The city's Sandy rebuilding agency, Build it Back, is $500 million over budget, and the de Blasio administration's plans to deal with that shortfall have many Staten Island residents worried about whether their homes will be fully protected from future storms. NY1's Amanda Farinacci filed the following report.
White bags filled with sand line the Tottenville shoreline, a temporary buffer against the ocean for the south shore community badly battered during Hurricane Sandy.
The Parks Department installed the 13-foot berm in 2013, but residents say their homes need protection from the ocean.
"They're falling apart. And they're mismanaged. They came and repaired them, and as you can see over there, they're even further impacted over there, and that was that last storm we had. You see how they're separating?" said resident Ronnie Peterson.
Plans to build a permanent dune are in the works, funded by federal Sandy aid sent to the city and state.
But now, the de Blasio administration is taking back its money, diverting $33 million meant to pay for Staten Island projects like the Tottenville dune to help plug a staggering deficit in the Build it Back program that repairs damaged homes.
"Build it Back has had its problems since the first machination of it, the second machination of it, and they've just not really been able to hunker down and get to the work of actually providing people with sustainable homes. So it's concerning that some of that money would be diverted there at the expense of real, tangible long-term resiliency projects," said City Councilman Joe Borelli of Staten Island.
Build it Back announced last month that it needed half a billion dollars more to complete its Sandy rebuilding work. It blamed ballooning contractor costs and the complexity of raising homes to protect them from future floods.
Meeting at the borough president's office last week, a host of officials echoed concerns about shifting taxpayer money from vital resiliency projects, like the Tottenville dune.
"Making homes more resilient is incredibly costly, but we shouldn't overlook the number of people that a shoreline protection system will serve," said Lisa Bova-Hiatt of the Governor's Office of Storm Recovery.
Still, the Mayor's Office says concerns about funding are unfounded. Without giving specific detail about where the money will come from, the city says any funding that's been reallocated will be replaced.