Progress on storm recovery, broadband highlighted at town hall
Broadband executives and local elected officials were among attendees at the town hall. Bob Scott photo
On Friday, March 14, Representatives in the North Carolina General Assembly hosted a town hall to update the public and local elected officials about the progress of both Hurricane Helene Recovery and broadband expansion in the region on Friday March 14.
And while town halls around in the region and around the nation have become tense affairs over the last several weeks, the mood in the basement of Holly Springs Baptist Church in Franklin where the town hall took place was calm, friendly and professional.
“So, we’ve invited two groups of people here today — Matt Calabria is with GROW NC, the storm relief group that the governor put together … Teena [Piccione] is the secretary of the Department of Information Technology,” said Sen. Kevin Corbin (R-Macon) as he opened the town hall.
The primary goal of the event was to facilitate communication between stakeholders involved in both broadband expansion and storm recovery on the local and state levels.
“The purpose of this meeting is for you to meet these people, be able to talk to them, see who they are,” Corbin told attendees.
Calabria is the Director of the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina (GROW NC), established by Gov. Josh Stein after he took office in January.
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Calabria began by rehashing the facts that most of the town hall attendees were familiar with.
“The total dollar amount of damages in Western North Carolina is the highest dollar amount of any North Carolina disaster by a factor of three,” Calabria said in a presentation at the town hall event. “That, I think, underscores the seriousness of the damage here in Western North Carolina. 106 people unfortunately lost their lives as a result of Hurricane Helene. And our Office of State Management and Budget has estimated nearly $60 billion in damage.”
North Carolina’s entire budget is around $30 billion. Calabria said the largest category of damage from the storm is to the economy — losses for small businesses — followed by transportation. More than 1,300 roads and bridges were damaged as a result of Helene.
“I’m glad to tell you that we are now at 89% of the roads that were closed have now been repaired and reopened,” said Calabria.
Calabria outlined key themes in Stein’s vision for storm recovery.
“The first is focus,” Calabria said. “Making sure that we are resident-oriented, business-oriented, and focusing on the things that matter most. There is so much to do when you recover from a hurricane or from a natural disaster, so it’s really important for us to focus on what is most important from a felt impact standpoint, for residents and small businesses.”
Urgency is another key theme. Calabria said it was important that recovery efforts moved with speed.
“Because we know, for example, that the longer a small business is out of commission, the harder it is, and the less likely it is for them to bounce back and to continue,” said Calabria.
Transparency and accountability are also part of Stein’s vision and GROW NC’s work.
“You all need to know what’s going on, we all need to have conversations like this, our stakeholders, our legislators, our congressional delegation need to know what’s going on so that we can all be working together,” Calabria said. “We all need to hold ourselves accountable.”
GROW NC recently launched its website, wncrecovery.nc.gov, which houses information about recovery progress, resources and a dashboard that is still under construction.
“We’re still adding more data and more data points, but it highlights some of the things that we are tracking and some of the progress we’re making,” said Calabria.
“All of this is under the umbrella of knowing that we have a long way to go,” Calabria continued. “Candidly, in every disaster of this size and scale and scope, it takes years and years to finish the recovery effort. So, we are very mindful of the amount of debris that is yet to be collected, the amount of homes that need to be repaired, the amount of people who are in temporary housing, the amount of businesses that are out of commission and who need support in the form of grants and loans and technical assistance.”
According to Calabria, more than 5,000 people in Western North Carolina are receiving temporary housing assistance, and the state has approved 157,000 applications for individual assistance for money to repair damage to homes, roads, bridges, farms or other personal property which has resulted in the distribution of $400 million in repair and replacement funds. More than 5.3 million cubic yards of debris has been removed.
“The hope is by the end of this month, to finish collecting debris out of the rights of way,” said Calabria.
While Calabria said there is not a good way to get grants for small businesses from the federal government, he did tout the program in which the state government put in about $20 million to a fund that was matched with more than $10 million in private and philanthropic sector money to create a small business program that has given out thousands of loans.
