On February 17th, the Grant Programs Directorate (GPD) announced the availability of the Fiscal Year 2012 Program Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOA).

Seven FY 2012 preparedness grant programs being made available representing $1,381,476,000 in FY 2012 federal assistance.

UASI grants totaled $490 million, more than many expected.

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Last week, President Barack Obama unveiled his fourth federal budget proposal, a $3.8 trillion proposal that, among other things, would provide $50 billion for immediate transportation investments, $30 billion to modernize schools, $30 billion to hire teachers and first responders and $2.9 billion to support workforce development training programs.

NLC President Ted Ellis, mayor of Bluffton, Ind., said that city leaders are pleased with the overall direction of the budget, which tries to mix spending cuts with important investments in infrastructure and human capital. However, more can be done to give city governments the flexibility and resources to create opportunities at the local level.

“Federal investments in cities do not stay in City Hall. They go to local businesses and service providers who act as partners in transforming their neighborhoods and delivering services,” said Ellis. “While it is important that Congress and the Administration continue to tackle the budget deficit, they also must still focus on creating an environment for private sector growth on the local level.”

The President’s proposal is a step in that direction, calling for $476 billion over six years for highways and mass transit, as well as initiatives that would enhance start-up access to credit, promote entrepreneurship and cut taxes for small businesses.

Read more @ www.nlc.org

Leaning Forward:
Go Big, Go Early, Go Fast, Be Smart.

In 2011, together with our partners across the whole community, we responded to a record setting year of disasters, provided assistance to help communities all over the Nation with our grant programs, and helped lead the way toward a National Preparedness Goal—a national vision of preparedness for how the nation will work together to approach our shared risk.

Today we would like to present you with the 2012 State of FEMA report. For the first time, FEMA has captured the highlights of our accomplishments for the year, laid out who we are and provided a vision for where we are going. The 2012 State of FEMA report also shows how utilizing the “whole community” has allowed us to collaborate with our partners to better prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from and mitigate all hazards.

Read more @ FEMA.gov

2011 left Americans with the aftermath of more than 90 federally declared disasters, 12 of which cost more than $1 billion, making it one of the worst meteorological years on record. Those numbers point out the need for communities to prepare for natural disasters and one way is to become a StormReady community.

StormReady, a program founded in Tulsa, Okla., in 1999, is a preparedness program that helps communities improve their safety operations by developing plans for how to handle severe weather. Sponsored by the National Weather Service (NWS), it recognizes communities that exhibit severe storm alertness. Through advanced planning and education, StormReady provides communities with the communication and safety skills needed to mitigate natural disasters before, during and after the event.

Read more @ emergencymgt.com

From Kim Stephens @ iDisaster 2.0

It seems there has been a lot of conversations on the #SMEM (or Social Media and Emergency Management) twitter hashtag about using volunteers to help response organizations deal with the huge volume of information that comes from social networks during a crisis. (One conversation was this recent chat.)  Organizing those volunteers into a group with set expectations of what they will provide, and then integrating their work into the response effort,  are the logical next steps.

One organization doing just that is the Standby Task Force (SBTF).  They have set out to “…[turn] the adhoc groups of tech-savy mapping volunteers that emerge around crises into a flexible, trained and prepared network ready to deploy. The SBTF is a volunteer-based network that represents the first wave in Online Community Emergency Response Teams.”

Read more