(Spencer)– The Spencer City Council has approved entering a 28E agreement with Clay county that would create what’s known as a “Long Term Recovery Group”. Deputy City Manager Kevin Robinson says the entity would work under a board structure out of the County’s Emergency Management Agency office and would serve in a disaster case advocacy role. He says currently, Upper Des Moines Opportunity is the state-designated case advocate…
“So there’s two reps right now trying to handle a 2,370 FEMA caseload. The Long Term Recovery Group would be able to assist them in their efforts if that was appropriate for the case. Again it’s all about the individual and the unmet needs. The goal is to connect the people to the resources that they need or the resources that through their advocacy discussion with the Long Term Recovery Board structure, those resources could be put in. Not everybody is able to clearly identify what exactly they need or where exactly they need to go, and essentially that’s a simplified version of a Long Term Recovery Group.”
Details on how the Long Term Recovery Group would be structured are still being worked out. Jessica Wright, who is the Human Resources Director for the city of Spencer, has been identified as a possible candidate to head up the group as she already has been overseeing a number disaster-related recovery operations. Wright told the council she is willing to do that but simply can no longer handle doing BOTH jobs…
“This is already unofficially in place. I’ve been filling the structure role since the day the flood happened. I’m exhausted. So I either have to focus on HR and you need to find someone else to run the LTRG, or you put me in the role and I’m happy to serve in which ever capacity, but I can’t work 17 hours a day seven days a week any more.”
Councilman Ron Hanson said he believes someone else should be hired as head of the Long Term Recovery Group…
“My concern right now is that we’re down a Finance Director, we’ve got a City Manager search going on. We can’t afford to lose our HR person right at this point. That’s my opinion. I really believe that we need a full time HR person with going through all this. I get it that you’d be great at this position but I think there’s other people out there, and we really as a city need you in the staff where we hired you at.”
No action was taken regarding that at Monday’s meeting.
On somewhat of a related note, the council also approved an agreement with a consulting firm that will assist the city’s Planning Department with items related to flood recovery.
Officials say they’re confident FEMA will reimburse the city for the additional positions.
