Becky Johnson
Jackson County commissioners whittled down three construction projects on their wish list to two last week.
A procession of impassioned speakers pleaded with Jackson County commissioners to slow the rapid pace of development on mountainsides during a public hearing Monday (June 11).
A non-profit that helps abused women escape domestic violence could be facing a budget cut by Jackson County commissioners this year.
A tight race could be in store for the two candidates vying for principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians between now and the final election in September.
A dam broke on an irrigation pond at Balsam Mountain Preserve in Jackson County two weeks ago unleashing hundreds of tons of mud downstream.
As Chuck Bennett rang up a sale at his electrical supply store in Cashiers, he showed no fear of the business slowdown some predict as fallout from a slate of development regulations coming down the pipe in Jackson County.
When Howard Taylor heard what workers at Blue Ridge Paper Products were being offered as part of a pending buyout of the mill in April, he realized his work was cut out for him.
A recurring debate between camps in the Chattooga River controversy is how many paddlers would actually come to the river.
The paddling community claims it won’t be very many, nor very often. They say they need at least two days of heavy rains to make paddling feasible — a condition that occurs only rarely, they said.
A long overdue $4 million payment may finally make its way to Swain County after languishing for the past year in the budget dungeons of the National Park Service.
The payment is part of a larger $52 million cash settlement the federal government pledged to pay Swain County — a deal intended to finally compensate the county for a road that was flooded when Fontana Lake was built in the 1940s.
Susan Gathers was kicked back in the student union one afternoon, her thumbs poised over her smart phone, simultaneously bantering with friends while texting — sometimes even texting the same person she was talking to.
This impressive skill to seamlessly dialogue in multiple mediums at once is nothing new for “Generation Next-ers” like Gathers. But unlike the typical truncated words and vowel-less abbreviations that permeate normal text-speak, her screen was filled with Cherokee syllables as she pushed send.
Three men, all with impressive law enforcement backgrounds, are vying to be Haywood County’s next sheriff.
The current Sheriff, Bobby Suttles, is retiring next month, but with two years to go until the next sheriff election, a replacement must be named in the meantime. Since Suttles is a Democrat, leaders in the Haywood County Democratic Party will pick his successor.
Jackson County’s planning board is knee-deep in a page-by-page rewrite of the county’s steep slope rules — a controversial process that seems destined to rekindle past disputes over protecting the mountainsides versus stymieing development.
A sweeping slate of mountain building regulations passed by Jackson County commissioners nearly six years ago were both commended and condemned as some of the most restrictive in the state. They took aim at unsafe building practices on steep slopes, but also reined in over-zealous development some feared would mar the mountainsides.
SEE ALSO: Changing the rules: Jackson re-writing development standards amid new economic realities
By Becky Johnson & Andrew Kasper • Staff Writers
For two years now, Jackson County’s planning board has systematically combed over and rewritten some of its development rules once hailed as the most protective — yet restrictive — in the state.
Aimed at reining in the previously unbridled and laissez-fare construction industry, the regulations put on the books six years ago ushered in a new era of oversight and standards.
Tourism numbers are looking good for Haywood County so far this year, and tourism leaders are keeping their fingers crossed that a cold winter will drive visitors to Cataloochee’s slopes.
Haywood County Sheriff Bobby Suttles announced last week he will retire in February, stepping down early despite another two years to go until his term is technically up.
The task of finding a new top lawman in Haywood County to replace retiring Sheriff Bobby Suttles will begin in early January and likely be decided by March.
More doom and gloom or a light at the end of the tunnel?
For five years, the nation has waited eagerly for economic forecasters to tell us what we want to hear — that home sales are rebounding, wages are finally rising, and job growth at long last is outpacing layoffs. Will 2013 bring those things at last?
RELATED:
• Haywood County economy outpaces its peers
• College kids gum up Jackson County’s economic stats
Two more lakes in the region are now under a fish consumption advisory due to mercury contamination.
Unsafe levels of mercury have been detected in fish species in Nantahala Lake in Macon County and Lake Chatuge in Clay County, leading to a consumption advisory on certain species.
