Maggie Valley is gearing up for its next round of beauty treatments in an ongoing effort to spruce up the town and bring some color to its streets.

The beautification program, led by master horticulturalist and Maggie Valley resident Clayton Davis, is a sweeping plan that intends to bring color to the valley year-round through mass plantings.

The first phase, which entailed planting tulip and daffodil bulbs in the town’s signature red and yellow, got under way last autumn. The bulbs need to be dropped into cold ground, so the town along with residents and businesses collectively planted several thousand bulbs last November.

The next phase of the plantings will include knockout roses, a famously hardy and simple species that blooms throughout the warmer months. Davis said that other plants intended to add color in the winter months, like nandina, will also be on offer.

The town is able to get wholesale discounts on the plants because they’re buying them in bulk, so citizens and businesses who take them up on the offer get their plants at cut-rate prices, as well as the expertise of Davis and the town’s grounds staff.

After discussion at a recent meeting of the beautification committee, participants will also get fertilizer and Nature’s Helper, a special growth aid, to help their plants along.

For its part, the town is funding the planting of its own properties — such as the landscaped area in front of town hall — with $6,000 it’s set aside for the project. Half of that sum was donated as matching funds by Home Trust Bank.

The idea behind the beautification belongs to Davis, who was inspired long ago by a trip to Summerville, S.C., where azaleas bloomed across the city. Davis and city officials hope this initiative will give Maggie Valley a face lift and bring increased tourist visitation.

Order forms for the plants are available at the Maggie Valley Town Hall and all orders are due by April 18. On sale are Gulf Stream nandinas for $11, nandinas for $18 and knock-out roses for $11. The next meeting of the beautification program will start at 10 a.m. on April 18, in the Maggie Valley Town Hall.

Despite its vibrant façade, downtown Waynesville hasn’t been immune to the economic recession.

So Richard Miller was surprised, to put it mildly, when he learned his downtown building doubled in value over the past five years — at least according to the county’s appraisers. Miller disagrees with their assessment.

The book value of Miller’s building on Main Street went from $431,000 to $800,000 in the recent countywide property revaluation.

Property values determine property taxes: the higher the value the higher the tax. And that’s what concerns Miller.

If his taxes go up, he’ll have to charge more in rent to cover the cost.

“Could the businesses stay in business if they had to pay that much more in rent?” Miller said. “I’m afraid one of my tenants would leave if I said rent goes up by that much a month.”

The Kitchen Shop and the Blue Owl art gallery occupy Miller’s building at the corner of Main and Church streets.

Most commercial leases automatically go up if property taxes go up, thanks to a clause built in to the lease for just this occasion. Merchants will then have little choice: either absorb the rent hike or pass it along in the form of higher prices to customers.

“The result? Fewer customers, fewer purchases, less profit, more overhead, and more and more doors closed,” said Jonnie Cure, a free market advocate and past downtown property owner. “Too many businesses come and go on Main Street in Waynesville as it is in this horrible economy.”

The steep increase witnessed by commercial property is the exception to the rule in the property revaluation. Residential homes and land largely went down, or at best increased slightly.

Canton saw significant hikes to commercial values as well: a 13 percent increase overall for the downtown district. If higher property taxes force up rent prices, it could break small businesses, said Charles Rathbone, owner of WNC Sign World in downtown Canton.

“The business owners here could not as a rule support that kind of increase,” said Rathbone. “They are struggling every day to keep the light bill paid.”

Rent is cheap in downtown Canton compared to Waynesville, but merchants are still operating in the margins, Rathbone said.

On average, property values in downtown Waynesville went up 28 percent, with the larger jumps seen on Main Street. Miller said Main Street has been singled out.

“Why is Main Street being punished for being successful?” Miller said.

Downtown Waynesville is a selling point for the whole county, said Buffy Phillips, director of the Downtown Waynesville Association.

“We are clearly doing something right,” Phillips said. “Realtors always say if they have a buyer who is on the fence, they drive them down Main Street to close the deal.”

It doesn’t seem fair that their success resulted in such large jumps in property values, which in turn will hurt the very merchants who are the life blood of downtown’s vibrant scene, Phillips said.

Main Street storefronts remain in high demand, however. Downtown Waynesville has only a handful of vacant storefronts, with only a couple on Main Street itself.

While downtown Canton has generally been flush with storefronts for lease in recent years, several have been snatched up lately. New downtown business that have just opened or are coming soon include a computer shop, an office for an outpatient physical therapy provider, an automotive shop and a new restaurant.

“It is beginning to fill,” Rathbone said.

 

What it means for taxes

In downtown Waynesville, higher property values carry a potential triple whammy: they not only determine county and town taxes, but also a special assessment to support the Downtown Waynesville Association, a self-promotion arm for downtown merchants.

Phillips said DWA will likely lower the tax rate in the Main Street district. That means that even though property values went up, the amount paid in taxes won’t go up by the same percentage.

At the county and town level, however, commercial property owners who saw their values go up shouldn’t expect a lower tax rate to offset the increase.

On average, property values flat lined. Although some obviously went up while others went down, the total value of all the property in the county is the same after the revaluation as it was five years ago.

 

How commercial is calculated

Commercial property is valued differently than residential homes and land. The values for homes and land are based on sales of similar property. But there are usually not enough sales of commercial buildings to establish an accurate baseline.

