Simi, FEMA Agree to Talks on Quake Aid

After haggling for weeks over a potential $3.7 million in federal aid for its earthquake-damaged police station, Simi Valley has received assurances that FEMA officials will negotiate a final settlement.

City Manager Mike Sedell said Wednesday that he hammered out an agreement with top lieutenants of FEMA Director James Lee Witt by which the Federal Emergency Management Agency will hold negotiating sessions with the city to determine how much additional disaster aid the police station should get.

If the city remains dissatisfied with FEMA’s final grant, it can go through a three-tiered appeals process that reaches as high as Witt.

“What we’re trying to do is work cooperatively to resolve it before we get to that point,” Sedell said in a telephone interview from Washington after concluding meetings with FEMA officials.

Simi Valley is counting heavily on FEMA money to help make early payments on the $10 million in bonds it recently issued to pay for construction of a police headquarters building near City Hall, Sedell said. Without the money, the city would have to cover the entire repayment cost of the bonds.

Leland Wilson, coordinating officer for FEMA’s Northridge recovery office, said Wednesday that the old police station on Cochran Street suffered only $260,000 in structural damage that is eligible for federal help--much of which has already been paid to the city.

But Simi Valley engineers have argued that much more of the damage caused by the 1994 Northridge earthquake qualifies as “structural” under FEMA guidelines, and therefore deserves the federal aid.

FEMA engineers who reviewed blueprints of the existing station found some damaged items to be not structural. But they changed their minds once they visited the damaged building, and agreed some of the damages did qualify, Sedell said.

“There doesn’t appear to be a definition of what ‘structure’ is in their regulations,” he said. “It’s the type of thing that engineers know it when they see it.”

FEMA’s top regional and national officials will try to sharpen that definition, and “that will help get to the bottom of it,” Sedell said.

The $260,000 damage award probably will stand until the agency starts negotiating with the city in the next few weeks, according to FEMA’s Wilson.

The city could receive more money for repairs--and even money to do earthquake upgrades on the existing building or an outright grant to spend on the new police headquarters, Wilson said.

But to trigger such a grant, Simi Valley must first prove the current station suffered at least $1.5 million to $2 million in damages, he said.

If Simi Valley has a problem with the final negotiated amount, he said, it will have to file a formal appeal with local FEMA officials. If it remains dissatisfied, the city can appeal twice more, the final time to Witt himself, Wilson said.

“There’s really no final or formal decision yet on whether or not the police station will be funded,” Wilson said. “But they know that our unofficial position is that the information we have right now says they don’t have enough money to trigger an upgrade or qualify for replacement funds.”

The magnitude 6.7 quake on Jan. 17, 1994, shook the police building so hard that parts of it sank 6 inches into the earth. Its walls split at the seams, ceilings sagged and broken water lines flooded floors.

Deputy City Manager Bob Heitzman has been monitoring FEMA’s engineers ever since the first walk-throughs of the damaged police station occurred after the quake.

The city spent at least $1 million on damage repairs, plus $2.72 million to bring the 1971 building up to current codes and transfer some police functions to other buildings.