In legislatures around the nation, it’s that time of decade again — time to break out the old redistricting maps and rehash the legislative lines.

Every 10 years, following the decennial census, lawmakers are constitutionally obliged to rearrange their districts so a roughly equal number of people are in each one, ensuring an representative Democracy of one person, one vote.

In North Carolina, the General Assembly is permanently comprised of 170 members: 50 senators and 120 representatives. Most every district will be finagled at least a little.

The state’s population grew by 18.5 percent, so the number of people in each districts must likewise grow. House districts, then, need 79,462 people. Senators now have to represent 190,710.

Since creating districts with such exact numbers would be hopelessly arduous, the rules allow for 5 percent more or less in every district.

For senators and representatives in the west, this means their districts will likely grow, pushing north and east in the pursuit of enough constituents.

This whole series of scenarios is a picture of the larger, statewide trend: over the last decade, urban areas have blown up. Rural areas, not quite so much, according to the 2010 census.

So legislators in more rural regions on the state’s mountain and coastal bookends are going to see their already-sizable districts balloon in geographic scope, freeing up legislative seats for faster-growing urban areas.

On the whole, two governing principles drive the redistricting process: equal representation among districts and districts where the predominant factor isn’t race.

Beyond that, the state’s constitution asks that counties be kept together, though as Western North Carolina proves, that’s often impracticable.

Then there’s the added political layer, which is what produces gerrymandered districts, those that are outlandishly drawn to cater to one party or politician’s interest.

In the gerrymandering game, North Carolina isn’t quite a gold-medal winner. Maryland has a few districts that resemble nothing so much as a polygraph readout, while Florida boasts a congressional region or two that look like a dot-matrix printer gone awry on a map.

But political considerations have factored into the state’s districts, and they haven’t always taken the constitutional mandates into account, splitting counties either for necessity or political consideration.

One thing nearly everyone agrees on, however, is that the future of redistricting would be a more equitable landscape if politics were taken out of the process altogether.

That’s the intent of House Bill 824, co-sponsored by Rep. Ray Rapp, D-Mars Hill, which passed in the House earlier this month.

It calls for a non-partisan, staff-penned plan that’s based on district compactness, continuity and constitutional mandates. Legislators would then give the map an up-or-down vote.

“I think what’s important is they don’t take into account the current residence of sitting members. So you don’t get into ‘oh, that’s so-and-so’s district, we’ve got to carve that out so he stays or she stays in this district,’” said Rapp.

The plan would kick in with the 2020 census and is based on Iowa’s method, which has been operating there for four decades without a single court challenge. The same cannot be said for North Carolina’s procedures.

“I think what it’ll do is ensure fairness in the process,” said Rapp. “Every decade we’ve had court challenges to the redistricting plan in North Carolina. I think there’s just a time when you say, ‘let’s do it right.’ Just do it straight up, straight forward so it’s fair and let the chips fall where they may.”

Rapp found bi-partisan support for the measure in the House, and he’s hoping for the same in the Senate.

For his part, Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, said he’s not against the idea.

“Some states do it that way and it seems to work pretty well,” said Davis. “Politicians are going to be really reluctant to give up that authority, but I think that has some merit.”

The legislature doesn’t yet have a final plan for the new districts, but committees have been meeting in both chambers to investigate the task, and the whole assembly is slated to start discussing it in mid-July, with recommendations due by the end of that month.

To split or not to split

Haywood County is a split county in both chambers represented by two different legislators. But now, there’s a move afoot to pull it back into a single district. Anyone putting pencil to paper to do the math, however, has realized it simply might not be possible.

This year, Haywood County’s Republican Party is lobbying for the county to be returned to one district, arguing that two house and two senate districts are confusing to voters and dilute the county’s legislative influence.

“It would be better if we were dealing with one legislator better than two,” said John Meinecke, chair of the Haywood County Republican Party. “The fact that we’ve been separated diminishes our political authority with the people in Raliegh. We’re the largest county west of Asheville, and yet it diminishes our political authority by having it divided the way it was.”

Local Democrats maintain the opposite, saying that four is always better than two, giving the county more clout and voice than surrounding counties.

“We are well-served — or have been in the past — by having four instead of two. We’ve had two senators and two representatives. I guess it just serves our county better,” countered Janie Benson, who heads up the Haywood Democrats.

Though they’d been asked to support a resolution in favor of joining the county, county commissioners declined to take a stance on the issue earlier this month.

