New York State Board of Equalization and Assessment Emergency Hurricane Agnes Flood Project Manual

Arranged by subject category.

The series consists of an unpublished administrative manual for the Emergency Flood Project undertaken by the State Board of Equalization and Assessment in the aftermath of Hurricane Agnes in 1972, when New York counties suffered extensive damage to real property because of flooding. The crash program was undertaken to compile and specify information on the impact of flood damage upon real property assessments, to develop a program to alleviate the effects on property owners, school districts, and local governments, and to assure full advantage of available federal programs of tax relief and emergency response measures in the disaster areas.

The State Board of Equalization and Assessment within the Office for Local Government had responsibility for measuring the extent of flood damage for assessment relief and for supervising the emergency project. Emergency funds covered added expenses incurred under the project as well as the state contribution to local governments (towards costs of appraising the extent of the damage at the request of property owners).

The manual is organizational and procedural in nature and may be an unknown administrator's working copy. It includes: correspondence and memoranda on staffing and personnel management; lists of contacts and service directors in county and local offices; status reports and timetables; memoranda on project progress, preliminary survey data, and initial classification of disaster areas; samples of forms; copies of gubernatorial press statements; memoranda on reimbursement and expenditure policies; and two annotated (no legend) print maps of New York State apparently showing counties included in coordinating zones or major disaster areas and/or counties with major damage to farm land and crops.

There are no restrictions regarding access to or use of this material.