When America tunes in to Ken Burns’ long-awaited documentary on the national parks next week, the hard-fought battle to save the Great Smoky Mountains from unrelenting timber barrons will play a major role in the epic series.

The story of the Smokies will unfold around two characters little-known outside the immediate region — yet whose passion for saving the Smokies stands in for the ideological struggle that played out across the country. That struggle ultimately led to a national park system Burns calls “America’s Best Idea.”

The two characters, Horace Kephart and George Masa, are certainly not the only ones who deserve credit for the park’s creation. But they are indeed the most compelling, said George Ellison, a naturalist and historian in Bryson City who consulted on the Smokies segment of the documentary. Ellison isn’t surprised by the filmmakers’ choice.

“It gave them a story line that was different. It gave them a hook they couldn’t resist,” Ellison said. “You could say they focus too much on Kephart and Masa, but it is effective. They did a good, honest job with it.”

Ellison was mailed an advance copy of the Smokies segment of the documentary earlier this summer.

Kephart, a reclusive writer, and Masa, a Japanese immigrant, met through their shared love of long sojourns through the high peaks of the Smokies. The two were kindred spirits who found solace, strength and inspiration in the mountains of their adopted home. They grieved together over the demise of the mountains at the hands of giant timber companies and became ringleaders in the campaign to protect the last stands of virgin forest in the Smoky Mountains.

“The Kephart-Masa story captivated them,” Ellison said.

They were exactly the type of characters the filmmakers were looking for, according to Susan Shumaker, a research who does legwork for documentaries by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan. Shumaker was dispatched to the Smokies by Duncan, the writer and co-producer behind the series.

When embarking on the project, Duncan knew the key to a successful documentary was to find compelling characters that shaped the national parks’ creation.

“It is really a human story,” Shumaker said. “Like anything in our history, it comes down to motivated people who are moving things forward. As humans, that interests us. We are drawn in to the stories.”

Masa and Kephart fit the bill perfectly.

“They cared so much about these places they put their lives on the line to protect them,” Shumaker said.

When Shumaker began her research assignment four years ago, Duncan vaguely knew about Kephart — essentially that he was an eccentric writer who immersed himself in the backwoods culture and wildness of the Smokies. They had no idea how rich the story line would ultimately be.

“Kephart emerged as this poetic voice in defense of the mountains and woods,” Shumaker said.

Masa, however, was completely unknown to the filmmakers. Masa, often referred to as the Ansel Adams of the Smokies, helped convince the nation of the need to protect the mountains through his stunning photographs. He was largely forgotten by history until a few years ago when an Asheville filmmaker Paul Bonesteel, made a feature length documentary about him. It aired statewide on public television, re-energizing an interest in Masa’s amazing body of photographic work. Masa has since been the subject of numerous exhibits and has been featured extensively in regional newspapers and magazines, especially during this year’s 75th anniversary of the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

“The thing that I really liked about Masa particularly is you have this guy who is not even from this country but cares enough about it he wants to save it for many generations,” Shumaker said. “That underlines that the parks were created by all people and for all people, regardless of your ethnic or religious background or gender.”

Bonesteel provided the filmmakers extensive research on Masa and helped develop the storyline, and even served as a consultant by viewing an early rough cut of the segment.

“Ken and Dayton are both very serious about getting the history told correctly, so we bring in many historians and other people to view segments and give feedback, often three or four or five times during the process,” Shumaker said.

It’s quite possible that thanks to Bonesteel and Ellison — who were among the first to be contacted by Shumaker in her research for the documentary — the filmmakers were steered to the Kephart-Masa storyline.

One upside of the focus is that both men are from North Carolina, giving the Smokies’ segment in the epic series a decidedly North Carolina bent. Although three-fifths of the national park lies in North Carolina, park operations and headquarters are based in Tennessee, which has been successful in claiming the image of the Smokies as its own.

Proper due in the well-watched Ken Burns’ series could help rectify the false national perception that that the park lies almost wholly in Tennessee.

“The depiction of the park is normally a Tennessee story. This time it is more North Carolina,” Ellison said.

In addition to Bonesteel and Ellison, Shumaker also spent a day interviewing Duane Oliver, a former resident of the North Shore area in Swain County who has written numerous historical accounts of life there. When Shumaker traveled here, she brought a portable scanner and camped out in the basement archives at Smokies’ headquarters and pored over historical collections at Western Carolina University. George Frizzell, the head of special collections at WCU’s Hunter Library, provided key assistance in the research.

Duncan often does his own research, but this project was so big he needed help, Shumaker said.

When the series airs next week, Ellison will be proud to say he had played a small part of shaping the story line for the Smokies, even if that first phone call was all the way back in 2005.

“What surprised me was I asked when it was going to come out and he said 2009,” Ellison said.

That kind of lead time is needed to pull off the caliber of film people now expect from Burns. In fact, Shumaker can name the next several topics Burns is tackling, including Prohibition, the Roosevelts and the Dust Bowl.

The recession has finally caught up with Swain County.

While other counties began bracing for declining revenues in late 2008, Swain County has only just begun to tackle a $1 million shortfall eating its way through the county budget. Swain County is working to plug the hole, but failure to take action sooner has caused the county’s fund balance to dip below the state’s benchmark for sound fiscal footing.

The Local Government Commission recommends counties maintain a cushion of 8 percent of their annual budget — essentially one month’s operating expenses to guard against a cash flow crisis. Swain County has dipped to less than 7 percent, however, according to preliminary audit figures for the 2008-2009 fiscal year ending June 30.

This will trigger budget oversight by the N.C. Department of Revenue until the situation is corrected.

County Manager Kevin King said the county has already figured out how to make up the shortfall and implemented a plan.

“In my opinion, there is not going to be any problem in turning this thing around,” King said. “It is not as dire as everybody is painting.”

King said he wasn’t oblivious to the mounting shortfall and has known since the spring that the county would dip below the 8 percent benchmark.

“We looked at doing furloughs in February and decided not to,” King said. “At that time the economy was getting ready to turn around, or so they said.”

Commissioners were reluctant to cut pay for county employees, who haven’t seen a raise in three years, he said.

“We just didn’t feel like we wanted to do a furlough to employees. They wanted to wait it out and see what would actually happen,” King said.

King emphasized that the county is not facing a deficit. It is merely a matter of its savings account being too low.

“It means you have less cash flow,” King said.

Root cause

King points to several factors playing into the shortfall, blaming the sheriff’s office and jail as the primary culprits (see related article).

Property tax collections were down by about $195,000 over last year, as the recession made it more difficult for residents to pay their tax bills.

Another cause of the shortfall is a convoluted state formula that swapped out the county’s Medicaid costs for sales tax revenue. The state agreed two years ago to take the burden of Medicaid off the county, but along with it, the state would keep some of the sales tax revenue that previously went to counties. While Swain will eventually be better off divesting itself of Medicaid even if it means losing a sliver of sales tax revenue in exchange, the switch was only partially phased in this year and the result was a net loss to the budget.

“There are all kinds of weird things in that formula,” King said. “We didn’t come out on the good side of it.”

Making up the difference

The county has already cut half a million from its budget compared to the previous fiscal year. The cost saving measures went into effect with passage of the new budget July 1.

The county cut eight jobs: five in the sheriff’s office and jail and three from other departments. The county also froze overtime.

With half a million in savings already penciled in, that leaves another half million the county needs to come up with. King recommended a five-day furlough without pay for the county’s nearly 200 employees, netting $100,000 in savings. County government will shut down on Oct. 30, Nov. 10, Dec. 23, Dec. 31 and Jan. 19. Offices that can’t simply shut down for a whole day will work out the furloughs amongst the staff. Emergency workers who can’t take off at all will simply see a pay cut. The sheriff’s office is exempt and will see neither furloughs nor pay cuts.

King is going to take another $100,000 out of a capital reserve account used for school maintenance and construction. The reserve account has accumulated a surplus, thanks to a little being squirreled away every year to pay for future school construction.

In a lucky break, the county will be getting an extra $150,000 in taxes this year from Tennessee Valley Authority for Fontana Dam, which King factored in to help cover the shortfall.

That still leaves $150,000 to finish plugging the hole. King doesn’t have a specific plan to get there other than across-the-board penny pinching.

“We are basically going to stop spending as much as possible,” King said. A hiring freeze on vacant positions is also in effect.

Day late and dollar short

Other counties anticipated fallout from the recession and began taking steps much sooner.

In Haywood County, leaders implemented a hiring freeze in the late summer of 2008. By fall, department heads were asked to trim 1 percent off the top of their budgets. By spring, department heads were searching for a 7 percent cut, a move that spawned furloughs and 36-hour work weeks. Haywood County also cut all contributions to nonprofits over the winter, a suspension in funding that has continued into the current fiscal year. Finally, the county increased property taxes and permanently eliminated 35 positions, many of which were already vacant due to attrition, however.

In Macon County, leaders began grappling with a projected $1.4 million budget shortfall over the winter as well. County commissioners put the onus on department heads to trim their own budgets in hopes of avoiding cuts to employees. A hiring freeze was enacted, but the lion’s share of savings came from suspending purchases and delaying maintenance.

As much as mountain dwellers take pride in the gnarled and weathered Rhododendron thickets that characterize Appalachian mountainsides, the signature bush could have a nasty side-effect.

The same uncanny knack of the twisted roots to cling to steep, rocky terrain also loosens the soil. The presence of rhododendron thickets could make a slope more prone to landslides during heavy rains, according to new research by U.S. Forest Service scientists at Coweeta Hydrological Laboratory in Macon County.

Triggered by heavy rainfalls, landslides have always been a lurking danger on steep slopes, often held at bay only by the network of tree roots.

“Roots of trees and shrubs can represent up to 100 percent of what’s holding soil together and keeping mountain slopes from sliding,” said Jim Vose, research ecologist and project leader at Coweeta.

The loss of trees due to development has sparked concern that more landslides could be on the horizon, further exacerbated by more frequent storms stemming from climate change.

Researchers got curious about which trees were more effective at holding soil in place.

“For this study, we measured the root distribution and tensile strength — roughly, the force required to pull a root to the point where it breaks apart — of 15 Southern Appalachian species,” Vose said.

Among the line-up of oak, hemlock, birch, tulip poplar, hickory and other trees, all performed equally. Not so for the rhododendron, however, the one bush included in the test. Rhododendron has come to dominate the forest understory in some areas of the Southern Appalachians.

“We found that rhododendron had the shallowest, weakest roots suggesting that the recent expansion of this species may have lowered the cohesive strength of soil in some hollows,” said Vose.

Researchers compared tree root systems on different contours: namely concave depressions on the flank of a mountain known as hollows and the convex topography shaped like the back of a spoon. They found tree roots in hollows weren’t as strong and had less cellulose content, Vose said.

Researchers could then pinpoint exactly what mix of terrain and vegetation to watch out for.

“Since debris flows usually start in the hollows, those dominated by rhododendron could represent a heightened hazard for landslides,” Vose said.

Although the study was not designed to firmly establish cause and effect, the results suggest that rhododendron may be a key species affecting landslide initiation in the Southern Appalachians. The theory played out in 2004 when the region was battered by heavy rains from back-to-back tropical storms Frances and Ivan, triggering numerous landslides. Most started in rhododendron thickets, including the deadly Peeks Creek landslide in Macon County that claimed five lives and 15 homes.

The findings were published in JGR-Earth Surface by forest service researchers Chelcy Ford and Jim Vose, along with UNC-Chapel Hill researchers T.C. Hales and Larry Band.

The full text of the article can be found online at www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/33547.

Duke Energy has fired back at Jackson County’s attempt to seize the Dillsboro Dam with a counterclaim of its own.

Duke claims that it is the victim of abuse of process by the county and is seeking damages.

Despite the county’s claims that it wants the dam and adjacent river shore to create a park, Duke alleges that Jackson has an “ulterior purpose.” Jackson County has long been an opponent of dam removal, fighting tooth and nail to save the dam before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Seizing the dam through eminent domain was seen as a trump card and last resort held by the county.

Duke argues the condemnation move is “solely for the purpose of interfering with and circumventing” dam demolition, not a true desire to create a park. Duke claims the county has “willfully misused” its condemnation powers.

Duke further took issue with the miserly sum of $1 Jackson County has offered to pay for the property it hopes to seize. The county would be required to compensate Duke for the monetary value of the dam and shoreline property if condemnation is successful. The county argues that $1 is sufficient, since Duke would be saved the trouble and expense of tearing it down, an undertaking that would have cost more than $1 million. That savings should more than suffice as the monetary compensation Jackson would otherwise owe Duke, the suit argues.

Duke said the snub is “further evidence of the county’s bad faith and improper purpose for bringing this action.”

Duke’s counterclaim filed last week seeks an unspecified sum covering attorneys’ fees and monetary damages.

Three years later, Denise Mathis, former director of the Haywood County Council on Aging, is still fighting to restore her reputation and seek monetary damages for being wrongly accused of mismanaging the finances of her former agency.

Mathis lost her job and was charged with 14 counts of embezzlement in 2006 for allegedly misappropriating $100,000 in flood relief donations — one piece out of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that poured into the county in the wake of massive flooding along the Pigeon River that wiped out dozens of homes and businesses in 2004.

The embezzlement charges were later dropped by District Attorney Mike Bonfoey. While the $100,000 in question did not make it into the hands of flood victims as donors intended, it likewise didn’t go into Mathis’ pocket, a police detective and financial investigator determined. It was used to cover salaries and overhead of the nonprofit agency — and it therefore would be hard to make the embezzlement charges stick in court, Bonfoey said of his decision to drop the charges.

Mathis said her reputation was tarnished by the ordeal and now has various lawsuits pending against Bonfoey, the detective who prepared the case, the Council on Aging Board of Directors, the chair of the board and a former employee. She also sued this newspaper, but the case has been settled.

Constance Daly, the chair of the Council on Aging at the time, is among those being sued for slander by Mathis. Daly failed in her attempt to get the slander charges dismissed last week by Judge Nathaniel Poovey. But the hearing in civil court offered a sample of what a full-blown case could entail, should the case goes to trial rather than reach an out-of-court settlement.

The suit against Daly claims that statements she made to the media hurt Mathis financially by preventing her from finding another job.

“What you have to look at is whether it injured that person or reputation,” said Rusty McLean, an attorney for Mathis. “Is the statement slanderous? Does it reflect unfavorably on the person’s matter of profession?”

Daly’s attorney countered that the statements were accurate, however, which is all that must be proven in defending the suit.

“While she was the executive director of the Haywood County Council on Aging, Denise Mathis mismanaged the financial affairs of the organization, spent restricted grant funds for impermissible purposes, and concealed her actions from the Council on Aging’s Board of Directors,” according to Amanda Martin, an attorney with Everett, Gaskins, Hancock and Stevens law firm in Raleigh. Martin specializes in media law as an attorney for the N.C. Press Association.

At the time, Daly was facing inquiries from reporters, county commissioners, donors and the public who were demanding an explanation of the unfolding events — namely how the flood relief donations had been used and why the publicly-funded non-profit was on the brink of financial collapse, Martin argued.

“These all became issues of great concern to the community and this area,” Martin said.

It was in that arena that Daly made statements to the media to explain what had taken place, Martin said.

Martin argued that the burden of fighting a baseless libel suit erodes the principle of free speech protection. The fear of such an ordeal could effectively gag free speech and therefore a suit like this should be dismissed outright, Martin argued.

“Our courts have repeatedly said those protections lose their effectiveness if the defendant is forced through the ordeal of a trial,” Martin said in her bid to get the suit against Daly dismissed before it goes any further.

When asking for the case to be dismissed, Martin aimed to make it sound simple, clear cut, and not worthy of a trial. McLean, meanwhile, wanted to portray it as so complex that it needed to go to trial in order to sort it out. Poovey’s decision did not side with one party or the other on the merits of the libel case, but merely deemed it did not meet the test for being dismissed.

Chain of events

McLean spent the better part of his hour-long argument claiming that Mathis was within her rights to spend flood relief donations within the agency and that any stipulations put on the money were baseless. Mathis did nothing wrong when she used flood relief money to cover the overhead of her agency rather than directly passing it on to flood victims, McLean said.

In the wake of the floods, a task force of various nonprofits and county players formed under the title of the Unmet Needs Committee to coordinate relief for flood victims. The Unmet Needs Committee pooled donations pouring in from across the state and processed requests from flood victims for aid. The committee became a de facto clearinghouse, but didn’t have a bank account of its own. So the Council on Aging agreed to be the recipient for the funds.

Once the money was in the Council on Aging’s account, however, Mathis had jurisdiction over the money and could spend as she saw fit, McLean said.

“There is absolutely no authority of this Unmet Needs Committee to regulate anybody, particularly the Council on Aging’s flood relief account,” McLean argued.

While not all the money went directly to flood victims, it was spent on flood relief, namely in-house expenses incurred as a result of performing flood relief work, McLean said.

“It was transferred from that flood relief account to the general operating account to keep the flood relief going,” McLean said.

The majority of flood donations funneled through the Council on Aging were indeed dispersed as directed by the Unmet Needs Committee, McLean said. The committee asked for Mathis to return a presumably unspent portion. McLean said they had no right to ask for it back after giving it to her.

“It would be like all of us sitting here saying we are going to decide how the county should spend its money, and if they don’t do like, we say tell them we want our money back,” McLean said.

When Mathis couldn’t produce the money, it was dubbed “missing” by the media, but this was incorrect terminology, McLean argued.

“There was no missing money,” McLean said.

McLean held up a front-page of The Mountaineer in court with the headline “United Way reacts to missing funds” featuring a picture of Mathis below the photo. The misnomer harmed Mathis’ reputation, he said.

The statements

Martin, meanwhile, stuck to her assertion that everything Daly said about Mathis and the financial state of the Council on Aging under Mathis’ leadership was accurate. Martin said most of McLean’s assertions — such as complaining about newspaper headlines or wrongful charges by the DA — were a “red herring” and unrelated to whether Daly libeled Mathis.

While Mathis has specifically taken issue with 14 statements made by Daly in local newspapers, they fall under a handful of common themes, Martin said. In court, Martin cited those points of contention, which included statements by Daly alluding that:

• Mathis misused Council on Aging funds.

• Mathis didn’t have the necessary skills to run an organization the size of the Council on Aging.

• Mathis did not fully inform the board members of the spiraling demise of the financial condition of the Council on Aging.

Martin argued that it was completely within the rights of a donor to attach strings and stipulations to money.

“The United Way funneled money to the Council on Aging but said, ‘We want you to distribute it the way this committee says,’” Martin said.

Failure to do so qualifies as misusing the money, thus Daly’s characterization as such is accurate, Martin said.

Martin pointed to Mathis’ own words in the past as evidence. In a state hearing to decide whether Mathis should receive unemployment benefits, she was asked about the fate of the flood money.

“Did you understand that the money received from the unmet needs committee was to be used, given directly to flood victims and not to be used for operational expenses associated with flood relief?” Mathis was asked, according to a transcript of the hearing read in court by Martin.

“I did understand that,” Mathis replied, according to the transcript read by Martin.

Mathis went on to give her reason for not complying with the terms, Martin said.

“She explained why they had to, that they were so far in the red they were behind and didn’t have a choice,” Martin said.

While the flood money captured the most headlines and was the source of the embezzlement charges, Martin argued that there are other examples of financial mismanagement by Mathis.

“There are other monies that were misused and illegally appropriated. She took money that had been given by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for one purpose and used it in other capacities,” Martin said. “She took money that had been withheld from employees salaries that was supposed to be deposited in their 401K’s, money they had earned, and used it to pay operational expenses of the Council on Aging. There is no dispute about any of those facts.”

Martin said this not only proved that Mathis misused funds, but that she didn’t have the “baseline knowledge” to manage such a large organization. Martin questioned Mathis’ training for such a job.

“She has two so-called degrees from an online university, the name of which she couldn’t even recall in her fist day of deposition, which were awarded as a result of paying a few hundred dollars and signing some paperwork. She did nothing other than submit this information and get her degree in the mail,” Martin said.

As for whether the board was informed of the fiscal problems facing the agency, they weren’t, Martin said.

“There is no question that Mrs. Daly and other board members were not fully apprised,” Martin said.

McLean countered that notion.

“She went to the board several times and said we need help,” McLean said.

The on-going tension between Swain County commissioners and the sheriff has surfaced yet again, this time over the root cause of the county’s $1 million budget shortfall.

“If it hadn’t been for the expenditures of the sheriff’s office we would have been pretty much been alright,” County Manager Kevin King said.

King cited excessive overtime and several additional positions added to the sheriff’s office over the past year as driving up costs by several hundred thousand dollars over above the budgeted amount.

Sheriff Curtis Cochran said the county is using his department as a scapegoat.

“It looks to me like the budget shortfall is poor management on the part of county administration,” Cochran said. “They need to look in the mirror and see where the problem lies. They are the watchdogs of the budget.”

The county spent $160,000 last year on overtime for jailers and deputies. Overtime was racked up every pay period thanks to a shift schedule that gave jailers and deputies 20 hours overtime each two-week pay period. They worked 60 hours one week and 24 the next, with overtime paid out whenever they went over 40 hours in a seven-day period.

King said the problem has now been solved by switching the overtime rules effective this month. Overtime pay now kicks in only after deputies and jailers accrue 86 hours over a two-week pay period. The alternative system for paying — or rather not paying — overtime is allowed under Department of Labor rules for law enforcement workers who often have longer shifts clustered together for several days in a row but then get several days off, King said.

King said he met with jailers and deputies to explain the new method for calculating their pay. He said they don’t like the new arrangement.

King said Cochran used the overtime formula to pay his people more, an end run in essence around salaries he thought were too low for his workers, King said.

Cochran admits without the regular overtime “Their paychecks are going to go down drastically.”

“They just barely make enough money to live anyway. They were dependent on some of this overtime to help them survive,” Cochran said. Some are getting second jobs, dropping health insurance coverage and even seeking food stamps and Medicaid.

But Cochran said eking out more pay for his people wasn’t his motive when implementing the schedule. He said it was part of a move from 8-hour to 12-hour shifts, which are more common in law enforcement, and to rotate who works weekend instead of it always being the same people.

“When we implemented this I wasn’t aware they had to pay the overtime like they say they had to,” Cochran said. “When you are looking for someone to blame they will pick someone to blame.”

King said overtime was only part of the budget problems emanating from the sheriff’s office. Revenue at the jail fell short of expectations. County leaders opened a big a new jail last year that was overbuilt in hopes of housing more prisoners from out of the county for a nightly fee. But the number of inmates housed from outside the county declined, however, shattering the county’s hopes of subsidizing the overly large debt payments.

King has blamed Cochran, but Cochran said it is out of his control. The jail project was started before Cochran took office. The county undertook an oversized jail despite neighboring counties that once regularly housed inmates in Swain building new jails of their own and decreasing the need to rent out bed space.

In addition, the county added several new positions to the sheriff’s office and jail over the past year. The extra jailers were needed to man the larger facility, or so everyone thought.

“The county commissioners approved every bit of this,” Cochran said. “They had to approve all the expenditures for the jail. They are the watchdogs of the budget. I don’t have the check book up here to write checks.”

King said the county should have cut some of the extra jailers when it became clear the jail wasn’t filling up and the extra jailers weren’t needed. Instead of cutting the positions, the extra jailers were made deputies and kept on the payroll.

“That was probably a mistake,” King said. “We didn’t have the money to keep them.”

But King said the commissioners were sensitive to accusations from the public that they weren’t treating Cochran fairly.

“They didn’t want to be perceived as doing anything political,” King said. King said they had been repeatedly chastised for having an ulterior motive whenever they turned down Cochran’s budget requests.

“People need to have good public safety, but that is not the issue. The issue is there is not the money to do it,” King said.

Cochran currently has a lawsuit pending against the county alleging that commissioners cut his pay as political retribution when he took office three years ago. Prior to Cochran’s term, the sheriff was paid a lump sum to feed inmates in the jail and could keep the surplus, as opposed to the county just paying the actual cost of the food.

When the practice was curtailed as Cochran went into office he claimed the effective pay cut was political retribution since he was a Republican and the commissioners are Democrats. The tensions have been brewing ever since.

Jackson County’s lawsuit against Duke Energy to seize the Dillsboro Dam and surrounding river shore through eminent domain has been kicked up to federal court.

Jackson County filed the condemnation lawsuit in state court in August, but Duke attorneys argued that federal law is in play and therefore the case belongs in federal court. While state law allows for the condemnation of land by a county to create parks and recreation facilities, Duke claims that the Federal Power Law governing utilities preempts state statutes.

The case could ultimately come down to the interpretation of both state and federal laws.

Meanwhile, the county was seeking a restraining order against Duke to keep the utility from demolishing, altering or removing any part of the dam or nearby powerhouse while waiting for the condemnation suit to be heard. Jackson County wants to transform the dam and surrounding shoreline of the Tuckasegee into a river park and promenade, replete with walking paths, benches, fishing areas and river access. The dam and powerhouse are intended as focal points and therefore must be protected through a preliminary injunction, Jackson pleaded.

But Duke says it does not plan to start demolishing the dam until January 2010.

For that reason, Jackson County’s request for a restraining order to stave of demolition is unnecessary for the time being, Judge Martin Reidinger ruled.

Jackson County can “refile such motions for a temporary restraining order as may be necessary,” Reidinger wrote in his ruling.

The forest service has pledged to ensure a solitary wilderness experience on the upper Chattooga River, even if it means imposing limits on the number of recreational users who can enter the area, including day hikers.

If such steps are taken, the Upper Chattooga would join a small handful of elite wilderness settings in North America where use is managed so stringently that permits are required simply for day hiking.

