Special session begins today
By Steve Herring
Published in News on December 13, 2016 9:57 AM
The Cherry Research Farm and Claridge Nursery, both damaged during Hurricane Matthew, would benefit from a proposed $200 million financial aid package being crafted by state legislators.
The package would also offer housing assistance, help nonprofits and address the issue of school days missed because of the storm.
The General Assembly convened in special session at 10 a.m. today to put together a plan to aid the recovery from both Hurricane Matthew and the wildfires in western North Carolina.
The session will address the most immediate needs and set the stage for more detailed work in the long session that convenes in January, said Republican House Majority Leader John Bell of Goldsboro.
"I am thinking it will be done by Thursday or Friday," Bell said. "I don't see a long time. We are going to put forth the Hurricane Matthew/wildfire legislation. We have been working on that for about a week and half. We feel pretty good about where that is. That will be the initial response. Then we will come back when we are in the long session and put together another bill.
"We are going to start addressing the housing issue that we have. We have grants built in to help with some of the issues our cities and counties are facing with infrastructure needs such as the water-sewer side. We also have some water quality issues for wastewater and drinking water."
It is a "good deal" for Wayne County since there are line items for Claridge Nursery and also the Cherry Research Farm that were both hit "pretty hard," Bell said.
"There will be grants put in here for nonprofits to apply for," he said. "Right there in Goldsboro we lost the Boy Scouts' office. Then also there will be grants and loans for small businesses that will be put in here. So a lot of those type of issue to start off with."
Another issue Bell said he was able to put in addresses concerns about caskets that were forced out of the ground by the flooding.
It will help the city deal with that issue, he said.
Bell said he and Rep. Jimmy Dixon of Mount Olive lobbied for a provision addressing school calendar flexibility because of the number of school days missed because of the storm. That should be announced today and give the school systems some certainty of how to proceed through the rest of the year, he said.
"There is another provision in here that waives any fees assessed by the Department of Motor Vehicles for people that had issues with driver's license, registration and those types of things for victims of the floods," he said. "It also puts funds in play to be able to match federal dollars that are going to start coming in.
"There was a significant amount of funds put in for agriculture as well. In my opinion it is a good start and will get us to where we need to be until we come back into session to have a more complex bill that would deal with other issues."
Half of the money would come from the state's rainy day fund and the other half from the regular state budget that included a surplus, Bell said.