When the town of Maggie Valley bought a grassy field to serve as a town festival grounds in 2005, the hope was that it would bring new visitors and new life to the town’s flagging tourism industry.

Since then, there have been two festival directors, attempts to make the place profitable, and now, an infusion of extra cash from the town is on the table as a boost to the facility.

The town’s proposed budget allocates $120,000 to the festival grounds. But the budget also calls for another $140,000 to put on two festivals — Red, White and Boom, a July 4 festival, and the Americana Roots and Beer festival next spring. The town hopes the festivals will bring in that much in revenue to cover the costs. But if they don’t, the town will be left to pick up the bill.

The festival ground has budgeted an additional $57,000 from the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority, a cut of local hotel and motel tax.

For the first few years, the festival grounds languished a bit. The first festival director didn’t rise to the town’s expectations in his few months on the job — the number of events was just too low.

The town’s hopes for the venue were pinned in 2009 on Festival Director Audrey Hager, who came in with an impressive event-planning resume and the intent to turn the place around.

Hager said she’s making strides, boosting the reputation of the festival grounds and making inroads with regional and national festival promoters, who would bring their own festivals and events to the space.

But total success doesn’t happen overnight.

“It’s really re-branding, getting the word out, building our reputation before people will come,” said Hager. “The expectation of the community was it wasn’t happening fast enough. But I think if we start building our reputation as a quality festival community, then that can only help attract promoters to this area to host such events.”

Ideally, said Hager, such events would include things like Red, White and Boom, an Independence Day carnival subsidized heavily by the town and outside affairs like Vettes in the Valley, an annual Corvette show that rents the grounds.

The festival grounds certainly don’t pay for themselves as yet; they lost more than $13,000 on their recent American Roots and Beer festival, due in part to colder weather that weekend.

But town officials say that self-sufficiency isn’t necessarily the end goal.

“I don’t think the town ever believed from the beginning that the festival grounds were going to pay for themselves,” said Town Manager Tim Barth. “With where the rates are set and the number of events that we have, there’s just no way it’s going to pay for itself.”

In the tourism gap left by departing Ghost Town and the closure of other venues like Eaglesnest and Carolina Nights, the real job of the festival grounds was to bring money into the valley, not necessarily make money itself.

“We hope to create enough commerce so that our constituents — the motels and the restaurants and whoever — can pay their taxes and we have a good crowd in town, to hopefully fill in the gap until we can get a few more venues back,” said Mayor Roger McElroy.

Though there might be some tension in using taxpayer money to support businesses that way, McElroy believes it’s only fair. Residents get services that businesses, by and large, do not, such as trash pick-up and road clearing.

And as the large attractions continue to dissipate, supporting the festival grounds is an effort by the town to buoy up business owners and boost their revenues with more traffic — even if it means taxpayers footing the bill for tourism interests.

Not everyone thinks that the festival grounds can be turned around, however.

“I have to be optimistic like others, but you can’t put lipstick on a pig, I guess is a good way to put it,” said Alderman Phil Aldridge. “They say give the young lady that’s our director time, but when do you draw the line?”

Local businesses, for the most part, are behind the measure. It at least brings in the promise of better business.

“I don’t think it’s as easy as people think it is,” said Brenda O’Keefe, owner of Joey’s Pancake House and a four-decade resident of Maggie Valley. “I’m not unhappy with the job they’re doing. I’ve been here for 45 years and seen a lot go on in this town, and I’m very happy the town has taken it over.”

Hager said she’s making progress in the connections department, stirring the interest of national promoters. She returned from a conference in Texas with dozens of leads to follow.

And, said Hager, that’s going to continue to be her tactic, which she’s confident will pay larger dividends as the years progress.

“I’m talking to a lot of promoters all the time,” said Hager. “And I’m just going to keep selling the festival grounds.”

A formerly notorious bar will reopen in Maggie Valley despite bombastic protests from the owner of Wheels Through Time Museum, who fears it will attract the same seedy crowd and societal ills as the past establishment.

Dale Walksler commanded a freewheeling four-hour town meeting this week marked by sparring and insults, often evoking gasps and murmurs from the audience. It was far from the typically tame public hearing where a round robin of speakers takes short and civil turns at the microphone.

Instead, the hearing was akin to a television courtroom drama. Speakers could endlessly cross-examine each other with no time limits and little restraint on appropriate subject matter.

At issue was whether the town board would grant a permit to Robert Leatherwood to reopen the old Spring House bar. Walksler made a vigorous appeal to town leaders to deny the permit. He said that under past ownership, bar patrons spilled over onto his museum property, littering his parking lot with used condoms and drug needles. Walksler suspects the same crowds will return.