This June, 91,000 pounds of paper will make its way into Western North Carolina. Some of it will end up in kitchen drawers, some will be used as doorstops, some will end up as litter dotting the roads, while still more will eventually find a home in the landfill.

It’s this year’s shipment of Yellowbooks, an annual tradition that could one day be an anachronism in an increasingly digital world.

But Neg Norton doesn’t think that day will be soon. He’s the president of the Local Search Association, also known by various other names including the Yellow Pages Association.

“It still plays a big role,” said Norton of the good old printed phone book. “About 75 percent of adults used print yellow pages some 11 billion times last year. We have some 3 million small-business advertisers across the country. Clearly they do so because they’re getting a good return on investment.”

But some think that rather than being a relevant tool, the phone book is an annoying relic. On the West Coast, San Francisco lawmakers are looking to ban the book from city limits unless a customer requests it. A similar measure in Seattle was met with a lawsuit last year by Norton’s group, who lobby actively on behalf of the $13 billion industry.

In Waynesville, such severe measures aren’t on the table, but Town Manager Lee Galloway said he does hear complaints about the tomes.

“Especially at some houses that were vacant and it jut became litter,” said Galloway.

And that is a problem with phone books. While Local Search said it’s involved in recycling old and unused books, they don’t necessarily take responsibility for returning to collect phone books that haven’t been touched since delivery.

And then there’s just the sheer volume. Twenty-five years ago, there was usually only one phone book to be found on the market. Now there are dozens in every region across the country.

The two main competitors in WNC are Yellowbook and AT&T’s The Real Yellow Pages, but nationally Norton said there are 200 separate companies hawking books.

That’s thanks to a 1991 Supreme Court decision that declared phone books outside the realm of copyright, as they held only a miniscule amount of original content.

But with the Internet so ubiquitous that Google has become a verb, even Norton conceded that when a younger generation of digital natives reaches adulthood, the printed books might become museum fodder. And, he said, his group is OK with that. They don’t want to pass out unwanted books — it’s as bad for them as it is annoying to the consumer.

“It does us absolutely no good to deliver a phone book to somebody who doesn’t want one. We don’t make any money by distributing additional copies,” said Norton. That’s why they’ve created an opt-out website, yellowpageoptout.com, that allows consumers to pass on the phone book. According to Norton, they’ve gotten around 400,000 opt-outs nationwide with the site, which doesn’t include those who call the book publishers directly to cancel.

But even if they are self-regulating, the industry has historically railed against legally mandated opt-in or opt-out programs.

In 2008, a bill was introduced in the state Senate, co-sponsored by local senator John Snow, that would force phone book companies to provide customers the option to decline. It died after the first reading, thanks in part to lobbying by the Yellow Pages Association.

“We think it’s wrong of the government to select winners and losers in the print media market,” said Norton. “We think that’s a very dangerous precedent for the government to set.”

Plus, he pointed out, with programs such as the one proposed in San Francisco, if 75 percent of people use the book at some point in the year, it’s impractical to ask them all to opt in.

Though do-not-deliver programs aren’t mandatory in North Carolina, Yellowbook Market Manager Michael Hartnett said he does field a call every now and again.

“Yes, it happens. But it’s a rare occurrence,” said Hartnett. He said the 91,000 Yellowbooks they’ll be distributing this year in Haywood, Jackson, Macon and Swain counties have held pretty steady for the last few years. But nationally, the trend is going down.

This year, there are 8 percent fewer phone books hitting the streets than the year before. And many are smaller, thanks to the elimination of the residential white pages in many larger markets.

In this way, say industry advocates, phone book companies are doing their part to reduce their own waste stream. They’re making books smaller, and all books are completely recyclable. In fact, that’s what they’re made of — themselves. When old books are recycled, they’re combined with disused woodchips gleaned from the lumber-making process and pressed into new books, a cycle that repeats itself each year.

So even as the digital revolution marches on, that staple of the kitchen drawer still, for now, has a life and a place.

“We still have a lot of people using the phone books,” said Galloway, and for those that do, they’ll be pleased to know a new shipment is already headed their way.



Facts
• 1: percent all paper products accounted for by phone books
• 0.3: percent of municipal waste stream generated by phone books
• 731,000: tons of phone books distributed in 2010
• The first phone book was created in 1878 for New Haven, Conn., residents. 
• Interleafing two phone books will make them impossible to pull apart. 
• To opt out of phone book delivery, visit yellowpagesoptout.com. 

