As a professional multimedia artist and photographer living in Western North Carolina since 2002, Luba Petrova still remembers the first piece of art she ever created.

Waynesville’s Russ Avenue Ingles already has one of the largest commercial footprints in Haywood County, but if plans filed with the Town of Waynesville’s Development Services Department by the regional grocer come to fruition, it will get even larger. 

Waynesville’s elected officials, administrators and department staff were supposed to spend Feb. 21 talking about the year’s upcoming budget — which they did, for nearly six hours — but the board also took immediate action on several issues deemed too important to wait. 

In Fitzgerald’s fields they toiled, sun-dappled and rain-soaked, caked in mud and in blood and in sweat. They raised corn and peas and potatoes and children and they always had plenty of butter and honey and wool so long as with ceaseless toil they coaxed the stubborn mountainside into giving up its seasonal blessings.

They worked about as hard as, and had about as much as, any other poor white Reconstruction-era Waynesville farmer except for the rights expressed in that document which begins, “We the people” because they were still somehow less than that. 

The beloved community fundraiser known as Pancake Day will return Tuesday, Feb. 25, to First United Methodist Church of Waynesville.

Although there was more than a little wrangling over logistics, the Town of Waynesville has finally announced the membership of its newly created homelessness task force. 

Much misinformation is being spread about the state of and the fate of Frog Level’s community-based food ministry — namely, that the community or the town pushed to close The Open Door, that The Open Door will cease operations, that a hip new Asheville bistro will soon gentrify the space and that Haywood Pathways will simply pick up the slack. 

Long’s Chapel leadership only received word about two weeks ago that its lease for The Open Door Ministry building in Frog Level would not be renewed for another year. 

SEE ALSO: Frog Level soup kitchen lease won’t be renewed

Franklin Police Chief David Adams will have some big shoes to fill when he becomes Waynesville’s new police chief, but according to Waynesville Town Manager Rob Hites, Adams is the right person to fill them. 

Proposed changes to and clarifications of cemetery ordinances prompted by public outcry in Waynesville will soon undergo a period of public comment before possible adoption by the town’s Board of Aldermen.