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.

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.

Graham County has thrown a curve ball in an ongoing debate with Swain County over ambulance service in Deal’s Gap, a motorcycle mecca that sees a disproportionately large share of wrecks.

Deal’s Gap is an outlying area of Swain County, so far-flung that it takes an ambulance 45 minutes to reach it from Swain County. The area is much closer to Graham, which has historically provided emergency services to the area as a courtesy.

Graham and Swain are at a stalemate in negotiations over whether Graham should be compensated for providing the service within Swain’s borders. Swain thus far has refused to ante up, claiming it already provides a quid pro quo by transporting Graham residents who end up in the Swain County Hospital.

In a surprise move on Tuesday, Graham informed Swain that it would not answer emergency calls to Deal’s Gap over Labor Day weekend. Graham will have its hands full responding to calls within its own borders, they said.

Swain County Manager Kevin King said the news came as a surprise, since the two counties were still in talks and Graham previously said it would give Swain time to make arrangements to cover the area if they couldn’t come to another resolution.

King said Swain County generally has two ambulances in service at any given time. A third ambulance that usually serves as back-up will be posted in the Deal’s Gap area for the Labor Day weekend.

King said Swain will also be willing to help out Graham if they are stretched too thin.

“If they need our help, we will be right there,” King said.

Swain will continue transporting Graham residents receiving treatment at Swain’s hospital.

“We are not going to play that game with them,” King said.

Swain and Graham county commissioners agreed Monday to let their respective county managers look at solid numbers before deciding on a resolution to the Deal’s Gap quandary.

Graham County, which provides rescue service to the satellite Swain County territory and motorcycle mecca, wants Swain to contribute financially for the service, take care of its own terrain despite the distance or cede the 1,900-acre area to Graham.

Meanwhile, Swain has countered that it loses money each time it transports Graham County residents and those injured in Graham County’s Tsali Recreation Area— one of the nation’s premier mountain biking destinations — from its Bryson City hospital on to larger hospitals in Sylva and Asheville. These patients end up in Swain County’s hospital because Graham County does not have a hospital of its own.

Contrary to what Graham County had originally asserted, Swain County Manager Kevin King claimed Swain was the real financial loser on the two counties’ mutual aid agreement.

King presented the results of his research to the two boards at the second meeting called specifically to address this issue.

Assuming that the county recoups the typical 70 percent of its expenses from the patients it transfers to hospitals, each ambulance trips equals a loss of $214 for the counties, according to King.

Last year, Swain County made 55 trips to the Tsali area and 110 trips transporting Graham County patients from Bryson City to bigger hospitals. That would mean a total loss of more than $35,000 for Swain County.

On the other hand, Graham County made 29 trips to the Deal’s Gap area last year, which according to King’s calculations, signifies that Graham County lost a bit more than $6,000 last year.

But Graham County Manager Lynn Cody said the expense is much greater than that.

“It’s costing little over $100,000 to compensate our EMS, fire and rescue service and our law enforcement,” said Cody.

King said Graham County has not backed up that figure thus far.

“Up to this point, they have not proven it,” said King. “I’m empathetic to what they’re saying. I just don’t think it’s costing them what they’re saying it costs.”

According to Cody, however, the final figure must take into account the added costs associated with Graham County ambulances making a long trip on windy roads to arrive at an accident scene, only to find both the victim and motorcycle missing. Furthermore, some of the injured refuse to be treated after the ambulance has already arrived. In these not so rare occurrences, Graham County can’t bill anyone for their trip, leading not only to a loss of time and money, but also more wear and tear on their vehicles.

Terry Slaughter, EMS director for Graham County, agreed that responding to calls at Deal’s Gap has not exactly been easygoing, even if it is only an issue in the summertime when throngs of motorcyclists crowd the roads there.

“It’s a little more time consuming than just a typical call where you pick up someone at their home,” said Slaughter. But fortunately, they have never had a situation where ambulances were too tied up at Deal’s Gap to respond to calls in Graham County, thanks in part to mutual aid agreements with other counties, he said.

Out of Swain County’s $11 million budget this year, about $798,000 has been allocated to EMS. Meanwhile. Graham County expends about $884,000 of its $12.6 million budget on EMS services.

Glenn Jones, chairman of the Swain County Board of Commissioners, said he hoped the two counties would carry on with the status quo.

“I would like to see us get along together and continue a mutual agreement,” Jones said. “[But] if we have to go it alone, we probably are prepared to do that.”

If Swain County took over rescue service at Deal’s Gap, its ambulances would have to travel nearly 50 minutes to respond to calls. The only other option would be to put up an EMS substation in Deal’s Gap.

Graham County Chairman Steve Odom said he would be willing to give Swain County six months to prepare an such a facility.

But Swain County Commissioner David Monteith said it would be hard to pull off that special service for 8 full-time residents out of about 13,500 residents in Swain County.

“I don’t see that we could justify it to the taxpayer,” said Monteith.

King said that people who move into the outskirts of Swain County, like Deal’s Gap, realize what they’re getting themselves into.

“They know when they buy that property where EMS is, where law enforcement is, where the courthouse is,” King said.

Redrawing county lines?

Swain stands to lose $195,000 in annual tax revenue from the 34 homes and businesses in Deal’s Gap if it were taken over by Graham County.

Odom said Graham County is not following through on its annexation proposal at this point, but it isn’t yet out of the question. He said Graham is fully prepared to petition the state legislature to move county lines.

“If they failed to give us enough money, if they fail to take care of it yes, then I don’t know why we shouldn’t pursue it, “ said Odom. “Even if it’s a long drawn-out process, I think the argument is on our side.”