“It is hard to find commercial properties that are truly comparable,” said Ron McCarthy with RS&M Appraisal firm.

So instead, commercial property values are derived from the prevailing rents in an area. Even if the property isn’t being leased, appraisers calculate how much rent income the building would potentially generate if it was.

While residential homes and land were appraised by an in-house team of county appraisers, the county contracted with a private firm, RS&M Appraisal, to do commercial property.

Regardless of the rent-based appraisal formulas, Miller disagrees with his assessment. Rents have not gone up 28 percent in five years, so why did property values, Miller asked.

 

On the rise

Commercial property values increased in the latest Haywood County property appraisal. Here’s the increase for certain districts compared to five years ago.

Waynesville downtown: 27.9%

Canton downtown: 14.6%

Maggie Valley downtown: 8.8%

Clyde downtown: 3.8%

Russ Avenue in Waynesville: 9.5%

South Main Street in Waynesville: 3.6%

Champion Drive in Canton: 26.7%

Haywood County’s property revaluation was a massive undertaking: appraisers had to lay eyes on 50,000 properties, from condos to fast-food joints to farms, and judge whether they had gone up or down in value over the past five year.

Hundreds of property sales from 2009 and 2010 set the bar for new values on the county’s property rolls. But just because a similar home across town sold for $200,000, does it mean yours would also?

In the world of real estate, location is everything, whether it’s a few blocks down or the other side of the ridge.

This year, the county developed a highly-engineered method called “neighborhood delineation.”

The formula carves the county up into nearly 1,000 neighborhoods. From there, the county essentially wrote its own computer program to calculate property values, taking dozens of variables into account. Each variable takes the value up or down a notch, but is only as good as the baseline assigned to the neighborhood.

The methodology is impressive, said Randy Siske, a Realtor and president of the Haywood County Board of Realtors.

“The last time we had a revaluation, the biggest complaint from the real estate community was they were comparing apples and oranges,” Siske said. “I think they really made an effort to compare apples and apples.”

Before, the county was divided into just 17 townships. All of Maggie Valley was lumped together, or all of Bethel.

Now, clusters of just 30 or 40 similar properties make up a neighborhood.

David Francis, Haywood County tax collector, pointed to a map of Hazelwood where a conspicuous donut hole appears in the middle of one neighborhood. A condo unit along a residential street was carved out and made its own “neighborhood” rather than lumping it in with the houses around it.

“That’s how close and how drilled down this is,” Francis said.

When county’s appraisal team reached the final stage of revaluation — a drive-by of every property on the books to double check their formulas — they had identified some 700 neighborhoods. But during their final drive-bys they kept creating more and more.

One appraiser trolling the back roads of Fines Creek left in the morning to survey what she thought was one neighborhood and came back to the office with three: Betsy’s Gap, Price Town and Turkey Creek.

“They were finding out that some neighborhoods were a little broad so they broke them down further,” said Haywood County Tax Assessor Judy Ballard said.

And further and further apparently, until they had added another 250 neighborhoods by the time reval was done.

“Neighborhood delineation” was lot of work on the front end — entering not just the number of bedrooms, square footage and whether a home has a garage — but also the school district, proximity to town parks or mountain views.

Those appealing their property values may have a harder time making their case.

“I think it is going to be more difficult for property owners to get through the appeal process,” Siske said. “I’m not saying there aren’t properties out there that need to be appealed. But finding a property that is $100,000 off in value I think it is very much less likely.”

Property owners in Haywood County faced a Catch 22 when their new property values arrived in the mail last week.

If your value went up, it’s nice to know the lackluster real estate market didn’t undermine your home’s worth. The downside will be higher property taxes. Those who saw their value go down will likely pay less in taxes — but it’s hard to be excited that your home isn’t worth as much as it used to be.

The total value of property in the county remained flat. If you add it all up — the value of every home, lot and tract of land — it amounts to $6.791 billion, an increase of less than 1 percent over last year’s total value of $6.787 billion.

The flat figures mean the county escaped the brunt of the national real estate downturn. As a result, the county won’t have to hike the property tax rate to bring in the same amount of money as last year.

“I am relieved there were no gigantic swings,” Commissioner Mark Swanger said.

Had property values gone down as a whole, the tax rate would have to go up for the county to collect the same amount as last year. Commissioners would be hard-pressed to explain the nuance of raising the tax rate, but not really raising taxes given lower property values.

Commissioners have been sparred that dilemma, but only to some degree.

Unfortunately, Swanger pointed out that sales tax collected by the county might be down as consumers are buying less. And the state is poised to stick the county with more of the tab for everything from road paving to education, Swanger said.

Commissioners may be faced with raising property taxes to make up for these shortfalls — unless they want to cut the county’s budget for the third year in a row, something that may not be possible, they said.

“We have already reduced it almost as much as we possibly can,” said Commissioner Kirk Kirkpatrick.

If the state cuts education, does the county hang the schools out to dry or pick up the cost locally?

“We have to wait and see what Raleigh does and then decide as a community and as commissioners, what do people want? What do you want your government to do?” Kirkpatrick said.

Those tough decisions will be facing the county over the next few months. A budget — and tax rate — will be hashed out by July 1 when the new fiscal year starts. Then, and only then, can homeowners pull out their calculators and know for sure what their new property values will mean for their tax bill.

