Up and downs with Morganton's $46.27 million hurricane damage

In the 155 days since Hurricane Helene swept through Morganton, city officials are beginning to fully understand the scope of the damage and calculate with clarity the costs of repairs and renovations.

Acknowledging that final numbers are “moving targets,” City Manager Sally Sandy said on Thursday that the price tag for repairs currently stands at $46,273,000, 48.6% of which is allocated to rehabilitating the city’s portfolio of parks and recreation amenities.

That cost aside, Morganton experienced a loss of at least $500,000 in revenue opportunities that were casualties of Helene, Sandy said. Examples included lost business sales and park rentals, CoMMA cancellations, and tax evaluation adjustments.

Sitting in Conference Room #4 on the second floor of City Hall, Sandy and Public Information Officer Jonelle Sigmon used an infographic report to illustrate the magnitude of Helene’s local impact since the storm swept through in late September 2024.

Bringing the full complement of services and amenities back online since Helene has been an all-consuming, all-hands-on-deck effort, Sandy said, requiring every bit of talent in the city’s employment ranks.

The City is at the point where staff can move from grasping the magnitude of damages to prioritizing projects and establishing restoration/rebuilding schedules. Capsuling the workload into three challenges, Sandy said the elements are:

• See what can be phased out/pushed down the road
• Ensure all monies spent are reimbursable
• Coordinate with their insurance providers on claims

Currently, crews and staff are working on the small pieces of the larger projects in order to expedite reimbursements and protect cash flow. Projects that do not have approved repair/replace contracts are on hold, she said.

BREAKDOWN OF DAMAGE

Taking a look, the breakdown of the over $46 million stands at:

• Parks and Recreation ($22.5 million)
• Water Resources ($11.2 million)
• Debris/Emergency Services ($4.6 million)
• Wastewater ($4.5 million)
• Electric Service ($3 million)
• CoMPAS Cable ($375K)

Overall, the parks and recreation damages are 48.6% of the damages.

Sandy and her team are coordinating with FEMA and other funding processes to secure reimbursement monies. Compounding the difficulty in appraising damages, there are cases where city staff still do not know the full extent of the damages pending additional research and preliminary discussions.

An example is the small water-control dam at the city’s water treatment plant near the Catawba River. “We’ve put $8 million on that based on some preliminary information,” Sandy said. “But until the (contracted scuba) divers are in there and we have full engineering on that, we don’t really know.”

She added that preliminary research into the wastewater treatment plant damages could range in the ballpark of $5 million.

On the water plant side, the City is working with its insurance providers before moving forward and looking into engineering services to help with the design work.

For their water and sewer systems, they have spent money on ongoing rentals and parts of those systems like distribution/collection, pipes, and pump/lift stations. They are currently waiting on permanent equipment to come in and other fixtures like fencing. This ranges from half a million to $1 million.

Those repairs are ongoing, with a recent washout of one of the sewer lines that was caused by the storm. Being newly discovered, the City had to have contractors come in since it was a bigger job than anticipated, which was around $80,000.

LOST REVENUES

One thing that Sandy does not have a lot of numbers on is lost revenues due to the storm.

The lost revenues include:

• Cancellations and refunds for events at CoMMA, the Morganton Community House
• Park rentals like missed tournaments at Catawba Meadows and other recreational events
• Lost electric, water, and sewer services with some industries closed
• Commercial properties not operating
• Residential areas that are not habitable
• Lost businesses
• Period of free sanitation fees for pickup
• Waived permit fees (the City will soon resume those fees)
• Tax evaluation reductions
• Impacted sales tax (local and state)
• General local economic changes

“Western North Carolina is suffering and that is affecting statewide sales tax. We’ve been told to expect flat or no growth in sales tax,” Sandy said. “We’ve been clipping along about a 10%-11% increase a year. For us, that works out to be, let’s call it half a million dollars. That is a safe number that we’re not going to see.”

MOVING FORWARD

“The reality is, yes, that’s a lot of negative news, but it’s true, and it’s the reality of what we’re facing,” Sandy said. “I think our community needs to understand that we also have to put together some things in-house, in trying to set the big stage.”

Toward the end of the meeting on Thursday, Sandy said that Special Projects Manager Rob Winkler put it best when he mentioned the challenge of building $40 million of capital projects in a few years that took city leaders 50 or 60 years to create.

“As I’ve said, this is a moving target and things change pretty rapidly,” Sandy said. “We can try to keep everybody informed so that our citizens have the opportunity to understand when they’re frustrated that something isn’t like it was and that something isn’t open — that we can’t start next week living life like we did.”

Although there is much work to come, things are still flourishing in Morganton. A couple of new restaurants are opening up. Projects are ongoing, like rebuilding parks to be better. Industries have reached out to the city about their future plans. Some parks are still open for Morganton to enjoy. Planting season is coming to breathe new life into nature.

With a heart-warming smile on her face, Sandy said she couldn’t be more proud of her team and the hard work they continue to do.

Toward the end of the meeting, Sigmon recalled a hopeful moment of what a Parks and Rec staff member told Sandy:

“We’ll build it back better, Miss Sandy.”