Tempers flared at the Franklin Town Council meeting Monday night as board members tried to find a solution to a public bathroom dilemma for its summer Pickin’ on the Square series. 

The Franklin Town Council is recommending a 4-cent property tax increase this year in order to cover its growing expenses and to avoid dipping into its fund balance. 

A second affordable apartment development is coming to Siler Road after the Franklin Town Council approved a special-use permit. 

The lawyer for a Franklin resident killed by a Macon County deputy claims the shooting was not justified and that the victim was just trying to protect his family.

With the 2018-19 preliminary budget in hand, Franklin Town Council will have a week to review it before the board’s May 15 budget workshop. 

A music and beer festival planned for April 20 in downtown Franklin has hit a roadblock since a town ordinance doesn’t allow alcohol to be served on town-owned property, but the Franklin Town Council is looking at ways to ease the restriction. 

When Sharon Van Horn organized the first-ever Thru-Hiker Chow Down in Franklin, she and her husband Bill were pretty fresh off the trail themselves. 

The Van Horns started hiking the 2,000-plus-mile Appalachian Trail piecemeal in 2005, getting more serious about it in 2010 and completing two 300-mile sections per year thereafter until their 2013 finish. During that time, they became well acquainted with the ways of hikers, from Georgia up to Maine. 

The five men — three Democrats, a Republican and a Libertarian — hoping to unseat Asheville Republican Congressman Mark Meadows in November will now be joined by one woman, if she can get the signatures she needs to make the ballot. 

Franklin Town Council seemed poised to approve a new zoning designation — the River Overlay District — until a packed room of business owners presented the board with a list of concerns Monday night during a public hearing. 

The results of a $14,000 study that assessed the best uses of the town-owned Whitmire property revealed to the Franklin Town Council what residents have been asking for all along.