 

Why the revaluation?

In North Carolina, counties are required to conduct a mass appraisal of real estate every eight years — called a revaluation, or “reval” for short. Property taxes are based on property values — the more your property is worth the more taxes you pay. The reval is intended to level the playing field, bringing the county’s assessed value of your property in line with the true market value so everyone is paying their fair share come tax day.

 

How do you calculate taxes?

Here’s how to figure county taxes at the current tax rate at 51.4 cents for every $100 of property value. Divide your property value by $100 then multiply by 0.514. This doesn’t include fire taxes for your fire district or town taxes if you live in the town limits. Bear in mind commissioners won’t set this year’s final tax rate until June.

When Mollie Weaver put her house on the market two weeks ago, she was bracing for the worst. She’d been here before, for two years in fact, when her house languished on the market from 2007 to 2009.

“Of course that was when things were rapidly changing,” Weaver said. “We learned from that.”

This time, the mom of three got serious.

“In the higher price ranges, there is stiff competition. There are brand new homes that haven’t sold, and if you can’t compete with that you have to slash down your price,” Weaver said.

ALSO: New values based on hyperlocal formula

So she did, and Weaver’s house in the Iron Duff area of Haywood County was under contract within a day.

She’s selling at a loss compared to where she bought it in 2006, but hopes to make up the difference when she finds a new house: “We sell at a bargain and we buy at bargain.”

Weaver’s story sounds familiar to anyone who’s tried to buy or sell and home in the mountains.

But now for the first, time there are hard-and-fast numbers painting a full picture of real estate values in Haywood County.

Every home, lot and tract of land in the county — all 50,000 of them — have been reappraised to reflect the current real estate market. New values were sent to property owners last week, and many learned their property was worth less than the last countywide appraisal five years ago.

In the past, you could count on values to go up with the exercise. But it’s a different ball game this time, and many anticipated a dramatic decline in property values.

Nationally, the recession has wreaked havoc on the real estate market. A glut of homes coupled with a dearth of buyers forced sellers to slash prices, and real estate values entered a downward spiral.

“To be competitive, to sell your house, you have to undersell the guy down the street and that’s what’s driving your market down,” said Randy Siske, a Realtor and president of the Haywood County Board of Realtors.

ALSO: What new property values mean for your taxes

But the property reval carried rather pleasant surprise in Haywood County when it came out last week.

“Overall we did not have a total collapse here as some other markets did. You don’t see things crippled here,” said David Francis, director of the county tax department

The total value of property — if you add up every home, business and piece of land — essentially remained flat. Roughly half the property owners in Haywood County saw their values go up, and half saw them drop, Francis said.

Keith Gibson, a private property appraiser in Haywood County, said pegging property values has been extremely difficult lately — the most difficult he’s experienced in his 25 years in the business.

Appraisals are dictated by the selling price of similar property. During the boom years, Gibson followed suit with the high prices in the market place, but he often found himself shaking his head over his own appraisals.

“We were seeing things that were unbelievable,” Gibson said. “We made predictions that this cannot go on like this.”

And indeed it didn’t. Property values fell with the recession, and fast, making it hard to know whether last month’s sale was a still an accurate yardstick for today’s appraisal.

“I have never seen values go down in Haywood County until the last two years,” Gibson said.

Fearing the real estate market was still in too much flux to accurately peg property values, Francis last year urged commissioners to postpone the reval until 2012. They had already postponed it one year, from 2010 to 2011.

“We collectively agreed to postpone it for a year because we were afraid there might not be enough valid sales to do as meaningful and accurate a revaluation as possible,” Commissioner Mark Swanger said.

Tax Assessor Judy Ballard didn’t have to dig deep to illustrate the problem. She randomly picked Triple Creek subdivision from a stack of property assessments. In the reval five years ago, appraisers had a long list of lot sales to base their estimates on — 25 of the 40 parcels in the subdivision had sold in the prior two years.

But this time, there were only four recent sales in Triple Creek, and they all fell below their former values.

Francis thought it wouldn’t hurt to delay the reval yet another year, as several neighboring counties have chosen to do. Jackson, Macon and Buncombe counties postponed theirs until 2013, and Swain until 2012.

But commissioners decided to take the plunge in Haywood this year.

Doing so keeps the reval from falling in an election year — although Swanger said this wasn’t the reason. Revals can be contentious and politically charged since tinkering with the tax rate will usually follow on its heels. But Swanger said the county had already entered a contract with an appraisal firm and delaying it could have cost the county fees.

 

Fewer appeals

In the past, angry property owners flooded the county tax office after seeing their new values, outraged by the sharp increase — and fearing the higher property taxes that would follow.

But last week, a county appraiser stationed at the tax window to field inquiries was sitting idle. A basket labeled “property appeals here” was empty, and a jar of fresh pens on the window ledge was untouched.

The county hasn’t seen nearly as many appeals this time, Francis said. For starters, “sticker shock” of rising real estate that played such a large role in past revals is obviously absent this time. But the values are likely more accurate than they’ve ever been this time, thanks to a new, highly engineered formula (see related article.)

“The county had a huge job to do and I think they did a pretty darn good job overall,” said Realtor Phil Ferguson, the owner/broker of The Seller’s Agency.

