The answer for "why?" in the article above was not very satisfying to me. I expect it could be the leadership changes at the foundation. Perhaps the performance measurement aspect of the grants was not yielding the results they had expected. I can say that disaster resilience is not a shake-and-bake effort. It takes time and a continuous effort to achieve results.
I don't know what the city of Seattle accomplished, but whatever it was, they are not shouting it from the rooftops. What I recall is that their focus was not on the disaster aspects of resilience, but more on social issues. The fact that they never did appoint a separate Resilience Officer is something that bugged me. A department director was designated as such. I have no idea if they took the money for the FTE and used it to supplant the normal salary of the position.
Upward and onward!
