Old photos sought for Sylva book - Friday is the deadline for readers to submit photos for inclusion in Arcadia Publishing’s upcoming book on Sylva. Herald Editor Lynn Hotaling is authoring the volume, with help from local historian Rachel Phillips. Proceeds will benefit the Jackson County...

Year’s first snow - Bishop Knight, 7, of Sylva gets a little help sledding from his father, Willis, as snow accumulated in Sylva for the first time this year last Thursday (Jan. 17). According to Department of Transportation county maintenance engineer Lori Jones, accumulations ranged from an inch in Cherokee to 6 inches in Balsam. Sylva received...

After EDC director fiasco, Denton to remain with Sylva - Jay Denton’s two weeks of employment uncertainty ended last Thursday (Jan. 17) when Sylva officials unanimously voted to rescind their Jan. 3 acceptance of his resignation, clearing the way for Denton to remain in his current post, that of Sylva’s town manager. The decision, which followed two and a half hours of closed-session discussion, was made necessary after “miscommunications” torpedoed the job Denton had resigned to...

County, towns form task force to study EDC by-laws - Citing “confusion and miscommunication” over hiring an Economic Development Commission director, county and town officials decided to develop a task force to look into the EDC’s by-laws. The action came during a Jan. 15 meeting between county commissioners and leaders from each of the county’s four incorporated towns. Commissioner Tom Massie suggested the idea in the wake of commissioners’ Jan. 7 meeting, when EDC...

WCU sees spike in number of freshmen applying for 2008-09 - You can’t blame the admission counselors and application processors at Western Carolina University if they appear a bit bleary-eyed these days. After all, they’ve been working extra hours trying to keep up with a 62.6 percent increase in the number of applications for undergraduate admission. As of Jan. 14, applications for WCU’s fall freshman class were up...

Affordable housing is topic at meeting - The need for affordable housing in the county was one of the issues brought up during a Jan. 15 meeting between county officials and leaders from each municipality. Western Carolina University representative Diane Lynch raised the issue, stating that the price of housing in the county has made it hard to hire new staff members. “Affordable housing has become an issue for us,” Lynch said. “It’s made it hard to recruit staff because the price of...

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