(Spencer)– The Spencer City Council earlier this week approved an invoice from an electrical contractor for $378,000 in repairs to control panels for five different sets of stop lights damaged in the June flood. City Manager Kevin Robinson told the city council Monday they earlier were under the impression the cost would be reimbursed by FEMA but have since found out otherwise…
“Through the reimbursement process we found out that the Federal Highway System does not get reimbursed by FEMA, it gets reimbursed by its own protocol, the Federal Highway Aid System. In the Federal Highway Aid System their normal protocol is that you are to put out stop signs until somebody from the state or federal level is able to inspect and then they make the call on repair. We were unaware that was the protocol. We were following FEMA protocol, so we met with the D.O.T and they believe that there is still a pathway through the Federal Highway Aid System to get reimbursed for this, but we just wanted everybody to know that this is not part of the FEMA reimbursement, we’re having to work a different channel for this.”
Robinson says the problems with the stoplights were discovered shortly after they were re-activated in the days following the flood, and that the malfunctioning signals were causing significant traffic back-ups. As a result he says they needed to take emergency action at the time to get the repairs made.