The forest service doesn’t believe use has reached that level yet, but intends to monitor encounters among wilderness users and put the brakes on if a certain threshold is reached. That threshold for solitude is subjective, yet rooted in social science, said Tony White, the manager for planning and recreation in the Francis/Marion National Forest. Research has measured perceptions among hikers, backpackers, fishermen and paddlers to determine how many encounters are too many.

The upper Chattooga is hardly heavily used. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, which is exactly why it has been singled out for the rigorous management.

“We are setting the stage for maintaining that solitude,” said White. “It won’t stay the same unless we put some of those limits in place.”

It’s a noble goal, yet a difficult one, said Wayne Jenkins, executive director of Georgia Forest Watch, which has played a watchdog role along the Chattooga River.

“At what point does it no longer feel wild? We are very challenged to legally quantify experience and emotions, which are all wrapped up in how we relate to nature,” Jenkins said. “How many groups would you need to run into before you start feeling like this place is crowded, that I am not having the experience I was seeking? There is no magic number.”

Yet the forest service has attempted to identify the magic numbers, which vary among user groups (see chart).

Plans to start monitoring encounters in the upper Chattooga River corridor were borne out of a long-running debate over paddling. At the insistence of paddlers, the forest service has spent the past four years studying whether to lift a long-standing paddling ban.

Hikers and fishermen claimed their wilderness experience would be degraded if paddlers are allowed on the river. Paddlers, however, pointed out the hypocrisy of putting restrictions on them but not on other users.

The result is a plan to limit encounters for all users — paddlers, hikers and fishermen alike. While the paddling debate has captured headlines, White believes the forest service’s larger strategy of protecting solitude is noteworthy.

“I think a lot of people are missing that element,” White said. “To me, that is such a critical decision that we are drawing a line on those encounter levels.”

The forest service hasn’t figured out exactly how it will monitor encounters between users, however. A workshop with paddlers, hikers and fishermen will be held this fall to hopefully arrive at a strategy.

White said his idea is to engage a third-party to monitor recreation levels rather than relying on users themselves to report on how many encounters they are having. The debate over paddling has been so passionate, White fears opposing sides wouldn’t trust the data reported by the other side.

If hikers reported they saw five groups of paddlers — one more than the allowed threshold for maintaining a wilderness experience — the paddling community would question whether the hikers were artificially inflating the numbers in order to impose a permit system on paddlers.

“We need some independent collection. People will tend to accuse each other of making up things,” White said. “Early in this process we really need to make sure instead of creating a situation where people stay divided we create a situation where they start coming back together.”

Unprecedented limits

Only places like the Boundary Waters, a canoe Mecca in Minnesota, and Denali National Park in Alaska, attempt to impose limits on the number of people who can set foot in an area on a given day.

The concern over encounters is an asymmetrical one, according to Mark Singleton, the director of American Whitewater, a national paddling advocacy group with its head office in Sylva.

While hikers and fishermen object to spying a paddler in their midst, the feeling isn’t mutual, Singleton said.

“If I am boating and I see a hiker that has no bearing,” Singleton said. The same goes for a fisherman.

“I paddle over to the other side of the river, float by, wave and that’s it,” Singleton said.

But, if preserving solitude is a stated mission along the Chattooga, Singleton supports limits being placed on all users rather than picking one to keep out while allowing a free-for-all for the others.

“That was one of our concerns, that this resource is getting hammered but the only management in place was a ban on boating,” Singleton said.

It’s one of the few areas where opponents seem to agree.

“American Whitewater had a valid point,” said Buzz Williams with the Chattooga Conservancy, which wanted to see the boating ban stay in place. “If you are going to ban one use you have to rein in the damage from overuse by campers, hikers, et cetera.”

But Williams questioned whether the mission is possible, and whether the limits will ultimately be arbitrary. For one, the perception of encounters is constantly shifting. When Williams started paddling the Chattooga in 1968, his experience was diminished if he saw anyone else at all. The entire river probably only saw 200 paddlers a year.

“If you ask people now, the majority of which are young male boaters from Atlanta who are dying to escape the beltway, they would think 80,000 people a year going down the river is not that big a deal,” Williams said. “Carrying capacity changes and their perception of encounters changes over time and between user groups.”

Limiting encounters comes with a price, however. While those who do venture into the upper Chattooga will be guaranteed a solitary wilderness experience, not everyone who wants to go may get to go.

“People aren’t willing to give those things up very easily, but my idea of conservation is seeing the wisdom of giving up something to protect the greater good,” Williams said.

It’s especially important to protect those remaining wild places as population growth and sprawl create more and more demand for solitude, Williams said. But the answer isn’t always easy.

“How do we share the resources in a way we can break way from our hectic lives and get that renewal and then go back to our hectic lives?” Jenkins asked.

The battle over healthcare reform hit home in Sylva last week.

A crowd of more than 50 people gathered on Main Street at the foot of the historic courthouse Wednesday evening holding signs in support of a public health care option.

“We are in a critical time for trying to provide health care for all Americans,” said Carolyn Cagle of Sylva, an organizer of the event. “This debate is about real people. We can’t afford to wait any longer for real health care reform.”

Across the street, a small counter protest set up on the sidewalk. A handful of people waved signs denouncing the health care reform bill, equating it with communism and raising alarm bells over euthanasia.

“No one is saying there shouldn’t be some reform, but the answer is not a government public option,” said Carol Adams, the public relations chair of the Jackson County Republican Party. “The answer is not this bill that will cost trillions of dollars. The whole thing is out of control.”

Those in favor of a public option held candles to honor the millions of people across the country who are suffering because they can’t afford the health care they need. Several people stepped forward to share personal stories of suffering and financial ruin. Their ranks included those who lack of health insurance, but also those with insurance who were denied coverage by insurance companies or faced astronomical co-pays.

Karen Rice of Franklin described losing everything she owned to pay for her husband’s cancer treatment.

“Now I live as a Third world person in a singlewide mobile home. I’ve taken to washing my clothes by hand,” Rice said.

Rice challenged the fear mongering of opponents who suggest euthanasia will be imposed on the elderly.

“Who are the true death squads? The insurance companies,” Rice said, citing the refusal of their insurance company to pay for her husband’s pain medication in his final days of life.

Being let down by insurance companies was a recurring theme by those sharing stories.

“If you have something catastrophic in your life, it can cost you a whole lot of money,” said Martha Yonce of Franklin. Yonce, whose husband was a teacher for 35 years, faced $80,000 in out-of-pocket expenses in a single year despite having good health insurance.

“It more or less prevented us from retiring. We never have been able to catch up,” Yonce said.

Yonce sees competition from a public option and the only way to reform the modus operandi of capitalist-oriented insurance companies.

“I don’t see how insurance companies will ever be pushed to do the right thing,” Yonce said.

Lack of access to preventative care, particularly early cancer screenings, is a glaring failure of the current health care model, according to Marsha Crites of Sylva. Crites shared the story of a friend who couldn’t afford regular colonoscopies and is now dying from colon cancer. Crites shared the story of another friend who is divorcing her husband of 40 years so she can qualify for Medicare.

“These are crimes my friends,” Crites told the crowd.

Crites is still paying off hospital bills of her own that were accrued following a stroke eight years ago. The owner of Harvest Moon Gardens Landscaping in Sylva, Crites is self-employed and didn’t have insurance at the time.

Saddling employers with the burden of health insurance doesn’t work, according to Dr. David Trigg, a part-time emergency room physician at Harris Regional and volunteer medical director at the Good Samaritan Clinic in Sylva.

“We are the only industrialized country where employers have to pay for their employees’ health insurance,” Trigg said.

For Allan Lomax of Sylva, the inextricable link between employment and health insurance creates a scary gap every time he’s between jobs.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Trigg chastised Congressman Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, for his opposition to a public option in the health care bill.

“Don’t forget about your Christian ethic you cited when you were elected,” Trigg directed toward Shuler.

Too much government

Meanwhile, those against the bill waved miniature American flags from the other side of the street.

“I feel strongly socialism is coming into our country,” said Ron Gamble of Sylva. “It is not just health care. The current administration is taking over everything. I’m afraid we will lose our personal freedom and personal choice.”

Gamble is self-employed and pays $700 a month for insurance for himself and his wife.

“The health care costs are astronomical. They have to do something,” Gamble said. But the bill currently on the table is being rammed down people’s throats with not enough deliberation and input, he said.

Gamble’s grandchildren are among those who lack insurance, but have had their health care paid for by the government, thanks to either being on unemployment or their status as a veteran. Gamble said it was their choice not to have health insurance, as is the case with many young people, which skews the number of the so-called uninsured.

The opponents argued the number of people who don’t have health insurance is quite small compared to the overall population.

“You don’t change 90 percent of the people’s health insurance to accommodate 10 percent of the population,” said Ginny Jahrmarkt of Sapphire.

Ralph Slaughter, first vice chair of the Jackson County Republican Party, said the bureaucracy needs to be weeded out of the current systems before adding another huge program.

“Before the government tries to add on another social program, we need to effectively and efficiently run the programs we have. Once the government figures out how to do that, this bottom group could be absorbed into Medicaid,” Slaughter said.

An impromptu debate sprung up when a supporter of the health care reform bill strayed across the street to challenge those in the counter protest. A light drizzle fell on and off through the evening, forcing protestors on both sides of the street to don umbrellas at times.

An interesting show of unity emerged between the two camps when health care supporters gathered on the steps of the courthouse with their candles in hand and began singing America the Beautiful — prompting protestors on the other side of the street to join in the song.

Those who buy their power from Western Carolina University have historically enjoyed cheaper electric bills than their neighbors, but that is soon to change.

WCU buys electricity at wholesale rates from Duke Energy and resells it to customers on its grid, which extends in a roughly one-mile radius around the university serving 2,700 customers.

WCU qualifies as the cheapest utility company in the state, according to Chuck Wooten, vice chancellor for administration and finance.

But Duke is jacking up the cost of wholesale power it sells to WCU, and WCU will have to hike its rates in return, said Wooten. Duke plans to increase the cost of power to WCU by 48 percent, imposed incrementally over the next three years.

Wooten said WCU hasn’t seen a rate increase from Duke in years.

“In essence they have sheltered us from the rate increases other wholesale customers have been paying,” Wooten said. “It was to our advantage but now we are having to catch up.”

WCU is in the midst of contract negotiations with Duke energy to set the rates for the next 20 years. Once a baseline for the wholesale rate for is set, Duke will adjust the rate annually only when necessary to compensate for the rise and fall of fuel costs —known as a “true up.”

Wooten said the University looked at buying blocks of wholesale power from another utility but couldn’t find a better option. WCU plans to raise rates by 12 to 15 percent pending approval from the N.C. Utility Commission.

Western Carolina University has enacted mandatory testing for the sickle cell trait among all student athletes following the death of a football player during summer workout drills in July.

Ja’Quayvin Smalls, a junior defensive back from Mount Pleasant, S.C., was in excellent physical condition. The afternoon was not abnormally hot, nor were the drills particularly exhausting. The lack of other explanations points to the presence of the sickle-cell trait as the cause of Smalls’ death, though an autopsy is not complete.

The underlying presence of the sickle cell trait is a leading cause of death among college football players. Colleges are increasingly testing athletes for the trait, although WCU is at the forefront of the movement for schools of its size.

The trait can strike under heavy exertion and clogs the passage of blood cells through arteries. Cramping is a telltale sign of the onset of a sickle cell attack.

Smalls had complained of cramps during the workout and was taken to the sidelines under the care of an athletic trainer. Just minutes later, Smalls quit breathing. Trainers performed CPR until paramedics arrived, but Smalls was pronounced dead an hour later at Harris Regional Hospital.

“This has been a very emotional experience for all of us,” said Chip Smith, the athletic director at WCU. “It has made a difference in how we look at football and how we look at each other.”

WCU Chancellor John Bardo said the character of the players on the team has been exceptional through the tragedy.

“I don’t care whether they win a game honestly,” Bardo said.

Several team members who came to the hospital following Smalls’s collapse joined in impromptu prayer when he was pronounced dead. The entire football team traveled to Charleston for his funeral. His headstone is being engraved with a WCU logo at the request of his family.

The sickle cell trait is found in one of 12 African Americans. WCU will test all student athletes regardless of race, however.

The blood test costs $10 per athlete. WCU has 330 student athletes across all sports. This year, the school will test all of them. In future years, only incoming athletes will be tested.

Students who test positive for the trait won’t be barred from the field.

“You can’t deny them the opportunity to play,” Smith said. “They can make an informed choice and decide for themselves whether to participate.”

Coaches and trainers will know which students have the trait, but will keep it a secret from the rest of the team. The first five days of team training will be less strenuous, giving the athletes a chance to acclimatize since the attacks are more prevalent during periods of high stress, Smith said.

The number of schools that test for the trait has increased in recent years, with more than 70 percent of conference schools testing for the trait. Among schools the size of Western, the number is far less.

The NCAA this summer adopted guidelines recommending that all student athletes be tested for the trait. The policy shift was prompted by a lawsuit against the NCAA by the family of a Rice University football player who died during practice in 2006 from a sickle cell attack.

The National Athletic Trainers’ Association has advocated for the mandatory testing of student athletes since 2007.

A long-standing ban on paddling on the Upper Chattooga River will be lifted this winter, but not without a host of restrictions designed to limit the likelihood of hikers and fishermen encountering the paddlers.

Paddlers will only be allowed to paddle during high water following big rainstorms when fishermen generally stay home. Paddling will further be limited to the three winter months of December, January and February, when hikers are less likely to be around. And of the upper 21 miles where paddling is currently banned, only seven miles will be opened to paddlers, with the rest still off limits.

The forest service’s decision to allow limited paddling theoretically ends a heated debate that has pitted competing recreational uses on the Chattooga River, a Wild and Scenic river that tumbles off the Blue Ridge escarpment south of Cashiers.

As the forest service promised early in the process, no side is completely satisfied with the outcome.

“It is a narrow victory at best, but it is a slight improvement over no boating,” said Mark Singleton, the director of American Whitewater, a national paddling advocacy group headquartered in Sylva. “This is the first time the public will have legal access to that upper river in 33 years.”

Fishermen, hikers, birdwatchers, campers and environmentalists have been protective of the river, fearing paddlers will ruin the solitude currently enjoyed in the remote upper reaches of the Chattooga. Opponents further argued that an onslaught of kayakers will destroy the fragile ferns, lush mosses and rich plant diversity that characterize the remote Chattooga headwaters.

“It is going to cause a lot of damage to one of the last remote places in the Chattooga and last places you can have a remote experience in keeping with the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act,” said Buzz Williams, director of the Chattooga Conservancy.

However, with the release of its decision last week the forest service disputed the notion of lasting environmental impacts by paddlers and instead said the debate boils down to maintaining a sense of solitude and minimizing conflicts between competing user groups.

That admission by the forest service was welcome news to Singleton.

“This is a tide turner to hear the forest service acknowledge that boating has no impact on the upper river,” Singleton said. “To get that recognition is a significant sea change in the dialogue around the Upper Chattooga.”

It lifted the veil off what paddlers had claimed all along: the hikers and fishermen wanted the river all to themselves.

“Specifically it becomes one type of user not wanting to see another type of user on this resource,” Singleton said.

Williams, a boater himself, disagreed. He said his concerns are rooted in protecting the river’s pristine ecology. Everyone’s desire to stake a claim to the Upper Chattooga will degrade the environmental features that make it special, Williams said.

“It’s called the tragedy of the commons,” Williams said.

How we got here

The forest service was pushed to reconsider its paddling ban by American Whitewater, which appealed to the highest level of the forest service several years ago claiming the ban was unjustified. The higher-ups ordered the local forest service to conduct an environmental analysis to assess the paddling ban. When the local forest service was slow to get started, American Whitewater further prodded them with a lawsuit.

Since the river splits three states, the analysis was a joint effort of the Sumter, Chattahoochee and Nantahala national forests. The long-awaited decision to lift the ban, albeit with stringent limits, was announced last week.

Opponents of paddling on the Upper Chattooga said the forest service kowtowed to paddling interests.

“At some point the agency has to stand and draw a line in the sand and say ‘We think this is fair, and we are not going to just react because there is one user group who wants to push that use into every nook and cranny,’” said Wayne Jenkins, executive director of Georgia Forest Watch.

Jim Whitehurst, a hiker in Highlands, said the forest service was acting out of self-preservation rather than an objective decision that puts the river and environment first.

“They know the paddlers are a litigious bunch, so the forest service has bent over backwards to accommodate them,” said Whitehurst.

But the forest service may not be out of the woods yet. Williams said the Chattooga Conservancy is contemplating an appeal of the decision, and if that doesn’t work, a lawsuit isn’t out of the question.

Williams said the forest service decision was “arbitrary and capricious” — setting the stage with key legalese. In particular, Williams questions the particular stretch that has been opened to boating.

Of the 21-mile stretch previously off-limits to boaters, the lower seven miles are the most prized by fishermen. The forest service appeased the fishermen by keeping the paddling ban along the lower seven miles, and instead opened up the middle seven miles.

But the middle seven miles are more fragile ecologically and more remote, providing a better opportunity for the solitary wilderness experience. Williams would rather see the section opened to boaters shifted down river.

Williams compared the forest service to a dealer in a card game. It had to give up just enough cards so paddlers would fold and go home satisfied, yet not relinquish so much that the trout fishermen rise up.

“They threw American Whitewater a small bone with a little bit of meat on it to see if they would back off,” Williams said. “It was two large powerful interest groups pushing around a weak agency to arrive at an arbitrary decision.”

No cap on boaters

Initially, the forest service proposed a cap on the number of boaters who could go down the river on the high-flow days. But in the final decision announced last week, the forest service removed such a cap.

In reality, the number of boaters showing up will likely be self-limiting. When a big rain hits, paddlers will have short notice to high tail it to the Chattooga, whether it’s arranging a babysitter or getting off work.

“This isn’t something you can put on your calendar,” Singleton said. “You have to drop what you are doing on a moment’s notice to be able to catch this.”

Singleton said the first couple of years will likely see bigger numbers, simply because paddlers will want to experience a new run that’s been off-limits for three decades. After that, numbers will ratchet back down to perhaps 20 or 30 boaters on those select high-water days.

The Chattooga’s long-distance from any major metro area will further limit numbers, Singleton said.

The forest service agreed.

“There really wasn’t a need to put a hard cap on the boaters,” White said. “There are no caps on any other users, so you could make an assumption that 10,000 hikers would show up on one day.”

Of course, that would never happen, White said.

The forest service plans to monitor the number of paddlers, however, and if it seems like too many are showing up, then it will impose a permit system at that point, White said.

Opponents to paddling fear the worst, however.

“Every put-in place will be flooded with kayakers and their equipment and their gear,” Whitehurst said. “There is going to be damage to the environment. They will tear up the fragile vegetation.”

The forest service believes otherwise.

“We did not feel there would be any additional impacts due to the number of boaters allowed on the river each day,” said Monica Schwalbach, acting director of Sumter National Forest in South Carolina.

Making the call

Paddlers will be allowed on the river during those three winter months when the flow reaches 450 cubic feet per second. At that flow, the river is too swift for fishermen anyway, removing the potential for conflicts.

“That is a pretty legitimate dividing line between fishing and boating,” Williams said. “There would be no reason to wet a hook.”

The forest service will install a flow gauge in the river that will transmit real time data to computers. The readings will then be plugged into a hydrology formula to predict whether the magic number of 450 cubic feet per second will likely be reached that day.

While a river begins swelling immediately with rain, it will continue rising even after a storm has quit. Runoff from headwater creeks can take hours to make its way into the main river. Each watershed behaves differently, so a hydrologist will be called on to develop a model for the upper Chattooga. Theoretically, the model will predict whether and when the river will hit the magic boating threshold, based on the river level, how much rain has already fallen and whether more is yet to fall.

But Singleton says it’s not as easy as it sounds. Such a model is somewhat unprecedented and the logistics of implementing such a system will be challenging, Singleton said. Singleton wonders how the cash-strapped agency will manage this added responsibility, especially if the high-flow days fall on the evening or weekend.

The logistics are troubling to all sides of the issue.

“Who decides the water level has hit that magic point?” Jenkins asked. “There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle once it’s out.”

Once the forest service predicts a boatable day is on the horizon and makes the call, it won’t send the eager boaters back home even if the gauge technically stops short of the mark.

“We know we can’t start and stop it once we declare that day it will be a boatable day,” White said.

As for Singleton?

“I am looking forward to a big honking rain storm on Dec. 1,” he said.

A debate has erupted in Sylva over whether dogs should be allowed in the town’s new Bridge Park, a small green space adjacent to downtown with a covered pavilion for holding concerts and community events.

The issue has split members of town board, which voted 3-2 to allow a 90-day trial period where dog use will be monitored — and in particular whether dog owners are diligent about picking up after their dogs.

“I really, really want people to take this privilege and use it responsibly,” said Town Commissioner Sarah Graham.

Town Commissioner Harold Hensley has been a vocal opponent of allowing dogs in the park, however, and voted against the measure.

“We just invested several thousand dollars on a nice big grassy lawn down there where they are supposed to do all these concerts,” Hensley said. “In a year from now it will be brown and spotted out.”

Hensley also questioned why people need to bring their dogs to concerts at the park in the first place.

“Why would you go out at night to listen to entertainment and drag your poor old dog?” Hensley asked.

Town Commissioner Stacey Knotts has attended several concerts in the park and witnessed dogs in the crowd.

“They were on leashes laying on blankets with their owners, and I didn’t observe any problems,” Knotts said.

Even if dogs are on a leash, Hensley doesn’t like the idea of kids and strange dogs in close quarters in public places. Hensley fears a kid will reach out to pet a dog and get bit, or that two dogs could get in a fight and hurt the person who tries to break it up.

Hensley added that it isn’t sanitary for families to lounge on a lawn where dogs have been using the bathroom.

“Even if they pick it up, I don’t want to sit down where it was just at,” Hensley said.

Knotts and Graham know firsthand the challenge of keeping kids out of dog droppings. Both are dog owners, mothers of small children and live downtown. They value a community where they can venture out with their family and their dogs in tow.

“We live in this community and walk our dogs and want it to be a dog-friendly town,” Graham said. “I don’t want my kids to run around and step in dog poop, but I also don’t want to prohibit dog use.”

Danny Allen, a challenger who is running for a seat on the town board against Knotts this fall, questioned her personal motivation in the issue.

“I don’t like using politics for self benefit as opposed to the overall concern of the people,” Allen said.

Allen suggested Knotts was using her influence to mold the town to suit her own purposes.

But Knotts said she would have voted that way regardless of whether she owned a dog herself.

“I just want the park to be open and accessible to as many people as possible,” Knotts said. “I enjoy seeing people out there with their dogs. It is a recreational activity that a lot of people enjoy, and I think the park should be open to those people.”

Bridge Park plays a special role downtown. It provides green, open space in the heart of the downtown district. The park is small and has few amenities. The grassy lawn is barely an acre. Its key feature is a covered pavilion with a stage, which hosts concerts and outdoor movie nights in the summer.

“The way it has been functioning has really been a joy to Sylva,” Knotts said. “It is an extension of the public sphere of downtown. That is kind of like our town square.”

Given its proximity to downtown and the fact that it isn’t fenced, it would be hard to keep dog walkers out, they said.

“Banning them would be more effort than it was really worth,” Graham said.

While the park has largely been a town undertaking, many community members and organizations donated to its creation.

Hensley and Allen point out that the town’s other two parks don’t allow dogs.

“My concern is we don’t allow it in the other parks, and so why should we allow it in that park?” Allen said.

Knotts and Graham countered that the town’s two other parks are fenced in playgrounds, quite different from the grassy open lawn at Bridge Park.

Hensley emphasized that he does like dogs.

“I am not against dogs. I have had dogs all my life. I don’t want people to misunderstand me,” Hensley said.

Allen said he also loves dogs. His own dog, Jordan, died this summer at the age of 14. He is still coping with the loss. But Allen said he has to separate the love he had for his own dog with the potential pitfalls of allowing dogs in a public park.

Unprecedented response

There’s one thing both sides can agree on. They are equally amazed at how much public input it has elicited — rivaling any issue town leaders can recall in recent years.

“There are so many things we deal with that don’t get a lot of interest, and something like this comes up and we are inundated with phone calls and email,” Graham said. “I think it is because it is a lifestyle thing.”

Knotts said the response has been overwhelmingly in favor of allowing dogs at the park. In fact, she said she didn’t get any feedback from supporters of a dog ban.

Allen said he has heard from those on the other side of the issue, however. He surmised they are just hesitant to come forward publicly given the ruckus raised by dog owners.

Hensley said he has received several emails from dog owners who don’t live in the town limits, but instead reside in Cullowhee or Webster.

“If you are out in the country, I don’t know why you need to take your dog to town to make a mess in the first place,” Hensley said. “That is utterly ridiculous to live in Cullowhee and think ‘I need to take my dog to Sylva to use the bathroom.’”

That’s not exactly what’s on the mind of Heather Bradshaw when she and her boyfriend Drew Cook load up their dogs after work and head downtown for an outing.

“It’s fun for us to get out of Cullowhee and come downtown where most of the action is,” Bradshaw said.

If the town portrayed an anti-dog stance, they might go elsewhere, which could ultimately be a bad move for the town.

“After work is our dog time so we like to take them with us,” Cook said.

The young couple recently visited Blowing Rock where a large park flanks an entire block of Main Street. Dogs weren’t allowed in the park, and it left them a bad feeling toward the entire town. They probably won’t go back.

“For some people, their dogs are their family. It’s like their kids,” Bradshaw said.

For Robert Lindsay, a downtown business owner, his dog is a big part of his life. When he adopted his husky three years ago, he never took mid-day walks.

“Now I am always getting up and taking him for a walk. Sometimes I don’t want to do it, but I always feel better after I do,” Lindsay said.

