The Southern Highland Reader

CULLOWHEE–In a letter published in this week’s Smoky Mountain News, Jeannette Evans, owner of Cullowhee’s Mad Batter and principal in the area transportation advocacy group Smart Roads, has a look at where the “southern loop” issue stands.

A clip:

A new bypass has enormous potential to drastically change our community’s traffic patterns, economy and landscape. Conversely, all the other projects located in the CTP are designed to improve and/or expand existing roads, thus improving current traffic patterns and preserving our landscape. DOT’s own modeling showed that the 107 Connector would not solve the congestion on N.C. 107 or at the intersection of Asheville Highway. It is primarily these congestion areas that are cited as reasons for building the 107 Connector.

Read her letter here.

CULLOWHEE–When outfitter Burt Kornegay, owner of Slickrock Expeditions, got an email from a friend inviting him to a save-the-Dillsboro-Dam shindig, he fired off a pithy response. Naturally, it was immediately shared all around the interwebs, where by complete happenstance it filtered all the way down to me.

Here it is, with his permission:

First, the note from his friend:

Yo, read all about it….

Saturday night there is a benefit in support of saving the Dillsboro Dam. So, all you anti-establishment, anti-Duke Power people come on down and catch the 7:30 set of singer-songwriter Barbara Duncan. If you’ve not heard her, you owe it to yourself to check this out and to have a few beers in the process, not to mention to support a good cause. So, let’s make Sat. eve. a party night and fill up Guadalupe (that also serves great food).

Hope to see you there …

Then, Burt’s response:

Hey, Partner, Hold on there!

Why do you say that fighting to keep the Dillsboro dam is “a good cause”?  Because doing so spites bad ole Duke?  Let’s not forget that the dam plugs up and drowns the Tuckaseegee River, halting the travel of river creatures and backing up an unnatural mile-long trough of deadwater behind it. Also, from a human perspective now, the dam stands in the way of creating a real, honest-to-goodness “river park” in Dillsboro.  By honest-to-goodness river park, I mean a park with a river that actually flows, like at East LaPorte (probably the most popular public place in our county).  A real river park would make a pleasurable place for all of us to go, and it would be good for businesses in Dillsboro too.  Hundreds of old concrete plugs like the Dillsboro dam are coming down all across the US,  cheered on by river-loving and civic-minded people just like yourself, and I say, Right On!

As for your rebel claim that it is “anti-establishment” to fight for the dam, because doing so is anti-Duke, I say, wasn’t the dam built by the county’s moneyed “establishment” in the first place, back when other segments of the local “establishment” were as busy as beavers gnawing out railroad lines, felling the virgin forest, and turning the Tuckaseegee into flowing mud?  I mean, what could be more “establishment” than a dam?  (Well, perhaps a skyscraper or aircraft carrier.)  And what could be more “establishment” than to align yourself with the likes of county manager Ken “Dam or Die” Westmoreland, who doesn’t mind taxing us to the tune of more than a quarter-million-$ to pay lawyers, in his attempts to do  .  . . what?  Why, to milk still more $ from Duke! When it comes to the Dillsboro dam, the “anti-” lies in taking it down.

Kornegay’s longtime Jackson County business has been the focus of some media features lately. Here and here from the Smoky Mountain News, for example. The Sylva Herald has also written him up (you can search that story at their paid archives, here).

Recent news from the legal struggle over the dam from the Sylva Herald here (link will expire in one week), and from the Smoky Mountain News here.

SYLVA–Sylva town leaders, in a unanimous vote, have named former Economic Development Commission board member Chris Matheson to fill an empty seat on their board.

The vote at Thursday’s meeting filled the seat vacated by newly-elected mayor Maurice Moody.

The naming of Moody’s replacement had been the focus of speculation, because on the frequently ideologically divided board Moody often provided the “swing” vote.

Thursday night’s proceeding before a packed house was the final meeting for Sylva’s longtime mayor, Brenda Oliver. Oliver has served as mayor since 1991, and was a town board member for a decade prior to that.

