Inside Mesa

As you may know, the City of Mesa, Mesa Public Schools, Mesa United Way and other civic organizations banded together after Hurricane Katrina to adopt a city in the Gulf region. The town of Gautier, Mississippi was chosen on the recommendation of Mesa firefighters who volunteered there shortly after the hurricane struck. With waves as high as 30 feet rushing as far as two miles inland, flood damage in Gautier was extensive. While life is far from normal five months after Katrina, there are signs of recovery in Gautier. The Gulf Coast Orchid Society’s 26th annual show and sale will open in the town’s Singing River Mall this weekend. Organizers expect a smaller crowd than usual, but they’re counting on brisk sales as residents replace their beloved plants lost in the storm.Another, admittedly bleaker sign of recovery are dozens of lawsuits being brought by residents against their insurance companies. Many of these residents claim to have been led to believe that they were covered in the event of storms. When it came time to pay up, however, the companies argued that their coverage included wind storms and not floods. I’ll be a while before that legal mess can be sorted out.Speaking of messes, much of the temporary blue roof sheeting provided to Gautier residents by the Federal Emergency Management Agency has proven to be defective. Provided under FEMA’s Operation Blue Roof, the material was supposed to shelter area homes until residents could permanently replace their roofs. In reality, much of the material began shredding within two weeks of installation. On a brighter note, volunteers from as far away as Cincinnati have converged on Gautier to help clean out and rebuild homes. Some of these volunteers have bunked up in the Winnebago Chieftan which was donated to the town by Tempe resident Bud Schall and driven there by Mary Hutchinson (right) and Margie Frost (center) of MesaCAN and Darlene Duncan (left) of Mesa United Way. While in Gautier last November, the trio brought a check for the funds collected to date. We recently learned that the money was used to purchase refrigerators, stoves, washers and dryers for 143 households under Whirlpool Corporation’s hurricane relief program.One of the town’s biggest needs is for sheetrock and nails. When the local Lowes receives a shipment, they sell it on a first-come-first-served basis, and customers must haul it themselves. This has proven to be very difficult for Gautier volunteers, who cannot provide the necessary transportation. If you know of anyone who can purchase and haul sheetrock for the people of Gautier, please let Darlene Duncan at Mesa United Way know. Click here to send her a message.

It seems to be an American tradition-in-the-making: count to ten after a natural disaster, and Congress will begin investigating the Red Cross. This time around, the mega-relief agency is being questioned about its slow reaction to needs created by Hurricane Katrina, and its failure to spend a good portion of the funds it raised after the disaster. The grilling is practically a rerun of questions asked about their mess-ups after the attacks of 9/11/2001.I’m not trying to apologize for them, but one does have to wonder how such a gargantuan, largely decentralized organization could be expected to be that buttoned up in a disaster situation. Frankly, I wouldn’t want their job, and fortunately, I don’t have it — My life as a staff person at Mesa United Way is infinitely more serene. Obviously, part of the reason is because our mission doesn’t involve disaster response. United Way’s role is to help communities take care of themselves. If the community were to suffer a disaster, we’d be there to help put the pieces back together after the initial mayhem was over. Normally, we can go about our task of building a stronger, more responsive community in a paced, organized fashion.That’s exactly what we’re about to do, and we need your help to do it. Now that Mesa United Way’s campaign season is beginning to wind down, it’s time to begin our investment process. Unlike some non-profits, our investments are not in real estate or large stock portfolios. They’re in our community: the children; the seniors; the people who face unforseen hardships; and the neighborhoods of Mesa. And we believe that people who live or work in our community are best suited to make these critical investment decisions.So, we’re calling on you, as a Mesa resident, employee or business owner, to spend about 20 hours of your time between February and May serving as a Community Investment Volunteer. You’ll have an opportunity to choose a team that most closely matches your area of interest and time availability. You’ll meet with other volunteers on your team, review agency applications, visit agencies and ultimately make funding recommendations to the Mesa United Way Board of Directors. All meetings and visits are made either before or after normal business hours.Participating in the Community Investment Process begins by completing our online application. It’s your best way of influencing how the dollars you contribute to Mesa United Way are spent. It also helps assure that the many competing needs in our community are prioritized and met in an un-biased fashion. Plus, it helps keep my life and the lives of my co-workers organized, prioritized