Goshen City Council establishes flood relief fund

March 07--GOSHEN -- At the urging of Mayor Jeremy Stutsman, Goshen City Council members Tuesday voted unanimously to approve an ordinance establishing a flood relief fund for the city aimed at aiding residential property owners with damage repair costs related to last month's major flooding event.

According to Stutsman, the decision to create the fund came after several community members expressed their wish to donate money to help flood victims, and receiving knowledge that many homeowners affected by the floods do not have flood insurance, or companies are denying their claims.

"So right now what we're looking at for this program is owner-occupied homes that have been flooded. We're still writing the guidelines and rules for the program, and we should have those done yet this week, but we're looking at the owner-occupied homes to start with, and we will be trying to get to people who need furnaces, hot water heaters, electrical issues, etc.," Stutsman said of his initial plans for the fund. "We're also going to attempt to use this fund to do some more emergency relief. Right now we're waiting for the state and possibly federal monies to come through, and the Elkhart County Community Foundation is also looking at doing something, but it will be a little while before they get theirs set up. So we believe there will be help for the other pieces that go along with this, but we really want to make sure that we've got people with heat and hot water again, and so helping with those pieces first."

Stutsman said he is currently in the process of appointing a Goshen Flood Recovery Fund Committee to help administer the monies collected through the flood relief fund. The city will also be partnering with the local nonprofit housing agency LaCasa Inc. to help with those administration efforts.

CITY MATCH

In a related move Tuesday, again at the urging of the mayor, council members were asked and ultimately agreed to support a desire by Stutsman to appropriate $100,000 from the city's rainy day fund to be used as a match for any private donations that are given to the city's flood relief fund.

"While there wasn't an official vote taken, they all agreed that that was an appropriate course of action," Stutsman said of the plan. "City staff and I have put a lot of time into working on this flood and trying to find help for people, so while I wouldn't say I was surprised by their support, I was very grateful, and appreciate their support on this."

According to Stutsman, the city's rainy day fund is essentially a money reserve that has been set aside to be used in times when regular income is disrupted or decreased in order for typical operations to continue.

"Often, those emergency situations are considered when you're having a budget shortfall within your community," Stutsman said of the fund. "But historically, the city rarely touches the rainy day fund. Even after we had the big economic downturn in 2008 and 2009, the city went through some really tough times with the budget, and I don't believe we touched the rainy day fund at any of those times either. So right now we have just a little over $2.1 million in that fund, and so I let the council know that I think this is a really appropriate use for $100,000 of that, and also told them that I fully support replacing that money later in the year if we see that we're going to have another surplus within the city for the budget by the end of the year."

While the suggested match will require an additional appropriation by the council at a future meeting, Stutsman said his plan is to begin matching donations immediately, and if necessary arrange to have funding pulled from other available budget lines until the rainy day appropriation becomes official. Such funding would then be repaid by the rainy day match once that funding has been appropriated.

"As of yesterday, I believe there was almost $15,000 that has been donated so far, so as soon as we can get these rules and regulations set, we're going to start accepting applications from members of the community that have been affected, and start working with them immediately," Stutsman said. "So I think that by the time we get the additional appropriation in place, we're going to have money in people's hands already."

HOW TO DONATE

According to Stutsman, anyone interested in donating to the relief fund can do so by making a check payable to the City of Goshen 2018 Flood Recovery Fund. Those checks should then be either mailed to or dropped off at Goshen City Hall, 202 S. Fifth St., Goshen, IN 46528, or any Interra Credit Union branch.

In addition, donations can also be submitted online by visiting the website pay.paygov.us, selecting "Indiana" under the state tab, "City of Goshen" under the jurisdiction tab, and "2018 Goshen Flood Recovery Fund" under the transaction tab.

"And we're guaranteeing that 100 percent of the money that is donated will go to helping somebody," Stutsman added. "The city will not take any money for administrative costs. The only exception to that is, the company than handles the online donations takes 3 percent of any online donations. But other than that, it all goes back to the community."

FEES WAIVED

Also approved Tuesday in connection to the recent flooding was an ordinance authorizing the waiving of city building permit fees and necessary inspection fees for homeowners who experienced flood damage as a result of the flooding that occurred between Feb. 20 and Feb. 26.

"With this item, I had actually talked to several council members before the meeting and just said, 'This is something I think we should be doing,' and the council members unanimously supported it," Stutsman said of the request. "So with this we have officially waived all building permit fees in the affected areas. They're still going to have to get permits and they're still going to have to go through inspections, but we've just waived the fees."

Speaking to who can take advantage of the fee waiver, Stutsman said the city is currently only offering the service to owner-occupied homes that experienced flood damage, though that could potentially be expanded to landlords, etc., depending on how well the city's flood relief fundraising efforts go moving forward.

"And as part of this, we're also now asking people to call in if they had sewer backups or if they had seepage in their basements from groundwater," Stutsman added. "Those are all considered part of this flood as well because they were caused by the amount of water that was here. So those homes, if they've got furnace damage, hot water heater damage, we'll have a whole list of things that if those homes have damage, they'll have access to this as well."

John Kline can be reached at [email protected] or 574-533-2151, ext. 315. Follow John on Twitter @jkline_TGN

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