The meeting was also the last for board member Harold Hensley, who was unseated in recent elections. Hensley was replaced by Danny Allen, a previous board member who won re-election. Also sworn in was incumbent Stacy Knotts. Knotts and Allen were the top vote-getters among five candidates for two seats on the board.

Some, including the newspaper The Sylva Herald, had argued that Hensley, as the third-highest vote-getter in the November elections, should’ve been appointed to fill Moody’s seat.

Coverage from the Smoky Mountain News here.

Coverage from the Sylva Herald here. (Link expires in one week)

GSMNP–Smoky Mountain News outdoor writer Don Hendershot wrote last week that the 2010 omnibus spending bill, due to be signed in a couple of weeks, might  include the long-awaited cash settlement that would (in theory) lay to rest Swain County’s North Shore Road controversy.

Hendershot quotes anonymous sources, and hints that the dollar amount could be greater than the projected $30 million.

Here’s an excerpt from Hendershot’s story:

After more fits, there was another start at construction back in 2000 when then Rep. Charles Taylor and then Sen. Jesse Helms appropriated $16 million for construction of the North Shore Road. Even though the $16 million was about $550 million short of the estimated cost of such a road, the appropriation spurred some Swain County residents to action.

The Citizens for the Economic Future of Swain County was created in 2001. Although totally lacking in acronym-imagination, the CEFSC did strike a chord with many Swain County residents and environmental groups with its proposal for a cash settlement in lieu of the improbable North Shore Road. Through some mathematical calisthenics the group came up with a settlement figure of $52 million.

Read the whole piece here

See a timeline through 2001, also from the Smoky Mountain News, here.

CULLOWHEE–Western Carolina University’s soaring pool of applicants is described as a “success story in outreach and marketing” by Smoky Mountain News reporter Giles Morris in this piece for the November 18 issue. News editor Becky Johnson adds, in a sidebar, that the quality of students could rise with the number of applications, and that the university’s student retention rate — often a problem in Cullowhee — has risen past the national average.

Here’s a clip from Morris’s story:

“What our staff is hearing — whether during an Open House, a campus tour or one of our regional recruitment events across the state — is that people are attracted by the affordability WCU offers and the dynamic, unique blend of academic majors available at WCU,” [WCU employee Mark] Anderson said. “Prospective students and their parents are very aware of all the new buildings and construction on campus, what a beautiful place Cullowhee is, and that the total student experience is possible at WCU.”

Here’s an excerpt from Johnson’s sidebar:

Despite a rise in applications –– tripling over three years –– enrollment at WCU has not risen significantly. The bigger pool has allowed the school to seek a higher caliber student, said Chancellor John Bardo.

The school has raised its academic standards, as measured by the average GPA and SAT scores of new students. The SAT went from 1023 to 1033 between 2003 and 2009. In 2003, the GPA was 3.25, compared to 3.48 this year.

“That’s a really, really big change in the nature of students,” Bardo said.

Left for future issues, maybe, is another number that is rising at Western: the student-to-teacher ratio. Traditionally one of Western’s calling cards, that ratio is rising quickly because of budget cuts, and those cuts are likely to worsen in the next couple of years. How will the school meet the challenge of teaching this growing pool of smart students?

Read the Smoky Mountain News story here.
Read the Smoky Mountain News sidebar here.

REGIONAL–The Smoky Mountain News’s Bibeka Shrestha reports that four far west counties and the Qualla Boundary are moving quickly to organize enforcement of child support laws after the state announced it would no longer handle the chore.

An excerpt:

The state will save about $4 million each year by cutting the program, which now serves 28 out of 100 counties in North Carolina. The rest of the counties, including Haywood and Jackson, already handle the program in-house.

For a successful takeover, the affected counties must learn how to set child support payments and how to punish deadbeat parents who don’t pay by withholding wages, revoking driver’s licenses, and even sending them to jail. Agents will also be responsible for establishing paternity in some cases.

Read Shresta’s story here.

BALSAM–The Balsam Mountain Preserve, a large gated community and significant employer in northern Jackson County, has been placed into receivership, according to a story in the Smoky Mountain News.

