Holly Kays

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The population of folks in need of overnight housing has been increasing in Jackson County, prompting Jackson Neighbors in Need to ask commissioners for $23,400 to help them shelter higher-than-expected numbers of people through the end of March. 

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The newly hired principal of the newly formed Catamount School in Sylva won’t be new to the environment at Smoky Mountain High School, where the Catamount School is to be located. 

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When starting the hike, it’s not immediately obvious why the Chimney Tops Trail should be appointed for long-term closure. The brook is babbling, the sun is shining and the trees are towering just as one would expect of a trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the results of a recent trail rehabilitation effort make for exceedingly pleasant walking. 

But as the trail nears its terminus at the twin peaks of the Chimney Tops, the reason becomes abundantly clear. Its harbingers are announced with a jumble of burned branches here, an area of blackened ground there, and the sudden realization that, even on a brisk winter day when it’s hard to smell much at all, there’s a faint odor of charcoal in the air.

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Sylva is just starting budget planning for 2017-18, but this year’s process promises to be less arduous than last year’s, when revenue uncertainty and the need for a tax rate increase clouded the enterprise.

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A technician with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission was out for a routine check of an elk fence installed at the Ralph Ross and Sons Dairy Farm on Jan. 31 when he spotted two young bull elk dead on the property.

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Construction on an outdoor adventure park offering everything from rafting to ropes courses could begin in Dillsboro as early as April if the Jackson County Commissioners give final approval to the project following a public hearing at 5:30 p.m. Monday, March 20, at the Jackson County Justice and Administration Building.

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Opponents of Principal Chief Patrick Lambert are crying foul over a $5.6 million contract between the Tribal Casino Gaming Enterprise and the Cherokee Grand Hotel — which Lambert and his wife own — saying that its existence violates tribal ethics laws.

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According to the National Phenology Network, Punxsutawny Phil had it all wrong when he emerged from his hole this month to declare six more weeks of winter — across the Southeastern U.S, the NPN’s data shows, spring 2017 is arriving three weeks earlier than the 1981-2010 average. 

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is looking for volunteers to help gather the data that will bring such generalizations down to a more local level. Phenology — the ways that plants and animals respond to seasonal changes — has been the subject of increasing interest as discussions about climate change have heated up, and the park is now four years into a volunteer program to collect data for the larger NPN project.

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Sylva will have to spend $25,000 on an emergency action plan for Fisher Creek Dam, due to a 2016 state law requiring dams designated as high-hazard to have such a plan in place.

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The Jackson County Tourism Development Authority has its first permanent employee following a unanimous vote from the Jackson County Commissioners this month.

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Sylva’s leaders have long grappled with how to spur the town’s stagnant residential tax base and get more high-density housing within its limits, but when a proposal for a 136-unit apartment complex made its way before town commissioners last week, the board was less than enthusiastic about the concept.

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Plans are crystallizing for a new middle school in Jackson County, but it’s a race against the clock for Western Carolina University and Jackson County Public Schools to meet the deadline for opening set by the General Assembly. 

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A newly approved expansion project at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort was nearly derailed when a resolution to kill the project was narrowly rejected in Tribal Council this month, with the final vote an even 50-50.

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If you’d polled Kimberley Brookshire’s friends a couple years ago, they’d likely have said the chances were slim to none that the Charlotte resident would ever think seriously about leaving it all behind to hike more than 2,000 miles through North Carolina. 

“I wasn’t much of an outdoors person,” said Brookshire, 32.

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With the recession nearly a decade in the rearview mirror, the real estate market is once more robust in Jackson County — especially in the southern end of the county around Cashiers.

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A team of 26 FBI agents descended on Cherokee Feb. 2, filling the Qualla Housing Authority building and wheeling entire filing cabinets, as well as papers and hard drives, into a U-Haul parked to the side of the building.

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To the boos of an outspoken audience, the Cherokee Tribal Council voted 9-3 Feb. 2 to begin impeachment proceedings against Principal Chief Patrick Lambert.