Lindsay brings his dog to work at his downtown insurance office every day. And every day, he hits the street with his dog during lunch, including the area around Bridge Park. Lindsay wasn’t aware of a town ordinance that required dog owners to pick up after them, however. He often let his dog poke around in the overgrown bank along Scott’s Creek and wouldn’t pick up after her since it was far off the beaten path.

But now that he knows, he said he will. To help educate the public, the town plans to install two baggie dispensers on Main Street to make it easy for dog owners to pick up after their animals.

“Putting those things out will be a big help,” Lindsay said.

No excuses

While the most heated debate has centered around whether to allow dogs in Bridge Park, the issue initially arose over Main Street. Some merchants have complained about dog droppings left on the street and in flowerbeds.

When board members suggested installing baggie dispensers to encourage responsible behavior, Town Manager Adrienne Isenhower flipped through a catalog lying around town hall and found dispensers advertised for $400 each, with rolls of baggies at 50 cents a bag.

The entire town board thought that was too expensive. They asked Isenhower to hunt around for a better price, and after searching the Internet she came up with a far cheaper option — just $80 per dispenser and a penny a bag. Rather than pole mounted dispensers, these mount on town trash cans.

The town board voted to purchase two baggie dispensers for Main Street — a vote that was also a 3-2 split.

While several town board members, who originally saw the cost as prohibitive, reversed course when the quote came down, Hensley said he stands on principle.

“My theory was I wasn’t willing to spend one thin dime of taxpayers money for something that silly,” Hensley said.

Graham said the baggie dispensers will send a visual message to dog owners who might not be aware of the town’s ordinance to pick up after their dogs.

“I think when a dog owners sees these things on the trash can it reinforces the law that already exists,” Graham said. “It is a friendly reminder.”

Hensley sees the issue as catering to a select handful of dog walkers at the expense of all taxpayers.

“If you’ve got a dog, I shouldn’t have to buy a bag for you to go clean up after your dog,” Hensley said.

Hensley also doesn’t understand how a dog owner could forget a baggie.

“If they leave home with their dog on its morning exercise, they pretty well know it is going to do its business before they get home,” Hensley said.

If they do forget a bag, the dispenser stationed at two key spots on Main Street won’t necessarily help, he said.

“If a dog needs to go in the middle of town, are you going to say ‘We have to hurry until we make it to the end of the street?’” Hensley asked.

The baggie dispenser will be a welcome amenity to Tim Blekicki, who walks his dog along Main Street once or twice a day. For Blekicki, it’s habit to stuff a bag in his pocket before setting out. But sometimes his dog, Revelry, tricks him by going twice during one walk. With his bag reserve exhausted, it leaves Blekicki scrambling.

“Generally I go to a trash can and rummage through until I find a plastic bag I can use,” said Blekicki, 27, who is a sous chef at Bear Lake Reserve.

Blekicki said he has never seen a dog owner walk away from a pile. He has occasionally seen dogs roam through town off a leash with no owner in sight, however, and wonders if they could be the culprit.

Graham said she would like to purchase an additional baggie dispenser for Bridge Park — along with a sign asking dog owners to keep their dogs leashed and to pick up after them — if the board votes to allow dogs permanently following the 90-day trial.

Enforcement

While the town’s ordinance says dog owners must pick up after their dogs, enforcement is another issue.

“Our police force is already overwhelmed and our maintenance department is already overwhelmed and it is not fair for other parts of the town to be neglected just to take care of dog poop,” Allen said.

David Kelley, another challenger seeking a seat on the board this fall, supports allowing dogs in Bridge Park.

Kelley, who works at Livingston’s Photo on Main Street, knows firsthand that not all downtown dog walkers are diligent about picking up, however. A grassy area near their store seems to be a favorite spot with dogs.

“I have to weed eat a little section and I don’t like getting hit in the face with it,” Kelley said.

The hot-button issue has emerged just two months away from town elections. Hensley is among those up for re-election. If it costs him votes, so be it, he said.

“If people don’t like me to try to save them a dime, they can send me to the house,” Hensley said, adding that perhaps it would help his blood pressure would go down.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park staged a reenactment this week of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s dedication of the newly created park nearly 70 years ago.

Roosevelt’s trip to the region in 1940 is still remembered by many. Throngs of people lined the main streets of Waynesville, Bryson City and Cherokee for a chance to see the heroic President roll by en route to Newfound Gap, where he would speak at a dedication ceremony for the new park.

“President Roosevelt was next to God,” said Henry Foy, who watched from the side of Main Street in Waynesville. “He was in the backseat and held up his hat and waved it out both sides.”

As is often the case with big milestones, anyone alive at the time seems to remember where they were when Roosevelt’s entourage drove through town.

“That was the biggest day of my life,” said J.C. Freeman, 81, who watched from the roadside in Bryson City. “He was in an open topped car. They roped the roads off. I was holding the rope as close as I could get. I thought that was one of the greatest things that could happen to a boy.”

Joyce Patton of Canton, just 7 years old at the time, was most excited at the prospect of seeing Roosevelt’s black Scottish Terrier pup named Fala.

“[Roosevelt] was waving with his cigarette in the holder. I saw right away that he didn’t have the dog,” Patton said, recalling her disappointment. Patton’s parents, who were park supporters, made the long car trip up to Newfound Gap to hear his speech. They were seated near the front, close enough to see Roosevelt getting out of his car into a wheelchair.

“At that time nobody knew he was paralyzed. They lined the ramp going up to the lectern with Secret Service and Park Rangers so most people couldn’t see him in the wheelchair,” Patton recounted.

While the park was officially created in 1934, Roosevelt’s dedication happened six years later on Sept. 2, 1940. By then, the Civilian Conservation Corps had carved trails, campgrounds and roads into the park, including the overlook at Newfound Gap. There Roosevelt stood with one foot in each state while delivering his speech in front of the newly finished Rockefeller Memorial, erected as an homage to the family that donated $5 million for the park’s creation.

Commodore Casada, 99, caught a ride up the mountain from Bryson City to witness the big event. Although like many, his interest was in seeing Roosevelt — not honoring a park he resented.

“I hadn’t accepted the park yet. It just always seemed to me like somebody was taking something that was mine,” said Casada, who grew up on land seized for the park. Although he added, “Now I’m glad we gave it.”

Roosevelt’s speech was laden with references to the brewing war in Europe, calling for the need to protect America’s great landscapes and natural history as well as the nation’s freedom.

Sylva isn’t the first place to wrestle with the not-so-pleasant by-product of dogs in public areas.

The wildly popular two-mile walking trail around Lake Junaluska in Haywood County confronted the same issue several years ago.

When word got out that the lake was contemplating a ban on dogs, the requisite public outcry ensued. While Lake Junaluska’s grounds are contained within a private conference center and residential community, the larger public had grown so accustomed to the recreational amenities at the lake it bordered on a sense of entitlement.

Volunteers responded by installing six pooper-scooper stations around the walking path.

“The problem is not as bad now as it was before, I think by and large because the boxes are out there,” said Gene McAbee, the security officer at Lake Junaluska.

The lake orders the baggies by the case — 4,800 baggies for about $200. Each dispenser holds 400 bags. Some have to be restocked every month, especially in the summer.

McAbee said there likely isn’t a cure-all, however.

“Just like people who throw litter out of the window of their cars, they just aren’t going to clean up after themselves,” McAbee said. “Thankfully, the majority who walk their dogs at Lake Junaluska have some sense of responsibility to keep it clean.”

Controversy over closing down the Haywood County trash transfer station has resurfaced now that commissioners have put the idea back on the front burner.

County commissioners postponed a decision earlier this year on whether to shut down the transfer station but promised to take up the issue in coming months when they could devote more time to it. It’s now back on the table as commissioners weigh whether to contract out landfill and trash operations to a private firm.

Perry Samuels, the main driver for Jim’s Garbage Service, dreads making the trek all the way to White Oak landfill should the county close the transfer station. It could be the death knell for Samuels, one of a dozen or so trash haulers in the county who pick up garbage every week for a fee.

The extra distance for each haul would add hours to his day and cost more gas, neither of which he can afford.

Theoretically, trash haulers could pass along the extra costs to customers. But Samuels said it wouldn’t fly.

“I would say if we raised our rates, a lot of people would quit us,” Samuels said. He charges $20 a month for weekly trash pick-up — and that’s already too much for some people. Many customers dropped trash pick-up thanks to recession-inspired penny-pinching.

Another problem is that the landfill is not suitable for high volumes of traffic. There are no clear roads through the landfill. Instead, trucks must navigate giant piles of trash strewn across acres and acres of a mud flat in order to dump their loads. Even a mild rain renders it impassable, so trash trucks must be towed by bulldozers.

“You have to get drug in with a bulldozer and drug out with a bulldozer,” Samuels said. The frame on one of his older trucks broke during such an operation, and he can’t afford to buy a new one.

“If we had to buy a new truck, we would just have to quit,”

Samuels said. “We are operating on a shoestring. I got one truck held together with duct tape, baling wire and shoestring. Come out and take a look if you don’t believe me.”

Trash trucks for the town of Waynesville have also been damaged when being towed by dozers, incurring “expensive repairs,” according to Town Manager Lee Galloway.

But county commissioners are eyeing the savings to be gained from shutting the transfer station — roughly $800,000 a year. They argue that the transfer station only benefits a segment of the population: those who have town trash pick-up or pay a private hauler.

Stephen King, the county solid waste director, said all the taxpayers are subsidizing a service used by some.

“We are trying to do what is best for the entire county,” King said. “If the towns chose to go around and pick up, that is their choice. I can’t change what we do because the towns want that service.”

If the towns and private haulers want to keep the transfer station open, they can pay for it themselves, he said.

“From a taxpayer standpoint if you could save $20 off your household fee by having the towns pay for that service themselves, do you not think county taxpayers would want to do that?” King said.

Double standard

There is a catch, however. The county would continue to subsidize convenience centers where residents without door-to-door drop their trash.

If the county will continue to operate convenience centers free for those outside town limits, why not operate the transfer station for those who live in town, argued Galloway.

There are two legs to the trash journey for everyone. The first leg is getting your trash to a central collection point.

For people without trash pick-up, that means dropping it at a convenience center. For those who live in town or pay a private hauler, their trash is taken to the transfer station.

The second leg of the trash journey — the journey the rest of the way to the White Oak landfill — is picked up by the county, whether it’s from the convenience centers or the transfer station.

Towns argue that closing the transfer station creates a double standard for town residents versus county residents. They both pay the same landfill fee on their county tax bill of $92 a year. Yet one would continue to have their trash journey subsidized and the other would not.

The towns have protested the plan as inequitable, but Galloway said the towns have had a difficult time making their case to county officials.

“The question was asked, ‘Why should county residents subsidize hauling trash to White Oak for town residents,’” Galloway recounted of his meeting with county officials. “We said, ‘Wait a minute … we would still be subsidizing the cost of transporting trash for the people who use the convenience centers.’”

Galloway understands the county’s quest for savings.

“The bottom line is garbage is a terribly expensive proposition,” Galloway said. “I am in total sympathy with the county in that regard. But whatever they do needs to be fair to everybody and fair to the entire county. It is not a Waynesville problem. It is a problem for all 60,000 people.”

But commissioners can’t shake the prospect of saving $800,000 a year.

“The savings are real,” Commissioner Kevin Ensley said. “The general public is looking for us to run an efficient government.”

Ensley said the feedback from constituents is overwhelmingly in favor of closing the transfer station. In fact, they don’t understand why there’s even a debate over it.

“They see it as a no brainer,” Ensley said.

From a strictly economic viewpoint, Commissioner Bill Upton agreed. But there are two sides, Upton said.

“I guess I am in the middle again,” Upton said.

Not sustainable

The cost of operating the transfer station is $800,000 and the cost of convenience centers is $680,000.

King said a costly overhaul would be needed to keep the transfer station going, however. Right now, the transfer station is a jerry-rigged operation.

“Our transfer station is in dire straits,” King said.

Trash dumped off by town trucks and private haulers must be repacked in a tractor-trailer and hauled to White Oak. Ideally, trash would be compacted and baled to fit as much as possible in each load bound for White Oak. But the baler at the transfer station rusted and broke from age. A new one would cost $1.8 million, King said.

Another option is to pack trash into tractor-trailers from above. That’s the way it’s done at the transfer stations in Macon and Jackson counties, and as a result, the tractor-trailers can hold 15 to 20 tons.

But at Haywood’s transfer station, the setup doesn’t allow tractor-trailer trucks to be filled from above. Instead, trash is merely shoveled up into piles by front-end loaders and pushed into the back of tractor trailer.

Workers can only fill the tractor-trailer about halfway before trash starts slipping back out. So trucks head to White Oak with only 7 or 8 tons, requiring twice as many trips.

“Every time our trucks leave out they are less than half full,” King said.

It also takes more manpower to shovel and push trash in the back door of the tractor-trailer rather than dumping in from above.

“We have to upgrade the transfer station. We cannot continue to operate the way we are operating,” King said.

But closing the transfer station would mean making upgrades to the landfill so town and commercial trucks can get in and out.

“We would request that appropriate facilities be constructed so that dumping can be done without encountering the mud and damage to these expensive vehicles,” Galloway wrote to the county in a letter expressing concerns over the plan.

There’s another problem: snow days. The road in and out of the landfill is steep, and last winter there were several days it wasn’t passable. Garbage was stockpiled at the transfer station until the landfill entry road thawed.

Macon also charges towns

Like Haywood, Macon County also has a transfer station. It saves private haulers and town trash trucks in Highlands from making the long trip down the mountain to the county landfill. But it costs them a transfer fee of $8.75 a ton.

Chris Stahl, solid waste director for Macon County, doesn’t feel bad passing along the cost of transporting trash from the transfer station to the landfill to the town residents.

“If you are saving someone an extra 30 minutes round trip by making that trip for them, I think it is proper for them to pay,” Stahl said. “The trash isn’t disposed of until it gets all the way to the landfill. If you are stopping somewhere short of that and the county is picking up the tab to go the rest of the way, the county is subsidizing that.”

The county apparently has no qualms about subsidizing the trash dropped off at Macon County’s eight convenience centers, however, which is hauled the rest of the way to the landfill on the county’s dime.

But Stahl doesn’t see the convenience centers in the same light as the transfer station.

“That hauling is an extra step that some people use and some people don’t. I don’t think it is fair to spread that cost out to everybody else,” Stahl said.

In addition to paying an extra transfer fee, the town of Highlands also chipped in to build the transfer station.

Haywood Commissioner Mark Swanger said the county and towns can work through the debate reasonably.

“This is not insurmountable,” Swanger said “Everybody needs to wait and see what kind of plan can evolve.”

But the towns aren’t content to simply wait. They can’t afford to, Galloway said. Instead, Waynesville is already putting together contingency plans.

“This fall will look at what our costs are to go elsewhere and possibly do our own thing,” Galloway said.

The town is already calculating its options — among them hauling trash to a private landfill in Buncombe instead.

“We have to look at those alternatives,” Galloway said.

Another option is for Waynesville to build its own transfer station, and allow the towns of Canton and Clyde, as well as private haulers, to share it.

The county may also be willing to keep the transfer station open if the town picks up the cost. But Galloway doesn’t like the double-standard.

“It would only be fair if we paid at the transfer station if people who use the convenience centers also paid,” Galloway said.

What is the transfer station?

The transfer station is a trash drop-off site in Clyde where town garbage trucks and commercial haulers can dump their loads instead of making the long trek to the White Oak landfill. The trash is shoveled with front-end loaders into the back of tractor-trailers and transported the rest of the way to the landfill by the county.

The recession bought Haywood County a little extra life in the landfill, thanks to less construction waste and commercial trash.

A pit that everyone thought would be full by now still has more than a year left. But some of the credit is also due to the county’s new solid waste director, Stephen King, who’s proved a zealot for recycling in his three years on the job.

Last year, recycling was a break-even operation. The money made selling recyclables covered the cost of handling, sorting and disposing of them.

Trash, on the other hand, is a $4 million per year cost.

“I can’t generate revenue off the stuff we put in the ground,” King said. “I have to come up with a way to manage it, not just for that day, but for eternity.”

It drives King crazy to see things that could be recycled buried in the earth at such a high cost.

“You tell me where the priority should be,” King said.

“Could you imagine if everybody devoted more effort to recycling? We wouldn’t have to be coming up with solutions to deal with this.”

King’s preaching — as well as the glaring line item in the county’s budget every year — prompted Commissioner Kevin Ensley to finally start recycling. He’s so into it now that he plays the role of recycling police with other family members — even recycling things like cardboard paper towel tubes and the boxes that toothpaste come in. He’s cut his household trash from five to six bags a week to only two.

“I don’t think I am going to save the planet by recycling, but I know I am saving my tax money,” Ensley said.

In a personal experiment, King split open people’s trash bags to see how much was getting thrown away that could be getting recycled. At least 50 percent of what’s being thrown away could be recycled instead.

“Why are we digging more holes to put recyclables in?” King said

Moody Funeral Home in Sylva has been accused of hiding its assets and income to avoid paying bills in violation of a court order, according to the latest filing in an ongoing lawsuit.

Moody Funeral Home was sued in 2007 by a casket company after failing to pay for coffins it had ordered, according to court filings. The court sided with the casket company and ordered Moody Funeral Home to pay $176,000 in 2008.

However, Moody Funeral Home claims it has no assets to its name nor any income and therefore hasn’t paid.

Meanwhile, funerals continue to be conducted out of the building. The sign still says Moody Funeral Home, as do those answering the phone at the business. And the same man still runs the business now as before, namely Reginald Moody Jr.

However, Moody claims he is running the business as a different entity now. Before, Moody Funeral Home was run by a corporation called Wings Aviation, and now it is being run by Moody Services.

Wings — not Moody Services — is the one named in the lawsuit. While Wings used to run the funeral home, it doesn’t any more.

“Used to does not count,” Moody said. “Wings Aviation has no affiliation with Moody Funeral Home or any of its businesses. Moody Funeral Home is run entirely by Moody Services.”

Moody was the president of Wings and is the sole proprietor of Moody Services, according to court filings. Moody said Wings ceased to do business in December 2007 — timing that coincides with the lawsuit by the casket company.

An accountant appointed by the court to investigate the finances surrounding Moody Funeral Home filed a report this month describing a tangled web of corporate entities designed to “hinder, delay and defraud creditors,” according to Shelia Gahagan, a CPA in Waynesville.

Specifically, Gahagan shows how assets once owned by Wings — from its building, to vehicles, to trade name — have been siphoned to other entities in hopes of making them untouchable by creditors, the court filing claims.

“It is certainly my position at this juncture that I will request the shareholder to repay any monies and to return any property taken from the corporation,” Gahagan wrote. “It appears if the shareholders would return money and assets they have taken, all the creditors could be made whole.”

Jeff Norris, a Waynesville attorney who represented the casket company, said Gahagan’s investigation confirms “a lot of what I suspected.”

“I have a client with a substantial judgment, and this individual has been taking money out of the corporation,” Norris said. “He has gone in and used it as his personal checking account.”

Gahagan was appointed the receiver in hopes of uncovering assets in Wings’ name that could be used to pay more than $400,000 in debts, owed not only to the casket company but the IRS and others as well.

The court gave her discretion to investigate the finances of all the business operations being conducted out of Moody Funeral Home. But Gahagan said she has not been given full access to the books and records.

Fred Jones, an attorney representing Moody, said that Gahagan is looking into more than she is entitled to, taking the “broadest possible view to expand the search for assets.”

Moody has an appeal filed with the N.C. Court of Appeals protesting the scope of Gahagan’s investigation. Multiple businesses can and are operated from a single address. The court should have tailored Gahagan’s investigation only to Wings, not to the other entities that now run funeral home operations.

“It appears they are wanting to not accept there is a difference between Wings Aviation and Mr. Moody individually,” Jones said.

Moody said the report by Gahagan makes incorrect conclusions.

“I would caution you to be very skeptical of that report. Most of the report is wrong,” Moody said.

A court filing rebuking inaccuracies in the report has been prepared by Sylva Attorney Jay Coward, but has not yet been filed. Coward did not return phone calls seeking comment due to a busy schedule, his assistant said.

The next step in the court case is unclear. The judge appointed to the case, Zoro Guise, could make a ruling based on Gahagan’s report and the rebuttal by Moody. But Jones hopes there will be a hearing.

“This is a report by a receiver, whether it is true, false, mistaken, misunderstood — these are nothing more right now than allegations,” Jones said.

When voters head to the polls in Canton next week, they will face a daunting and even unwieldy list to choose from: 10 candidates for four seats on the board.

Town politics in Canton have been marked by division the past two years, and the vast majority of candidates claim they will rise above the fray and bring an end to the stalemate that has stalled progress on some important issues.

Much is at stake as the historic mill town struggles to find its place in the 21st century economy. Canton is one of the last blue-collar, working towns in the region, where smoke dominates the landscape and the mill whistle still trumpets across town. But the mom-and-pop shops that once anchored Main Street have gone the way of suburban sprawl. Unlike other mountain towns that filled the void by catering to tourists, that model wasn’t in Canton’s cards.

Candidates running for town board say they want to help forge a new path for Canton, but to do so means ending the power struggles that have consumed the town’s agenda.

“I feel like the lack of cohesiveness on this board the past two years has kept them from making a lot of progress,” said Carole Edwards, one of the candidates.

“It’s like we are standing still, waiting to move forward,” said Angela Jenkins, another challenger on the ticket.

The mantra for change resonating through this election is not new. Two years ago, voters ousted three long-time board members and ushered in a slate of new faces for the first time in years.

“I think people were looking for some good positive change,” said Patrick Willis, who supported the turnover two years ago but is now running himself. “I think people were hoping for improvement the last election, but I didn’t see much improvement, so I think that’s why so many people are running now.”

Indeed, many candidates share Willis’ assessment of town politics.

“Two years ago, I was happy there was a change made,” said Gene Monson, another candidate. “It was time for some fresh faces. However, as a board, I don’t think they accomplished what they wanted to accomplish over the past two years — or accomplish what most of the citizens were hoping for.”

Those who swept into office two years ago admit they haven’t been as effective as they hoped.

“There was resistance to the improvements and initiatives we brought,” said Alderman Eric Dills, who seems to be at permanent loggerheads with Mayor Pat Smathers. “If the town has not progressed in the past two years, the mayor has to bear his share and can’t keep pointing his finger at the board and saying it is all our fault.”

While challengers are quick to criticize the current board for not getting along, few were willing to ascribe blame.

“I don’t know whose fault that is. That is very controversial, and I wouldn’t touch that with a 10-foot pole,” Edwards said. “You can’t place blame on any one person.”

Jenkins said the blame lies on both sides.

“I think it has been uncooperative all the way around. People went in there and picked a team,” Jenkins said. “It was us versus them.”

Kenneth Holland, another candidate, said he wouldn’t “point the finger at anybody.” That’s not what matters, he said.

“The net result is not a whole lot is being accomplished,” Holland said.

Candidates scrambled to fend off labels that would lump them into one of the existing camps on the board.

“I think the idea of a Pat Smathers’ camp and an Eric Dills’ camp is more in the mind of Pat and Eric than the minds of the citizens,” Monson said. “I think the citizens are saying ‘I agree with part of what one says and part of what the other says.’”

While campaigning to voters, however, Monson has been asked point-blank if he was on one side or the other. His answer?

“If elected, I am not in either camp,” Monson said.

Underwood said he wouldn’t “take sides” between Dills and Smathers. Candidates would lose votes from people on the other side if they openly testified to being in a camp, Underwood said.

Only Jenkins admitted to being in any particular camp: the people’s camp.

“I feel like I would be for the side that was for the people,” Jenkins said. “I think you should be able to voice your opinion but also be able to listen to other people’s opinion.”

That’s precisely what hasn’t been happening amidst the power struggle on the board, according to candidates staking out the middle ground.

“I hope I have the intelligence and humility to consider every idea on its merits and not based on whose idea it is,” Monson said. “I am more concerned about getting it right than being right.”

Willis said a difference of opinion on the board could be a positive thing if they listened to each other.

“I am all for putting out 200 ideas,” Willis said. “I don’t want the board members not to listen to an idea just because they don’t like who it came from.”

Quagmire

Dills said the new board members faced pushback on initiatives they tried to bring to the table over the past two years. Dills said those in charge at town hall tried to block the change.

One example involved installing swings at the town playground, which had been part of Dills’ campaign platform in 2007.

“I told people, ‘If I get elected, I am going to get you those swings,’” Dills said.

Shortly after taking office, Dills and the other new board members expressed their desire for swings. But Town Manager Al Matthews said the town’s insurance would go sky-high with the addition of swings, according to Dills. They continued to push the issue, however, and directed Matthews to research insurance rates. It turned out the town’s insurance rates wouldn’t “go up one cent,” Dills said.

“It was like pulling teeth to get the swings,” Dills said.

Dills recounted a similar resistance when he proposed extending the season for the outdoor pool by remaining open two additional weekends through the end of August.

“Mr. Matthews said it could not be done. He said it was impossible,” Dills said.

According to Dills, Matthews said it would be a problem getting lifeguards to work. But when Dills took his proposal directly to the town recreation committee, they said there was no problem getting lifeguards for two additional weekends. The extended season was a success this year, Dills said.

A top example of the quagmire on current board point is how long it took to hire a permanent town manager. Long-time Town Manager Bill Stamey retired shortly after the new guard was elected in fall 2007. Town Clerk Al Matthews stepped in as interim town manager, a post he held for another 16 months — which is how long it took the board to choose him to take Stamey’s place.

“We were in a state of flux during that time,” Edwards said. “It is a very important role for a town, especially a town this small.”

As the process drug out, Smathers publicly expressed his frustration. But Dills claims it was the mayor’s fault, not his.

“He kept blaming us for taking so long to hire the manager when he was delaying the entire process,” Dills said.

