BROWNSVILLE — Cameron County is still waiting on close to $1 million in reimbursement funds for Hurricane Dolly almost 10 years later.
The county has recently been in communication with the company Texas hired to close out cases and officials are hopeful those funds will be available by the end of the year, said County Administrator David Garcia.
“The reasons for the delay have been several. All the documentation has been submitted to the state, and the state had put people on the project, and they either get moved to another project, or another event occurs, and they get assigned to cover a more pressing matter,” Garcia said. “Supposedly, they are going to try and get some funds out by the end of the year, but hopefully sooner than that is what we’re being told.”
The reimbursement is for actions the county took during Hurricane Dolly to help get residents back on their feet. Their services ranged from debris removal to water pumping to fixing infrastructure.
Cameron County has a fund balance for emergency events, but it is still important the reimbursement is dispersed, Garcia said.
“The county keeps a healthy fund balance for road and bridge, and a healthy fund balance for the general fund, which enables us to utilize funds when these events happen, but at the same time … they could potentially have an impact on our ability to go out and do other things in the future,” Garcia said. “The last thing we need is to have a hurricane come this season and we’re already in the hole one million dollars because we’re waiting on the last reimbursement.”
Hurricane Dolly was in 2008. Ike followed shortly after, and then the Bastrop fires occurred in 2011. With so many natural disasters occurring back to back, emergency management gets spread out thin at the state level, Garcia said.
“They’re not only working on documentation for past events, but present events. … They’re spread out thin. I know that the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management has been trying to get a better system in place (Chief W. Nim Kidd) and streamline a lot of the processes,” Garcia said.
Palm trees bend under the force of Hurricane Dolly at 77 Sunshine Strip and Commerce on July 23, 2008.
