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POINT PLEASANT BEACH — In an effort to help reduce homeowners’ flood-insurance premiums, the Point Pleasant Beach Floodplain Management Committee plans to join several other local municipalities in forming a new public information program.
The Point Beach group will participate in the creation of the Northern Ocean County/Monmouth County Multijurisdictional Program for Public Information [MJPPI] as early as the beginning of next year.
The announcement of the MJPPI comes at a time when borough officials are considering routes to increase flood-insurance-premium discounts from the present rate of 20 percent to 25 percent via the National Flood Insurance Program’s [NFIP] Community Rating System [CRS].
The different “classes” of municipalities opted-in to the CRS are determined by a point system. Points are earned through activities that promote flood insurance awareness, like flood prevention and, in the MJPPI’s case, public information outreach. According to the Floodplain Management Committee’s webpage, Point Pleasant Beach’s current status as a Class 6 municipality with between 2,187 points qualifies residents “for a 20 percent discount of the premium cost of flood insurance for NFIP policies issued or renewed in Special Flood Hazard Areas.”
Borough Engineer John Mele, also manager of the floodplain committee, said the borough’s administration had, for some time, been discussing the desire to upgrade from a Class 6 to a Class 5 municipality in the CRS.
“There was a lot of talk amongst the administration, mayor and council that they wanted to try and push it to a Class 5 to get a 25 percent discount,” Mr. Mele said at the meeting. “We’re 313 points short of a Class 5; we need to be at 2,500.”
He conceded that it is not necessarily an automatic boon of points, but remained hopeful that the MJPPI, when fully realized, will help breach that 25 percent discount threshold.
“It’s going to take some work,” Mr. Mele said, “but we’re already doing work. So it’s really just making [the Floodplain Management Committee] more successful and strategic.”
For more on this story, read the next edition of The Ocean Star—on newsstands Friday or online in our e-Edition.
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