During his cross examination, the short and spry Walksler hovered inches away from the podium where the comparatively large Leatherwood stood. Leatherwood occasionally leaned into the podium in response to Walksler’s heated antics, bringing the two mere feet apart at times.

“Don’t push me,” Leatherwood told Walksler once.

Walksler routinely cut Leatherwood off if he didn’t like what he was saying, waving his hand to silence Leatherwood while tossing out statements ranging from “I’ve heard enough” or “Yeah, whatever,” or “I’ve made my point.”

One heated exchange followed a complaint by Walksler that riff-raff from the bar took up nightly residence in his parking lot. Both Walksler and his son live on museum property, and say they were often kept up all night by illegal partying that migrated onto their property from next door.

“Do you know where the closest residence is to your establishment?” Walksler asked.

“I have no idea Mr. Walksler. Why don’t you advise me on that,” Leatherwood said.

“We’ll talk later,” Walkser said, wheeling away from the podium.

“Anytime pal,” said Leatherwood.

Leatherwood then offered Walksler a free lifetime membership to the nightclub, and welcomed Walksler to come pass out coupons to his museum to bar patrons.

When aldermen or the town’s attorney tried to rein Walksler in, he wouldn’t hear of it.

“I don’t like to be interrupted,” Walkser barked at Mayor Roger McElroy at one point.

During one of Walksler’s cross-examinations, town attorney Chuck Dickson told him to stick to questioning the witness and save his own viewpoints for his own testimony.

“I think this is the appropriate time,” Walksler said and continued doing what he was doing.

Alderman Danya Vanhook, an ex-judge, ended up being the de facto handler of Walksler when he got out of line. Stepping back into her judge’s shoes, she objected when he delved into hearsay, and made him rephrase what she dubbed “compound questions.” She frequently called Walksler out of order for badgering witnesses.

“No arguing with each other. You have to let him answer the question,” Vanhook told Walksler. She even intervened when he mischaracterized the testimony of other witnesses.

Walksler said he feared the bar would lower the property values of his museum, which has a value of $20 million. Walksler’s museum is indeed world-class. It is internationally renowned for its unrivalled collection of historic bikes and memorabilia. Its iconic status is a fact he reminded the audience of often.

“I am a very successful person who has made an accomplishment in this town that none of you people could even dream of,” Walksler told the room.

Walksler belittled Leatherwood for striving to open such a bar.

“We all have to have goals I guess. I know I did when I was a kid and I pretty much achieved my goal, which is to open the coolest place in the world,” Walksler said.

Walksler often uses his museum as a platform to bash the rest of the town to visiting patrons. Shirley Pinto, who waits tables at Joey’s Pancake House, called him on this during the hearing. She said customers at the restaurant would divulge what Walksler had said about the rest of town while they were visiting the museum.

Jim Davis, a Maggie resident who came to the meeting to see the show, recounted a similar experience in the hallway after the meeting. A year ago, he took an out-of-town guest to the museum and they got an earful from Walksler, who ranted about town politics and criticized its people.

“As a person who just paid a ticket and walked in the door, he laid it all out,” said Davis.

Walksler has threatened to leave town with his museum if the town board granted the bar its permit, and questioned whether the town could afford to sacrifice its last standing tourist attraction with so many others now shuttered.

It won’t be the first time he has threatened to leave. He has vocally announced his intentions to pull out of the town on and off for a few years, but each time decided to stay.

Nonetheless, it is enough to strike fear into the hearts of motel owners who have little else besides motorcycle traffic driving business.

“A lot of people come see his museum,” Gabi Edwards, owner of a Holiday Motel, said in an interview. “It is very important, very important. Everybody comes away impressed not only with the museum but with Dale. I can’t imagine what else are we going to lose.”

Brenda O’Keefe, a longtime Maggie business owner, told Walksler his message would be more effective if he didn’t insult and attack people along the way. For example, when Walkser was questioning traffic flow in the bar’s parking lot, he said the design drawn by a local surveyor looks like it was done by three-year-old.

“I understand my personality flaw,” Walksler responded. “People have said before, ‘Oh Dale is his own worst enemy.’ I am not buying that.”

The real issue

While upstaged by the dueling personalities of Walksler and Leatherwood, the real issue was whether town leaders would endorse a bar that might devolve into a public nuisance.

Walksler said the bar has been “drug and alcohol” infested for two decades and called it a “total violation that everything that we as Americans believe in.”  Police responded to calls at the Spring House 300 times over an eight-year period, he said, introducing the police reports as evidence.

Walksler held up photos of the sign still posted on the door of the bar from its last owner.

“No drugs, no pushers, no paraphernalia. No muscle shirts or wife beater shirts worn at any time. No biker gangs or colors to be worn. No knives, no guns, no brass knuckles,” Walksler read. “This is not the clientele we need in this town. This is not the establishment we need in this town.”

