St. Tammany News

Thanks in part to the efforts of state Reps. Tim Burns and state Tom Schedler of Mandeville, ICF Consulting, the administrator of the state's Road Home program, has agreed to change the way it has been calculating pre-storm home values.

Burns and Schedler joined state Reps. Charmaine Marchand, Peppi Bruneau, Juan Lafonta, JP Morrell, Cedric Richmond, Avon Honey and state Sens. Ann Duplessis and Charles Jones at a meeting Tuesday evening at the Governor's Mansion with representatives from ICF. Burns said while the meeting ended with ICF conceding that it has made mistakes and is behind schedule, only one concrete change in the process was agreed to be made.

However, he said the change might mean a more fair practice for issuing funds.

Burns said ICF Consulting was using "arbitrary figures" to calculate the pre-storm values of homes to determine how much money people would receive.

He said the homes were often undervalued because ICF was not taking into consideration the diversity of the area.

"In some places, we have mansions next to shacks," he said.

ICF agreed Tuesday night to now calculate pre-storm fair market value of homes based on one of three things - a recent appraisal, federal financing database or appraiser archives - and recipients will be able to appeal the valuations.

Burns said most people have a semi-recent appraisal of their home that ICF can use to work from, and he hopes this new method will lead to more accurate assessments.

Tuesday evening's meeting was largely prompted by the efforts of Marchand, who camped in a tent on the Capitol grounds, protesting the slow pace of the distribution of money by ICF.

ICF's contract with the state is valued at more than $700 million, and Burns said he is extremely disappointed in the work it has done so far.

"They still don't have a database together," he said, explaining that the organization is required to assembly the database for third party verification. Burns said the representatives acknowledged they have had technical delays in assembling the data, but said the company offered no solution at Tuesday night's meeting about how those issues would be resolved.