Ben Steinberg, general manager at Deal’s Gap Motorcycle Resort, said he doesn’t see a need for Graham County to take over since he doesn’t mind living in isolation.

“This area, while it may not offer the creature comforts of modern life, it’s a small price to pay for the beauty of the natural surroundings,” said Steinberg. “We run to town once a week, get all the things we need. Our sign out front says population 8, and we absolutely love it.”

Steinberg said even if Graham County did annex the territory, life in Deal’s Gap probably wouldn’t change drastically.

“I’m not sure either community will be able to provide all the services we would need,” Steinberg said.

Since its creation, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has loomed over Swain County. Its massive peaks flank life itself: as an engine for tourism, a stomping ground for locals, and a refuge for wild things.

The park’s most lasting legacy, however, seems to be the deep and unforgivable wedge it has driven through the mountain people living there. Like every community bordering the Smokies, Swain County suffered a heartbreaking evacuation of farms and home places to make way for the park in the 1930s. Hardly a decade later, the construction of Lake Fontana forced a second relocation, not only for those who lay in the direct path of the rising water but also those who lived in a vast area rendered inaccessible when the only road into their communities was flooded.

Hemmed in by the lake on one side and the park on the other — and with no road in or out — the area was no longer habitable, and the people were forced to move out. The isolated territory was ceded to the national park, but with a written promise from the government that it would rebuild the flooded road on higher ground. While the land would remain part of the park, the hope of a road provided a measure of solace. At the least, descendents believed they could visit their beloved home sites and pay homage to their cemeteries.

It has now been 68 years, and the road is still not built.

The broken promise to rebuild the road has fostered deep-seated distrust of the government and the park in Swain County. The feeling was so universal in years gone by that it was commonly taken up from the pulpit on Sundays, with preachers packing powerful sermons about the injustice perpetrated by the government’s betrayal. The hardships suffered by those visiting graves of loved ones trapped deep inside the park fanned the flames of bitter resentment.

“There was a good period of time in Swain County when the overwhelming view of the county was united that we needed to build this road,” said Leonard Winchester, 59, of Swain County. “Primarily based on the idea that the families from the North Shore had been given a raw deal and the road would give them a way to visit cemeteries.”

In the 1960s, a few miles of the road were actually built. But the rising environmental movement of the era rallied opposition from across the nation. Those forced out to make way for the park countered the false notions of a pristine wilderness. What about the houses and barns, mines and mills, stores and churches, that once riddled the area? But Swain proved no match for the numbers or clout of environmentalists, who not only made a good case against denigrating a well-loved national park but had the backing of environmental laws and the money to go to the mat if needed.

As Swain County fought for the road decade after decade to no avail, it seemed the government saw the mountains as a political backwater that needn’t be heeded. Over the years, however, some began to form a different conclusion. Perhaps the problem lay with the idea itself: a 30-mile road slicing through the largest backcountry territory in the East could never be pulled off.

As this realization sank in, a circle of leaders in the county began postulating: if given another out, would the government make good on its promise? If Swain County dropped its unwavering claim to build the road, then perhaps there was hope for another type of settlement.

The solution was a payoff, more or less: “Give us cash and we’ll settle this once and for all.” At first blush, it sounded like nothing more than a sell-out. Mountain people aren’t known for relinquishing their position once they’ve dug in. The challenge to change minds would be daunting.

The idea for Lake Fontana arose during the grips of World War II, when a large and steady source of electric power was needed for a plant in Tennessee hard at work churning out sheets of aluminum for wartime airplanes. A dam was proposed on the Little Tennessee River to provide hydropower for the Alcoa aluminum plant.

Not only would the lake drive out hundreds of people in the direct path of rising water, but it would flood the only road leading to several communities above the high water mark. Roughly 44,000 acres would be rendered inaccessible, leaving 216 families hemmed in by the lake on one side and the recently created Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the other.

The government could not spare the money to build a new road, so it decided those families would have to move out as well. A deal was crafted to evacuate the people and turn the land over to the national park.

The federal government signed a pact with Swain County to rebuild the flooded road after the war, “as soon as Congress appropriated the money” to do so. Known as the 1943 Agreement, it was signed by Tennessee Valley Authority, the State of North Carolina, Swain County and the Department of Interior on behalf of the national park.

The 1943 Agreement pledging to rebuild the road has lived in infamy ever since. While die-hard road supporters won’t speak to cash advocates even casually in public, there is one point they agree on.

“We felt like they owed Swain County something. We still do,” said Claude Douthit, the leading historian on all things pertaining to the North Shore Road.

The only question is what: a road or a cash settlement?

If there is one man responsible for turning the tide toward a cash settlement, it’s Douthit. Now 81, Douthit knows every court case on the matter, which courtroom it was heard in and the name of the presiding judge. He can quote chapter and verse from the 1943 Agreement.

A room in his house is littered with evidence of his fight for Swain County’s settlement. Files that no longer fit in cabinet drawers form precarious piles on his desk, dog-eared post-it notes protrude from the pages of Congressional transcripts. Maps detailing every tract of land acquired for the park have taken up permanent residence on his dining room table.

“I could tell you every piece of property that was down there and whose it was and how much it was,” Douthit said.

Douthit has all the necessary traits to drive the settlement home: he’s stubborn, cantankerous and a stickler for the facts. The tougher the fight got, the harder he hoed. When others wanted to give up, convinced it was a hopeless cause and their efforts were fruitless, he soldiered on, prodding others to stick with him.

Like many Swain natives, Douthit claims family ties to the area now under the park’s domain. His father worked for one of the big lumber companies as a blade sharpener for the giant saws that ate their way across the landscape in the 1920s.

Douthit spent his own career closely tied to the park. He was the head of the Bryson City office of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which had built Fontana Lake. As a lake overseer, Douthit spent many a day patrolling the water.

