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Seal Beach Police Sgt. Brian Gray updated the Chamber of Commerce on the Hazard Mitigation Plan update on March 13. The occasion was the monthly Chamber networking breakfast. A city official usually gives a presentation to the Chamber breakfast.
Gray, the SBPD’s emergency services coordinator, described the Hazard Mitigation Plan as a FEMA document.
“What happens is, I think I touched on it last time I was here, when a city has a local hazard mitigation plan, in effect, ratified in the city,” Gray said.
“It opens up governments for grant money,” Gray said.
“Let’s be honest, we’re after the money. So about five, six years ago, our current chief police, Mike Henderson, he was in my position, and he got a grant to do the plan,” Gray said.
“Back then, only a couple of Orange County cities actually had localized communication plan. So it was pretty progressive at the time. So it was ratified in 2019, and the only thing with these plans is they’re only good for five years, because all sorts of things change, rules, regulation, laws,” Gray said.
“So here we are, five years later, and now I’m updating,” Gray said.
Gray said that the city got a FEMA grant last year for about $100,000 to hire contractor. According to Gray, the contractor was Michael Baker International. Gray said the city was going through the process of updating the plan and expressed hope that the plan would be finished at the end of summer. Gray said the plan would go to the California Emergency Services Office and would be passed on to FEMA.
“It gets approved, we bring it back to council, we have a nice plan. It’s in effect, and then we can go after big grants. We’re talking like in a $50 million range,” Gray said.
He said Officer Kendra Owen was taking pictures of the Chamber meeting because outreach events have to be documented.
According to Gray, the Chamber breakfast presentation was one of the required outreach sessions. “If you simplify the plan into three things, it’s hazard profiles, vulnerability assessment and then mitigation strategies,” Gray said.
“So hazard profiles, we’re looking at tsunami, we’re looking at earthquake, fire, the big ones, and then we look at specifically, who’s the most vulnerable to each of those. There’s something they have called SVP, socially vulnerable population,” Gray said.
He asked if seniors would be more vulnerable to some hazards than the rest of Seal Beach. “Probably, so all that stuff kind of gets weighted, and then, of course, the big piece at the end, we can come up with mitigation strategies, and that’s where we can get the grants to help us with funding for some of these bigger projects,” Gray said.
The next outreach was scheduled for Wednesday, March 19, at Leisure World.
“We’ll also be the car show. April 26,” Gray said.
He encouraged the Chamber members and guests to visit the city website so they could take the hazard plan survey.
“It says it takes 10 minutes. It takes half that. And part of this plan really is engaging people that live in town, that work in town, people that visit the town and their input and feedback, it really helps,” Gray said.
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Community Development Director Alexa Smittle spoke next, turning to other plans the city is required to update.
“I’m actually just here to ride on Brian’s coattails because my department has some parallel activities going on with the local Hazard Mitigation Plan,” Smittle said.
“So many of you may know the Land Use and Planning is governed by our General Plan,” Smittle said.
“Our General Plan is made up of multiple elements, and one of them is the Safety Element. So we are in the process of updating our Safety Element, which runs in parallel to this other process. But obviously there’s going to be quite a bit of overlap. The other piece of overlap that we have right now is the Local Coastal Program that we have been working for many years to get off the ground and ultimately Institute,” Smittle said.
(Note: A Local Coastal Program is a California Coastal Commission-approved program that, once approved, transfers some of the CCC’s permitting authority to a local government.)