With the latest increase in gas and grocery prices, the already long lines at soup kitchens and food pantries across Western North Carolina are growing even longer.

“The need is going up again,” said Amy Grimes, executive director of The Community Table in Sylva. “We could break another record this year.”

That’s not a record Grimes is particularly thrilled about: In 2010, the Sylva group served 20,393 dinners alone, double the number of dinners served at The Community Table the previous year, when 10,335 were given out. The surge, Grimes said, is directly attributable to the hard times individuals and families are experiencing as fallout continues from the nation’s long economic slump.

The story is the same across WNC. The need is getting greater and greater, even as many people’s abilities to help financially have become increasingly difficult. That widening chasm, and the best means of tackling the problem regionally, will be the focus of a forum on food security Monday, April 25, at Western Carolina University in the A.K. Hinds University Center.

Sponsored by WCU’s Public Policy Institute and MANNA Foodbank, the forum is intended to highlight the problems of hunger in WNC and outline possible regional solutions, said Paul Dezendorf, a WCU professor who is helping organize the event.

“North Carolina has one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the country, and the Asheville metro area ranks No. 7 in the country for food hardship among all metro areas in 2010. We all know that the rural counties are even worse, not better,” Dezendorf said.

There are two main objectives set for this forum at WCU: the first is to provide a public setting for discussing the problem and deciding how to improve the situation, and the second is figuring out how the academic community and those directly involved in feeding the hungry can communicate better.

A networking session for community organizations will be held in the morning. The public session is set for 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., and will include speakers from MANNA FoodBank and other area nonprofits, plus local experts on healthcare and sustainable agriculture. That event will take place in the theater of the University Center.

Dezendorf said he and other organizers hope the forum will evolve into an annual event focused on increasing food security across WNC.

Want to help?

The Community Table in Sylva needs assistance picking up boxes of donated food from Wal-Mart. Pickups are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. If you can help on one or more of those days, call Amy Grimes at 828.586.6782. Additionally, the group’s biggest fundraiser of the year is set for Friday, April 22, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tickets for the Empty Bowl are $20, available at the door, and include choices of handcrafted, locally made bowls; plus soup, bread and desserts from local restaurants. 828.586.6782.

With the coming of spring the pungent ramp is about to strut center-stage once more.

For either the novitiate or the aficionado, there are ample opportunities over the next month to sample this Southern Appalachian delicacy — no fewer than three spring festivals in the immediate area feature ramps, a plant that at one time ranked among the lowliest members of the leek family.

This attention accorded the ramp is relatively newfound, though one must note for the purposes of accuracy that Waynesville’s venerable ramp festival has been around for many a year — featuring a ramp eating contest where grown men face off across a fodling table to see who can stuff the most of the eye-watering bulbs in their mouth.

SEE ALSO: Ramp recipes

But once upon a time, and not so long ago, eating lots of ramps was considered offense — and offensive — enough for children to be sent home in disgrace from school. The reaction was swift and uncompromising, akin to what could be expected if said children had been sprayed by skunks and then attempted to pass unnoticed — not sniffed out, as it were — in class. Eating too many ramps, you see, can cause one to emanate odors that, in these more sensitive olfactory times of yester-yore, was considered simply too much for delicate classmates and teachers to endure.

You ask, pre-ramp festival visitation, what should be considered eating “too many” ramps? That would constitute a pile, or perhaps a bushel and a peck: Never, ever fear sampling a mere few ramps.

Besides, even if you do eat a pile (there are ramp-eating contests, after all) and return home smelling of this native delight, these days that’s considered oh-so-cutting edge. Eating the odiferous ramp is practically the pinnacle of culinary fashion — restaurants in New York City, no less, now prominently feature ramps on menus.

The popularity of ramps has grown so much, in fact, that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2002 banned collection. Picking plants and taking them from a national park is generally considered poaching. But an exemption had been made for ramps in the Smokies “because of the traditional practices by Native Americans and European settlers,” Smokies spokeswoman Nancy Gray said.

The tribe protested and lobbied the park to reconsider and allow native people to continue ramp harvests, but to no avail. Gray said there was no legal authority to bend poaching rules for ramps collected by Cherokee people.

There are still public lands where one can legally dig ramps.