Ferguson said the county’s new values for his property were in the “ballpark,” and that is actually impressive.

“When they have 50,000 properties to go out and evaluate, there is no way to do it perfectly,” Ferguson said.

The county’s team appraises homes from the curb, stopping at each one but not going in. There’s a lot they might miss inside, said Gibson.

“The counter tops, the doorknobs, whether it has 10-foot ceilings, hardwood floors,” Gibson rattled off a few. Even whether a house has stained oak woodwork instead of painted baseboards and door jambs.

This year, the county is actually seeing appeals from people who think their new values are too low. While it seems odd to lobby for a higher appraisal — since higher values mean higher taxes — that’s exactly what some people are doing, Francis said.

He spoke to one property owner who saw a tract of land — land took the biggest hit in values — fall from $550,000 to $100,000.

“She was very concerned,” Francis said.

Francis has also fielded calls from homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than it is now worth. They want to know whether the bank will come knocking, asking the upside-down mortgage holders to pony up the difference. Francis assured them that’s not the case.

 

The winners and losers

While generalizations don’t apply to every house in every neighborhood, there are some trends.

•  Commercial went up, especially in downtown Waynesville (see chart).

• Tracts of land went down substantially. Land, once considered a mini-gold mine, is no longer in demand by developers. Plus, banks have balked at financing land.

• Lots in subdivisions went down, also due to old fashioned supply and demand. While there’s hundreds of lots for sale, the tanked economy halted the mountain migration of retiring baby boomers.

• Property closer to town held its value or went up compared to rural areas. On average, property values fell in Crabtree, Iron Duff, Jonathan Creek, Fines Creek and the like, while they went up in the towns of Waynesville and Canton and in areas closer to town.

• High-end homes went down, while lower priced homes went up. It’s no surprise, since expensive homes have been in less demand while affordable ones are highly sought.

“On a sliding scale, the higher you go the greater decrease you would find in price,” said Kirk Kirkpatrick, a county commissioner and attorney who has a bird’s eye view of the market through real estate closings.

Kirkpatrick’s own house in Laurel Ridge went from a value of $800,000 in 2006 to $650,000 in the recent reval.

But a small home he owns on the outskirts of Canton went up from $78,000 to $100,000 — a case in point that lower priced homes have gone up compared to expensive ones.

There’s a side effect come tax day, however. High-end property owners will no longer pick up as much of the county’s property tax tab as they once did. Median home owners will see their share of tax burden go up comparatively.

“That is an unfortunate outcome of what this economy has done,” Swanger said.

Of course, the county was lucky to lean on the higher-valued properties for the years that it did.

“I don’t think there is any question the real estate bubble artificially inflated the value of the upper-end homes. They are now back to where they should have been all along,” Swanger said.

 

Turn around coming

Realtor Randy Siske said it is important to take the long view. If you only look at how much your property went down since the last reval in 2006, you ignore the dramatic rise leading up to 2006. In the first half of the decade, property values rose by so much that even though they have taken a step back now, it’s more like one step back for two steps forward.

There has still be a net gain in value over the decade as a whole — although it’s hardly consolation to those who bought at the market’s peak.

Real estate watchers see an uptick on the horizon. After two years of decline, the number of homes sold last year leveled off (see graph).

“It has started to stir now. There have been several good closings in the last couple of months,” Gibson said.

Before prices can fully recover, however, the number of homes on the market needs to be thinned out.

“There is still a lot of inventory on the market. If people don’t absolutely have to sell right now they probably shouldn’t,” Ferguson said.

The converse is certainly true.

“Now is a great time to buy,” Ferguson said.

 

 

What went up, what went down

Median and lower-priced in-town homes held their value compared to tracts of land and mountainside subdivisions, which fell in value. Commercial went up nearly universally. Here’s a break down by geographic region of the county.

Town of Waynesville: +4.22%
Waynesville outskirts: -0.29%
Town of Canton: +1.85%
Beaverdam (Canton outskirts): +3.86%
Town of Maggie: -0.67%
Ivy Hill (Maggie outskirts): +2.76%
Town of Clyde: +6.75%
Clyde outskirts: -2.25%
Jonathan Creek: -0.43%
Crabtree: -3.92%
Iron Duff: -9.99%
Fines Creek: -11.95%
White Oak: -17.93%
Cataloochee: -14.39%
Lake Logan: +1.49%
East Fork: -3.17%

Commercial
Waynesville downtown commercial: +27.9%
Canton downtown commercial: +14.6%
Maggie Valley downtown commercial: +8.8%
Clyde downtown commercial: +3.8%

It’s what everyone wants to know: is their neighbor’s house worth more or less than their own?

It’s not hard to find out at the county’s mapping site, where there’s a plethora of property revaluation data to keep even the most obsessed followers of local real estate busy for days.

Here’s how to navigate the county’s online mapping and tax information.

 

How to view property information:

• Go to http://maps.haywoodnc.net/gisweb/default.htm. (Or, from Haywood County’s home page, click on “maps” on the left.

• Search for your parcel by name, or click on “PIN” to search using the PIN number from your property notice.

• Your property will be highlighted in blue. You can also see your total assessed value, acreage, and so forth.

• For more complete details of the property, such as number of bedrooms, heated square feet, etc., click on “view tax card” on the lower left.

