Macon County Sheriff Robbie Holland told commissioners last week that he tries his best not to ask for more money in the middle of the budget year, but after an inmate recently escaped from the courthouse, he said the lack of security at the facility must be addressed sooner rather than later. 

It could cost less than originally anticipated to build a new 10,000-square-foot animal shelter facility in Jackson County, according to the most recent architectural estimates. 

Is it a Taj Mahal or a wise use of tax dollars? 

I’m talking about the proposal to spend around $13 million to build a central office for the Haywood County School System that will bring administration, food services, transportation, teacher/staff training facilities and more all under one roof.

Haywood County has taken its first formal step forward in pursuit of a proposed $13 million, 40,000-square-foot central administration facility requested by Haywood County Schools. 

Jackson County hopes to offset the cost of moving its Dillsboro recycling center with proceeds from selling a piece of land in Sylva that has been county-owned since 2012.

With a major new administration facility proposed and a shuttered elementary school still sitting empty, Haywood County Schools finds itself at a crossroads as its schools fill up, even before a number of new apartment complexes plan to accept new tenants in the coming months.

A proposal to consolidate several aging Haywood County Schools administrative buildings into a single multi-million dollar state-of-the-art facility first discussed months ago has suddenly taken on an unanticipated but not unwelcome urgency.

After narrowly losing out in each of the past three years, developers have finally been awarded tax credits that will make redevelopment of the county-owned Historic Haywood County Hospital into 54 residential units financially feasible. 

Editor’s note: This is the eighth in a series of stories on Haywood County’s public charter school, Shining Rock Classical Academy, which has been beset by a host of academic and organizational problems since opening in 2015.

Although plans for a new facility proposed by taxpayer-funded Haywood County public charter school Shining Rock Classical Academy have been scuttled due to an unexpected decrease in revenue brought about by dramatically lower student enrollment totals for the current school year, questions about how Shining Rock’s unelected governing board got so far along in the planning process without any public mention of the project continue to linger, and the school’s not talking. 

Plans to construct a new Angel Medical Center in Franklin moved forward last week after the town planning board approved a special-use permit for the replacement hospital.