For personal use, people can harvest up to five pounds of ramps free on the Nantahala and Pisgah national forests. Mike Wilkins, district ranger for the Nantahala National Forest, said the maximum commercial use is limited to 500 pounds, with no more than 50 percent of the bulbs harvest in a 1-foot by 1-foot area. Fees are charged for commercial harvests.

“Personnel use is (harvest) anywhere,” Wilkins said. “We rotate the areas for commercial harvest.”

Ramp festivals

• Mountain trout and wild ramps are featured at the annual Rainbow and Ramps festival on Saturday, March 26, at 9 a.m. at the Cherokee Indian Fair Grounds. Hosted by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Entertainment, music, Civil War reinactors and food featuring ramps. A $10 lunch will be served starting at noon, consisting of rainbow trout or fried chicken, ramps, pinto beans, fried potatoes, cornbread, dessert and a beverage.

• Waynesville Ramp Festival, May 1, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. American Legion Field, Waynesville.

• Robbinsville Ramp Festival, May 1, noon until the food is gone, downtown Robbinsville.

Biologists recently confirmed white-nose syndrome at a third site in North Carolina, meaning two counties are now positive for the disease that has killed hundreds of thousands of bats in the eastern United States.

The disease was confirmed late last month in Yancey County. It was previously discovered in a retired Avery County mine and in a cave at Grandfather Mountain State Park.

“We knew that white-nose syndrome was coming and began preparing for its arrival, but we have a lot of work to do to address the impact of this disease on bats and our natural systems” said Chris McGrath, wildlife diversity program coordinator in the N.C. Wildlife Commission’s Wildlife Management Division.

While much remains to be learned about white-nose syndrome, there is evidence that people may inadvertently spread the fungus believed to cause the disease from cave-to-cave. Therefore, the most important step people can take to help bats is staying out of caves and mines.

While there are no known direct human health effects of the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, the impact upon humans, other wildlife, and agriculture as a result of declines in bat populations could be substantial. Bats play a significant role as night-flying insect predators.

At this time, the fungus appears to grow on bat skin in the cave environment during hibernation. Infected bats may spread the fungal spores to other bats and roosts during the warmer summer months; however, the fungus only grows in a narrow range of temperatures (41 to 56 degrees Fahrenheit) in high humidity conditions.

Work to bring broadband to all of North Carolina — including adding missing sections of fiber in the mountains — is well under way, leaders with a state nonprofit group said.

Construction on an important link from Enka to Sylva that will run through Haywood County is targeted for completion by early May, Tommy Jacobson, vice president of MCMN’s network infrastructure initiatives, told about 50 regional business and political leaders during a conference held at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino.  

North Carolina has received $255 million in federal recovery grants to extend broadband in the state, via MCMN (Making Connections in North Carolina).

The new fiber will help groups such as BalsamWest FiberNET in Sylva and other telecoms by providing them with additional capacity and making them more efficient. BalsamWest is a private entity that is jointly owned by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and Macon County-based Drake Enterprises. It worked independently to build a broadband infrastructure to serve Western North Carolina, putting in 300 miles of fiberoptic cable.

“Bandwidth demand will never go down,” Phil Drake of Drake Enterprises said of BalsamWest’s ability to use extra broadband capacity.

The missing piece now being laid in Haywood County has been described as critical to that county’s economic wellbeing by elected and business leaders: MedWest, a collective of hospitals in Haywood, Jackson and Swain counties, has estimated such a connection would save MedWest alone at least half a million dollars.

Additionally, construction on an 18-mile stretch of fiber cable in Graham County, which will tie back into BalsamWest, is slated to start this summer. Jacobson said his group is working to get clearance to build through the Nantahala National Forest.

He dubbed the process “challenging,” dryly describing the U.S. Forest Service “as an interesting agency to work with.”

“Little can be done out here without public-private partnerships,” said Cecil Groves, CEO of BalsamWest and the former president of Southwestern Community College.

Joe Freddoso, president and CEO of MCMN, agreed. He said the group used BalsamWest and Blue Ridge EMC (serving the state’s westernmost counties and north Georgia) as a model for expanding service to rural areas across North Carolina.

“That model was crafted here,” Freddoso said, “by a region that met its own need.

The second-home economy has fueled far more than construction and real estate jobs over the past decade.

“If it’s someone’s second or third home, they aren’t bringing anything with them,” said Doug Worrell, the president of High Country Furniture in Waynesville. “They aren’t moving their furniture.”

