Recovery efforts – even 15 months after damaging storms – remain front and center of daily life in Shawnee. While at this point much of the fallout has been rectified, there remain many sites that residents and the city are still pushing to get back on track.
During the April 19, 2023, tornado event that ripped through the community, one of its many casualties was the Lions Club Park ballfields, just west of Kickapoo on Federal. Though it is a slow-moving, multi-faceted process, the city has been working toward the repair and reconstruction of the site.
“The ballfields were significantly damaged, along with many of our other city-owned assets,” Shawnee City Manager Andrea Weckmueller-Behringer said during the Shawnee City Commission’s July meeting. “More than a year later, the city is still actively coordinating with insurance, and of course we are also working with FEMA for the necessary repairs.”
To date, more than $6 million has been spent on storm debris removal – initially funded through the city’s operating reserves, she said.
While many repairs already have been made, there is still an estimated $18 million in damages to city assets that are ongoing, she said.
“In regard to repairing the remaining damages, the city has been diligently working with FEMA and the city’s municipal insurance pool on revising damage assessments and coming to a consensus on supplemental settlements,” she said. “And most importantly, we have to mutually determine that the building or the asset is indeed destroyed and should be replaced and rebuilt.”
That has taken some time, she said.
“The insurance and FEMA have different ideas than city staff, so we’ve been round and round on several of those – one of those being the Lions Club Park ballfields,” she said.
It took several site visits – particularly from FEMA, she said, to actually come to the determination that the site could be demolished.
“If the city had torn down those ballfields before FEMA concurred with us on the need for it to be demolished, the city would have risked the potential receipt of funding necessary to rebuild,” she explained.
Weckmueller-Behringer said based on conversations she has had — as well as questions and comments on social media – there is an indication that necessary collaboration between the city and FEMA is not well understood among the public.
Short-term recovery activities were completed very quickly, such as initial response and stabilizing the community from further damage.
“Long-term recovery efforts can take years,” she said, reminding commissioners and residents that the city had only just now received some reimbursements from FEMA for a 2013 event.
“In general, before FEMA can be asked for any kind of financial assistance, the city must prove beyond a doubt that we have squeezed our insurance for every possible amount that we can get, and of course, working with the municipal insurance fund, we don’t want to squeeze that hard because they’re also responsible for other cities – a lot of which have been hit by additional tornadoes this year,” she said. “This is not a normal insurance company; this is a partner in insuring, because if we try to go out and get regular insurance on the free market, we would be told, ‘you have a pool, you have parks, you have police – we are not insuring any of this; go away.’”
Weckmueller-Behringer said she is glad to have an insurance pool.
To maximize those settlements, she said the city hired a recovery specialist to help it step through the process.
“There have been additional supplement checks from the insurance that have come in since the very original one,” she said, “and every time we get some additional insurance funds, they are put toward the rebuilding of all these assets.”
Now that the city is almost at the end of working with insurance, she said the city is getting knee-deep with the FEMA process.
“FEMA itself has about seven different steps,” she said, citing planning and coordination; impact and eligibility; scoping and costing; final project review; the obligation, then post award monitoring and closeout. “That can take literally up to 10 years.”
Of the 75 damaged city-owned locations, they were grouped into 27 projects, she said.
“Only two of those have reached Phase 5 in the FEMA process,” she said. “Which means that we have received funding for those; they’re all related to the debris removal – nothing else.”
She said debris removal has been closed out.
“The first 30 days we received that reimbursement, in December of last year,” she said. “We are getting ready to receive that next check (also for debris removal, nothing else).”
Regarding the ballfields, Weckmueller-Behringer said the city has completed damage assessment and reached an agreement with both the insurance and FEMA on the ballfields.
“That led us to the May 2024 City Commission approval of that award for demolition,” she said. “Permits had to be pulled, some additional questions had to be answered regarding World War II usage of that area by U.S. Armed Forces.”
Just a few weeks ago demo began, she said.
“Because of the debris that had entered into the soil, the top six inches had to be removed and be replaced,” she said. “That is a very expensive project; it was more than $250,000 to get the demo underway.”
The structures have been removed and the soil work is getting ready to be started, she said.
The city has already started working with Tap Architecture, the firm retained to help with the redesign of the reconstruction and development of the bid packages, she said.
The work scope and associated service order is being drafted for the ballfields project right now, she said, adding the item would come before commissioners soon.
“FEMA will work with the city for a like-for-like replacement, with code updates,” she said. “What FEMA does not do is pay for additional upgrades or allow significant changes of what was there.”
The city is moving as fast as it can on the project, she said, but dealing with the FEMA process and coming to a mutual agreement was necessary to avoid missing out on funding for reconstruction.
Watch for updates.