This means that a third party has been appointed by the court to manage the property pending the outcome of ongoing foreclosure proceedings.

Read the News story here.

REGIONAL–It’s no secret that in North Carolina, with its appointed and influential Department of Transportation Board, road construction is heavily politicized. That’s a foregone conclusion in the “good roads state“.

And one of the crown jewels of politicized road-building is I-40 west, which, just under half a century ago, was routed through particularly inhospitable country at the behest of well-connected state and regional leaders.  A series of enormous rock slides has been the legacy.

The Asheville Citizen-Times’s John Boyle pulled the timeline together for Saturday’s paper.

Here’s an excerpt:

When the slide-prone gorge route was first proposed, leaders from Madison County and the Asheville area had pushed for another route, one that would have sent I-40 through the French Broad River Valley in Madison, close to where U.S. 25/70 runs now.

“Lots of people these days will say highway decisions are all politics — well, hell yes, they are,” said Jody Kuhne, a state engineering geologist with the N.C. Department of Transportation.

“Back at that time, Haywood County had a large paper mill, major railroad access and other industry, and Madison County just didn’t have that, except some in Hot Springs. So, sure, they out-politicked Madison. The road went where the action was.”

The Smoky Mountain News, meanwhile, took a look last week at the likely economic impact of the closure in Haywood County.

SYLVA–The forecast remains cloudy for Balsam Mountain Preserve, a 4,400-acre gated community near Sylva, after a foreclosure hearing for the property was continued for a month last Friday.

Jackson County Clerk of Court Ann Melton continued the hearing until November 30 at the request of Balsam Mountain Preserve attorney Jay Coward, and over the protests of the Asheville-based attorney for lender TriLyn, according to the Sylva Herald.

TriLyn, a Connecticut-based venture capital firm with connections to the Bank of Scotland and the middle eastern concern Investcorp, argues that Balsam Mountain Preserve has had over a year to address its now $21 million dollar debt to TriLyn, and seeks to foreclose.

Rumor has it that TriLyn officials have a relationship with the owners of the similarly high-end Cliffs Communities, and that the Cliffs Communities might be interested in acquiring the Balsam property. The Balsam Mountain Preserve is owned and was created by Chaffin/Light Associates of South Carolina.

Meanwhile, the Smoky Mountain News reports that a buyout offer from current homeowners on the Preserve is gaining steam.

The recent economic downturn has had a marked impact on the substantial mountain second-home market, and numerous planned or newly-minted gated communities have given up the ghost. But Balsam Mountain Preserve was begun nearly a decade ago, its amenities are mostly in place and over half of its lots are sold.

The Preserve’s recent layoff of about half of its 80-plus person workforce was a significant economic blow to northern Jackson County.

Should the Cliffs Communities appear on the scene in Balsam, one storyline will have come full circle: Balsam Mountain Preserve’s first president was named Jim Anthony, and the CEO of the Cliffs Communities is also named Jim Anthony. When Balsam Mountain Preserve was fresh out of the gates, nearly a decade ago, the Cliffs was involved in a land acquisition controversy in Transylvania County and the dual high-profile names were the source of considerable confusion.

SYLVA–An imposing hotel construction project, dormant since early 2009, will remain unfinished for the foreseeable future according to the Smoky Mountain News.

Construction of the Clarion Inn on NC 107 N, near Walmart, ceased in January of 2009. In February, developers told the Sylva Herald that construction would resume in May. Construction did not resume and the bank that financed the project recently foreclosed.

Read the Smoky Mountain News story here.

CULLOWHEE-Organizers and supporters of Jackson County’s ambitious greenways project celebrated a milestone October 5, when the county board of commissioners voted to purchase a 1.4-acre plot of land near Cullowhee for $39,580.

The plot is the first purchased by the county to augment an existing sewage right-of-way that follows the Tuckasegee River between Cullowhee and Sylva. Organizers envision the Cullowhee-to-Sylva segment as a core element of a larger plan to hook individual greenways segments together to create an alternate transportation system for the county.

Commissioners tabled action on the purchase of an piece of property adjacent to the one they purchased.

County greenways project manager Emily Elders says the purchase is significant.

