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Unicoi Co. Commission passes budget with near-$500K deficit

ERWIN, Tenn. (WJHL) — The Unicoi County Commission passed a budget this week with a nearly half-million-dollar deficit, and county leaders said it's largely due to the effects of Hurricane Helene. Unicoi County leaders said much of the deficit comes from the washout of the Industrial Park Drive area and the local hospital. The county has not had any income coming from those businesses since September, when Helene struck. The budget passed Monday with an over $450,000 deficit. However, the county expects to get some funding from the State of Tennessee. Mayor Garland 'Bubba' Evely told News Channel 11 on Wednesday that he is hopeful that six or seven of the businesses washed away from the Industrial Park will return and again bring income to the county. 'We worked on trying to cut expenses as much as we could,' he said. 'We got that down to under $500,000. And, the State of Tennessee has agreed to, in 2025-26, allocate funds to the most affected counties. And we're going to receive that funding in July, which the shortfall will be taken from the additional revenues the state's going to provide.' Evely said another big expense hurting the budget is the county's EMS service, which now must transport all patients into Johnson City since the Unicoi County hospital's closure after Helene. 'The shortfall is strictly due to [the] Helene disaster that we suffered and lost revenue from property values, homes that were destroyed, our industrial park being destroyed–to the tune of almost $570,000 in revenue that the county would normally receive in a regular year.' Evely noted that the county's budget is a little over $10 million and that the school system budget and highway department budget are separate from the county's. 'Helene has certainly created a lot of budget challenges, not just for the county and the two towns, but also for those like ambulance service, police department, sheriff's department, you know, it's created a lot more on the expense side, in addition to the lost revenue that we got.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.