Austin San Souci was just 2 years old the first time he rode a bike. 

“He never had training wheels. He just took off,” said his father, Tyler San Souci. “We sort of supported that all along.”

While Sylva’s leaders have considered the idea of a town occupancy tax a couple times over the years, so far they’ve always walked away from the discussion deciding that it wouldn’t be the right move for the small town of 2,700.

Vaccinations continue to slow down in the four-county area and in the state as a whole, but case counts are dropping too, with the 981 new cases reported statewide May 4 — marking just the fourth time since October that figure has fallen below 1,000.

During an April 29 work session, four of Sylva’s five board members signaled their approval of a draft budget totaling $4.9 million, 18 percent more than the budget approved last June. It includes a tax rate increase of 1.5 cents per $100 of property value and $400,000 in America Rescue Plan funding. 

Despite their proximity to multiple slope failures on and around Allen Street in Sylva, two trouble spots that appeared in late 2020 are unrelated to the others, according to a recently released engineering report. 

On cold January days, Bob and Janaye Houghton prefer to eat outside. 

“If it’s 20 degrees in the sunshine, it’s Miami,” Bob said. 

For Lin Forney, the end of fourth grade was the end of an era. 

The year was 1963, and the world was changing. Nine years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision struck down the “separate-but-equal” precedent that allowed racial segregation in schools, and the Civil Rights movement was spurring change — or at least talk of it — in communities across the South. Now, that change was coming home to Haywood County. The schools were desegregating. 

Jackson County leaders are considering adding a penny to the county’s tax rate to fund the Cullowhee Volunteer Fire Department’s request for eight full-time employees.

Western Carolina University is gearing up for a traditional college experience this fall with plans to resume all typical academic, social and extracurricular activities. 

State of residence was the most visible dividing line in an April 14 hearing on the proposed terms for a renewed wastewater discharge permit at the Evergreen Packaging mill in Canton. 

In a 55-page opinion filed Friday, April 16, U.S. District Court Judge James A. Boasberg gave a green light in the Catawba Indian Nation’s quest to build a casino in Cleveland County and struck a heavy blow to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ years-long effort to keep the facility from existing. 

Tracy Swartout will take over as superintendent for the Blue Ridge Parkway on May 23 following the departure of former Superintendent J.D. Lee last summer. Alexa Viets, the Parkway’s chief of resource management and interpretation, has served as acting superintendent since then.

With less than two months to go before the Primary Election Thursday, June 4, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Board of Elections has released its list of candidates certified to run in the 2021 elections for Tribal Council and School Board.

Eight months after voting to revamp the pedestal of the county’s controversial Civil War monument, Jackson County commissioners got their first look at what the new version might look like. 

Sales tax receipts are booming in Sylva and a newly completed property revaluation will bump real estate values by about 14.5 percent this year — if tax rates stay the same, the town would expect to receive $345,000 more in the coming fiscal year than in the current year’s budget.

The COVID-19 vaccination rollout is in full swing, and while many people rushed to get their shot at the first opportunity, others say they still have questions and will wait for a vaccine — or won’t get one at all. 

After months of working breakneck speed to clear an ever-expanding backlog of people waiting to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, local health departments are reporting a marked slowdown in signups, even though only about 30 percent of the population has received at least one shot. 

Tribal Council voted unanimously April 1 to table an ordinance aiming to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana. However, discussion preceding the vote indicates that some version of that ordinance will likely pass in the future. 

For every 116,732 people visiting the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, one experiences an emergency and calls the park’s Search and Rescue Team for help. As the park’s popularity increases, so does the urgency of figuring out how to weaken that ratio. 

The Jackson County Department of Public Health will pause its use of the Johnson & Johnson Janssen COVID-19 vaccine following a recent joint statement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The COVID-19 Vaccine Drive Thru Clinic scheduled on Thursday, April 15, is cancelled as a result.

Earl B. Hunter Jr. describes his younger self as a “Good Times kid,” growing up on free lunch and government assistance in Columbia, South Carolina. He wasn’t great at school — he didn’t even learn to read fluently until he was a teenager — but he had a quality about him. And he had a mentor. 

When the pandemic first hit, Waynesville resident Sammie Conner was so scared of contracting COVID-19 that she wouldn’t even go to the grocery store. As a 56-year-old woman with COPD, among other health issues, she knew she was a prime candidate for a poor outcome, so she sent her husband to do the shopping. 

Despite gusting winds and a temperature of 42 degrees at the time the three-hour meeting began — it was 37 degrees and felt like 30 by its 8 p.m. conclusion — more than 50 people bundled up to attend an outdoor hearing on the fate of two Sylva apartment projects Thursday, April 1. 