“I worked up and down this lake, worn out more damn boats than most people have ever seen,” Douthit said.

That’s how his quest for the real history behind the North Shore started.

When Douthit first started with TVA in 1951, the lake was relatively new. He was frequently paid visits by those whose land was claimed in the creation of the lake or the park and became a dumping ground for their gripes. Some claimed they were still owed for their land, others decried the hardship to visit family cemeteries unreachable except by boat.

“I had to learn and understand exactly what happened,” Douthit said.

Douthit wasn’t always a supporter of the cash settlement. Like most, he felt the government should keep its promises to build back the road it flooded.

While slow to start, it seemed the road would eventually come to pass. In 1960, $8 million was appropriated for the road and construction got underway. But in 1968, with just seven miles built, work ceased. For starters, money had run out. But far more ominous, environmentalists had mounted a campaign against the road. And park service engineers issued a report advising against further construction.

While the road progressed in fits and starts those eight years, a second debate was playing out over whether the park should be designated as wilderness. A heated round of public hearings ensued. Environmentalists and park lovers wanted the entire park to be designated as wilderness, forever scuttling the North Shore Road. The people of Swain County fought back, but were outnumbered by the rising environmental movement of the era. While wilderness designation never came to pass, the writing on the wall did not bode well for the fulfillment of a road.

Douthit and others fighting for a settlement of the 1943 Agreement began toying with the idea of a lawsuit against the federal government. In 1974, an entourage from Swain County drove to Asheville and boarded two small planes bound for Raleigh. Their mission was to meet with the N.C. Attorney General Robert Morgan and implore the state for help.

“Whether it was build the road or give money, just to do something,” Douthit said.

They felt the only solution was to sue the federal government.

But they soon uncovered a major flaw in the 1943 Agreement. The agreement contained a hold-harmless clause should the road never come to fruition, stating: “failure on the part of Congress for any reason to make such appropriations shall not constitute a breach or violation of this agreement.”

“Our county lawyers at the time got out- lawyered, so to speak,” Douthit said.

Dejected, Douthit realized there was no ground for a lawsuit.

“If they filed a suit, it would be lost and Swain County would never receive anything. It would be over with. We would get no road, no money, nothing,” Douthit said. “Knowing we couldn’t sue on the 1943 contract, what would we do?”

To Douthit, the fight for a road hit a dead-end.

“Why did I choose to fight for money?” Douthit asked. “We knew we couldn’t get the road. We knew we could never get it.”

And so Douthit began the long, uphill battle to bring the same revelation to the rest of Swain County.

One of the people on Douthit’s list to bring over to the side of a cash settlement was Luke Hyde. Born and raised in Swain County, Hyde went away to law school and entered the world of state politics in Raleigh. He traveled back and forth regularly, and Douthit figured Hyde would be useful to have on their side.

Like Douthit, Hyde, 69, had always supported the road. In the late 1960s, Hyde joined an underground movement of strategists to get the road built. They researched federal laws, studied the politics and plotted the prospects of bringing a lawsuit against the federal government get the road built.

But one day in the mid-1970s, when Hyde was giving a talk for the local Democratic Party in the old Swain County Courthouse, Douthit approached Hyde and shoved a thick stack of papers into his hand. Among the papers was a copy of the 1943 Agreement. Hyde came across the same pesky hold-harmless clause.

“I sat there reading it and my face flushed and I got angry and said ‘Son of a gun,’” Hyde recalled. “It was a marvelous job of lawyering.”

Like Douthit, Hyde realized then there would never be a road. There was only one outlet left. In lawyer’s terms, it’s called a “substitute performance,” but to laymen it would become known as the cash settlement.

It wasn’t an easy stance for Hyde. His own family grew up in the North Shore area and was forced off their land to make way for the lake and the park. Many in his own family remain road supporters to this day.

“We respect and love each other enough not to talk about certain issues,” Hyde said. “We are on good terms, but they think I am wrong for supporting the cash settlement.”

The drama over the North Shore Road heated up through the 1980s. Descendents of the North Shore area sued the government to get the road built, known as the Helen Vance lawsuit. The case was lost, appealed, lost again, appealed again, but denied by the Supreme Court for a hearing.

Meanwhile, Congressmen fought it out in the halls of Washington. Dueling bills were introduced: one that would provide a cash settlement of $9.5 million and one that would build the road.

In Swain County, public hearings on the dueling bills drew crowds in the hundreds, inspiring impassioned, angry and heartbreaking speeches. It was like a replay of the public hearings from 20 years earlier pitting wilderness designation against road construction. Little did people know at that time that the hearings were destined to repeat themselves yet again 20 years later.

Supporters of a cash settlement had won an important and promising ally in the late 1970s: Cecil Andrus, Secretary of the Department of the Interior. Andrus made a trip to Swain County to see for himself the issue at hand. It seemed everyone wanted a shot at lobbying Andrus, so a local entourage rented a bus and piled in for a chance to bend Andrus’ ear.

“We took him up to Calf Pen Gap and let him look across Fontana Lake to the Smokies,” Douthit said. “We wanted to convince him that Swain County was due some money, due something.”

The fieldtrip ended with a catered picnic at Deep Creek in the park. Andrus was apparently convinced and began working to help secure a cash settlement for Swain County. Andrus even appointed a committee to study the issue, which recommended a cash settlement of $9.5 million. A bill was introduced to that effect in Congress.

Although one foot was in the door, the prospect of a cash settlement hit a brick wall. Senator Jesse Helms, with his dueling bill to build the road, proved a formidable opponent. Helms was soon joined in Washington by Congressman Charles Taylor, who took a similar stance in the House of Representatives.

