After a career spanning more than 14 years as the executive director of Haywood County’s Economic Development Council, Mark Clasby told EDC board members Nov. 2 that this year would be his last.

The economies of Haywood and Buncombe counties are and have been intricately linked for some time now, but a forthcoming agreement between them will soon formalize an economic development partnership designed to move both counties forward in a more efficient, more effective manner.

Earlier this year, a series of stories in The Smoky Mountain News focusing on Haywood County’s economy explored its various economic sectors, the businesses that comprise them, the organizations that aid them and the ultimate financial impact of them.

After realizing small but consistent gains in local business development over the past few years, the town of Waynesville has recently undertaken several initiatives designed to strengthen the economic vitality of the town while also guiding that development in a direction acceptable to the community as a whole.

The Haywood County Tourism Development Authority is considering a number of major changes to increase its efficiency in collecting and allocating tourism revenue dollars.

Long before the Oct. 3, 1880, arrival of the first scheduled train in Asheville, the American railroad has been romanticized in both story and song, on stage and on screen.

Trains took us to our baby, or away from our baby. Trains took us off to war, or home to peace. Trains opened vast swaths of the American West to settlement, bringing with them jobs, growth, trade and prosperity while quietly gliding over miles upon miles of cold steel rail.

One needn’t look further than industries like Sylva’s Jackson Paper, Canton’s Evergreen Packaging and Waynesville’s Giles Chemical for evidence of how rail access benefits the economy in small Western North Carolina towns.

Like bubbles bobbing atop bathwater, the sectors of Haywood County’s economy are separate but often attached to each other in ways not always readily seen. Although all the bubbles ebb and swell independently of each other, they also rise and fall with the level of bathwater in the tub.

Since late April, The Smoky Mountain News series on economic development has focused on the financial health of Haywood County, the mechanisms by which state, local and national governments encourage economic development and the various sectors that make up the county’s economy.

A robust and vigorous health care sector is the cornerstone of any community; convenient access to health care facilities is a make-or-break issue for many, including the elderly, the disabled or even young families expecting children.