A revised FEMA disaster declaration has opened the door to federal reimbursement of county and municipal dollars spent during the response and recovery to Hurricane Dorian. For local governments, that means a reduced financial burden that would ultimately have to be paid by local taxpayers.

“Prior to the storm, we were already declared for preemptive measures, which would include things like the police department needing extra people on staff to ensure a good response to the storm,” said Chris Newkirk, Beaufort County Emergency Services chief of fire/emergency management. “We’ve already declared for preemptive measures, and my understanding is that this opens the window for some funding for any recovery and damages.”

Newkirk says the county is still in the process of compiling the total cost of responding to Dorian, as well as the recovery piece. It’s a process that involves a lot of work and a lot of documentation, all of which is necessary to qualify for any federal reimbursement.

“There’s a lot of documentation and tracking that goes into getting reimbursed from the state, FEMA or both,” Newkirk said. “If we were to think back to Hurricane Floyd, which was a major incident for eastern North Carolina, in the days, weeks and months after, it was almost like some of these state and federal agencies came in and said, ‘We’ve got this pool of money, and we’re just handing it out.’ There weren’t a whole lot of questions asked for it; it just flowed out very freely. But now, through good fiscal stewardship, it is required that we have some pretty extensive documentation.”

In many cases, this documentation can go to the granular level. Newkirk used the example of a truck used by the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office to move Red Cross supplies during the storm — for every vehicle used, county staff track mileage, hour used, the occupants and what the vehicle was used for.

Other counties included in the declaration include Brunswick, Camden, Carteret, Columbus, Craven, Currituck, Dare, Duplin, Greene, Hoke, Hyde, Jones, Lenoir, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Pender, Perquimans, Pitt, Robeson, Sampson, Tyrrell, Washington and Wayne.

“Anytime that we’re able to spare our taxpayers the expense of that response, that’s only a positive for the county,” Newkirk said. “If that frees up money to spend on other investments in the county, other infrastructure projects, services or needs, we want to make sure we’re not robbing Peter to pay Paul in that sense. That reimbursement piece helps, every penny of it. We want to make sure we’re documenting it in a way that we get as much back as possible so our taxpayers don’t have to bear that burden.”