The Baton Rouge Area Foundation has donated over 1.6 million dollars in flood relief and plans to give even more. Michelle Southern has the story…
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An Ascension Parish lawmaker wants FEMA to move faster in providing manufactured homes for flood victims. Halen Doughty has more…
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The Baton Rouge Area Foundation has given over 1.6 million dollars to help those affected by the historic flooding that tore through south Louisiana. Director of Communications Mukul Verma says they’ve given dozens of grants to local nonprofits working in the field of flood relief. He says a lot of this money comes from online platforms where people from around the country donate money.
Verma says companies around the region have donated about a million dollars to BRAF. He says 600-thousand dollars have been distributed to schools and education organizations to assist with new classroom supplies and restoring water logged schools.
Verma says donations aren’t coming in as quickly like after Hurricane Katrina, for which they raised 10 million dollars in the same amount of time. He says donations have slowed again but they are raising about 20-thousand dollars a day in online donations and a lot of other people are raising money too.
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State lawmakers grilled a FEMA administrator today in the House Homeland Security Committee meeting, asking why it’s taking so long to get assistance to flood victims. FEMA Coordinating Officer Gerard Stolar says there are 23-hundred FEMA personnel working on this disaster.
Stolar says 131-thousand people have registered for federal aid, and $315 million has been approved for FEMA. He says over 111-thousand home inspections have been ordered, but only 56-thousand have been completed.
Stolar says $289 million has been dispersed to flood victims. He says 2-thousand flood survivors are still in hotels, and more than 15-hundred are in shelters. Gonzales Representative Clay Schexnayder express frustration that FEMA is not moving fast enough to help flood victims return to a normal everyday life…
Stolar says 200 households have been approved for FEMA manufactured homes, but only one of the trailers has been set up in Louisiana. He says local ordinances are creating a road block to getting these homes set up. Schexnayder says he doesn’t care how it happens, but the process needs to be expedited.
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State Treasurer John Kennedy told lawmakers today that they should consider suspending the one cent sales tax increase for flood victims rebuilding their homes. He said the state should not reap a financial windfall from people’s tragedy, when they’ll have to pay an extra penny on items needed to rebuild their lives…:
But New Orleans Senator JP Morrell, who chairs the Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee, says this is not something that Kennedy should be proposing as feasible on the fly, because it’s not…:
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Kennedy says the increase in the sales tax should be revisited, even if it means calling a special session. He says Morrell is entitled to his opinion:
Morrell says Kennedy has been in government for years, and he should know that the state’s tax code just doesn’t allow lawmakers to immediately suspend a tax for certain people…:
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Mandeville police have arrested a former employee at an assistant living facility on a charge of first degree rape. Officer Beck White says 58-year-old Jerry Kan, who worked as cook at Beau Provence Memory Care, was booked after authorities received a call about inappropriate behavior between Kan and a 78-year-old resident.
White says Kan has worked at Beau Provence since April of this year. She says the incident occurred on August 21 inside the resident’s room, and Kan resigned two days later.
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