Holly Kays
For some people, spending free time cross-referencing town fee schedules would be as boring as watching paint dry. But for Tyler Watras, a sign painter by trade, watching paint dry isn’t so bad, and delving into the world of sign permit fees is more likely to induce passion than yawns.
Principal Chief Patrick Lambert bore the look of a man on a mission when he presented Tribal Council with a first look at results of an ongoing forensic audit on Tuesday. The results he held in hand may have been only preliminary, he told council, but they were disturbing enough that he’s already encouraged the FBI to start investigating.
Google the name of almost any trailhead in Western North Carolina, and you’re likely to come up with pages of links to a plethora of online mentions and trail descriptions aimed at helping readers do just the hike you’re looking for.
When Earth Day rolls around this year, students at Western Carolina University will be able to celebrate with a bit of high-class hammocking, with the date marking completion of what’s been dubbed the Electron Garden on the Green — believed to be the nation’s first combination solar-generating facility and hammock hanging lounge on a college campus.
“We’re excited about it, and I think the students are pretty excited as well,” said Lauren Bishop, sustainability officer for WCU.
The future of the old furniture factory in Whittier has been through more than its share of twists and turns over the past year, but Jackson County now has an offer on the table from a group of farmers who want to turn it into a packing and agricultural resource facility.
While the Waynesville dog park’s temporary closure this week might have canines a little bit antsy, dog owners are rejoicing over the reason — a drainage project expected to spell an end to the post-rain sludge that’s been a reality for the well-used park.
Nearly a year after Jackson County passed zoning standards for Cullowhee, the ordinance is set to get ground-tested with the creation of the Cullowhee Planning Advisory Committee.
Leaking roofs, failing heating systems and broken pipes in Jackson County Schools will get some much-needed attention after commissioners voted unanimously to take the first steps toward borrowing as much as $10 million to fix them.
After being ousted from their jobs when the September elections brought a new Tribal Council and executive administration, the three people who had composed the Tribal Gaming Commission came before council last week hoping to convince councilmembers to give them their jobs back.
Take a drive around the mountain roads of Western North Carolina and it probably won’t be long before a tight curve spits you out alongside a yard decorated with a few rusty old vehicles here, some extraneous car parts there and a peppering of discarded tools for good measure.
When the state opened the doors for hydraulic fracturing — called “fracking” — in 2014, a flood of public opinion from the mountains told Raleigh that drilling would not be welcome in the western part of the state.
“So, are you here as a reporter or as a biker?” asked one of the 100-plus shorts-wearing, bike-bearing people converged on Tsali Trailhead last Friday.
The parking lot at Tsali Recreation Area was full of bikes Friday evening — more than 100 of them, strapped to the backs of sedans and SUVs, tied into beds of pickup trucks, license plates running the gamut from Florida to Virginia to Mississippi. Gears were spun, wheelies popped, hoorahs yelled as mountain bikes shot down the trail or gathered in a shiny metal line to await the start of the group ride.
SEE ALSO: Fake it till you make it
“I’m kinda excited,” said Rob Burgess, prepping his bike in the parking lot. “Tsali is one of the epic trails.”
It’s been a while since the old Mountain Credit Union building in Cherokee saw foot traffic from people looking to deposit checks or get financial advice, but its doors still swing open and closed with regularity — though for a much different purpose.
In the quest to replace the football field at Smoky Mountain High School in Sylva with artificial turf, Jackson County Schools is going public in the search for funds to finance its field of dreams.
When the bell rang for the end of school Friday afternoon, Jeff Vamvakias’ room at Cullowhee Valley Elementary emptied a lot less completely than is typical for a middle school on the edge of a weekend. Seven students — six of them eighth-graders, one sixth-grader — hung around after buses left, but they weren’t there for detention or make-up work or mandated study time.
They were there to talk about worms. Their worms.
By the time polls closed March 15, Kevin Corbin’s soles were feeling the pain from 12 hours of standing on pavement outside polling places in Robbinsville, Murphy and Hayesville.
After taking home 59 percent of the vote in last week’s election, Mike Clampitt, R-Bryson City, is looking toward a November contest against incumbent Rep. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville, for the N.C. House District 119 seat.
Sylva’s town leaders spent a sunny Saturday indoors armed with pen, paper and heads full of ideas for bringing the small town toward a bright future. And while they may not have left the building with a perfect road map, the four-hour brainstorming session ended with some solid ideas for how to prepare Sylva for success.
Change is likely coming to the ordinance outlining preference rules for tribally owned businesses. The rules come into play when bidding contracts for everything from construction projects to office supplies.
There’s another kink in the knot surrounding the ill-fated R-5000 road project connecting N.C. 107 and N.C. 116 in Jackson County — a legal battle raging between DeVere Construction, the company originally hired to build the road, and its bonding company Liberty Mutual.
The mood was jovial as Western Carolina University’s Faculty Senate waited over cookies and coffee for their hour with Margaret Spellings to begin. Small talk and light jokes made the minutes before her arrival feel less gravity-laden than they really were.
The little storefront that serves as home base for Todd McDougall’s chiropractic office looks just about how you’d expect such an office to look — reception desk at the front, neutral walls and an exam room with padded table inside. But the smattering of framed mountain snowscapes on the wall of that exam room give a clue as to what “normal” looked like for McDougall before setting up shop in Waynesville.
“I would look back after those years, and I had climbed over 60 mountains over 20,000 feet,” McDougall said. “That was six times a year I was at 20,000 feet, and that’s kind of a lot.”
