Jeremy Morrison
Sitting in the judge’s seat, Jackson County Commissioners Chairman Jack Debnam took a look around. He absorbed the courtroom, glanced down at Commissioner Doug Cody on the witness stand and County Manager Chuck Wooten in the jury box.
Western Carolina University is sweating out the North Carolina General Assembly’s budgetary process, but perhaps not as much as some institutions of higher education.
The public hearing on Jackson County’s steep slope regulations struck Dave Waldrop as special.
“It was so unbelievable,” Waldrop said.
“See that up there?” asked Alaska Presley as she piloted her Mercedes up a back road to the top of Ghost Town in the Sky. “That’s the drop tower there.”
A conversation has begun in Jackson County regarding the revision of the county’s regulations pertaining to cell phone towers.
“We’re just barely into it,” said Ed Weatherby, a member of the Jackson County Planning Board.
Thom Tillis has a recurring daydream. The Republican Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives and candidate for the U.S. Senate, laid out his fantasy during the GOP’s annual convention held last weekend in Cherokee.
“It goes something like this: I’m standing in the Senate chamber,” Tillis said, “and Harry Reid is looking for his seat. And I get to say, ‘Mr. Minority leader, it’s somewhere back there.”
After her teenage daughter was banned from Poteet Park for a year, a Sylva mother sought an audience with the town’s commissioners.
“Everywhere I try to address my concerns, I’m ignored,” Deborah Woolverton told Sylva commissioners during a recent board meeting.
When North Carolina Republicans arrive at Harrah’s in Cherokee the first week of June for their annual convention, they will likely leave the din of discontent far behind. The rallies — the restless and the rowdies — and the realities of Raleigh will fade in the rearview.
The Jackson County Tourism Development Authority is still in the early stages of determining whether to hire an executive director. A committee has been formed and legwork is being completed.
The former Drexel manufacturing plant site in Whittier is a step closer to its future. Jackson County was recently awarded a $10,000 grant, which will be put toward the preparation of a master plan for the site.
On a muddy Friday afternoon they gathered at Kituwah Mound, the Mother Town.
Preparing for the journey. Offering up prayers for the sendoff.
At the front of the room, banjos and fiddles plow through an Appalachian repertoire. Fingers dance across strings, conjuring the history and tradition that have seeped out of the region’s hills for generations.
“Trying to get’em to play together on the same beat at the beginning is kind of like herding cats,” laughed instructor Robby Robertson. “But by the end they get it together.”
Across the audience, parents capture the moment with cell phone cameras. The young musicians focus on their instruments and ready themselves for another song.
The North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching is sweating out the legislative short session. Gov. Pat McCrory didn’t include any funding for the Cullowhee-based center in his proposed budget, and unless legislators carve out a place in the final budget, the center will close June 30.
The North Carolina GOP generally holds its annual conventions in places like Raleigh or Greensboro. This year, state Republicans will be traveling to Cherokee for the affair.
The state Republican convention will be held in Cherokee June 6-8. It’s an event that’s been a long time in the making.
Union employees at Evergreen Packaging’s Canton and Waynesville factories are currently engaged in contract negotiations.
Memorial Day weekend has come and gone, and Ghost Town in the Sky still appears much as the name implies. The closed gift shop and ticket windows sit watch over an empty parking lot.
The northern portion of Jackson County will go without fireworks again this Fourth of July. Last year’s display in Dillsboro was rescheduled for December due to rain, but it appears future fireworks have been scuttled due to funding.
Vandalism is apparently still a problem in Sylva public parks.It’s a problem that cost the town about ten grand last year to install four security cameras as a deterrent. But it wasn’t enough to do the trick, so town leaders will spend another $13,400 on more cameras this year.
Local school leaders and educators are celebrating last week’s court ruling declaring a 2013 law that doles out a small raise for 25 percent of the state’s teachers — no more and no less — unconstitutional.
North Carolina legislators have returned to Raleigh for the General Assembly’s short session. In the weeks ahead, lawmakers will wrestle with Medicaid, coal ash and a $445 million budget shortfall.
Jackson County Librarian Tracy Fitzmaurice recently pitched her first proposal for library funding before county commissioners. She asked for a bit of a jump in the their financial commitment.
The mostly vacant Tuckaseigee Mills factory in Jackson County will soon become a warehouse and shipping site for ConMet, a company that makes dashboards, consoles and custom-molded cab interiors for 18-wheelers.
With two of four incumbents losing their seats during the primary election, there will soon be some new blood on the Swain County Board of Commissioners. That sounds about right to Ben Bushyhead.
“I think if you stay in office too long you never bring new ideas,” he said. “You just become a caretaker of your own ideas.”
Don Kostelec stood in front of a flip pad in the cafeteria of Cullowhee Valley Elementary School. He asked for it all. Hold nothing back.
Alumni Tower is enjoying a late-semester afternoon on the Western Carolina University campus. Its clock keeps watch over students as they hustle between exams or toss a Frisbee on the grass.
A short walk from the tower, a fountain has attracted two sophomores and a puppy named Emma.
The vibe in the Cashiers library was thick with polite tension as Jackson County Manager Chuck Wooten recently stood before a roomful of curious skeptics.
The undertone was summed up by an audience member about halfway through the meeting.
