The City of Homer has halted pursuit of adoption or implementation of building codes for the foreseeable future, per a resolution passed by the city council on Tuesday, May 27. The decision comes after the city received notice in April from the Department of Homeland Security that a federal grant application submitted by the city in 2022 was canceled.
Resolution 25-052 notes that building safety and code enforcement was identified as a council priority in a work session held in 2022, with the intent to ensure that buildings in Homer are safe, provide the city with a system for enforcing regulations, and to allow for future denser patterns of development. The council submitted an application to the State of Alaska for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program for up to $500,000 to adopt and implement the 2021 edition of the International Building Code. However, the entire FEMA BRIC program has been shut down.
Per the resolution, the city was notified on April 4 that the FEMA BRIC program “has been shuttered and will no longer exist in its current form.” A May 14 memorandum to the council from City Planner Ryan Foster notes that FEMA has “no further guidance on if a program like this will return in the future.”
According to Mayor Rachel Lord, the city’s application was “in pre-award status as a sub-recipient of the state’s FEMA BRIC grant.” In accordance with guidance from DHS and FEMA in light of the grant program’s closure, “all projects not yet awarded from FY2020 through FY2023 will not be awarded.” Foster also wrote in his memo that, according to the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, there is “at this time” no appeal process to save projects that have not yet been awarded.
Resolution 25-052 acknowledges that the city’s 2022 FEMA BRIC grant application has been canceled and resolves that city staff will not continue to pursue the adoption and implementation of building codes unless otherwise directed by the council.
The press release, available on the FEMA website, says that under Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, DHS is “eliminating waste, fraud and abuse” and that any grant funds not distributed to states, tribes, territories and local communities will be “immediately returned either to the Disaster Relief Fund or the U.S. Treasury.”
Noem is the eighth DHS Secretary and was appointed to the role this year by President Trump.
A statement attributed to “a FEMA spokesperson” and included in the release calls the BRIC program “politicized” and “yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program.”
Also per the release, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed into law by President Biden in 2021, made $1 billion available to the BRIC program over five years. To date, $133 million has been disbursed to about 450 applicants; approximately $882 million of remaining funding is slated to be returned to the Treasury or “reapportioned by Congress in the next fiscal year.”
“Ending this program will help ensure that grant funding aligns with the President’s Executive Orders and Secretary Noem’s direction and best support states and local communities in disaster planning, response and recovery,” the release states.
Find Resolution 25-052 in full online at www.cityofhomer-ak.gov/citycouncil/city-council-regular-meeting-330. The resolution was passed as part of the May 27 consent agenda; no discussion was held by the council on the resolution.
