Good post but not sure that last part is entirely true. Texas has a multibillion dollar
rainy day fund around $24 billion. It’s a matter of priorities and vision and will.
Still, Hegar said lawmakers will have yet another large surplus, to start from this session: an estimated $23.8 billion that includes $4.5 billion that was set aside last session for public education funding tied to Governor Greg Abbott’s priority school vouchers bill.
They could have covered all of the camps and most of the RV parks for probably less money than it takes to put lights up on a baseball field.
Both Kerr Co. and the state had the money - they just chose to spend it elsewhere. Now that this foolishness is being exposed and has resulted in a lot of needless deaths, there will be plenty of money available.
In 2016, one year after the deadly flash flood in Wimberley, the city of Kerrville committed to spend about $10MM on a sports complex. It ended up costing over $14MM. This narrative about not having the money is just not true. Granted, this is a city initiative rather than a county one, but there aren’t any sirens in the city of Kerrville, either.
One other point about this is that it wouldn’t have done anything to help the camps, because the the stations are all downstream, with the furthest upstream being on the North Fork of the Guadalupe above Hunt. The camps are mostly on the South Fork, which doesn’t have any monitors. But the data from Hunt stations should have alerted every downstream RV park to GTFO immediately.
Norman Oklahoma’s planned flood warning system is on hold due to FEMA canceling BRIC grant money.
FEMA says the BRIC program is inefficient and focused on climate change. The BRIC program was created in 2018 under the presidential administration that was in office at that time.