Hazard Mitigation Plan Update: Cost and Timeline from FEMA's Records

The Short Answer

A typical hazard mitigation plan update costs about $54,000, and the grants that pay for one are usually written for two years of work. Half of all updates cost between $32,000 and $120,000. Both figures come from FEMA's own records, which we pulled on November 11, 2026.

The price is rarely what goes wrong. The calendar is. A third of the approved local plans in the country expire within 18 months, which is the time FEMA says an update needs. This guide sets out what the records show about cost, schedule and funding, and what moves each one.

It is written for emergency managers, planners and finance staff in counties, cities and towns who have to put a number and a start date in next year's budget. Figures are general information. Confirm program rules with your State Hazard Mitigation Officer.

What Updates Cost, from 1,171 FEMA Grants

FEMA publishes every mitigation grant subapplication in its HMA Subapplications dataset. We took the local plan updates that were approved or funded for fiscal years 2020 through 2025. There are 1,171 of them, worth $129.7 million in total.

Three cautions apply to these numbers. They are grant budgets, set before the work was bid, so they show what communities planned to spend. They include the local match, which FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Assistance guide allows to be met with staff time. And they leave out updates paid for entirely from local budgets, which FEMA does not record.

Recent contract awards sit inside the range. Fayette County, Georgia awarded its update for $24,000 in December 2024. Routt County, Colorado received four proposals and awarded $69,965 in March 2025. Our RFP guide for plan updates lists more.

Shared plans cost less than you would expect

Most people assume a plan covering a county and eight towns costs more than a plan for one city. FEMA's records say otherwise.

The table leaves out 35 updates submitted by state agencies on behalf of local governments. Those are larger, with a median of $202,000, because one grant often covers several plans.

The pattern makes sense once you look at who writes single-jurisdiction plans: large cities with more hazards, more assets and more people to consult. A shared county plan spreads the risk assessment across every participant. FEMA's plan records show the median local plan covers four jurisdictions and a quarter cover twelve or more, so the cost per town in a shared plan is a fraction of going alone.

Shared plans do cost more at the top end. The most expensive tenth of multi-jurisdictional updates ran above about $229,000, against $200,000 for single-jurisdiction plans. Regional plans with dozens of participants are where budgets climb.

What Maryland updates cost

FEMA's records hold twelve Maryland plan update grants in the period. The median was $45,000.

Eleven of the twelve were fiscal 2020 grants, and many Maryland plans now come due close together. Our Maryland plan update calendar lists each expiration date, and the Maryland plan tracker reads them from FEMA daily.

What Moves the Price

Six things explain most of the spread between a $30,000 update and a $150,000 one.

1. How many jurisdictions take part. Each one needs its own risk notes, its own actions, an annex and an adoption vote.
2. How deep the risk assessment goes. FEMA's Handbook says hazard profiles may not need detailed event databases or complex mapping. A parcel-level flood analysis costs more than a county-level one, and is worth it only for the hazards that drive your losses.
3. Whether you add scope FEMA does not require. Future-conditions analysis, human-caused hazards, a dam element and a Community Rating System crosswalk each add hours. FEMA's 2025 Policy Guide no longer requires climate change in hazard probability, so if you want it, you pay for it on purpose.
4. How much engagement you buy. Meetings in every town, translation and a real comment process cost more than one hearing. They are also what makes the action list credible. Our stakeholder engagement plan guide covers the design.
5. The state of your own records. If nobody tracked the last plan's actions, the consultant bills hours to reconstruct them. We wrote about keeping a plan alive between updates for that reason.
6. How many review rounds the price assumes. State and FEMA reviewers send comments. A fixed price that stops at "draft submitted" leaves you paying for the revisions.

The fifth item is the easiest to overlook. The cheapest hour in an update is the one a staff member spent two years earlier writing down what happened to an action.

How Long an Update Takes

FEMA's 2025 Local Mitigation Planning Handbook gives the planning number: at least 18 months from kickoff to approval, six of them for state and FEMA review. The grant records give the number communities use in practice.

Of the plan update grants that list start and end dates, the median period requested is 24 months. A quarter ask for 18 months or less. A quarter ask for 36.

Add the rows and a grant-funded update runs close to three years from the first conversation to an approved plan. That is why the Handbook tells communities to have scope and funding lined up by the third year of a five-year plan.

The step that gets forgotten: adoption

FEMA reviews a plan, marks it "Approvable Pending Adoption", and then waits for each governing body to adopt it. The plan is approved when the first adoption arrives. Every other participant is covered only once it adopts too.

FEMA's plan status records show how often that last step drags. Of 27,424 jurisdictions listed under approved, unexpired local plans, 4,090 (15%) still show as pending adoption. For 2,555 of them, FEMA's go-ahead came more than a year ago. Under the Policy Guide, a town adopting that late must first confirm its part of the plan is still current.

A town in that position is not covered by the plan until it adopts, whatever the county's status says, so it cannot receive FEMA mitigation project grants. Put the adoption votes on the schedule as a deliverable, with a date for each council.

Where the Money Comes From

Four in five dollars spent on these updates were federal: $102.8 million of the $129.7 million total. Two in three updates were funded at a 75% federal share, and about a quarter at 90%.

The source has narrowed. Across the six years, the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funded 71% of updates and BRIC 24%. For fiscal years 2024 and 2025, all 322 plan update grants in FEMA's records came from HMGP or its post-fire version. The BRIC round FEMA opened in March 2026 did not fund planning.

That changes who you ask. HMGP money follows presidential disaster declarations and is managed by the state, which may spend up to 7% of its ceiling on planning. Your State Hazard Mitigation Officer decides what is open and when. In Maryland that is the Maryland Department of Emergency Management.

If no grant is available in time, the update comes out of the operating budget. At the median, that is about $54,000 once every five years. Set against the project grants an approved plan keeps open, it is a small line. Our resilience funding hub tracks the programs a plan makes you eligible for, and the funding readiness scorecard checks whether a project is ready to apply.

Work Backward from Your Expiration Date

Here is the schedule for a plan that expires in the middle of 2029.

Find your own date in the hazard mitigation plan tracker, then count back 18 months for the start of planning and another year for funding.

If you are already inside the 18 months, three moves save time. Pay for the update from the operating budget and skip the grant wait. Use a small-purchase or cooperative contract if your rules allow one. And keep the scope to what FEMA requires, leaving optional analysis for an amendment.

How Council Fire Can Help

Council Fire is a sustainability consultancy and certified B Corp in Annapolis, Maryland. We work with county teams and their consultants on the parts of an update that decide what gets built: the public engagement FEMA requires, ranking the actions, and lining up funding for the projects the plan names.

With the Resilience Authority of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County, 18 months of engagement on the Annapolis Maritime Resilience Initiative produced 38 resident-identified sites of concern, and 10 advanced to preliminary design. Through Council Fire Labs we built Aptation with the Resilience Authority to rank projects and match them to funding.

If your plan expires in the next three years, see hazard mitigation planning in Maryland, read our guide to choosing a plan consultant, or tell us your expiration date.

Sources and Method

Cost figures: OpenFEMA HMA Subapplications v2, queried November 11, 2026. Records are plan updates for local single- and multi-jurisdictional plans, fiscal years 2020 through 2025, with a status of approved, obligated, accepted or closed and a total above zero (1,171 records). Schedule figures: OpenFEMA Hazard Mitigation Plan Statuses v1, queried the same day, limited to local plans with test records removed (4,140 plans). This page uses the Federal Emergency Management Agency's OpenFEMA API, but is not endorsed by FEMA. Rules: 44 CFR 201.6.