By the ‘90s, the issue had all but stalled. The families suing for the road lost their lawsuit in the federal courts. In Congress, Helms and Taylor were unable to advance the road but were unwilling to take up the cause of a cash settlement.

“We wound up with nothing,” Douthit said.

While hamstrung nationally, supporters of a cash settlement put their down time in the ‘90s to good use, swaying the hearts and minds of locals. In the process, Hyde struck on a commonly held belief.

“If you asked people as a moral question, should the government build the road, the answer would be ‘yes.’ But at the same time 9 out of 10 said there ain’t going to be a road,” Hyde said.

So Hyde stopped asking people whether they thought the road should be built.

“The question instead is ‘since they are not going to build the road, what should we do now? What is an intelligent plan B?’” Hyde said. “That’s been my posture.”

They took their message to what Hyde calls the county’s “influence molders,” one porch at a time and one living room at a time. One of those on their list was a man named Leonard Winchester.

Like many, Winchester was a road supporter. Hyde and Douthit not only swayed him, but convinced him to take a leadership role in their newly formed group to fight for the cause of a cash settlement: the Citizens for the Economic Future of Swain County. While all in the group support the cash settlement, reasons vary.

“Some say since there is not going to be a road, we should pursue a settlement,” said Winchester, 59. “My view is given the choice of a road or a settlement and you can have which ever one you pick, I would still pick the settlement. I think it is a better choice.

“Clearly there would be some level of tourism increase if the road was there, but who would benefit from it,” Winchester said. “The average taxpayers would not get much out of it.”

Winchester, now retired, was the IT director for the school system at the time. Winchester was a Republican, unlike Hyde and Douthit who were Democrats. Winchester would help present their group as bi-partisan.

The Citizens for the Economic Future of Swain County needed a cold, hard dollar amount to ask for to successfully advance the cause of a cash settlement. The group hired an accounting firm, Crisp, Hughes and Evans, to calculate a figure. They had an easy starting place: the monetary value of the old road flooded by the lake. The accounting firm started with that base figure, adjusted for inflation and added 60 years of interest. Their answer became the now-touted $52 million.

To realize a cash settlement, the group had to sway the original four signatories of the 1943 Agreement: Swain County, North Carolina, TVA and the park service. Each would take work to win over, but perhaps the toughest and most critical were the elected leaders of Swain County.

To that end, the Citizens for the Economic Future of Swain County pulled off quite a coup in the county commissioner election in 2002. For the first time, a majority of the candidates elected were in support of the cash settlement. They promptly passed a resolution by a vote of 4 to 1 calling for a $52 million payout in lieu of the road.

In the meantime, however, road supporters were having some luck of their own. Congressman Charles Taylor, a long-time road supporter, had risen in prominence and power in the halls of Washington. Using his seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee, he stealthily inserted a line item of $16 million in the federal budget for construction of the road.

It was far from a green light for the road, however, as the National Park Service would first have to undergo a massive study to meet the terms of the National Environmental Policy Act.

The park would spend more than five years coming up with possible solutions and weighing them from every possible angle — even building a giant bridge across Fontana Lake. Once again, controversy reached a fever pitch as Swain County became home to another round of heated public hearings, marking the third such showdown in the history of the road saga.

The park service spent five years and $10 million conducting the assessment, a 552-page report on the pros and cons of building or not building the road. Ultimately, the park came down on the side of a cash settlement.

Ironically, Taylor had single-handedly advanced the cause of a cash settlement more than anyone in history. If not for his $16 million line item to build the road, there would have been no environmental assessment that in turn forced the park service to formally weigh in — for or against — for the first time. Taylor’s little line item had also once more rallied environmental groups and pushed the issue onto a national stage.

“That put them in high gear,” Winchester said.

The environmental movement was the lynch-pin in the fight for a cash settlement, bringing to bear political pressure that the people of Swain County could never have mustered otherwise.

“The conservation community is a large community, and they were willing to help to keep a road from being built through the park,” Douthit said.

In 2007, several key elements fell into place to bring about the cash settlement in lieu of the long-promised road.

One was the election of Heath Shuler, a new congressman for Western North Carolina who was from Swain County and differed from his predecessor’s stance on the road. Shortly after Shuler took office, he got to work on a cash settlement. Just three months into his term, a coalition of 17 Senators and Congressmen from North Carolina and Tennessee joined forces in calling for a cash payoff and signed on to a letter of support.

“We finally had a large number of lawmakers focused on getting a monetary settlement for the folks in Swain County. It was the first time we’d been able to point to such strong support for that approach on Capitol Hill,” Greg Kidd, with the Asheville office of the National Parks Conservation Association, said at the time.

In May of that same year, Douthit got an important call — one that was a long time coming. Dale Ditmanson, the superintendent of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, told Douthit the park service finally made a decision on the North Shore Road. It supported a cash settlement.

“I was very pleased,” Douthit said.

Shuler got to work again and appropriated $6 million as a down payment toward an eventual cash settlement in the government’s 2008 fiscal year budget. Another $6 million is left over from the pot of money secured by Taylor for road construction that never came to fruition.

Swain won’t receive any money until final negotiations with the park service over a dollar amount are concluded.

While it seems Swain County is closer than ever to getting something, a new obstacle has arisen. The same park leaders who once embraced Douthit, Hyde and Winchester as allies have suddenly stopped backing a settlement figure of $52 million and are pushing for a lower number, according to those familiar with the issue.

The about-face was not only a surprise but a personal affront to the people of Swain County.

“It is the greatest disappointment I have seen in the last 20 years,” Hyde said. “I don’t know why they are backpedaling, but it is not a nice thing to do. We believe in the mountains in keeping your word. We got into this mess partly because people didn’t keep their word.”

