The
Red Hook StarªRevue
MAY 2015
SOUTH BROOKLYN’S COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER
FREE
CITY COMPTROLLER CALLS BRING IT BACK “A CASE STUDY IN DYSFUNCTION” by George Fiala
I
n June, 2014, at a meeting at PS 15, Amy Peterson, Mayor de Blasio’s head of the Build It Back program, spoke to residents about the Build It Back program. We wrote at the time: “New York City’s answer to the major damage from Hurricane Sandy was meant to offer millions of dollars of assistance to families and businesses reconstructing their homes in the aftermath of the disaster. Five pathways were made available for victims: repair, repair and elevation, reconstruction, reimbursement, or acquisition.
However, a combination of factors including poor public communication, confusing qualification guidelines, and changing leadership neutralized the efforts of the program until recently. Amy explained that of the thousands of residents who sustained hurricane damage in Red Hook and Gowanus, only 121 had actually applied to the program. Of those, only eight had selected their assistance option. Amy was being polite. A few weeks before that meeting, City Comptroller Scott Stringer held a session in the same auditorium as part of a six neighborhood tour he was making to hear firsthand the problems people were having. We wrote of that meeting: “Mary Kyle, from Van Brunt’s Dry Dock Wine and Spirits, found her element in the audience. She regaled them, saying that having to appear
Stringer listening to Red Hookers tell their tales of woe last year at PS 15.
Red Hook Star-Revue
before Build-It-Back was like a trip to visit the great OZ – all smoke and no action. She almost broke into tears, saying that the alienation she feels from the city has been crippling. She was speaking both as a homeowner and business owner. “We need money – not cups of pudding!” was how she characterized the Sandy aid that she perceived since the storm.” Stringer’s Build It Back study was issued March 15, and to say it is damning is to put it mildly. The 87 page report, available online, is a compendium of mismanagement, bad decision making, fraud and outright theft of city money by hired contractors. Build It Back is a NYC program initiated by Mayor Bloomberg in 2013 to help owner-occupants of 1-4 family buildings that were ravaged by the Sandy floodwaters. Applicants, many from Red Hook, were initially encouraged by the city’s commitment to help them recover and rebuild their damaged homes. But that hope soon turned to utter frustration as they were led through an interminable process of paperwork which led to nothing. “New York City’s response to Sandy was a case study in dysfunction,” Stringer said in his press conference to introduce the study. “During the course of this audit, I went to affected communities to hear first-hand the stories of the recovery from hundreds of City residents - from the endless delays, to the lost paperwork and the maddening lack of progress. With this audit, we present a new level of detail about how the City allowed consultants to run amok and what must be done to make sure these mistakes are never again repeated.” The Bloomberg administration hired Public Financial Management, (PFM) a Pennsylvania based firm that boasts municipal clients throughout the US. However, they had absolutely no experience at managing disaster recov-
ery, according to a September 2014 NY Times article. PFM went on to hire various subcontractors to perform the intake work - the application process that homeowners needed to go through. Complaints about the program caused PFM to be terminated in December 2013, the last month of Bloomberg’s term, but the subcontractors remained, but without contracts. Stringer explains “If there are no valid contracts in place, the City has limited leverage over its vendors’ work and cannot hold them accountable for their performance. “ The city agency responsible for all oversight of Build It Back is the Office of Housing Recovery Operations (HRO). Before they were fired, PFM was paid over $17 million for their project management work. According to the audit, at least $6.8 million was paid for “work that did not conform to program requirements set out in PFM’s contract.” These were payments made for forms filled out by homeowners that were incomplete and useless. The incentive for all the contractors were to get paid for turning in forms. Whether the applicants were instructed properly in the filling out of the forms was not checked.
www.star-revue.com
The NY Times article gave a hint at how this could have happened. “PFM brought in another firm that had worked on prior disasters, URS Corporation, to run the intake centers, which it staffed with temporary workers. The custom-made computer system, into which all applications were to be entered and stored, was supposed to be delivered two to four weeks before opening day, a person involved in setting up the centers said. But it did not arrive until the night before opening day, leaving no time for any familiarization. “Everybody was pretty much on their own, trying to figure it out themselves,” said a man who worked as a recovery specialist and also would only speak anonymously to protect his chances of finding a new job. For months to come, records scanned into the computer system — proof of income, property ownership and storm damage — seemed to disappear. “People were told to come back with the same info, and the same form,” the man said. “I apologized to them a lot, because it was frustrating for me as well.” (c0ntinued on page 3)
May 2015, Page 1