Walksler said the town’s reputation will be harmed at a time it can little afford to lose any more tourism business.

“As we know this town has 68 empty businesses between Dellwood and the hill. It’s not the gas and it is not the economy. It is decision making in this city hall that is substandard and has made this the town of broken dreams.”

Leatherwood said he would take measures to ensure the safety of bar patrons and neighbors. The bar will have metal detectors at the entrance, closed-circuit night vision cameras both inside and out, and hire off-duty cops to work the door.

“You are not going to have to fight your way in and fight your way out like it used to be,” Leatherwood said.

The metal detectors and bouncers didn’t appease Walksler. Instead, he took it as proof positive that the joint would cater to the underworld. Leatherwood said it was just a precaution, however.

“When people get drunk sometimes they get rowdy, sometimes they don’t. Men or ladies, they can both get rowdy,” Leatherwood said.

The Spring House changed hands several years ago, sold by longtime owner Ivy Suggs and converted into Big Michael’s, and then Little Rick’s. They lasted only a short time before the new owners lost the bar in a bank foreclosure. The building is now owned by Blue Ridge Savings Bank, which is leasing it to Leatherwood.

Leatherwood will name the bar Stingrays. It will technically be a private club requiring membership. By doing so, Leatherwood avoids a state law that requires establishments serving alcohol to also serve food.

Leatherwood previously had a long-haul trucking company, but it went bankrupt.

If there’s one thing Western North Carolina is rooted in, it’s music. The rolling Appalachians were the birthplace of bluegrass, and the region has long been known as a bastion of folk tradition and talent.

Along with music, another industry has recently been finding its roots in the mountains as well. With a bevy of new craft brewers popping up around the region, WNC is making a name for itself in the beer world, too.

So Maggie Valley is taking the chance to celebrate both, kicking off their festival season with the inaugural Americana Roots and Beer Festival on May 6 that celebrates both the craft brewers and down-home musicians who call the region home.

The muse for the event was the storied Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion in Bristol, Tenn., said Maggie Valley Festival Director Audrey Hager.

The idea of a roots celebration was attractive because, said Hager, it’s a concept that has a multitude of facets that can be explored in years to come.

“Roots can be a lot of different things,” said Hager. “It can be rock, it can be punk, it can be folk, it can be a lot of different things so we can go a lot of different ways.”

The festival itself is designed as a companion to the long-running Maggie Valley Trout Festival that will take place the next day, May 7. Proceeds from the beer and music event will go towards water conservation efforts in the area, which is one of the chief aims of the trout festival.

For the fête’s birth year, Hager said they decided to go with a bluegrass theme, in keeping with the region’s heritage.

As for the craft beer, it just seemed a natural fit for an event showcasing acts that are true to their roots. North Carolina is at the leading edge of the craft brewery movement, which values local, grassroots brewing efforts.

“A lot of people are getting into craft brewing as a hobby, and Asheville is really becoming a craft brewing destination, so the craft beers just seem to go along,” said Hager.

And indeed, with the weighty distinction of Beer City USA being bestowed on neighboring Asheville for two years running, the area is becoming a haven for local brewers of all kinds.

Many will be at the event, offering beer tasting and information in a special beer garden section of the festival grounds. Waynesville’s newest brewmaster, Frog Level Brewery, will be on hand, as will Asheville’s Craggie Brewing and Asheville Brewing Company. Other as-yet unnamed beer-makers from around the region will also be offering tastings of their products.

For those not alcoholically inclined, however, music-only tickets will also be on sale, granting admission to the day’s busy lineup of shows.

The main stage will see performances by Balsam Range, well-loved local bluegrass aficionados, as well as Big House Radio, winners of Asheville’s Last Band Standing competition last year.

The Harris Brothers, an Americana duo from Lenoir, will round out the main shows, but according to Hager there will be much more musical.

The second stage will give up-and-coming talent who find their roots in WNC a place to demonstrate their abilities. New acts will perform for the crowd and a panel of judges, who will both cast their votes for the top new talent. The winners will get $500 in prize money, with the possibility of more, depending on ticket sales.

Other attractions on the afternoon will be a few craft booths as well as food and drinks from area vendors. Alcohol sales will close at 10 p.m., but the music will keep pumping until 11 p.m. To encourage responsible drinking, a shuttle will run continuously from the festival grounds to various locations around Maggie Valley from 4:45 until 11:45 p.m.

Hager said that, in the run-up to the festival, response has been strong and positive from local and regional partners, and she hopes that will translate into enthusiasm from festival-goers.

“ Maggie’s never had anything like this, so we hope the community supports this event” said Hager. “We’re excited about it and I think they’ll find this is something we want to grow into a regional event going forward.”