Park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson said he is merely trying to arrive at an equitable figure and determine how the $52 million was calculated.

Hyde said there is a moral and legal obligation for the park service to stay with its position on $52 million. Hyde suspects it may be a negotiating device suggested by the legal counsel for the park service. Whatever the case, “It’s not going to work,” Hyde said.

It seems the government is getting a bargain with $52 million — considering the cost of building the road was pegged at $728 million, he said.

Swain leaders say they won’t settle for anything less. For Douthit, Hyde and Winchester, it would be difficult to face their friends and neighbors if they did. They rallied the community to give up on the road and come together behind a cash settlement of $52 million, and to now produce something less simply isn’t an option for them.

“We are closer than we have ever been, and we are going to prevail. I am convinced we are going to make it work,” Hyde said. “While it has been 66 years, we are going to solve this and Swain County will get $52 million. We have the right combination in Raleigh and Washington.”

Negotiations over a cash settlement for Swain County have been stalled for more than a year as opposing sides argue over a fair dollar amount.

Swain County officials have met three times with the U.S. Department of the Interior to discuss a dollar figure for the cash settlement, but negotiations were called off last July. The leading reason is a change in Washington administration, from a new president to a new secretary for the Department of the Interior and various players down the line — all of whom must be briefed and educated on the long-standing controversy.

The negotiations also ground to a halt after the U.S. Park Service mentioned a dollar amount for the settlement that is drastically lower than what Swain County expected to hear.

For six years, Swain leaders have operated under the assumption they would get a $52 million cash settlement from the federal government if they gave up their claims to the long-promised North Shore Road. The federal government promised to rebuild the road after flooding the old one during the construction of Lake Fontana in the 1940s. Building a new one would traverse 30 miles of backcountry in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, an expensive and environmentally unsound proposal — thus making the cash settlement a more viable alternative.

U.S. Congressman Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, has been fighting for a cash settlement since taking office three years ago and stands by the number of $52 million.

“That number has been pretty consistent. That is the number that has been out there,” Shuler said.

Shuler said he does not know why the park service came up with such a low number in negotiations.

“It may have just been thrown out there to say ‘Let’s see if they’ll take this,’” Shuler surmised. “I think like with any negotiation, one group will start out low and one group will start out high.”

That said, Shuler doesn’t want to bend on $52 million, nor do the Swain County commissioners who will ultimately accept or reject any offer on behalf of the county.

According to those familiar with the negotiations, Great Smoky Mountains National Park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson has been actively pushing for a far lower number. In a response to written questions, Ditmanson countered that claim, however.

Ditmanson said that the park service has not yet made Swain an offer for a monetary settlement. When asked how he would characterize the figure he allegedly brought up during the negotiations, Ditmanson did not respond.

It is unclear how much sway Ditmanson will have over the final number the Department of the Interior puts on the table.

“As superintendent, my primary responsibility is to do due diligence in identifying a justifiable basis for a monetary settlement and briefing the leadership of the National Park Service and the Department of Interior,” Ditmanson said in his written response to questions.

Ditmanson said the purpose of the negotiations right now is to determine exactly how Swain County has calculated the figure of $52 million and whether it is accurate. The premise is that it starts with the value of the road at the time it was flooded and adjusts it for inflation and interest. But exactly what the starting number should be is a matter of debate.

“Determining a basis or calculation for a monetary settlement is a primary purpose of the meetings with the four parties,” Ditmanson said. The basis will be explained in the final agreement, he said.

The sum of $52 million was arrived at by the Citizens for the Economic Future of Swain County, a group that formed to advance the cause of a cash settlement. In 2002, the group hired the accounting and auditing firm of Crisp and Hughes to do the calculations.

Shuler said he has been educating the new guard in Washington about the North Shore Road issue, including a meeting with President Obama’s chief of staff and a breakfast with the Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

“We have to reengage them back into the process,” Shuler said.

As for Ditmanson, he has briefed the assistant secretary of the Department of the Interior and the acting director of the National Park Service. There is no permanent director appointed yet.

The past three negotiation meetings have had a delegation from Swain County, the state, the National Park Service and the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built the dam and lake that flooded the road. Ditmanson expects another meeting between the parties to be held this fall.

Shuler said the decision of how much to appropriate for a settlement is ultimately up to Congress, and he will fight for what he calls a “complete settlement.”

Shuler managed to rally support among fellow congressmen and senators for a cash settlement two years ago. But that was when building the road was still on the table and the park service was in the final throes of a major analysis weighing the pros and cons of each option.

During the analysis, the park adopted the figure of $52 million and quoted it extensively as a leading alternative to building the road during a lengthy public input process. That led the public to believe that if the monetary settlement was supported, that’s the amount Swain would be getting.

But Ditmanson now says the figure was used only for “analysis purposes,” largely because it lacked anything more concrete. The $52 million figure had been proposed by Swain’s leaders, so the park ran with it during the analysis.

When the analysis concluded and the park came out with its official stand on a cash settlement instead of the road, the $52 million figure vanished and was replaced with the language “monetary settlement,” with “an equitable method” for arriving at a dollar figure to be determined through negotiations. Ditmanson was appointed as the Department of the Interior’s point man in those negotiations.

Ditmanson said his job is now in the “due diligence” stage.

Shuler said the full settlement of $52 million is needed “to heal some wounds and bring people back together in the community.”

When asked about the public relations crisis the park service would likely encounter by refusing to endorse a settlement of $52 million, Ditmanson said his responsibility is merely to determine an equitable amount.

“I cannot comment on how the public will respond,” Ditmanson said.

Swain and Graham counties are at odds over who should provide rescue service to the isolated Deals Gap territory, a dispute that could lead to a redrawing of county lines.

