Damage to the Biltmore Village area of Asheville after Helene. (Photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
The upcoming aid bill to western North Carolina communities rocked by Hurricane Helene is shaping up to be the largest yet, with $830 million in relief being considered a week out from voting.
State Senator Bobby Hanig, a Republican who represents several counties in the northeastern part of the state, provided that ballpark estimate to a meeting of the North Carolina Travel and Tourism Board Wednesday morning in response to concerns over the financial struggles of restaurants and hotels in the region.
If that figure makes it into the final version of the relief legislation, it would be the largest Helene aid package passed to date. Lawmakers previously issued an initial round of $273 million focused on FEMA matching funds, education, and election accommodations in the immediate aftermath of the disaster and a second $604 million package on Oct. 24 largely prioritizing infrastructure and utilities.
The funds will find western North Carolina in a dire state. Lynn Minges, President and CEO of the NC Restaurant and Lodging Association, said she has been receiving calls “of desperation” from the businesses she works with — largely due to the immense cost of shipping in potable water, with infrastructure still in tatters in many cities and towns.
“Restaurants and hotels are spending a fortune to have water ported in,” Minges said. “They’re really having cashflow issues.”
The restaurant owners Minges spoke to are paying as much as $5,000 per week to bring in water from distant sources. For hotels, the price is even steeper — around $17,000 each week, she said.
“Nobody’s giving us a date for when water is gonna come,” she said. “This is not a sustainable model, so something’s gotta give.”
The businesses are looking for grants, not loans, to survive — something the General Assembly has thus far declined to provide. While Governor Roy Cooper requested $475 million to launch a small business grant program for western North Carolina, legislators provided just $50 million in its second Helene relief bill in the form of loans.
Lawmakers attending the Travel and Tourism Board meeting did not indicate whether grants were under reconsideration, though State Rep. Frank Iler (R-Brunswick) encouraged tourism and hospitality stakeholders on the call to make their needs known to Speaker Tim Moore’s office.
Republican state Rep. Ray Pickett, who represents Alleghany, Ashe, and Watauga counties, said he and some colleagues were prepared to go to Washington to “sit in front of them” push for federal dollars to relieve the burden on Helene-afflicted businesses.
“We’ve got to come up with something,” Pickett told the group. “It’s inevitable — we’re going to lose some of them, it happens in every disaster — but we’ve got to save as many as we can.”
Pickett added that he would look into payroll protection — an initiative he also sponsored in the General Assembly during the pandemic. Those on the call acknowledged, though, that Congress seems to have little appetite to support another grant program.
But businesses — many of which were still in a financially precarious state after the recovery from COVID-19 — have few other options.
The Small Business Administration, Minges said, is “out of money” and unable to provide funds to western North Carolina businesses in need. While the business owners she spoke to were still receiving award letters, they were informed they would not receive funding until Congress appropriates money to the agency.
And despite the great pains businesses are taking to operate, visitor dollars have plummeted. “We missed our Christmas,” said Rowan County tourism official James Meacham. The region brings in nearly a third of its annual hospitality revenue in October as visitors flock to see the fall colors of the mountains.
The presence of FEMA personnel, who are helping make up the difference from the lack of lodgers, is cold comfort. The disaster agency has not been paying hotel owners “in a timely manner,” Minges said. While that money is coming, the large outstanding bills for aid workers’ stays are only making it more challenging for businesses to keep their doors open.
Hanig cautioned attendees of the meeting that legislators are still expecting the federal government to carry a substantial part of the load when it comes to the financial recovery from Helene.
“We want to be careful of how much we spend,” he said. “Like any appropriations, we don’t want to spend too much when we can get that from the federal government.”
Triangle-area U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross (D-NC2) told NC Newsline last week that she is optimistic that Congress will come together in bipartisan fashion to appropriate additional federal disaster relief funds to aid areas impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton and other storms prior to the end of the year.
This story has been updated to correct a misidentified speaker. It was state Rep. Ray Pickett who said “We’ve got to come up with something,” not state Senator David Craven, who did not attend the meeting.