Purpose
The purpose of this activity is to develop an engagement plan to include community input in your recovery plan. In this activity, the recovery organization captures and documents the road to recovery.
Why?
The recovery plan is driven by community engagement and must therefore be accepted by community stakeholders. Disaster assistance depends on the community’s ability to relate recovery goals to larger plans. Fitting disaster recovery into broad community goals allows officials to be more creative in thinking about the kinds of funds that may be appropriate to the situation. Those can include a variety of focus areas with co-benefits: rural economic development, housing, transportation, environmental protection, parks and recreation, urban redevelopment, and even health and sanitation.
When?
The process of drafting a community recovery plan is conducted concurrently with many of the previous steps in the disaster recovery planning process, as the completion of each of these steps is what informs the plan. (Days 31 - Ongoing)
Tips
- Use the plan! Use the plan as a medium of public engagement to conceptualize what recovery means and what planners have identified as the means to get there. Also, use the plan as a means of communication. Once finalized and implemented, the plan becomes the long-term roadmap for the community, which helps to ensure that recovery stays on track. Finally, format the plan to be designed to assist communities to prioritize projects for future implementation.
- Ensure the plan outlines community support, identification of project need, a description of the project, and cost estimates of the project. Keep it succinct and concise. Where there is a need for additional project information, reference rather than summarize or attach it.
How does my community do this?
- Collect data and information through public engagement and situational awareness.
- Develop the Recovery Plan design and content. Compiling all of the information you have developed up to this point and communicating it clearly in a formal plan is one of the most important steps in the process. This FEMA guidance provides an overview of a general plan design you could follow. In addition, you can find a draft template to start from. The plan should be clear and concise for the community to engage with and understand. There should also be clear recommendations for how the plan’s proposed goals, policies, projects, and programs are to be integrated into other local plans and regulations as needed.
- Distribute copies of the Recovery Plan in print and electronic forms. A clear process for public review and comment and plan adoption and activation should be articulated in the plan document. Another round of review should be conducted with the stakeholder group, elected officials, and the public, with the feedback integrated into a revised draft plan.
- Monitor recovery activities and review and update the plan as the recovery process progresses.
- Adopt the plan. A more formalized process of public hearings might also be conducted by the appropriate elected bodies, the city planning commission and city council, responsible for the adoption of the plan.
Community Call Out: Town of Lyons
Through the Town of Lyons Recovery Action Plan, the town established that the vision of recovery was one of “recovering stronger, more sustainably, and more resilient than before.”