The Deal’s Gap area is a satellite territory of Swain County, lying on the other side of Lake Fontana and surrounded by Graham.

Deal’s Gap is home to the infamous Tail of the Dragon, a stretch of U.S. 129 sporting 318 curves in just 11 miles. Motorcyclists and sports car drivers flock to the road from across the country to race the mountain curves. The result is lots of wrecks, requiring rescue service to an otherwise remote area. Until now, Graham has taken on the burden of responding to wrecks since it is so much closer.

“When it started getting popular, what was no more than four or five calls a year at most has turned into a nightmare,” said Steve Odom, the chairman of Graham County commissioners.

Graham County has grown weary of providing rescue, fire and law enforcement to the increasingly popular area and getting nothing in return.

“Graham County is trying to be a good neighbor, but it has gotten to the point where it has exceeded the good neighbor part,” said Lynn Cody, Graham County manager.

Graham is giving Swain County three options: move the county line so that Deal’s Gap is part of Graham, pay an annual fee to Graham County, or station their own rescue personnel and law enforcement in the area.

“If we are going to take care of it, we should just have it part of Graham County,” said Sandra Smith, a Graham County commissioner. Smith proposed petitioning the state legislature to redraw the county line. But they decided to first sit down with Swain County leaders before running to Raleigh.

Graham and Swain county commissioners met on Tuesday (July 28) to discuss the issue.

Swain County will likely fight any attempt by Graham to take over the territory — or the property tax revenue that goes with it. Swain collects $195,000 a year in property taxes from the 1,900-acre territory.

Swain County Commissioner David Monteith said he would rather the county provide emergency services to the area themselves — despite the long distance — than cede territory to Graham County or pay an annual fee.

“Let’s face it. Every county is scrambling for money and their piece of the pie,” said Brad Talbot, owner of Deal’s Gap Motorcycle Resort. Talbot agrees that both counties have legitimate issues to work out, however.

Tit for tat

Graham County leaders claim their residents are bearing the burden of providing services in Swain County and need money — whether it’s the property tax revenue from Deal’s Gap or an annual contribution from Swain — to offset their costs.

“It all boils down to finances,” Odom said.

Graham County responds to an average of 30 wrecks a year on the Swain County portion of the Tail of the Dragon, many of them with serious injuries that tie up medics and ambulances for hours.

Swain County countered that patients are billed for ambulance service, so the county recoups most of their costs. But not all patients pay up, resulting in a net loss, Smith said. And other patients decide to drive to the hospital on their own or are treated by medics at the scene and never taken to the hospital, so the county is unable to bill them at all.

“That’s a lose situation for us because we don’t get paid for it. It is a dead run,” Odom said.

Graham budgeted $890,000 on EMS services last year and only collected $725,000 from patients.

According to David Breedlove, the emergency services director for Swain, no county is able to break even on emergency services.

While Graham County presented charts and dispatch logs showing the number of calls and accidents its people responded to in Deal’s Gap, Swain County countered with some facts and figures of its own. Since Graham County has no hospital, many patients from there are brought to the hospital in Bryson City. Many are then sent on to the larger hospitals in Sylva or Asheville, a service provided by Swain County’s ambulances. Swain County provides transport for an average of 100 Graham County residents a year from the Bryson City hospital to their final destination.

Breedlove said it balances out the services Graham provides in Deal’s Gap.

Swain County commissioners mostly listened during the meeting on Tuesday as Graham County leaders laid out their position. The two boards decided to reconvene at 9 a.m. Monday, Aug. 24, in Robbinsville.

“We got a lot of the plate. We’ve got to digest some if it,” said Glenn Jones, chairman of the Swain County commissioners.

What is Swain doing all the way out there?

The Deal’s Gap territory is technically part of Swain County, even though it lies on the other side of Fontana Lake, isolated from the rest of the county and surrounded by Graham County.

It hasn’t always been that way, however. The convoluted geography dates back to the creation of Lake Fontana. The Little Tennessee River once served as the county line between Swain and Graham. When the river was dammed up and a vast territory along the lakeshore was ceded to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Deal’s Gap area became inaccessible to the rest of Swain County without driving all the way around the lake and through Graham County to get there.

When Swain County opened a new $10 million jail last fall with 109 beds — four times bigger than necessary for its own inmates — it was banking on housing federal prisoners and those from other counties to subsidize the cost.

Instead, the number of inmates housed from outside the county has shrunk dramatically, not grown. As a result, the oversized jail has been a drain on county coffers and proved a source of contention in an on-going feud between the sheriff’s office and county commissioners.

County Manager Kevin King says the onus falls on the sheriff to court inmates from other counties to fill the jail.

“He said it wasn’t his place to get contracts, but it is,” King said. “It is going to take the sheriff talking to the other sheriffs.”

But Sheriff Curtis Cochran says the commissioners should have secured commitments from other counties before embarking on the bigger jail, which was already in the works when Cochran took office in late 2006.

“I believe one thing I would have done was to have contracts in hand,” Cochran said. “I would want to think if I didn’t have contracts in hand I would have thought about a smaller jail.”

The county was supposed to line up commitments as a condition of its federal loan to build the jail. Terms of Swain County’s loan with the U.S. Rural Development program stipulated “the applicant obtain written commitments from the other parties who have verbally committed to wanting access to jail beds.”

That never happened, however. Instead, the sheriff at the time, Bob Ogle, got verbal commitments, King said.

No demand for jail beds

Since Cochran took office, Swain has seen the number of inmates it houses from Graham, Cherokee and Haywood counties, as well as federal prisoners under the custody of the U.S. Marshall Service, all but dry up. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is the only outside entity contracting with Swain for jail space on a significant level.