Ghost Town in the Sky has no hope of pulling itself out of bankruptcy, according to a federal bankruptcy administrator.

The court will decide this week whether to let the amusement park continue to languish in bankruptcy, where it has been stuck for two years now, or simply dismiss the case.

When a company is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, it buys time from debt collectors while it attempts to get back on its feet. A company is not allowed to remain under bankruptcy protection indefinitely, however.

It must reorganize and present a viable plan for how it plans to pay off debt and continue operating. Or, it is forced into a liquidation, known as Chapter 7, where the assets of the company are sold off by the court and the money used to pay off the debts.

In this case, however, the bankruptcy administrator has recommended simply dismissing the case.

“The debtor has been totally inactive since June 2010 and there appears to be no chance of reorganization,” Linda W. Simpson United States Bankruptcy Administrator, wrote in court filings.

Two bankruptcy court hearings — one on reorganization and one on liquidation — have been on the docket for a year now. Each month, they have been continued.

Ghost Town has failed to file monthly reports as required by the bankruptcy court for the past year, nor has it paid quarterly bankruptcy court fees for the past 12 months. Meanwhile, Ghost Town’s bankruptcy attorney withdrew from the case in February after months of not being paid.

Once a tourism magnet in Maggie Valley, Ghost Town has been in bankruptcy limbo for two years now with debt topping $13 million. The park is also on the brink of foreclosure.

BB&T is owed $10.5 million dating back to the purchase of the park by new owners in 2007 and for subsequent repairs and upgrades.

The bank has initiated foreclosure against Ghost Town, and could auction off the property on the courthouse steps at any point in order to recoup what it is owed.

BB&T has held off on doing so at the urging of Ghost Town principals who want to save the park and have claimed for the past year that a financing deal is just around the corner.

The 288-acre mountain top property won’t fetch enough at auction to pay off all that BB&T is owed, which is likely why BB&T has stopped short of going through with foreclosure.

Meanwhile, the 200 small businesses collectively owed $2.5 million by Ghost Town — including dozens of local businesses left hanging after providing services or products — are out of luck. BB&T is first in line to get paid, and only if there is money left over after its $10.5 million is paid off does anyone else get money.

And that’s precisely why the bankruptcy court is poised to simply dismiss the case rather than go through the hassle of liquidating the company in a formal Chapter 7 proceeding.

“The liquidation value of the property is arguably less than what is owed the bank,” surmised David Gray, Ghost Town’s former bankruptcy attorney.

Windfall in back taxes

In the trail of bad debt left by Ghost Town, there is someone who has been paid. Haywood County recently got a $142,000 check to cover three years of back taxes on the 288-acre property. Maggie Valley got one for $110,000.

But it was BB&T — not Ghost Town — that paid the bill.

“We just know that we got it, and we are pleased with that,” said Tim Barth, Maggie Valley town manager, when asked why BB&T would have paid off Ghost Town’s back property taxes.

Whoever buys property at foreclosure inherits the unpaid property taxes. If the bank resumes title to the property, the bank bears the burden of paying the property taxes.

But BB&T hasn’t pulled the trigger on foreclosure yet — so why jump the gun and pay off those taxes before it has to?

BB&T is most likely looking out for number one. Since counties can foreclose on a property owner who has failed to pay their taxes, Haywood County could do an end-run around BB&T and foreclose on Ghost Town itself in order to get the tax money it’s owed.

The only thing keeping the county at bay for now is Ghost Town’s bankruptcy status: bankruptcy halts debt collectors in their tracks. But once Ghost Town gets the boot from bankruptcy court it will lose that protection.

By paying off the taxes, BB&T is buying time. It can continue to sit on the brink of foreclosure — continuing to give Ghost Town’s owners more time to pull off a financing deal — for as long as it wants. It remains first in line should money ever materialize without the threat of being displaced by a foreclosure from the county’s end.

In an interview with WLOS, Ghost Town General Manager and partner Steve Shiver alluded that Ghost Town may open in some capacity this year.

“We would like to have the park open for its 50th anniversary at some level. It may not be full scale. It’s just too early to tell,” Shiver said on television last month.

Following the broadcast, Shiver sent out a mass email to “clarify” the situation.

“Although we have no definitive information about our opening date for the 2011 season if any, we continue to make significant progress and are currently awaiting a decision by a third party regarding the disposition of the property. All indications are for a favorable resolution within the next month,” Shiver wrote in the email.

Maggie Valley is gearing up for its next round of beauty treatments in an ongoing effort to spruce up the town and bring some color to its streets.

The beautification program, led by master horticulturalist and Maggie Valley resident Clayton Davis, is a sweeping plan that intends to bring color to the valley year-round through mass plantings.

