How to get FEMA Pre-Disaster Mitigation money for planning
On this week’s episode of our podcast Go Cultivate!, we spoke with Laura Clemons, an expert in disaster recovery and resilience. Laura mentioned in that interview that there’s a brand-new FEMA grant for cities to make hazard plans before a disaster ever hits.
We had a number of follow-up question for Laura. Here is what you need to know about about the FEMA FY 2019 Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) Grant Program:
1. How much money is available for A) planning and B) mitigation/implementation projects?
There isn’t exactly a specific amount of money for A/B.
There is a total of $250M in the pot.
All eligible “Applicants” (50 States, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) are each eligible to receive an allocation of $575,000. (That totals $3,450,000.)
$20 million will be set aside for federally-recognized tribal applicants to receive an allocation of $575,000 per tribe.
Then the balance ($226,550,000) of PDM grant program funds will be distributed on a competitive basis to all eligible applicants with no single applicant receiving more than 15%, or $37.5 million of the $250M.
FEMA will select eligible planning and project subapplications in order of the agency’s priorities as follows:
FEMA will select one eligible multi-state/tribal mitigation planning or project subapplication per Applicant.
FEMA will select eligible planning subapplications from applicants that have less than $400,000 HMGP planning funds available.
FEMA will select eligible project subapplications from applicants that have less than $4 million HMGP regular project funds in the following order:
Mitigation projects that reduce risk to any natural hazard (e.g., seismic, wildfire, landslide, wind, flood, drought)
Generators for critical facilities identified in a FEMA-approved mitigation plan and meet the standards set by local building codes.
FEMA will select eligible planning subapplications from applicants that have $400,000 or more HMGP planning funds available.
FEMA will select eligible project subapplications from applicants that have $4 million or more HMGP regular project funds available in the following order:
Mitigation projects that reduce risk to any natural hazard (e.g., seismic, wildfire, landslide, wind, flood, drought)
Generators for critical facilities identified in a FEMA-approved mitigation plan and meet the standards set by local building codes.
2. What the match is for normal cities and small/rural towns and how does it work? Does the work have to be funded up front by the city and then it's reimbursed by FEMA, or can the city get access to the FEMA portion up front? (A lot of cities may say they can come up with their portion, but don't have the money to pay for the whole thing up front).
FEMA money is always reimbursement. There is no prepayment. So along the way, as money is spent buy the jurisdiction, it can be submitted to the State for reimbursement.
Awarded applications will receive up to 75% of the eligible activity costs.
Small, impoverished communities may be eligible for up to a 90% federal cost share. Requirements are as follows:
A community of 3,000 or fewer individuals that is identified by the State;
Economically disadvantaged, by having an average per capita annual income of residents not exceeding 80% of national, per capita income, based on best available data;
Local unemployment rate exceeds, by 1% point or more, the most recently reported average yearly national unemployment rate;
Any other factors identified in the State Plan in which the community is located.
The 25% local cost share may be met through the use of force account labor/equipment or through donated activities.
3. What’s the timeline?
First thing is contacting a hazard mitigation officer. Here’s a script for a city/county when they call their state’s hazard mitigation officer:
We are interested in submitting a FEMA FY2019 PDM Grant application.
For PDM sub-applicant submissions, can you send us your priorities list that you'll use to rank subapplications for submission to FEMA?
Has the state established PDM application submission deadlines?
Since FEMA is prioritizing states that have less than $400,000 in HMGP funds available, does the state have any HMGP funds available? If so, how much and for which priorities?
Does the state currently have or is it planning on having an HMGP application submission period in the future? If yes, what will the priorities and deadlines be?
How can I get added to your email list for future mitigation grant opportunity notices?
Applications due on January 31
This is the deadline for the Applicant to submit all of their bundled and prioritized subapplications to FEMA. So each state will have a much earlier deadline for the subapplicants to have their subapplications submitted to the state.
Award notifications
Application Submission Start Date: 9/30/2019
Application Submission Deadline: 01/31/2020 at 3:00 pm [Eastern Standard Time]
Anticipated Funding Selection Date: 06/1/2020
Anticipated Award Date: 12/30/2020
No project part of an awarded project is allowed for work to commence prior to the grant award contract being issued.
4. Any other critical info?
Get one community in each state to contact the state hazard mitigation officer. Contact info by state found here.
Once you have this info, I [Laura] can better advise on next steps. If a community wants to submit a project, we need to first know what the state’s priorities are so that we can determine if it’s a good fit. If it’s a project that falls at the bottom of the state’s priorities, it is extremely unlikely to be funded and therefore not worth the time to submit. Project subapplications are far more arduous to create, whereas the planning subapplications are fairly easy/quick to complete.
For more information, check out FEMA’s Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant fact sheet. →
Want more help? Contact Kevin Shepherd at kevin@verdunity.com or Laura Clemons at laura@ccmc.me.
[Top image: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]