As a new economy emerged to support the second-home movement, furniture stores have proliferated throughout the region.

Worrell saw a customer last week who bought a home at Bear Lake Preserve in Jackson County and wanted it furnished by Friday. On the other end of the spectrum, a couple who hadn’t yet closed on their lot, let alone started building, were already browsing for their dream furniture.

A brand-new house also calls for art and décor. Enter the many galleries and boutiques filling downtown store fronts through the region.

“What impact does the second home market have on Main Street? Major,” said John Keith, owner of Twigs and Leaves gallery in downtown Waynesville.

Many second-home owners make a hobby out of decorating their new mountain abodes, and Twigs and Leaves had the sales to prove it. But as second-home construction slowed over the past three years, so did the purchase of artwork, Keith said.

While Keith has no doubt the second-home market will return — few places can beat WNC as a destination for retiring boomers — some galleries have been unable to wait out the downturn. Just last month, Echo Gallery in the upscale Biltmore Village closed down.

No one knows the importance of the second-home economy more than Danny Wingate, the vice president of Haywood Builders in Waynesville.

Haywood Builders nearly tripled its sales over the first half of the decade, peaking at $30 million in sales in 2006. The robust growth was fueled almost entirely by the second-home market, Wingate said.

“Our business was made up primarily of high-end second homes,” Wingate said.

The large number of gated communities popping up in Jackson County spurred Haywood Builders to open a Design Center in downtown Sylva, where people building homes could pick interior features from kitchen cabinets to bathroom lighting.

“It was a platform for us to access the Jackson County market, particularly for cabinetry,” Wingate said. It was a savvy move: Wingate recalled one homeowner who spent $140,000 on cabinets alone.

But that has all changed now.

“We are off substantially,” Wingate said of sales today compared to that boom period.

Last year, sales had dropped to $12 million, a precipitous decline from the peak of $30 million in 2006.

Wingate has a bird’s eye view of the construction industry, with builders constantly funneling through his store, where both prices and customer service beat out his big-box competitors. Contractors who were once among his top 10 biggest clients are now struggling to find work.

“Even our big boys are out of work,” Wingate said.

Time for reflection

The slump in second home growth isn’t all bad, according to Ken Brown, Chairman of the Tuckasegee Community Alliance in Jackson County.

Brown questioned whether the growth rates of the past decade are sustainable. Jackson County saw the largest population growth of any county in WNC among year-round residents, as well the biggest increase in home construction, much of it in the second home market, according to the census.

“It is hard to gauge what kind of an impact that had when you have that many folks building second homes,” Brown said. “It is kind of unprecedented in my time.”

The economic downturn has been like a pressure relief valve on a boiler.

“I think we need to assess just what kind of development we want,” Brown said. “You wonder if that trend could happen again if the economy does pick up. It would put a tremendous amount of pressure on the county.”

Now is not the time for counties to let down their guard on mountainside development or roll back ordinances regulating slope construction, he said. Jackson County passed some of the region’s most progressive and restrictive development regulations four years ago — largely in response to the unparalleled building boom. But that could change given a slate of new commissioners elected last fall.

“We felt like they may try to weaken or water down the ordinances,” Brown said.

So Brown and like-minded citizens in Jackson County have formed a grassroots task force to keep an eye on any moves by the newly elected board of commissioners to undo construction regulations, Brown said.

Brent Martin, who lives in Macon County and works for The Wilderness Society in Sylva, said the face of the mountains could change dramatically if the second-home dynamic continues on its current trajectory.

“It will be very interesting to see what this place turns into in another 30 or 40 years,” Martin said.

“I don’t know how we would handle it. The current downturn is allowing us to catch our breath and step back and figure out how to address the next wave of it — because it is certainly coming.”

Although population in Western North Carolina increased only by a modest amount over the past decade, home construction grew at a much higher rate, according to 2010 census data released last week.

The census counts year-round residents. But much of the growth in WNC has come from second homes — and as a result isn’t reflected when looking at population numbers alone.  

Hard data on the number of second homes and the region’s summertime population can be difficult to ferret out. But the latest census shows the growth in housing units has outpaced population growth, confirming the second home dynamic that people who live here year-round witness.

ALSO: See the graphs

“You can definitely feel when summer season is coming back,” said David Francis, a Haywood County resident and the head of the county tax department. “You can just tell from the traffic on a Friday afternoon. Where I really see it is at Ingle’s.”