The first phase, which entailed planting tulip and daffodil bulbs in the town’s signature red and yellow, got under way last autumn. The bulbs need to be dropped into cold ground, so the town along with residents and businesses collectively planted several thousand bulbs last November.

The next phase of the plantings will include knockout roses, a famously hardy and simple species that blooms throughout the warmer months. Davis said that other plants intended to add color in the winter months, like nandina, will also be on offer.

The town is able to get wholesale discounts on the plants because they’re buying them in bulk, so citizens and businesses who take them up on the offer get their plants at cut-rate prices, as well as the expertise of Davis and the town’s grounds staff.

After discussion at a recent meeting of the beautification committee, participants will also get fertilizer and Nature’s Helper, a special growth aid, to help their plants along.

For its part, the town is funding the planting of its own properties — such as the landscaped area in front of town hall — with $6,000 it’s set aside for the project. Half of that sum was donated as matching funds by Home Trust Bank.

The idea behind the beautification belongs to Davis, who was inspired long ago by a trip to Summerville, S.C., where azaleas bloomed across the city. Davis and city officials hope this initiative will give Maggie Valley a face lift and bring increased tourist visitation.

Order forms for the plants are available at the Maggie Valley Town Hall and all orders are due by April 18. On sale are Gulf Stream nandinas for $11, nandinas for $18 and knock-out roses for $11. The next meeting of the beautification program will start at 10 a.m. on April 18, in the Maggie Valley Town Hall.

After eight years of entertainment, Maggie Valley’s largest venue is closing its doors, falling prey to the poor economy.

800-seat Eaglenest Entertainment was one of the largest in Haywood County and has drawn big-name acts such as Percy Sledge and Pam Tillis, but in the end, they just couldn’t keep pace with a still-sluggish economic environment and consumers’ increasingly discerning tastes in entertainment.

“There’s a lot of competition for the entertainment dollar today,” said owner Grier Lackey. “We have not been able to attract the clientele that we needed to make the place profitable.”

Lackey is putting Eaglenest up for sale with hopes that whoever buys keeps it as an entertainment venue.

“We are going to make every effort we can to try and get someone back in there that will be an asset for Maggie Valley,” said Lackey. “That’s not going to be easy, but we’ll wait for the right opportunity that will be an asset to Maggie Valley.”

For now though, Maggie Valley is missing one of the few major attractions the struggling tourist town had left. Carolina Nights dinner theater is not reopening this season either.

It will “leave a big gap in entertainment options,” said Teresa Smith, president of the Maggie Valley Chamber of Commerce.

The massive center is state-of-the-art and unique in Maggie Valley. In addition to the large two-level auditorium, there’s also an outdoor amphitheater that can hold up to 1,000.

The site opened in 2003, replacing the notorious dance club Thunder Ridge with a family-friendly, alcohol-free venue. The idea, said Lackey, was to bring in entertainment that was geared towards families and tourists, bolstering the entertainment economy in the valley.

And to a certain extent, it worked. The place did draw a number of big names and crowds of music fans clamoring to see them. However, with the tanking economy, the shows Eaglenest has been able to book have steadily dwindled, along with each production’s attendance.

Lackey chalks this up not only to the economy, but to new entertainment venues that have come online in the region, like Smoky Mountain Center for the Performing Arts in Franklin and a new concert venue at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino.

“I think that has had a drastic effect on it,” Lackey said. Plus, the region is known for its plethora of free festivals and music events put on to attract tourists.

Really though, said Lackey, it wasn’t just the new competition that was the death knell for the place. It was also a changing tide in what people actually want and are willing to pay for. Expendable income, he said, is shrinking fast, and the money that was once put to seeing acts of all kinds is now spent more carefully.

People only want to see artists they’re really committed to, which makes filling an 800-seat auditorium in a semi-rural community a very difficult proposition indeed.

And to just break even, never mind turning a profit, Lackey said they need to be pulling in at least 60 to 70 percent of their capacity for each show.  That, of course, just hasn’t been happening.

Lackey says he’s not in a huge hurry to sell. The venue was always more of a hobby than a central business investment anyway. He is the president of Taylor Togs, once the nation’s manufacturer of Levi Strauss.

In the quagmire that is politics in Maggie Valley, the most recent appointee to the town’s board of aldermen says it’s her lack of agenda that makes her the ideal candidate — and possibly a rarity in a town defined by allegiances.

Danya Vanhook, a local lawyer who just finished a stint as district court judge, was chosen by a three-to-one vote to fill the vacant seat on the town’s board until elections are held in November.

“The reason I applied to fill this position is that I have no agendas,” Vanhook told the crowd assembled at the March 22 meeting of the town board. Vanhook was chosen after interviews with several candidates who threw their names into the ring to fill the seat vacated in January by former Alderman Colin Edwards.

