Press Release
Posted:
Santa Rosa, CA – Today Rep. Mike Thompson (CA-05) and the City of Santa Rosa announced $33,988,033.19 in Federal funding through the Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program to fulfill other unmet fire recovery needs, such as rebuilding the Fire Station. The station burned in the tragic 2017 Tubbs Fire and Thompson presented a ceremonial check for this Federal funding to city officials today.
“Our community continues to rebuild from the tragic 2017 Tubbs Fire and I’m so proud to announce this award of $33 million in Federal funding that can be used to work on outstanding recovery projects such as rebuilding the station,” Thompson said. “We were hit hard by the fire, but we are coming back even stronger. I worked for strong disaster relief funding, including voting for a supplemental appropriations package that increased funding for the Community Development Block Grants-Disaster Recovery program, from which this grant was awarded and I’ll continue to work to bring back every Federal dollar and resources as we continue this recovery.”
“The City of Santa Rosa is extremely grateful for our community’s allocation of recovery infrastructure and mitigation funds that will help us rebuild and improve our local infrastructure to protect lives, homes, and businesses from future disasters,” said Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Rogers. “We have made significant progress in the last few years to build back from the 2017 fires, but there are a few challenges that we have yet to overcome such as rebuilding Fire Station 5 in a more resilient location within our Wildland Urban Interface community. This funding is going to help us to close the gap on our unmet infrastructure projects and was made possible because of Congressman Thompson’s advocacy and support for federal legislation that ensured that communities like Santa Rosa could benefit from these funds.”
On April 10, 2018, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded nearly $28 billion in CDBG-DR grants to support long-term disaster recovery for the 2017 hurricanes and wildfires. This was required by the $89 billion disaster package Thompson helped to enact and is only the first third of the money to be awarded by CDBG-DR. This included $212 million for California with $124 million allocated for unmet needs and $88 million for mitigation. Of this $124 million for California’s unmet needs, at least $99 million of that must go to Sonoma County, the 94558 zip code in the City of Napa and other areas that were most impacted by the fires. The remaining $25 million can be spent on any 2017 wildfire disaster areas, including spending more on Sonoma County
The City of Santa Rosa continues to successfully navigate the recovery process from the Tubbs and Nuns fires. After being identified by HUD as a most impacted and distressed community resulting from the 2017 fires, it was eligible to apply to California Housing and Community Development's (HCD) Infrastructure Program and MIT Resilient Infrastructure Program which were created using funds the State received from HUD. HCD allocated $33.9M across both CDBG-DR Infrastructure and CDBG-MIT funds to the City for infrastructure projects to assist the City with rebuilding as well as to reduce impacts of future events. The City may now submit project applications for HCD approval to utilize the HUD funds and has prioritized rebuilding Fire Station 5 in a new location as one of its top projects.
