The large, cavernous room at the heart of Jackson County’s Community Services Center doesn’t see much action these days. It’s no longer open to the public. A trash can sits solemnly collecting water dripping from a leak in the ceiling. 

But the room’s parquet floor still hints and harkens to better days gone by.

Scotland’s roots run deep in Western North Carolina. Since before this country’s inception, Scottish immigrants have been migrating to these hills that remind them of home. 

So, it makes sense that the only museum outside of Scotland that’s dedicated to the Scottish tartan — the various criss-cross patterns most associated with kilts — is nestled in an unassuming storefront on Franklin’s Main Street.

A new health advisory was issued this month warning people about mercury levels in walleye fish in Lake Glenville. This is not exactly news.

“As an obligate piscivore — that is, fish that feed almost exclusively on smaller fish — this species is very prone to mercury bioaccumulation,” explained Susan Massengale, public information officer with the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Sylva Commissioner Danny Allen had a question. He’d been watching what was happening with the incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York, where police-involved fatalities of black men have led to civil unrest, and wondered about his own home. 

“I wonder,” Allen asked during a recent Sylva Town board meeting, “if the police have gone through any kind of ethnic sensitivity training to handle such things?”

The first time Merrily Teasley saw the Balsam Mountain Inn was somewhat dreamlike. It was during a full moon hike that would reroute her life. 

“There was no illumination except for the moon,” Teasley recalled. “It just looked like magic. It was gorgeous.”

The Jackson County Tourism Development Authority may be slimming down. Eventually. 

“It’s in discussion,” said Robert Jumper, chairman of the tourism authority. 

The Jackson TDA was launched by county commissioners and is charged with marketing the area and attracting tourist dollars. The tourism board currently consists of 15 members, all hailing from various pockets of the area’s tourism-related businesses. 

A skatepark is coming to Canton, possibly by early winter.

“So, the skateboarders have a place to go,” said Town Manager Seth Hendler-Voss.

Canton Alderman Ralph Hamlett recently attended a neighborhood meeting where the talk turned to skateboarding, and more specifically skateboarding on streets and sidewalks.

It wasn’t the first time Swain County Manager Kevin King had to tell his commissioners that the numbers were off on the Solid Waste Fund. But this month he added an asterisk of oomph. 

“This is probably one of our worst years so far,” King said, explaining that the fund had a $100,000 deficit. 

The rolling hills of the Cullowhee River Club unfold beneath a heaven of blue sky as the Tuckasegee River rifles by. The property long belonged to the Battle family, it was known as the Battle farm.

That’s before Ken Newell stumbled into God’s backyard.

Trails top the list of Maggie Valley’s recreational needs, according to the results of a recent survey conducted by the town. 

“A lot of people seem to have the same thought of ‘we live so close to the mountains, but we have to drive 30 minutes to get to the trails,’” Maggie Valley Town Planner Andrew Bowen told the town board recently. 

Quite a few parking tickets have gone unpaid in Sylva. Since 20011, a total of $7,585 worth of parking citations have gone unpaid.

“It’s pages of tickets,” said Sylva Town Manager Paige Dowling.

Following a pair of community input sessions in October, proposed planning regulations for the Cullowhee area have been tweaked a bit. 

“Relatively minor revisions to text and to maps,” explained Jackson County Planning Director Gerald Green. 

Most ribbon cuttings are routine. Bland, even.

But then, most ribbon cuttings aren’t executed by a robot. 

“You’ll note there’s a pair of scissors strapped to one hand,” said Jim Falbo, mechatronics program coordinator for Southwestern Community College, pointing to the robot across the room. 

It’s probably best to avoid eating fish out of Lake Glenville. At least the walleye.

“I’d like to tell you I know what a walleye is,” said Paula Carden, health director for Jackson County Department of Public Health. “I think it’s a bass.”

The Swain County Sheriff’s Office responds to its share of security alarms. Between January and the middle of November, the department has responded to 1,019 such calls — and rarely is there an actual need for its services.

“We may have one call like this, thinking back, where someone is actually in the house,” Swain Sheriff Curtis Cochran informed the Swain County Board of Commissioners recently. 

It’s not much of a street now. And soon, Fry Street might not be a street at all.

“What we’re working towards there is, of course, permanent closure to vehicular traffic,” said Karen Wilmot, executive director of Swain County Tourism Development Authority. 

Maggie Valley is on its way to building a downtown.

“This is something I’m very excited to present to the board,” Town Manager Nathan Clark said during the Nov. 10 meeting of the town board of aldermen. “This was a longtime in the making to get to this step.”

