Holly Kays
An effort to conserve 912 acres along the Plott Balsam ridge in Jackson County cleared the final hurdle of a five-year-long race last week when the Cherokee Tribal Council narrowly voted to contribute $1 million to the project.
After taking input from the more than 100 people who attended a Jan. 14 public forum and carefully combing their suggestions for the upcoming N.C. 107 makeover in Sylva, the Asheville Design Center generated a respectably long list of design alternatives to investigate.
While unanswered questions remain in the recent death of 49-year-old Franklin resident Melissa Middleton Rice, which occurred on Jan. 18 while in custody of the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, public records reveal new information about the hours leading up to her ultimately fatal collapse.
A Sylva man has been charged with assault after Jackson County deputies responded to a Feb. 7 call and found a man with a cut to the right side of his neck along Allens Branch Road in Sylva.
Robert Dylan Thomas, 21, was charged with assault with serious bodily injury and held on a $15,000 secure bond, with victim Jacobe Matthew Conner, 32, also of Sylva, transported to Harris Regional Hospital and later transferred to Mission Hospital in Asheville, according to a press release from the Jackson County Sheriff's Office.
The incident stemmed from a 6 p.m. call reporting an intoxicated male in the roadway yelling at a passerby. The call was quickly followed by an update to the dispatch center that a male had been stabbed at about the same address, the press release said.
Zac Guy grew up on the back of a tractor.
His father worked in sales and his mother was a postal carrier, but Guy’s grandfather Louie Reece was a commercial beef farmer, raising cattle as well as the hay and corn silage they needed to thrive on his farm in Bethel.
Young Cherokee tribal members could soon be able to use their gaming allocations to pay for housing following a unanimous vote from Tribal Council last month.
An autopsy recently completed on a man who died in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park last September determined that 30-year-old William Lee Hill Jr., of Louisville, Tennessee, died from an accidental methamphetamine overdose — not from a bear attack.
After 35 days of furlough, National Park Service staff are back to work at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway and more than 400 other National Park Service units nationwide.
“On behalf of the employees of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I want to express our heartfelt gratitude to our partners and communities for their unwavering support over the last five weeks,” said Smokies Superintendent Cassius Cash in a press release. “In addition to the monetary support offered by our partners to provide basic visitor services, we were moved by the number of people and organizations who stepped up to organize litter pickups and the outpouring of generosity expressed to our employees through meals and gift cards.”
Following a series of closed session discussions, Jackson County has opted to cancel its $500,000 contract to buy a 5.61-acre tract in Whittier containing the old Pepsi-Cola plant, but it could still pursue the purchase at some point in the future.
The recent death of a Jackson County Detention Center inmate has spurred a probe from the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation.
Jackson County got its first glimpse at what a reinvigorated Green Energy Park campus might look like when a preliminary master plan was presented during a county commission meeting Tuesday, Jan. 22.
A meeting to discuss possible solutions to the N.C. 107 issue in Sylva scheduled for today was postponed due to winter weather.
Normal operations at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park resumed for the first time since Dec. 22 on Saturday, Jan. 26, but due to inclement weather park facilities are closed once more.
Following a series of closed session discussions, Jackson County has opted to cancel its $500,000 contract to purchase a 5.61-acre tract in Whittier containing the old Pepsi-Cola plant.
Jeanine Davis has spent more than two decades researching new and emerging crops in North Carolina, but she’s never experienced anything like the hype surrounding hemp.
“I’ve always gotten a disproportionately large number of inquiries just because there aren’t a large number of people across the country that work with the crops I work with,” said Davis. “Taking on hemp has taken it to a whole new level.”
As states across the nation loosen restrictions on cannabis products, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is launching a study into the feasibility of legalizing such industries on the Qualla Boundary.
With the one-year anniversary of Jackson County’s decision to consolidate its health and social services departments looming, commissioners are now talking about returning to the way things were before 2018.
Despite the ongoing government shutdown, two visitor centers in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park will be open over Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend thanks to a donation from Friends of the Smokies. Appropriations from federal recreation fees are also keeping a third visitor center, as well as a variety of restroom facilities, open during the shutdown.
On Sept. 30, 2018, a program that’s been pouring money into land conservation for more than 50 years expired. And despite bipartisan support, efforts to reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund have so far failed.
“A program like LWCF should not be subject to these crazy swings in politics and funding,” said Jay Leutze, vice president of the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy Board and a spokesperson for the Land and Water Conservation Fund Coalition. “This just creates chaos.
In a search that is now entering its second year, Western Carolina University’s Chancellor Search Committee is preparing to interview the top candidates applying for the job left vacant by the late Chancellor David O. Belcher.
The ongoing federal government shutdown is having a negative effect on the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and last week the tribe’s Tribal Council voted unanimously to send Rep. Mark Meadows, R-Asheville, a letter to tell him so.
More than 100 people filled the Jackson County Public Library’s Community Room Jan. 14 to help kick off the Asheville Design Center’s quest to develop an alternative, less disruptive vision for N.C. 107 in Sylva. Attendees included business owners, community members, elected leaders and N.C. Department of Transportation representatives.
The National Park Service is closed.
Sort of.
When the clock struck midnight on Dec. 22, 2018, the latest continuing budget resolution expired and the federal government’s failure to agree on a spending bill resulted in the suspension of all “non-essential” government services — including most services associated with operating the national parks. Of 24,681 National Park Service employees nationwide, only 3,298 are working during the shutdown, with just 326 for the entire Southeast region.
It’s just after 11 a.m. on a weekday, and while a road sign at the Cherokee entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park alerts travelers “All facilities closed for govt shutdown,” visitors are still arriving.