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Did the fires hurt wildlife? 

Prescribed burning is often used as a tool to benefit wildlife by regenerating their habitat, and in the case of the slowly creeping ground fires that accounted for most of the burned area, wildlife are usually able to get out of the way as flames approach.

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It’s a warmer-than-average January day, the contours of the mountains visible from the highway beneath a thin covering of leafless tree branches under a half-blue sky. A U.S. Forest Service Jeep travels west on U.S. 74, bypassing Franklin and hanging a right for the winding road that leads to Wayah Bald. 

The vehicle pauses for a moment as it traverses a valley framed by Wayah’s upward-reaching face. The slope is mottled with patches of darkness that could almost pass for cloud shadows. 

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Rumors have been flying on the Qualla Boundary since an investigation into contract awards and human resources actions under Principal Chief Patrick Lambert’s administration was completed last week. The report, a redacted copy of which was posted on the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Tribal Council Facebook page, states that the investigated actions “deviated from the Cherokee Code and other documented policies and processes.”

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A blanket freeze on federal hiring is having a local impact as the agencies tasked with managing Western North Carolina’s roughly 1.5 million acres of public land halt the hiring of seasonal employees responsible for keeping the area’s national parks and forests safe, clean and educational for the millions of visitors who seek them out each year. 

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Land conservation groups across the region found something to celebrate this month when the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced an $8 million allocation for farmland conservation in Western North Carolina — a gargantuan number that the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy calls “unprecedented.”

This type of funding, allocated through the Natural Resource Conservation Service’s Regional Conservation Partnership Plan under the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, has been available in the past. But never before has the amount been so large or so specifically targeted to Western North Carolina.

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Upgrading the Jackson County Health Department could prove a much less expensive undertaking than originally anticipated, if estimates contained in a recently completed study prove correct.

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The town of Sylva took a tentative first step this month toward easing residential zoning restrictions that some credit with hindering growth in the geographically constrained town.

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Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort is stepping into its 20th year of operation with plans for a massive expansion that will add 600-800 hotel rooms, a parking deck and a 100,000-square-foot event center to the existing 1,900,000-square-foot complex.

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It was around 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 5, when the two hikers stepped out of their red Ford Edge and into the parking lot at Big East Fork Trailhead. After the stunning vistas the Blue Ridge Parkway had offered on their drive from Asheville, David Crockett, a 23-year-old UNC Charlotte student, and his friend Sultan Alraddadi wanted to see those mountains up close.

They’d found the hike on AllTrails, an app that outlined an 8.1-mile loop that climbed Chestnut Ridge, continuing west to butt up against the Art Loeb Trail before returning east via the Shining Creek Trail. 

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The streets of downtown Sylva are newly treeless after town crews excavated the red maples earlier this month, but the condition won’t last for long. A new set of trees — 15 Japanese zelkovas — has been ordered and will likely go in this week.

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The Tribal Casino Gaming Enterprise’s newest member will be anything but new to the business of casino management when she takes her seat on the board.

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According to a recent ranking from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Cherokee Indian Hospital Authority is one of the nation’s worst-performing hospitals when it comes to rates of patients who acquire infections while staying in the hospital.

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Joe Ward’s term on the Tuckasegee Water and Sewer Authority board came to an abrupt end last week when newly elected commissioner Mickey Luker made a motion to remove him during the Jackson County Commissioners’ Jan. 9 meeting. The move prevailed in a party-line vote, three Republicans against two Democrats.

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Just north of Cullowhee, at the curvy, gravel terminus of Cane Creek Road, sits the building containing the world’s largest wilderness medicine classroom. 

Landmark Learning, a nationally accredited school offering a variety of courses in wilderness medicine, started using the building in May, though there’s still heavy equipment in view as fine-tuning continues. The 8,000-square-foot building contains a 2,400-square-foot classroom, a commercial kitchen, and a student lounge. Up an even steeper hill than the one that leads to the main building is a pair of dorm-style cabins and a terraced camping area, which together can accommodate 36 people.