Cell phone towers in Jackson County cannot currently be built on ridgetops. That looks likely to change as revisions to the county’s ordinance governing cell towers progress. 

Thus far in the revision process, the Jackson County Planning Board has dug into issues such as allowable height and style of construction.

Three candidates were aiming for the top prize in Swain’s sheriff race. The contest pitted the status quo against the notion of change, as well as featuring the third candidate wildcard.

The fate of the Jackson County Board of Commissioners rested with this election. With six candidates on the ballot — aligning themselves neatly into two teams of three — voters were asked to decide if they were satisfied with the conservative incumbents or would they rather return to an all-Democratic affair.

It’s been two years since Bruce Yarrington and his Knights of Columbus buddies started volunteering at the Veterans Restoration Quarters in Asheville. Twice a month the crew makes the trip from Waynesville to cook for the veterans at the center.

The folks spearheading the effort to expand broadband access in Haywood County are thinking big. Gigabyte big. 

“Our goal is to make Haywood County a gigabyte community,” said Ron DeSimone.

It’s official. Starting with the 2016-17 academic year, sophomores attending Western Carolina University will be required to live on campus.

“We have a philosophy of students learning better by growing into their responsibilities. First-year students need that residence hall experience,” said Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Sam Miller. “It’s often their first time living away from home.”

Swain County will soon be home to a YMCA camp. 

The camp — called YMCA Camp Watia — will be on land located near the Almond Boat and RV Park.

“Probably 5 miles from the highway,” said Swain County Manager Kevin King. “I think it used to be a tree farm.”

The Jackson County Tourism Development Authority is pursuing a leader, someone to act as the organization’s executive director. The workload is becoming more than volunteer board members can handle.

“Some of us feel, and I feel, it’s going to be a full-time job,” Robert Jumper, head of Jackson’s TDA, said earlier this month.

Inside and out, the Swain County Heritage Museum is an ode to history. The very building that houses the museum long served as the courthouse in Bryson City, and now serves to usher visitors through all those many years gone by.

The Village of Forest Hills is about to go on a vision quest. The quest begins Nov. 3 with a community workshop. 

The village will be the latest community to ponder a vision, a long-range view. It follows in the footsteps of nearby Jackson County neighbors, most notably Cullowhee.

They weren’t thrilled about it, but members of the Cullowhee community did show an appetite for possible development standards during a recent second public input session focusing on the proposed regulations.

“This is not a pretty plan, there are parts of it I find very disturbing,” said Jim Lewis, during the Oct. 23 meeting. “But if not this, what? Just let us go?”

Canton exists against the backdrop of the paper mill. Both literally and figuratively. 

For generations, the paper mill — currently run by Evergreen Packaging — has helped to define the community of Canton. Its billowing factory by the railroad tracks are as much a part of Canton’s horizon and landscape as the setting sun. 

Hanging out at the confluence of crossroads that embraces downtown Canton, two young skateboarders while away a lazy afternoon. They’re leaping stairs against the backdrop of a mural depicting the town’s glory days — a ball team from the 1950s, the Labor Day parade and, as ever, the mill.

It’s pretty quiet around town. Slow streets and green lights wanting for traffic. Jason Burrell would like to see that change — he’d like to see more action. More energy.

Tonight will be the last of two public input meetings concerning the proposed Cullowhee Planning Area  development standards. Tonight’s meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. in the Hospitality Room of the Ramsey Center at Western Carolina University. 

Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient Dockie Brendle will have a bridge officially named in honor of him this month. The NCDOT Secretary Tony Tata will be in attendance next week as the department recognizes Brendall’s bridge, located off U.S. 74, exit 64.

Evergreen Packaging has been in talks with its employees since the spring, trying to hammer out a new contract. This month, the company reached a deal with members of the union.

Editor’s note: The Smoky Mountain News spent a day on the campaign trail with Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, as he tries to retain his seat in the N.C. General Assembly representing the seven western counties.

It’s almost dark and North Carolina Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, is sitting in the Ryan’s steakhouse in Sylva. It’s Thursday, another day on the campaign trail with an election only weeks away. 

Election season is winding down to the finish line and both candidates in the N.C. House’s 119th District race are eyeing Raleigh. Challenger Mike Clampitt and incumbent Rep. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville, have been here before. They went up against each other in 2012 and both are back for more. 

The campaign season — even these last frenzied weeks — suit Queen just fine. He loves the ballgames, homecomings and festivals. 

Jamie Kemper knew it’d happen. She just didn’t think it’d happen this quickly.

“We thought it’d be a few years,” Kemper said. 