Vanhook told citizens that she sought the position because she believes in public service and was looking for a place to get involved. She lost re-election as district court judge in November after just two years on the bench.

“I am doing this because it is a way for me as a private business owner and a private practitioner of law to serve my community,” said Vanhook.

The lone vote against Vanhook was cast by Phil Aldridge, who has recently disagreed with the other board members at nearly every turn.

Aldridge said his vote wasn’t an indictment of Vanhook or her qualifications, but a salvo to his recent campaign to allow the next-highest vote-getter from the last election to take the seat. Since Edwards abdicated, Aldridge has maintained that it would be the most democratic way to replace him, railing against hand-picking by the board.

“I have to oppose simply because I support Phil Wight,” said Aldridge. “He was the citizens choice. I think we did have wonderful candidates but the people have spoken.”

The seat on Maggie Valley’s board was left empty after a rift over ABC operations, with Aldridge and Edwards on one side and fellow members Saralyn Price, Scott Pauley and Mayor Roger McElroy on the other. Edwards said the argument made it impossible for him to continue working with other board members, so he left.

In the wake of his departure, more conflict arose over precisely how his replacement would be chosen. After setting a deadline for applications, Town Manager Tim Barth extended the deadline at the last minute, which he said was to allow a wider field the chance to participate.

This rankled Aldridge, who saw it as a ploy by other board members to wait for hand-chosen applicants to express interest.

In this respect, thought, Vanhook is somewhat of a surprise appointment. While she has a history of public service, especially in the legal arena, her involvement in Maggie Valley politics has been negligible.

Despite that, Vanhook said she is eager to learn and sees local government as important decision-makers for residents and business owners.

“I think the most important thing is to serve our local town. The most important decisions happen right here in this room,” said Vanhook.

Maggie Valley’s town board has historically dominated by tourism-oriented business people. But as the town has annexed more subdivisions into the town limits over the past decade, the board has seen more representation from residents like Vanhook without commercial interests.

She will be sworn in at the town’s next monthly meeting and will serve for seven months before the seat is up for re-election.

In Maggie Valley’s Town Hall, the cooperative spirit has been in short supply of late, with disputes flaring at nearly every turn.

A chill fell over the Board of Aldermen when former member Colin Edwards took his leave last month, creating a vacancy on the board and a chasm between its remaining members.

Things got significantly less friendly at the board’s Feb. 15 meeting, where disagreements and outright arguments among board members erupted over several touchy issues.

Edwards departure – and the choice about how and when to replace him – was a cause of some indignation, with Alderman Phil Aldridge criticizing the other members over the extending the deadline for people to apply for the vacant seat.

Other aldermen said they were in favor of giving residents an extra month to put their names in the hat, but Aldridge said he was vexed by the extension when the town had five applications in hand already.

“We had more people to come forward that applied for this vacant position we have on the board here than we’ve ever had,” said Aldridge. “We’ve never had this many people.”

Aldridge questioned whether other town board members simply didn’t like those who have applied so far and were hoping to hand pick someone of their own choosing. Aldridge has lobbied for selecting the runner-up from the last town election, calling it the most “democratic” thing to do.

Whoever the appointee eventually is, they’ll only be sitting in the position for six months before the November election, where Alridge’s seat will also be up for grabs.

Though the decision to extend was made in consultation with the town board, Aldridge laid the blame for the extension squarely at the feet of Town Manager Tim Barth, even going so far as to call for Barth’s resignation.

“I guess I’m holding him accountable for this,” said Aldridge. “I think we need to look at Tim’s severance pay and his contract and go forward possibly looking for another town manager.”

ABC board controversy

The ire didn’t stop there, however, with perhaps the most heated exchanges coming over issues related to the town’s ABC board. Maggie Valley’s two liquor stores lost money in 2010 for the second year in a row, and blame was placed on a bad economy and overhead related to opening a second store. While revenue increased with the second store, overhead increased by even more, according to ABC Board Chairman Ralph Wallace.

But Aldridge, and Edwards prior to his resignation, suggested the stores have been poorly run, even mismanaged, and need more oversight. Both wanted to see the ABC board increased from three to five members.

However, Aldridge failed to garner support for the idea, as the board ultimately voted 3-to-1 not to increase the ABC board membership, at which point the meeting devolved briefly into a mire of bickering. Board members vacillated between hurling insults and accusations at one another, and taking it in turns to directly address the nearly full audience.

Aldridge logged the lone vote in favor of increasing the board, although Alderman Scott Pauley and fellow member Saralyn Price said they’d be for the measure at some point, but not right now.

Despite implications to the contrary, Price countered that she had faith in the scruples of the alcohol board’s members.

