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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSubmittal-Wayne Pathman-Sea Level Rise Committee Quarterly ReportSubmitted into the public on or 4 in e T ,.,�. City Clerk TO; Honorable Mayor & Members of DATE: April 26, 2017 the City Commission SUBJECT: April 27th City Commission Meeting Sea Level Rise Committee Quarterly Appearance (DI.1) FROM: Wayne Pathman ENCLOSURES: March 23rd, 2017 Memo from Chair, Sea Level Rise Committee Greenberg Traurig to Miami -Dade Managing Partner, Pathman Lewis, County re: NFIP Reauthorization LLP On April 27`h, 2017, the City of Miami Sea Level Rise Committee (Committee) will appear before the Miami City Commission for its second scheduled quarterly discussion item for the year. Since its last quarterly appearance in January, the Committee sent you all a follow up memo dated February 24. 2017 summarizing our findings and recommendations to the Commission. The SLR Committee has also held three regular monthly meetings and one workshop focused on planning and zoning issues since January. This memo will highlight some of the critical findings from these recent hearings and encourage the City to urgently appropriate funds for addressing the associated recommendations contained herein. However, before addressing these findings and recommendations, it would be remiss of this Committee not to recognize some of the positive steps the City has been making towards assessing its resilience to sea level rise (SLR) including the City Manager authorizing: • Retaining consulting services from the South Florida Regional Planning Council to assist the Office of Resilience & Sustainability (ORS) in developing decision-making GIS mapping tools, to better understand the City's increased flooding risks associated with SLR • Piggy -backing on a Miami -Dade County contract with Hazen & Sawyer for developing a Rapid Action Plan to address the vulnerability of the County's most critical infrastructure to increasing flood risks exacerbated by SLR • Development of an RFQ to update the City's Stormwater Master Plan taking SLR into account and fully digitizing the City's stormwater infrastructure so that future modeling scenarios will become easier. The Committee supports these actions as an initial step to help the City better understand the vulnerability of its assets and communities to SLR. However, as you are well aware, the City is already subject to significant flooding impacts and risks due to King Tides and extreme storm events. While these actions represent a start, the Committee believes they must be quickly augmented with Economic/Insurance Risk modeling to better understand the economic risks of inaction vs. the potential risk- adjusted economic value of adaptation investments and Engineering/Planning support to evaluate potential enhancements to Miami21 to prevent or reduce the impact of development in highly vulnerable areas. in our memo to the City Commission dated February 24, 2017 — the Sea Level Rise Committee requested a budget which included a proposed $300,000 to conduct vulnerability analyses around sea level rise. To date, the Committee has received no response on its request from either the City Commission or Administration. Considering the urgency of SLR, the Committee again respectfully asks that the City considers and approves this budget request. Per the findings of our recent hearings, the Committee is requesting the City appropriate funding to contract with outside professional services for the following: 1. Economic Risk Modeling for Sea Level Rise During the last appearance before the City Commission, the Committee discussed the urgency of understanding and preparing for potential economic impacts from sea level rise. Along with analyzing physical and social vulnerability, this 201,5- Submitted into the public record fpr A O on L `� City Clerk Committee believes it is just as urgent (if not more so) to begin the process to comprehensively study Miami's economic vulnerability to sea level rise, and to retain the appropriate expertise for doing so, especially with changes to the prevailing insurance landscape looming. As a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and extensive flooding in recent years, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), on which many Floridians rely, is almost $25 billion in debt. NFIP is set to expire on September 30, 2017, and Congress has indicated its intent to renew the program prior to this date. However, there remains much debate and uncertainty around how long the program may be renewed for and what form it will ultimately take. Much of the debate centers on: accelerating the development of a private flood insurance market and competing private -sector insurance products; what authority states will have over private flood insurance; and, a move towards a more risk-based formula for pricing. These changes will have significant effects on our local insurance landscape, rate stability, and economy as a whole. Therefore, it is critical that the City begins to fully understand its economic risk from SLR and take the needed actions to reduce it. The Sea Level Rise Committee strongly recommends that the City considers retaining professional services for economic and catastrophe risk modeling as an urgent priority — to quantify and model the economic risks Miami faces from sea level rise including; insured and uninsured risk, business and service interruption risk, and more. Furthermore, we ask that the City Commission direct the City Manager to: task ORS to work closely with the Sea Level Rise Committee on developing a scope of services for retaining a qualified provider for said services; and, identify and appropriate the funding necessary. 