The town of Bryson City didn’t have any contested races this year, which means no big surprises on election night. 

The town of Franklin will keep its incumbent mayor while welcoming two new faces to the town board.

The General Election has been over for a week, but in Sylva the results won’t be certain until provisional ballots are counted on Friday, Nov. 15. 

Sylva residents gave incumbent commissioners David Nestler and Greg McPherson a vote of confidence by granting them another four years on the town board, but just as in the 2015 race the third of the three seats up for election will be decided by the flip of a coin, according to unofficial results.

After running unopposed for his last two terms in office, Franklin Mayor Bob Scott is being challenged for his seat by fellow Town Councilmember Barbara McRae. 

Scott is seeking his fourth two-year term as the town’s mayor and served as a councilmember for 10 years before that. 

Maggie Valley may be a small town, but its economic impact on and importance to Haywood County can’t be understated. 

After Mayor Saralyn Price announced she wouldn’t seek re-election this year, only two candidates stepped up — Mayor Pro Tem Janet Banks and Alderman Mike Eveland. 

They’re both longtime board members — one’s a longtime mayor and the other a longtime mayor pro tem. 

One of them, Gavin Brown or Gary Caldwell, will be Waynesville’s next mayor come Nov. 5, and one of them will cycle out of city government, taking decades of institutional knowledge with them. 

Voters will be faced with a long list of candidates when they go to vote in the Franklin Town Council election, but they should be aware that two candidates on the ballot have dropped out of the race last minute.

Like much of the United States in 2015, the Town of Waynesville was still straining to stand up straight after the Great Recession of 2008 knocked it knobby-kneed; although Western North Carolina suffered less and recovered quicker, erasing a decade’s worth of economic growth comes with consequences — declining property values, a general economic malaise and few forward strides taken. 

The mayor of Bryson City and two aldermen seats are up for election this year but all three seats will be uncontested.