The reason appears to have little to do with Cochran, however.

Like Swain, both Haywood and Cherokee counties have built new jails and can now handle their own inmate volume in-house. When Swain embarked on a new jail in 2005, it was common knowledge that other counties were doing so as well, but Swain overbuilt anyway.

Graham County is one of the only counties that still faces chronic over-crowding at its jail. But instead of sending inmates to Swain, it now sends almost all of its overflow to the new Cherokee County jail, according to Graham County’s chief jailer.

Cherokee County is closer for Graham, saving time and money on transport. In addition, Cherokee County charges only $40 a night per inmate while Swain charges $50 a night.

Cherokee County’s new jail — sporting 150 beds — is even bigger than Swain’s. It is often only half full, however — even with Graham County’s overflow and federal prisoners that once went Swain’s way — adding to the glut in jail beds the region seems to have these days.

As for the decline in federal prisoners, that trend was under way prior to Cochran taking office in late 2006. The U.S. Marshall Service had come to view Swain’s old jail as inadequate and unsafe. It was riddled with cracks and leaks and plagued by temperamental locks. But the biggest concern was no sprinkler system, the dangers of which came to light when eight people were killed in a fire at the Mitchell County jail.

“After the fire in Mitchell County there were concerns about older facilities without adequate fire suppression,” said Kelly Nesbit, chief deputy with the western district of the U.S. Marshall Service.

Nesbit began pulling federal prisoners out of the Swain jail and housing them elsewhere. Although Swain opened its new jail last fall, federal prisoners have yet to return. Nesbit said they simply got used to using other jails, and it has taken a while to get Swain back on the radar as a viable facility.

“The federal government moves slow. It just take a while for things to turn around,” Nesbit said.

The U.S. Marshall Service has 15 jails west of Interstate 77 that it uses to house prisoners, Nesbit said. But Bryson City is the location of a federal court, so it would be convenient to start housing them there again, he said.

Whose fault?

Cochran blames county leaders for the decline in federal prisoners. He said the county threw away a chance to put in a smoke evacuation system in the old jail that would have satisfied safety concerns and allowed them to keep housing the federal inmates.

The Marshall Service even came through with a $30,000 grant to help pay for the smoke suppression system, but Swain never acted on the grant and it was rescinded.

Cochran said the Marshall Service pulled strings to get the grant for Swain and was perturbed Swain decided they didn’t want it after all.

“The $30,000 allocated for Swain County was only provided after numerous phone calls and letters between myself and headquarters,” U.S. Marshall Gregory Forest wrote in a letter to Sheriff Bob Ogle in December 2003. Forest wrote that he wanted to continue their “long working relationship” with the county, but that the county “must complete this process without delay.”

The Marshall Service perceived it as a snub, Cochran said.

“They seemed to think that Swain County just wasn’t interested in housing their inmates because they wouldn’t accept the money after they went to great lengths to get it to help upgrade the jail,” Cochran said.

King said the county walked away from the grant because it wasn’t enough to cover the cost of the system.

“The system would have cost a lot more than $30,000. It would have been around $100,000. That was just not doable,” King said.

Ultimately, the decision cost the county more in lost revenue than it would have spent to install the system. The county would have made its money back on the system in less than two years if federal prisoners had continued to flow Swain’s way at the same volume as years’ past. Instead, the county is now entering its third year without housing federal prisoners.

Cochran wasn’t sheriff during the episode over the sprinkler system and said he didn’t understand why they weren’t getting federal prisoners anymore. Cochran recently called a meeting with the U.S. Marshall Service to figure out what the problem was.

“After I got to investigating it a little bit and talked to the right people as to why we weren’t getting inmates, we started working on it,” Cochran said.

County blames Cochran

County commissioners suggested Cochran is to blame for a declining number of inmates being housed at the Swain jail from outside the county. The theory was vocalized during a county budget workshop in June. Cochran heard about the accusation and challenged King to name the counties that allegedly had a problem with him.

“I said ‘If there is somebody out there let me know so I can make amends,’” Cochran said. Cochran asked for the clarification three times, including twice via email.

King responded that he knew of no entity in particular other than a miscommunication with the Eastern Band last year. The Eastern Band, however, is the only entity that actually houses more prisoners with Swain now than it did three years ago.

Cochran said he is doing what he can to court other counties.

“When we moved into the jail I sent out an email to every sheriff’s office in the state and let them know we were in our new facility and had bed space,” Cochran said.

Cochran also met with the Graham County commissioners in the spring, and recently met with the U.S. Marshall Service.

One cloud hanging over the Swain jail is the escape of a murder suspect earlier this year. The suspect had been slipped a key by a jailer who ran away with the suspect. Cochran said the inside job was not a reflection on the security of the jail itself.

The escape has no bearing on whether to house overflow inmates there, according to Nesbit with the U.S. Marshall Service and the chief jailers from Graham or Cherokee counties.

“That’s happened in federal institutions before,” Nesbit said of escapes. “It is just part of the kind of business we are in.”

Declining inmate nights

Out-of-county inmates housed in the Swain jail have declined drastically under Sheriff Curtis Cochran compared to the last year of former sheriff Bob Ogle’s tenure.

2005-06    8,029 inmate nights from out-of-county

2008-09    3,940 inmate nights from out-of-county

The new Swain jail costs the county $610,000 a year more than the old jail: $450,000 in debt payments and an additional $160,000 on overhead and staff.

The county hoped to make $500,000 a year housing prisoners from out of the county to offset the cost.

The county’s old jail was unsafe and dilapidated, so a new one was in order anyway. County leaders figured they may as well make it extra big and try to subsidize the cost by housing inmates from out of the county, and end up with a new jail for relatively little of their own money.

