Every seat on Waynesville’s Board of Aldermen will be up for election this year, but if the town’s plan for pursuing the staggered terms comes to pass, the order in which candidates finish will be important. The top two finishers will be awarded four-year terms, and the next two finishers will be awarded two-year terms.

The Downtown Waynesville Association has been in the fight of its 36-year political life since Waynesville aldermen refused to renew the group’s contract back in June, but after a highly unusual special called meeting on Aug. 12 where the DWA narrowly avoided the death penalty, aldermen have decided to give the beleaguered organization yet another chance, putting the group on life support for 90 days. 

Just days after a local nonprofit asked the Town of Waynesville to help fund emergency overnight stays for the unsheltered, aldermen gave them an answer.

Waynesville Alderman Jon Feichter says that he’s proud of the concrete steps previous town boards took to address the affordable housing crisis, but if the presentation he made during a March 4 budget retreat had any impact, the town will soon embrace a less passive approach to one of the region’s most troublesome issues. 

In the interest of transparency, all responses from local officials regarding the Jan. 6 insurrection have been published online, in their entirety. Some submissions may have been lightly edited for grammar, spelling and punctuation or to conform with AP style. 

It’s still early, but judging by Election Day vote totals at Waynesville’s four largest precincts, it’s going to be a long day.

Incumbents wasted little time in declaring their intentions to defend their seats after municipal candidate filing opened at noon today, but there are already two incumbents hoping to move up in the ranks, if their campaigns are successful.

On Jan. 15, The Smoky Mountain News contacted almost every elected official in Haywood County for whom an email address was listed with the county’s board of elections. Around half failed to respond, but those who did were sometimes too verbose for print, so an excerpt from their response was used in the Jan. 23 edition of The Smoky Mountain News. In the interest of transparency, their full responses are included here.

A Gastonia-based developer’s request to change a small part of the Town of Waynesville’s zoning rules to allow for multi-family housing in a semi-rural community generated big waves last week.