January 11, 2007
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Sylva, NC
Volume 81, No. 42

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Commissioners seek subdivision, steep-slope ordinances - County leaders are hoping they can enact ordinances to curb harmful development within a year. During a Jan. 3 work session, commissioners expressed concern over a lack of ordinances regulating subdivisions and steep-slope development. According to county planner Linda Cable, the planning board had been working on a subdivision ordinance that also deals with steep-slope development for the past few years. However, she said commissioners had asked the board to take on other issues, and that....

Snow alters SMHS exam schedule - Snow began falling around 9:30 a.m. Tuesday (Jan. 9), forcing the early dismissal of school. While no significant accumulations were reported in town, schools remained closed on Wednesday, forcing postponement of scheduled end-of-course exams. Schools will now operate Tuesday (Jan.16) but will be closed Monday, Wednesday and Thursday of next week. For a revised Smoky Mountain High School exam schedule, see story on page 8A. According to N.C. Department of Transportation spokesman Edwin Austin, the conditions caused no major accidents, though traffic was slowed....

Martar receives first Sylva Volunteer Award - Karen Martar, a longtime Sylva volunteer and restaurant owner, was recognized by town officials during Thursday’s (Jan. 4) meeting. Mayor Brenda Oliver said the town decided to create the award to recognize Martar’s service to the town and plans to continue giving the award annually. “She is just a considerate, generous, caring person, and we wanted to be able to tell her how much we appreciate her,” said Oliver. The “Sylva Volunteer Service Award” will be an etched glass plaque, but due to Martar’s illness, the town took a....

March, breakfast to mark MLK Day - For the second year in a row, Bridging Jackson Communities (formerly known as Bridges to Community) will mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day with two days of activities. The celebration will start with a “unity walk” down Main Street, which will begin at 5 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 14. Participants will gather at the east end of the street (near Mill and Main restaurant) and march towards the Courthouse before heading to the Golden Age Center. There, a program and....

County energy park wins EPA award - Jackson County’s move towards more environmentally-friendly living has been honored with a national award. The county’s Green Energy Park was recently named the Landfill Methane Outreach Program Project of the Year by the Environmental Protection Agency. LMOP is a voluntary assistance program that helps to reduce methane emissions from landfills by encouraging the recovery and use of landfill gas as an energy resource. Since the Green Energy Park’s opening in October, representatives from the program....

Local cable TV subscribers lose access to WLOS signal - Threats turned into reality at midnight Friday when WLOS-TV was removed from Mediacom’s cable lineup. A dispute between Mediacom and Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of WLOS, has been ongoing for several months as the two sides tried to renegotiate a retransmission consent agreement. Federal law allows television station owners to require some type of compensation from cable companies in order to carry the signals of....

Sylva debates downtown parking - Business owners and residents voiced their concerns to town officials during a Thursday (Jan. 4) forum on downtown parking. Sheryl Rudd, Downtown Sylva Association president and co-owner of Heinzelmennchen Brewery with her husband, Dieter Kuhn, speculated that the issue might be more one of laziness than lack of parking. “The question I have to ask is, ‘Is this really a lack of parking issue?’ or is it just that we’ve all gotten lazy?” she said. “There are parking spaces there, we just forget that when we’re in....

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