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HomeMy WebLinkAboutstrategyLOCAL MITIGATION STRATEGY CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION A. PURPOSE AND SCOPE 1. LOCAL MITIGATION GOALS Natural disasters are inevitable in Florida. Natural features, such as the geography and topography of the state of Florida, make it vulnerable to a wide variety of natural and man-made disasters. Florida has over 14 million residents, most of whom live and work along or near the state's 1,350 miles of coastline. More than $870 billion of residential and commercial property is exposed to the threat of hurricanes and severe coastal storms.' "Preparing a local mitigation strategy is a voluntary — but critically important — process." — The Local Mitigation Strategy, A Guidebook for Florida Cities and Counties In 1997, the Florida Department of Community Affairs (DCA) launched an initiative designed to help communities identify areas that are repeatedly damaged during disasters, and tap into state and federal funding to help strengthen these areas. This initiative, called "Breaking the Cycle," is a proactive approach to making communities less vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters. As a part of this initiative, DCA recognized that effective decision. making about rebuilding cannot be done in the chaos following a disaster and provided funding for cities and counties to work together to prepare a single, unified Location Mitigation Strategy (LMS). Adopting and implementing an LMS helps to strengthen communities by reducing their vulnerability to natural disasters and protecting them from future losses. By identifying and prioritizing projects prior to a disaster, local governments will be able to take actions to permanently reduce the risk of future losses. While disasters cannot be prevented, such actions serve to decrease the human and economic costs often associated with a disaster. The LMS serves as a bridge between local governments' comprehensive and emergency management plans, land development regulations, building codes, and other ordinances. By working together to produce a community -wide mitigation strategy, cities and counties can reduce the escalating costs of recovery and rebuilding after a disaster. In addition, communities that develop and implement an LMS tend to receive more post -disaster funding and are generally given priority over communities that have not implemented a mitigation strategy.2 Local govemments will also benefit from having information readily available that is required on applications for post -disaster funding. Other benefits of adopting an LMS include: • Reductions in lives lost and property damage resulting from a disaster and Tess money spent in the aftermath; ♦ Quick access to post -disaster funding for pre -identified mitigation projects; • Improved relations with Miami -Dade County through the sharing of resources; • Increased emphasis on vulnerabilities in hazard -prone areas; and ' Florida Dcpai rneni' of Community Hifairs, -Nio Date. Breaking the Cycle, Strengthening Florida rserore Disaster Strikes. 2 Ibid. SEPTEMBER 1999 PAGE 1 CHAPTER I LOCAL MITIGATION STRATEGY ♦ Better decisions following a disaster and an effective planning tool that provides a summary of relevant goals, policies, and objectives for each participating municipality. 2. DOCUMENT OVERVIEW This LMS is comprised of five chapters: • ChapterI describes the goals of LMS planning, provides background information, and describes the methodology used to identify and prioritize mitigation projects proposed by the City of Miami, • Chapter 11 provides a review of regional and county plans already in place that affect the LMS planning process. The applicability of these planning documents to local mitigation planning is specifically addressed. ♦ Chapter III describes some of the regional hazards and vulnerabilities that formed the basis for identifying potential mitigation measures. Many of the hazards are directly applicable to the City of Miami; others are more limited in scope. What they have in common, however, is that the hazards pose significant threats in the region and need to be considered in a larger context than a single municipality. ♦ Chapter IV presents an LMS for the City of Miami. The chapter describes the specific mitigation measures identified and evaluated by the City and summarizes the scores assigned to each measure during the prioritization process. This chapter also includes an initial review of potential funding sources for each project. ♦ Chapter Vdescribes the implementation process for the LMS. Activities discussed in the chapter include adoption of the LMS, anticipated uses, and suggested next steps. 3. USES OF THIS STRATEGY This document is intended to be used in two ways. First, the document is intended to serve as a resource for the City to use in advancing its local mitigation planning goals. In developing and prioritizing a list of mitigation measures within the framework of the Local Mitigation Strategy Guidebook,3 participants gained new insight into the planning process and benefited from discussions of mitigation needs and concems. The list of projects focuses as much as possible on specific needs identified by representatives from diverse departments within the City of Miami. This list should serve as a useful starting point for initiating funding applications and monitoring progress in implementing individual mitigation measures. In addition, the document may be used, in conjunction with other sources, to pursue lower annual flood insurance costs under the National Flood Insurance Program's Community Rating System. Second, the document will serve as a component of Miami -Dade County's LMS that is being compiled by the County's Office of Emergency Management (OEM) using input from all 30 of the individual municipalities, county agencies, not -for -profit, and private sector entities participating in the initiative. The County document will include the List of mitigation projects identified by the City of Miami and will highlight "common threads," or mitigation measures identified by multiple communities during preparation of their individual strategies. 