[StBernard] damage assessment

[Westley Annis]

Oh Westley,
I'm just so irritated with this kind of nonesense.  Our a/c contractor, Bert
of Red's Heating and Air gave me three models to look at.  The most
expensive had a 2 speed cooling system and a much higher SEER rating than
the other two.  I talked with him about it and he said really, with that
higher SEER, we'd recoup the cost in a year or two on the Entergy Bill.
Same goes with switching out the windows to the double-paned type.  Of
course we'll *never* recoup the cost of these expenses when/if house is
sold, but it's the type of things that will help us by making the house
"tighter", so to speak.  (sigh)  Guess we'll have to just work around some
things.
 
Jim
(who knows...maybe it would be easier to just walk away from it and buy
somewhere else, but we had a very tight little group of neighbors at the
corner of Green and Meadowlark; of the 4 households I know three of us are
coming back and that's the way I'd like to keep it)
 
P.S. I agree about the Stafford Act.  It really needs a major overhauling
but don't know what/how that would get started.
 
 

 

	Jim,
	
	It boils down to one of the problems with the language of the
Stafford Act.
	It is designed strictly to restore to pre-damaged condition.
	
	The parish faces the same problem. All of the wastewater treatment
plants
	were damaged, so FEMA will help to restore them. Never mind the fact
that
	it would save $1 million or so to abandon all of the existing plants
and
	just build the new one that the council has been working on for the
past
	couple of years.
	
	40 years ago when the Stafford Act was passed, I guess Congress just
didn't
	realize how much things would improve even though the US had just
come out
	of one the biggest innovation cycles we've ever had. Then again,
when the
	Stafford Act was passed, we were still recovering from Lyndon
Johnson and
	the Vietnam War.
	
	Westley