“The proposed transfer inappropriately favors one provider and undermines expansion of consumer choice.” — Mental Health Advisory Task Force Chairwoman Linda Poss A Buncombe County task force is up in arms about the recent transfer of more than $1 million in public assets to a private nonprofit agency. The move, maintains the citizen task force, […]
Author: Tracy Rose
Showing 106-126 of 299 results
The big ride
On the first authentically crisp day of fall, a cheerful man in a motorized wheelchair glides through the Asheville Transit Center. “It’s got a bite in it today,” he remarks to another man waiting for a bus on this breezy day. “Yes,” the other rider agrees. Moments later, the No. 15 bus (which traverses parts […]
Ticket to madness
If the plot of the play Nuts were reduced to a pair of screaming headlines in a New York tabloid, they would shout: “Sexy call girl offs john!” and “Hooker claims ‘I’m not crazy!’” Given that playwright Tom Topor once wrote for the New York Post, the image might not be that far-fetched. Yet Topor’s […]
Questionable authority
“We ought not to be exercising authority we do not have, in my opinion.” — Henderson County Manager David Nicholson A troubling question arose at a recent meeting of eight county managers who are crafting mental-health reform in Western North Carolina: Do they have the authority to make a key decision? Or must they wait […]
Buncombe County Commission
“It’s unconscionable.” — Assistant County Manager Jerome Jones For months, mental-health advocates have been pressuring the commissioners in Buncombe and seven other Western North Carolina counties to grant them equal representation on the new mental-health governing board. And they’ve insisted that state law backs them up. County officials, however, had argued that a state statute […]
Buncombe County Commission
“Money isn’t everything, but it is how we pay for schools and health care.” — Nathan Ramsey, chairman, Buncombe County Board of Commissioners Weighing in on the continuing controversy surrounding the Grove Park Inn’s proposed high-rise on City/County Plaza, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners voted 4-1 at their Sept. 2 meeting to endorse the […]
A unanimous yeehah!
“It’s a great day for public radio.”
Point blank
In the FBI’s Freedom of Information Act Reading Room in Washington, D.C., there are 15,786 pages devoted just to Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd. And odds are, there’s not a kind word among them. But the same could not be said of Bill Brooks’ new novel, Pretty Boy: The Epic Life of Pretty Boy Floyd […]
As adventurous as apple pie
Waynesville sings the praises of the wild ramp. Tabor City touts the glories of the illustrious sweet potato. And Henderson County puts on a four-day extravaganza in honor of the most versatile of fruits, the apple. Harvest festivals are a tradition as ancient as the apple itself. Communities across the country — and around the […]
Freaky Sunday
The recent flowering of high-end boutiques on Lexington Avenue adds a different kind of vitality to the strip of asphalt and concrete long associated with mohawked, dreadlocked and buzz-cut-topped kids with metal bits and Birkenstocks and heaps of attitude on parade. Kitty Brown, owner of Sky People Gallery and Design Studio on Lexington, seeks to […]
Should it stay or should it go?
SPINDALE — WNCW’s fate still hangs in the balance following an anticlimactic meeting of the Isothermal Community College board of trustees last week. At a specially called Aug. 12 meeting, board members (who collectively hold the station’s license) did little more than ask a few questions and rifle through a report by ICC President Bill […]
Don’t come around here no more
Keep out. That’s the stance Buncombe County Planning Board members took last week to stop people from bringing old mobile homes into the county. The board voted unanimously Aug. 4 to recommend to the county commissioners that manufactured homes — a.k.a. mobile homes — built before July 1, 1976 should not be allowed to be […]
Buncombe County Commission
Unless Buncombe County devises a more palatable proposal, piles of construction-and-demolition debris will continue to be buried at the Buncombe County landfill — rather than being recycled. Under threat of legal action from waste-industry behemoth Waste Management Inc., the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners unanimously decided Aug. 5 to rescind an ordinance requiring all waste […]
Vital signs
Late on a Monday afternoon, I pull off the New Leicester Highway just a few yards from the Madison County line at Reeves Grocery, a brown block building with a pair of wooden benches out front. But after a few minutes inside, the strains of banjo music and the small group of people clustered around […]
I-26 by the numbers
The new leg of Interstate 26 through Madison County is the fruit of a massive undertaking. Consider these statistics: Length: nine miles Number of lanes: six Original cost estimate (1988): $50-$60 million* Final cost: $230 million Percent paid by the federal government: 80* Cost of welcome center/rest area $6.1 million Construction time: seven years Tons […]
Thinking globally, dancing locally
What do a Norwegian offshore-oil-rig worker, a Hawaiian college student, a Sardinian surveyor and a former Utah beauty-pageant queen have in common? A passion for folk dancing, of course. These dancers — and about 350 other dancers and musicians from across the world — have put aside their day jobs to travel to Waynesville to […]
Moving mountains
“They filled it in from mountaintop to mountaintop. To look down, you’d never know there was anything had ever been there.” — displaced homeowner Lucille Babbitt In a quiet hollow in eastern Madison County, there once was a house whose owners never locked the door. (In fact, it’s doubtful that they even had a key.) […]
A perilous stretch
The Murray Mountain section of U.S. 23 is the most treacherous. Each year, there are about 40 wrecks — and one fatality — on U.S. 23 between Mars Hill and Sams Gap, DOT Resident Engineer Stan Hyatt reports. About a half-dozen times a year, a trucker loses his brakes and jackknifes, closing the road until […]
High hopes
The push to build I-26 through Madison County originated not in WNC or even elsewhere in North Carolina but in Tennessee, according to a February 1992 report by Calvin Allen in Green Line, the monthly newspaper that spawned Mountain Xpress. Plans to upgrade U.S. 23 had languished since the ’60s and were all but abandoned […]
Buncombe County Commission
In a contentious June 17 session, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners adopted a spending plan for fiscal year 2003-04. The decision to adopt the $194 million general-fund budget came on a split vote, with Commissioner David Gantt opposed. The vote, however, came only after Gantt’s last-ditch attempt to divert more money to the city […]
County budget officer changes jobs
With a new fiscal year just around the corner, it looks as though Buncombe County will also be looking for a new budget officer. After about 1-1/2 years in the position, Budget Officer Mamie Scott has been transferred to the Planning Department, County Manager Wanda Greene confirmed June 4. Scott’s new duties haven’t yet been […]