Haywood Commissioners press on against misinformation
Haywood County Commission. File photo
Two weeks after an unusual meeting where Commissioner Terry Ramey was told to resign over lies he helped spread about the post-Helene housing situation in Haywood County, the other four commissioners made clear they weren’t in the mood for any more shenanigans — removing one woman from the meeting, refuting more lies and even using a little bit of poetry from a cherished Western North Carolina scribe to keep things on track.
Ramey, who hadn’t heeded Rep. Mark Pless’ Dec. 2 call to “serve with them or step down,” was mostly silent during the meeting, but Chairman Kevin Ensley seemed intently focused on maintaining the dignity of the proceedings after weeks of personal threats that emerged when Ramey appeared in a YouTube video by an out-of-state grifter who encouraged Ramey to force a commission vote overriding state building codes.
Only the state could relax the codes, which it did when the sham Helene relief bill became law on Dec. 11, but on Dec. 2, more than a dozen people who spoke during a heated public comment session — most not from Haywood County, or anywhere near it — presented even more lies suggesting commissioners could indeed act as they wished.
As the public comment session began on Dec. 11, the first speaker refused to provide her name and was asked to sit down.
“We’re very transparent at this board, and we expect the folks that come to speak to us to do the same, so if you don’t want to be transparent, we don’t want to hear what you got to say,” said Vice Chairman Brandon Rogers.
After several more refusals to identify herself, Ensley waved over two sheriff’s deputies. Eventually, the woman was escorted out without further incident. Her expulsion from the meeting is believed to be the first in a decade, if not more.
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Later, Chief Deputy Matthew Trantham presented an update on allegations raised during the previous meeting, namely, that people were living in tents and weren’t getting help. Trantham said there were “very few” reports of such situations over the past two weeks, but his department investigated them anyway.
“We’ve checked those. The sheriff checked one of those himself. All of those have been either nonexistent when we get there or they were folks that were homeless prior to the flood, had nothing to do with the flood and didn’t want anything to do with us,” he said.
“So you haven’t found anybody living in a tent that didn’t want to be there?” Ensley asked, receiving an affirmative response from Trantham.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Ensley said. “Because we take care of our people here whether people want to believe it or not. We do.”
Ensley went on to describe a video he’d heard about allegedly showing flood victims in tents; however, those people were not flood victims and weren’t even located in an area that flooded. Ensley implored Trantham to continue to be on the lookout for scams.
“People not from here, they see things that are made up and not true and then it gets them to give money and then that money goes into somebody’s pocket, and it doesn’t help any flood victims,” Ensley said. “Nothing makes me madder than that … that’s not ‘misinformation,’ it’s really just lies is what it is and they keep perpetuating it and it’s unfortunate.”
Later in the meeting, commissioners considered a request to erect a privately funded memorial to one of Canton’s favorite sons, legendary writer Fred Chappell, at the Canton branch of the Haywood County library. Chappell passed away at the beginning of 2024. Commissioner Tommy Long took the opportunity to read into the record one of Chappell’s poems, which he said resonated with him after the recent loss of his father.
“We’ve had some unusual meetings here recently, kind of some jaw-droppers, so I guess this is a little unusual as well,” Long said, before reading Chappell’s “Time when,” which explores grief and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of loss — not specifically loss incurred during Helene, but also perhaps the loss of a civilized, educated populace working in good faith to solve society’s biggest problems together.
“The woman pauses her needle and stares before her. Silently she comes to know a man she loved in sudden years gone by has died. From him she learned the many thousand ways the world is not. Strange, how the power of memory increases when objects of its longing are taken away. Strange, that the woman has no power to weep. For half an hour she sits alone, examining the shapeless silence with its dark message, and then she puts her sewing by and rises to address new ceremonies of her altered life, to bear her sorrow gracefully, as a tree bears snow.”
