A Lakeland couple whose home faces repeated flooding because it was built on land that is at least two feet too low got a glimmer of hope last week, thanks to the city board and a grant discussed at the Nov. 13 city board meeting.
Randy and Kelli Higdon bought their dream house at 6743 Salem Valley Cove in November 2008 for $325,000. The 3,456-square-foot house has four bedrooms, three and one-half baths, and a serious flooding problem.
The home has been flooded throughout twice since 2010.
They sued the builder, who filed bankruptcy. Their insurance gave them only minimal relief.
The family has been sleeping under tent-like plastic sheeting, getting their Sheetrock replaced, and dealing with mold in the home and dead fish in their flowerbeds. They have had to sandbag around the house to minimize further damages.
“Our house is a disaster,” Randy Higdon said. “We still don’t have floors in our house.”
Nevertheless, the couple have continued paying their bills and mortgage while they looked for a solution. They now know the area is notorious for flooding, and they understand the flooding will continue to happen at that location.
City manager Chris Thomas said there is a hazard mitigation grant available through the state, but it is only offered to municipalities. The city board has agreed to apply for the grant before the deadline at the end of January. The city hired a person to sort through the detailed application process.
If the application is approved, the city will buy the Higdon’s Salem Cove house and property at the appraised value before the flooding. The grant would cover the land, house, demolition of the structure, attorney fees and the new appraisal itself.
Under the grant, the state would cover 75 percent of the cost, the federal government would cover 12.5 percent, and the city would cover 12.5 percent. However, the homeowners’ equity in the house would take care of the city’s 12.5 percent, so Lakeland will not lose any money, Thomas explained. The couple will also have some money left over after the sale to the city to make a down payment on another house.
Thomas said the grant has strict guidelines and is not available for minor one-time flooding events. The grant would ban future sale of the land or any building construction on the space, which can only be used as green space or a neighborhood park area in the future.
Thomas said the whole grant process takes about a year from the initial application.
Higdon said the land floods because the developer removed dirt from the lot for use elsewhere before their home’s construction. When Higdon tried grading the land to relieve the flooding, he found that the water line is just two to three inches underground instead of the required 18 inches.
Neighboring homes who have less severe flooding issues may qualify for a HUD grant that could provide solutions such as a retention pond across Tennessee 385, Thomas said.
For the Higdons, this hazard mitigation grant is the only solution.
Better fire rating
Also at the Nov. 13 Lakeland city board meeting, residents in Lakeland and unincorporated Shelby County got good news from the October fire report.
Shelby County Fire Department’s interim chief, Dale Burress, said his department’s Insurance Service Offices (ISO) rating has improved from a Class 5/9 to a Class 3/3X, effective Feb. 1, 2015.
Because of the improved fire class ratings, nearly every owner of the 43,000 structures within the Shelby County Fire Department’s areas of response can ask their insurance carrier to reduce their insurance costs after the new class ratings take effect.
“It should be quite a reduction, falling two classes,” Burress said.
The range goes from 1 to 10. A Class 1 rating is the highest level of fire protection that a local government can provide, with a 10 indicating little or no fire protection at all.
A Class 3 could be given to a structure that lies within five road miles from a Shelby County Fire Department (SCFD) station and/or 1,000 feet from a fire hydrant.
A Class 3X would be a slight modification from that and given to a structure that is beyond those distances yet still remains under the protection of a paid, full-time, professional fire department.
The Shelby County Fire Department is the primary responding agency for some 323.45 square miles of unincorporated Shelby County and Lakeland. Roughly 113,000 residents call these areas home and about 13,000 calls are answered every year, or almost 36 each day.
Burress also provided the October fire response statistics for Lakeland: 59 emergency medical service (EMS) calls and 12 fire calls.
Other business
In other business, the Lakeland city board also:
- Passed the first reading of an ordinance amending the land development regulations regarding wireless transmission towers. The purpose is to minimize potential negative impacts to surrounding property with standards for installing and placing wireless transmission facilities.
- Approved a contract with Madden Phillips Construction Inc., the lowest qualified bidder, for Carly Drive drainage improvements. The base bid amount was $44,289.
- Approved a contract with Suncoast Infrastructure Inc. for storm water piping improvements.
- Approved a contract with Gibson Paving Inc. for the city’s 2014 paving projects. The base bid amount was $206,721.
- Approved a Comcast contract for telecommunication services for the city.
- It will be a three-year contract at $12,251.52 annually.
- Selected Alan Johnson of Lakeland to fill an open position on the Lakeland Development Corporation (LDC), the city’s industrial development board.
- Authorized an application for an EDGE economic development matching grant of up to $26,000 total. The funds would be used to create an LDC policies and procedures manual guiding decisions on tax incentives.
- Rescheduled the board’s two January meeting dates. The Jan. 1 work session is moved to Jan. 8, and the Jan. 8 business session is moved to Jan. 20.
- Approved the amended and extended plans for the Evergreen Residential Planned Development.
- Among the changes is increasing the minimum lot size to 10,000 square feet, prohibiting driveway access along Evergreen Road, designating a privately maintained open space at the corner of Evergreen and Old Brownsville roads, setting a 2,800-square-foot minimum for homes and capping the use of siding at 20 percent for home exteriors.
- Approved a new handbook for city employees, as recommended by staff. One board change limits the accrual of sick time to months in which the employee was on the payroll (worked or took vacation) for at least 15 business days.
- Heard from David Reaves, county commissioner for District 3, who commended city leaders on the school system and their planning abilities.
Read more about these city board measures online at http://tn-lakeland.civicplus.com/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/417.