Quarter-cent sales tax money in Jackson County will be available sooner and in greater quantities than previously planned due to a $2 million grant the county received for the Southwestern Community College Health Sciences Building and a decision to take out a 20-year loan for the project rather than a 15-year loan.
An alarming decrease in the population of ginseng on Cherokee tribal land is prompting the tribe to look at cracking down on ginseng theft.
Randy Eaton isn’t a fortune teller, but the Western Carolina University athletic director sees a winning future for WCU teams.
Steve Kemp moved to the Great Smoky Mountains in 1987 for what would become a 30-year career with the Great Smoky Mountains Association, and following his 2017 retirement GSMA is looking to honor his contributions to the organization through a new writer’s residency.
“There is a specific skill in writing in a way that engages the reader and inspires curiosity and passion in the reader, and that’s what we want to be able to cultivate,” said Laurel Rematore, executive director of GSMA, “because we’re in the business of helping people to connect with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, connect on an emotional level so they will take care of it.”
Developing policies to help business owners affected by the upcoming N.C. 107 road project will go on the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority’s backburner until more project details are known, Executive Director Dan Harbaugh said during the board’s Dec. 18 meeting.
An ordinance seeking to broaden the ability to protest decisions of Tribal Council is under discussion, with Tribal Council narrowly voting to table it when it was introduced during a Dec. 6 meeting.
After months of work sessions, tabled votes and debate, Cherokee has an updated election law.
From the depths of winter to the height of summer, valley agriculture to mountain exploration, longtime mountain dwellers to new arrivals, a year in Western North Carolina’s great outdoors can provide a lifetime of stories. In 2018, The Smoky Mountain News covered everything from conservation to kudzu, encountering plenty of colorful characters along the way. Here’s a selection of the best quotes we heard this year, about the mountains and from those who love them.
The year is nearly over, but in 2018 the Graham County Rescue Squad has run only three search and rescue calls in the thousands of acres of national forest land surrounding Robbinsville.
“We probably used to run three or four times that, just about all of them in Joyce Kilmer Slickrock,” said Marshall McClung, search and rescue coordinator for the squad. “Mostly in the Joyce Kilmer section, a few in the Slickrock section.”
The Community Table in Sylva will get a new roof to the tune of $18,000 after Town of Sylva and Jackson County commissioners voted unanimously to contribute to the project.
The homeless shelter in Jackson County is full up with a waiting list 12 deep, shelter managers told Jackson County Commissioners at a Dec. 11 work session.
The Cherokee Tribal Council took the first step toward dissolving the Qualla Housing Authority with a resolution passed Thursday, Dec. 6.
Sylva commissioners voted Dec. 13 to remove former mayor and longtime Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority board member Brenda Oliver from TWSA, citing a desire for “fresh” and “out-of-the-box” ideas on the board.
Sylva got some good news about the creek that runs straight through its heart at a Nov. 8 town meeting.
Scotts Creek has been on the state’s list of impaired waterways since 2008, continually testing above acceptable levels for fecal coliform bacteria, a group that includes dangerous pathogens like E. coli. Aside from implications for the health of the aquatic ecosystem, high concentrations of such bacteria can make streams unsafe to boat, wade or otherwise recreate in.
Western Carolina University students will likely see only a modest increase to their cost of attendance following the Board of Trustees’ approval of tuition and fee levels for 2019-20.
Snow and ice caused the Asheville Design Center to cancel a planned public hearing on the N.C. 107 project in Sylva, but the meeting has been rescheduled for 4 to7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 14, in the Community Room of the Jackson County Public Library in Sylva.
Just over a year after opening its doors at a new location, Caney Fork General Store is closed, though likely only temporarily.
Efforts to overhaul Cherokee’s election ordinance will come down to the wire following Tribal Council’s unanimous decision to table a vote on the legislation at its meeting Thursday, Dec. 6.
For centuries and even millennia, the early spring greens of the sochan plant have served as a celebration of spring for the Cherokee people. If a proposal now out for public comment meets approval, in a few months tribal members could hold that celebration with greens harvested in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
“Our culture is not linear. It’s more circular, and going back to places like the park, to where we once inhabited and lived and collected, it takes on a different meaning of spirituality,” said Tommy Cabe, forest resource specialist for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and a sochan gatherer himself. “It takes on a different meaning of who we are as Cherokee.”
The Jackson County commissioners said goodbye to a longtime member, welcomed a new member and changed their meeting schedule during an organizational meeting Monday, Dec. 3.
Patrick Lambert was removed from office following a controversial impeachment process in 2017, but with the 2019 election season underway he’s saying that the impeachment shouldn’t stop him from running again.
A May blog post titled “Chairman Mao or is it Chairman Mau?” was the topic of an impassioned statement Jackson County Commissioner Ron Mau read during a Nov. 19 commissioners meeting.
Dan Pittillo has made his name as a botanist, but he could easily have ended up a dairy farmer instead.
Born in Henderson County the oldest of five, Pittillo entered the world in 1938, when the Great Depression was in full swing and people were used to not having much. For the first two years of his life his parents didn’t even have a house — the family lived with his grandparents while his father worked to build one.
A Sylva town meeting this month drew a crowd of people to speak against the N.C. 107 road plan, but before the public comment period began Nov. 8 Mayor Lynda Sossamon reminded attendees of a few ground rules.
With the N.C. 107 project continuing to move forward, the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority is beginning to talk about the part it could play in keeping affected businesses in Sylva.
The Michigan-based Christman Company will carry out a $17.66 million contract to construct a new health sciences building at Southwestern Community College in Sylva following a bid opening for the project Nov. 13.