“It’s the first property purchased specifically for greenways in Jackson County after nearly ten years of hard work by our volunteers,” she said. “Hopefully, with future donated conservation easements, other successful negotiations and grant funding, we’ll be able to put a project on the ground soon that will demonstrate the wellness, transportation and recreation benefits of greenways for the whole county.”

Three newspapers are covering Jackson County’s greenways progress: the Smoky Mountain News, The Sylva Herald and the Cashiers Crossroads Chronicle.

The Chronicle is primarily concerned with the several Cashiers-area elements of the greenways plan, so it didn’t weigh in on Monday’s vote, but the Herald and News both did. Bibeka Shrestha’s story for the News emphasized the commissioner’s decision not to purchase the adjacent property, noting that if they had, the first mile of the 4.5 mile stretch would’ve been in county hands. The Herald, which has recently taken county commissioners to task for what it considers profligate spending on county payroll and the Dillsboro Dam fight, emphasized the property’s price tag.

Read the Smoky Mountain News piece here.

Read the Sylva Herald piece here. (Archives=$)

CULLOWHEE–A student led bike-sharing program at Western Carolina University has taken off, writes Bibeka Shrestha of the Smoky Mountain News.

Her lead:

Ever since the launch of the Yellow Bike Project in late August, a new bike culture has quickly sprung up around campus at Western Carolina University.

The student-led initiative, which makes a fleet of fixed-up bikes available to anyone who wants to get around campus, has worked well under an honor system.

Chris Holden, co-president of the WCU Cycling Club, said he and the other organizers had anticipated that some of the bikes would go missing, but said he hadn’t seen any bikes leave campus so far. Moreover, students seem to be respectful toward their borrowed rides.

Such programs are popular and diverse world-wide. In general, a fleet of bicycles is made available within a certain geographic area. If you need one, you ride it. Then you park it in a designated rack, and the next person who needs it takes it from there.

Arrangements vary city-by-city. Read more about bicycle sharing systems here.

Read the Smoky Mountain News piece here.

DILLSBORO–Two months ago, the courtroom slap-fight between Jackson County and Duke Power over the fate of the Dillsboro Dam seemed to have descended nearly to the level of farce.

Duke Energy, which holds a monopoly on electricity production in this area and has many hydroelectric projects here, wants to tear down the dam as part of an enormous licensing agreement, reached years ago. Jackson County’s Commissioners long ago decided that the county didn’t get enough of a cash settlement in the agreement, and that the dam, which is more or less the centerpiece of the little town of Dillsboro, should stay.

Jackson County, with the firepower of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Duke Energy, half the environmentalists and a growing segment of the population arrayed against it, seemed to be pouring tens of thousands of dollars down a questionable hole in lean economic times.

As the court hearings droned on, local reporters tried to take accurate notes while dreaming of things they’d rather be doing — like driving bamboo shoots under their fingernails.

Then, things took an interesting turn.

After being forced in court to release the necessary permits for Duke to begin dredging silt from behind the dam, and as court-ordered mediation efforts were winding up, Jackson County quietly paid a consulting firm almost $20,000 to design a large river park and riverwalk along both banks of the Tuckaseegee above, at and below the dam location.

The commissioners now say they’ll use eminent domain to take the dam from Duke Energy. The eminent domain possibiliy has been mentioned before, but there are only certain circumstances that are grounds for eminent domain under North Carolina law. Public recreation is one of them.

The Sylva Herald newspaper editor Lynn Hotaling points out in this blog post, though, that the original agreement terms call for the land alongside the river to be turned over to the town of Dillsboro to be used for public recreation. Dillsboro has since relinquished its rights to that property to the county. The upshot is that if the county condemns the land, it’ll pay Duke fair market value, but if Duke removes the dam, the power company will give the county the land for free.

The Sylva Herald has taken an open editorial stance against the county’s legal efforts.

Meanwhile, Duke has announced that it will accelerate its efforts to remove the dam, and will accomplish as much as possible before condemnation proceedings interfere.

REGIONAL–The Smoky Mountain News’s Julia Merchant has a look at the voting inclinations of 11th District congressman Heath Shuler.