A federal lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Interior’s decision to allow the South Carolina-based Catawba Indian Nation  to build a casino in Cleveland County is far from resolution, but the tribe is proceeding with plans to begin gaming on the site — though at a slower pace than originally intended. 

With the 2021 property revaluation now complete, Jackson County’s taxable value will rise nearly 20 percent over the value established during the last valuation in 2016 and 12.1 percent over the value for the current fiscal year, the last using 2016 valuations. 

Tribal Council voted 11-1 this month to allocate an additional $35 million toward a Kituwah LLC development project along Interstate 40 in Sevier County, Tennessee. 

By unanimous vote, Tribal Council approved an allocation plan for future revenues from the Southern Indiana Casino during its monthly meeting March 11. 

This spring, the eastern United States will play host to one of nature’s great marvels — periodical cicadas, mysterious insects that live underground either 13 or 17 years before emerging for a few short weeks of furious mating closely followed by mass death. 

As a respiratory therapist, Bruce Moyle is trained to deliver breathing therapies to people who struggle to draw oxygen. As a respiratory therapy instructor at Southwestern Community College, he’s trained to deliver the next generation of healthcare workers to a region that struggles to hire enough of them. 

Vaccination numbers have nearly doubled in the four-county area of Haywood, Jackson, Swain and Macon counties over past month and case numbers are way down, but with Easter weekend and spring break trips on the horizon, public health officials are urging the public to continue taking measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

A pair of public hearings slated for April 1 will determine the fate of two proposed apartment developments in Sylva. 

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ new sports betting venue is now open following a ribbon-cutting ceremony held Thursday, March 18 — just in time for March Madness. 

National Park Service officials are seeking help from the public in identifying a suspect believed to be connected to a recent armed robbery on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Anyone 18 or older can now schedule a vaccine appointment with the Jackson County Department of Public Health, regardless of group. The clinic at Western Carolina University will open appointments to all groups starting Thursday, April 1. 

A Georgia resident suspected of supplying illegal drugs to the local community was arrested last week after a Sylva Police Department officer stopped his vehicle for traffic violations.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ new sports betting venue is set to open following a ribbon-cutting ceremony tomorrow at 10 a.m., just in time for March Madness.

When spring sprung in 2020, so did the Coronavirus Pandemic, forcing farmers to make life-altering decisions in the face of an unknown future. A recently published survey  of Southern Appalachian farmers shows that those decisions built a reality that was better than anticipated but still full of challenges. 

When life as we knew it slammed to a sudden stop in mid-March of 2020, the novel coronavirus from Wuhan hadn’t yet infected a single resident of Western North Carolina, but with the virus continually expanding its territory  since the United States’ first confirmed case on Jan. 21, 2020, it seemed only a matter of time. 

When meetings moved to Zoom and schools shut down last March, Zach Sorrells kept on reporting to work. As a maintenance worker with the Town of Sylva, he’s responsible for jobs that simply must get done, pandemic or no — like trash collection, for instance.

For Malcom Skinner, the pandemic was not a pause, but rather a call to action. 

“I’ve been trained up to this moment,” he said. 

In the pre-pandemic world, life was a constant swirl of activity for Lynn Jones and her husband. 

Katlin Roberts was making coronavirus contingency plans before most people in the United States had even really heard of COVID-19. By February, she’d grown concerned enough to walk into her principal’s office and ask what would happen if the disease spread to Cherokee. They’d take precautions, she was told, but certainly wouldn’t send students home. 

Invasive zebra mussels have been found in commercially available aquatic moss balls in North Carolina, and consumers who have purchased any such balls in the past month are urged to properly destroy them and clean their aquariums.

Western Carolina University is planning for a fall semester that will be “close to normal,” given current COVID-19 trends and projections.

Growing up in eastern Kentucky, Frances Figart loved any chance to glimpse the diverse wildlife species roaming those Appalachian foothills — except when the sightings occurred after the creatures had become roadkill, something that occurred all too frequently. She felt their deaths keenly. 

In a normal year, this would be the week that parents hoping to get their kids a coveted place in the enormously popular Base Camp Waynesville Summer Camp series would rush to the Waynesville Recreation Center as registration opened, hoping to snag one of the soon-to-vanish spots. 

For more than a decade, groups serving Jackson County’s homeless population have done so on a shoestring and a thin supply of hotel rooms, but the nonprofit currently providing homeless services says the time has come for a dedicated shelter facility. 

Macon County became the first county in The Smoky Mountain News’ four-county coverage area to break the 20 percent mark on first doses, with the 7,759 people receiving first doses there as of March 8 equivalent to 21.64 percent of the county’s estimated population. 

Despite the dire predictions of spring 2020, Jackson County’s budget prognosis for the 2021-2022 fiscal year is looking downright positive, commissioners learned during a Feb. 23 budget retreat.