Hurricane abatement process continues
BY FRANKLIN HAYES Gulf Breeze News franklin@gulfbreezenews.com

As Hurricane Ivan becomes more of a distant memory, county officials are working to make the area's hurricanedamaged abandoned homes a memory as well.

"The county lost 4,000 homes as a result of Ivan and Dennis," said Commissioner John Broxson of Gulf Breeze. "We're not having as much rebuilding as we'd hoped for. There's still a tremendous amount of vacant land, particularly in costal areas."

Public Services Director Tony Gomillion said out of the 583 abatement cases initiated by the county, 390 have been closed by voluntary compliance.

"Some cases are in the final county process of going out to bid and securing a contract. Some have a legitimate legal issue and in some cases action has been taken by the property owner," Gomillion said. "We've seen a wide variety of issues."

In November of 2005, county officials began mailing certified letters to property owners whose structures were deemed unsafe or total losses. The letters gave recipients 60 days to respond by demolishing the property themselves, showing proof of repair or giving an explanation of circumstances. Thus far, the county has paid approximately $52,000 to demolish 10 homes after property owners did not comply. That cost is billed to the property owner. Unpaid demolition costs incurred by the county will result in a lien placed upon the property.

Currently, the county's building inspection and code compliance department is developing the next wave of letters and approximately 54 new cases will be added to the next mailing.

"There are always others that seem to show up on the list," Broxson said. "The process is coming along very smoothly considering how difficult a challenge it was."

When determining if a property is uninhabitable, county officials use what is called the 50 percent rule.

"In layman's terms, we're looking to see if the house is over 50 percent destroyed," Gomillion said. "That rule also applies if the cost of construction is 50 percent of the property value. Valuation has to be defined and it can be debated."

Building Official Tim Tolbert said his department uses a formula loosely based on values ascribed by the county's property appraiser.

"We're looking for properties that are substantially damaged over 50 percent from their market value," Tolbert said. "[In some cases] we take the property appraiser's estimated value and add 20 percent and come up with a figure for the structure only."

Tolbert said his department also uses a piece of software developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) called the Residential Substantial Damage Estimator (RSDE) to determine a substantially damaged property's repair costs.

For more information about the county's building department, visit http://www.co.santarosa. fl.us/.