School district continues town hall meetings

News Herald (Panama City, FL)

Nov. 7--PANAMA CITY -- Three of four town hall meetings hosted to help Bay District School employees with disaster recovery are in the books, and one more meeting will be hosted this week.

The town hall meetings give teachers and staff of Bay County an opportunity to have face-to-face contact with different agencies for relief. The road to recovery for employees has been a rigorous one.

"Wages haven't gone up any, but your rent has, your power has and all the bills have," Bay High School teacher Greg Bailie said at one of the meetings. "A lot of people now are wanting first month's rent, last month's rent plus a deposit and that's about $5,000 or $6,000."

Bailie encouraged his colleagues to go to the town hall meetings if they're still seeking help for disaster relief.

"We had about 25 people that came (Tuesday) and significantly more today," Bay District Schools Communications Director Sharon Michalik said. "I asked everybody yesterday to go back to school and tell your colleagues it was worth your time and encourage others to come."

The agencies were there to help those who needed to apply for rental assistance, counseling services, legal services, insurance claims and much more.

The Housing Assistance Program was one of the more popular stations at the meeting.

"We provide down payment and closing assistance; up to $22,000 in down payment and $3,000 closing assistance," Deputy Director of Community Development Sheila Ware said. "We also provide foreclosure prevention if somebody has gotten behind on mortgage payments due to the hurricane. We can assist up to $7,500."

The Housing Assistance Program will also help with minor home repairs. They also have a program that will do up to $25,000 in rehabilitation work.

"For us, we've been really busy. I think yesterday we had about 25 people, and today we've had about the same," said Ware.

The final town hall meeting is 3-4 p.m. Friday Nov. 8 in Mosley High School's media center.

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