St. John hosting Disaster Resilience Competition public meeting

Published 8:09 am Monday, October 19, 2015

LAPLACE — St. John the Baptist Parish and the Louisiana Office of Community Development will hold a public meeting at 6 p.m. today at the LaPlace Library, 2920 U.S. 51 to present proposed projects included in the $1 billion National Disaster Resilience Competition application.

St. John the Baptist Parish is participating with the Louisiana Office of Community Development’s Disaster Recovery Unit in a nationwide competition for a portion of the $1 billion launched by HUD in September for risk reduction.

The Recovery Unit is spearheading this effort, and its leadership will describe the competition details and lead a discussion proposing several projects submitted by St. John the Baptist Parish during the public meeting.

Projects proposed at this time include Multimodal Transit, Resilient Housing, Waterworks and Sustainable Wastewater Management. St. John the Baptist Parish will then facilitate a discussion with attendees to gather comments on these projects.

St. John Parish is one of the four parishes the state has designated as target areas for this funding opportunity and is currently in Phase 2 of the competition. The application is due Oct. 27 and more information regarding award news is expected in January.

Residents are encouraged to attend the public meeting to provide comments on the future of St. John the Baptist Parish.