Cory Vaillancourt

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Fears that North Carolina’s new voter ID implementation would disenfranchise legitimate voters have proven unfounded — at least in Haywood County, where municipal election turnout was stronger than usual. 

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While there are still plenty of unknowns regarding Canton’s new waste water treatment plant, including where it will go and when groundbreaking will take place, a project budget ordinance passed by the town’s governing board on Nov. 9 eliminates one of them — how the massive appropriation from the North Carolina General Assembly will be spent. 

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The Town of Canton’s governing board has been through a lot in the last four years — with the 2021 flood and the 2023 closure of the town’s largest employer — but they must be doing a good job managing the chaos, as voters decided overwhelmingly to return Mayor Pro Temp Gail Mull and Alderman Ralph Hamlett for another term. 

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More than two years after deadly flooding killed six people and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to public and private property from Bethel to Cruso to Canton to Clyde, Haywood County will purchase an early warning siren system to keep residents better informed for when — not if — it happens again. 

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A Western Carolina University professor has been awarded one of the most respected fellowships in the world, which she hopes will not only shed some light on pertinent trends in media — both in the Balkans and in the United States — but also help to inspire her journalism students in the same ways she was, years ago. 

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Incumbent Alderman Dann Jesse will return to the Town of Clyde Board of Aldermen, along with a new face, Amy Russell.

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They ran a noisy campaign, filled with distortions, misinformation and outright fabrication, but in the end, that’s all it was — noise.

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The Town of Canton’s governing board has been through a lot in the last four years — with the 2021 flood and the 2023 closure of the town’s largest employer — but they must be doing a good job managing the chaos, as voters decided overwhelmingly to return Mayor Pro Temp Gail Mull and Alderman Ralph Hamlett for another term.

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Despite largely refusing to show up for forums or interviews, a slate of far-right candidates has tried multiple times to spread misinformation in the lead-up to Waynesville’s November election — both on the internet and in printed campaign materials — but their most recent attempt to do so, concerning waste water treatment plant funding, doesn’t appear to hold water either. 

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With early voting underway and municipal election races heating up, a supporter of the far-right nativist faction running for various Town of Waynesville offices has been handing out campaign literature at Waynesville’s downtown post office, in apparent violation of federal law.

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Despite all the important elections taking place in Western North Carolina this fall, there’s probably no other town with more on the line than Canton. 

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For nearly two decades, a unique nonprofit with roots in Western North Carolina has helped to recognize veterans for their wartime service.

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Haywood County Commissioners got some great news Oct. 16 that will help the community ameliorate the effects of a red-hot real estate market on local housing affordability and availability.

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Although she hails from Mississippi, Marsha Blackburn has become a powerful force in Tennessee politics over the past 25 years, first as a state senator, then as a member of Congress for 16 years, and now as the state’s senior U.S. senator.

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Newly empowered General Assembly Republicans aren’t even trying to hide the fact that the congressional and legislative maps they drew behind closed doors and without substantive public input will disenfranchise Democratic voters across the state — especially in Congress.

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Voters in Waynesville are preparing for a contentious election that offers very different visions for the future of the town the candidates want to lead. 

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The four of them lumbered along the logging road until finally reaching the old fox hunting cabin about a mile below the crest of Big Stomp Mountain, an unassuming woody knob sloping gently towards the heavens from the floor of Ratcliff Cove.

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Things are changing in Haywood County’s smallest incorporated municipality. Although there are only 754 registered voters in Clyde, the town plays a central geographic and economic role in how the county itself will, or will not, thrive and grow in the 21st century. 

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For the first time in nearly 55 years, a Waynesville native and Air Force captain who didn’t return from his mission over Quàng Nam Province in South Vietnam is finally back among his family, friends and loved ones. 

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Days before the remains of Capt. Fred Hall are to be returned to Waynesville for burial after he went missing in Vietnam more than 54 years ago, Waynesville’s Town Council has bestowed a special honor on him.

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A substantial grant from the U.S. Department of Labor has already provided help for more than 50 dislocated workers in Western North Carolina, but Southwestern Commission Workforce Development Director David Garrett wants to get the word out that they’re looking to help a whole lot more. 

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It’s been more than a year since residency challenges were filed against six Democrats who registered to vote at a Graham County home that had burned down and then avoided the challenges by changing their registrations to Buncombe County; the North Carolina State Board of Elections still hasn’t announced the results of an investigation into the matter, even after three of the six re-registered in Graham County, just in time for the 2023 municipal election. 

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After years of delay, the tiny half-acre park off Pigeon Street in the heart of Waynesville’s Black community should soon see the long talked-about bathrooms the park so desperately needs. 

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A candidate for Maggie Valley alderman who dropped out and resigned her seat on the town’s zoning board when opponents filed a residency challenge is drawing further scrutiny after an investigation by The Smoky Mountain News revealed that she was not a resident of the town during most or all of her service on the zoning board of adjustment. 

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This year’s state budget process may have been one of the most discordant in recent memory, but Western North Carolina’s legislative delegation was able to secure record-setting funding for critical needs in a relatively poor region that sometimes feels overlooked when Raleigh gets to dishing out the dough. 