• To see the value of your neighbors’ property, click on “adjoiners” on the lower left. A list of neighboring parcels will appear. As you scroll over the list, the parcel on the map will be highlighted. Click “details” for the parcel you want to see info for. Click “back to search results” to get back to the list.

• To see the details of any parcel, first click on the “identify” button across the top, then click on the parcel you want to see.

• To move around your neighborhood, click on the symbol of the hand across the top and then use the tool to drag the map around.

 

How to find recent real estate sales:

• To see what recent sales in your neighborhood were used as a baseline for your property revaluation, pull up your own parcel (using directions above.)

• Click on “select viewable layers” (in the black bar just above the map).

• In the list on the left hand side, check the boxes for “revaluation neighborhoods” and “valid sales.” (Don’t uncheck anything that is already checked.)

• Recent sales used to determine property values in your neighborhood will be outlined in red. You may have to zoom out to see them.

• To see the details of any of the parcels, first click on the “identify” button across the top, then click on the parcel you want to see.

 

How to find old property values:

• Only the latest property values from the revaluation show up with the parcels on the map site.

• To find the old values for a parcel, go to http://www.haywoodnc.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=960&Itemid=134 (Or, from Haywood County’s home page, click on “taxes online” on the left side.

• Type in the name of the property owner.

• If the property owner owns multiple parcels, they will all come up and you will then have to select the one you want.

• When you select a property from the list, last year’s tax card will come up, which shows the value of the property last year.

Less than a year after opening a new visitor center in downtown Waynesville, the Haywood County Chamber of Commerce learned last week that its funding for the site is on the chopping block by the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority.

The county tourism agency plans to open its own visitor center downtown and end its subsidy for the one run by the chamber.

The tourism agency is better positioned to operate a one-stop shop for tourists looking for things to do and see in the county, according to TDA Director Lynn Collins.

“Our sole purpose in life is to market Harwood County as a destination,” Collins said.

It makes sense for the TDA, which is in charge of branding and marketing the county, to run its own visitor center for tourists to provide a seamless message rather than contract the role out to the chamber.

“This is a good time for us to take control of our program and tell our story the way we want to tell it,” Collins said.

The chamber received $30,000 from the TDA to run a visitor center. Losing that revenue will not be easy and could mean the loss of staff, according to CeCe Hipps, the Haywood chamber’s executive director.

“Anytime an organization gets that big of a budget cut, we will have to look at how we do our day-to-day operations,” Hipps said.

The chamber says it will not shut down its visitor center, however, despite the loss of funding. A visitor center is still central to the chamber’s mission, Hipps said.

“Chambers are considered a trusted and established source of information,” Hipps said. “Regardless of the outcome of this we will maintain our visibility and maintain our visitor center. Nothing will change for us from that aspect.”

The result: two visitor centers less than three blocks apart in downtown Waynesville.

The turn of events comes as the Tourism Development Authority grapples with budget shortfalls of its own. The TDA raises money with a 4 percent tax on overnight lodging, bringing in close to $1 million a year. That money is pumped back into tourism promotions, from national advertising campaigns to mini-grants for local festivals.

As tourism has dropped with the recession, however, the TDA has seen its budget shrink by more than $200,000 in three years. This year alone, the TDA has come up $115,000 short of what it anticipated, leaving the agency struggling to make mid-year budget cuts.

“We didn’t just wake up one morning and say ‘Let’s go take the chamber’s funding away from it.’ There is a quite a bit of planning and pros and cons and up and down that when into this,” said Ken Stahl, TDA finance chair.

However, the chamber learned only last week that its visitor center funding is in jeopardy with the start of the new fiscal year come July. Such short notice will make it hard to adjust, Hipps said.

Key members of the chamber board and TDA board met last week to discuss the issue. Ron Leatherwood, the incoming president of the chamber board, said the TDA might be willing to phase out the visitor center funding over two years rather than doing it all at once. That would certainly soften the blow, he said.

The visitor center funding is more than 10 percent of the chamber’s annual budget, and it will be a challenge to make up the difference, Leatherwood said.

But Leatherwood said he understands why the TDA, which is in the tourism business after all, wants its own visitor center. If they can serve the number of visitors they hope to — 40,000 a year — it will surely be a good thing for the county, Leatherwood said.

“Hopefully it will be successful for all of us. A rising tide lifts all boats,” Leatherwood said.

 

A full-service visitor center

The TDA envisions a full-service visitor center, where tourists will be awed by an endless list of things to do in Haywood County, from crafts to fly-fishing to motorcycle rides. Not to mention a clearinghouse for all the special events going on any given weekend, something that doesn’t exist now.

“We hope to achieve a little bit of synergism here,” said Stahl.

And since the TDA lives and breathes tourism, it can best disseminate that information, Collins said.

“We have a very good handle on what is going on in the county,” Collins said.

Collins also wants their visitor center to be open seven days a week, compared to the chamber’s visitor center, which is only open on weekdays.

The TDA is negotiating a lease to house the visitor center and its administrative offices in a storefront on Main Street across from Mast General store — in the thick of the downtown action. It’s a better spot for snagging foot traffic than the chamber’s location, Stahl said.

Stahl hopes a new visitor center will catch 40,000 visitors a year compared to the 6,000 seen at the chamber’s visitor center.