Swain County Superintendent Sam Pattillo is taking a new approach this year. He’s requesting that county commissioners participate in the school district’s budgetary process.
“I feel like we need to be more together in our planning process,” Pattillo told commissioners during a recent meeting during which a foundation was laid for future discussions. “The struggle and juggle is going to be between the facilities and our programs and the best way to educate our kids.”
For nearly a year, REACH of Macon County has been helping domestic abuse victims in Jackson County. The group has handled more than 400 cases in Jackson since last July.
“To be honest with you, we feel like that number should be higher,” Andrea Anderson, the group’s executive director, told the Jackson County commissioners recently. “We definitely have been talking and trying to figure out how to reach out to more victims.”
Whatever qualities make for an ideal public space, Sylva’s Bridge Park seems to have them. At least Sarah Graham thinks so.
“That’s exactly what everybody had in mind,” Graham said.
The cemetery is up a dirt road, past an old barn and its bygone basketball hoop. A tread-worn path leads up the hill, where Confederate reenactors have arrived in pickup trucks.
Not everyone was happy about the free shoes. Betty Cloer Wallace was more concerned about the “holy war.”
Jackson County and the town of Sylva agreed this month to merge the entities’ separate Alcoholic Beverage Control boards. The deal means that Jackson and Sylva will share in the overall profits generated throughout the county, including those generated at the yet-to-open ABC store in Cashiers.
Swain County’s clerk of court race is an early-season affair. With no challengers looming on November’s general election horizon, the contest will be decided in next month’s primary.
The Swain clerk’s contest is also a race that offers voters a stark choice. A choice between old and new, between same and change.
The Jackson County Tourism Development Authority may be ready to start thinking about hiring an executive director. Board members of the still-new tourism organization are currently forming an exploratory committee to ponder the possibilities.
The breakfast crowd in Bryson City’s Bojangles’ seems to know Dockie Brendle.
“Hello, Doc,” says a man at a nearby table. “How are you?”
The nice, open room in the KARE house in Waynesville is a welcoming space. There’s books and toys and a wash of bright colors. There’s a rug featuring dolphins, hearts and shooting stars.
There have been reports of explosions in the Clyde area. People have written to Haywood County officials out of concern. The issue recently came up during a commissioners meeting.
“Basically, what they’re saying was it shook the earth, it rattled the windows, it scared them death,” relayed Haywood Commissioner Michael Sorrells.
Clyde’s new police chief has only been on the job a few weeks. But Terry Troutman already had his hands full before he even got sworn in.
The takeaway from Western Carolina University’s inaugural Tourism Works conference was pretty straightforward.
“I don’t think tourism gets enough credit for what it does for county economies, and I think it’s about time it did,” summed up Steve Morse. “In Western North Carolina, tourism is economic development.”
There’s only one primary in the Macon County commissioners’ races, but it’s a good one to watch. It might well be a political bellwether.
“You have varying opinions on what’s best for the county,” said Macon County Commissioner Jim Tate, a Republican running for re-election.
A trio of Republican candidates have lined up to challenge N.C. Rep. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville, for his District 119 House seat. One is barely old enough to drink, one campaigned for Barry Goldwater and one features Second Amendment-chest thumping on his website: “United Nations – stay out of NC!”
North Carolina’s District 50 senator represents the state’s seven western counties. In 2010, Sen. Jim Davis (R-Franklin) narrowly wrested the seat from incumbent John Snow but then beat Snow by a much-wider margin in 2012.
Cullowhee is awash in new developments. Specifically, the community is buzzing with the construction of high-density developments aimed at housing Western Carolina University’s growing student population.
The folks in Franklin are not yet sure what direction they may go with the revamping of the town’s gazebo on Main Street. Representatives of Venture Local Franklin presented the town board of aldermen with alternative plans for the gazebo during its April 7 meeting, but the board did not take up the issue for discussion.
When Franklin town leaders meet in April, they will be digesting a number of alternative plans for revamping the downtown gazebo, the beloved but dated focal point of the town square on Main Street. The designs and ideas for a gazebo facelift will be presented to the board of aldermen by a group of downtown merchants lobbying for a larger voice in town conversations.
After a full day of brainstorming, the Waynesville Board of Aldermen had thrown a lot of meat onto the table. Ideas, concerns and potential opportunities were written down on giant pieces of paper and tacked up on the walls, canvassing a good portion of the meeting room overlooking Lake Junaluska.
Western Carolina University is expected to get the go-ahead this month to place development of the Millennial Campus under the control of WCU’s endowment fund.
University officials believe the endowment fund would serve as a better vehicle to foster the public-private initiatives envisioned for Millennial Campus, according to the proposal.
New controversial voting laws passed by the N.C. General Assembly last year were supposed to take effect in 2016, but the timeline will ultimately come down to lawsuits challenging their constitutionality.
Walking out of the Jackson County Board of Elections offices in Sylva, Lane Perry seemed pleased. A year’s worth of work was about to pay off.
SEE ALSO: Election laws in the ‘new’ North Carolina
“At the end of the day, we want to be able to get university students to vote where they live for three to five years,” Perry explained on the way to his car.
The division along Franklin’s Main Street is tough to see with the naked eye. Passersby appear oblivious to the battle lines. The lazy rhythm of downtown, its quaint storefronts and ornamental lamp posts serve up a idyllic postcard, quietly concealing contention.
