HUD funds $45,000,000
to help the fire victims.

Attending the meeting at Riverside Elementary School auditorium on June 3rd 6-7:30pm. We received the Wildfire RECOVERY flyer telling us about the meeting on June 2nd, via email, so there was not a lot of time to make arrangements to attend the meeting.

If you take about 850 homes destroyed by the wildfire and divided them into that sum of money it would equal $52,941.18 per property owner (approx). Wremember, we are people who have lost everything. This kind of chunk of change would help us right now, in finishing our home in a real way. Unfortunately, the County being in control of the funds will result in creating a

…slow stagnant mosquito pond with water flows blocked by mountains of paperwork.

Please don’t let the County steal the money setup for the fire victims! Instead divide up all the funds to help any of the victims at whatever stage they are at in the process of recovery.

The meeting suffered from a lack of preparedness. There was a slide show presented that clearly laid out a County plan to deposit all the funds into a 6 year bank account feeding a myriad of governmental offices. They might be able to have a plan for the money by late Fall or sometime during winter. That does not help us get any work done this year during good summer weather. Many questions went unanswered.

Instead of blindly feeding an inflated ineffective bureaucracy like the Long Term Recovery Group of Elk or the Spokane Emergency Response Offices. I would suggest that first those offices become accountable to us. They should be required to give an accurate public report showing exactly what funds have been donated to the fire victims, and where those funds been distributed to? No, vague verbal number recitals. We have never been provided any credible type of report. What government offices and personnel have been paid and continue to be paid? What remains of the funds already collected?

Is there a bank account balance sitting idle in the mosquito pond?

Any office receiving fire victim funds should be required to be relevant, cost effective and willing to communicate responsibly about the progress being made. Are they doing their jobs? County offices are already fully funded by our working-class taxes, so it does not make sense that their offices are looking to be the first-in-line to receive funds meant to go the the wildfire victims. Some subjects brought up.

1. House Rebuilding Funds.

This is presented only as an after thought, with many many restrictions and formulas mentioned that will hold it up.

2. Setting aside 16K for mitigation.

There is no discussion allowed about this. Teaching us how to clear burnable debris (already fully funded). Funding Spokane County Conservation District. Funding DNR Dept of Natural Resources (already fully funded) to clear debris and replanting (already funded).

3. Re-surfacing major arterials, Frideger, Bridges, and Madison.

The residents on these 3 roads voted against paying the RID, Road Improvement District Tax (5 years ago) . We paid $5K for the privilege of the seal coat on the main dirt road arterial of Nelson, Jackson, Oregon, through to Pend O’reille County. Our double-dipping County had already been paid for this service by our property taxes, which include road improvement taxes.

4. Dealing with timber slash piles.

Some of us have gradually burned slash piles over the winter with some real foolish difficulties with the fire department permit requirements. Some have done absolutely nothing. If the County fire department could assist in allowing reasonable restrictions and stop the foolish expensive permits, we could deal with this problem as a community together.

If the County takes the funds, they will only be available (after a long, long wait) to the unemployed living at a poverty level. The majority of us have filled out more paperwork during the past two years, than could even have been imagined. A new set of burning hoops will be rapidly setup by whoever holds the purse strings next for sure. We, the working class victims qualify for nothing, we are on our own, just like we were with FEMA earlier. If you are one of those, who has tightened-your-belt and struggled through the last 2 years doing anything and everything you could to start over, TOO BAD SUCKER! Don’t expect any assistance because this is not a system set-up to reward the hard worker.

The money should simply be divided up between the victims of the fire, to use for what ever they need to get done.

We are grown up property owners and are quite capable of making decisions about our own livelihood. How do you think we managed our homes before the fire? We are all victims recovering at different levels of repair after the tragedy. The only fair way to do this, is to give the money to the victims, not the Government offices.