Council Member Treyger Calls for Hurricane Sandy Relief Task Force

With the 5-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy approaching, City Council Member Mark Treyger has called for the creation of a new Hurricane Sandy Recovery Task Force.

Council Member Treyger, of the 47th District, is chair of the Committee on Recovery and Resiliency, and is seeking a new committee to analyze and report on recovery efforts and make recommendations to improve remaining recovery efforts and to inform future preparedness issues.

Last week, Treyger held an oversight hearing of the Committee on Recovery and Resiliency, pursuing answers from the Build It Back program director regarding the disenrollment of participants as the program approaches its end.

Now the proposed legislation, Intro 1720, would create the task force out of “representatives from government agencies, the non-profit sector, the faith-based community, and residents from Sandy-impacted neighborhoods across the city,” according to statement from Council Member Treyger’s office.

“This task force would allow us to develop a holistic understanding of the recovery process, provide other localities that are now embarking on their own recovery process with an opportunity to learn from our experiences, and give us a chance to use those same experiences to better our own approach,” said Treyger.

The legislation is a joint effort between the Council Member and Staten Island Borough President James Oddo, who was much more critical of the current relief efforts.

“The story that will be told will show mistakes were made early and often, and were repeated and compounded with cascading negative implications,” said Oddo, going on to say that the recovery effort only found its footing in 2015 and that the still incomplete effort has an “unconscionable” price tag attached to it.