Smathers wanted to promote Matthews to town manager, while Dills supported an outside candidate. Dills was ultimately the only board member who voted against Matthews appointment to the post.

“I felt we needed a new manager for things to change,” Dills said.

Tax hike

While the majority of candidates say the turnover on the board two years ago reflected voters desire for change, Charlie Crawford, one of the aldermen voted off the board at the time, paints a different picture. He claims it was mostly backlash over a 5-cent property tax increase.

Crawford said the town had depleted its reserves on flood recovery, a catastrophe dating back to 2004 when a swollen Pigeon River consumed much of downtown Canton. The town had to rebuild the depleted reserves, he said.

“It absolutely had to be done,” Crawford said.

Crawford points to the failure of the current board to lower property taxes as proof there was no alternative.

“That says to me they knew absolutely nothing about what they were talking about before the election,” Crawford said of his ousters two years ago.

Not only did the newcomers not lower taxes, but they raised fees for town services like trash pick-up and water and sewer.

Jimmy Flynn, a long-time town employee now running for office, agrees discontent over the tax increase drove the election results two years ago.

“I think that tax increase was not thoroughly explained to the public,” Flynn said, adding that an incremental increase would have been more tactful.

Alderman Troy Mann, who is running for election, made the property tax hike his main campaign platform two years ago.

“Most people were upset about that,” Mann said. “We needed folks on that board who would look out for the expenditure of their tax revenue.”

But Ed Underwood, another candidate, questioned a governing philosophy that avoids raising taxes at all costs.

“They don’t care what happens to anybody else as long as their taxes don’t go up,” Underwood said. “If you’ve got that mindset, you are being a little selfish. They don’t want the town to progress. Other people are out there saying, ‘I wish we had things for our kids to do.’”

Underwood said he was not among those seeking wholesale change in leadership two years ago.

“I liked a lot of the board members who were there at the time. I supported some of the board members who were there,” Underwood said.

A big plan

Mayor Pat Smathers, who has held office since 2000, has aggressively pursued a new image for Canton over the past decade. The current board has stalled that vision, Crawford said.

Flynn agreed and said if elected, he would support the “mayor’s train,” borrowing directly from an analogy Smathers has used over the years to describe his initiatives.

“Even if it is moving very slowly, it still needs to be moving,” Flynn said of the train. “I think over the past two years, it has not went forward at all.”

While Smathers is running unopposed for mayor, he has not stayed out of the race. He wrote an op-ed column in The Mountaineer two weeks ago laying out a 17-point plan for the town. He directly challenged candidates to get on board with his vision and called on voters to pin candidates down on whether they would support him.

“My aim is to make the following items election-year issues so that I and whoever is elected can begin working on an implementation plan soon after the election,” Smathers wrote in the op-ed.

Many were careful to couch their support, however. They said they would support Smathers’ ideas on their merits, but not merely because Smathers wants them to.

“I will do what is in the best interest of the town,” Monson said. “As far as it being Pat’s platform, I am running to work for the citizens of Canton. I am not running to work for Pat.”

Willis said the members of the town board should also craft their own lists. The board should compare and contrast their lists, then rank the projects by priority.

“I don’t think all the ideas (on Pat’s list) are as important as Pat thinks they are. Some are. We just need to look at those,” Willis said.

Residents should be brought into the fold as well, according to Willis.

“In a perfect world there would be a number of residents who have input on what those goals should be,” Willis said.

Underwood said there’s not much Smathers left off the list.

“Pat listed a lot of things,” Underwood said. “I think anybody in that position who knew the town like Pat does would probably list the same things.”

Nonetheless, Underwood thinks there’s room for more input.

“Pat has put this list out there. Everybody else needs to put their list out there and come up with a consensus on how we need to attack what Canton needs,” Underwood said.

Underwood pointed out that Dills has not put out a similar list of his ideas.

Dills countered that not all of his ideas are tangible projects. One of his initiatives would be ending a long-standing practice of nepotism in town hiring. Another would be reducing the number of town employees who are issued unmarked town vehicles to drive back and forth to work.

What to tackle

The sheer volume of items on Smathers’ list left few stones unturned. The list called for installing lights on town sports fields, creating a craft and farmer’s market, hiring a town recreation coordinator and extending the town’s greenway. It included an upgrade of town water and sewer lines around Interstate 40, where the capacity has been maxed out preventing new businesses from hooking on. Smathers also wants to annex new territory into the town limits.

Nearly every candidate said they supported the items on the list in theory, although they had different ideas of which are most important and should be tackled first.

Holland said Smathers has been an excellent visionary for the town.

“He hits the nail on the head,” Holland said. “The problem is he can’t get everybody to go along with him on it. Some board members may have opposed it just because Pat proposed it.”

Dills said it would be hard not to support items on the mayor’s list.

“Who could be against those things? We all want outdoor lights at the international sports complex, but it costs $425,000 and the town absolutely doesn’t have it,” Dills said.

Alderman Troy Mann also questioned the usefulness of the list when there was no way to pay for it all.

“It would be foolish to go out and advocate spending $450,000 on a project without the necessary cash flow to pay for it,” Mann said.

Mann said he has tried to keep the reins on town spending during his term, even though it’s labeled as not progressive.

“I wasn’t bursting forth with a lot of ideas that would create a lot of tax requirements,” Mann said. “There are times in your own family budget that you put back those things you think you can do without.”

Mann said no board should fall in lockstep behind one person’s initiatives, which is one difference between the current board and previous board.

“It is not a given that if it is brought to the table it is going to be approved,” Mann said. “There is more discussion, more oversight. We are more engaged. Every issue is given more consideration.”

Crawford said just because the previous board got along doesn’t mean they rolled over.

“I had a number of disagreements with the mayor when I was on the board serving under Pat. They just weren’t worked out in public. They were worked out behind the scenes,” Crawford said. “You don’t air your dirty laundry in public.”

Affluent property owners in Balsam Mountain Preserve have raised commitments of $16.3 million in an effort to stave off foreclosure of the development by lenders.

Balsam Mountain Preserve, a mega development on 4,400 acres in Jackson County, owes nearly $20 million to lenders, who initiated foreclosure proceedings earlier this month. A hearing on whether the foreclosure can proceed was scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 28.

Dave Walters, one of the property owners leading the effort to raise capital, hopes they will get a seat at the table in the dialogue between the lender and Balsam Mountain Preserve.

“We hoped to raise enough capital that would create an environment the lender would want to have serious dialogue with us during this process,” Walters said. “We have a very active and very intelligent and very vested and worldly group of property owners who are engaged and will remain so.”

Ideally, property owners hope to step into the shoes of the lender and get in control of their own destiny, Walters said. Commitments have been raised from 65 property owners — more than a third of the total property owners within the development.

“I think that is indicative of the overwhelming love for the place and the desire to keep the lifestyle what we hoped it would be,” Walters said.

Property owners would rather keep Balsam Mountain Preserve’s parent company Chaffin Light on board as the developers rather than an unknown player, Walter said.

“The ultimate goal has always been to keep the Balsam in Balsam,” Walters said “Balsam Mountain Preserve is a very unique place.”

Lots in Balsam Mountain Preserve have averaged $500,000. The grounds are rife with multi-millionaires and corporate executives who bought into the culture the upscale development embodies: top-notch amenities, an environmental ethos, strict covenants and a woodland estate setting. The conservation ethic is particularly important to property owners, Walters said.

“Nobody knows what a new owner or someone who took over would do,” said Nancy Seidensticker, a homeowner in the development. “It is a little frightening. We don’t want it change. We like it the way it is.”

Balsam Mountain Preserve has been in default of a $19.8 million loan since January, trying the patience of TriLyn, a private equity real estate investment firm based in Connecticut. The property owners knew a foreclosure was in the cards since May and have been working on a plan since then.

They created an LLC, wrote an investment prospectus and solicited pledges from property owners. The deal is twofold, mirroring the two major pieces of equity within the development.

One fund, called the Balsam Mountain Sustainability Plan, would be collateralized with the unsold lots that are still in the developers’ hands — approximately 120 lots. The current developers would remain on board as operators and pay back the loan from property owners through lot sales. So far, $8 million has been raised through that fund.

A second fund, called the Amenity Purchase Plan, would be collateralized through the amenities, including an Arnold Palmer golf course, riding stables, dining hall, pool, tennis courts, pavilion and backcountry camp. The amenities have been shut down for now.

“The amenities are a very large part of keeping the Balsam in Balsam,” Walters said.

Property owners buying into the fund would own the amenities and make money back over time through memberships and any profits off their operation.

Property owners are not willing to take a second position to the current lenders, Walter said. The property owners have fallen a few million short of being able to pay the lender off in full, however. Whether the lenders are willing to take what they can get and walk away, or whether they would prefer to move forward with foreclosure in hopes of eventually making all their money back, is not known.

“In today’s market, it is all about the money,” Walters said. “That is the position the lender has taken since day one. They have a right, it is their money.”

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is home to one of the most intact and comprehensive collections of early Americana, lining row after row, room upon room, of metal shelves, drawers and floor space in a sprawling, albeit hidden, storehouse.

A gander through the vast collection brings people of the past back to life. A knife worn on the belt of a farmer from sunrise to sunset, a dipper tipped to the mouth of thirsty children during a break from hoeing, quilt pieces painstakingly stitched by lamplight on winter nights, glass salt cellars proudly set at each place for Sunday dinner.

“Every usable item tells a story about how people lived, how they worked, how hard life could have been for them, as well as the ingenuity that went into building it. Sometimes I think, ‘How did anyone ever think to build something like this?’” said Dianne Flaugh, the park’s caretaker of the artifact collection.

Much of the collection is attributed to the work of two early park rangers who were savvy enough to scoop up items from the families living in the park at the time of its creation. The men, Hiram Wilburn and Charles Grossman, traveled around the countryside visiting the mountaineers being evacuated from their homes and farms to make way for the park.

They had one major advantage. The families simply couldn’t take everything with them. The park provided no moving assistance, posing a serious hardship. For families with several small children or elderly in their ranks, multiple wagon trips over the mountains to cart out possessions was simply not possible.

“It was a matter of people packing and deciding ‘Do I need this much stuff?’ So large things like looms or broken kettles were left behind,” said Flaugh.

The park’s collection continued to grow over the years.

“Even today people come to us and say ‘This was owned by grandmother. She grew up in the park. We want you to have it,’” Flaugh said.

But Grossman and Wilburn soon encountered a problem that would continue to plague the park for decades: where to put it all. The early historians stashed their treasure in any nook and cranny they could find. The artifacts continued to be shunted about every couple of decades, squirreled away in the attics and basements of park buildings, including a stint in the loft of Mingus Mill.

Through the collection’s many twists and turns, its varied caretakers adopted their own method of cataloguing the items. Park historians only recently wrestled the artifacts under a uniform system. Luckily, tags had largely kept up with the item they belonged to.

But the collection still has its share of renegade objects, with no owner or origin. Some are so veiled in obscurity, their long-ago use or purpose proves a guessing game, fueling a rousing game of “what in the Sam Hill is this?”

Flaugh finds one item in particular that always seems to lack a tag identifying its long-ago owner: moonshine stills.

No permanent home

By the early 1980s, the unwieldy collection had taken up residence in the damp and musty basement of the 1930s-era Oconaluftee Visitor Center. Kent Cave, a recent graduate of Appalachian studies, landed the task of assessing it. He spent day in and day out going through box after box of the rare antiques dating back to the park’s creation and beyond. While the hustle and bustle of park visitors went on overhead, Cave quietly pored over the relics, gingerly oiling leather gun holsters or removing rust from plow blades. He occasionally pieced the parts of spinning wheels or looms back together.

One particular restoration provided a little more excitement than he bargained for as an historian. While cleaning a muzzle-loader, he inserted a rod down the barrel only to have it stop before reaching the breach. The dicey job of disarming the loaded rifle fell to Cave. It ultimately involved irrigating the barrel with water while inserting a rod with screw tip down the barrel, boring into the bullet and lifting it out.

Cave had a knack for identifying often obscure items, like a tooth from a mechanized mowing machine that had accidentally found its way into a box of cobbler tools. When he occasionally got stumped, he sought out old-timers to help decipher what a certain object might be. Another trusty source was a century-old Sears and Roebuck catalog, as many of the items had been ordered from its pages long ago.

For three years, Cave bonded with the park’s collection, and by extension, the park’s former residents.

“You wonder about the people who used a particular coffee grinder or sausage grinder or cobbler’s bench or dough bowl, things that you know were in someone’s home and used on a daily basis,” Cave said. “You feel a personal kinship to people who gave up their homes and sacrificed for the establishment of the park. You feel a certain obligation to them to take care of their family heirlooms.”

To Cave, the collection provides a rare window on what life must have been like.

“There are an awful lot of hand tools and equipment you have to use by hand. Everything required some sweat and elbow grease,” said Cave, who is now the supervisor of visitor outreach.

Steve Kemp recently got to know the cultural repository during the making of a coffee table book by the Great Smoky Mountains Association. The book will provide a photographical tour of the otherwise hidden collection.

“It’s astonishing how people were so much more versatile in those days, how the average person could make so many things, from furniture for the house to a harness for the horse,” said Kemp, the director of interpretive products for the Association. “Another thing that struck me is how busy people were. It must have been seven days a week, 18 hours a day.”

The damp basement of the Oconaluftee Visitor Center was obviously a poor place to store the precious collection. So in 2000, the park managed to secure climate controlled storage space in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the home of a major federal complex that served as a nuclear research facility in WWII. The park was understandably reluctant to ship its collection to a remote site near Knoxville, but safeguarding the items seemed more important than having old baskets and butter churns close at hand. The park pays $27,000 every year in rent for the 4,000-square-feet of storage.

New visitor center on the horizon

To many, the second-fiddle status of the artifacts — witnessed by the park’s failure to build a proper storage facility inside the park — is an affront to those who sacrificed their land for the park and who donated items for the collection, and to the millions of visitors who would otherwise like to see them.

Shortly after the park was established, a master plan called for twin visitor centers at the main park entrances in Tennessee and North Carolina. In Tennessee, the visitor center would focus on natural history and in North Carolina on cultural heritage.

The one in North Carolina was never built, however. Instead, a small ranger station built by the Civilian Conservation Corps has sufficed.

Until now, that is.

Construction of a new $3 million visitor center at Oconaluftee got underway this year. It is being funded jointly by the Friends of the Smokies and the Great Smoky Mountains Association. Its primary focus will be cultural interpretation. At long last, some of the precious artifacts in the park’s collection can be viewed by the public.

The cultural heritage theme will dovetail with the Mountain Farm Museum already in place at the site, where visitors can see old farm buildings and demonstrations of early life. In keeping with the national park setting, the visitor center will be certified as an environmentally friendly building, with features like geothermal heating and cooling, recycled building materials and rain water collection for flushing toilets.

One of the most difficult things will be picking out which artifacts to put on display in the new visitor center. In the 7,000-square-foot center, about a third will be dedicated to a museum — not nearly enough to fit everything.

“Just like at the Smithsonian, only a tiny portion of what they have is displayed for the public,” said Bob Miller, park spokesperson.

To Cave, who spent may a lonely day bonding with the collection nearly 30 years ago, the new museum will provide a long overdue homecoming.

“This is a fulfillment of a dream and of a promise,” said Cave.

The election for Sylva town board next week will determine the philosophical direction for the town.

The board has been marked by split votes over the past two years, stemming from deep-seated ideological differences.

Two years ago, the majority on the board shifted away from a more traditional mindset toward a more progressive bent, reflecting the growing number of newcomers and young people moving to town. This election, the pendulum could swing back to the traditional camp, or swing further toward the progressive side.

The more traditional camp — consisting of Harold Hensley and Ray Lewis — has consistently opposed town funding for the Downtown Sylva Association. They also opposed funding for the downtown Bridge Park concert pavilion and were against allowing dog walkers in the park for sanitary reasons.

They have been on the losing side of issues over the past two years, however. Danny Allen, who lost re-election two years ago, was once in their camp. If he wins his seat back, they would once again be in the majority.

Town Commissioner Stacy Knotts, who is up for election, has partnered with Sarah Graham and Maurice Moody to pursue a more progressive agenda of town initiatives.

Another challenger in the race, David Kelley, says he wouldn’t join the progressive camp by default but he would be more flexible than Hensley in advancing the progressive agenda.

Kelley, 32, said he straddles the divergent philosophies on the board. On one hand, he’s younger like Knotts and Graham and spends a lot of time downtown. On the other hand, he was born and raised in Sylva and can identify with the more traditional views of long-time residents.

“Sometimes Harold and Ray are more traditional because they have been here longer and are closer to a lot of the natives,” Kelley said. But, “I can see ways of improvement and change that might be good overall that maybe the others can’t see or don’t want to see.”

Whichever side wins the election will have a chance to further solidify their agenda on the board by appointing a like-minded board member to join their ranks come December. Moody will vacate his board seat to become mayor, and the rest of the board members get to appoint his replacement.

Knotts got more votes than Hensley when the two appeared on the same ballot four years ago. Like this time, there were two seats up for election on the board. Both were running unopposed, however, creating a shoe-in for each.

Bridge Park

One issue that shows the dividing line on the board is funding for downtown amenities. Hensley and Allen both raised issues with the money spent on Bridge Park, a small vacant lot downtown that was converted into a gathering place featuring a covered pavilion stage with a grassy lawn.

“I talked to a lot of people and they are saying they are not going to use that park,” Allen said. “But who pays for that? It is the taxpayers. That park is not a necessity in these times right now. The taxpayers are on fixed incomes.”

Hensley agreed. He said the town contributed around $100,000 to the creation of the park, including $12,000 on the sod alone.

Knotts supports the investment in Bridge Park and thinks the public appreciates it. She has heard a lot of support for Bridge Park on campaign rounds.

“A lot of people really like Bridge Park,” Knotts said.

Residents tell her they like the progressive projects the town has embarked on, Knotts said, whether it was Bridge Park, the launch of curbside recycling and plans under way for a Sylva to Dillsboro sidewalk.

While Hensley prides himself on penny-pinching, Knotts said he does not have the monopoly on safeguarding taxpayer dollars.

“I think all the board members have been good stewards of the taxpayers money. Many, many of these projects are funded by grants. We are as efficient as we can and definitely scale back,” Knotts said.

Kelley wouldn’t weigh in on whether Bridge Park was a good use of money. He has heard from both sides, he said.

“It certainly is nice and is definitely improves the town overall,” Kelley said. But he thinks the board could communicate better with residents about those types of expenditures.

Allen said the current board’s focus on downtown, like the town’s effort to provide plastic baggies for dog walkers to clean up after their dogs, is excessive. He said Knotts’ camp has been catering to special-interest groups who want to shape Sylva to suit their own lifestyle.

Hensley opposed spending town dollars on the plastic baggies for dog poo as well. He suggested banning dogs from Bridge Park as an alternative solution so that people could enjoy the park without worrying about sitting in dog poo while watching a concert.

Hensley still doesn’t favor a contribution of town dollars to the Downtown Sylva Association — another source of debate on the board.

“I don’t think the taxpayers send their money down there for us to decide to give it to other charities,” Hensley said.

Several years ago the town contributed $20,000 to DSA. But Hensley, Lewis and Allen voted to reduce it to $2,000. When Graham unseated Allen, the philosophy shifted and the town partially restored funding to $12,000 a year, where it now stands.

“I think they are a great organization, but I do not believe in using tax dollars to fund it,” Hensley said.

Knotts said the work of the Downtown Sylva Association is important to the quality of life of all residents . DSA performs vital community service by generally promoting downtown and staging events, including the Christmas Parade and Greening Up the Mountains festival. Knotts sees it as an economic investment, since downtown events bring in visitors, who in turn support businesses throughout town.

Hensley says he is not against downtown, however. He would like to build a public restroom downtown and employ a police officer who walks the streets of downtown like in days gone by.

Knotts said several issues will face the town over the next four years. She sees the town board weighing in on how to solve traffic congestion on N.C. 107. The town will also likely tackle new development guidelines along the commercial corridors leading into town.

A trail and recreation plan for Pinnacle Park will be adopted. And the town will have to decide what to do with a town building occupied by the Golden Age Senior Center once it moves into a new senior center built by the county. Knotts wants to see it turned into a community center of some sort.

Several candidates have made downtown revitalization the central tenet of their campaign and consider it the one of the most important issues on the town’s agenda. They include Gene Monson, Carole Edwards, and Kenneth Holland.

“When I was growing up, it was a booming, prosperous little town. We have seen that go away. The downtown has kind of dried up,” Holland said.

Holland wants to see a downtown revitalized to look more like the town he once knew. And who wouldn’t?

“All the buildings were full,” Edwards said. “You had drugstores and you had clothing stores. We had a Belk’s on the corner. We had a jewelry store. You could buy a pair of shoes. We had all the things in our town that you would need.”

Canton is not alone in its plight. Small towns across America saw business sucked from their downtowns by strip malls and big-box stores as auto-centric suburban sprawl became the new way of life.

But Edwards thinks there’s hope.

“I really feel like we can bring this town back to life. I know other communities have done it,” Edwards said. “We shouldn’t sit there and say ‘We can’t do this.’ There is always an option out there.”

But others aren’t as optimistic. Several of the old anchor buildings are in the hands of owners who aren’t investing in their upkeep. Charlie Crawford, another candidate, questioned if the town could force the owners to do something with their buildings.

“People have a right to do with their property what they want to do,” Crawford said.

Crawford said the town has tried to create a nurturing atmosphere for revitalization. Crawford pointed to streetscape projects pursued during his tenure, which vastly improved the downtown appearance by burying power lines, installing historic lampposts and beautifying sidewalks and the public realm.

“I think the town has done about all it can do to help the building owners,” Crawford said.

The downtown proponents advocate cracking down on these building owners, however.

“Citizen after citizen after citizen appeals to the board of aldermen about the appearance of downtown. I hear the town say there is nothing we can do. I disagree. There is,” Monson said. “People sit here and say ‘As a property owner you own this and own that.’ But you don’t own it — you are simply a steward of that property.”

The downtown district has been recognized as a National Historic District and the town has a historic preservation committee to oversee it. Monson said the historic status provides a mechanism to compel building owners to take responsibility.

Holland agrees the town needs to more stringently enforce appearance codes for downtown buildings.

Alderman Eric Dills agrees as well.

“We need to require the building owners, most of whom do not live in Canton, to maintain their buildings to an acceptable standard,” Dills said.

Holland said the downtown needs an active merchants’ association to “get everyone pulling together.”

Candidate Jimmy Flynn would like to see a business organization take root in Canton, but said it shouldn’t be limited to the downtown area.

“I hate to think of downtown as an entity in itself,” said Flynn. “I feel like business in Canton is business in Canton, be downtown or anywhere else. I think we are too small a town to identify one little area to be economic development. It needs to be in any area that will accommodate business growth.”

“You can’t just focus on the downtown. You have to focus on the entire town,” candidate Ed Underwood said.

A drill simulating the collapse of a tunnel on Interstate 40 in Haywood County tested and prepared the full gamut of emergency workers during an exercise that spanned 30 hours and involved hundreds of rescue personnel from across the region.

The training exercise began at the 911 center, where dispatchers pieced together the extent of the disaster as fake 911 calls rolled in. The calls themselves were dramatic, painting a picture of mass carnage, including the screams of one distressed woman who’d lost her legs as a boulder came through her windshield.

The bulk of the exercise involved the rescue workers themselves, who dug through piles of dirt and stumps and tunneled through concrete to reach crumpled cars replete with injured mannequins inside the replica of a tunnel.

The operation even extended to Haywood Regional Medical Center, where nurses set up a makeshift crisis wing at Haywood Regional Medical Center to handle the influx of trauma patients.

Orchestrating the fake disaster, which was staged on vacant land in Jonathan Creek, was an undertaking in itself.

“We literally took dirt and rocks and logs and used heavy track hoes, bulldozers and dump trucks and hauled the debris to each end of the tunnel and covered it up,” said Greg Shuping, Haywood County Emergency Services director.

Once inside the tunnel, rescuers encountered upturned, smashed-up cars, some trapped under rubble and a few that were even on fire. Rescuers had to put out the fires and cut through car doors to extract the dummies, each with its own lineup of injuries that had to be treated.

“They did an excellent job simulating the tragedy,” said Jim Pressley, the director of Haywood County EMS.

Rescuers got a chance to treat burns, crushed limbs, and even respiratory distress as a result of breathing in dust.

“We pretty much saw the gamut of every injury you would expect to see if such an event happened,” Pressley said.

Some patients were inevitably beyond saving, and rescuers had to perform triage, deciding which patients to extract first. The tunnel was booby-trapped with obstacles. Concrete barriers had been piled up to simulate collapsed tunnel walls, requiring rescuers to bore through concrete and crawl through the openings to reach victims. In one place, the road had collapsed and rescuers had to build a bridge over a fissure before continuing with the operation.

It’s what Shuping called a “very technical rescue experience.” Those setting up the drill observed the actual tunnel site on Interstate 40 in the Pigeon River Gorge to get a snapshot of how many and what type of vehicles would be inside should it ever experience a collapse. The simulation used 25 vehicles: a mix of cars, trucks, buses and vans.

The drill was funded with a $60,000 federal grant from the Department of Homeland Security. The grant was awarded on the premise that it would be used for a regional exercise and a realistic scenario. Shuping said both were achieved, with rescue workers from many surrounding counties involved in the drill. As for a realistic scenario? While rare, earthquakes, mostly barely detectable tremors but earthquakes nonetheless, have occurred here, including two in the past five years.

The operation tested more than the nuts and bolts of a rescue itself, but the systems that support it. The training exercise even tested the protocol for calling in back-up workers at the dispatch center to handle the increased volume of 911 calls to ensure that other emergencies didn’t fall through the cracks when phone lines were flooded.

