County to hold flood maps, economic grant public hearings

Published 7:44 am Sunday, May 3, 2020

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The Beaufort County Board of Commissioners will hold its regularly scheduled meeting on Monday, and the public is invited to attend. Those in the audience will, however, be seated in chairs that meet the requirements of social distance.

“What we’ve done is set up seats at six-foot distances,” said Beaufort County Manager Brian Alligood. “If people want to come, they’re welcome to come.”

Alligood said the county will not be live-streaming its meeting online, but the video of the meeting will be posted to the county website, as usual.

Two public hearings are on the agenda: the first, the county will be accepting comments about the new FEMA flood maps that are set to go into effect on June 19.

“The areas that are in flood zones — whether they’re in the 100 year or 500 year — people may find that they have property that was in the flood zone and have been taken out,” Alligood said. “Ours was to the benefit of properties coming out to the flood zone.”

Alligood said the new flood maps, as well as the old ones, can be found at ncfloodmaps.com.

“When you go there you can click between the two different maps, the existing one and the proposed one, and you can see the difference,” he said. “But just because you are no longer in a flood zone, doesn’t mean to drop your flood insurance — just because a map says it’s not going to flood doesn’t mean it’s not going to flood.”

Another hearing will allow the public to weigh in on county participation in an economic development performance grant for Project River Breeze, a new air-purification product line, representing an expansion of a currently operating manufacturing company. The company expects to invest $2.6 million in a facility and $1 million in equipment and employ 76 full-time workers — including managers, engineers, shift managers, assemblers and administration positions — at an average annual wage of $38,224.

“The economic development performance grant will be paid out over five years only after the County has collected Project River Breeze’s property taxes for the year and will not exceed the property taxes paid in that year. The grant will require the company to achieve its capital investment and job creation goals plus be current on all its Beaufort County tax obligations to receive the proposed grant funding,” the notice reads.

Alligood said county residents have a couple of different options to comment: those who wish to do so can attend the meeting, email their comments to Beaufort County Clerk Katie Mosher at katie.mosher@co.beaufort.nc.us or call Mosher at 252-946-0079 to arrange to comment during the meeting via Webex.