While long lines and empty shelves at the grocery store are a sure sign that the seasonal population has returned, the summer influx of residents is witnessed in every facet of society, from more trash at the landfill to more people at the emergency room.

Seasonal residents translate into a 15 to 20 percent increase in trash at the Haywood County landfill, Francis said.

The emergency room at MedWest Harris in Sylva sees a seasonal spike in patient volume of 10 to 15 percent during the summer and fall compared to winter, according to numbers provided by Lucretia Stargill, a MedWest spokesperson. Ambulance calls likewise increase in the summer, according to Jim Pressley, the EMS director for Haywood County.

In Maggie Valley, a town full of vacation homes, users at the town library go way up in summer, according to Town Manager Tim Barth. So does the need for police officers. It means the department is slightly overstaffed in the off-season.

“Right now there may not be a lot of people in the Valley. But you can’t just hire police officers for two or three months. That doesn’t work very well,” Barth said.

Running a community with such seasonal population swings isn’t easy. It must have adequate infrastructure to serve the larger population. In Maggie Valley, the sewer treatment plant has a much larger capacity than its year-round population of 1,100 would typically dictate.

“We have to assume that everybody will be in Maggie Valley all at one time, and that is what we have to plan for,” Barth said.

While thousands of seasonal Maggie residents make a wintertime exodus back to Florida, they continue paying a sewer bill of $15 a month while they’re gone, even if their water is completely shut off, Barth said. The minimum monthly bill allows the sewer treatment plant to be keep operating during those months and be in working order when the masses return.

The building surge of the past decade forced counties to grapple with all kinds of infrastructure issues. Ken Brown, Chairman of the Tuckasegee Community Alliance in Jackson County, pointed to the dispute between the Glenville Fire Department and second-home owners on an island in the middle of the lake. The second-home owners wanted the volunteer fire department to provide fire service, even if it meant taking a fire truck across the lake on a barge.

“I thought it was offensive actually they could buy an island then demand the county provide them fire service,” Brown said.

Second-home growth also takes its toll on natural resources, from construction-site erosion muddying the streams to view-obscuring smog from vehicles.

Public lands, which are home to the last remaining Appalachian ecosystems, are also feeling the squeeze. As development spreads across the landscape, it’s pushing up against the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests and encroaching on wildlife habitat. The National Forest Service ranked the Pisgah and Nantahala among the top five forests threatened by periphery development in a 2009 report called “National Forests on the Edge.”

Meanwhile, more people are recreating in the national forests, testing the carrying capacity of the public lands that make WNC such a desirable place to live, according to Brent Martin, the Southern Appalachian director of The Wilderness Society in Sylva.

How many second homes?

Mark Clasby has spent much of the past decade trying to quantify the second-home market in Haywood County.

“It is a very important part of our economy,” said Clasby, the county economic development director.

The potential buying power of Haywood County’s population can make or break whether a new business comes here. Clasby has been trying to pedal a mega commercial site once slated for a Home Depot that was cancelled after the recession took hold. Finding a retailer of that magnitude to fill the void has been tough.

“What they tend to look at when they pick a location is they want to know what the population is,” Clasby said. “We try to make an argument that we have more people here than what census numbers show. What I have to use is unscientific.”

One figure Clasby points to is the number of property tax bills mailed out of the county. In Haywood County, one-third of tax bills are mailed out of the county, indicating the property owner has a primary residence somewhere else. In Macon County — an even bigger second-home market — 54 percent of tax bills are mailed out of the county.

Five years ago, the Downtown Waynesville Association commissioned a study on where shoppers come from. Over 70 businesses throughout town recorded the zip codes of those making purchases, including those who were second-home owners. Second-home owners accounted for 12 percent of shoppers at participating shops the last week in July.

But second-home residents aren’t just here in the summer anymore.

“I think our seasonal folks increase starting in the spring and go into the fall and some all the way through the holidays,” said Linda Schlott, the director of the Main Street Program in Franklin.

And that’s good news for business owners.

“We can see an increase in people on the streets and merchants see an influx of customers when those seasonal visitors are here,” Schlott said.

Some second-home owners actually live here more months of the year than they do in their so-called primary residence. But the absence of income tax in Florida makes it advantageous to claim that state as their permanent residence.