“As of this week, we’ve dispersed $65 million to small businesses to help stand them up, and also facilitated $152 million in small business loans through the SBA [Small Business Administration],” said Calabria.
Alongside the GROW NC office, Stein also created the Division of Community Revitalization within the Department of Commerce with a mission to focus on housing and economic development, as well as economic recovery.
“Right now, they are working through a process to enable us to access disaster recovery funds through HUD,” said Calabria. “Already the federal government has appropriated to us $1.65 billion for community rebuilding, revitalization. And these are really important funds because they have a lot of flexibility to them, but they are slow to get out. So, the state has autonomy within federal bounds for about $1.4 billion of those dollars.”
The governor has released a HUD action plan and is currently taking feedback on the plan.
While the Cooper administration asked for $25.7 billion in federal aid for Hurricane Helene recovery, it was awarded $15.7 billion.
“Again, the total amount of damages is $60 billion and so the federal funds that are coming in are not going to make North Carolina whole in that respect,” said Calabria.
Secretary for the North Carolina Department of Information Technology Teena Piccione addressed attendees. Bob Scott photo
Governor Stein’s administration has put in a renewed request for $11.6 billion for repair of roads, bridges, housing and more. In addition to that, the state is requesting federal agencies release the funds that Congress already appropriated to the state but has gotten held up by those federal agencies.
On the state side, the General Assembly appropriated a little more than a billion dollars to Helene recovery.
“I want to encourage you all to share information about the resources that are available,” said Calabria. “Please advocate to your legislators, to your congress people.”
The second portion of the town hall focused on broadband expansion in Western North Carolina.
According to data presented by the North Carolina Department of Information Technology, more than $550 million of $1 billion in federal funding has been awarded for internet access, devices and digital skills since 2022. And while that has connected about 187,000 unserved and underserved locations in Western North Carolina, there are more than 150,000 estimated locations remaining that need connection.
“We have to make sure we are not resting until every single household and business in North Carolina is connected at an affordable rate, that we can all enjoy the same access,” said Piccione.
Angie Bailey, director of the Broadband Infrastructure Office spoke to town hall attendees about the progress of broadband in Western North Carolina and how the effort is funded.
“The General Assembly appropriated about a billion dollars of American Rescue Plan Act [funds] to DIT to provide grants and incentives to private sector providers to build out to unserved and underserved locations,” said Bailey. “So, we provide funding to private sector providers to help cover the capital costs to build to locations that are hard to reach.”
Out of that $1 billion, about $500 million has been invested and awarded for infrastructure builds. The state has more than $400 million left in American Rescue Plan Act funds.
“We’re working hard to get those out the door, because those projects need to be either expended or substantially complete by the end of 2026,” said Bailey.
More federal money is coming to the state through the BEAD program (Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program), from the infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. North Carolina is allocated about $1.5 billion to incentivize private providers to build out to unserved and underserved locations.
“The difference with BEAD is that the goal is for us to reach, as a state, to reach 100% coverage for every location in the state, and we think that with the billion and a half that that is doable,” said Bailey. “We do expect some changes at the federal level on BEAD and so we’re watching that closely to see what requirements may change under the program.”
Also attending the town hall were more than a dozen broadband executives who have contracts in Western North Carolina.
Following presentations by Piccione and Bailey, those providers were encouraged to ask questions and describe the biggest barriers they are encountering when trying to provide broadband access in Western North Carolina.
Providers brought up concerns with deployment bottlenecks including easement access for municipalities, pole access and the length of time for permitting for those things. Another executive brought up the length of time it takes to get a permit to cross public lands, noting that it can take up to a year and half to get the needed access.
“We need to socialize some of these problems, because it just seems like the owners of the choke points don’t always feel it is a problem,” said Brian Gregory with Charter Spectrum.
While the officials present didn’t have immediate solutions for the impediments presented by broadband executives, they did encourage communication about roadblocks as they come up so that elected representatives and NCDIT know the issues these companies are facing as they build out broadband projects.