“When the foot traffic is in the thousands up there on Main Street, it is an opportunity for us to reach out and touch a lot more people than what we have been for essentially the same amount of money,” Stahl said.

The chamber’s visitor center is past the courthouse in a historic home a block beyond the main shopping district. To Hipps, the location is ideal: at the corner where Russ Avenue, a main corridor into downtown, feeds into Main Street.

The chamber just moved into the building last June. It had been without a permanent home for much of the past decade, bopping from one location to another every few years. A visible spot for the visitor center was the top consideration in the quest for a permanent site.

“That was our main driver. We wanted to have a gateway into the downtown area,” Hipps said.

The chamber’s physical quarters are impressive and inviting. The stately historic brick home has a wide front porch decked out in rocking chairs. The lobby has a grand double staircase and features include hardwood floors and black-and-white checked bathroom tiles. Its interior décor is appointed with comfy sofas and lush ferns. The front lawn is crowned by stately oaks with views down Main Street.

“We wanted something that would give people a really good first impression,” Hipps said.

The chamber made a sizeable investment when signing a three-year lease on the building.

Hipps said tourists quickly make themselves at home there.

“Finding the perfect home for a visitor center was so key. Had we known this a year ago we probably would have looked at other options,” Hipps said.

 

Move in the cards

Until now, the TDA has been holed up in an obscure county office building carrying out a mostly administrative role. Few in the county could tell you where the agency was headquartered, despite its very showy mission of broadcasting Haywood’s tourism accolades to the world.

Despite a sweetheart deal — the county charged the TDA only $250 a month in rent — the TDA had been contemplating a move to new offices for a couple of years.

But it was spurred recently into action by a massive reshuffling of county office space — one that might leave the TDA with no home at all.

Most of the occupants housed in the same office building as TDA are moving to an abandoned Wal-Mart being remodeled for various county departments. The project was motivated by the need to replace the antiquated quarters of the Department of Social Services but has led to musical chairs for other county offices as well.

The county hasn’t decided yet whether TDA can stay where it is, whether it might give the space to different county departments, or whether it will sell the building.

While it’s not certain TDA will get the boot, it was enough to get the TDA’s attention.

“They have not said definitively we have to move any certain time. Their exact words from the county manager were it would be prudent for you to start looking,” Collins said.

It seemed like a good time to pull the trigger on something they wanted to do anyway.

“We don’t want to wait until the music stops and not have a chair,” Stahl said.

If the TDA is going to fork out substantially more in rent, it will cut into its already tight budget. To make it work financially, the TDA will take visitor center funding away from the chamber to cover the rent, bringing visitor enter operations in-house in the process.

“If we are going to move we want to move into something that totally completes our mission,” said Alice Aumen, chair of the TDA board.

Part of that mission is to bring the TDA to the next level as an agency.

Since the TDA’s creation 25 years ago, it has funded visitor centers run by both the Haywood chamber and Maggie Valley chamber.

While it made sense for the TDA to outsource visitor center operations in its infancy — in the early days it had no staff of its own let alone an office — it has grown into a major marketing force for tourism and needs to take a leading role in serving tourists once they arrive.

There’s another advantage to running its own visitor center: to advance marketing research, Collins said. Currently, TDA staff responsible for marketing the county don’t interface directly with the traveling public on a daily basis. Collins wants to survey visitors and find out what brought them here, where they are from, how much they are spending, who’s in the traveling party, and what they like to do.

“It helps us get to know our visitors better. We can conduct all kinds of market research to build our marketing program appropriately,” Collins said. “If you don’t have research you are flying by the seat of your pants.”

The days of shotgun advertising is over, said Aumen.

“This is a huge opportunity for us to do research on who the actual visitor is,” Aumen said.

Plus, TDA can capture the email addresses of visitors, which are worth their weight in gold for direct marketing through social media like Facebook.

While the TDA is in the business of luring visitors to the county, there’s still an advantage to engaging those who are already here.

“Even though they are already here, we can get information in their hands that would make them want to extend their stay or come back for a visit at another point in the year,” Collins said.

 

Fulfilling a mission

Before moving in to its new office last year, the chamber invited the TDA to share the space. The two entities could run a joint visitor center and share overhead expenses, Hipps suggested.

Talk of co-locating the chamber and TDA have surfaced on and off over the years, but this marked the first formal invitation to the TDA to move in together.

“We wanted to continue and strengthen our partnership and to continue to work together and collaborate,” Hipps said.

Hipps said the two entities have the same common goal, namely “to promote Haywood County.”

It’s common for chambers of commerce and county tourism agencies to share offices and staff while maintaining separate budgets. It’s done in Asheville to the east and Jackson County to the west.

But co-locating with the chamber did not fit the TDA’s mission.

While tourism is the TDA’s only focus, the chamber recruits new businesses, promotes commerce, supports entrepreneurs and engages in economic development.

“A visitor center is not their primary mission,” Stahl said.

But Hipps said tourism is integral to the county’s economy, and thus integral to the chamber’s mission.

“Our model has always been everyone in this county is connected to tourism,” Hipps said. “We can’t dissect and separate the chamber from tourism.”

That said, the chamber’s visitor center does serve as a point of contact for people moving to Haywood County, buying a second home, relocating their business, starting a new business — all of whom may have started out as just a tourist at one time.

