Item on the agenda item 3A discussion, North Kingstown Hazard Mitigation Plan update.

Hi.

Hi.

How are you?

Welcome.

No, it's just the latest draft of the hazard mitigation plan.

So the consultants were here a couple months ago at this point.

And you guys had a discussion very early in the process.

I think it was mostly on what is hazard mitigation, some of the vulnerabilities and risks at that time.

And since then, we got an initial first draft back of the this is actually a second draft, believe it or not.

You would not be able to tell that.

But we sent that to the local hazard mitigation committee.

We got some feedback back from the members.

Meg is your representative on that board.

We got some comments back from her and a couple of other members.

And staff also had extensive comments that were going back to them.

So we sent them a long list of edits.

We got this version back.

We're actually going to do them in-house at this point for expediency because it's just going to be quicker for us to make those changes.

So as we speak, Elle's working on more of the like editorial things, even if it's a spelling mistake, if we think the formatting is weird, pagination has been driving us absolutely crazy.

So we're trying to fix the pagination on it.

The formatting is funky, so we're trying to like erase their formatting and get better one in.

So it's stuff like that.

But also substantively, there were things that we had requested that they do that they didn't that were in our initial comments to them on the first draft, and it was actually in the RFQ that we sent out that are not in there.

Namely, there's very little discussion about the comprehensive plan.

If you look at the existing hazard mitigation plan, there's a whole section related to how this plan ties to the comp plan.

And in the comp plan, there are specific actions taken from the hazard mitigation plan that are then reflected in the comprehensive plan.

So they are very linked.

There's almost nothing in this plan besides the actions that were from the old plan.

And so that is something that's not only we asked for in the RFQ, but it's a crosswalk FEMA requirement that you show how this plan can be integrated and linked to other planning documents.

So that's completely deficient.

So I'm working on that.

Even if we take language from the existing plan and literally copy and paste it, like the a lot of that language should be carried over, and none of that was done.

So we're going to be adding that documentation.

Um the one thing I have to look at is how some of the new actions that are in there might be implemented by some of the actions in the comp plan or not.

Certainly when we do the comprehensive plan rewrite or update in five more years, it's required every 10 years now.

We'll have to carry some of those actions into the hazards element from this plan.

So that's eventually those actions will be adopted into the comprehensive plan rewrite in five more years when the update is due.

Yeah, and this one will this one will be updated in five years again.

So it's kind of on, you know, it's a catching up game all the time between the two documents.

This is not an amendment to the comp plan.

It used to be an amendment to the comp plan.

Now it's a reference document.

So if you look in the beginning of the comp plan, it's listed as like resources or a reference, or it's not an amendment, so you don't have to adopt this as an amendment to the comp plan.

So in the past we had done that.

Um it will go to the town council eventually.

It's not nearly ready to go there yet.

So that was the big one of the bigger substantive items that was missing.

The other was, and it's near and dearer to me because I work on this is the community rating system.

That is something the town participates in.

I'm sure you've heard us talk about it a little bit in the past where policy holders for flood insurance get a reduction in their policy for us participating in it and gaining a certain number of points.

So a requirement of the CLS program is that you have a hazard mitigation plan.

So every year we provide the town council with an update on the actions as required by CRS.

So there's just very little mention of that in the existing plan.

So I'm also looking back at the old plan.

I'm really taking a lot of the similar language and just making sure this version has that too, because it's important to highlight that um in the hazard mitigation plan.

And then the other one was talking about development trends.

It's a requirement of FEMA that you show where development is happening in your community and how it's impacted by hazards.

The only thing in this current plan is like a list of new developments that have happened.

So that's not sufficient.