Quoted:
Quoted: Actually we were declared a disaster recovery area. The only thing that does for us is make the local governments eligible for reimbursement for costs related to sheltering the evacuees from Louisiana. It does nothing else as far as your everyday life is concerned.
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Roger that. It's only purpose is to gain relief funds.
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Exactly. When they make those kind of declarations, local governments become eligible for reimbursement of OT, supplies expended, some equipment, etc. that would otherwise impact their daily budgets.
While most local governments have enough contingency funds built in for "minor" emergencies, helping out on something this big can get VERY costly, VERY fast. Doing a speedy cost breakdown, it would cost us about $50-60K to send 10 cops or firefighters to the disaster area for a week, and that is assuming they camped out and had no lodging costs, and that local officials supplies them with most of their water, food and fuel.
Even running a local evacuee center is going to eat up OT budgets, deplete stocks of emergency supplies, and generally cost a bunch. Most Texas governments run on an October to September FY, and most have already burned through all of their budgeted money for the year. Any money left over generally has been shifted to fuel budgets, because I don't think ANYONE anticipated how much fuel costs were going to rise, and most fuel budgets for most local governments ran out last Spring and have been getting covered from other accounts.
I really hate the fact that I know all of this stuff (though I am by no means a budget "expert"). Things used to be so much simpler...