Some downtown merchants in Franklin have clashed with town leaders in recent weeks over a perceived lack of support for new ideas and initiatives to boost commerce.
A side drama playing out in the downtown Franklin fracas involves an unusual public display of the tension that often exists between newspapers and the government leaders they cover.
Both sides in a downtown Franklin dispute have pledged to work together after publicly locking horns in recent weeks.
“It seems there were a lot of issues because people were bumping in the dark. Both sides really need to reach out to each other on this,” said Franklin Town Manager Sam Greenwood.
SEE ALSO:
• Franklin merchants run afoul of festival planning protocols
• On the job with Franklin’s Main Street director
• Newspaper says advertising was pulled after critical news coverage
Some schools are thinking twice about the long standing practice of passing out fast-food coupons to children as rewards.
She is every Main Street merchants’ dream.
With a penchant for the eclectic and a passion for supporting independent businesses, Carolyn Phinizy worked downtown Waynesville’s shopping district during the post-Thanksgiving spending days like it was her civic duty, not calling it quits until the trunk of her SUV wouldn’t fit another parcel.
Try scaring up a parking space, hunting down an empty bench or pushing a double-stroller along the crowded sidewalks on peak days, and the popularity of downtown Waynesville’s quaint, tree-lined shopping district is obvious.
But for merchants, getting those browsers off the sidewalks and into their shops is another job altogether.
Three longtime doctors with Sylva Pediatrics will soon come under the wing of Mission Hospital in Asheville.
The physicians will keep practicing out of their same offices in Sylva and Bryson City, and keep serving the same local patients they always have. But come January they will be known as Mission Children’s Sylva and Mission Children’s Bryson City.
A new CEO who will take over MedWest-Haywood in December will face the parallel challenges of improving the hospital’s bottom line and capturing patients who travel to Asheville for health care.
Janie Sinacore-Jaberg will become the new CEO of MedWest-Haywood in December.
She is currently the Chief Operating Officer of a 320-bed system in Muskogee, Okla. She has served as the COO and CEO of several hospitals in Georgia, South Carolina and Ohio.
Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, pulled out a surprisingly strong win over his Democratic challenger John Snow in what was supposed to be razor thin race.
Swain County voters are being asked this election whether they want a quarter-cent sales tax increase to help pay for school construction.
The quarter-cent sales tax would bring in roughly $250,000 a year and would pay for a $2 million expansion of East Elementary. The additional classrooms would let the school do away with “dilapidated” modular units that currently serve as classrooms to handle overcrowding, said County Manager Kevin King.
A festering disagreement over how to overhaul Jackson County’s tourism agency is coming to an end, but some lodging owners who have resisted the changes aren’t happy about it.
Western North Carolina found itself in an unflattering national media spotlight a year ago when a reporter from The New Yorker picked the state Senate race between Jim Davis and John Snow to illustrate a masterful takeover of national politics by conservative special interest groups.
John Snow dreads his daily trip to the post office these days. It’s just two blocks from his home outside Murphy, but the whole way there he wonders what will be waiting for him this time.
Once inside, he heads for the trash can and peers inside. And more often than not, he finds his own face staring back, perhaps flanked by a cartoonish cutout of Obama’s head, or alongside a drowning pink piggy bank, or — the worst yet — as an accompaniment to the menacing face of a child rapist behind prison bars.
Whether a grassroots movement to spark planning in Cullowhee dies or moves forward will rests with the next Jackson County board of commissioners.
A group of Cullowhee residents have called for development guidelines. Without standards, Cullowhee is vulnerable to unattractive development according to proponents. But, they need the county’s blessing to put them in place.
Despite having three Macon County commissioner seats on the ballot this fall, only one has any competition.
In the conservative leaning county, two sitting Republican commissioners will stroll back on the board after no Democratic candidates stepped up to run against them. While Commissioners Jim Tate and Kevin Corbin had to fend off challenges from other Republicans in the May primary, both won and are now enjoying a leisurely campaign season given the lack of Democratic opposition.
A race for Jackson County commissioners this fall has come down to a contest of the Joneses.
The similar names on the ballot — Mark Jones versus Marty Jones — will no doubt keep voters on their toes when they walk into the polling booth. The views of the two candidates, however, are anything but identical.