Shuler, a first-term Democrat, recently climbed to the top of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s no-no list by voting against the stimulus, among other things. He served as whip for the Blue Dog Democrats in 2008.

Shuler can afford to appease his rural, conservative district with these votes, Merchant points out, because of the way the numbers break out in congress — the Dems have a big majority.

Here’s an excerpt:

As testament to the “different breed [of Democrat]” idea, Shuler won the 11th Congressional District in the last election by a landslide – but every county except Buncombe and Jackson voted for John McCain in the presidential race.

Not surprisingly, Shuler garners support from a number of Republicans as well. He was the first candidate in years able to do so, said Haywood County Commissioner Kevin Ensley, a Republican.

“The district is conservative, and when I was watching the Democrats fill the candidates, they’d get these liberals from Asheville and Hendersonville,” Ensley said. “When they got a conservative Democrat, I knew they’d do real well.”

CULLOWHEE–According to information released by Western Carolina University last week, the school will lay off 31.75 employees due to ongoing state budget cuts. 92 jobs have been eliminated campus-wide, but only 31.75 are currently held positions.

Western is Jackson County’s leading employer, with over 1,500 employees.

In addition, among the apparent early victims of budget cuts at Western Carolina University are these programs and initiatives:

• The Institute for the Economy and the Future
• The Clinical Lab Sciences Program
• Summer Ventures Program
• Legislator’s School
• Reading Center

Here’s an overview from Josh Mitchell at the Smoky Mountains News.

Of these program cuts, one, the clinical lab sciences program, hits particularly close to home. As the Sylva Herald’s Justin Goble describes, it isn’t a flashy program, but it is a productive one.

Here’s a previous post about Western and the budget crisis.

BRYSON CITY–Naturalist George Ellison and his wife Elizabeth live “off the grid”, but are more prepared than most for the weather extremes we sometimes see in the mountains.

In this column for the Smoky Mountains News, Ellison notes how some other living things prepare for cold.

His lede:

Several weeks ago, the nighttime temperature dropped below 10-degrees Fahrenheit at our place. The next day my wife, Elizabeth, and I spent most of our time in house on the North Carolina side of the Smokies, feeding wood into the two woodstoves in our living and kitchen areas. Out the back windows, we could see birds foraging around the feeders. Through the front windows, across the little creek that flows through our property, rhododendrons drooped their leaves like forlorn sheep, indicating beyond all doubt that the first really cold snap of the winter was upon us.

CULLOWHEE–Western Carolina University lives in a media bubble, an anomaly of place, time and people that frees it from some of the pressures that come with media scrutiny.

In some ways, this serves the school well; lack of accountability equals freedom of movement. Sometimes, though, it seems ill-prepared to deal with big events, or tone-deaf to how its message-of-the-moment resonates outside of the ivory tower.

WCU student body president Dwight Nelson speaks to WCU students during a nighttime march on chancellor Jack Carlton's home in 1973. (Photo originally published in the school yearbook, the Catamount.)

One thing is certain: this tax-funded school is flexing its institutional muscles in particular ways these days, and some of its moves are controversial.

So who’s watching?

The “local” daily is almost an hour away, and has never been a strong paper. These days, as it faces the same pressures as the rest of the fourth estate, the Asheville Citizen-Times is weaker than ever. To this paper, to be tough on Western is to have your sports guys say mean things about the football team; to be nice is to publish content provided (for free) by faculty members.

The local weekly, The Sylva Herald — which doesn’t do much investigation regardless — has developed a certain symbiosis with WCU over the decades. The Herald tends to run Western’s press releases verbatim, and to generally allow the university to have it’s “bubble.” (There has been this recent and notable exception).

A couple of independent weeklies range into Jackson County: the Smoky Mountain News, based in Waynesville, and the Mountain Xpress, based in Asheville. These two papers take their investigative reporting seriously, and the growing Smoky Mountain News probably has the wherewithal to focus weekly attention on decisions made at the university. Still, given the school’s economic impact in the SMN’s sparsely-settled coverage area, the paper might choose to tread carefully. The Mountain Xpress seems unlikely to come this far west too often, with busy Asheville at its doorstep, but when it does, we can count on solid reporting. The Xpress provides an example this week with its piece on a recent BB&T donation.

