Last week, the Sylva Town Board approved rules and procedures for the new Economic Development Advisory Committee, an advisory committee to the Economic Development Director and to the Sylva Town Board of Commissioners. 

Consultants finally delivered to Haywood County commissioners a report on the results of a secretive, long-awaited “listening post exercise” meant to chart Haywood County’s economic development vision — revealing in the process that there was no input from average working-class residents, an omission that may prompt some to question the applicability of the report’s findings despite the project’s tagline of “stronger together.” 

What happens when the those with the most chips in the game only have a partial stake in it?

In other words, what does a community lose when most of the very large businesses are owned by absentee or corporate entities whose main goal is make money but have little interest in making that place a better place to live?

It’s been a little under a year since Corrina Ruffieux took over for longtime Haywood County Tourism Development Authority Executive Director Lynn Collins, but Ruffieux’s wasted little time bolstering the TDA’s destination marketing strategy with robust and insightful data meant to show the county’s relative strengths and weaknesses while also hedging against uncertainty with new initiatives designed to keep the money flowing into Western North Carolina’s tourism-based economy — especially in post-mill Canton. 

The Downtown Waynesville Commission has had two years to get on its feet since its predecessor organization imploded.