When local veterinarian Dr. Kristen Hammett appeared before the Haywood County Board of Commissioners on the morning of Sept. 7, 2016, she said she’d just come from euthanizing two animals at the county’s dilapidated shelter, which was at the time 30 percent over capacity, reeked of animal waste and produced a “deafening” roar. 

Mountain Projects is now moving into a newly renovated building on Asheville Road in Waynesville, thanks in part to matching contributions of $150,000 that Jackson and Haywood counties approved in April. 

With Mission Health in the process of building a replacement hospital in Franklin, Macon County and town of Franklin leaders were curious how the pending acquisition may impact the project. 

Plans are moving forward for an extensive renovation of the Jackson County Health Department building, with County Manager Don Adams hoping to have an architect contract ready for commissioners to approve at their May 7 meeting. 

The next chapter in the saga of the historic Haywood Hospital is about to be written, but in the choose-your-own-adventure format of the existing saga, the happy ending of the county’s quest to unload the expensive, underutilized parcel has yet to be written.

Southwestern Community College is seeking compensation for damage to the Balsam Center building that it believes resulted from the R-5000 road project, a 0.7-mile connector road between N.C. 107 and N.C. 116 that wound up costing $30 million. 

Months after work wrapped up to relocate Caney Fork General Store in Jackson County, multiple subcontractors who worked on the project remain unpaid, resulting in two claims filed against the business. 

Parking decks could come to Western Carolina University sooner rather than later following the Board of Trustees’ unanimous vote to designate three existing parking lots as sites for future parking deck construction.

Residents are accusing the Macon County government of impeding their private property rights by proposing new requirements for landowners and contractors wanting to perform grading work, but commissioners say that was never their intention. 

Drawing more than 300 million visitors each year, the National Park Service is both a reservoir of natural beauty and an economic anchor for the communities surrounding its lands — and many of those communities are now banding together to demand that Congress address the parks’ $11.3 billion maintenance backlog.

“To know what this means to us — the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park — and for us to have to ask them for some sustainable revenue to keep these parks going, it’s almost like asking somebody to take care of their baby,” Jackson County Commissioner Boyce Dietz said before the board unanimously passed a resolution in favor of sustained funding Dec. 18, 2017.