Crime in Haywood County appears to largely mirror national trends, according to a brief report Sheriff Bill Wilke gave to county commissioners. 

As Wilke explained the stats, he offered insights as to what may be driving certain changes in trends; however, as he did so, he occasionally lamented the lack of immediate data to further explain correlations to national trends. 

Waynesville Town Council will hear public comments next week regarding its upcoming vote that would purportedly allow for conservation of rural farmland. 

Last month, Waynesville’s planning board discussed the potential zoning amendment in detail before ultimately voting 6-3 to recommend town council passes it.

Haywood County’s Black Generational Wealth committee is the product of a long-dissolved 2020 book club. 

That year, a white police officer murdered an unarmed Black man named George Floyd with the assistance of three other officers.  Like many COVID-era racial justice collectives, the book club was a response to the horrific act perpetrated in Minneapolis, said committee chair Nancy Thomason.  

Mayor Gary Caldwell announced the appointment of Interim Manager Page McCurry and Interim Manager Rick Howell. McCurry will take office on June 11 and serve until July 5. Howell will take office on July 6 and serve until Town Council appoints a town manager. 

 McCurry currently serves as the town’s human resources director and has an extensive background in public administration. 

Construction along Waynesville’s commercial corridor is ready to begin its next major phase.

A contractor for the N.C. Department of Transportation will close the U.S. 74 West offramp to Russ Avenue (Exit 102) from Monday, June 8 through Sunday, Aug. 30. The closure is necessary for the safety of drivers and crews who will improve the offramp. 

The project to repair the eastbound lanes of I-40 washed away in Haywood County during Hurricane Helene is progressing on-time, but the heavy lift has really just begun. When Helene tore through Western North Carolina in 2024, it inundated the embankment supporting the highway so vital to interstate commerce, washing away about a million cubic yards of rock and dropping the eastbound lanes into the water below.

Last week, Gov. Josh Stein and North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson stopped by Canton to talk to media, local leaders and State Reps. Lindsay Prather and Eric Ager about the town’s construction of a new wastewater treatment plant. He also highlighted the role the state played in bringing the project to fruition while calling on federal legislators to provide more funding to ensure more towns can complete similar crucial infrastructure improvements. 

This week’s Haywood County Commission meeting featured over a dozen speakers decrying the board’s decision to not grant the full funding requested by school officials ahead of the budget vote. 

The meeting began with County Manager Bryant Morehead presenting the budget, as he’d done during an earlier meeting. The budget looked almost the exact same as the prior presentation with one exception, an additional $1 million fund balance appropriation to bolster school funding, leaving the county $700,000 short of meeting the $3 million funding increase request. 

Wanona Tara, a hospitality industry executive with more than 30 years of experience, has joined the Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center as director of sales. 

In her new role, Tara is responsible for all group sales at Lake Junaluska, including lodging, food service, conferences and media services. She also will serve on the center’s operations, revenue and extended executive teams. 

In the new documentary, “Papertown,” a film that immerses itself into the mountain community of Canton as it dealt with the closure of its 115-year-old paper mill in 2023, features a scene with Gail Mull — the town’s mayor pro tem and secretary of the local millworkers union — that sums it all up. 

“The mill has provided, and there is going to be life after the mill,” Mull said. “Billionaires come and go, we’re going to be here forever. We have to make something of it.  We have to have the backbone. We have to have the grit. We have got to stay here and make something of it — and we will.”