A city commissioner helping to overseei Build it Back is stepping down. less than a week after NY1 detailed how soaring coats and rebuilding delays are plaguing the storm rebuilding program. NY1's Amanda Farinacci filed the following report.
On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he didn't expect any changes at the top of city agencies overseeing the city's storm recovery program, Build It Back, after NY1 detailed many iproblems plaguing the more than $2 billion effort.
"I don't think this is about personnel.This is about the core policy," de Blasio said in an interview on the Road to City Hall.
But Tuesday, one of the commissioners charged with overseeing the rebuilding program resigned.
Feniosky Pena-Mora has headed the Department of Design and Construction, which oversees Build it Back contracts
At an event 13 months ago, he was seen next to Build It Back Director Amy Peterson.
"A lot of people worked really hard to try and get this difficult program to work. They've made a lot of progress since October," de Blasio said then.
That was just months after the city brought the Department of Design and Construction into the Build It Back program, hoping to speed the rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy. Until that point, Build it Back operated solely under the city's Housing Recovery Office.
But the announcement of Pena-Mora's resignation Tuesday came after a NY1 special report last week, Build It Broke, disclosed how the program has been spending far more repairing and elevating many homes than those homes are worth.
NY1 also disclosed how home rebuilding and elevation projects are plagued by long delays, high costs and substandard work.
Monday night, for the first time, de Blasio said his administration deserves some of the blame.
"We inherited a program. In retrospect, I wish we had questioned the whole thing and said, 'Wait a minute, we may want to do an entire reset,'" de Blasio said. "We took a bad design and tried to get the best out of it. It just was not the right approach."
Several hundred homes are still awaiting repairs and elevations four-and-a-half years after Sandy. The work in Build it Back will continue, but, now, Pena-Mora no longer will have any responsibility for it.