Property Revaluations

The hurt is coming. All the candidates agree, it won’t be pretty. In 2016, Jackson County will preform a property revaluation, in which the values of properties on the tax role — currently listed with values tethered to the high times of the housing boom — will be squared up with the values actually reflected in the current real estate market. 

No one really knows how the Jackson County commissioner races are going to pan out. Incumbent Republican Commissioner Charles Elders has no idea. 

“It’s hard to say,” Elders said. “Straight party voting, that’s a thing of the past. They’re gonna study, they’re gonna look.”

Downtown Sylva property owners will still have to replace any plywood currently covering up windows, but they will be provided with more time to do so. 

In September, the Sylva Board of Commissioners considered a trio of ordinance amendments aimed at shoring up both aesthetics and safety in the downtown area. One of the amendments disallowed structures with exteriors of metal siding or concrete blocks, while a second targeted manufactured housing in the district. Those two passed.

Following multiple anti-fracking resolutions passed by local governments around the region, Jackson County commissioners have now taken an action of their own. While their resolution never specifically mentions “fracking” or “hydraulic fracturing,” the board — or at least three of its members — seemed satisfied that it afforded them protection against the natural gas exploration method green-lighted for North Carolina by state legislators this year.

The new Swain County library isn’t a reality yet — except in the minds of the true believers.

Last week, a group of Swain residents who are certain the journey to a new library is well underway gathered on a sprawling parcel resting off of Fontana Road.

N.C. Rep. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville, and Republican challenger Mike Clampitt are on a similar mission. Each is trying to assure voters they are nothing like the other guy.

Recently, the two candidates seeking the 119th District House seat faced off for a debate in Cullowhee hosted by Western Carolina University. The pair discussed education, healthcare and fracking. They got into immigration reform and term limits and more. And they disagreed at every turn. 

Cullowhee is the fastest growing area of Jackson County. The growth owes much to Western Carolina University and is evidenced in recent years by a surge in private student housing complexes and smattering of bars.

Without regulations in place, Cullowhee’s growth has taken place in a Wild West, cowboy environment. For more than a year, the Cullowhee Community Planning Advisory Committee has contemplated how to guide such growth.

The quiet, early morning streets of Dillsboro seemed still asleep as the town board ambled in. They arrived one by one, easing in with casual conversation about health and grandchildren and how delicious Town Clerk Debbie Coffey’s homemade cheese Danish tasted. 

But there was more on the table for discussion than bull and breakfast. Dillsboro’s leaders assembled for their specially called meeting to decide if the town should sell property recently handed over from Duke Energy.

“The county wants to make a river park with that property,” Dillsboro Mayor Mike Fitzgerald had explained the day before.

Over the summer, Duke turned over roughly 17 acres of property bordering the Tuckaseigee River near downtown Dillsboro. The property is located where the energy company previously operated a hydroelectric dam, and the handoff is tied to federally mandated relicensing requirements that require public utilities to give back to areas from which they profit. 

Jackson County has long eyed the riverfront property. There are plans calling for a riverside park already on the shelf. During re-licensing discussions in 2009 the county commissioned Equinox Design Inc. to prepare a conceptual design for a park on the north and south sides of the river.

With Duke’s handoff of the property to Dillsboro this summer, the time has come for Jackson to make its bid. 

“The mayor of Dillsboro contacted me in mid-September to advise that the town board had taken possession of the property and offered to sell the property to the county at market value,” Jackson County Manager Chuck Wooten said.

That’s a move the county had anticipated. Several months ago Jackson had the property appraised with just such an opportunity in mind.

On Sept. 15, commissioners took up the issue during a closed session. They approved a potential purchase price — the appraised value of $350,000 — and decided to make a formal offer. 

“I have a contract right here,” Fitzgerald told his aldermen during their special meeting. 

The mayor explained that, if the offer was accepted, there were no encumbrances on the funds. He laid out the county’s intentions, read a letter from Wooten — “obviously we view this property as a strategic piece of property for recreation purposes” — and called for a vote well before the cheese Danish was finished off. 

The whole thing took about five minutes. Alderman David Gates agreed the decision was a no-brainer.

“Well, yeah, because we can’t afford to keep it, we can’t afford to do anything with it,” he said.

The board adjourned and dove back into friendly conversation. They hung around a bit longer and laughed about what the money might be spent on. 

“Debbie’s going to get a new oven,” Fitzgerald joked following the board’s unanimous vote to accept the county’s $350,000 offer. 

“We’re gonna have a gourmet kitchen,” Coffey laughed. 

While both Jackson and Dillsboro have given nods of approval to the purchase, this is not quite a done deal yet. Commissioners will formally consider the matter during their Oct. 6 regular meeting; approval looks like a safe assumption. 