“The ABC board assures us everything is on the up and up,” Price said. Otherwise, Price said, town leaders would not “stand for somebody taking something and not doing things about it.”

After a shout from the crowd that cast derision on that claim, Price shot back, “then don’t vote for me ever again and maybe some other people should start running for these offices.”

Broken chain of command

Pauley made his appeal to the crowd, after proposing a policy to prevent members from circumventing Barth and going straight to town employees with their requests.

“We have a terrible communication problem,” said Pauley. “I’m not trying to mask it, I’m trying to fix it.”

Even in the public comment segment, citizens who showed up vented their spleen about nearly everything on the agenda, including the fact that public comment continued to languish at the end of every meeting. That means citizens have no venue for pitching their thoughts before votes are taken.

Several residents made the point that a poorly worded resolution that was passed before public comment could have been amended before it was voted on, had the board recognized audience members with raised hands looking to illuminate the mistake.

The resolution will now have to wait until next month’s meeting to be rectified.

In the end, Mayor Roger McElroy closed the tense session with a half-hearted adjournment, telling the few audience members who remained, “we appreciate your comments and will take them under consideration. Or at least I will.”

Maggie Valley has extended its deadline for alderman applications by a month, despite already having five applications in hand.

The town set an application deadline of Feb. 9 after Alderman Colin Edwards tendered his resignation last month. Edwards told The Smoky Mountain News that he stepped down from the board because of irreconcilable differences with the other board members. His resignation was accepted after a 3-1 vote, over the protestations of Alderman Phil Aldridge.

The town staff and remaining alderman decided to take applications for the position, hoping to name a new member at their Feb. 15 meeting. But late last week, town officials announced a deadline extension to March 9, which Town Manager Tim Barth said was to allow more residents the opportunity to apply.

“When we were finally able to get the ad in both newspapers, it ended up giving people very little time to get their applications or resumes in,” said Barth. “The board didn’t want to limit the number of people who were interested because they want to get the best candidate available, so they decided to extend it and not try and force it.”

However, Aldridge said he is concerned that the extension wasn’t to get the best candidate, but instead to find a hand-picked candidate.

The town currently has five applications, two from former alderman hopefuls from the last election, which Aldridge believes is more than enough, and indeed a far better response than he expected.

“I thought they were all good,” said Aldridge of the applicants, “and one of them was the highest vote-getter [in the last election aside from those who were elected], which would have been the most admirable way and the most democratic way to go about this.”

Aldridge clashed with the other three aldermen at a special-called meeting earlier this month over accepting Edwards’ resignation, as well as the operation of the town’s ABC board. That issue — and specifically Chairman Ralph Wallace’s decision to remain the chair — was what other aldermen said was the only reason given to them for Edwards’ abrupt resignation in January.

Edwards himself was appointed to the board before he won his seat in the last election.

Barth said the decision was about timing rather than choices, and said a March deadline would allow a broader range of citizens to apply. Alderman will interview selected candidates before voting on a choice at their March 15 meeting.

The appointee will sit in the position until November, when an election will be held to determine the seat.

Maggie Valley’s liquor stores lost money in 2010 for the second year in a row, prompting some aldermen to question whether the ABC stores are being properly managed.

The two stores are opening for fewer hours. Three part-time employees have been laid off in hopes of turning the corner, according to Ralph Wallace, chairman of the Maggie Valley ABC board.

“It is paying off,” Wallace said. “I think we are going to be all right.”

But Alderman Phil Aldridge doesn’t understand how Maggie’s two ABC stores ended up in the red for a second year in a row.

“There has to be money in this. I know there is,” Aldridge said.

Towns with ABC stores get to keep a cut of the profits. That once amounted to about $40,000 a year, but instead the Maggie stores lost $70,000 over the past two years.

“I am a steward of the taxpayers money. Because of mismanagement, the ABC funds are not coming back to the taxpayers like they should,” Aldridge said. “This is an issue that needs to be brought to the public’s attention.”

Wallace blames the losses on the bad economy and additional overhead of opening a second ABC store in 2009.

In a tactical move to grow revenues, Maggie Valley opened a second store aimed at capturing business from Waynesville. Maggie strategically annexed a satellite tract into its town limits to put the new store half way between Maggie and Waynesville on U.S. 19 in Dellwood.

Financial reports out of Waynesville show a corresponding drop in revenues since Maggie opened the second store.

Liquor sales in Maggie grew by $300,000 the first full year the store was open, with $1.59 million in sales in 2010 compared to $1.235 million in 2008, according to annual revenue reports filed with the state.

But the increase in revenues wasn’t enough to offset the expense of the second store, Wallace said.

Operating costs went from around $225,000 a year to $430,000 a year, according to revenue reports.

The new store not only meant more employees and additional overhead for phones, computers and utilities, but also paying off the debt from building the store and buying the land for it.

