Budget cuts impacting assistant coaches at the middle and high school level will likely be restored in Haywood County Schools following public outcry from the youth athletics community.

Haywood County is continuing with efforts to update and improve its emergency management ordinance — a local regulation that came under fire last year by a group of residents who thought the language violated their constitutional rights.

Haywood County commissioners are once again standing by their commitment to public education, making good on a long-standing pledge to be one of the top counties in the state in local school funding.

New rules are now in place to govern commercial outdoor gun ranges in Haywood County.

An announcement by Haywood County commissioners last week that a vote to legalize beer and wine sales countywide will appear on the November ballot came as a surprise to the public, with the news still making the rounds.

Beer is good for business.

That’s the message supporters of countywide beer and wine sales in Haywood County are hoping to get across in the run-up to a ballot question in November’s election.

It’s been a year since the Haywood County commissioners agreed to make changes to the county’s emergency management ordinance to tone down some overbearing language that didn’t sit well with an adamant group of civil liberty watchdogs.

To the Editor:

I won’t be voting for Michele Presnell, but it seems silly for this newspaper and local elected officials to blame her for the failure of local initiatives like the proposed room tax increase, school funding issues that influenced the closing of Central Elementary and the failure of the proposed Lake Junaluska/Waynesville merger to get on the ballot. Maybe part of the problem is we’re not doing enough to engage our citizens in information exchange or dialogue.

Haywood County voters will be asked to weigh in during the general election on whether businesses outside town limits should be allowed to sell alcoholic beverages.

Eric Messer only has one complaint about the health and wellness initiatives the town of Waynesville has been pushing with its employees. The fitness tracking bracelets passed out by the town weren’t designed with sewer plant workers in mind.