City's Milford invited to state conference
BY VICI PAPAJOHN Gulf Breeze News vici@gulfbreezenews.com

Milford

Steve Milford, Special Projects Manager for the City of Gulf Breeze, has been invited to the Governor's Hurricane Conference in May to share his expertise on debris removal and reimbursement.

Milford will lead the "Public Assistance Reimbursement by the Experts" session. The class is designed to help municipalities recover every penny possible from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Public Assistance reimbursement program. As Amendment I continues to tighten budgets, properly handling procedures and paperwork is critical in order to be eligible for FEMA funds.

"Municipalities need to understand how FEMA and agency insurance need to be integrated, and the session training is designed to provide real-life examples that will give the most up-to-date information about the Public Assistance Program from a user, State and FEMA perspective," Milford explains.

Gary K. Freerksen, State Public Assistance Officer, Florida Division of Emergency Management, will lead the workshop. According to Freerksen, Milford will afford a new twist to the training with sessions on coordination with the insurance industry and with lessons learned from a small town perspective.

This marks the second time in three years that representatives of the city of Gulf Breeze have been included in program for their expertise. In 2005, Nancy Millay, Director of Finance and City Coordinator for IDR was invited to the Governor's Hurricane Conference to present the Interfaith Disaster Resources (IDR) recovery plan the city and area churches put together in response to Hurricane Ivan's devastating impact on the area. The IDR prototype was implemented as a model for the long term recovery plan (now called LTRO, or Long Term Recovery Organization) at the 2005 conference. The IDR group formed immediately after Hurricane Ivan first to identify the immediate and long-term needs that exist following a hurricane, and then to assess what available local resources were within the community to meet those needs. The success of that cooperation made the almostimmediate cooperative effort in the aftermath of Dennis even more successful. During a post- Dennis visit, the smooth process caught the attention of the Governor and prompted his request to form a state-wide plan based on the Gulf Breeze IDR prototype.

"I think the success in Gulf Breeze is a function of Buz's [City Manager Edwin "Buz" Eddy] attitude," Milford asserts. "Buz led with his own action and I will be sharing at the conference that no level of funding or funding expertise can substitute for being a good neighbor on-hand and hands on. The difference between Gulf Breeze's response and the recovery of other areas is that the city staff was ready to react fast and citizens see you doing what is needed, and then the citizens get out and react and soon neighbors are helping neighbors because it just needs to be done."