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America reckons with its legacy in Vietnam, one soldier at a time

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The field of candidates for the two Maggie Valley alderman seats up for election this November just got a little smaller, after one candidate dropped out just two days before a preliminary hearing into her alleged residency issues.

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Luke Klein’s life in North Carolina hasn’t been much different than that of any other pre-teen boy.

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UPDATE: Barrett dropped out of the race on Sept. 13, one day after this story was updated for print. Read about that here.

An election protest filed at the Haywood County Board of Elections has initiated proceedings by which a candidate would be removed from the November ballot if the allegations are substantiated.

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With less than two months until Haywood County municipal elections are held, two candidates who filed to run back in July have decided to drop out of their races.

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The replica of a decorative arch that once spanned Main Street in Waynesville but was removed in the early 1970s is closer than ever to being reinstalled, after more than two years of efforts by town officials and local civic groups to resurrect it. 

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A film about one of Western North Carolina’s most revered literary figures will make its world premiere in a free event at 2 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 9 at the Jackson County library in Sylva. 

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A controversial law enforcement association that holds a fringe interpretation of the Constitution and has ties to white nationalism, the sovereign citizen movement, election denial and COVID-19 conspiracy theories will host a meeting in Cherokee County this weekend, but Western North Carolina sheriffs have been largely reluctant to say whether they’ll attend. 

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When old Jack Welch sold his Waynesville dairy farm to Jim Long in the early 1920s, he probably couldn’t have envisioned that it would one day become a top-notch golf club with stunning views of the Great Smoky Mountains and clubhouse amenities renowned throughout the southeast as some of the most luxurious. 

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North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis has taken a particular interest in Canton over the past few years, making multiple appearances in town after flooding in August 2021 and acting as a federal liaison during the ongoing paper mill shutdown saga. 

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She’s only been on the job for a few months, but the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority’s new executive director is already taking steps to streamline and refine the authority into an organization that’s proactive and premeditated, rather than reactive and organic. 

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Two defendants who pleaded guilty in federal court for their roles in communicating threats to dozens if not hundreds of elected officials, judges and public figures across the nation and across Western North Carolina have finally learned their fates, as U.S. District Judge Martin Reidinger handed down sentences in Asheville on Aug. 24. 

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The effect of short-term rental properties on the availability and affordability of workforce housing has been well-documented in Haywood County. 

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A construction project on the five-lane road in Maggie Valley is aimed at improving pedestrian safety, but some are also pointing out its potential to cause a whole lot of trouble for drivers. 

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Elisabeth Biser, secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality, made her second visit to Canton last week, touring Pactiv Evergreen’s shuttered paper mill and vowing to hold the company accountable for environmental issues that could poison future development of the parcel. 

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Over the past two years, Rep. Mark Pless (R-Haywood) has made multiple attempts to bring partisan municipal elections to the two counties he represents, Haywood and Madison.

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Six months ago, the eight men gathered on the auditorium stage at Haywood Community College’s Regional High Technology Center were working at Pactiv Evergreen’s century-old paper mill in Canton, looking forward to long and financially rewarding careers there. 

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The appearance of a bright yellow construction crane towering over Pactiv Evergreen’s shuttered Canton paper mill prompted questions from citizens late last week — and more speculation that the site has been or will be sold, but that’s not exactly the case. Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers confirmed Aug. 21 that the crane, which had arrived on Aug. 17, was there to lower the height of the smokestacks, so that Pactiv no longer has to comply with Federal Aviation Administration regulations. Generally, any structure more than 200 feet  above the ground must be marked and/or lighted.

— Cory Vaillancourt, Politics Editor

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Just two hours after Senators failed to concur on a bill that would have forced Haywood and Madison counties to hold partisan municipal elections, a conference committee worked out a slightly different version of the bill, which passed shortly after 8 p.m.

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After months of pushing for partisan municipal elections in the counties he represents, Rep. Mark Pless (R-Haywood) has again come up short — for now.

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The Town of Waynesville will no longer require speakers at its public comment sessions to reveal their addresses, after a raucous July 25 meeting where some speakers voiced concern over identifying their residences due to violent threats made against the LGBTQ+ community that resulted from a man’s unfounded allegations of indecent behavior at the Waynesville Recreation Center on July 12. 

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Long a leader among Western North Carolina’s local governments in the field of environmental sustainability, the Town of Waynesville has taken recent steps to ensure it becomes carbon neutral before 2050 by establishing an oversight board to research, adopt and implement responsible management strategies. 

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More than three months after a rezoning request revealed plans by Haywood County Schools to consolidate several facilities on a new piece of property in Waynesville, Superintendent Trevor Putnam was given access to the funding that will make acquisition of the parcel possible. 

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With former President Donald Trump’s most recent indictment — his fourth in five months — comes a slew of familiar names like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, but there’s at least one more name included in the list of Trump’s co-defendants that’s well known to Western North Carolina voters.  

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It’s only been open for about a year, but Canton’s Chestnut Mountain Park has already proven a popular, unique regional outdoor recreational attraction — even though it’s still growing.

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