Since the drill lasted 30 hours, rescuers twice got to practice handing off the operations — both at a command level and in the trenches — to relief teams every 12 hours. The seamless hand-off of an ongoing rescue operation is in itself a useful exercise, Shuping said.

Jennifer Pharr Davis, the female record-holder for the fastest thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail, spoke to a large crowd in the auditorium of Southwestern Community College in Sylva last week, enrapturing students with tales of her trail exploits.

While Davis has hiked many of the world’s most glamorous trails, from the Inca Trail in Peru to Mount Kilimanjaro, the trail with the most stories is the one right here in the students’ backyard.

Davis’ record-setting hike in 2008 was actually her second trip along the trail. Her first was in 2005 upon graduating from college. She was a mere two weeks into the trail somewhere outside Franklin when she was struck by lightning, emerging shaken but uninjured. A week later, she was crossing one of the toughest, highest sections of the trail through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park when a blizzard struck.

“I had a couple Pop-Tarts and a little bit of peanut butter and that was it. I knew I had to make it out of the Smokies,” Davis said.

Her remaining trail miles through the park were mostly downhill, so she turned her boots into cross-country skis. Sleet was driving against one side of her face, like razor knocks in her skin. She lowered her head and closed one eye on the windward side.

“It was hard because the AT is marked with white blazes and everything that I saw was white.”

When she got into protection of the forest canopy, the eye she’d shut was frozen closed.

“The rain and snow had congealed in my eye, and I couldn’t open it,” Davis said.

The elements weren’t the only challenges Davis encountered during her 2005 expedition. The Appalachian Trail is not quite the respite from society most would assume.

“There are lots of people on the trail, lots of friendly people on the trail, lots of young males who are especially friendly on the trail,” Davis said.

Davis was usually able to shake unwanted hiking companions by virtue of her pace, except for one tag-along in the Virginia section.

“He walked anywhere he could near me for 10 days,” Davis said. Like any good Southerner, Davis deployed a litany of subtle hints, but they were lost on him.

“I would say things like ‘I really like being a solo hiker,’ and he would say ‘Yeah, me too,’” Davis said. “I didn’t know how to get rid of him. At one point I hid under a rhododendron bush hoping he wouldn’t see me.”

Davis finally had to put her good Southern manners aside and tell him bluntly. The skill of direct communication continued to serve Davis well on a trail that can sometimes be intimidating for young single women.

Davis had a troubling experience on the trail in New Jersey that brought her hike — and her life — into a new focus. She came upon a man who had committed suicide in the middle of the trail. She didn’t know the cause at the time, however, only that she had stumbled upon a dead man.

“I pulled out the cell phone my mother insisted I carry as fast as I could,” Davis said.

She called 911 as she ran down the trail away from the spot. The experience had her brooding for days, feeling alone and scared. Word traveled in the trail community of her disturbing encounter. Within a couple weeks, the mother of a fellow hiker called Davis and offered to put her up for a few days at their Connecticut home, allowing Davis to regroup mentally.

“That epitomizes the trail community,” Davis said. “Even when you go through tough things someone will come along to lift you up and care for you and love you and often times it is a complete stranger. The trail actually restored my faith in humanity.”

Davis has launched Asheville-based Blue Ridge Hiking Company, where she trains potential thru hikers for their 2,000-mile journey. She also conducts workshops, talks and programs for groups. She has a book due out in 2010.

The fate of an unfinished Clarion Inn in Sylva is up in the air after a bank foreclosed on the property earlier this month.

The developer burned through a $5.1 million construction loan for the hotel but ran out of money before finishing the job. Meanwhile, the developer filed for bankruptcy and still owes the contractor $1.9 million.

The boarded-up windows and a weed-engulfed sign of the abandoned hotel casts a cloud over the main commercial thoroughfare in Sylva. The four-story hotel seems doubly tall given its placement on a high, steep bank above the road, its bulk now a prominent feature against the mountain skyline.

Sylva Town Commissioner Maurice Moody hopes that someone will step in to finish the construction and open the hotel.

“There is too much money in it to sit there and do nothing. If it does sit there and do nothing it will become an eyesore,” said Moody, who is running unopposed for mayor this fall.

Its developers, the father-son team of Thomas and John Dowden, took out a $5 million loan in September 2007 from the Alpharetta Community Bank of Georgia.

The loan was due in full two years later. As September of this year approached, however, the Dowdens still owed nearly the full loan amount.

“It is a shame it had to stop in its tracks,” said Thomas Dowden, the father, who lives in Cashiers. “We were 80 percent done and we should be open and running by now. That’s what our plans were.”

Thomas said his son, John, was the principal manager of the project and questions should be directed to him. John Dowden, however, did not return calls seeking comment.

The Dowdens hired Cooper Construction to begin construction in September 2008. Cooper Construction of Asheville did $4.8 million in work before construction was halted. Cooper was only paid $2.9 million, however, leaving the company holding the bag on $1.9 million in labor and materials that it already expended but has been unable to recoup.

“It has been a terrible, terrible, terrible hit to this 42-year-old company,” said Larry Rocklin, the general manager.

Rocklin said the loss has been difficult for the company to absorb, despite being the third largest contractor in Western North Carolina. The family-owned business has 60 employees currently.

Initially, the Dowdens planned to build a three-story Sleep Inn, Rocklin said. But along the way, they decided to upgrade it to a four-story Clarion. Rocklin said they miscalculated the extra cost of the additional story, which requires significantly more structural support.

“That’s where he blew it,” Rocklin said.

The Dowdens’s plan was to seek additional financing from the same bank that made the original loan. When that fell through, they sought other investors to no avail.

“I’m afraid what happened is the bank wouldn’t provide any further monies to finish the project,” Thomas Dowden said. “With all the bank problems going on since last fall, we got caught up in all that. We went out and found some new investors but couldn’t get it structured properly.”

The construction contract with Cooper Construction was $6.33 million — $1 million more than the initial construction loan, not counting additional costs such as architecture fees, furnishings and water and sewer connections.

Rocklin said he didn’t realize until it was too late that the Dowdens didn’t have enough money for the upgraded design.

“The bank never had any intention of giving him additional money,” Rocklin said.

In late December 2008, just a few months into the construction, Cooper filed a lien against the property. By February 2009, however, John Dowden had filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

The bank got permission from the bankruptcy court to proceed with foreclosure in July. A foreclosure sale was initially on tap for late August.

Cooper Construction managed to stave off the sale for a month. With the developer in bankruptcy protection, Cooper’s only recourse was a claim against the tangible property. Once it fell to a new owner or was repossessed by the bank, that claim would be harder to make.

Cooper has a lawsuit prepared to go after the bank for the outstanding balance on the construction work.

“It then becomes a decision of do we want to push forward with a lawsuit with a chance of winning or a chance of possibly losing,” Rocklin said.

In addition to the $2.9 million paid out to Cooper Construction, the Dowdens spent at least $1.4 million in additional costs related to the project: $480,000 on land, $270,000 on water and sewer hook-ups, $60,000 on a franchise fee to Clarion, $200,000 on architecture and $400,000 on furnishings and equipment, according to court documents.

The total — $4.3 million — leaves $800,000 of the initial construction loan unaccounted for in court documents. Rocklin said he has been unable to determine how the full balance of the construction loan was spent.

Clarion Hotel, which is one of several brands under Choice Hotels, has no interest in stepping in to take over the proerty, according to a spokesperson.

“We don’t own or operate any of our properties. They are all individually franchised,” said Heather Soule, spokesperson for Choice Hotels.

Soule said the company has seen a national slowdown in new hotels coming online over the past year.

“It is taking longer for new construction to get off the ground and find the financing to do so. People are having to wait to get that construction loan,” Soule said.

Exactly what Alpharetta Community Bank will do with the hotel now is anyone’s guess. As for what happens now, Rocklin doesn’t thinks they can sell it for enough to recoup the original $5.3 million loan. The bank will either have to sell it at a loss or hire someone to finish it then sell it, he said.

Haywood County commissioners are once again considering the abandoned Wal-Mart shell for a new Department of Social Services building.

The current DSS building is housed in a cramped and crumbling 80-year-old building that was once the county’s old hospital. Patching the building has become an expensive proposition, with the latest issue a leaking roof that would cost $260,000 to repair. The county’s facility director, Dale Burris, said there is no easy patch that could solve the problem.

“We can’t find where the leaks are to be honest. You patch one area and it comes in a different area,” Burris said.

Commissioners have long known that the DSS building either needed a major and costly top-to-bottom overhaul or relocation to a new building. When Wal-Mart left a gaping hole in the strip mall where it was located to take up new digs on the other side of town last year, commissioners began eyeing the vacant spot. They decided not to pursue it at the time given the county’s economic situation with the recession. At that time commissioners were seeking a federal loan of up to $11 million to purchase and renovate the retail building.

Commissioners decided they should revisit it, however.

“It’s going to be a constant stream of tax dollars going into a building that is 80 years old,” Swanger said. “I think we would be remiss to marry ourselves to this building. If we put a quarter million dollars into it, we will do the same thing the year after and the year after, and at the end of the day we will still have a bad building.”

At the time commissioners were considering the old Wal-Mart site, County Manager David Cotton had said buying land and building a new DSS building from scratch could cost up to $25 million. Commissioner Kevin Ensley said the old Wal-Mart site would save millions over constructing a new DSS building, a cost that his children will bear.

“They will say ‘Why didn’t you seize the opportunity when you could have,’” Ensley said.

The former DSS director, Tony Beaman, stepped down earlier this year. The department now has a new DSS director, Ira Dove.

The old Wal-Mart could also house the health department, which is in need of new quarters.

Haywood County commissioner sent a strong message to Raleigh this week, chastising state government for not stepping in to help when the county got sued by a landowner when trying to enforce erosion control standards.

The county spent $282,000 on attorney fees to defend the case. The county lost and chose to cut its losses and settle out of court, forking over another $75,000 from county coffers.

“The state needs to step in with its attorneys and defend a lawsuit like this,” Commissioner Kevin Ensley said. “They should not expect the taxpayers of that county to fund it.”

Fewer than half the counties in the state handle their own erosion enforcement, but instead turn the job over to the state, since the erosion laws are in fact state laws.

Commissioners said it was unfair that the county should bear the burden of liability and was a deterrent to continuing erosion oversight in-house.

The head of the state sediment and erosion control division, Mel Nevils, came to the meeting from Raleigh to beg the county not to give up on local erosion oversight. Nevils said the lawsuit was unwarranted and the county had acted appropriately, even following Nevils’ own recommendation in the matter.

Ensley told Nevils that if the county is doing such a great job then the state needs to ante up should the county get sued in the course of doing its job. Ensley told Nevils to take that message back to “whoever his bosses are.”

Commissioner Skeeter Curtis jumped on Nevils as well.

“Can you tell the people of Haywood County why you refused to come in a defend this case or provide legal fees?” Curtis asked.

Commissioner Mark Swanger said the county wants to develop a threshold or litmus test for high-risk cases, which could then be handed off to the state to absolve the county of the liability.

“The state has deeper pockets and resources than does Haywood County,” Swanger said.

“What we don’t want is for everyone to send us all their problem sites,” Nevils said. “I can’t tell you we would take a case just because y’all felt you might get sued by it.”

Swanger pointed out the hypocrisy of the state’s stance. Haywood County could walk away from local erosion oversight altogether, dumping the entire responsibility on the state. The state would then have to assume oversight of every erosion permit in Haywood County, not just one or two that the county wanted to pass off as high risk.

Swanger didn’t let up, but continued to push the point, asking again and again over the course of the nearly two-hour discussion whether Nevils would make a commitment to take certain cases.

“We need something that can act as a buffer,” Swanger said. “We simply cannot afford that kind of fees for this program without some kind of assistance from the state.”

“The state can’t afford to pay that either. That is taxpayers money as well,” Nevils replied.

Nevils said he couldn’t make any promises, and that perhaps a change was needed at the legislative level.

Swanger said Nevils indeed had the power to accept certain cases referred up the ladder to the state. Nevils said he would not make a wholesale promise but at least agreed to consider it.

The lawsuit has unfortunately made county erosion inspectors gun shy, commissioners said.

“It weakened the local program. There has been a lot of damage,” Curtis said. “It is a shame it has to be that way.”

Nevils said the state has seen a handful of cases with facts very similar to this one — where a landowner claimed roads were for logging but appeared to be for development — and all were won by the state.

“Then why didn’t we win this one?” Curtis asked.

The audience shifted uneasily in their seats waiting for Nevils’ nswer. Critics of the outcome have largely pointed fingers at the judge as being off base. Judge Laura Bridges heard the case while on temporary assignment in Haywood County due to a vacancy on the bench locally.

Nevils hesitated before saying that in his opinion the ruling was “not an appropriate ruling.”

“I was shocked at the ruling,” Nevils said.

N.C. Rep. Ray Rapp, D-Mars Hill, attended the commissioners’ discussion of the issue.

“This is a judicial decision that absolutely leaves me dumbfounded and puzzled,” Rapp said. “Haywood County to me is a model. You have top-notch people.”

What the case was about

When Ron Cameron built a 1.6-mile road network on a 66-acre tract up Camp Branch in Waynesville, he claimed the roads were for logging. Logging activity falls under a laxer set of erosion rules than residential development, which is held to a more stringent standard.

The county questioned the landowner’s true motives, however, citing Cameron’s creation of a development master plan, registering a subdivision name with the county and applying for a septic tank evaluation. The county insisted on holding him to the higher erosion standard and levied him with hefty fines. Cameron sued to get out from under the county’s jurisdiction, ultimately prevailing in a three-week trial in May.

Today, Cameron has the land up for sale. It’s being billed by his Realtor as perfect for development. One of the selling points listed in ads: “Roads already in.”

Cameron recently applied for a septic tank permit for a five-bedroom house on this presumed forestry tract.

Jennifer Pharr Davis says she never set out be a speed hiker.

When she first hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in 2005 at the age of 21, she was mostly looking for an excuse not to get a job right after graduating from college.

But she soon found she had a natural proclivity for hiking fast.

“I have this inner thing where I just love going all day on the trail as hard as I can,” Davis said. “I just really, really like the hiking part.”

Some people write journals on the trail, others linger at trail shelters over a game of cards with fellow hikers. But for Davis, an Asheville resident, it was all about the hiking: the physical act of moving through the woods and covering ground.

Three years later and with several other long-distance trails under her belt, Davis returned to the AT to hike it once more, this time at a record-setting pace for women.

Davis, who lives in Asheville and was born and raised in Hendersonville, completed the 2,175-mile trail in 58 days — just five days behind the men’s record and 30 days faster than any other woman. Only five men have done the trail faster.

To make that kind of speed, Davis had help, of course. Her husband shuttled her gear between trailheads, meeting her each night at points where the trail intersected with roads with food, water and tent and clean clothes. Her devoted one-man support crew allowed Davis to drastically lighten her load compared to the average AT hiker. She carried a small daypack or some days just a hip pack packed with the barest essentials. She was also freed from housekeeping details like setting up and striking camp, restocking groceries or doing laundry.

“Trust me, I am paying him back, probably for the rest of my life,” Davis joked.

Plotting meet-up points often meant relying on backwoods forest service roads, which sometimes led to confusion. Occasionally, she would arrive at the designated spot only to find he wasn’t there. Perhaps she had arrived early, making better time than expected. Or maybe she arrived late, and her husband had gone ahead to the next meet-up point looking for her.

On one occasion, the road was washed out and Davis’ husband had to load gear into a pack and run in to find her. Another time, the road they pinpointed on a map didn’t actually exist.

Expecting these missed connections, both Davis and her husband carried surveyor’s tape and a Sharpie to leave messages.

The thought of her husband waiting at the trailhead, often playing the guitar while he waited for Davis to show up, was one of the strongest motivators pulling her along the trail each day. The two had been married just days before embarking on the trip.

“I was crazy in love with my husband. I wanted to get to him as quickly as possible,” Davis said.

Of course, Davis also looked forward to the food he had waiting. At Davis’ record-breaking pace, she burned 4,000 calories a day, which meant she had a lot of consuming to do.

“If you are eating that much every day it becomes a job,” she said. “Honestly, I got sick of chewing.”

Davis defends her fast hiking to critics who question how much communing with nature one can honestly do at that pace.

“People say you didn’t appreciate it, you didn’t stop to smell the roses, you didn’t see the same things that people see when they hike slowly,” Davis said. “That’s not true.”

Davis ran some, but mostly just walked fast. She averaged 3 miles an hour, still a brisk pace considering the terrain and the inevitable bathroom breaks.

But by striking out at dawn and hiking through dusk, and moving quietly without companions, she saw more wildlife on her speed hike than three years earlier when she hiked at a standard pace — including 30 bears, compared to none on her 2005 hike.

Her final days on the trail became a whirlwind, however. Her husband, Brew, is a middle school teacher in Asheville and had to return home for the start of the school year. So two veteran AT hikers pitched in as a support crew in the final days. One of the trail greats enlisted was David Horton, the men’s record holder on the AT who completed the journey in 52 days after four tries. The other was Warren Doyle, who has thru-hiked the AT 15 times, more than anyone else.

She covered 205 miles her last four days, largely due to a perhaps overly encouraging support crew.

“What I remember is getting to the meet-up point just to see them drive off and say see you at the next road,” Davis said. She got in the car after finishing the trail and promptly fell asleep.

Davis doesn’t discount the possibility of another record hike, perhaps even going after the men’s record. Once the AT is in your blood, it’s hard to shake, she said. Not that she didn’t try after her first hike back in 2005. When she’d reached the summit of Mount Katahdin, which marks the end of the Appalachian Trail in Maine, she vowed never to repeat it.

“I climbed up that mountain and said ‘This has been a good experience. I am glad I did it, but I am never going to do it again — not even an overnight.’ Maybe a day hike but that was it,” Davis said.

She got a job doing marketing and special events at the Ash Lawn-Highland museum home of James Monroe, the fifth president, in Charlottesville, Va. But she soon found the trail calling.

“I was missing the simplicity of it. I was missing having everything I needed just on my back. I missed the self-reliance, looking to myself and depending on myself to make it through every day,” Davis said.

Davis, who graduated from Samford University in Birmingha, Ala., and played college tennis, also realized how much multitasking was involved in normal life.

“On the trail all I had to do was hike. It was so simple and I missed it,” Davis said.

Over the next three years, she hiked Mount Kilimanjaro, the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail, the 600-mile Bibbulmun Track in Australia, the Inca Trail in Peru, and the 272-mile Long Trail in Vermont.

She worked in between trips but always with the next hike in mind.

“I just worked to hike and worked to hike,” Davis said. “Obviously by this point it was becoming an addiction.”

Johnnie Cure said she never expected to become a local celebrity when she started speaking up during the public comment period of Haywood County commissioners meetings.

Typically taking the county to task over what she perceives as excessive spending, Cure has become a regular fixture on the front row of county meetings in recent months. As a result, she gets primetime on the county’s government access channel where the videotaped proceedings are aired repeatedly in the days following the meeting.

“People I don’t even know will say ‘Good going,’ ‘Thank you,’ ‘Glad you are standing up for us,’” Cure said.

While he can’t hold a candle to the number of Cure’s appearances, Ted Carr gets his share of street compliments following meetings where he speaks out.

“I am surprised at the number of people who say ‘I saw you on the commissioners meeting. You made some good comments,’” Carr said. “A lot are people I wouldn’t expect to be paying attention but who watch it quite religiously.”

The barrage of public comment — both the volume and repetitiveness — has tried county commissioners’ patience over recent months, however.

“Rumor has it they want to move the public comment session to the end of the meeting, which would require common citizens to sit there for the whole meeting before we have the opportunity to speak,” Cure said.

Carr said he hopes the commissioners won’t change the format, either by moving comments to the end of the meeting or by taking them off the air. If they do, it will be perceived as trying to stifle the public, he said.

“I think it would hurt the community. The community wouldn’t get the impact of what individuals have to say,” Carr said.

But commissioners say they have no intention of changing the meeting format.

“Everybody has a voice and should be heard,” Commissioner Bill Upton said. “We aren’t trying to suppress that. I feel like we are very open. I think this board has been very patient.”

Those who are regulars during the public comment period say they aren’t purposely grandstanding or filibustering.

“What is being expressed are legitimate comments that do have merit,” said Bruce Gardner, part of an organized grassroots movement called the 9-12 Project.

Gardner said shifting the public comment period wouldn’t silence them.

“It wouldn’t stop me,” Gardner said. “But it would lose some effectiveness. All the good ideas don’t generate from the front of the room anyway. We elected these people and need to interact with them.”

Cure thinks any move on the commissioners’ part to shift public comment to the end or even take it off the air would be perceived as stifling public comment.

“I think I am getting on their very last nerve,” Cure said. “They want to shut us down, turn us off, they want to reduce our exposure. They don’t like us. They do not want to held accountable. They don’t want to be asked any questions.”

Local activism, national movement

The recent outpouring at Haywood commissioners meetings — centering around fiscal restraint — is a local manifestation of conservative activism witnessed nationwide since the loss of power by Republicans in the last election. With the national Republican Party struggling to redefine itself, the social issues that had galvanized the party for the past two decades are being traded in for economic talking points.

“The Republican Party is in a bit of an idea vacuum and leadership vacuum,” said Gibbs Knotts, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. “Instead of coalescing around a national leader, you are seeing this bottom-up activism.”

Ted Carr, a Haywood County Republican, said the commissioners are “caught in the firestorm.”

“Nationwide, citizens feel like they aren’t being heard,” Carr said while speaking to the board during its public comment period this week.

Linda Bennett also drew a comparison to national movement when speaking to commissioners last month.

“Over the past several weeks and months, we have seen the town hall presentations on the TV where people have had a lot of passion,” Bennett said. “I think you have also seen record numbers in your courtroom you haven’t seen it the past. They are here for a reason.”

Accommodating despite the costs

Haywood County commissioners’ approach to the recent wave of public comments has varied. In general, they are polite and accommodating, listening intently and often taking notes. They usually devote a portion of the meeting to addressing concerns raised during public comment, and have even assigned county staff to prepare PowerPoints and compile timelines to address recurring points of contention.

“We are trying to be as transparent and open to the public as possible,” Chairman Kirk Kirkpatrick said.

Nonetheless, commissioners have shown signs of aggravation, witnessed by an exchange between Kirkpatrick and Cure at a county meeting this week.

“Ms. Cure, I am never going to be able to answer all your questions for you to your satisfaction,” Kirkpatrick said.

Kirkpatrick has pointed out that the cost of airing public comments costs all the taxpayers.

“The more we televise, the more cost that is to the county,” Kirkpatrick said. “We would televise everything we did if it didn’t cost. But it does cost us money.”

Despite concerns over cost, commissioners said they have no plans to discontinue public comment as part of the televised meetings.

“I don’t want to deter the public from seeing what people have to say on television,” Kirkpatrick said.

Haywood County is one of the few counties in the region that tapes and televises their meetings. For those who don’t have cable, a copy is placed at each library and can be watched online. Commissioners even tape and air their work sessions in addition to regular meetings.

“We are the most open board by far. We have taken to televising work sessions,” Commissioner Upton said.

Cure questioned just how much the public comment really costs, however. The cost of actually airing the meetings is the same no mater how long they are. The added expense is related to the filming, done by a private video production company that charges $175 an hour. Assuming public comment takes up an hour at each meeting — although it is often half that — it comes to less than $5,000 for the whole year to televise the public comment portion of the meeting.

Who is listening?

Haywood County commissioners have become visibly irked that the entourage present at the beginning of their meetings dissipate rapidly following the public comment period and have all but evaporated by the midway point in the meeting. Often later in the meeting, county commissioners take up the issue raised during public comment or provide the information that the critics had been seeking. But by then, they are gone.

During the public comment period at a meeting two weeks ago, county commissioners were asked for a copy of the legal settlement brokered with a landowner suing the county over its enforcement of erosion laws. The county had brought a copy to the meeting in anticipation of such a request. Critics of county spending had previously criticized the legal costs incurred as a result of the suit. The county asked the speaker to come up during a break and get the copy of the settlement, but the individual left without the copy — a point that didn’t go unnoticed by commissioners later in the meeting.

“The settlement offer that they asked for, we have a copy of here, but they have left,” Commissioner Mark Swanger said, then turned to the camera to address the TV audience. “If you are listening to the broadcast, they are available to pick up.”

Commissioners have also shown irritation when the same points are raised again and again, even after they have been addressed. Cure has repeatedly advocated for privatizing the county trash business and during one public comment period accused the county of not seriously examining the option.

But Commissioner Skeeter Curtis said the county had indeed talked about it.

“The majority of people here tonight got up and left after they made their comments. I was hoping after they left they would at least look at our meeting on television to see what we were talking about, but evidentially y’all didn’t do that,” Curtis told the audience during one meeting last month.

The point hit home again at the county’s meeting this week. County staff had prepared a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation in direct response to a recurring public comment.

“Unfortunately we have no one here that normally attends the public comment periods,” Kirkpatrick said, looking around the meeting room that was empty except for two local reporters. “The county is trying to be responsive and put the information out there for the public to hear, and it is disheartening sometimes when no one is here who had asked the questions.”

The meeting had nearly hit the three-hour mark, and given the empty room, Kirkpatrick suggested postponing the presentation until the next meeting. The presentation would have detailed how the county does its purchasing, be it supplies or contracted services. The purpose was to lay out the process so local businesses and contractors could hopefully snag a piece of the county’s business.

“I think there should be a priority given to local businesses whether it is goods or services,” said Bruce Gardner, who twice brought up the issue during public comment periods, recommending a crash course to help local businesses navigate the county’s procurement process.

Cure said it is unreasonable to expect the public to sit through three-hour meetings, even longer sometimes, when they have jobs and families to attend to.

