July 9-11: 102nd Annual Meeting of National Governor’s Association, Boston. July 16-20: National Association of Counties Annual Conference, Reno, NV. July 26: 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. July 25-28: National Conference on Disability Policy, Washington. Katrina/Rita: 87 occupied units Gustav/Ike: 16 occupied units Announcements FEMA: Week in Review Louisiana Recovery Office New Orleans, LA July 8, 2011 Calendar Region 6 Advisory Council Housing Update Contacts News Desk: (504) 762-2477 External Affairs Director, Andrea Davis: (504) 247-6628 / Andrea.Davis1@dhs.gov IGA and Congressional Affairs Lead: (504) 232-8602 / Lynette.Fontenot@dhs.gov FEMAFEMA FEMA Provides Funding For Orleans Criminal Sheriff’s Office FEMA has awarded the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff’s Office $7.7 million to use for the construction of a new four-story, comprehensive administration build-ing. .This grant supports the sheriff’s alternate project request, enabling the office to combine funding previously provided for five of their damaged facilities and de-stroyed contents from other facilities into an all-inclusive administration facility,. said FEMA’s Louisiana Recovery Office Deputy Director of Programs Andre Cadogan. The new facility will be part of the larger Orleans Parish Prison system recovery project currently underway. Hurricane Katrina damaged the local jail system, com-monly known as the Templeman facilities, as well as devastating an original 1960’s building – called the .fisk building. or men’s work release building. The new post-Katrina administrative building consolidates various pre-storm facilities into one. Per FEMA’s recent approval, funds from these damaged facilities and contents will be applied to the construction of the new 70,217-square-foot administration building, which will be attached and share common walls with a larger consolida-tion project currently under review by FEMA. The larger consolidation project proposes a new 370,000-square-foot facility for inmate housing (Templeman 3 and 4) and an intake processing center. The new facility’s design includes enough beds for 1,438 inmates, the same number as pre-Katrina. To date, FEMA has obligated approximately $223 million in Public Assistance funding to the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff’s Office for work necessary to re-store their various facilities damaged during hurricanes Katrina and Rita. FEMA Establishes Disaster Acquisition Response Team The newest team to FEMA’s Office of the Chief Procurement Office (OCPO) — the Disaster Acquisition Response Team (DART) — has been officially brought on board. The DART consists of 18 Administrative Contracting Officers (ACO), seven Quality Assurance Specialist (QAS) and one Administrative Assistant located in Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Oakland and Washington D.C. DART will provide administrative contracting support for FEMA’s disaster con-tracts including surveillance of contract performance as it occurs in the field and to provide timely closeouts of disaster contracts. The focus will be on already awarded contracts, specifically large task orders issued against prepositioned contracts in disasters to better manage Disaster Relief Funds. The Baton Rouge DART staff will consist of five ACOs and three QASs. Some of the brightest emergency management minds from Arkansas, Lou-isiana, New Mexico, Okla-homa, and Texas are pool-ing their years of experi-ence to provide FEMA Re-gion VI with a combined regional, state, local and tribal view on emergency management issues. These experts represent Region VI's Regional Advi-sory Council. Members include representatives from the Arkansas Depart-ment of Emergency Man-agement, Louisiana Gover-nor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, Grapevine, Texas, Fire Department, and 18 other highly re-spected emergency man-agement professionals. The council advises the regional administrator on emergency management issues, especially in identi-fying the region's strengths and weaknesses through-out the disaster lifecycle.