The three MedWest hospitals in Haywood, Jackson and Swain counties laid off 82 employees this week to cope with shrinking revenue and declining patient volume.
The layoffs are part of a larger workforce reduction in recent months. Another 79 positions at MedWest hospitals have been eliminated through attrition.
The hilltop above Sylva that’s home to the iconic historic courthouse is back on as a potential site for a new Jackson County library.
The location has been in the running on and off over the past several years during a heated community debate over where to build a new library. Despite numerous fans, the historic courthouse hilltop has repeatedly been dismissed as unfeasible and impracticable, largely due to space constraints and the difficulty of blending a new building with the old.
Jackson County commissioners are poised to make numerous changes to a slate of proposed development regulations billed as the most stringent in Western North Carolina and possibly the state.
Commissioners intend to pass the regulations by the end of July. While developers and those in the real estate industry have criticized the regulations as stifling, the public at large seems to welcome the regulations as a needed check on rampant mountainside development.
Mill workers at Blue Ridge Paper Products are optimistic about their future under a new owner.
The buyer, a billionaire from New Zealand named Graeme Hart, has been gobbling up market share in the milk and juice carton industry over the past 18 months. His company, the Rank Group, has grown to the world’s second-largest maker of cardboard drink cartons. Hart has spent more than $5 billion on his forays.
Just when the fate of the Road to Nowhere through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park seemed sealed, road supporters are rallying their troops for one final hurrah.
Balsam Mountain Preserve, a 4,500-acre development in Jackson County, has been fined $300,000 for ongoing sediment and erosion control violations by the county.
The fine comes on the heels of a dam break that sent hundreds of tons of mud downstream, clogging creeks with a miles-long mudflow and wiping out fish. Surprisingly, the fines have nothing to do with the dam break. Instead, they are a result of erosion from golf course construction.
Smaller, independent hospitals across the nation have increasingly sought partnerships with larger hospitals in recent years, a trend largely driven by financial challenges.
For Highlands-Cashiers Hospitals, the latest hospital in the region to jump on board with Mission Hospital in Asheville, cost savings were certainly a large motivator, although not the only one. While Highlands-Cashiers Hospital loses money on operations every year, that doesn’t mean it is in the red.
Highlands-Cashiers Hospital will soon join the growing number of small hospitals in Western North Carolina to come under the management of Mission Hospital in Asheville.
A tourism task force in Jackson County has spent several months formulating a major overhaul of the county’s tourism agency, but the recommendations seem to be dead-on-arrival now that they’ve landed at the county commissioners’ doorstep.
The hospitals in Jackson and Swain counties formally declared last week that they want out of the partnership forged nearly three years ago with Haywood’s hospital — however, it’s not at all clear whether the leaders of Haywood Regional Medical Center will agree to let them leave.
At first blush, an obscure change to state law stipulating how many days students have to go to school each year seems like semantics.
But in fact, it could give local school districts flexibility to cut the number of school days in a year and instead go for longer hours — a schedule that could help cash-strapped school systems save money.
State legislators have once again tinkered with school calendars, reining in when early school districts — even those prone to excessive snow days — can start back in August.
State law mandates that school can’t start back sooner than the last week in August. However, counties with lots of missed school due to snow have been exempt in the past.
Jackson County commissioners will appoint a task force soon to study whether — and if so where — the county should open its own liquor stores.
When voters overwhelmingly approved a countywide alcohol measure in May, it opened the door for the possibility of county-run liquor stores. Currently, the only liquor store in Jackson County is run by the town of Sylva.
The fate of state-subsidized preschool for at-risk, low-income 4-year-olds rests in the hands of the next General Assembly. The state currently does not provide enough funding to serve the estimated 67,000 children who meet the definition of at-risk.
This year, a 20 percent budget cut to NC Pre-K (formerly known as More at Four) further reduced capacity of the program — which currently serves only 26,000 children — and has lengthened waiting lists.
Armed with a stack of folded construction paper, Charlotte Rogers ushered a four-year-old child to sit down at a pint-sized writing desk, take up a pencil and scratch out the words “I love you” in crooked letters on the inside.