Lengthy criticisms, lengthy answers

Some meetings see much heavier comment than others. On Sept. 20 a half a dozen members of the public spoke up. Topics were varied, but all focused on the common theme of fiscal restraint.

“They are spending my money, our money. We have given them a credit card with no limit,” Cure said.

Speakers have criticized the county’s efforts to harness methane, a byproduct from decomposing trash. The county has been condemned for its recent propensity for landing itself in expensive lawsuits. Commissioners were even chastised for not attending a 9-11 memorial held on the courthouse steps.

“None of you showed up,” Al Goodis told commissioners. “Doesn’t anybody care?”

Clearly offended, Commissioner Skeeter Curtis said he did care but didn’t know about the memorial in advance and was out of town.

Often the commissioners’ response to comments takes longer than the public comments themselves.

“Their rebuttal is lengthy,” Cure said.

But Kirkpatrick says it is necessary. Otherwise it appears the county isn’t taking the public’s concerns to heart if they merely listen and don’t respond. So the commissioners have taken to keeping a running list of the grievances brought up during public comment session and then addressing them one by one following the public comment period.

While presented as explanations, they sometimes come across as the last word by the county.

“Personally I am not looking for an immediate answer. I would rather have a studied answer to a serious question,” Gardner said.

Clearinghouse or bottleneck?

In addition to the surge in public comments, the county is also facing a significant volume of public record requests by the speakers. In response, commissioners plan to adopt a written request form for any county documents being sought by the public.

County Manager David Cotton said a clearinghouse for public record requests would solve the problem created when the same person makes the same record request to multiple county employees.

“Had we known, we would have been able to answer once rather than have five or six different county staff answer the same question five different times,” Cotton said.

The written requests would be funneled through the county’s public information officer.

Cure, who frequently requests county finance documents to track county expenses, opposes the idea.

“I believe this protocol to go through an information person is going to be a bottleneck,” Cure told commissioners.

In addition, county staff have been directed to stop compiling information in a specific format, such as spreadsheets, and walking people through the information they request.

“You don’t need to spend special time preparing special documents,” Kirkpatrick said at a meeting two weeks ago.

“Because there’s no end to it,” Swanger added.

Cure said she prefers to go sit down with Julie Davis, the county finance officer, who takes the time to explain the county budget documents.

“She welcomes me to come into her office,” Cure said. “She is a dynamite communicator.”

But Kirkpatrick said it is taking too much time.

“There is not necessarily a requirement she speak to you about everything. All we are required to do is provide the information to the public. She bends over backwards to try to accommodate you,” Kirkpatrick told Cure.

Cure said the budget documents are written in a finance code difficult for a layperson to understand, however.

“It is not an issue of IQ, it is a question of the language. I would bet you lunch you can’t understand it either,” Cure said. Cure said she would have to hire a finance person to explain it to her otherwise.

“You may have to,” Kirkpatrick responded.

“So you are saying I will not be able to sit with her and talk with her?” Cure asked.

“What we are saying is we are having an abuse of that. We can’t have the staff spending several hours of their time at taxpayers’ expense to explain things to certain members of the public,” Kirkpatrick said.

Swanger said it is preventing county employees from performing their primary duties.

“We would have to hire extra people and you would be one of the first people chastising us for that expense,” Swanger told Cure.

Al Goodis, who’s become a regular speaker at meetings, suggested the county scan all the paperwork that passes through its hands over the course of a day and put it on the county’s Web site with a searchable database. Along with it, the county should provide a glossary of terms used by government bureaucrats so the public can keep up.

“I feel like you should be trying to help us save our money,” said Goodis.

“We are trying to be as transparent as possible and provide as much information to the public as possible so they can understand it,” Kirkpatrick said. “We do value your public comment, but we cannot make everybody happy.”

Putting the requests in writing serves another end goal: giving the county cover when the information request is met. The person who requested the documents will have to sign for them when picking them up, giving the county cover should they be accused of not complying.

“They come in here and ask the same questions over and over. We have already provided most of the information they ask for, but they keep asking for it,” Commissioner Skeeter Curtis said during one recent meeting.

While the new method of requesting information appears likely to become county policy, commissioners have backed off from any idea to alter they way they conduct the public comment period.

Cure said it would have been a bad move politically, particularly with three of the five commissioner seats up for election next year.

“They will nail the last nail in their coffin if they cut the public comment out. It is a death wish,” Cure said.

As for Cure, she doesn’t plan on running herself.

“I’ve been asked, but I will not do it. My place is at the podium,” Cure said. “I am going to ask questions for a long time.”

When Haywood County commissioners convened this week to discuss the fate of the county’s erosion control program, they were met by a deep bench of prominent community members who turned out to show support for Marc Pruett.

Pruett is the county’s lead erosion enforcement officer.

Commissioner Kevin Ensley, a land surveyor, said he has received several phone calls from developers urging him to keep the local erosion department.

“It is running 10 to 1 positive from the people who deal with it on the day to day,” Ensley said. “They prefer dealing with local people.”

Mel Nevils, the head of the state erosion enforcement division, came to the meeting from Raleigh and begged commissioners not to do away with the local erosion department, calling it among the best in the state. If erosion oversight was passed off to state control, the environment would suffer and developers would be more likely to see after-the-fact fines than under Pruett’s proactive approach.

“We don’t have time to work with people to get them back in compliance,” Nevils said. “We don’t have the time to sit there with people and figure out how to get it right.”

State erosion inspectors for the region are based in Asheville. Each one carries a case load of up to 350 development projects spanning three to four counties, Nevils said.

“We would do the best we can. We would pick it up and get here as often as we can, but you will not get the level of service you get from your own folks,” Nevils said.

In Pruett’s approach to erosion enforcement, he strives primarily to educate developers on how to protect the environment.

“My staff can tell you that I often said we must be problem solvers and peacemakers first. Enforcement is a last resort,” Pruett said.

Erosion running off construction sites is detrimental to the environment, muddying creeks, rivers and lakes, Pruett said. But it can also be hazardous when it washes down on public roads, making them potentially slick.

It seemed commissioners never intended to do away with the local erosion control program, but felt compelled to address the issue after the county landed itself in a lawsuit with a landowner as a result of its erosion enforcement. A few members of the public had appeared before commissioners at their meetings calling for them to do away with the erosion enforcement at the local level and pass the duty off to the state.

Members in the audience backing Pruett included General Contractor Ron Leatherwood, Builder Dawson Spano, Rep. Ray Rapp, James Ferguson, Bill Yarborough, Leslie Smathers and more.

At first glance, it is hard to see why Balsam Mountain Preserve has been unable to satisfy the lenders behind a $19.8 million loan dating to 2005.

The exact amount of the payoff on the loan has not been revealed, but is the only debt Balsam Mountain Preserve is carrying, according to Chris Chaffin, managing partner of the development. Chaffin did say Balsam Mountain is current on the interest portion of the loan.

Since taking out the loan four years ago, Balsam Mountain Preserve has had $65 million in lot sales, according to real estate transactions and records. That’s enough to pay off the principle of the loan three times over.

However, the majority was spent constructing amenities. Chief among them is the Arnold Palmer golf course, a dream course that was no small feat to pull off given the mountainous terrain. The golf course likely ate up much of the revenue from lot sales, but Chaffin did not provide an exact price tag.

In addition, the development boasts an equestrian center, a sports center with tennis courts and a pool, a nature center, a dining room and lodge, guest cabins and a road network.

Of the 354 lots in the master plan for the development, two-thirds have been sold. There are 120 lots left, and with the infrastructure and amenities mostly in place, any profit to be realized would largely rest with the remaining parcels.

Lot sales have declined in 2009 over previous years, but are strong in comparison to what most developments have seen since the recession. Balsam Mountain Preserve sold 12 lots so far this year, bringing in $6.17 million at an average of $514,000 a lot. If the rate is sustained for the remaining 120 lots, the development would realize an additional $60 million in revenue.

That begs the question of why the lenders aren’t being more patient on the undisclosed balance of the $19.8 million loan.

At the 2009 pace of lot sales, it would take three years to pay off the principal, not taking into account the inevitable overhead expense of maintaining a sales presence or the construction of additional road infrastructure, which is still needed in new phases of the development.

Sustaining operations and the additional capital for more road construction would drag out the payoff much longer than basic calculations allow for, and thus make the lender uneasy. The question, it seems, is whether TriLyn is willing to keep waiting or will attempt to take matters into its own hands.

Of the 120 lots that remain, 40 are scattered through existing phases of the development, while 80 are in new phases. The 40 scattered through existing phases require no additional infrastructure in order to market, but are merely waiting for buyers. The other 80 lie in two future phases and would require a capital investment to upgrade old logging roads into development-caliber roads before aggressively marketing the lots.

In some developments, the last lots to sell are likely the least desirable and lowest in value — whether they’re too steep, lack a view or are otherwise unappealing. Some are so flawed they may never sell.

But given the sparse number of lots in Balsam Mountain Preserve — 354 sites on 4,400 acres — the layout and design was likely more thoughtfully considered on the front end, making it less likely that the remaining lots are of less value or won’t sell at all.

A proposed redesign of Russ Avenue, the main commercial thoroughfare in Waynesville, received strong public support among those who attended a public workshop last week to learn more about the plan.

“I think this has to be done,” said Lyle Coffey, one of several residents who came out to study the large maps on display. “Russ Avenue has to be redone in some way.”

Verona Martin said the free-for-all that defines Russ Avenue makes driving it unpleasant.

“I’m not happy with it all, especially in the morning when it is so congested,” Martin said. “It puts me off.”

The redesign aims to improve traffic flow, but will also impart an aesthetic appeal sorely lacking today, said Ron Reid, the owner of Andon Reid Inn Bed and Breakfast in Waynesville.

“It is important for us because so many of our guests come in this way,” Reid said of the corridor. “It is the gateway to Waynesville.”

The key component of the plan is replacing the middle turn lane with a landscaped median the length of Russ Avenue. Drivers could no longer dart across multiple lanes of oncoming traffic in pursuit of their favorite fast-food joint on the opposite side of the road.

Instead, left turns will be corralled at intersections, improving both safety and traffic flow. A network of new side streets would skirt behind the businesses, taking pressure off the main drag.

Intersections that are off-kilter will be aligned and extra turn lanes added. The most dramatic example is at the entrance to Ingles, where a side street looping behind CVS and McDonald’s is off-center and as a result under-utilized. A building stands in the way of the intersection to be aligned, but the plan calls for knocking it down to shift the intersection over.

“This is an awfully needed intersection alignment,” Coffey said of the spot.

The only people raising issues with the plan were property owners in the direct path of a wider road footprint. While they supported the premise of the redesign, they lobbied for alterations that wouldn’t encroach as much on their property.

“I’m taking a hit right there,” said John Burgin, pointing at the spot on the map occupied by Arby’s.

Burgin built the store 15 years ago and has leased it to Arby’s ever since. But the redesign would claim precious parking lot real estate and wipe out his drive-through exit.

“You have to have a drive-through,” Burgin said of the fast-food business. “The numbers that go through a drive-through are staggering.”

Bike lanes and sidewalks on both sides of Russ Avenue would increase the road’s footprint, but would mostly fall within existing right of way. Extra turn lanes at major intersections are a different story, however, and would require taking of property. Such is the case in front of Arby’s, where an extra right-turn lane funneling vehicles into the Ingles entrance would claim part of Burgin’s already-cramped parking lot.

Mike Melner, owner of Joe’s Welding, stands to lose his entire shop if the intersection makeover at Dellwood Road goes through. But Melner said he liked the overall plan.

“There’s good and bad,” Melner said. The bad mostly being the loss of property, and the rest being good.

Melner, a horseback rider, said he would rather see horse lanes than bike lanes down Russ Avenue, thinking they would be important in the future.

“You have to keep your mind open,” Melner said.

Long, long, long way off

The town got a $40,000 state transportation planning grant to hire a firm of its choice to create a new plan for the road.

The total cost of the makeover is $21.7 million, according to estimates prepared by the firm, Wilbur Smith Associates. The road designers broke down the costs into the two major components: $15.5 million for the makeover of Russ Avenue itself and $6.1 million for the network of new side streets.

It could easily be 20 years before the plan comes to fruition, according to Town Planner Paul Benson. That’s how long it typically takes to advance a project to the top of the state road construction list. As for the Russ Avenue project, it isn’t even on the list yet, and once it does get there, there’s no telling where the DOT will place it in the pecking order.

“It’s a pretty long time in the future,” Benson said. “It is always subject to money availability and political wind.”

An analysis of property values in Haywood County aims to reduce disparities between the value listed on the county’s tax rolls and the real-life value.

The project will more precisely hone in on characteristics that affect home values, hopefully resulting in a more accurate assessment in a pending countywide reappraisal of property values due out in 2011. Since the values are used to calculate property taxes, the consequence is whether some people pay too much or too little in property taxes compared to everyone else.

The county commissioners voted last month to hire the firm RSM associates for $211,000 to conduct the analysis.

“It gets us closer and closer to accurate and fair values,” said David Francis, Haywood County tax collector.

When doing an appraisal on a mass scale — roughly 52,000 parcels of land and 40,000 structures — it is simply too costly and time consuming to personally visit each one.

Instead, properties are weighed by key variables such as number of bedrooms, whether there’s a garage or even if it has a good view. Each variable takes the value up or down a notch, but is only as good as the baseline assigned to the neighborhood. The method is often accused of painting with too broad a brush.

The analysis aims to create more distinctions between properties on a micro level.

“I feel like this will give a more accurate appraisal,” said Commissioner Kevin Ensley, who owns property throughout the county and in the past has felt the county-assigned values were a little off.

Francis had to look no further than his childhood home for a classic example of what many in the county face. The home dates back to the early 1960s in what was then rural Francis Cove. During the building boom of the past decade, wealthy houses cropped up all around it.

“Right next door to the house I grew up in is a development where no house sold for less than $500,000,” Francis said.

While that would naturally push up the value of neighboring properties, there’s no way his boyhood home built in the early ‘60s was worth as much as those houses next door, Francis said. Under the conventional reappraisal method, however, it would have been lumped into the same category.

While the technical lingo for the project is “neighborhood delineation,” Francis likes to call it “fine-tuning.”

For example, while a home with a view is already valued higher than a similar home without a view, the new methodology will adjust not just for a view but the caliber of the view.

“My idea was to drill it down even further,” Francis said.

Worth the cost?

A couple of residents have questioned the expense of hiring the outside consultants.

“I believe that department is fully capable of doing this process on their own,” Ted Carr, a Bethel resident, said during a public comment period at a county meeting last week. Carr was among a group of vocal residents who have become regulars at county commissioner meetings. Members of the group regularly speak during the public comment period, largely preaching fiscal restraint.

When county commissioners voted to hire the consultants, they justified a portion of the expense by tapping into money already allocated for a reappraisal. The county budgets for a five-person staff in the property appraisal department. But it currently only has four staffers, resulting in a savings of $48,000. By not filling the fifth position, the county can apply the savings to offset the cost of the study — in effect only costing the county $115,000 instead of the full $211,000, the commissioners rationalized.

Carr challenged the mentality, however.

“What I am asking is to do what I do at home. When I find some extra money, I might apply it to the mortgage,” Carr told commissioners. “Please, don’t say ‘So where can we spend it?’”

County commissioners don’t see the expense as frivolous, however.

While there will always be inherent disparities in a property appraisal of this scale, the analysis should level the playing field, according to Commissioner Kirk Kirkpatrick.

“I believe this project will help to even out or create more fair market values,” Kirkpatrick said.

Francis said the lessons learned from the consultants could be applied in future years by the county’s in-house staff, making the one-time cost worth it in the long haul.

“They are teaching us a way to do a more fair appraisal,” Francis said.

Haywood County used to contract out the entire job of the countywide appraisal, but brought it in-house following the 2002 reappraisal.

That’s when the county switched from an eight-year reappraisal schedule to conducting one every four years. The shorter timeframe aimed to reduce “sticker shock.” Property values had been rising so rapidly in the mountains that over a span of eight years property was doubling, tripling or even quadrupling in value. While the state only requires property reappraisals to be conducted every eight years, nearly every county in the region has adopted a more frequent schedule.

When switching to the four-year schedule, the county realized it would be cheaper to set up its own department and do the job in-house rather than continue to contract it out.

Commercial versus residential

Along with neighborhood delineation, the firm will conduct the reappraisal of all the commercial property. It appears the last reappraisal in 2006 was favorable toward commercial property. Right now, commercial property is undervalued on the tax books when compared to residential, Francis said.

Naturally, property today is selling for more than it was in 2006, the year of the last countywide reappraisal. Residential properties are selling on average only 12 percent higher than the 2006 tax value. But when commercial property is included in the statistics, sale prices are 23 percent higher on average.

“We are seeing a huge difference in the sale prices on commercial property versus the tax value,” Francis said.

Francis pointed to the Sonoco gas station on Dellwood Road between Waynesville and Maggie, which sold for $1.4 million when the tax value was listed at half that.

Calculated delay

The county reassesses property values every four years, with the next one up in 2010. But county commissioners decided to postpone it for a year due to the fluctuating housing market.

Pegging a value on homes and land would have been difficult over the past year, the period when the lion’s share of the reappraisal would have been conducted. Housing prices were still in flux, and to some extent still are, Francis said.

Since a countywide reappraisal hinges on the selling price of existing homes, the lack of a consistent baseline during the thick of the recession led commissioners to delay the process.

“It was just really fluctuating. I thought it was in the best interest of the citizens to wait a year,” Francis said.

Swain County, which had a reappraisal slated to take effect this year, chose not to enact it despite the work already being done. Swain simply tossed out the reval, which had been conducted just prior to the recession but would have taken effect post-recession, and will just stick with current property values until the next reval rolls around in another four years.

Balsam Mountain Preserve, a mega development on 4,400 acres in Jackson County, has defaulted on the terms of a $19.8 million loan, prompting a notice of foreclosure by nervous lenders last week.

Owners of the development say they are hopeful a deal can be worked out with the lender to satisfy their debt and halt the foreclosure, however.

“We are optimistic we can reach an agreement,” said Chris Chaffin, the managing partner of Balsam Mountain Preserve.

Balsam Mountain Preserve has been in default of the loan since January, trying the patience of TriLyn, a private equity real estate investment firm based in Connecticut. The loan dates back to 2005. For now, neither TriLyn nor Balsam Mountain Preserve will say how much is still owed on the note, although it is believed to a substantial amount.

Balsam Mountain Preserve has continued to ask for more time and has searched for additional credit, but to no avail.

“It is a very challenging environment to find capital,” Chaffin said. “Unfortunately we got caught in the economic downturn. Even though we are the market leader for sales in Western North Carolina, it is not enough to satisfy the debt requirements.”

The answer now seems to lie with the uber-wealthy property owners within the development itself.

“They love the lifestyle of Balsam. It is a place where they have invested and they want to make sure the original vision of Balsam is completed,” Chaffin said.

Not your run-of-the-mill development, Balsam Mountain Preserve has attracted affluent and well-connected buyers, among them actress Andie MacDowell, an Asheville resident. The grounds are rife with multi-millionaires and corporate executives who bought into the culture the upscale development embodies: top-notch amenities (including an Arnold Palmer designed golf course), an environmental ethos, strict covenants and a woodland estate setting.

No one is sharing exactly what form a rescue by property owners may take, although the arrangement would likely involve property owners pooling capital. That could mean forming their own LLC and taking over the note in whole, becoming the new primary financial investors of the development.

Or they could merely raise enough money to get the loan out of arrears, taking a backseat position to the original note. How much would have to be raised to satisfy lenders is not being revealed.

“We are working through all of that right now,” Chaffin said.

Mark Antoncic, founder and managing principal of TriLyn, was reached in Connecticut but said he could not comment on the proceedings at this time.

Balsam Mountain Preserve’s development plan calls for only 354 lots on 4,400 acres, with most of the tract protected in a conservation easement. Roughly two-thirds of the lots have been sold.

With the amenities and infrastructure largely in place, the capital investment was largely behind the company. The profit margin for the development would primarily be realized through the sale of the remaining 120 lots, which are now the target of the foreclosure.

BMP joins a long list

Chaffin said Balsam Mountain Preserve is a temporary victim of the recession, but the business model still holds long-term promise.

“It is a timing issue,” Chaffin said. “The fundamentals of Western North Carolina as a second-home market are sound. It is just a matter of working through the downturn.”

Balsam Mountain Preserve is certainly not alone, however. Mountain developments both large and small have been facing foreclosure and even bankruptcy in recent months. As lot sales have dropped off, so did cash flow. Developers no longer had a revenue stream to make loan payments or finance infrastructure like roads and golf courses.

Unable to sustain operations, they hunted for additional sources of credit. But everywhere they turned, credit had dried up, even among the most notorious hard-money lenders, forcing some developers to fold. Another mega developer in Jackson County called Legasus saw a sizeable portion of its development foreclosed on by Macon Bank this summer.

Jackson County Sheriff Jimmy Ashe has had a bird’s eye view of the rash of foreclosures in the region. His office serves foreclosure papers, including the ones to Balsam Mountain Preserve last week. The foreclosures aren’t just among developers, but also among investors who snatched up blocks of individual lots. Rather than continuing to appreciate, there is a glut of mountain lots on the market. Some lot owners are simply choosing to not make payments and watching the property revert to the banks.

“There were more properties out there than people wanted,” Ashe said. “As far as it being swooped up because it is there, it didn’t happen. The mountain property they thought was so valuable, they are finding out what the local people have known for hundreds of years: if you can’t farm on it or build on it and cattle can’t stand up on it, it’s not that valuable.”

Balsam Mountain Preserve was arguably in a better position than most. While lot sales aren’t what they used to be, they are still strong compared to other developments in the region. Balsam Mountain Preserve sold 12 lots so far in 2009, averaging more than $500,000 each. Some developers sold zero.

Balsam Mountain Preserve was one of the first mega developments in the mountains, with the initial land purchase dating back to 1999. The property was part of the vast timber holdings of Champion Paper, which logged the tract over the decades to fuel its paper mill in Canton.

Amenities and infrastructure have largely been completed, unlike relative newcomers that had barely gotten started when the recession hit.

“Balsam is in the fortunate situation that the amenities are mostly completed. The fabric of Balsam has been defined,” Chaffin said.

Legasus, for example, didn’t even have its golf course permitted, much less constructed, when it faced foreclosure.

Balsam Mountain Preserve’s $20 million note with TriLyn is the only debt the company is carrying, while some over-leveraged developers are grappling with a half dozen loans with various lenders.

Balsam Mountain Preserve is one of several large-scale resort developments under the umbrella of the national company Chaffin/Light Associates. Developments span from Snowmass in Colorado to coastal South Carolina, but the model is the same: a recreation-based resort set on expansive acreage in beautiful surrounds and catering to high-end clientele.

Chaffin is the son of Chaffin/Light founding partner Jim Chaffin and took over as managing partner of Balsam Mountain Preserve in January of this year, in the thick of the economic downturn and credit crisis.

Jobs disappear, lights stay on

In an effort to preserve capital and as a result of foreclosure proceedings by TriLyn, Balsam Mountain Preserve has been forced to lay off half the 80 workers — including a security force, golf caddies, stable hands, maintenance workers, dining room staff and sales managers — who had been on the payroll.

“It was a very sad day when we had to reduce operations,” Chaffin said.

A crew of critical security personnel, maintenance workers and office staff remain employed, Chaffin said.

“Our operations are focused on protecting the physical integrity of the community,” he said.

The golf course is closed for the remainder of the year due since there’s no staff to run it. Property owners no doubt aren’t pleased, since the Arnold Palmer designer course was a main selling point to some who bought into the development. But Chaffin said they have been resilient.

“We had a fireside chat or town hall meeting this weekend to address the situation with the members,” Chaffin said. “The members are behind us working toward a solution. There is always the toxic 2 percent, but in large part the members have been very supportive.”

Defining eco-development

Balsam Mountain Preserve is also one of the first self-described eco-developments in the Western North Carolina mountains. While many developers have since made the claim as a marketing strategy, Balsam Mountain Preserve continues to lead the pack in its conservation approach. Despite its giant size, the master plan for the development calls for a mere 354 lots.

“The idea is for the ecosystem to stay intact through the community. The homes are islands within the sea of the preserve,” Chaffin said.

More than half the acreage was placed into a conservation easement to be permanently protected, which also reaped substantial tax benefits for the company. No matter how the foreclosure turns out, the conservation easement will remain intact. It is tied to the land deed, and applies in perpetuity no matter who owns it.

To oversee the large natural areas, the non-profit Balsam Mountain Trust was formed as an independent entity. It has a staff of three naturalists, who care for the ecosystem and operate a nature center. Nature programs are provided for members of the community and the public at large, from guided hikes to school fieldtrips. The naturalists are still on staff and the nature center is still open.

“We’ve got more naturalists than golf pros. The environmental ethic is fundamental to Chaffin/Light Associates,” Chaffin said.

The Balsam Mountain Trust is funded by a portion of every lot sale, including the resale of homes and property. The arrangement that will continue no matter who is the eventual owner of the development, Chaffin said.

The eco-philosophy behind the development has been embedded in covenants that will persist even if the foreclosure proceeds. A new owner of the development could not add more lots, for example, which are capped under the development’s master plan, Chaffin said. Strict covenants that apply to individual property owners, such as limits on cutting trees and stipulations reducing the glare of windows, would also carry over.

A plan to redesign Russ Avenue would dramatically alter the appearance and traffic flow along the frenzied main commercial artery of Waynesville.

The plan has several components, but chief among them is wiping out the middle turn lane. Instead a landscaped median will run the length of Russ Avenue.

If you want to visit up a business on the other side of the median, you’ll have hang a U-turn at a traffic light or duck up one of the new rear-access streets and skirt behind the buildings.

“A huge thing is the rear connectors,” said Town Planner Paul Benson. “It would allow people to move between businesses without ever coming out onto Russ Avenue.”

