North Carolina announces grant program for local businesses impacted by Helene

Down Ballot Staff Reports

North Carolina recently announced a grant program for businesses impacted by Hurricane Helene.

According to a news release from the N.C. Department of Commerce, the $500,000 grant funding will go to local workforce development boards serving the Western North Carolina counties that were most effected by the storm.

"This innovative grant program is one of numerous tools we are using to support long-term economic recovery for western North Carolina,” N.C. Commerce Secretary Lee Lilley said in a statement. “It is essential that we help employers, particularly small businesses, to save jobs, adapt and rebuild.”

The Hurricane Helene Business Edge Fund is managed through the Governor’s Rapid Response program at the North Carolina Department of Commerce’s Division of Workforce Solutions.

Workforce development boards in the region may apply to the workforce solutions division for funding and then may provide grants of up to $10,000 each to eligible businesses and community-based organizations.

Employers located in one of the critical business disruption counties will be eligible to apply to their local workforce board. Those counties include Ashe, Avery, Burke, Buncombe, Caldwell, Haywood, Henderson, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Transylvania, Watauga, and Yancey.

To apply, businesses must have been in operation for at least two years, be current on Unemployment Insurance taxes, and be in good standing with the Internal Revenue Service.

Economically, Western North Carolina is still recovering from last year's storm.

The latest unemployment figures show Asheville with the state's highest jobless rate for metropolitan areas at six percent.

For counties, five of the top nine counties are from Western North Carolina.

Mitchell County has the state's second-highest rate at 7.3 percent. Buncombe County's unemployment rate is 6.8 percent.