3 Florida Department of Community Affairs, June 1997. The Local Mitigation Strategy: A Guidebook for Florida Cities and Counties. PAGE 2 SEPTEMBER 1999 LOCAL MITIGATION STRATEGY CHAPTER Local Working Group members from throughout FJiam;-Dada County have pa;ticipat:: ;n regular (approximately bi-weekly) meetings with OEM. In addition, a smaller Steering Commiftee comprised of a smaller group of Working Group members has met approximately monthly to support and help guide the Miami -Dade County LMS planning effort. These meetings have allowed participants to discuss issues and concerns and to identify common mitigation needs across municipalities. They have also helped ensure that local mitigation planning efforts have remained as consistent as possible with the county's overall mitigation strategy. The coordinated efforts of municipalities and the OEM in developing a unified LMS will allow participants to maximize the benefits from developing and implementing measures that will strengthen their communities and reduce vulnerabilities. Chief among these benefits is reduced loss of life and property resulting from natural disasters. Other benefits of a coordinated unified strategy allow municipalities and the County to: • Receive post -disaster funding more quickly by pre -identifying mitigation projects; • Save money because the costs of mitigation are less than the costs of recovery and rebuilding; • Receive funding to meet existing State planning requirements; • improve existing city -county partnerships through the sharing of resources; and • Develop a community -wide mitigation plan. B. BACKGROUND As part of its local mitigation planning process, the City of Miami used available funding provided by Florida Department of Community Affairs (DCA) to engage a consulting firm to provide assistance in perfomning the work. The group selected 1CF Consulting based on a competitive bidding process initially performed by the City of North Miami. tCF Consulting's responsibilities included coordinating the flow of information, generating new information about potential mitigation measures, developing procedures to establish priorities among potential mitigation measures within a municipality, facilitating meetings, drafting an integrated LMS, and documenting the results of these, activities. As part of this process, the City assembled a Working Group consisting of one or more representative from the departments identified in Exhibit 1-1. SEPTEMBER 1999 PAGE 3 CHAPTER 1 LOCAL MITIGATION STRATEGY EXHIBIT i-1 MEMBERS OF THE CITY -ASSEMBLED WORKING GROUP Department Representative Title Fire & Rescue Joe Fernandez Captain . Fire & Rescue Terry Remland Lieutenant GSA, Property Maintenance Jose Sardina Superintendent Public Facilities Terry Buice Assistant Director Public Works . Frank Vilar Civil / Environmental Engineer - Parks & Recreation Terrence Griffen Assistant Director Public Works John H. Jackson, P.E. Assistant Director Planning Lourdes Siazyk Assistant Director Building and Zoning . Frank Rollason Director Public Facilities • Stephen H. Bogner Marinas Manager Public Works Len Helmers Professional Engineer III Police Tom Roell Commander of Planning & Research Police Michael Marquez Emergency Planner Fire & Rescue Mark Wolosz Facilities Coordinator Saulo Bastos Saulo Bastos Parks Coordinator The City of Miami executed an agreement with 1CF Consulting on July 23, 1999, for the scope of services identified in ICF Consulting's proposal originally submitted in February 1999, and the subsequent modifications to the submittal. The agreement was approved by the City Manager, Raul Martinez, on July 8, 1999. C. METHODOLOGY . APPROACH The development of this LMS followed a step-by-step process that focused early on identifying a list of specific mitigation measures based on several sources. Specific activities included convening P Ytyllollly Group consisting of at least one representative -from a Vail Ly UI City departments, discussing potential hazards, and reviewing and updating available information on vulnerabilities and critical facilities. Potential projects identified by the City earlier PAGE 4 SEPTEMBER 1999 LOCAL. MITIGATION STRATEGY CHAPTER I in the LMS process were identified based on a preliminary "wish list" that had been developed by the City of Miami. This original list of potential mitigation measures was subsequently modified by the Working Group based on a review of examples of other projects developed by other municipalities in Miami -Dade County, and other needs identified by the Working Group. Participants were encouraged to think as broadly as possible about measures that could be taken to strengthen the City against future disasters. Proposed mitigation measures were then carefully reviewed and additional information was obtained, where needed, to more fully describe the measures. 