The goal of the median is to prevent left turns across multiple lanes of oncoming traffic when pulling in and out of parking lots. Instead, left turns will be corralled at intersections, improving both safety and traffic flow.

“Every time you have a left turn, you have to slow down and that means everybody behind you slows down,” Benson said. “Left turns bring traffic to a complete stop.”

Corralling turns at the traffic lights mean through traffic can sail by rather than constantly braking for darting cars.

It’s not likely that everyone will be fans of the median. It could deter people from patronizing an establishment on the other side, a possible negative for business owners.

But the status quo isn’t much better, said Fred Baker, the Waynesville Public Works Director.

“Nobody is going to visit a business if it is gridlocked in front of your store,” Baker said. “It doesn’t do much good to have unlimited driveway access when it is so congested people don’t want to stop and there’s lots of accidents.”

Nonetheless, some drivers might not like the idea of doubling back should the mood strike them for an Arby’s roast beef or KFC biscuit on the spur of the moment.

But perhaps that’s a good thing, said Joe Taylor, the owner of Taylor Ford Motor Company on Russ Avenue.

“It’s as dangerous as a cocked gun,” Taylor said of Russ Avenue. “When you get 25,000 cars a day on a five-lane road, you shouldn’t impulsively dart across oncoming traffic, so maybe it is a good idea if you have to think about getting over and turning at the stop light. You are encouraging people to be a little safer.”

Taylor comes and goes from his Russ Avenue dealership several times a day. The only time he dares a left out of his parking lot is late at night or early Sunday morning when traffic is sparse. Otherwise, he makes his way to the nearest traffic light for his left-turn needs.

While Taylor thinks creating a safer road is paramount, he likes the other elements of the plan as well: the additional turning lanes at major intersections, the rear-access roads, and realigning sigogglin intersections.

“We need it so badly,” Taylor said of the plan.

At one time, the five-lane commercial strip — defined by a middle turn lane dubbed the suicide lane — was standard road-building fare for the DOT. The five-lane road design proliferated across the nation, working hand in hand with suburban sprawl of fast-food chains and strip malls.

But road engineers have been moving away from the model and instead have heralded the landscaped median as a new approach, largely due to extensive research of accidents involving a suicide lane, according to Deniece Swinton, a transportation engineer with Wilbur Smith Associates, the firm that created the redesign plan.

“Initially DOT was all for that suicide center lane,” Swinton said. “But I think they are coming to realize a median is a lot safer. We are finding more and more of them in DOT are opening up to that idea.”

The design is a lot prettier, too, driving communities to request the design over the traditional five-lane strip.

“The majority of the cities we work with, this is the first thought. They want something pretty — a landscaped median with street trees,” Swinton said.

While some business owners oppose medians, claiming it will hurt their stores if people can’t turn in, Swinton said the trade-off is worth it.

“The only thing I can say is the whole safety factor,” Swinton said. “I understand the median prohibits people from turning left directly into their business but providing them a safer way to get into their business is a plus.”

Crafting the plan

While those caught in after-work traffic snarls on Russ Avenue might feel like the prospects for a fix are hopeless, a solution is well within reach, according to Swinton.

The town got a $40,000 state transportation planning grant to hire a firm of its choice to create a new plan for the road. Swinton was the lead consultant on the project.

Swinton’s first impression of the road?

“Very busy, a lot going on, a lot of traffic, a lot of potential conflict points.”

The description sounds familiar to anyone who’s driven the stretch during rush hour, one foot hovered over the brake while furtively on the lookout for darting cars.

Swinton’s goal was to corral left turns to traffic lights, thus the median. With left turns off the main road being restricted, Swinton looked for alternative ways to access businesses, thus the rear access roads behind buildings.

“I thought personally it was somewhat of an easy fix. There was enough land to create these connector roads,” Swinton said.

The commercial corridor targeted in the plan is less than one mile long, roughly from Bi-Lo at one end of Russ Avenue to the bypass just past McDonald’s.

Russ Avenue is an important road in the county and one that plays dual roles, said Mayor Gavin Brown.

“It is an important commercial hub in the town of Waynesville,” Brown said. Brown also sees Russ Avenue as one of the major gateways into town.

The town thus had dual goals in a redesign: make it prettier and improve traffic flow.

Baker called the redesign “extremely attractive.”

What’s next?

When or if the plan ever comes to fruition ultimately lies in the hands of the Department of Transportation.

To get that ball rolling, Brown anticipates the town board will formally adopt a redesign plan for Russ Avenue by spring. It will then advance to a regional transportation planning board, and from there inch its way toward the DOT’s state priority list.

“If we can get the powers that be to agree that this is the result we want, then politically they will have to find the money to do it,” Taylor said.

Brown is hoping to see the plan implemented in 10 years.

“You would like to think if we really pushed on it and DOT was cooperative and funds were available, that would be reasonable,” Brown said of his 10-year goal.

Baker said the plan could be targeted in stages if there isn’t money or political will by the DOT to do it in one fell swoop.

In ideal world, however, it would be fully implemented rather than a piecemeal approach, Benson said.

“If you just pick one piece, it won’t work as well as if it is fully integrated,” Benson said. “The tricky thing is it involves quite a bit of property acquisition to create these rear connectors.”

See the map

While neighboring hospitals count down the days until an affiliation is finalized, Angel Medical Center in Franklin continues to stand alone during a time when independent hospitals are becoming increasingly rare.

Angel Medical CEO Tim Hubbs said the small hospital is doing fine financially and is meeting its mission to serve the community. That said, an affiliation isn’t out of the question if the right one came along.

“That is something we always have to evaluate on an ongoing basis,” Hubbs said. “I don’t think they want to merge for the sake of merging. I think the sentiment is we want a strong local hospital.”

There can be financial benefits in a merger or affiliation with other hospitals, but it can also result in a loss of local control, Hubbs said. The two factors would have to be weighed when considering an affiliation.

“Can we get economies of scale and still have autonomy?” Hubbs said.

Roughly 70 percent of hospitals in North and South Carolina are part of a larger hospital system.

Haywood Regional Medical Center and WestCare, which serves Jackson and Swain counties, anticipate launching a new joint venture in January. The two entities will manage daily operations jointly, yet keep their assets and long-term balance sheets separate. The venture also calls for partnering with Carolinas HealthCare System, a conglomerate based in Charlotte with a network of 23 hospitals.

Angel was engaged in preliminary discussions of a merger with WestCare a few years ago, but it failed to materialize. Angel’s board of directors hesitated for fear of seeing some of their local medical services absorbed by Harris Regional Hospital in Sylva.

“We were afraid the focus would be in Jackson County,” Hubbs said. “We would like it to be in our best interest and not in the best interest of someone somewhere else.”

While Angel has an agreement with Mission Hospital in Asheville to house a medic helicopter at the hospital, there is no official partnership with Mission, Hubbs said. Angel was selected as a base for the medic helicopter largely for its strategic geographic location as a jumping off point for Mission to serve trauma patients in the far west.

Hubbs said no affiliations are on the table right now, but nothing is off the table either.

“I think they are receptive to things that make sense,” Hubbs said of Angel’s board of directors. “If we get to the point we can’t survive without it, then we’d have to consider it, but we are not there today.”

When Tim Hubbs stepped down as the CEO of Drake Software, a Franklin firm that writes accounting software, he thought the frenzy of tax season was behind him and he would coast out his years with the hassle-free title of consultant.

He was soon coaxed into taking on the job as CEO of Angel Medical Center, however, and landed in the middle of a constantly changing industry that sometimes makes him yearn for the good old days of tax season crunch time at Drake.

When Hubbs took the helm at Angel in summer of 2008, the hospital had been through a handful of CEOs over a five-year period, most of them in interim roles. His immediate predecessor was there just two years when the hospital board decided a different direction was needed. In a replacement, the board was looking for stability and a face the community was familiar with.

“I think there was no question if I was available and willing to take that spot, they saw advantages to not having to do a search process. They thought it would be a win-win and only time will tell if that’s the case,” Hubbs said, flashing a humble grin.

The truth is, Hubbs was no stranger to health care. He had served on the Angel Medical hospital board for six years, so he had a working knowledge of local issues facing the hospital. Predating his time at Drake, he had worked in hospital administration — namely as the chief financial officer for East Tennessee Children’s Hospital — in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. It doesn’t hurt that Hubbs is Franklin born and bred and got his MBA right here at Western Carolina University.

One of his biggest challenges upon re-entry to the field?

“Obviously getting used to terminology again,” Hubbs said. “Everybody has their acronyms.” Between doctors and nurses, insurance companies, the Medicare bureaucracy and hospital regulators, Hubbs had his fair share of jargon to brush up on.

From the business end, Hubbs was struck by just how difficult it is to profitably run a hospital today.

“There is this enormous pressure to say we have to be as efficient as we can,” Hubbs said.

He has apparently done well on that front, however. While Angel only has 25 inpatient beds, they are routinely full.

One of the biggest financial challenges is failure by Medicare and Medicaid to fully reimburse hospitals and doctors for the true cost of services.

“Health care was tough from a reimbursement standpoint when I left, but it has gotten more difficult,” Hubbs said.

Factor in those unable to pay their bills who must be written off as charity cases, and the hospital’s already thin margin is constantly being squeezed.

“That is health care in general. You bring it down to a smaller, rural area, and it makes it even tougher,” Hubbs said.

A few hundred thousand for a big hospital is small potatoes, but it can be the entire operating margin for a hospital of Angel’s size. Yet there are dozens of variables that could swing revenue or expenses by that amount. It can only take one thing to throw off the balance sheet — and “there’s lots of ‘one things’ that can hurt you really bad,” Hubbs said.

The most obvious are the caliber of doctors practicing at the hospital.

“One physician can make a difference,” Hubbs said.

Hubbs has made recruiting new physicians a priority. The hospital has recruited eight new doctors in the past year.

The hospital has a roughly $45 million operating budget, Hubbs said. In recent years, the hospital has averaged a 1 to 2 percent positive cash flow. It’s too thin for Hubbs, who hopes to raise it to a 3 to 4 percent margin, the most a small, rural hospital can feasibly hope for.

But in the most recent fiscal year ending Sept. 30, the hospital saw its first minor loss in several years, Hubbs said. Hubbs would not specify how much the loss was, and isn’t required to since the hospital is a private nonprofit entity. (The information will eventually be available on the hospital’s annual 990 tax return, which is public record for nonprofit entities.)

Hubbs said the small operating loss is not a surprise, but rather was undertaken consciously. The hospital spent money in two key areas: on nurses and doctors.

While other hospitals enacted workforce reductions during the recession, Angel not only didn’t trim jobs but gave its nurses raises. Hubbs said the nurse salaries at Angel were too low and not competitive with the rest of the region.

“We had to make a pretty big commitment,” Hubbs said of the raises.

The hospital also spent money recruiting doctors. While doctors historically operate as independent practices — setting up their own offices and billing patients separately — Angel is embarking on a new trend of making doctors employees of the hospital itself. It requires more of an upfront cost by the hospital to help the doctors set up their practice and cover office overhead, with benefits realized down the road.

“We went into the year knowing we would lose money, but we saw it as an investment,” Hubbs said.

Haywood Regional Medical Center and WestCare are in the final stages of forming a partnership, with plans to launch a new joint venture as early as January.

The two entities will join forces under a new umbrella organization with a single CEO and new board of directors. While daily operations will be merged, the arrangement stops short of a full merger with the assets and long-term balance sheets remaining separate.

Haywood County Commissioner Mark Swanger questioned how the interests of the public will be safeguarded under a new joint venture.

Currently, Haywood Regional is a public hospital. The public and media are allowed to attend hospital board meetings, and finances, policies and nearly all its records are open. The new joint entity will be a private nonprofit, however, entitling the public to only very limited disclosure about operations.

Swanger said the new entity won’t be required to operate in a transparent manner, and thus the public’s vested interest in Haywood Regional could be thwarted.

Swanger expressed his concerns at a county commissioner meeting this week, which was attended by Mark Clasby, chairman of the HRMC board.

Swanger suggested a slot for a county commissioner should be a reserved on the new governing body.

“Has there been thought of having a county commissioner serve on that board to ensure our county government and citizens have as much transparency as possible?” Swanger asked Clasby.

Swanger said he wants to see a stipulation guaranteeing a Haywood County commissioner a seat on the joint operating board written into the bylaws.

“While I don’t doubt the motives of anyone involved in this now, 10 years from now we will have an entirely different cast of characters, so to count on the trust issue is not good business in my view,” Swanger said. “I think a commissioner seat needs to be part of the operating agreement so the citizens who have the financial investment in the physical plant of Haywood Regional are properly represented.”

Swanger asked Clasby to deliver the suggestion to the rest of the hospital board. The current hospital board will continue to exist once the new entity is formed, but which decisions will lie with the Haywood Regional board versus the new joint operation board has not been stipulated.

The new joint board will have 14 members: seven appointed by Haywood Regional and seven appointed by WestCare. County commissioners appoint the members of the Haywood Regional board, which in turn will appoint members to the joint operating committee, giving commissioners a small, albeit twice-removed, measure of control.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the most studied national parks in the country. It consistently ranks in the top three for the number of research permits issued every year — a whopping 184 in 2008.

The influx of researchers to probe science in the Smokies provides valuable insight — even if not apparent at first. Such was the case with a researcher who spent years collecting fruit flies in the park. Fruit flies once found at a particular elevation have shifted higher up the mountain — most likely due to global warming that has sent cool climate species higher in search of the temperatures they’re used to.

“The researcher’s been doing this so long, he can actually document changes in distribution that could actually be related to climate change,” said Park Ranger Paul Super, the research coordinator for the Smokies who is stationed at the Appalachian Highlands Science Learning Center in Haywood County. “You go from something that doesn’t sound that important to something that can help us better understand changes in the park.”

Much of the research in the park now has a global warming angle. A researcher from Minnesota ventured to the Smokies to study the adaptability of salamanders under rising temperatures — one being the red-cheeked salamander.

“It is one of our flagship species. It is found nowhere else in the world except the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,” Super said. “Can we predict where it is going to retreat to and can we protect those areas under climate change?”

The Smokies’ status as a research magnet is helped by the plethora of universities within a half-day drive. Another reason is the varied ecosystems available to researchers. Need craggy 6,000-foot peaks? No problem. Boggy low-lying wetlands? Got them, too.

The Smokies has also been a hotspot for researchers in the past decade because of the All Taxa Biological Inventory, a massive undertaking of taxonomists to document every living species in the park. So far, nearly 900 new species have been discovered in the process.

The number of researchers who have dabbled in the Smokies allows the park to tap into expertise across the globe. Super is on a first-name basis with researchers from the University of Gwelp in Canada who used the Smokies for cutting-edge research involving DNA bar-coding.

The relationship came in handy when a whippoorwill killed by a car windshield fell into Super’s hands last summer. Nocturnal birds like whippoorwills are in decline. The loss likely stems from a similar decline in large moth species suspected as their main food source, but no one knew for sure exactly what these birds ate.

So Super cut open the whippoorwill, pulled out the bits and pieces of moths from its stomach, and sent them off to the DNA experts in Canada. Using their new barcode technology, they identified the unrecognizable moth parts.

“Now we have some of the first definitive data on what whippoorwills eat,” Super said.

Part of Super’s job when issuing permits is weighing the loss of the plants and animals plucked from the park by researchers with the potential benefits to the park. As a haven for wild things, the park forbids taking even the most benign things from the park — catching fireflies to take home in a jar, picking flowers, even putting a pretty rock in your pocket is illegal. It’s part of being in an unaltered ecosystem.

So Super takes the requests seriously. Specimens that leave the park — from stacks of pressed ferns to slime molds in Petri dishes — mean little slices of the park have taken up residence in labs and universities all over the county.

“Federal law requires that anything collected in the park is still the property of the park service,” Super said.

Dueling solutions for relieving traffic on N.C. 107 in Sylva are poised to make the final cut in the long-awaited Jackson County Transportation Plan.

Both a bypass around the commercial thoroughfare and redesign of the road itself could ultimately be pursued, working in tandem to solve congestion rather than being an either-or proposition.

The task force charged with creating a long-range transportation plan for the county still faces a looming question, however: which one will appear on top of their list? Task force members are split over that question.

Dean Coward, an accountant in Sylva who is on the task force, believes the bypass is the answer, creating a new connector from U.S. 23-74 into the Cullowhee area that would avoid the bottleneck along the commercial stretch of N.C. 107.

“I hate to see that torn up,” Coward said of the countryside that would be impacted. “But the honest truth is that it is the only thing that will give real relief.”

Coward’s wife, who works at Western Carolina University, leaves for work at 7 a.m. to avoid traffic on N.C. 107, even though it puts her at work far earlier than she needs to be there.

But others on the task force would rather see trouble spots on N.C. 107 fixed first, including Alan Grant, who works at Southwestern Community College. Grant has sat through up to four light cycles at the intersection of N.C. 107 and U.S. Business 23 on Friday afternoon.

“I think almost everyone in Jackson County would think that is a major problem,” Grant said.

As for the bypass: “I am not against it, I just don’t think it is a panacea,” Grant said.

Still others on the task force don’t think a bypass belongs on the final list at all.

“In my view, once they fix the light timing on N.C. 107, I don’t think we really have a traffic problem,” said Don Selzer, another task force member. “There are certain times of day when things back up a little bit, but I don’t think it is a big deal.”

Loose ends

While reconciling the divergent views seems unlikely, task force members say they should attempt to rank the projects by priority and then vote on a final plan. It is unclear whether they will have that chance, however.

The coordinator of the task force, Ryan Sherby of the Southwestern Commission, said the task force has completed its charge of creating a master transportation plan.

At the last task force meeting, members assigned scores of 1 through 5 to a laundry list of road projects that were developed by the task force over the past years. Sherby tallied the scores and said the list now suffices as a transportation plan for the county.

Task force members feel otherwise, however. Those on both sides of the most contentious road project — a new bypass around N.C. 107 — want the opportunity to prioritize the list and to take a formal vote on it.

“With the limited financing from the state, we need to be absolutely sure that number one, two and three on the list are the real priorities,” Grant said. “It is the difference between reality and a wish list.”

Task force members didn’t realize walking into the last meeting that they would be asked to score the projects. The format for the meeting wasn’t revealed until its outset, allowing task force members little time to contemplate their answer, they said.

“It has got to be prioritized, but I don’t think going around the table and loosely getting people to throw out a score is the way to do it,” Coward said.

Grant says he would like to reconsider his score for a couple of the projects, describing the initial scoring process as merely “suggestive.”

Susan Levielle, another task force member, said she felt so flustered when it was her turn to rank the bypass that she gave it a high score even though she is adamantly opposed to it.

Task force members have yet to see a final tally of how each road project scored. Sherby compiled a spreadsheet of the rankings that shows the cumulative scores for each project, but has not disseminated it to the task force members — another reason they see the need to meet again.

“If I have been involved and put the energy in this far, I need to see the final plan to express an opinion on it before it goes out the door,” said Grant. “It still needs some finishing up.”

Few happy with results

While some opponents to a N.C. 107 connector say the task force didn’t give them adequate time to discuss their concerns, those who are for the bypass feel like too much time was dedicated to it.

Dean Coward said representatives from Smart Roads, a citizens group opposed to the bypass, have dominated the task force meetings, and as a result, he isn’t overly pleased with how the process went.

“I don’t see we are accomplishing a whole lot. I think we are spinning our wheels,” Coward said. “I think our role needs to be a little clearer as to what we are to do and who’s responsible for what. We have just been floundering around.”

Coward thinks the scoring system undertaken at the last meeting was an attempt to keep naysayers from continuing to bog down the process, but perhaps overcompensated. A plan was rapidly shepherded to the finish line and the result isn’t a very useful list, Coward said. Coward would rather see the task force prioritize the projects and then vote on the list — even if it results in a split vote.

Coward admits a consensus will be difficult, however. But the lack of a bona fide ranking system doesn’t do justice to the most serious problem of all: N.C. 107.

“It is the one road that affects everybody in the county,” Coward said. “I think you got to deal with 107 separately and then you can get about the other things that need to happen.”

Coward called the bypass aruund 107 “the elephant in the room.”

Levielle agrees. She suggests taking 107 off the list completely and dealing with it as a separate issue, allowing the rest of the transportation plan to advance with the task force’s endorsement, unfettered by controversy.

The appearance of both projects in the county’s transportation plan pleases Joel Setzer, the head of the Department of Transportation for the region.

“I honestly believe that both are needed,” Setzer said.

That’s what Setzer has been saying for several years. The task force seems to concur, he said, and the recommendation is supported by the traffic models created over the course of the task force’s work. Those traffic models show that congestion management alone along N.C. 107 couldn’t handle all the traffic projected along the road by the year 2035, Setzer said.

“I think if the task force and the model had said the new connection isn’t needed, I would have had to say I was mistaken and am sorry for that,” Setzer said. “I am relieved somewhat that my opinions after we started doing some number generation seem to be validated. That is always reassuring.”

But the traffic models were based on only a partial set of plans, according to some task force members. A feasibility study by DOT to fix N.C. 107 is only in the preliminary stages, so traffic engineers providing data to the task force couldn’t accurately gauge how much traffic would be improved by a redesign when the redesign hasn’t been formulated yet.

Don Selzer, a task force member, gave low scores to both congestion management fix for N.C. 107 and the bypass. He was under the impression congestion management meant extensive widening of N.C. 107 with more lanes — and if that’s what it means he’s against it. If it simply means targeting problem intersections, he’s for it.

Dean Coward also had trouble scoring congestion management since he didn’t know exactly what it entailed.

“It seems to be a generic term for a problem,” Coward said.

DOT’s Joel Setzer agrees that it’s unclear what fixing N.C. 107 would entail, whether that would mean extra lanes, perhaps roundabouts, side roads to handle traffic or some other combination. A feasibility study for a redesign of N.C. 107 is currently in the works but is far from complete.

As for which to pursue first — a new connector or 107 redesign — Setzer leans toward the bypass. Once completed, it would give drivers a way around N.C. 107, which could be crucial during construction on the thoroughfare itself.

“It is going to be a nightmare when that thing is under construction,” Setzer said.

Cart before the horse?

While the task force has not been afforded the opportunity to vote on the transportation plan, a regional transportation board already signed off on the draft plan last week. At a quarterly meeting of the Regional Planning Organization, comprised of elected leaders from six counties, Sherby asked the board to conditionally approve the Jackson County Transportation Plan.

Sherby said he planned to present the plan to the Jackson County commissioners in December, as well as to all four municipalities in the county, and expected them all to approve it. He asked the regional transportation planning body to go ahead and approve the plan, assuming that the elected bodies follow suit.

“I thought we could pass a resolution of support contingent on the county and four municipalities, that if they pass it by default the RPO supports it,” Sherby told members at the meeting.

As a result, the regional transportation board unanimously endorsed the task force’s plan, even though the task force itself has yet to endorse it.

For 75 years, Cataloochee Ranch has been serving up a taste of the Wild West in the Smokies.

From its mile-high perch on Fie Top Mountain, the ranch offers respite and solitude, fishing and horseback riding, expansive rolling meadows and prized vistas.

But courting a metropolitan clientele to Cataloochee Ranch in its early days wasn’t easy. The Ranch was isolated and rugged, a wind-swept mountain outpost where bears preyed on sheep and moonshiners guarded their secret stills.

The founders, Tom and Judy Alexander, were city transplants from elite social circles, Tom as the son of a judge from Atlanta and Judy as the daughter of a doctor in Richmond, Va.. But Tom’s dashing ingenuity and Miss Judy’s fabled charm convinced locals to lend a hand to the new-fangled tourism venture. Their joy for life was so addictive that a strong and loyal following of guests was clinched nearly on that charisma alone.

The couple thrived in their adapted home. Tom was soon wrangling cattle and orchestrating muzzle-loading rifle matches. Miss Judy learned to salt hams and make jellies, but played an equal role in tending the Ranch, even fending off bears that found their way into the smoke house. She once sauntered through the Ranch house with a dead bobcat over her shoulder, surprising guests who were kept guessing about its origins.

The two met in the mountains after following different paths here.

Miss Judy came to Asheville for boarding school and entered the flapper scene of the Roaring ‘20s. Meanwhile, Tom, a forester by profession, was working in the region for a private timber estimator. Tasked with appraising the value of timber in the soon-to-be-created Great Smoky Mountains National Park, his job took him roaming through the high mountains where he came into his own as a rugged outdoorsman.

When the Depression hit, coinciding with the demise of the logging era, Tom’s employer went bankrupt and paid him out with company equipment, including tents, a chuck wagon and sundry backcountry gear.

With no other prospects for work on the horizon, Tom opened a tourist fishing camp in the Smokies’ hinterlands, catering to some of the new national park’s first visitors in 1931 and 1932. But the Three Forks camp was remote and inaccessible, and the park service, recognizing the value in providing amenities to visitors, encouraged him to shift the operations to Cataloochee Valley.

Miss Judy, just 24 at the time, joined him in the venture, taking up residence among mountain families still living off the land in the isolated valley. They were adopted by the community, in part thanks to the black medical bag Miss Judy’s father had given her to care for basic ailments.

“Word spread up and down the valley that Miss Judy had all this doctoring stuff,” recounted Alice Aumen, a daughter of Tom and Miss Judy who was an infant during those years.

Tom soon tired of the park’s arduous rule book, however. They couldn’t hunt, couldn’t cut trees, couldn’t build a new fence or guest cabins without permission. When the park told him his beloved dog, Foxie, who loyally accompanied the guests on backcountry horse trips, would have to be leashed, he drew the line.

“My dad said ‘He’s never has been on a leash and he never will be,’” Tom’s daughter Judy Coker recalled. “He told us that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Tom began scouting for new land outside the park’s borders and purchased 1,000 acres on Fie Top mountain above the then-rural community of Maggie Valley.

