The town of Waynesville has rolled out a budget plan for the coming fiscal year that’s nearly identical to the year before.

A new animal shelter is in the works in Haywood County despite a major decline in the number of stray and orphaned animals over the past decade.

A new $3 million animal shelter on the horizon in Haywood County has become a catalyst for a philosophical shift in animal control.

Smoking will soon be banned on sidewalks in Waynesville.

Town aldermen voted unanimously last week to ban smoking on all town property — including parks, ball fields, greenways, public parking lots and the grounds of town buildings.

Spend a few hours on the streets in Frog Level, and the heartwarming stories flow like water.

Haywood County commissioners say a property tax increase is needed to dig the county out of a recession-era backlog.

A stalemate over whether to raise property taxes in Sylva ended last week with the majority of town board members opting to take money out of the town’s reserve fund to cover a $140,000 projected shortfall in next year’s budget.

Lake Junaluska annexation

What the bill says: Lake Junaluska would become part of the town of Waynesville pending approval by voters of both Lake Junaluska and the town.

The give-and-take of crafting a budget is in full throttle in Haywood County, but what will be cut and what will come out on top is a close-to-the-vest affair until next week.

Haywood County commissioners are contemplating a property tax increase to pay for raises for county employees.

In a mere four years, Jackson County Planner Gerald Green has wrestled with just about every controversial land-use issue you could possibly come across in the mountains.

Haywood County Schools will cut its budget by $900,000 next year, plus tap its cash reserves to the tune of $1.5 million to soften the blow of what would otherwise be even larger cuts.

“This is a draft. We may have to go back and cut more,” Haywood Superintendent Anne Garrett said, when presenting a summary of the school system budget to county commissioners last month.

Haywood School Superintendent Anne Garrett came up with a novel approach for predicting how many students a new charter school will siphon out of the public school system.

Haywood County Schools will get a modest 2 percent increase each year for the next three years in its student per capita funding from the county.

Marlowe Mager isn’t an economist by trade, but a little-known data set at his fingertips puts him on par with the nation’s best forecasters.

About 200 people gathered for the ribbon cutting of a $3.2-million renovation of the Terrace Hotel at Lake Junaluska, the anchor lodging facility of the conference and retreat center.

A new addition will soon be added to the town of Waynesville’s street fleet.

Haywood County farmers caught some face time with elected leaders this week over heaping plates of bacon, eggs, grits, biscuits and hash browns to talk candidly about the issues facing today’s farmers — and the unrelenting rain over the past week wasn’t one of them.

Last fall’s election is barely in the rearview mirror, but battle lines are already being staked out for 2016.

And voters may be looking at a rematch for the state senate seat that sprawls from Waynesville to Murphy, spanning seven mountain counties. Both N.C. Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, and challenger Jan Hipps, D-Waynesville, say they will run again in two years.

Haywood Community College had to pay back $126,000 in state funding after accidentally inflating its enrollment numbers.

The state doles out community college funding based on enrollment. HCC inadvertently reported more students than it actually had, however, and as a result got more money than it was supposed to for last year.

Haywood County is back on the prowl for potential sites to build a new $3 million animal shelter to replace its existing one.

County commissioners initially set their sights on an empty field at the Haywood County Fairgrounds. But that is now off the table due to deed hang-ups — namely legal covenants limiting what the fairground property can be used for.

The smokestacks at Evergreen Packaging paper mill in Canton will be significantly cleaner within four years thanks to $50 million in pollution upgrades.

A plan to turn Waynesville’s old town hall into a visitor center and the headquarters for a suite of tourism, commerce and business development agencies appears to be dead.

Waynesville has emerged victorious in a nail-baiting quest for cheaper wholesale power to resell to its own electric customers.

A Haywood County political operative and local government critic was cleared of alleged cyberstalking charges in court last week.

Monroe Miller, 67, was accused of cyberstalking by Savannah Tedesco, 24, who claimed Miller would not stop sending her intimidating and embarrassing emails after she asked him to quit. A judge dismissed the misdemeanor cyberstalking charge.

Waynesville leaders are wrestling over how far to go with a smoking ban in public spaces.

The proposed ban would apply to sidewalks and streets in business districts throughout town, from Main Street to Russ Avenue.

A public hearing on whether to ban smoking in public spaces in Waynesville — including outdoors — was held Tuesday night (March 24), after the newspaper’s press deadline.

There are plenty of Ron Rash fans who have been waiting — and waiting — for “Serena” the movie to come out, and they won’t let all those bad reviews rain on their parade.

Little bits of local lore riddle the pages of Ron Rash’s Serena.

“As a fiction writer I know I am going to get things wrong, but you do the best you can to get those details as correct as possible,” Rash said. “If we can get enough things right, I think it allows the reader to stay in the dream. Very specific, authentic details allow the reader to believe everything else that is being made up.”

There’s good news in the marketplace for Evergreen Packaging paper mill in Canton.

Town board, pick three

Mayor running unopposed • Jerry Walker, 69, retired from Blue Ridge Paper Products engineering and maintenance. Part-time security at Blue Ridge Paper Products.

Mayor — pick one

Editor’s note: The Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project, a regional environmental group, took the Smoky Mountain News on an aerial tour of the seven western counties last month. The group’s goal was to convey their perspective on threats facing the changing mountain landscape.

While witnessing an up-close aerial view of the mountains is an awe-inspiring adventure for most, for Ben Prater, a biologist with the Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project, it’s a major let-down.

The Blue Ridge Parkway plans to build a visitor center outside Asheville in coming years that will provide information on the Parkway and become a tourist outpost for all of Western North Carolina.

Two Cingular cell towers proposed for the White Oak and Panther Creek communities - a rugged and rural part of Haywood County near the Tennessee line - pitted neighbor against neighbor at a public hearing Monday night (Nov. 7).

A well-known Waynesville community leader has been charged with embezzling a $15,000 donation made to the Pigeon Community Development Club for a playground by the Waynesville Kiwanis Club.

Every Monday morning, Justin Mack roles through the Swain County dispatch office to pick up a list of the week's most-wanted before heading out for a day of bounty hunting.

As Mickey Henson waded into a brambly thicket bordering a town park in Sylva, he stopped a few steps in, bent down and retrieved a single blade of grass, plucked and displayed between the thumb and forefinger above his head like a prize trophy.

The boards of the Haywood County Chamber of Commerce and Maggie Valley Visitor Center and Convention Bureau met last week to discuss the prospect of joining forces.

When Mickey Henson looks at a creek, he sees a physics equation.

The clock is ticking for hemlock trees in Western North Carolina.

A wrongful death lawsuit surrounding a landslide in Maggie Valley was declared a mistrial this week after a jury failed to come to a unanimous decision.

The owner of the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad has teamed up with a venture capitalist and an amusement operator to strike a deal to buy Ghost Town and get it back in operation.

Almost two years ago, a retired couple from Florida was crushed in their home after the hillside behind their house in the Wild Acres subdivision of Maggie Valley collapsed.