How about on-campus media? As the current dustup over charitable funding from the CEO of Gannett was building, commenters from Gannett papers across the country asked “where is the student newspaper on this?”

Almost four decades ago Western’s students marched on then-chancellor Jack Carlton’s home, demanding a voice in how their school was run. If students have marched to the chancellor’s place since, they were carrying goalposts, not grievances. Today’s student body makeup doesn’t seem to lend itself to vigorous assessments of leadership, but even if that isn’t the case, and even if the students decide to take a less secondary role, it’ll take a while to build a student culture and student media capable of truly helping guide the school.

STATEWIDE/NATIONAL–While the house approved a $14 billion bailout program for automakers Wednesday night by a 237-170 vote and sent it on for senate consideration, NC lawmakers weren’t feeling so charitable. The state delegation was 14-9 against.

11th District congressman Heath Shuler voted against.

Senator Libby Dole voted for the bailout, Senator Richard Burr against.

Here’s how the NC congressional delegation voted.

How about the impact of the industry’s struggles on mountain dealers and mechanics? Here’s a story from the Smoky Mountain News.

And another from the Hendersonville Times News.

NEW YORK/CULLOWHEE-Roger Cohen is an editor for the International Herald Tribune and columnist for the New York Times. He’s one of the best at that level right now, writing comfortably and insightfully from any continent, with refreshingly clear vision. He sees the big picture.

In today’s Times column, he ties current market crises to what he calls the culture of “two M’s — Money and Me”. “[They've become] the lodestones of the zeitgeist,” he writes, “and damn those distant wars.”

He quotes lyrics from the band Coldplay almost as comfortably as he quotes Barack Obama, who warned in a springtime speech: beware of the “poverty of ambition” in a culture of “the big house and the nice suits.”

Cohen points out that between 30% and 50% of Ivy League grads end up with investment banking firms, not because they have a particular interest, in many cases, but because it seems the thing to do. And he argues that our detached, self-interested financial elite are fiddling while the country’s infrastructure crumbles all around.

He winds things up with a call to public service during which he cites as “stirring” WCU graduate Nick Taylor’s  “American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the W.P.A.: When F.D.R. Put the Nation to Work.”

Writes Cohen: “It shows how the Works Progress Administration, a linchpin of Roosevelt’s New Deal, put millions of unemployed to work on dams, airports and the like. It’s a book about how imaginative political leadership can rally a nation in crisis.”

Read Cohen’s Column here.

Read a 2007 profile of Taylor from the Smoky Mountain News’s Michael Beadle here.

SYLVA-Hitch up the horses and tug out the welcome wagon for blogger Jason Bugg, a Mountain Xpress music writer who recently relocated to Sylva. The Smoky Mountain News’s Chris Cooper hangs his hat here, too, so now we’ve got two hip music writers amongst our young townies and we can but wonder: is there room?

Bugg’s personal blog, So Much for Tact, can be found here. He has a recent piece about Ric Flair. He writes a good bit about music, and offers downloads. He’s also enamored of Sylva, which is nice, and he uncorks sharp turns-of-phrase.

He gets credit from me for his apparent two-year pissin’ contest with Citizen-Times staffer Tim Rawal, whose mug shot alone is enough to make my forehead hit the desk.

The Mountain Xpress distributes here and points west, of course, but for those unfamiliar, the Xpress is Asheville’s independent weekly newspaper. Which makes it, in real terms, Asheville’s only newspaper, since the daily Citizen-Times is in the headlock (complete with indian burns) of the Gannett Corporation.

Unlike the Citizen-Times, which sends reporters west of Balsam for blood and football alone, the Xpress will occasionally wander this way for something less predictable. Here are a few Mountain Xpress stories about our neck of the woods:

A review of the show Fragile Earth at Western Carolina University.
A review of Guadalupe Cafe
A column on development (from Cullowhee’s Mark Jamison)