Based on the Town's own published "Storm Recovery Updates," the Town's public records response to Lake Lure Insider's Records Request #2, and records the Town produced: a donations ledger, a separate PayPal transaction list, and two check-request/invoice packets. Lake Lure Insider has since sent the Town Manager's office a detailed written request for comment and additional records covering the findings in this piece and in Parts 2 and 3. As of publication, the Town has not responded.

After Hurricane Helene tore through Lake Lure in September 2024, the Town of Lake Lure did something most local governments don't do: it asked the public to send it money directly.

Not through a nonprofit. Not through a community foundation. Through a PayPal link and a check made out to "Town of Lake Lure Storm Recovery," mailed straight to the Town's own post office box.

More than two years later, Lake Lure Insider has reviewed the Town's own published donation page, its weekly "Storm Recovery Updates," and records the Town produced in response to a formal public-records request — and found that the Town never told the people who gave that money what it was for, or who was meant to benefit.

"Help Bring Our Lure Back"

The Town's donation page is built around one line: "Our community, along with many of our neighbors, has been devastated by the historic flooding caused by Hurricane Helene." It tells people they can give online by PayPal or mail a check. It thanks donors for "volunteers, donations, and supplies."

It does not say the money will go to residents. It does not say it will go to businesses. It does not say it will go toward a specific project, a relief program, or even general Town operations. It names no amount the Town is trying to raise and sets no date by which the giving will end.

That silence continued for more than two years. Every "Storm Recovery Updates" page we reviewed — from June 2025 through the most recent one posted, Oct. 31, 2025 — carries the identical line in its funding table: "Private Donations — Up to $90,000 — Deposited; being held for future disbursement under discretion of Town Council."

"Under discretion of Town Council" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It tells donors the money sat in a Town account, waiting for commissioners to decide what to do with it — not that it was earmarked, reserved, or committed to any purpose connected to the storm that prompted people to give it in the first place.

Why Taking the Money Directly Is the Unusual Part

It's worth pausing on something this story noted at the beginning: a town taking disaster donations directly, by check and PayPal, into its own accounts, is not how most North Carolina local governments handled Helene giving.

It is legal. A local government "may solicit and receive donations and expend the funds for any purpose it has state law authority to undertake," according to an analysis published in the first weeks after the storm by the UNC School of Government's Coates' Canons blog — the reference North Carolina town attorneys and finance officers routinely turn to for exactly this kind of question. Lake Lure wasn't out of bounds simply by setting up the donation page.

But that same analysis spells out what choosing to take the money directly requires. Once a check or a PayPal gift lands in a town's own account, it stops being a private charitable gift the town can hold and spend at its own discretion — it becomes public funds, subject to the same state budget law that governs tax revenue. The governing board has to formally vote to accept the donations. And before the town can spend any of it:

That's a formal budget ordinance amendment, passed at an open Council meeting, adding the donations as estimated revenue before a dollar of it can legally be spent. Under North Carolina's Local Government Budget and Fiscal Control Act, it isn't a courtesy step — it's the law. Lake Lure Insider could not find a record of the Town Council ever taking that vote, either to formally accept the donations into the fund or to amend the budget to authorize spending them — the same gap flagged below and in our follow-up records request.

Lake Lure also appears to have been an outlier regionally in choosing to take the money directly at all. The state's own official donation guidance after Helene — and the dominant channel used across the hardest-hit parts of western North Carolina — pointed givers to the NC Disaster Relief Fund, administered through the United Way of North Carolina and later merged into the NC Community Foundation's Disaster Relief Fund, which distributed money to more than 100 vetted nonprofits on the ground. Lake Lure Insider could not identify another Helene-affected North Carolina town that ran its own direct-to-town-hall donation drive, soliciting checks made payable to the town itself, the way Lake Lure did.

The appeal of routing through an outside nonprofit is straightforward: a 501(c)(3) is already tax-exempt, so it doesn't need the town to issue its own donor acknowledgment letters; it can disburse money on its own board's schedule without a public vote for every authorization; and the money never becomes part of the town's own audited books at all. The tradeoff is that the town gives up direct control over how the money gets spent — which may be exactly why Lake Lure didn't go that route. But having chosen to keep the money, and the decision-making, in-house, the Town also took on the legal obligations that come with that choice. Based on the records produced so far, several of those obligations don't appear to have been met.

What the Town Told Us When We Asked

Lake Lure Insider filed a public records request on Sept. 8, 2026 asking, among other things, for an itemized accounting of the fund, any Council authorization for spending from it, and the fund's accounting classification.

Town Manager Olivia Stewman responded with several documents and this explanation:

"The use of donations received through the Storm Recovery Fund will ultimately be determined by Town Council. At this time, no formal action has been taken regarding the expenditure of the majority of these funds. As recovery efforts continue, the Town is evaluating remaining recovery needs and available funding sources to help ensure donated funds are used thoughtfully and effectively."

In other words: more than two years after the storm, and roughly that long after the Town told the public it was "holding" the money "for future disbursement," the Town still has not decided — publicly, at least — what the money is for.