The mountaintop land, which had previously belonged to a rugged farmer and rancher, consisted of a derelict collection of outbuildings and barns. The task of transforming the property into an appealing resort was arduous to say the least. But Tom and Miss Judy quickly found a willing workforce of mountaineers with few other prospects for cash money.

The Ranch provided work to scores of locals as horse wranglers, cooks, dish washers, hunting guides, farmers, and even fiddlers to entertain guests. They raised sheep and cattle, and grew much of the food that was served up to guests. And they always seemed to have a good supply of moonshine on hand, which was fondly sampled by many of the Ranch guests.

While outsiders, particularly affluent ones, were often viewed skeptically and kept at arms’ length by locals, Tom and Judy Alexander were embraced. They were already well-versed in mountain ways from their years in Cataloochee Valley and held the mountain people in high regard.

“My dad was such an every man. He formed friendships with every kind of person you could imagine, from big time corporate executives all the way down. The people who worked for him all loved him,” Aumen said.

Nonetheless, they maintained their more elite social lives, mingling with the upper classes of Waynesville and the Biltmore circles in Asheville. The Ranch’s guests were affluent and metropolitan, providing Tom and Judy with an endless stream of entertainment.

“They made such close friends among the guests that they were always traveling to visit in the winter months,” Aumen said.

The operation of Cataloochee Ranch more often than not fell to Miss Judy. Tom, a forester by profession, held steady jobs off the mountain, first with the forest service and later as a timber appraiser for Champion Paper Mill in Canton.

A world apart

Growing up at the Ranch was an idyllic childhood for the Alexander children, Alice Aumen, Judy Coker, and a son, Tom Alexander, Jr.

“From the age of five or six, mother never knew where we were,” Aumen said.

While they attended boarding school in Waynesville and Asheville during the week — due to bad roads that kept the mountaintop isolated — summer and weekends were spent roaming the rolling meadows, riding horses and playing with the children of guests. Visiting families stayed for weeks at a time, and often returned year after year.

“It was very much an extended family,” Aumen said of the guests.

The road to the top of the mountains was once impassible for much of the winter. Miss Judy, when staying on the mountain alone with Tom at work and the children in boarding school, used a signal system with a lantern to indicate when she got stranded.

Guests driving to the Ranch relied on roadside sign posts instructing them to shift to a lower gear or cool their engine, warning them of particularly treacherous switchbacks ahead. One even declared: “If car chatters on rocks, reduce air pressure in rear tires.”

The early isolation meant Alice and Judy grew up with one foot in two worlds. During the summer and weekends, they were barefoot mountain girls. During the week, they were city girls, attending boarding school in Waynesville, and for some years in Asheville.

For high school, the girls attended St. Catherine’s in Richmond. After that, it was on to Duke University.

Tom and Judy wanted the best schools, but couldn’t afford it on the Ranch’s income alone.

“We went to pretty high dollar schools,” Judy said.

Aumen said her parents never spoke a word about the price of their education.

Taking the reigns

Alice and Judy didn’t initially set out to operate the Ranch in their parent’s footsteps. Judy followed her husband to South Carolina, while Alice went off to design school in New York, then moved to San Francisco. Tom Jr. was busy pursing a career in journalism.

But in the early 1960s, Judy’s husband grew tired of working in his family company in South Carolina and suggested they move back to the Ranch. Judy gladly complied. Alice was back home from San Francisco visiting for a couple weeks and was caught up in the excitement of a new venture: opening the first ski area in North Carolina.

“I said ‘Oh this sounds like fun,’ and I never went back,” Alice said.

Tom had long toyed with the idea of starting a ski operation. In the 1940s, Miss Judy and the kids would strap on homemade skis — made from bent wood and leather straps — and go careening down the mountain. But a ski slope for tourists proved out of the question until the advent of snow-making technology.

Tom was driven to open a ski area in hopes of providing steady employment for local people and creating a wintertime tourism economy for Maggie Valley. He had, after all, always been concerned with the welfare of the local people.

“He also liked any kind of challenge. He was somewhat of a visionary you could say,” Aumen said. “It was something new and no one was doing it.”

Tom was surely pleased about the return of both daughters but didn’t show it.

“Dad just said ‘Good, now I’ve got help. We’ll start the ski area,’” Judy recalled.

The previous year, Tom and Miss Judy contemplated selling off the Ranch. But the daughters’ return to the mountaintop set the stage for a continuing family legacy.

It would be several more years, however, until Aumen met her future husband, Tom. It’s hard to imagine a better first impression than the one pulled off by Tom Aumen, who made an uninvited helicopter landing in the middle of the Ranch one Sunday morning. He’d just opened a helicopter sightseeing service in Maggie Valley and popped in for a look-see of the Ranch during some down time.

Tom Alexander was infatuated with helicopters and invited the young man to stay for lunch. Aumen married him shortly thereafter.

The two daughters and their husbands, along with Tom and Miss Judy, embarked on the all-consuming project of opening a ski area, installing rope tows and snow making equipment on one of the mountain’s slopes.

Cataloochee Ski Area became a booming business in its own right. It was eventually sold by the family and operates as an independent company today.

Finding their niche

While some family businesses are fraught with internal conflicts and divergent visions, everyone found their own niche when it came to running the Ranch. Luckily, the two sisters, Judy and Alice, have quite different interests. For Judy, her love was being in the barn with the horses and roaming the property.

Alice became the office manager, running the reservations desk and bookkeeping. During the early years in the ski business, she even ran a retail shop in Atlanta selling ski merchandise. And her flair for interior design has certainly found an outlet, adding new elements to the cabins and ranch house as needed, although the rustic antique decor has changed surprisingly little.

Today, she still arranges flower vases for the guest cabins and tables, artfully weaving in native plants like the waxy green leaves of Galax.

Judy, who always gravitated toward the barn as a girl, found a home among the backcountry horse guides, accompanying the expeditions to tend to the horses and help cook camp meals.

“Judy wouldn’t be caught dead arranging flowers,” Alice said of her sister.

“That’s not so,” Judy protested, but then thought better of it.

Judy admits she would much rather be on her hands and knees in the meadow, repairing divots in the earth torn up by destructive wild hogs. Judy can still be found fixing fences and trapping nuisance hogs, announcing four killed last week. She spends less time in the barn and with the horses, a job that now falls to her daughter, Judy B., as stable manager.

Passing it on

Another changing of the guard is underway at Cataloochee Ranch. While Judy’s daughter, Judy B., tends to the Ranch’s prized herd of horses, Alice’s son, Alex, has taken on the role of general manager.

Alex didn’t set out to carry on the family legacy at Cataloochee Ranch, but a suspicion it may be in the cards steered him towards a business major in college.

“When you are 20 or 21, you have no clue. You say ‘Well that would be handy one day if you go back to the Ranch,’” said Alex, 40.

Technically his first jobs at the Ranch were as a child, whether it was cleaning horse stalls, mowing the grass or washing dishes. But most of his childhood memories are of the pure and complete freedom the remote mountaintop afforded — coupled with a revolving door of visitors who kept it exciting.

“You had an endless stream of playmates all summer long. It was like growing up at a summer camp,” Alex said.

He still keeps in touch with a few summer playmates who vacationed at the Ranch, some who have homes in Haywood County today and others who now bring their own children to family vacations at the Ranch.

Alex’s wife, Ashli, also works at the Ranch, overseeing food service. She plans menus, cooks meals, shops for the food, manages wait staff, and pitches in with accounting.

Waiting in the wings

Navigating the Ranch into the 21st century has been a balancing act, refining the operations just enough to meet the expectations of upscale travelers while retaining its historic character.

“Expectations of our travelers have changed,” Alex said. “People want to feel like they are in a rustic setting but still want their amenities. They want to be in the middle of nowhere but still check their email.”

Historic photos of the Ranch show visitors pitching in to split wood. They survived without hot water and relative isolation during their stay. Today, the Ranch has wireless Internet, and added satellite TV to the cabins last year.

But the spirit of Cataloochee Ranch has changed surprisingly little.

The furniture in the ranch house is still pushed back for Saturday night square dances. Guests are still greeted by the smell of a wood fire and the creak of wooden floor boards when they step onto the porch of the Ranch house. Inside, farm implements hang on the walls, quilts drape over the banisters and antiques comprise most of the furniture, save the Western-style leather sofas added for comfort’s sake.

The long-range views are still everywhere you look — the expansive meadows crowned by distant ridgelines, the world unfurling below you from the vantage of an Appalachian mesa.

“People say it’s changed, but it is still Cataloochee,” Alex said.

Another constant has been the menu, with many of the old recipes created by Miss Judy still served up during the fabled breakfasts and dinners at long banquet tables.

“There are people who come back and request things they had as children here, onion casserole being the number one,” Alex said.

Families retreat to the Ranch today to reconnect: with the outdoors, with a simpler time and with each other. Meals as a family are in itself a novelty.

“Statistically, most people don’t sit down as a family and eat together anymore,” Alex said. “An appeal for families now is that it reminds them of when they were kids. Today, you can’t just turn your kids out to play and not worry about them every second. Here as soon as they eat, they are gone playing outside. You don’t ever have to get back in your car once you are here.”

The Ranch has expanded guest quarters and cabins, accommodating twice as many people as it used to. Today a full house is 70 people.

Running a bigger operation requires a more structured work flow, with duties spelled out in job descriptions and schedules for when to do what, unlike the old days when many employees were live-ins or neighboring locals who constantly tended to affairs of the Ranch, whether it was their shift or not.

The ranch has 25 to 30 full-time employees during the peak season, dropping back drastically in winter when it shuts down all together. Even the horses go on winter sabbatical, with many of them boarded in South Carolina and brought back again in the spring.

Today, Alex’s and Judy B.’s own children are growing up at the Ranch, marking the third generation to spend its childhood roaming the high meadows and socializing with out of town guests.

The Ranch is less isolated with each generation. A school bus now comes to the top of the mountain to fetch the children daily. Last week, Alex could easily pop into town for a midday Thanksgiving program at his daughter’s school. She plays softball and is integrated into the community in ways he never was — let alone the generation before him.

Only time will tell if the fourth generation will eventually continue tradition and run Cataloochee Ranch.

“The only thing you can do is cross your fingers and expose them to it as much as you can,” Coker said. “They have to get their education go out into the world and then make their decision.”

Haywood County library is experimenting with novel methods for wiping out some of the $250,000 in late fees it is currently owed.

For the month of December, the library plans to accept canned food in lieu of library late fees for the first time. Each can will deduct $2 from patrons’ total bills, though the program will not erase any fines for lost or damaged materials.

Library director Robert Busko said the program has not worked well in other libraries that have tried it but that it was worth giving a try at Haywood this year.

“Given the fact that the economy is in trouble and people need food, this might be successful here,” said Busko.

Haywood’s library also plans to erase all fines on children’s library cards in preparation for a new policy on juvenile cards.

On Monday night, Haywood County commissioners voted to give the library the go ahead to wipe out $16,000 in juvenile fines.

Children will have a clean slate before a new policy goes into effect that will block them from checking out materials after accumulating a mere $1 fine on their cards.

Up until now, the library blocked all users from checking out materials after they racked up $10 in fines.

This new rule would protect juveniles from running up excessive fines, and more indirectly, prevent parents from using their children’s cards to bypass the library’s limits on their own cards.

Busko said parents who use their children’s cards after running up fines on their own cards are a “chronic problem” across the state. They prevent their children from checking out materials for pleasure or for work on school projects.

Haywood County seems to be no exception to that trend. Busko said there’s currently a four-year-old who owes the library $617.50 and a one year-old who has run up a $238.95 bill in library fines.

Since the commissioners approved the library board’s request, outstanding fines on every child’s library card have officially been waived.

“I know it’s rewarding bad behavior, but I don’t know what else to do,” said Busko.

The library board’s written request for the waiver stated that the $16,000 in juveniles’ fees would probably never have been collected anyway.

According to that request, the library seems to value children’s ability to borrow materials more than some parents in the county.

“The library considers this a down payment on the future for many of our users,” the request stated.

A Cherokee elder presided over a ceremonial torch passing from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to the Blue Ridge Parkway last week.

Standing at an overlook along the Parkway outside Cherokee, Elder Jerry Wolfe performed a “smudging” to open the ceremony, waving a feather and burning sage over the four corners of the land.

“The grounds and our souls are all cleansed,” Wolfe pronounced.

The event marked the beginning of the Parkway’s 75th anniversary and the closure of the Smokies 75th anniversary.

“Just a word of wisdom, slow down and enjoy your year because it will go by very, very quickly,” Smokies Superintendent Dale Ditmanson said to Parkway Superintendent Phil Francis.

Cherokee is stationed between both parks, marking the southern-most entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway and eastern gateway to the Smokies. The ancestral heritage of Cherokee people is rooted in the mountains and scenery embodied by both national parks.

“Our DNA runs deep here,” said Perry Shell, a tribal council member. Archaeological excavations have shown 11,000 years of continuous occupation by the Cherokee.

The Parkway stretches from 469 miles from the Smokies to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, passing through 29 counties along its route and dozens of communities. The scenic drive attracts more than 17 million visitors every year.

When the Parkway was conceived in the 1930s, a great tug of war ensued over where the Parkway would go. Tennessee hoped to route the Parkway through Knoxville and Gatlinburg. Asheville — along with Waynesville, Maggie Valley and Cherokee — would have missed out on the $2.3 billion economic impact the Parkway has today.

The Parkway is a tourism engine, responsible for 27,000 jobs and $508 million in payroll in the state.

“Certainly our forefathers when they had the vision for the Parkway were right on target. It has done exactly what they intended it to do,” said Lynn Minges, director of the N.C. Division of Tourism.

Much like the region fought to secure the corridor past its doorstep 75 years ago, it must rally today to protect the Parkway, said N.C. Ray Rapp, D-Mars Hill.

“How can we preserve the national treasure we have here for future generations?” Rapp said. Rapp said the viewsheds are integral to the Parkway experience and must be protected.

Parkway Superintendent Phil Francis echoed the theme.

“The Parkway didn’t happen without a lot of support from a lot of people,” Francis said. “To preserve the Parkway for future generations will take all of us working together.”

The torch was passed from the Eastern Band to the Smokies superintendent, then to the Parkway superintendent, and finally back to two Cherokee children.

“The future of the Parkway is in your hands,” Francis said to the youth.

Bo Taylor, a cultural heritage specialist with the tribe, reminded the crowd gathered at the overlook that the Cherokee connection with the land lives on.

“We are not the past, but the present as well. We are also the future. We are fortunate to have young people picking up our traditional ways,” Taylor said.

More than 300 people waited in line at the N.C. Employment Security Commission in Waynesville on Monday to submit job applications with Evergreen Packaging, the paper mill in Canton.

Evergreen employs 1,200 workers in Haywood County. The company is not adding new jobs at this time but is merely building up its applicant pool.

“This is actually a routine practice we do once or twice every year to make sure we have a pool of qualified applicants as jobs become available, primarily because of retirements,” said Mike Cohen, spokesperson for Evergreen.

Mark Clasby, Haywood County Economic Development Director, said Evergreen has an older workforce that is retiring.

“So there is a continued need for replacements,” Clasby said.

Evergreen’s last call for applications was in January 2009.

The line seemed longer than usual this time, according to Virginia Gribble, the director of the Employment Security Commission. ESC accepts and processes the applications. Gribble cited the high unemployment in Haywood County, which was 8.5 percent in September.

The long line is likely a sign of the economic times, said Gribble, but it was also a testimony to the quality of employment offered by the paper mill.

“It has been a very good response from the community,” Gribble said. “A lot of people are interested in working there because they are such a good employer.”

Clasby agreed.

“They have been a mainstay here in our community for 100 years and have provided really good jobs over that period of time,” said Clasby.

Entry-level jobs were advertised at $37,500 per year plus health insurance and other benefits.

Many who applied cited a long lineage of family members who have worked at the paper mill.

The Canton factory makes paperboard used in milk and juice cartons and envelope-grade paper. Evergreen also operates a smaller plant in Waynesville where coating is applied to the cardboard.

A local developer has purchased a key parcel alongside Super Wal-Mart in Waynesville, potentially kick-starting long-awaited commercial redevelopment along the South Main Street corridor.

The coming of Super Wal-Mart was heralded as an instant recipe for growth around it. But by the time Wal-Mart opened its doors a year ago, the recession was in full swing. Not only has a South Main boom failed to materialize, but Home Depot killed plans to open a store there.

But Brian Noland, a Waynesville developer and Realtor, is drafting plans for a retail strip sporting six storefronts along South Main Street with hopes of attracting national franchises.

“I put myself in their shoes, and if I am looking to go somewhere, that is definitely a hot spot,” Noland said, citing traffic volume from Wal-Mart and the easy access off the U.S. 23-74 bypass.

Noland closed on the two-acre parcel this month for $600,000. The total project will cost several million dollars, he said. Noland hopes to have the building completed and occupied by early summer.

Mark Clasby, the Haywood County Economic Development Director, said he is glad to see movement in the area. While Waynesville has the consumer demand to support many of the national franchises Noland is likely courting, scouts often look solely at population data, Clasby said.

“But we know there are more people than that because of tourists and the second-home market. They just don’t necessarily show up,” Clasby said. “It will take some salesmanship to convince [retailers] from a demographic standpoint that ‘You need to be here.’”

Noland has a national franchise broker working to line up leases. Noland said he was “a very small fish in a big sea,” but believes if he builds it, they will come.

Meanwhile, a second so-called “outparcel” in the Super Wal-Mart complex has also sold. A 1.8-acre tract behind Hardees sold for $550,000. The developer of the site, Donald Holland, has submitted site plans to the town for a car wash and oil change business and an additional commercial building for an unidentified tenant. The site is located along the Waynesville Commons entrance drive off South Main Street.

While Noland has not yet locked in leases, he already has the project underway with the building design. The attractive architecture will sport stacked stone and stucco with varying rooflines and pronounced eaves. It’s a good thing, since a run-of-the-mill, monotonous, low-slung strip mall wouldn’t pass muster with the town’s design standards. Noland has yet to submit his plans to the town for approval, but believes the town will like the look.

The development of the Super Wal-Mart outparcels were considered key to the appearance of South Main. Town leaders hoped attractive developments fronting South Main would visually shield the sprawling Wal-Mart parking lot set further back on the site.

Noland is a Realtor with Remax Creekside Realty. He is currently developing a 46-unit affordable townhouse development in the Clyde area. His first foray into development was in the mini-storage unit business 14 years ago. He has also built and operated three car wash and lube locations in Haywood County.

“I love developing. I really do,” Noland said. “Hopefully, the whole shopping center itself will be a one-stop shop.”

Noland has had the property under contract for 10 months. He purchased it from Cedarwood Development, a national firm that developed the complex known as Waynesville Commons and leases the site to Super Wal-Mart.

Several property owners along the corridor have had their property on the market since the coming of Super Wal-Mart, even booting out current tenants in anticipation of hot demand by national chains seeking proximity to the retail giant. So far, these property owners have failed to find takers.

Best Buy and a Verizon Wireless store are the only two major retailers that have set up shop around Wal-Mart so far.

The 12-acre site immediately beside Wal-Mart that was once slated for a Home Depot does not appear to have a taker yet. Home Depot, which had already purchased the site and even designed a building before backing out, still owns the site and is actively marketing it.

“The economy has obviously had an impact on that,” Clasby said. “It’s not an easy market, there is no question about it.”

A man has been arrested for shooting an elk in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park last Friday.

The elk was shot around 10:30 a.m. in Cataloochee Valley. Another park visitor who happened to be in the area got a description of the man’s vehicle and license plate number, which was used to track down the vehicle’s owner.

A Special Agent with the National Park Service who was assigned to the case drove to the man’s house, five hours away in Granville County, N.C., and confronted him. The suspect reportedly confessed to the offense, according to a press release issued by the Smokies.

The Smokies elk herd is well-loved, even revered. The news has been hard to take for many elk fans who make regular trips to Cataloochee to watch and observe the herd.

Esther Blakely, a volunteer with the Elk Bugle Corp who sees the elk every week, was shocked when she heard the news.

“It is just sad,” Blakely said. “I am still having trouble wrapping my head around someone going into the national park, in this peaceful valley, and shooting this magnificent animal. These are protected animals. This is not a hunting ground. It is a national park.”

Elk once roamed the Smokies but were hunted to extinction in the 1800s. In the eight years since, 52 elk were reintroduced in the park.

This is the first incident of an elk being shot in the park.

“The many visitors and volunteers who come to Cataloochee expressly to watch the elk constitute a very effective surveillance network, which has undoubtedly prevented elk poaching from occurring earlier,” said Steve Kloster, Acting Chief Ranger.

While Cataloochee is certainly a popular destination, it would have been far from crowded at that time of morning on a weekday outside of peak tourist season. The sound of a gunshot reverberating throughout the valley would have sent up a red flag to anyone who was in the area. It is currently illegal to have a loaded and accessible firearm in a national park.

“Having a loaded weapon in the park would have been a violation in its own right,” said Bob Miller, a spokesperson for the park.

The bull elk, which was sporting an impressive antler rack, was left lying in the field at the edge of the woodline where it had been shot. A bull elk can weigh up to 800 pounds. Rangers took the dead elk to the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine for a necropsy, which is still pending.

Smokies rangers, the NPS Special Agent and the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission cooperated on the investigation. The Park is now working with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to develop the case. The suspect’s name will be released once they figure out all the charges against him.

Those convicted of poaching in a national park can face up to six months in jail and/or a fine of up to $5,000. The weapon and the vehicle used in the crime also can be seized.

The loss of the bull will not negatively affect the long-term viability of the herd, which now numbers 105, but it is an affront what national parks embody.

“We do see this as a very serious theft of the public’s enjoyment of their national park,” Kloster said. “Thousands of visitors come to see these elk each year, and many of them know each animal by sight.”

Miller said elk fans are taking the loss quite personally. The elk that was shot, known as #21, was particularly well-loved.

“He is one of the largest, most magnificent dominant bulls in the valley,” Blakely said.

Only a few bulls are considered dominant. The bulls jockey for their dominant position during the mating season, known as the rut, which occurs in early fall. Dominant bulls emerge from the rut with a harem.

The bull that was shot would have already bred with the females in his harem by now. The bull is no longer crucial to the success of his harem after mating.

Visitation is up in Cataloochee so far this year, with more than 80,000 visitors for the year so far. Last year saw only 75,000. The Bugle Corp has 82 volunteers who take turns educating visitors about the elk and ethical wildlife viewing.

Jackson County Commissioners pondered paint samples at their meeting this week in an attempt to pick an exterior color for the new library beside the historic courthouse.

“I like white,” said Chairman Brian McMahan. “It’s historically been known as a white building and should be kept that way.”

Fellow commissioners seemed to agree that the new library should be white in keeping with the historic icon perched on the hillside over Sylva, but the decision didn’t end there.

“There are different types of white. There’s an eggshell white and a bright white,” McMahan said.

McMahan recently got a lesson in the myriad hues of white when he tried to buy a can of the stuff to repaint the hallway in his house.

“They said, ‘What color white do you want?’ I didn’t realize there were so many shades of white,” McMahan said.

He ultimately made what he called the right choice: deferring to his wife.

When McMahan turned to the other commissioners and asked them to weigh in, they shifted uncomfortably in their chairs.

“I don’t know. I will have to ask my wife,” Commissioner Tom Massie replied. “I am smart enough to know to get any good woman’s opinion on this.”

Commissioner Mark Jones explained that he was colorblind, recusing himself from the discussion.

Commissioner William Shelton said his wife has ample experience when it comes to paint colors.

“You would be shocked to know how many times my wife has changed colors in our house,” Shelton said.

Shelton said the color on a tiny swatch never seems to look the same once it gets on the wall.

“I think it would be a good idea to slap some on there to see what it looks like,” Shelton said.

The architect for the library, Donnie Love, said that approach could certainly be arranged, perhaps by painting a few choices on a wall or two.

“We could let anyone who wanted to go have a look at it,” Love said.

Shelton suggested eliciting feedback from the Friends of the Library group, which is raising money for the new library.

“We’d be happy to,” responded Mary Otto Selzer, co-chair of the library capital campaign committee, who was sitting in the audience.

A surge in students applying to Western Carolina University has allowed the college to be more selective.

Despite a rise in applications –– tripling over three years –– enrollment at WCU has not risen significantly. The bigger pool has allowed the school to seek a higher caliber student, said Chancellor John Bardo..

The school has raised its academic standards, as measured by the average GPA and SAT scores of new students. The SAT went from 1023 to 1033 between 2003 and 2009. In 2003, the GPA was 3.25, compared to 3.48 this year.

“That’s a really, really big change in the nature of students,” Bardo said.

Bardo said the admissions office was somewhat blindsided by the surge last year. Had they known how many applications were on the way, they would have been more picky during the vetting process. Instead, the university over-admitted on the lower end early in the admissions process rather than holding out, Bardo said.

Now that strides have been made in raising the average SAT and GPA of incoming freshman, admissions will begin weighing other criteria, such as extracurricular activity involvement by students.

“We now have a lot more opportunities to change the way we think about admissions. What are the things we should be looking at other than GPA or SAT?” Bardo said. “Who is it we should be admitting?”

The university has historically struggled with student retention. Some students come to Western for their first two years, then transfer to one of the larger state universities rather than spending all four years at WCU. Improving the retention rate has been a long-standing goal, and the deeper pool of applicants will allow the university to target students who really want to be at WCU.

The retention rate at WCU has gone from 67 percent in fall 2007 to 71 percent in fall 2008. Bardo projects 75.9 percent for this fall — slightly above the national average of 75.4 percent retention rate.

“For the first time in our university history, we are above the national average in retention rates,” Bardo said.