“We are so connected with the big picture that the overall economic impact is much greater than the numbers for foot traffic that comes through the door,” Hipps said. “Our business model is all inclusive.”

The chamber’s visitor center is critical a point of contact for business inquiries, said Leatherwood. You never know when a “lone eagle” will stroll into the visitor center, for example. That term refers to a mobile professional who can do their job online from anywhere and may be seeking a new place to move, Leatherwood said.

 

A county of many visitor centers

The visitor center run by the Haywood Chamber is one of four funded by the TDA.

“We are probably the only TDA in the state that funds four visitor centers,” Stahl said.

One in Maggie Valley run by the Maggie Valley Chamber of Commerce gets $30,000 a year from the TDA. The other two — one at the highway rest area in Balsam and one off the interstate in Canton — are staffed by the TDA at a cost of $25,000 each.

The Canton visitor center was opened only three years ago, but tourist traffic there has not panned out. A cinderblock car wash beside a gas station was converted into a visitor center.

Faced with a budget shortfall last spring, the TDA shut the Canton visitor center for six weeks. Traffic had fallen sharply anyway due to a rockslide that shut down I-40. But even once I-40 opened again, numbers remained low. In the fall, hours were scaled back, and in January it was shut completely. The TDA plans to turn it over to volunteers with the Canton merchant association.

The visitor centers in Maggie Valley and at Balsam draw higher numbers of visitors (see chart). Neither is on the chopping block for now.

The TDA will continue funding the visitor centers that perform better, but could not justify funding those that saw such a small number of visitors, Stahl said.

Hipps said the chamber is grateful for TDA support all these years and believes the two entities will continue to work together.

“We have a very successful business model here. TDA has been a part of that success by helping to fund that part of what we do,” Hipps said.

The health care bills rolling into the Haywood County jail for inmate care might now be slashed by up to 25 percent after the sheriff’s office contracted with a company who will ferret out discounts on the county’s behalf.

Currently, the county pays full sticker price for all health care given to inmates, and since they’re legally obliged to foot the bill for any inmate treatment, it can get pricey.

Sherriff Bobby Suttles told county commissioners that $20,000 a year was on the low end of what they might expect to pay. In a year when an inmate needs major medical care, such as open-heart surgery, costs can skyrocket to more than $100,000.

What the company, Correctional Risk Services out of Brentwood, Tenn., would do is comb through the bills looking for mistakes, such as being billed for a higher priced procedure or more treatment than an inmate actually received.

A company spokesman said that they save counties an average of 20 to 25 percent. They work solely on commission, keeping 30 percent of any savings that are found.

In addition to checking the bills for accuracy, the company will also be able to save the county from shelling out for full-price procedures by bringing them into a PPO — preferred provider organization — which would give the county the same kind of discounts private citizens can get by being under a medical insurance plan.

If the county sees savings from the contract, the majority would be from such markdowns.

Suttles characterized this as a win-win situation for the county. If no reductions are found, they lose nothing, and whatever savings they do glean will be a big help to the sheriff’s healthcare budget, which is, he said, notoriously hard to manage.

“Right now, we’re holding $8,000 worth of bills,” said Suttles. “It’s just hard to budget for the unknown.”

Haywood County Schools is currently without a finance director, after long-time finance officer Larry Smith stepped down amid an investigation into accounting irregularities involving one of his employees.

Payroll Administrator Sheila Nix, who had been with the district for more than 20 years, was fired as part of the investigation into policy violations in the bookkeeping department. Smith, who had been with the school for 10 years, resigned.

Assistant Superintendent Bill Nolte said that while he couldn’t comment on the specifics of the open investigation, they’ve brought in an outside auditing firm to pore over the system’s financial records, scanning for further irregularities or signs of misuse.

While Nolte said they were certain some fairly major policy violations had occurred, they were, as yet, unclear about whether any laws were broken in the process. Local law enforcement and state officials, he said, are waiting on standby for the results of the audit.

Meanwhile, the school district is now left without someone to direct their finances, at a time when schools across the state are facing one of the toughest budget years on record — Gov. Beverly Perdue has warned schools to brace for 10 percent funding cuts, on top of the millions in cuts they’ve suffered in recent years — it’s a tough time to lose an experienced finance director.

However, Nolte said the support they’ve received from the community and other school districts in the region has been encouraging. Local citizens with experience in the field have offered their expertise, while other districts have said they can lend a hand and possibly a few staff until the dust settles and a new director is named.

Nolte said Smith himself has even been in touch to ensure a smooth transition, though he wouldn’t comment on Smith’s exact reasons for parting ways with the school system.

“People resign for different reasons and when people resign it’s their reason, not ours. But he [Larry] is a good fellow and he has been very helpful to us in transitioning to a new finance director,” Nolte said.

While the investigation has no specific timeline, Nolte said he’s confident that suspected violations don’t extend outside the bookkeeping department. But when there are questions of taxpayer money, the best response, he said, is a quick one.

“There are some things where you can go, ‘Let’s look at that next week,’ but you don’t do that with taxpayer money,” said Nolte. “You look at it immediately.”

The Haywood County Fairgrounds are on the way to being back in business after a scare that shuttered the covered arena for code-compliance violations.

An infusion of cash by Haywood County commissioners saved the fairgrounds from cancelling upcoming events at the arena, which would have hurt the local economy and killed off the fairground’s main revenue stream.