Real numbers at last

The census offers a glimpse into just how many homes in our midst may be second homes or vacation rentals. To census workers, any house not occupied by a full-time resident was designated “vacant.”

In Haywood, 27 percent of homes were deemed “vacant.” In Swain, it was 35 percent. In Jackson, it was 37 percent. And in Macon it was a whopping 42 percent (see chart).

The numbers are even more staggering in quintessential vacation and second-home markets. In the town of Maggie Valley, two-thirds of the housing units were “vacant.” In the town of Highlands, “vacant” homes account for 78 percent of the housing stock.

A small portion of the housing units deemed “vacant” by the census are truly that. There’s a baseline of legitimately vacant houses, such as rentals that are between renters or empty houses where the owner has died.

Statewide, the average vacancy rate is only 13 percent. That average includes places like the beach and the mountains with a preponderance of vacation condos and second homes. For a typical city where these aren’t a factor, like Greensboro or Durham, the vacancy rate is 9 to 10 percent.

In Jackson County, student housing contributes to the high percentage of “vacant” housing units. Several apartment buildings have gone up over the past decade aimed at students attending Western Carolina University. Perhaps too many apartments, said Mark Jamison, a resident of nearby Webster. The university predicted exponential growth of students that hasn’t materialized completely.

“You have an inventory created on suppositions that probably aren’t going to come true,” Jamison said.

Another factor in the number of vacant homes on the census roster is speculative building. During the boom years, the line of prospective second-home buyers seemed endless, prompting developers to build spec houses rather than merely sell off lots. Some contractors would even buy lots to build spec homes of their own.

But when the stream of buyers dried up, those homes were left standing, explained Danny Wingate, the vice president of Haywood Builders.

Sitting idle

The 2010 Census reveled a high number of second homes not occupied by year-round residents. Here’s the percentage of “vacant” homes by county.

Haywood    27 percent

Jackson    37 percent

Macon    42 percent

Swain    35 percent

Total housing units by county:

Haywood    34,954

Jackson    25,948

Macon    25,245

Swain    8,723

Urban areas grew at a torrid pace over the past decade — so get ready, legislators in the mountains and on the coast, because your already large districts are about to expand.

Why? Because, as Christopher Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University explained, even though there are very few rules about exactly how voting lines are drawn, there are two guiding principles.

First, lines cannot be drawn with race as the predominant factor; and secondly, there should be approximately the same number of people in each district.

Since urban areas grew faster than rural ones, that must be represented when lines are redrawn, said Cooper, who oversees a university-sponsored blog focused on North Carolina politics.

The state, as a whole, grew more than 18 percent. Much of that population surge occurred in Mecklenburg and Wake counties, and in those counties abutting them. Northwest North Carolina also experienced strong growth. These places are entitled to more representation in Raleigh beginning in 2012, while rural counties in WNC will get less.

“Since we hold constant the number of representatives in Raleigh, then those additional seats (for urban areas) have to come from somewhere,” Cooper said.

Voting districts in the mountains will expand to take in larger geographic areas, freeing up legislative seats for faster-growing urban areas.

Rep. Ray Rapp, D-Mars Hill, serves on the House Redistricting Committee. He said it’s too early to know exactly how mountain and coastal districts will expand, but the shifts must take place. Western North Carolina is bounded by three states, so expansions must flow eastward: Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina are unlikely to look favorably on a land and population grab.

That, Rapp said, will setup an eastward district-redrawing cascade of sorts. The veteran legislator emphasized that he doesn’t expect mountain dwellers to experience nearly the redistricting changes eastern North Carolinians can anticipate. Some counties on and near the coast saw population declines.

WCU Professor Cooper said residents in the state’s westernmost counties aren’t likely to look on changes favorably.

“Folks in the west have long felt that their voices are not heard in Raleigh and any change in the number of representatives we receive will only further erode trust in state government,” he said. “This is not only a North Carolina phenomenon — the farther you get from the capital, the lower the information about state politics and the less trust people have in their state government.”

Jim Davis, R-Franklin, a newly elected member of the N.C. Senate, isn’t particularly worried, though his analysis of the 2010 census data indicates the 50th District he represents will grow larger, despite already spanning parts of eight counties.

“It will have to expand quite a bit,” Davis said.

The Franklin orthodontist said he doesn’t view a larger district as a hindrance. Additionally, Davis described the state’s eastern legislative delegation as “kindred spirits” to those who represent the west. Much of North Carolina is rural, Davis said, and that creates commonalities transcending simple geography.

