The Republican-led North Carolina State Board of Elections voted 3-2 along party lines to allow the closure of a Democrat-leaning early voting site at Western Carolina University, against overwhelming opposition from the people the closure would affect.

Western North Carolina entered 2025 with a familiar sense of dread, confusion and misplaced confidence as local governments, public agencies and assorted boards once again demonstrated an unwavering commitment to solving problems that do not exist while inventing several new ones along the way. 

From Jackson County’s continued Quixotic campaign against its own public library to the Department of Transportation’s discovery that some Haywood County roads remain dangerously intact, the year has already produced a wealth of developments that demanded immediate, serious attention — or at least, a healthy dose of mockery. 

People from these mountains have gone on to do some pretty great things, but it’s hard to imagine someone in quite a while who’s been a point of pride like Cal Raleigh.

Raleigh, an all-star catcher for the Seattle Mariners, was a star in both basketball and baseball at Smoky Mountain High School. He was even a bat boy at Western Carolina University, where his father played catcher and was inducted into the athletics hall of fame in November. 

We never thought that Micromanager of the Year would become a repeat award, but here we are.

This year’s micromanagers of the year are the members of the Fontana Regional Library Board of Trustees.

As the board continues to handle complex big-picture issues without the guidance of an attorney, some members are also finding time to dictate how staff members conduct day-to-day business.

Jackson County’s various governing boards spent much of the year demonstrating that governing does not require attendance, consistency, basic curiosity about consequences, respect for the law or for the feelings of taxpayers, voters and young people. 

Three former members of the Western Carolina University women’s basketball team stepped up to the line to tip off the process of raising enough philanthropic support to name the current Catamount squad’s locker room after the founder of the program. 

That opening shot has resulted in a resounding “swish,” as that locker room now bears the name of the individual who launched the program during an era when women’s intercollegiate athletics was primarily an afterthought. 

Western North Carolina’s next election cycle is already shaping up amid a volatile mix of entrenched incumbents, disaster recovery fallout and deepening national divides, with competitive races stretching from the U.S. Senate on down to county-level offices. 

While marquee statewide contests appear to be headed toward familiar General Election matchups, cracks are emerging down the ballot, where public trust and institutional legitimacy are demanding attention from voters now more than any other time in recent memory. 

While some originally hoped — and continue to hope — that a series of amendments to the Fontana Regional Library System proposed by Jackson County commissioners might ameliorate enough of their concerns to allow them to remain in the decades-long partnership with the FRL system, a questionable pamphlet and an academically dubious “list of inappropriate books” being circulated by FRL opponents suggests otherwise, even as FRL supporters report troubling visions of Christmas future if commissioners don’t turn back soon. 

Jackson County Commissioner Jenny Lynn Hooper made a rare appearance at a Jackson County Tourism Development Authority meeting last week — only her third of 2025 — after echoing former Chair Robert Jumper’s claims that the attendance policy didn’t apply to her. County Attorney John Kubis, however, says Jumper and Hooper are both wrong. 

Throughout her first two-and-a-half semesters in Southwestern Community College’s Medical Sonography program, Emma Dao heard her instructors repeatedly emphasize the value of curiosity. 

Because Dao took that message to heart, one area woman received an early cancer diagnosis and now has a much better outlook for treatment and recovery.