The Manager's response also disclosed something the Town's public updates never did: "the only disbursements from the Storm Recovery Fund have been associated with two donations designated by the donor for a specific purpose." We'll detail those two disbursements, and a billing discrepancy connected to one of them, in Part 2.

The Math Doesn't Match the Town's Public Number

The records the Town provided let us do something its own website never allowed the public to do: add it up.

A ledger titled "Storm Recovery Fund Monetary Donations - excluding PayPal" lists 170 separate checks and cash gifts, dated October 2024 through July 2025, each tied to the Town's Fund 20, account 20-390000 — the account the Manager says "was established to track Hurricane Helene-related revenues and expenditures." The ledger's own printed total is $148,334.75. Lake Lure Insider independently re-added all 170 line items and got $148,234.75 — a $100 gap from the Town's stated total. Most likely an error in addition, but it is something we have not been able to account for and are asking the Town to clarify.

That's checks and cash only. The Town separately produced a PayPal transaction list — roughly 110 additional gifts, running from Oct. 15, 2024 all the way to July 31, 2026 — totaling $20,982.89.

Add the two together and the Town has taken in somewhere north of $169,000 in private donations to this fund. The Town's own public communications, as recently as October 2025, told the community it was holding "up to $90,000."

To be clear about what we can and can't conclude from this: the $90,000 figure may represent an estimate made at an earlier point that was never updated as more money came in, rather than a deliberate understatement. The ledger shows roughly $143,000 had already been deposited by the time of the Oct. 31, 2025 update that still said "up to $90,000" — meaning the public figure was already well behind the actual total by the time it was published, and the gap has only widened since, especially once the PayPal receipts — which continue well into 2026 — are included. We found no "Storm Recovery Update" posted after Oct. 31, 2025 — meaning that stale figure may simply be the last one the Town ever published, with no newer page to correct it.

One possible partial explanation: a single $50,000 check from the RHI Legacy Foundation, deposited in January 2025, which the Town's own donation page advertises as a matching gift — "RHI Legacy Foundation will match any donation up to $50,000." If that gift were excluded from the Town's internal running total for some reason, the remaining checks and cash would be closer to $98,300 — still a bit above the "up to $90,000" number, and still not accounting for the PayPal donations at all.

We don't know which of these explanations, if any, is correct, because the Town's public updates have never shown their math. That's the heart of Part 1: not that a number is wrong, but that the public has had no way to check it — and still doesn't, well over a year after the figure first appeared.

What the Town Hasn't Answered

Lake Lure Insider's Sept. 8 records request asked for several additional categories of records the Town's response did not address, and did not say had been withheld:

• Any resolution, motion, or Council minutes formally accepting the privately raised donations into the fund.
• Any record of Council action authorizing the two disbursements the Manager described — or confirmation that none occurred.
• Any record of how the Storm Recovery Fund is classified under the Local Government Budget and Fiscal Control Act (special revenue fund, restricted account, or otherwise) beyond the account number provided.

The Town's response did not include a combined total (checks, cash, and PayPal together), and did not update the "up to $90,000" figure that remains on its website.

Lake Lure Insider has asked the Town Manager's office to address these gaps. As of publication, the Town has not responded; we will publish any response in full.

That's the money nobody's touched. Next, in Part 2: the money somebody did. The Town admits exactly two disbursements have ever left this fund — and the records trail on both of them doesn't hold together. One check paid for a memorial bench tied directly to Mayor Carol Pritchett's own family, with no Council vote authorizing it anywhere on the record. The other was signed off by the same Town employee who requested it, charged to the wrong fund entirely, and carries a journal voucher number that — according to the Town's own ledger — couldn't have been issued on the date the Town says it was.

And that's before we even get to the beach. Part 3 digs into the one story the Town has told publicly, by name, about where some of this money and labor went: that a "private donor" helped re-sand Lake Lure Beach after Helene. We tracked down who that donor really was, what he actually did and didn't do, what the Town told FEMA about it — and a clause buried in a Town concession contract that raises the question of whether this was ever a donation in the first place.

Sourcing Note

This story is based on the Town's own published "Storm Recovery Updates" (June 17, 2025; Aug. 20, 2025; Sept. 20, 2025; Oct. 31, 2025, townoflakelure.com); the Town's donation page ("Donations for Town of Lake Lure Storm Recovery — Help Bring Our Lure Back!"); Town Manager Olivia Stewman's email response to Lake Lure Insider's Records Request #2; the "Storm Recovery Fund Monetary Donations (excluding PayPal)" ledger and "PayPal Donations" transaction list produced in that response; Kara Millonzi, UNC School of Government, "Local Government Soliciting and Receiving Donations During an Emergency," Coates' Canons, October 2024 (canons.sog.unc.edu); the North Carolina Local Government Budget and Fiscal Control Act (N.C. Gen. Stat. Ch. 159); and nc.gov's and the NC Community Foundation's published Hurricane Helene donation guidance. Lake Lure Insider sent the Town Manager's office a written request for comment on the specific findings in this piece, and additional records requests, covering all three parts of this series. As of publication, the Town has not responded; we will update this piece with any response received.

Last updated: 2026-10-06