(Posted April 24, 2015)
By Kristy Zurbrick, Madison Editor
The city of London is renewing its efforts to update floodplain maps.
At the April 16 city council meeting, Susan Mullins, a resident of Chandler Avenue, said over four years have passed since she first complained about the city’s floodplain maps being out of compliance.
“Four years is excessive,” she said.
Mullins lives near Jacqueline Drive, an area that for years suffered from severe flooding after big rains. The problem was fixed several years ago, but the floodplain maps have not been updated to take the area out of the floodplain.
The result, Mullins said, is that residents in the area are paying high premiums for flood insurance when it no longer applies. Also, she and others have had trouble selling their homes because financing is difficult if not impossible to secure for a property listed in a floodplain, she said.
Andrea Ashmore, a local real estate agent, said 10 property owners from the Jacqueline Drive neighborhood signed a statement citing the same complaints Mullins voiced.
A couple of years ago, the city appropriated money to hire a surveyor/engineer to update the maps. The city contracted with a local surveyor/engineer to do the job, but to date the job has not been completed, even after multiple calls into the contractor, said Steve Hume, safety-service director.
On April 20, council’s finance committee decided to find someone else to do the work. The committee put calls into four companies for quotes on the job. The city has money available to pay for the map update in the professional services line of its budget.
