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Most Cities Say They Felt the Impact of 2005 Hurricanes
Although only a relatively few cities were directly hit by hurricanes last year, a large majority have felt repercussions from the storms, according to a survey earlier this year by the National League of Cities Center for Research and Municipal Programs.
With the population increasingly aware of security issues and natural disasters, concerns over survival services such as food, shelter, heating, clothing and health care also were on an upswing among the 1,566 local officials who were polled for “The State of America’s Cities, 2006.”
Among the findings:
- City officials have been increasingly pessimistic about the general direction of the country since 2000, when optimism was at its zenith, although there is currently a fairly even split on this question: 46% are pessimistic (14% very, 32% mildly) and 52% are optimistic (43% mildly and 9% very).
- Although not to an unbridled extent, officials perceive some significant improvement in the economic and fiscal conditions of their cities. Forty-three percent reported improving fiscal conditions, up from 32% last year; and 42% said economic conditions had improved, compared to 37% in 2005. However, 19% and 18%, respectively, said their fiscal and economic health has been getting worse this year.
- Fifty-one percent said that the cost and availability of health care has worsened since last year.
- When asked about the conditions that have deteriorated the most in their communities over the past five years, 34% said traffic congestion, followed by the availability of quality affordable housing, 27%; and the cost and availability of health services, 26%.
- Of the 74% of cities that receive Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding, nearly four in 10 (39%) reported that cuts in the funding are making it more difficult for them to provide affordable housing. Thirty-five percent reported cuts affecting the rehabilitation of homes and buildings, 26% cited cuts affecting the construction and improvement of public facilities; and 15% said cuts were affecting their ability to provide assistance to businesses to carry out economic development and activities related to job creation and retention.
- More than three in four city officials (76%) reported that they had not used eminent domain in the past three years in connection with an economic development project.
- Although only 4% of the officials surveyed said that their cities had been directly touched by hurricanes Rita and Katrina, 47% reported that their cities provided supplies and other aid and assistance and 42% received displaced residents from cities devastated by the hurricanes. Reacting to the hurricanes as they did to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, 51% of the city officials said they had revisited their city’s disaster planning and 26% had reconsidered their city’s disaster planning for underserved populations.
- Forty-one percent reported an increased need for survival services, compared to 45% in 2004 and 2005. By comparison, in the League’s 2001 survey, which was conducted prior to Sept. 11, 28% said there was a need for increasing survival services.
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