Lake Junaluska residents spearheading the annexation effort realized they needed more and better ammunition to prove their case and sway holdouts in the General Assembly to let the community merge with next-door Waynesville.

The large majority of Lake Junaluska property owners and registered voters want to join the town of Waynesville, according to a volunteer petition drive carried out over the last six months.

Supporters of the stalled merger of Lake Junaluska with the town of Waynesville hope to get it back on the docket of the N.C. General Assembly in the spring.

When a “for sale” sign went up on the hospitals in Haywood, Jackson and Swain counties earlier this year, it was chalked up as inevitable, a sad but unavoidable trajectory faced by small, independent hospitals everywhere.

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At best, the safe harbor of a big hospital network would bring practical perks — be it regulatory expertise, doctor recruiting prowess, leverage haggling with insurance companies or buying power for medical supplies. 

Lake Junaluska community leaders gave residents a first look at how its service fees will increase since its merger with Waynesville was thwarted, at least temporarily.

Ron Clauser never saw himself as a lobbyist. He’s an accountant by trade, a world where logic and rationale rule the day. The same could be said of Ed LaFountaine, a career military man and retired major general in the airforce.

A state bill that would have merged Lake Junaluska with the town of Waynesville is dead for now.

The Waynesville Board of Aldermen rubberstamped a $31.8 million budget Monday, but it may just have to turn right around and approve a new one.

A compromise has been floated in Raleigh that could break the political impasse over the proposed merger of Lake Junaluska with the town of Waynesville.

The merger of Lake Junaluska with the town of Waynesville has yet to get the blessing of state legislators in Raleigh, and time is now running out.