Things to Do in the Final Days

I have been keeping busy answering requests for the DPZ planning team. They bombard me with questions about data or where they can get things. I have also spent some time trying to make sure their work is received well and is carried forward after they leave. To this end, I have set up meetings between Duanny and the County Council as well as between Duanny and the Citizens Recovery Committee.

Normally I would not be allowed to have such freedom to things like this, but the boss is preoccupied with getting our Long Term Recovery Plan in to the HQ. Recently a HQ designed a tool to evaluate the recovery value of all the projects we identified. The tool asks lots of questions like, “Does this meet an urgent need” “Are there multiple sources of funding” and “Does the project address an issue that is directly tied to the storm.” All this gets plugged in to a spread sheet and out pops a number between 1 and 3. In theory, the higher numbers are in the best position to get federal funding.

Like all things from HQ, a simple exercise turns into a big fuss with 12 hours of meeting and tons of excess discussion. The good part for me is that, as I said, it has distracted everyone else and let me have some freedom.