The animal shelter and health department are in, and the swimming pool and Green Energy Park expansion are out, Jackson County commissioners decided in a wide-ranging discussion of capital improvement priorities recently.
In a tiny cabin on a sliver of property adjacent to the Jackson County Historic Courthouse, Sylva author John Parris spent years putting pen to paper, writing the newspaper columns and books celebrating life in the mountains that would ensure his long-lasting legacy in the hearts of Jackson County’s people.
When someone shows up to a medical clinic, sick and suffering, the hardest words to say can be, “Sorry, but you’ll have to wait three months for an appointment.”
Sales tax in Jackson County could rise to 7 percent if voters approve a referendum vote that would add a quarter cent to the existing sales tax to help get the county’s K-12 and community college facilities back in shape.
It’s been two months since Jackson County Manager Chuck Wooten announced his impending retirement, and county commissioners are beginning the search for their perfect match to take over the reins.
Bright sunshine? Sixty-degree weather? In February?
The March ballot might feel a bit like déjà vu for Republican voters in N.C. House District 119, as Aaron Littlefield and Mike Clampitt once again face off for the chance to run against incumbent Rep. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville, in November.
Rep. Roger West’s, R-Marble, announcement that he wouldn’t be running for re-election left a void in N.C. House District 120, and two Republicans are vying to fill it.
Jackson County Commissioners will vote this week on whether to approve a referendum vote for a quarter-cent sales tax increase to appear on the June 7 ballot for the U.S. House of Representatives primary.
If discussions between Nantahala Outdoor Center and Jackson County continue to move forward, the outdoor recreation giant could start work this year on an adventure park and outfitter store in the tiny town of Dillsboro.
“This is the ugliest fly I have,” says Mike Kesselring, pulling a battered-looking brown-bodied, black-feathered fly from a box marked “18. Antiques.”
The box is just one of the many filling the back of Kesselring’s red SUV, the fly just one the roughly 9,000 in his expansive collection. The flies run the gamut from the long, flowing streamers designed to resemble flashy-colored minnows to tiny but intricate creations mimicking the river’s smallest insect nymphs. Nearly all are prettier, more pristine than the 20-year-old thing Kesselring, 64, now holds up to the sunlight.
Phones in Jackson County’s planning department have been buzzing lately with people interested in developing property in Cullowhee, and that news has spurred county commissioners to work toward getting a planning council in place to handle requests that might come their way.
Work will begin on establishing a shelter for Cherokee’s homeless following passage of a resolution Principal Chief Patrick Lambert introduced this month.
A plan to replace the football field at Smoky Mountain High School with artificial turf is likely to move ahead following an engineer’s finding that the work could be done well within Jackson County Public School’s $715,000 cap for the project.
Sylva is going to hit the big screen next year, made over as the fictional town of Ebbing, Missouri, and home to a character portrayed by Oscar-winning actress Francis McDormand.
Running through the hearts of Dillsboro and Sylva on its tumble down from Balsam, Scotts Creek has star potential. It could be a centerpiece of both downtowns — a magnet for anglers, kayakers and kids looking for a place to splash around.
After three elk were shot on the Ross dairy farm in Jonathan Creek for eating winter wheat, a follow-up visit from wildlife officials revealed the remains of a fourth elk as well.
Elk hunting could be on the way to becoming legal in North Carolina following the N.C. Wildlife Resource’s Commission unanimous vote in favor of a rule change last week, though any actual season on elk is likely still a good ways in the future.
Mark Rogers sticks his hand through the cold air outside Bethel Grocery into the even more frigid interior of the standalone freezer settled beside the building along U.S. 276 in Haywood County. There’s a dead coyote inside, folded body hard and rigid through a combination of cold and rigor mortis. Rogers pulls it out into the sunlight, where bright rays bounce shine off its array of red, gray and white hairs.
It’s been 30 years since Raymond Bunn saw his first coyote, and that moment — Clay County, 1986 — is not one he’s likely to forget.
“I remember well seeing it,” said Bunn, manager at Shed’s Hunting Supply in Sylva. “When I first seen it, I thought it was a German shepherd dog or something like that, but it was a coyote.”
When the snow starts falling and Western North Carolina’s main streets, schools and businesses go to sleep in wait for warmer weather, there’s a select group of mountain residents who see the blanketed roads as an invitation rather than as an inhibition.
They’re the cross-country skiers of Western North Carolina, and they’re not afraid of the cold.
Since launching the U.S. Motto Action Committee, Rick Lanier has gotten his pitch to government leaders pretty well dialed in. After the group won a lawsuit in 2005 challenging Davidson County’s display of the national motto on its county building, Lanier’s helped convince 67 North Carolina counties and municipalities to display the words “In God We Trust” on their buildings.
A three-way finger-pointing contest over cracks in Southwestern Community College’s biggest building — and their relation to construction work on the R-5000 connector road project — could result in a lawsuit if the parties involved aren’t able to decide who should pay to fix it.
A $15,000 contribution from Jackson County Commissioners will ensure that housing for the county’s homeless continues through the winter.
As national champion Karen Tripp likes to say, cyclo-cross is a sport that you win by seconds. And that’s just how the Sylva resident conquered nationals in Asheville this year. By seconds — 34 of them.
“I think my mind and my focus was there,” Tripp said. “They all have to come together just right, because not every race is like that.”
Every month, the Jackson County Tourism Development Authority shells out $2,650 to keep its website updated, get it to show up prominently in search results and analyze digital traffic.
What’s the best way to spend $55 million? As far as the leadership at Southwestern Community College is concerned, the answer is simple — build, build, build until the lengthy checklist returned from its recently completed master plan is all done.
