Stamford officials say ‘no’ to flood-related federal buyout program

The Bennington County town of Stamford has decided not to participate in a federal buyout program for properties under threat from flooding after considering the question multiple times.

A local homeowner said the Stamford Selectboard’s decision has left her family in limbo, and she is now considering asking the courts to intervene.

Deb Burchard and her husband Robert, who own a house in a federally designated special flood hazard area , now can’t pursue a government buyout. They can’t sell the property, knowing it’s in a precarious condition. Their family also can’t live in it long term.

“The next flooding event will literally take out the septic (system),” said Burchard, a local real estate broker. “That will condemn the house, because there’s no other place to put the septic.”

“I’m very, very concerned that they’re taking people’s property rights away from them,” she said of the selectboard’s decision. “It’s a huge hit, financially.”

During Town Meeting Day in March, Stamford residents voted against participating in the buyout program. But since the citizen-petitioned article was merely advisory, the final decision rested with Stamford’s top elected officials.

Earlier this month, the five-person board voted 3-1, with one abstention, not to participate in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Hazard Mitigation Assistance Grant Program . Burchard had been pursuing an application for her family’s property since last summer’s historic flooding . Under the program rules, the municipal government needed to approve the buyout for the application process to continue.

At their meeting on April 4 , some selectboard members voiced misgivings about joining the FEMA program. They expressed concerns about having insufficient knowledge of the program and about the lasting caretaking responsibility the town would have over properties that get bought out. They said they were worried too that they would have to sign on to every buyout application — and take on the corresponding administrative work — if they agreed to one application.

Once FEMA completes a property buyout under the Hazard Mitigation Assistance Grant, the program requires that existing structures be demolished and the land be deeded to the local government, with its use restricted to open space in perpetuity.

Board members also expressed their desire to make a decision that would reflect voters’ input during the recent Town Meeting Day, according to the official audio recording of the meeting.

“This is probably one of the hardest decisions and hardest thought processes we’ve had as a board,” said selectboard vice chair Mike Denault, who voted no. “I looked at it a thousand times. Is it in the best interest of the town?”

That was the board’s second vote on the question in two weeks. During the previous round, on March 21 , Denault had supported the buyout program, but it failed to pass because the two newly elected board members were opposed. The board decided to study the issue further and come back for another vote two weeks later.

In a December selectboard meeting — where the board initially agreed to support the Burchards’ buyout application — members discussed the town’s potential tax losses if a significant number of property owners applied for the buyout.

Selectboard Chair Nancy Bushika has abstained from participating in votes on the issue due to a conflict, according to official meeting documentation. Neither she nor Denault responded to multiple messages asking for an interview.

Bill Levine, Stamford’s long-time emergency management director who retired in March, disagreed with the selectboard’s decision. He believes participating in the FEMA buyout program would offer town residents more options on how to deal with properties that have been damaged by flooding or are at risk.

“The town shouldn’t take a position limiting the future possibility of somebody’s catastrophic loss that could be helped by the program,” Levine said in an interview. “I thought it was a short-sighted thing.”

According to the town clerk’s office, Burchard is the only person who applied for a FEMA buyout after the July 2023 flooding. Town Clerk Lori Shepard said that, in her 13 years on the job, no other FEMA buyout applicants have come forward.

Levine also said he doesn’t recall anyone applying for a FEMA buyout in his nearly 40 years with the town office.

The Vermont Emergency Management office, which helps administer the FEMA buyout programs in the state, is expecting Vermont to receive $75 million to $90 million from the federal government for Hazard Mitigation Assistance grants related to the July 2023 flooding.

In addition to buyouts, the grants would cover projects such as property elevation, floodproofing, floodplain restoration and upsizing culverts and bridges, said Stephanie Smith, state hazard mitigation officer with Vermont Emergency Management.

To ease the buyout application process following the July 2023 floods, Smith said, Vermont Emergency Management has put in place a new process, where the state handles the bulk of the administrative tasks. These include applying for buyouts on behalf of the towns, managing the contracts and overseeing the funding.

Towns have until June 21 to sign up for the federal program so that applications from their jurisdictions can proceed, she said.

Residents of towns that don’t participate in the program won’t be able to pursue a FEMA buyout. “They would need to find a different funding mechanism,” Smith said in an email.

There are different reasons towns decline to participate in FEMA buyouts, she said, but the biggest concern that state officials hear is the erosion of their tax base and housing stock.

Neither FEMA nor Vermont Emergency Management could provide information on how many municipalities in Vermont have opted not to participate in FEMA’s buyout.

Meanwhile, Burchard is not giving up on finding a solution to her flood-hazard property, located beside the North Branch of the Hoosic River. She said the two-story house, which she and her husband purchased in 2006 and now serves as a second home for their family, was assessed by the town at $304,000 last year.

Burchard, her husband and two sons moved to another house in Stamford in 2021, and they’d been planning to sell the house on the river prior to the July 2023 flood. She said the extreme weather event widened the path of the river, bringing it closer to the house, and resulted in her basement flooding more often.

“The sump pump wasn’t keeping up with it,” Burchard said. “Hundreds of gallons of water out of the basement every single day, and it’s caused mold in the basement.”

Based on cost estimates she has received, Burchard said, shoring up the river would cost more than twice the house’s value. She said she’d also need a permit from the government and the cooperation of at least two other adjacent property owners.

Burchard said she has reached out to Vermont state and federal lawmakers, and she is considering whether to sue the town. She said an attorney representing her family plans to speak with the town’s legal counsel. She hopes that conversation would change the selectboard’s mind about participating in the FEMA buyout program.

“The only course that we have right now,” she said, “is to fight this in the court … Sometimes you have to do what’s necessary to protect your interests.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Stamford officials say ‘no’ to flood-related federal buyout program .