51 area property buyouts pending

By Jennifer Learn-Andes jandes@timesleader.comLuzerne County Reporter

Shickshinny and Township are proving it pays to be proactive when applying for disaster funding to buy out flood-prone homes.

Seventeen flood-prone properties in Plymouth Township were bought out by the government and demolished in 2007, and another 30 buyouts are in the works, a municipal official said.

A government buyout of another 21 properties in Shickshinny is also pending, the borough said.

Meanwhile, recent flood victims in several other municipalities have been questioning their inability to get bought out.

The pending buyouts in both municipalities stem from an application made in 2010.

Funding to buy and demolish flood-prone properties becomes available in any municipality when there’s a federal disaster declaration somewhere in the state.

The county sent letters to all municipalities with structures that have been flooded around July 2010 to inform them that flood buyout money was available due to snow events in western Pennsylvania that February.

Plymouth Township and Shickshinny were the only municipalities to apply in 2010, county Flood Protection Authority Chairman Stephen A. Urban and authority Executive Director Jim Brozena said during Tuesday’s authority meeting.

Federal, state funding

The federal government is funding 75 percent of these buyouts, and the state picks up the rest of the tab, Brozena said.

Shickshinny received notice last month that its 2010 request for 21 buyouts was approved, said borough secretary/treasurer Melissa Weber, who is also the borough’s agent for the buyout program.

The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) ultimately decides which properties are approved for the buyout, Weber said.

Borough officials chose to seek buyouts for the benefit of property owners, even though the loss of tax revenue and residents hurts the municipality, Weber said.

Municipalities must accept ownership and maintain the properties, with the agreement that the sites will never be developed, Weber said.

“It’s a burden for the municipality, but Shickshinny has historically taken the residents’ needs into account first and foremost,” she said.

Plymouth Township Supervisor Gale Conrad said the 17 buyouts and demolitions in the township in 2007 stemmed from an application made after a federal disaster declaration in 2006. The government provided roughly $1.3 million to acquire and tear down those properties, she said.

The pending demolition of another 30 properties will create a void, but the township is putting residents first, she said.

“You have buyouts to help folks, which is very important, but there go your tax dollars and residents,” Conrad said.

She stressed the township will aggressively seek any additional funding for buyouts that becomes available as a result of recent federal disaster declarations from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee.

More alerts planned

County officials said they will again issue letters to all municipalities to alert them of buyout application deadlines for these disasters.

The county oversees a different buyout program set up to help municipalities along the Susquehanna River that aren’t protected by the Wyoming Valley levee, and about 300 properties are on this buyout waiting list in the county.

About 15 properties in Shickshinny, Plymouth Township and Jenkins Township were bought out through the program in recent years, but buyouts have slowed because the federal government has not provided roughly $15 million earmarked for the program, Brozena said.

“In the last few years when we requested federal appropriations, we haven’t received the money, which is why we haven’t been able to move on mitigation projects,” he said.

New buyout requests won’t be added because the remaining $15 million won’t come close to funding the pending projects, Brozena said.

The county has roughly $2 million for the program, and Urban said he’d like to use the money to acquire some of the properties on the waiting list, especially ones that are no longer livable.

The $2 million isn’t just for Luzerne County, Brozena said. He said it must be shared with four other counties that are part of the county’s hazard mitigation program -- Columbia, Montour, Northumberland and Snyder.

Another 300 projects, mostly buyouts, are also on the waiting list in the other four counties, he said.