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Recently elected Jackson County Commissioner Mickey Luker has dropped a lawsuit he filed in June contesting a permit denial handed down from the Jackson County Department of Public Health.

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Mill Street in Sylva will go from two lanes to one when a 2016 decision from the Sylva Board of Commissioners goes into effect. However, the timeline will depend on the town’s ability to fund the plan in the upcoming budget year.

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An unusual number of “for rent” signs have been cropping up in downtown Sylva lately, and the vacancies have town leaders and business owners wondering what this forebodes in the year ahead.

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January is universally recognized as the time to make a fresh start, throw away last year’s used-up calendar and dream up a new set of aspirations for the 12 months ahead. And when it comes to New Year’s resolutions aimed at becoming more active in 2017, Western North Carolina offers a dazzling array of options.

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Western Carolina University will soon be opening a school serving primary grades — likely in Jackson County — after a state mandate passed this summer goes into effect.

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Sylva’s town leaders were so excited to see the number of applications they received from prospective members of a public art committee they’ve spent the last half year working to form that they considered expanding the number of seats available on the committee.

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Health services emanating from the Good Samaritan building in Sylva are set to expand this year as Good Sam moves under the umbrella of Hendersonville-based Blue Ridge Community Health Services.

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As the drought of 2016 progressed, flows of streams and rivers dwindled region-wide — and the Tuckasegee River, water source for most of Jackson County, was no exception.

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For those who love the outdoors, it’s not hard to list the reasons why Western North Carolina is a spectacular place to live, and from that standpoint, the year 2016 certainly didn’t fail to deliver. The curtains are now closing on 2016, but the year will get its proper send-off with this roundup of favorite moments and memorable stories from the past 12 months outdoors.

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Judy Seago almost left the United States without packing a stethoscope. 

Seago, a pediatrician, was headed to Nepal on a honeymoon trek with her new husband Jerry Parker, a pharmacist. Medical missions weren’t part of the itinerary for the Jackson County couple — it was supposed to be all about exploring the miles-high mountains of Nepal’s Annapurna range.

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Caitlin Derico was 11 years old when her family’s Christmas tradition shifted from stockings to service.

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Simply removing contaminated dirt from the Southwestern Community College shooting range won’t be enough to close out a lead removal project that’s been in the works since April 2014, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality announced this month. 

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Jackson County is hoping to save $2.3 million on the cost of completing critical repairs in Jackson County Public Schools through a loan program that would lend the $9 million needed at 0 percent interest.

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A Cherokee firefighter has pled guilty to federal charges for intentionally starting seven wildfires on the Qualla Boundary between 2010 and 2014, which cost the Bureau of Indian Affairs a total of $106,700 to extinguish.

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The smoke has cleared from the Chimney Tops 2 Fire, which escaped the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Nov. 28 to cover more than 17,000 acres and result in 14 deaths, but park officials are just beginning the daunting task of dealing with the aftermath.

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Dowdy Bradley is 68 years old, and for nearly all of those years he’s been involved in some kind of farming, staying with the land through drought and flood, surplus and scarcity. The drought of 2016, however, has been the worst, hands-down — for him and for growers throughout the region. 

“This has been some of the hottest, driest weather I’ve seen, “ Bradley said. “I was worried about the water because it was already getting low. A couple pastures just dried up.”

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When Mark Jones first ran for a seat on the Jackson County Board of Commissioners in 2006, he was the general manager of High Hampton Inn and Country Club in Cashiers, a demanding and well-paid position. But when he won the election, Jones knew he wouldn’t be able to keep the job while also fulfilling his newly acquired civic responsibilities.

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Members of the Cherokee Tribal Council are hands-down the highest-paid local representatives in Western North Carolina, with other commissioner stipends paling in comparison to the $80,000-plus per year councilmembers receive as salary. 

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A state program that’s set to lower Western Carolina University’s tuition to $500 per semester could have unintended consequences when it comes to the university’s summer programming. 

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