“They had authorized an offer in executive session and Dillsboro accepted the offer so it is a done deal,” Wooten explained. 

Once commissioners have given their formal approval, the county will develop a scope of work and then plans to reengage Equinox Design. The 2009 designs — which incorporate Duke’s dam into a river park — must be tweaked. Wooten expects the whole process to be moving forward by the end of October. 

This is all good news to Barry Kennan. The Jackson resident — and former World Freestyle Kayak Champion and member of the U.S. National Slalom team — has been pushing for a whitewater park in Dillsboro for a while. 

“Sounds like it’s going to happen,” Kennon said after the town accepted the county’s offer to purchase the Duke property for the purpose of a park. 

Kennon has requested repeatedly that Dillsboro consider putting in a whitewater park. He contends the stretch of river rifling through town is perfect for the venture, calling it “the textbook spot to put a whitewater park.”

“The gradient’s already there,” Kennon said. “It’s a tailor-made spot.”

Plus, the kayak champion said, Dillsboro is located in a prime area insofar as participants in paddlesports are concerned. 

“That’s basically like the paddling crossroads of the Southeast,” Kennon explained. “It’s right between Atlanta, Chattanooga, Knoxville and Asheville.”

The paddler points to parks in Colorado, where the concept of whitewater parks is nothing new.

“The Colorado parks, they’ve got so many of them,” Kennon said. “Like every little river town, they’ll have a park there.”

Those parks, he said, have long attracted not only paddlers but also people watching paddlers.

“These whitewater parks, they attract spectators. They’ll be like 10 spectators for every paddler in the water,” Kennon said. “There’s millions and millions of dollars being spent in Colorado at whitewater parks.”

Kennon won the World Freestyle Kayak competition in 2001 in Spain. Each year the event is held in a different location. Last year, it was held on Swain County’s Nantahala River. 

Kennon entertains notions of the event returning to the region again someday. This time to Jackson County.

“We could have that event in Dillsboro,” the paddler said. 

Dillsboro officials would like nothing more than to see visitors flock to the river. For years, the town benefited daily from visitors transported to its doorstep by the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad, which now offers only limited trips to Dillsboro. Now, the quiet and quaint town boasts a burgeoning art community, but it could still use that extra something to really kick things into gear again. 

Following the Friday morning vote over cheese Danish, Alderman Gates explained why he felt the sale worked for the town. Besides the money in the bank, he’s hoping the river park benefits Dillsboro exponentially. 

“More tourism, bottom line,” Gates said, “for the county and for Dillsboro.”

Jackson finally gets its park 

For years, Jackson County fought the removal of Duke Energy’s dam on the Tuckasegee River in Dillsboro. County officials argued that the dam had recreational benefits, historical meaning and green energy potential.

In 2009, as part of its effort to quash the removal of the dam, the county argued in court that the structure should be left in place and incorporated into a river park it had planned. Duke eventually won its fight with the county, dismantling the dam in 2010. 

After a few years of environmental restoration, the power company handed off about 17 acres of riverfront property to the town of Dillsboro this summer as part of its federally mandated relicensing requirements. The town has chosen to sell the property to Jackson County, which still has intentions to place a park at the site, only without the dam.

The planned Dillsboro riverpark — or Dillsboro Heritage Park, as it was dubbed in 2009 — will feature river access points, boat ramps, walking paths and nature trails. It will have parking lots and playgrounds, pavilions and picnic tables. 

The county’s plans call for a North River Park on one side of the river, with a South River Park on the other side. Since the time that the county initially had designs drawn up, Duke Energy has removed its dam and also built a river access point on the north side of the property. Those old plans will need to be dusted off and tweaked.

“I think the general concept will be the same,” said Jackson County Manager Chuck Wooten.

Officials have set aside $100,000 — a portion of the amount. Duke paid Jackson in connection with its removal of the dam — to pay for the project.

Wooten said the county intends to reengage the plan’s author, Equinox Design, to update the plans.

“I think that they are ready to start as soon as we give them the go ahead,” said Wooten. 

County commissioners are expected to give their formal approval to the sale during their Oct. 6 meeting. By the end of the month, they may be ready to consider a possible scope of work for Equinox.

With Election Day nearing, Odel Chastain seemed pretty relaxed. 

“I’m sitting on my porch with my feet thrown up, watching the deer,” Chastain said. 

Come November, voters will be selecting candidates to fill all four seats on the Swain County Board of Commissioners. They will choose from a slate of six candidates — four Democrats and two Republicans. 

Late last month, Superior Court Judge Bradley Letts wrote a letter. “He kind of drew a line in the sand,” said Jackson County Manager Chuck Wooten.