In the latest in a slew of federal funding freezes and cuts that have rocked local governments, money for Cumberland County’s emergency management is on the chopping block.
In a presentation to the Fayetteville City Council on Monday, Gary Crumpler, Cumberland County’s interim emergency services director, said the county has yet to receive its annual funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The funds are administered by the state but come from FEMA’s Emergency Management Performance Grant program, Crumpler said. Cumberland County received $62,500 as part of the fiscal year 2023 program, according to HigherGov.
A good deal of the funds go toward Cumberland Alerts, a system that residents can sign up for to receive real-time messages about severe weather hazards, evacuations and protective actions. Crumpler said the county typically receives funding from the Emergency Management Performance Grant twice a year, in one smaller sum and a second larger payment. The larger sum, Crumpler said, goes toward the emergency alert funding. The county was told in 2024 that they would no longer receive the smaller check under changes to the program from FEMA, Crumpler said.
“But here’s the thing,” he said, “with the new administration, we have not received that notice of funding for the larger check and the state does not know if we’re going to get it or not.”
Without the funding, the county will have to pay for the emergency alert system through its general fund, Crumpler said. But that fund is already going to face some other hefty costs, as the county will likely also have to foot the bill for other expenses typically covered by the federal government, including SNAP benefits.
Laura Smith, Fayetteville’s emergency management coordinator, said the city’s Office of Emergency Management works with the county’s Emergency Services Department to coordinate emergency mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery efforts. The departments often share resources, and the county allocates emergency management funding it receives from the state to support the nine municipalities in the county. But the county relies on state funding, which is up in the air this year as North Carolina struggles to pay for the recovery from Hurricane Helene and will soon have to pick up the tab for benefits lost by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The county’s emergency management funding issues come as FEMA in April canceled more than $18 million in funding for projects in Fayetteville and Cumberland County intended to reduce flooding and improve the disposal of debris during major storms. At Monday’s meeting, city council members expressed concern about the increasing burden being placed on states and municipalities — which will inevitably trickle down to taxpayers — to manage disasters as the federal government withholds resources and withdraws support.
“I still can’t quite understand our top administration when it comes to [federal funding cuts],” Council Member D.J. Haire said. “It’s as if everything is being pushed to the states across the board.”
In addition to the funding uncertainty from FEMA, Crumpler and Smith raised concerns about President Donald Trump’s executive order, “Achieving Efficiency Through State and Local Preparedness.” The order, according to their presentation, increases “autonomy and responsibility for state and local governments.” At the same time, it comes with a “potential reduction in federal support, requiring stronger local planning and investment.”
Emergency management solutions
Despite the challenges, there are resources available to municipalities to manage disasters on their own, Crumpler said. One of these is by declaring a state of emergency. City Manager Doug Hewett described the declaration as a “superpower” of local elected officials, allowing them to tap into additional funding and resources that have the potential to later be reimbursed by the state or federal government.
The emergency declaration also allows the city to “restrict the movements” of residents through things like curfews and for public safety when disaster strikes, Hewett said. He added that the emergency declaration will be especially important as hurricanes and flooding have become more severe across North Carolina over the past few years. Climate scientists agree that these events are a result of climate change, which is causing natural disasters to become more frequent, intense and prolonged.
“The state of emergency is a big deal and sadly these hurricanes are coming at a greater intensity,” Hewett said. “Who would have thought that the trouble they had in Asheville, and just never thought that would happen, or what they had recently in Durham and Hillsborough.”
At the beginning of their presentation, the emergency management directors asked city council members and staff leadership to participate in a threat assessment activity, in which participants placed monopoly money in buckets that were labeled with various emergency scenarios. According to the results, city officials felt the most pressing possible emergency in Fayetteville was dam failure, followed by inland flooding and then hurricanes.
According to Fayetteville’s stormwater management division, the city is working to address these issues, but it will take significant time and funding to complete. The city currently has $1.1 billion in flood mitigation projects, stormwater project manager Alicia Lanier said on Monday. Lanier presented the council with a $50 million project to help mitigate flooding in downtown Fayetteville from Cross Creek. She described it as the “watershed program’s highest impact project.”
The project involves widening the channel of Cross Creek, from the Martin Luther King Freeway to Green Street, and will likely take a decade to complete. The council agreed to move forward with staff’s request to begin work on the preliminary design, which will involve completing 15% of the initial design, cost $534,050 and take about 11 months.
Hewett had urged city elected officials to take action on such projects now, in order to prepare for and mitigate the effects of future disasters.
“What the federal government at the moment is saying to the states is that you have a local problem, you have local solutions, funding,” Hewett said. “And that … from wildfires on the West Coast to flooding in Texas, flooding in the mountains, hurricanes, unknown global pandemics, there is not a way that the government can be all things to all folks.
“And so they’re asking us, through efforts that you have done and past councils have done, such as through smart development,” Hewett continued. “The water goes where the water has always gone. And we’re trying to have to learn to live with it to some extent.”
Government accountability reporter Evey Weisblat can be reached at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
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