TREASURE ISLAND, Fla. — After a weeks-long pause, the City of Treasure Island will continue distributing substantial damage determination letters, but only if they are requested in person at city hall.
Commissioners made the switch in a Tuesday night vote.
The city is still in the process of determining if homes across the island are substantially damaged after widespread flooding during Hurricane Helene.
The city must follow FEMA rules and ensure homes are not substantially damaged before issuing permits to rebuild them. If a home’s monetary damage is determined to be more than 50% of its pre-damage value, it must be demolished, relocated, or elevated.
To make this determination, the city used a subcontractor to assess homes and businesses. Data collected in that assessment was inserted into a FEMA calculator to determine a structure’s extent of the damage. Then, letters were being mailed to the property owners to inform them of the damage determinations.
However, some homeowners, like Chris Clark, argued the process was inaccurate and unfair since most assessments were done hastily without entering impacted homes.
“Houses right next door to one another — same footprint, same basic house, same amount of water. And one gets a 98%, you know, damage letter. One gets a 40% damage letter, and there’s no rhyme or reason to them,” Clark said Tuesday.
So, in December, the city switched to a new process that it calls option two.
Under option two, the city now waits for property owners to apply for permits and, following its normal permit review procedures, makes substantial damage determinations at that time.
“You have a contractor submit a permit of what your damages are. They compare that to your 50% rule,” Clark explained.
But that new process also takes time.
“Why can’t, starting tomorrow, we come in and get a permit?” one homeowner complained Tuesday. “Every day, I lose thousands of dollars because I can’t live in a house that I’m paying for.”
Despite the continued frustration, citizen volunteers like Heidi Horak say they are trying to help homeowners navigate the confusing process and get the permits they need.
“They are getting permits in a number of days, many people have told me. They give the thumbs up on the way out of the permitting room, and it makes me feel really good,” she said.
Meanwhile, FEMA is set to visit Treasure Island this Friday to make sure the city is following FEMA rules under option two. If it’s not following the rules, it could lose key flood insurance discounts under the federally-backed National Flood Insurance Program.
“I say bring FEMA in. I would love to talk to FEMA at this point. Maybe they’ll give me a permit,” one frustrated homeowner said Tuesday.
Some homeowners believe the city has nothing to fear since option two also includes strenuous safeguards to verify if homes are substantially damaged or not.
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