BOOOOO! on John Mica pulling a Corrine Brown trick, i.e., being the messenger which he wants us to feel he is responsible for the whole blessing on Debary. The only real good news he could bring is that he is going to campaign against the rail road to no-where and save lots of money that could be spent on many better community-Florida efforts.
One thing that has always bothered me is that John Mica got nothing done to prevent the 2004 flooding from occurring again in 2008. See below where someone in the article points that out. In fact funding for the Army Corp of Engineer projects falls under infrastructure and so does federal funding for water management projects in general. It appears that Debary was left out of the Clean Water Act even though John Mica always brags about putting together the one and only Bush veto override. I guessing saving the Everglades makes for better headlines than saving Debary from future flooding catastrophy. And the override would have happened anyway, with or without John Mica's help. As always John Mica goes with the tide, and claims credit for the work of others. Lets praise the local officials for putting in their request to FEMA, and for FEMA to have responded faster which they now know how to do, given the Katrina Disaster.
As for the city's ongoing stormwater drainage problems, Garcia said
officials are working on it and "I'm hopeful."
Consultant David Hamstra
said the money will help but it doesn't solve a bigger problem: how to pay for $8.5 million in stormwater drainage improvements that include funding a
much-anticipated westside emergency flood-management system.
Locations near the DeBary Golf and Country Club were among the hardest-hit areas during Fay and improvements to the west side drainage system would help lessen that area's flooding problems, according to city officials.
The city has a $5 million shortfall to pay for the west side system and needs $3.5 million to fund 29 new projects, Hamstra said.
"(The reimbursement) is not new money to pay for any
of these situations," he said. "My goal at the moment is to find money for the
west side."
Well don't count on John Mica for looking for federal funding for that,...... even in the stimulus bill. All he is interested in is his Central Florida Rail pet project where we see the usual greed, excess and arrogance that we've become so accustomed to in the Bush years.
On the other hand another commenter makes a good point too:
I still don't like Tax payer money going to cover bad engineering though. The
developers should foot the bill in Glenn Abby, DeBary Golf Club, and Saxon
Woods. Those developers were the major culprits here anyways, with their ponds
not being "as Built" according to design, and failed miserably.
But that's what we do. Taxpayers bail out banks and other large corporations, so why not bail out the developers for their pursuit of a quick profit?
