Virginia County Builds a Community Partnership
by Frank Shafroth
Shortly after Hurricane Katrina rampaged across the Gulf Coast last year, Arlington County, Va., a member of the National League of Cities (NLC), responded by dispatching first responders as part of an unprecedented regional response. Subsequently, then-Arlington County Chairman Jay Fisette called together citizens from the religious, corporate and nonprofit community to determine how the entire community might be able to make a longer-term commitment to the creation of a community-to-community partnership with Biloxi, Miss.
Following the recommendations of the Arlington Response to Katrina (ARK) Task Force, Arlington joined forces with Habitat for Humanity of Northern Virginia to try to not only support rebuilding efforts in Biloxi, but also to create a mutual partnership.
This month, County Board members Jay Fisette and Barbara Favola led a team of 17 Arlington volunteers to Biloxi, where they joined with Habitat for Humanity of Northern Virginia to help repair homes in hard-hit East Biloxi and join with Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway and Councilmembers Bill Stallworth who is also the executive director of the East Biloxi Coordination and Relief Center and George Lawrence to celebrate the return of 11 families to their rebuilt homes in East Biloxi.
Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast harder than it did Louisiana. Overnight the storm destroyed nearly 70 percent of the ad valorem tax base and 37 percent of the sales tax base. East Biloxi, with a population of 12,000, was among the hardest hit. Katrina crashed through the heart of East Biloxi on a 30-foot surge, destroying about 3,500 of Biloxis homes perhaps 70 percent of the housing, where almost all of the households lived significantly below U.S. median income. Most of the businesses in East Biloxi were damaged or destroyed, leading Lawrence to ask the visiting Northern Virginia local elected leaders: How do we recapture who we are? Nine months after Katrina, Biloxi has yet to decide what the shape of its future will be.
The scope of the disaster precluded any quick recovery. Katrina not only destroyed a significant portion of incoming revenues and the citys tax base, but left the city with huge new expenses both operating and capital imposing much higher needs for tax revenues to not just operate, but also to recover and rebuild. In recognition of the events, Standard and Poors downgraded Biloxis general obligation debt outstanding last November to BBB from A. Mayor Holloway reacted by imposing a hiring freeze and attrition (not replacing any employee who resigned or retired).
Community-to-Community Partnership
The issue of defining a mission arose early on in the ARK Task Force. In addition to working with Habitat to support housing rebuilding in Biloxi, the task force recommended a community mutual partnership. I was asked if, from my nearly score of years at NLC, I could provide an example. My response was no. There are some urban to rural partnerships within states, and there are sister city international relationships; but what the task force was proposing is unprecedented. I could only liken it to two blind centipedes trying to feel each other out to determine how they might mutually relate and reinforce each other. It was and remains a daunting challenge.
The concept was and is to create relationships between two communities that might be business-to-business (say the devastated shrimp processing industry in Biloxi and the restaurant association in Arlington), school-to-school; hospital-to-hospital; or non-profit to nonprofit. Where can two diverse and geographically disjointed interests find mutual benefits by creating a mutual relationship?
The second part of the partnership, with an organization like Habitat for Humanity, was both simpler to undertake and more immediately rewarding. The Northern Virginia non-profit group uses volunteer labor and discounted materials from Home Depot and other companies to rebuild owner occupied, low-cost housing. Habitat estimates that the average cost for rebuilding a home in East Biloxi is $25,000, a bargain by any standard. Consequently, Arlington has been able to help raise funds, provide a vehicle and provide labor and be richly rewarded by helping families return to their homes and neighborhoods. Everyone in our group came back richer for our experience, having made friends with volunteers from cities across the country in Biloxi on the same mission, and from families who had been fearful they might never be able to go home again. Figuring Out the Logistics
One lesson that becomes ever clearer is that cities can help each other to learn from these disasters. The logistics of coordinating responses brings out the very best of Americans. But the logistics of coordinating volunteers and materials to maximize American generosity is a towering responsibility.
Even our small effort in Biloxi made it mandatory for the team leader to begin work every morning at 4 a.m. to determine which volunteers would work on which houses, which materials needed to be purchased and delivered where and which inspectors were necessary to contact from the city in order for work to go on. Too often there is a tendency to forget the importance of these little details so vital to coordinating the generosity that can flow in the wake of a citys tragedy.
It remains uncertain what kind of a community partnership Arlington and Biloxi will create. Already there are important shared photos, memories and lessons learned. Already we were blessed and touched by people from cities across the country who have made multiple visits to Biloxi since September some of the most extraordinarily dedicated volunteers and citizens I have ever met.
Now the city and its citizens are focusing on tomorrow. And there, the future is very much in question. Katrina has wreaked tax havoc and human destruction beyond ones capacity to understand; yet a combination of grit, determination, and extraordinary volunteerism appear to augur hope and recovery. And perhaps it will lead to a new way for one community to become a partner with another.
Frank Shafroth, former head of federal relations at NLC, is director of intergovernmental affairs for Arlington County.
Source: National League of Cities.