U.S. congressional districts, too, must reflect the population shift in North Carolina. But, in that those districts are so large already, changes are unlikely to seem as profound. Andrew Whalen, senior advisor for U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, said prior to the census-data release he expected the congressman might pick up a few counties to the east.

Redistricting, required by federal law every 10 years when updated census data is released, comes as Republicans have grabbed control of the General Assembly for the first time in more than a century. Previous redistricting in North Carolina proved acrimonious, with Republicans accusing then-in-power Democrats of drawing the lines to their political advantage, or gerrymandering districts.

District maps were redrawn three times in as many years from 2001 to 2003 because of Republican-filed lawsuits; primary elections were delayed twice as a result, in 2002 and 2004.

Sen. Bob Rucho, R-Mecklenburg, the Senate Redistricting Committee’s chairman, says the GOP will draw districts correctly and fairly. Redistricting meetings get under way next week.

Time to redraw

The General Assembly is required to redraw voting districts for North Carolina after every census. Once adopted, a valid redistricting plan cannot be changed during that decade.

The 170 legislative districts for the N.C. Senate and House, and the 13 U.S. congressional districts, must be exactly or nearly equal in population — ensuring equal representation under the principle of one person, one vote. As the population grows, voting districts likewise must include more people.

Each representative in the N.C. House will represent about 79,500 people; state Senators about 191,000 people. Each congressional district must have 733,500 people. The redrawn districts take effect starting in 2012.

Once upon a time and not particularly very long ago, trail running in Western North Carolina was a fringe sport at best.

Hitting the trails instead of roads served as a refuge for longtime runners who couldn’t bear to give up their morning jogs but whose knees and joints simply couldn’t take the pounding anymore of feet-on-pavement. For other road-racing runners, trail running was a nice, scenic method of getting in some strengthening exercises. But in the main, serious runners primarily steered clear of focusing on trail running, afraid that while running off-road would indeed make them stronger, it might also make them slower.

No more. These days, trail running has burgeoned into WNC’s outdoor sport de jour. Some runners do nothing now but run on trails, avoiding road running altogether. Others, such as Brad Dodson of Haywood County, continue to enjoy both pavement and trails — Dodson, in fact, is currently training for one of the world’s premier road races, the Boston Marathon, set for April 15. He finds trail running complements his road racing.

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Dodson, 43, said he finds it much easier to run for three hours on trails than to put in, say, 20 miles on pavement.

“Running on pavement is really hard on your body, especially as you get older,” the former college track runner said.

Not to mention, Dodson added, the sheer meditative quality of running in the woods.

“All my life I’ve been looking at a clock and worrying about time while running,” he said. “Trail running is less about the time, more about just being out there — and it’s about enjoying being in the woods.”

A new business niche for region

Even the Nantahala Outdoor Center, the area’s biggest and oldest river-raft company, is getting into the act of trail running. NOC is working now on improving a series of trails behind the business’ main headquarters in the Nantahala Gorge in Swain County, with the plan of hosting a series of trail races in the future. Additionally, walk (or run) into the outfitters’ store and you’ll discover a recently added complete line of trail-running gear — from trail-running specific shoes to handheld water bottles.

“We got many requests to add those, from a lot of customers who wanted trail-running items,” said Lauren Dieterich, a trail runner herself and a member of NOC’s marketing department.

The outfitting company also has teamed with nearby Fontana Village to hold back-to-back trail runs Oct. 29-30, “to give people a whole weekend of trail running,” said Charles Conner, the company’s marketing department director.

The demand for trail races is definitely growing, Conner said, which is what prompted NOC to focus on improving the trails nearby the center and to team with Fontana Village. By improving its system of trails, NOC will be able to hold a race and offer perks runners enjoy after a hard slog in the woods — showers, maybe a live band playing music and more.

Conner said there are about five or six miles of trail available to NOC now, and that the trails can be connected into loops. Plus a few more miles of trails might be added on as well.

In May, the trail-running community will converge on NOC via the 2011 Smoky Mountain Relay, a running event that starts in North Mills River and ends at NOC in Wesser. This is the second year NOC has been a relay sponsor.

Runners will cover 205 miles of trails, forest service and rural roads. Teams of 12 runners each will cover the course in 36 sections, with each runner completing three sections of 2.5- to 10-miles each.