On the surface, the growth in liquor sales seems like enough to cover the extra overhead, however, and that’s what puzzles Aldridge.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing the financial records for the past five years,” Aldridge said.

The Smoky Mountain News has requested more detailed financial records from the ABC board, but Wallace is out of town and was unable to provide them as of press time.

Oversight

Town leaders were not aware of just how poorly the stores were doing until recently. The town does not get regular financial reports from the ABC board, something town leaders want to change. Until now, all they got was a copy of the annual audit.

“We need to determine how they can report to us on an ongoing basis — what can they give us that will show how they are progressing over the course of the year so that we don’t just get a once-a-year snapshot,” said Town Manager Tim Barth. “Obviously it is something that concerns us.”

The town does not have a direct hand in operating the liquor stores. That’s up to a three-member ABC board. The town’s only role is appointing those three members.

“Other than that our hands are tied,” Aldridge said.

Aldridge wants to expand the ABC board from three to five members. So did former Alderman Colin Edwards.

Edwards had been leading the charge to expand the ABC board to five members. Like Aldridge, he had raised concerns about mismanagement and questioned the financial losses.

Edwards resigned as an alderman last week, however, citing irreconcilable differences with the rest of the town board.

SEE ALSO: Maggie alderman Colin Edwards resigns 

Aldridge said Maggie’s ABC board could use new faces.

“The more people the more accountability there is,” Aldridge said. Besides, it seems they could use the help.

“Five heads is better than three,” Aldridge said.

Red flags

Town leaders at the time hoped the second store would pay off in the long run, but it now doesn’t seem that way. Aldridge half-heartedly suggested closing the second store if it costs more to run it than it is making, but that would leave the town holding the bag on the remaining 13 years of loan payments on the building.

Barth said it wasn’t a total surprise that the stores were in the red. The issue came to a head, however, when a few aldermen noticed shelves at the second ABC store seemed empty.

“There was some concern among the aldermen about whether the stores were being stocked as they needed to be stocked,” Barth said.

The town board called a special meeting with the ABC board in early January to ask questions.

A poorly stocked store is a bad sign, and would only make financial problems worse, Aldridge said.

“You can’t sell it if you don’t have it,” Aldridge said.

It ran counter to the whole idea of capturing sales.

“We lost that edge when we let the stock run down,” Aldridge said.

Cash flow problems are likely why the store wasn’t keeping as much inventory, Barth said.

Wallace brought the attorney for the ABC board along to the meeting with the town board, as well as their accountant. Barth and Aldridge said they did not know why Wallace brought the attorney.

“It was supposed to be a casual meeting,” Aldridge said. “What was going through my mind was how can we help the ABC store.”

But the meeting allegedly got heated at times. There is no written or audio record of the meeting. The town clerk was out sick that day, and Town Manager Tim Barth said he didn’t take minutes.

This violates the NC Open Meetings Law.

Short of expectations

Wallace said the recession came at the worst possible time.

“When they opened the new store the economy took a downturn all of a sudden,” Wallace said. “We are not the only ABC store in the country that isn’t doing good.”

Wallace said another factor that hurt the bottom line was the closing of Thunder Ridge, a large nightclub and dancehall.

“That was a big account of ours and that has hurt business some,” Wallace said.

However, Thunder Ridge has been closed since 2004, long before the ABC board made forays into a second store.

“You can blame it on a lot of things,” Wallace said.

Indeed, in an interview in December 2009, then-chairman of the ABC board Austin Pendley cited several factors. Pendley primarily blamed the recession for a slump in tourism, further exacerbated by the closure of Interstate 40 because of a rock slide.

Meanwhile, Harrah’s Cherokee Casino began serving alcohol. Before, people gambling at Harrah’s would drive over to Maggie Valley to stock up on booze. The Maggie liquor store did a bang up business in pocket-sized airline bottles: the perfect size for smuggling into the casino.

Nonetheless, Maggie’s ABC stores posted gains in liquor sales to the public despite the recession, according to revenue reports. Restaurants and bars, on the other hand, stopped buying as much. Liquor purchased by restaurants and bars once accounted for one-third of the business done by Maggie’s ABC store.

But sales to restaurants and bars went from $300,000 a year before the recession to less than $200,000 in 2010, according to revenue reports. The recession meant fewer people were eating out, and those who did ordered fewer drinks.

Pendley passed away last year, as did fellow ABC board member Sam McCrary

Wallace said he isn’t as knowledgeable about ABC operations as they were.

“We lost both of those guys, and it has really been a struggle,” Wallace said.

For example, when questioned about overhead for the second store, Wallace couldn’t say how many new employees were added. He also said he didn’t know off the top of his head how much the annual debt on the land and building is.