2. PRIORITIZATION TOOL Working Group members recognized the importance of establishing priorities among the broad variety of proposed mitigation measures. The Working Group developed a systematic and unbiased methodology to allow participants to analyze the suitability, costs, and risk reduction potential of their proposed hazard mitigation measures, and allow the measures to be compared and prioritized within each community. The methodology, used successfully by ten other municipalities in Miami -Dade County as part of their LMS efforts, was developed around two important requirements: 1. The measures must be based on needs identified and qualified by City personnel who best understand these needs; and 2. The methodology must be based on a solid foundation that reflects the key parameters agreed to by participants and their consensus view of the relationships among the parameters, determined by the weighting factors assigned to each. Advantages of this methodology are that: • Potential mitigation measures within a municipality can be easily evaluated and compared to help determine priorities; • The methodology can be adjusted as additional needs are identified or as priorities change over time; • The method is easily documented. For each potential mitigation measure, individual judgments are made for more than a dozen parameters, each with its own weighting factor. The Working Group then developed an initial prioritization tool, or "straw man' for this effort based on local mitigation strategy planning and guidance documents, and discussions with OEM personnel. The preliminary prioritization tool was an attempt to formulate an equation that used reasonable ranges for individual parameters while allowing a wide range of overall scores. Additional information about the parameters comprising the algorithm and the prioritization methodology used to develop scores, are provided in Appendix A. 3. CONCLUSIONS AND LIMITATIONS The prioritization procedures used to develop scores for each of the potential mitigation measures generated a large amount of data. The Working Group carefully reviewed this data and drew the following conclusions: SEPTEMBER 1999 PAGE 5 CHAPTER I LOCAL MITIGATION STRATEGY + There was a broad distribution of scores reflecting diverse mitigation needs in the City. In general, perceived mitigation needs were consistent with the results of this scoring exercise. Participants believed that the process was successful in quantifying the overall need, benefits, and costs of alternative measures. • Although the results suggest that the scoring methodology succeeded in differentiating among the potential mitigation measures, the scores reflect the individual biases and scoring preferences of the scorers. Results might change as more information is obtained about the projects, or if there are new participants in the prioritization process. + The scoring methodology was modified by Working Group members to reflect their individual concerns and priorities. As a result, the scope of the evaluation criteria and the weighting factors assigned to each of the parameters reflect the consensus views of Miami's Working Group and may not be appropriate.for other communities. The methodology may be easily refined (e.g., changing weighting factors, adding or removing parameters) as program needs change, or as funding becomes available for certain categories of mitigation measures. The prioritization procedures developed for this effort makes an important step forward in allowing a systematic and unbiased evaluation of proposed mitigation measures. The methodology is built on a solid quantitative framework that relies heavily on information provided by City personnel. By requiring each of the potential mitigation projects to be broken down into specific components, the prioritization tool adds essential objectiveness to the review and evaluation process. The benefits of this approach were apparent to participants. The actual worksheets containing the scores for each mitigation measure are included in Appendix B. 4. PUBLIC REVIEW PROCESS Hazard mitigation and long-term redevelopment planning are not popular issues with the general public. If they were, there would be no need to emphasize the urgency to enhance existing mitigation programs and develop new ones. Nevertheless, the local mitigation strategy being developed will directly or indirectly attempt to result in changes to the public's current approach to living or working in hazard prone areas. This means that the strategy will need to gain the necessary level of public acceptance to allow City officials to act upon the strategy through its adoption and implementation. To achieve this goal, Working Group members are encouraged to provide Public Notice of the availability of this LMS document for review. The notice would be placed in local newspapers. Other mechanisms, such as a press release, newsletters, and intemet messages also may be used. Copies of the document should be available for review at public libraries, city hall, and other public buildings. The public should then be invited to submit written comments on the document or provide verbal comments at a public meeting. Any comments provided by the public should be carefully considered prior to adopting the LMS. Benefits of an effective public review process include: + Increased awareness of the life safety and economic benefits of hazard mitigation; • Greater public recognition of hazards and community mitigation programs; • Valuable suggestions from the public about hazards, risks, and mitigation strategies; • Acknowledgment of the difficult choices in hazard mitigation planning; and PAGE 6 SEPTEMBER 1999 LOCAL MITIGATION STRATEGY CHAPTER 1 a Greater potential for public acceptance of the LM3 and initiatives comprising it. By allowing public input, the Working Group will be able to benefit from the ideas and information provided. In addition, it will improve the public's acceptance of the process and facilitate the City's adoption of the LMS. SEPTEMBER 1999 PAGE 7