[StBernard] parish debt

[Westley Annis]

Thanks Deborah,
 
Can you tell another bedtime story- for some reason the one you told is the
one that keeps waking me up in the middle of the night.
 
I would like one with picnics and parades and festivals and backyard
bar-b-ques and playgrounds and dance reviews and grass clippings on the
sidewalk and children's bicycles parked at McDonald's and baked macaroni
from Rocky's and . . .  well you get the picture- I'll wait for the next
story.
 
God Bless,
Craig 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
I don't envy our parish council and president having to make major financial
decisions and I certainly don't know anything about our financial status
with regards to actual revenue and expenses, but I do know just enough about
FEMA assistance to government entities to give you all an analogy that may
help you understand what our council is dealing with. Call this an urban
fable:

Jer has been offered by FEMA free money to repair or rebuild his house. The
only catch is that FEMA will only pay 90% of the cost to do so and Jer has
to contract for the repairs/rebuilding himself. To get the FEMA money, Jer
has to send each bill from the contractor to FEMA and FEMA sends him back a
check to cover 90%. Furthermore, if Jer wants to mitigate against future
damage, like raise the house or raise the air compressors or his generator,
etc, FEMA will pay a great portion of that, too. Jer has exhausted his
insurance money, what little coverage he had.

But Jer is broke. He doesn't have his $10,000 to put towards the $100,000 in
repairs/rebuilding. So the State is willing to loan him the $10,000 courtesy
of the federal government. He will not have to make payments on the loan
until 2011 and sometimes,like in 9-1-1, the federal government might even
forgive his $10,000 loan and interest totally.

Now Jer is faced with a deadline for telling the State if he wants to be on
the list of people to receive the loan. If he says yes, but ends up not
needing the money, then he can just not sign for the loan.
If he says no, and he never gets his $10,000, then he never gets FEMA's
$90,000 and nothing gets repaired/rebuilt. 

Jer wants to do this, but his wife, May, says that they should cut back on
their household expenses before he tells the State he wants the loan. May
says that Jer is spending too much money on operating their household and
they already have a loan from their bank to pay for living expenses. She's
concerned that with this $10,000 loan from the State, they'll be in too much
debt.

Jer argues that at this point they just have to tell the State they are
interested in the loan. He also argues that without the loan, they can't
$90,000 in free money. He says that they have absolutely no money to
repair/rebuild without the loan and free FEMA money so when the deadline
comes, they will be left out of any chance of being financially able to do
anything.

May just keeps saying to cut expenses first. She probably knows that it is
foolish to lose out on $90,000 of free money, but she's been trying to get
Jer to kick out his relatives who are living with them since the storm and
this is the leverage she can use to do that. Meanwhile, the deadline is
approaching.

(The names above are fictional to protect the innocent. Any reference to
real people is purely coincidental.)

Deborah Keller

P.S. Draw your own conclusions, but I'd be interested in knowing what you
would do if you were Jer, and maybe you need to call your council person and
let them know your opinion, too. It  might break the tie vote if the elected
officials knew what the voters thought they should do on this matter.