But revenue projections fell far short. Over the past 12 months, the county only made $140,000 housing out-of-county prisoners, a far cry from the half million it hoped for, according to County Manager Kevin King.

King said that the jail is not an undue burden for the county, however.

“We are making it just fine,” King said. “We are covering the debt. We are covering the operation. We are covering personnel.”

That said, if the new jail brought in more money, it could bolster the sheriff’s budget — which is a bitter source of contention between the county commissioners and Sheriff Curtis Cochran.

“When he first started as sheriff, I told him all this is done as a business plan,” County Manager Kevin King said. “The more revenue generated the more deputies and law enforcement we are going to be able to fund.”

When the new jail opened last fall, the county added five additional jailers, two new deputies and an extra secretary.

But King said the additional staff was contingent on an influx of inmates, which never materialized.

“It is like McDonald’s or anywhere else. If you aren’t selling hamburgers they are going to lay people off and send them home,” King said.

As the county grappled with a budget shortfall for the new fiscal year, commissioners looked to the jail to make cuts. The county cut four positions that had been added in the past year.

Two of the laid-off staff had been hired as jailers but had since been made deputies after Cochran realized he didn’t need that many jailers. A third layoff targeted one of the two new deputies added over the past year. The fourth layoff targeted the additional secretary position added over the past year.

An ongoing feud

Cochran still has one more deputy and three more jailers than he did a year ago, but has publicly criticized the commissioners’ decision to cut his staff. He accused the county commissioners of jeopardizing the safety of Swain County’s citizens by underfunding his department.

Cochran had increased deputies on the night shift from two to three. Now, he’s back down to two. If both are tied up on calls, residents are left with no backup, he said.

King points out that Cochran’s budget is still bigger than his predecessor’s, former sheriff Bob Ogle.

In reality, the Cochran’s budget comprises the exact same percentage of the total county budget now as it did under Ogle.

For the 2009-2010 fiscal year, the sheriff’s office accounts for 8 percent of the total county budget and the jail accounts for 7 percent of the county’s budget. It’s the exact same percentage as 2005-2006, the last budget allocated by commissioners under the tenure of former sheriff Bob Ogle.

Cochran’s supporters have accused the commissioners of playing politics with his budget. The commissioners are all Democrats, while Cochran is a Republican.

“There is nothing political about this issue,” King countered.

King pointed to the number of new vehicles the county provided Cochran’s office this year. Typically, the county replaces two or three vehicles a year, and sometimes skips a year altogether. This year, the county bought five new vehicles for the sheriff’s office.

Cochran and the commissioners have been warring over the sheriff’s budget since Cochran took office in late 2006. Cochran suffered a major blow to his own salary when the commissioners ended a lucrative arrangement to feed inmates enjoyed by Cochran’s predecessors. When the commissioners decided to end the long-standing practice on the eve of Cochran taking office, it was seen as political retribution.

Cochran has a lawsuit pending against the commissioners, claiming they effectively reduced his salary in violation of state statutes. Commissioner David Monteith has consistently sided with Cochran and against his fellow commissioners on budget issues.

Budget expenses

Swain county budget expenditures by year:

Jail, 2009-2010:    $875,000

Jail, 2006-2007:    $715,000

Percent of total county budget both years:    7%

Sheriff Dept., 2009-2010:    $964,000

Sheriff Dept., 2006-2007:    $796,000

Percent of total county budget both years:    8%

Swain County will continue contracting with the Bryson City Fire Department to provide county fire service, despite threatening to cut ties with the department after it asked the county for more money.

Earlier this year, the county balked at a request from the town fire department to up the amount of its contract from $40,000 to $70,000 per year for fire protection provided to county residents outside the town limits of Bryson City.

County Manager Kevin King countered that the county would not only not pay more, but would cancel the contract altogether and build two new fire stations of its own — all by July 1 of this year. It was an ambitious plan to choose a site and build the stations in just four months, especially since the county didn’t have any money set aside to do so.

Not surprisingly, the plan did not materialize quickly enough, causing the county to renew its contract with the town department for another year.

“West Swain is trying to develop a plan to do a satellite station in the outlying areas, but right now, it’s just not developed yet,” explained King. “We just needed an extension of time with the Bryson City Fire Department in order for them to do that, so they asked the town a few months ago if they’d be willing to entertain a year’s extension.”

The town fire department agreed, though it won’t be getting any of the additional money it had initially requested. Still, Bryson City Fire Chief Joey Hughes said he was satisfied with the outcome. The town gets to retain its call volume and won’t loose county funding.

“I think it comes to a real good agreement, not just for us, but for the taxpayers and everybody,” said Hughes.

The contract also includes one important change — it provides the Bryson City department with more flexibility in how it spends county dollars. Before, the majority of the county’s money could only be spent on certain things: specifically, the maintenance of two trucks and half the cost of the building maintenance.

Now, “we just bill them quarterly and get our whole $40,000 that way,” Hughes said. “It’s giving us some more flexibility.” For instance, the town department can spend money on gear and radios rather than truck and building maintenance, if it determines one need is greater than the other.

“In a roundabout way, they did up the money,” by providing more flexibility, Hughes said.

However, the county has warned that the arrangement with the town won’t last longer than it has to. Instead, it’s just a stopgap to give the county more time to hammer out its plans to build new fire stations of its own.

“The county is looking at long-term fire planning for the entire county over the next five years,” King said. “Basically, we just passed the year’s contract to give us another 12 months to work on the long-range planning process.”

Hughes is skeptical that the county’s plan to build two new fire stations will work. He wonders how the county will get the money for the project, since there are already capital projects like the senior center that sit uncompleted.

“Already, they have a building they can’t finish, and now they’re applying to build another building,” Hughes mused.