The arena lacks permanent bathrooms and instead uses port-a-potties during events. As a result, the arena has been operating with a temporary building permit for the past five years.

ALSO: County’s leading critic stirs up trouble for fairground arena

The temporary permit has expired, however, forcing the covered arena to shut down, and in turn canceled upcoming events for the year unless someone came up with $400,000 for restrooms.

The Haywood Agricultural and Activities Board, which operates the fairgrounds, didn’t have the cash.

With the fate of the facility on the line, the fair board again appealed county commissioners for financial help. At their meeting this week, several members of the community spoke to how vital the place is to the county, its economy and its heritage.

“The fairgrounds are an important part of our agricultural heritage in Western North Carolina. It’s a big reason why people like and visit here in Haywood County. It’s part of who we are,” said Bruce Johnson, president of the Greater Haywood Chamber of Commerce, at Monday’s commission meeting.

He, like other supporters, expressed concern that once events left the arena, it would be increasingly challenging to court them back.

It marks the second time in a year the county has put up a cash infusion to save the arena and fairgrounds. The fairground arena was nearly lost to foreclosure last year after defaulting on a loan dating to its construction.

The fairgrounds once received an annual contribution from the county, which covered the loan payment. But when the recession hit, the county cut its contribution to the fairground, and it was left with no way to pay the loan.

So the county ultimately stepped in and paid off $337,000 left on the loan.

 

Good use of county money?

Not everyone spoke out in favor of the fairground, however. Some wondered why the facility had failed these 21 years to become self-sustaining, part of its original mission and still one of the current board’s main goals. They asked commissioners to let the fairground succeed or fail on its own, without more county help, especially since it’s not an essential government service.

But commissioners were sympathetic to the fairground’s plight, reminding the audience that the county provided 75 percent of the site’s funding until it was pulled three years ago, thanks to the tanking economy.

How many entities — churches, businesses, individuals — could be expected to survive without help if they lost 75 percent of their revenue, asked Commissioner Kevin Ensley.

Commissioner Kirk Kirkpatrick also stepped in to defend the county’s support of the fairground as important, even if it is non-essential.

“This is not necessarily an essential government function, but there’s a lot of things that government does that are not an essential government functions. It’s more a quality of life issue,” said Kirkpatrick, to applause from the audience.

The county has spent over $1.7 million on the fairground since 1990, including paying off the loan last year, according to County Finance Director Julie Davis.

And while members of the fairground board say they’re looking at every possible revenue stream outside county coffers, it’s not exactly the best time to go on a money hunt.

Their most promising lead is a federal loan, but it hasn’t panned out — the loan agency won’t have funds to lend until the federal government has a budget in place, which may still take weeks or months. So the board is looking to other ideas to get the fairground back on its feet.

“We are looking at grant opportunities and other possible loan opportunities, we’re looking at the possibility of corporate sponsorships, we’re trying to look in as many places as we can come up with to make this work,” said Fair Board Member Nancy Davis, who also heads up the dog show slated to appear this June, one of the major events in jeopardy because of the closure.

Davis said the board didn’t know that the temporary occupancy permit would, or could, be a problem, and they were surprised by the arena’s closure.

But, she said they’ve been working hard on ideas that will push the facility into self-sufficiency, and they’re trying to take the place that’s been kept alive by the sweat and toil of volunteers on to the next level.

 

Working toward solvency

Enter Aaron Mabry. Mabry is a Haywood County native who has been brought on to beef up the fairgrounds offerings and schedule, to pitch it, full-time, to any event he can find.

He’s excited about the possibilities for the site, and sees self-sufficiency within three to four years as an extremely attainable goal.

“You’ve got car shows, you’ve got cook-off’s, you’ve got other types of fair events that we’ve never done before,” Mabry rattled off confidently. “It’s really unlimited as to what you can do, it’s just a matter of taking the time and the resources you have.”

The site has long been agriculturally focused — most of the events held here have an agrarian connection in some form or another. And while Mabry doesn’t see this as a bad thing — the heritage and lifeblood of Haywood County is, after all, farming and the fairground facilities lend themselves to agricultural events — he’s keen to widen the field on what kind of events and clients come to the fairground. And it’s safe to say he’s ambitious about the prospects, given that he’s now able to dedicate his efforts to selling the fairground full-time.

When asked how many events he’d like to see there annually, he’s quick to answer: “365.”

“Up to now, it’s really just been marketed for the weekend,” said Mabry. “I’d like to have an event here every single day, that’s my goal, to bring in consistent weekly revenue that’s dependable.”

The first step in getting there, though, he said, is getting the arena back open, getting its bathrooms up to par.  

According to Haywood County Facilities Director Dale Burris, the place should be completed and ready for inspection by June 15, just in time to accommodate the June 18-19 dog show.

And as for the county, County Manager Marty Stamey said the county is not over-extending itself. For now, money will be pulled from the county’s fund balance, but they’ll seek a short construction loan with the approval of the Local Government Commission to repay the fund balance, then hopefully recoup that with the sale of one of the county’s currently or  soon-to-be vacant buildings. Those properties promise to bring in upwards of $3 million, when sold.

They’ll also draft an agreement between the county and the fairground, making sure that if the fairground becomes profitable, they’ll try to pay the money back.