Absent any meaningful gun legislation by the North Carolina General Assembly or by Congress, the cost of protecting Haywood County’s children from being gunned down at their desks will now fall squarely upon county taxpayers, once a tax increase in next year’s proposed budget gets the final OK from commissioners.

Last week, Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers hosted Gov. Roy Cooper and a panel of elected Democrat and Republican leaders along with economic development officials, workforce analysts and environmental policy officials, all trying to prepare for the inevitable closing of the venerable old mill at the center of town.

Republican Commissioner Terry Ramey should pay his taxes and stop threatening the media for reporting on the issue, according to a rare joint statement issued by the other four Republicans on the Haywood County Board of Commissioners.

Haywood County may have found a buyer for a county-owned 22-acre plot off Jonathan Creek, as long as everything goes smoothly during the lengthy due diligence period.

The effort to bring more workforce housing to Haywood County will receive a significant boost thanks to an anonymous donor’s generous offer of a substantial piece of land worth nearly $2 million.

As Haywood County continues to assess damage from the Pigeon River flooding associated with excess rainfall from Tropical Storm Fred on Aug. 18, local officials are asking for help in a number of ways while noting a pair of grim milestones associated with the destruction.

In the interest of transparency, all responses from local officials regarding the Jan. 6 insurrection have been published online, in their entirety. Some submissions may have been lightly edited for grammar, spelling and punctuation or to conform with AP style. 

Last month, members of the Haywood Branch of the NAACP took a trip to Montgomery, Alabama to visit a museum honoring more than 800 Americans who were lynched between 1877 and 1950.

There’s a monument there for each one of them — a long, steel box resembling a coffin, engraved with their names and places of death. One bears the inscription, “George Ratcliff, Haywood County.”

Last month, Haywood Community College President Dr. Barbara Parker told Haywood commissioners that HCC wanted a new $7.2 million facility that would augment the school’s ability to train and produce badly-needed medical professionals.

On Jan. 15, The Smoky Mountain News contacted almost every elected official in Haywood County for whom an email address was listed with the county’s board of elections. Around half failed to respond, but those who did were sometimes too verbose for print, so an excerpt from their response was used in the Jan. 23 edition of The Smoky Mountain News. In the interest of transparency, their full responses are included here.