2. Analyzing Possible Changes to the Miami 21 Zoning Code for Sea Level Rise During the last appearance before the City Commission, the Committee also discussed the urgent need for the City to identify opportunities for strengthening Miami 21 and other applicable building and land -use development plans/documents, to increase resilience to sea level rise. In addition, the Committee believes it is critical that changes to the Code ultimately provide a framework that encourages more cooperation between the City and the private development sector for increasing SLR resilience. With limited staff capacity in the Planning & Zoning, Building and other applicable departments to conduct a comprehensive gap -analysis in this regard, the Sea Level Rise Committee strongly recommends that the City considers retaining professional services for these purposes; and that the City Commission direct the City Manager to: task ORS, the Planning & Zoning, Building and other applicable departments to develop a scope of services for retaining a qualified provider for said services; and, identify and appropriate the funding necessary. On behalf of the entire Sea Level Rise Committee, I wish to thank you for this opportunity to present this information, and look forward to continuing working closethe City on strengthening our resilience to sea level rise and ensuring a prosperous future for all of Miami. -- Wayne Peftan Managing Partner, Pathman Lewis, LLP Chairperson, on behalf of the Sea Level Rise Committee as a whole Cc: Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Commission Daniel J. Alfonso, City Manager Todd B. Hannon, City Clerk Dr. Nzeribe Ihekwaba, Assistant City Manager Jane Gilbert, Chief Resilience Officer Members of the Sea Level Rise Committee Xavier Alban, Assistant City Attorney Ajani Stewart, Board Liaison mGreenbergTraurig Memorandum TO: Miami Dade County FROM: Diane Blagman, Laurie McKay DATE: March 23, 2017 RE: Flood Insurance Reauthorization Submitted into the public record f r itrig (s) ti� on City Clerk As you know, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) will expire on September 30, 2017, and Congress is looking to reauthorize the program before that date, although there has been significant discussion whether it should be a three, five, or seven year reauthorization. Following Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and extensive flooding in recent years, NFIP is $24.6 billion in debt, and has roughly 5.1 million participants. Legislation to reauthorize the program, the Flood Insurance Market Parity and Modernization Act, introduced in the Senate by Dean Heller (R -NV) and in the House by Dennis Ross (R -FL). This legislation would accelerate the development of a private flood insurance market, and seeks stronger consumer protections. The bill would clarify a provision from the Biggert -Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 to allow private insurers to meet the mandatory purchase requirements of the NFIP. The legislation would also give states regulators the authority to determine what would constitute an acceptable private insurance. This bill moved through the House last year, but saw no action in the Senate. Specific bill provisions include: Acceleration of the development of a private flood insurance market with stronger protections overseen by state regulators by allowing state regulators to allow for private insurers to participate if requirements are met; Technical amendments to the Flood Disaster Protection Act of 1973; Ensures that mandatory flood insurance (either private or federal) be equal to the development or project cost of the structure (less estimated land costs), the outstanding principle balance of the loan, or, the maximum limit of federal flood insurance coverage available for the particular type of property - whichever is less; Submitted into the public record f r ite (s) U , 1 on / 1 . City Clerk Page 2 • Revises certain requirements that apply to home loans or loan guarantees by the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac); • Extends the NFIP to Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa; • Requires FEMA to consider any period during which a property was continuously covered by private flood insurance to ne a period of continuous insurance coverage. There have been three hearings on NFIP reauthorization to date in the 1 15th Congress. The House Financial Services Committee held hearings on March 9 (httQ://financialservices.house.gov/calendar/`eventsingle.asQx?EventID=401561) and March 16 (http://f in ancialservices. house. aov/calendar/eventsingIe.aspx?EventID=401597), and the Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on March 14 (http://www. ban king.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/hearings?ID=CAFEDOAS-B098- 442A-946C-F4A5A2B43AIA), and more hearings are expected as Congress continues to work through the program. As you know, this is a bipartisan issue that generally unites Members of Congress and Senators from coastal communities against those representing more landlocked states. Therefore, there is always significant debate surrounding this program, and a variety of other provisions and ideas are being discussed beyond what has been included in legislation to date. Some Members would like to see the pricing structure rewritten with a more accurate risk-based formula that they argue would improve the program's solvency and encourage the private sector to offer competing products. House Financial Services Chairman Hensarling (R -TX) has said he would like to fully privatize the program, but has recently indicated he may back more bipartisan efforts to stabilize the rates, improve the flood maps, and encourage the private market back in. Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D -CA) favors having the Treasury forgive the program's debt - an idea Republicans don't support. Senate Banking Chairman Crapo (R -ID) has said the reauthorization effort would work on improving FEMA's use of technology, such as light detection and ranging, to create maps that better reflect risk, make greater use of private insurance to give policy holders more options and to share risk between the government and the private sector, and change the length of the reauthorization. Other ideas include updating maps and technology used to assess flood zones and factoring in a homeowner's ability to pay a certain rate. Submitted into the public record f r ite (s) U I i on 1 i�l City Clerk Page 3 In addition to Congressional action, President Trump's "skinny budget" included a provision to restructure TSA and NFIP by establishing user fees that would likely go toward funding the border wall. Specifically the President's budget blueprint includes the following bullet point: Restructures selected user fees for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to ensure that the cost of Government services is not subsidized by taxpayers who do not directly benefit from those programs. The Budget proposes to raise the Passenger Security Fee to recover 75 percent of the cost of TSA aviation security operations. The Budget proposes eliminating the discretionary appropriation for the NFIP's Flood Hazard Mapping Program, a savings of $190 million, to instead explore other more effective and fair means of funding flood mapping efforts. We expect significant debate on this issue to increase in the upcoming months, and both House and Senate committees are hoping to markup by summer.