Village of Clemmons adopts Northern Piedmont regional hazard mitigation plan

The Village of Clemmons Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2025-R-11 on Aug. 25, 2025, formally approving the Northern Piedmont Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan.

Forsyth County emergency management official Michelle Brock, who presented the plan to the council, said the regional document covers seven counties and must be approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency every five years. "If you don't have a mitigation plan in place that is approved when a disaster happens to your community, you are not eligible for reimbursement," Brock told the council, noting FEMA had already given conditional approval pending local adoption.

The plan, Brock said, is more than a flood plan: "It used to focus on just natural things like flooding ... but now it includes all the other things that we have to plan for so that we are mitigating those risks." She described categories of mitigation actions — prevention, property protection, public education, emergency services, natural resource management and structural projects — and said mitigation typically saves about $6 in recovery funds for every $1 spent on mitigation measures.

Brock highlighted several local priorities captured in the plan: wildfire and wildland-urban interface risk in recently developed neighborhoods, increasing risk from excessive heat, cybersecurity training needs, and an absence of a consolidated countywide emergency notification system. She told the council the village presently relies on the state's IPAWS system for some messages and that a single countywide notification system that did not require individual opt-in would be a high-priority mitigation action.

Resident Jesse Levy spoke during public comment in support of adoption and praised the plan's attention to flooding and wildland-urban-interface hazards. Levy urged the village to pursue free programs such as Firewise and the CERT program through the North Carolina Forest Service and Emergency Management to reduce wildfire risk in areas where homes abut woodlands.

Council members asked about outdoor sirens versus wireless alerts; Brock said sirens are expensive to maintain and can be confusing locally, and she stressed wireless emergency alerts as the most reliable way to reach people on mobile phones.

The council adopted the resolution by motion, second and unanimous voice vote. Because FEMA's approval was already conditional on local adoption, Brock said the village's action preserves eligibility for federal mitigation and reimbursement programs. Brock noted the plan must be renewed again in five years; she gave the date for the next cycle as Aug. 18, 2030.

The adoption directs staff to carry the plan forward into village practice and to coordinate with county partners on high-priority items such as consolidated notification and public outreach.