The oft-threatened closure of the state prison in Haywood County has finally come to pass, but by now, it hardly comes as a surprise.

“Every year, they would always say it is going to close,” said Haywood Commissioner Kirk Kirkpatrick.

And so every year, county leaders appealed to mountain legislators to save the prison, who in turn mounted political pressure on their colleagues in the General Assembly to put the prison back in the budget.

The prison was spared the chopping block, but the victory was always short-lived, giving way the following year to cries of “here we go again” and another round of lobbying.

“I think our representatives at the state level had indicated inevitably it was going to close. They could push it off or prolong it, but inevitably they wouldn’t have the votes to keep it,” Kirkpatrick said.

“At some point we realized we were going to lose it,” Commissioner Bill Upton said.

It’s not clear exactly what the state will do with the prison it abandons. Haywood County has an idea, however, that’s still in its infancy and might not come to fruition, but county commissioners are giving a hard look.

Commissioners are contemplating leasing the prison from the state and going in to the inmate business. For $40 a night, the county would house prisoners from other places — from other counties that don’t have enough space in their own jail or from the state itself.

Commissioners say they won’t plunge headlong toward owning a prison yard unless it makes sense.

“You don’t just necessarily want to take it because you can,” Swanger said. “You want to make sure what you are taking. We have to make a wise decision.”

They asked County Manager Marty Stamey to put together a feasibility study and hope to hear back in another week.

The fact-finding mission would include estimated utility costs, staffing and upkeep.

With the county jail next door, the prison wouldn’t need its own cooks or medical officer or canteen. It could piggyback on the jail’s support staff and really only need the guards. The number of guards could be adjusted depending on how many prisoners materialized.

The county could also operate just half the facility, cutting down on utilities.

The beauty of the deal may be the rate the state will lease it for. Commissioners are hoping for the bargain rate of a $1 a year.

Why such a good deal? It’s doubtful the state would find a buyer for a 128-bed prison on the open real estate market, and at least leasing it to the county would keep it from being a maintenance headache and liability for the state.

No matter how cheap the lease is, the county doesn’t want to be saddled with a deteriorating facility that becomes more work than it’s worth. But based on an inspection of the prison by the County Maintenance Director Dale Burris, it is in surprisingly good shape.

“The buildings are old but very well maintained,” said Commissioner Kevin Ensley

The big kicker, however, is whether there are actually inmates out there who need to be housed somewhere.

When someone is first charged with a crime, counties bear the burden of housing them in their local jails. Only after they go to trial and get sentenced by a judge are they shipped off to a state prison.

The state doesn’t seem terribly pressed for space: the existing population at the Haywood prison is easily being absorbed into the state’s other prisons. So demand for bed space, if it exists, would likely come from other counties who have maxed out their own jails.

But there’s the rub.

“A lot of the counties have built new jails,” Haywood Sheriff Bobby Suttles said.

Over half the counties bordering Haywood have recently built new jails of their own and have room to spare: Swain, Jackson and Madison counties all have new jails, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is about to build one.

Cherokee County also has built a large new jail, capturing overflow inmates from other far western counties.

With so few jails at capacity, there might be little overflow for Haywood to capitalize on — if not for a new state law that would keep inmates serving minor sentences in county custody. (see related article.)

The new law would pay counties to house inmates convicted of misdemeanors and serving less than 180 days. In the past, they would have entered the state’s prison system.

It will give Haywood another 14 prisoners a year, not enough to make leasing the shut-down state prison viable. But Haywood could volunteer to keep some of those convicted misdemeanor prisoners on behalf of other counties, who have enough room for their own inmates but not enough room to take on the extra load.

“We are trying to determine how many of those there actually are in the state,” Swanger said, adding however that there probably won’t be that many

And that may sideline the whole idea.

“I am skeptical about short-term profitability,” Swanger said.

Suttles is more inclined to strike while the iron is hot, assuming that the inmate population is bound to grow in the future.

“Eventually, I think there will be a need for it, to hold inmates. It would be real handy,” Suttles said.

The fences around the perimeters of the state prison and county jail are practically touching already.

Commissioners are contemplating a worst-case scenario where the county essentially mothballs the site for now to see if more demand materializes. And in the meantime, the county looks out for its interests by keeping something else from moving in there, something that may not be compatible with the county’s neighboring jail or public dumpster station.

“If we don’t lease it and the state sells it, who is going to be our neighbor?” Swanger said.

Western North Carolina is losing one of its strongest municipal work forces. And a quick look at their record of projects shows that, in towns and counties around the region, they will be sorely missed.

But this loss isn’t exactly the result of layoffs or furloughs. It’s what will happen when the Haywood Correctional Center closes at the end of this year, and its 125 inmates — who serve as a nearly free labor force for the region — are shipped off to larger prisons in the state system.

It’s been a good ride while it lasted for communities benefiting from the prison work crews.

They’ve painted public pools in Haywood and Jackson counties, pulled weeds from the dam at the Waynesville watershed, assembled playgrounds, painted schools, done landscaping on municipal buildings, cleaned up the grounds of state parks, assembled school equipment. One crew built an entire boat ramp by hand on Lake Fontana. They shoveled snow from sidewalks in downtown Waynesville one particularly rough winter.

“At one time we had three crews,” said Donnie Watkins, the prison’s superintendent.

SEE ALSO: A new life in the cards for Haywood's prison?

And that’s just in the community work program, which offered up inmates to local governments, schools and the like to add free manpower to a whole range of projects.

Inmates also staff litter pickup crews, and assist the N.C. Department of Transportation with projects on almost a daily basis. This week inmates labored along the roadsides in a Maggie Valley subdivision, repairing old landslide damage.

In the transportation department program alone, inmates logged 122,656 hours between 2006 and the end of July. Worked out to minimum wage, that’s $889,256 of work that’s been almost donated to communities from the state line all the way to Buncombe County. The cost of inmate labor is 70 cents per person each day. It’s a service, said Watkins, that will be noticeable when it’s gone.

The state-run prison is being shuttered, along with three other small-scale minimum security prisons, to save money. It’s cheaper for the state to run fewer big prisons rather than more smaller ones. But the cost to the local community will be immense.

The community work program has been in business for eight-and-a-half years, and tracking the exact projects inmates have helped with over that time is a little difficult. There are so many that to go through the whole record would probably be a box or two of papers to sift through.

But sitting around in the prison’s front office one Thursday afternoon, a gathered group of officers are able to rattle off a laundry list of maintenance and beautification projects, from the offbeat to the mundane.

Haywood Correctional has, until now, supplied more man hours for community projects than any other prison in the region by far. Part of that is because it’s a minimum security place, so by definition, a good deal more of the inmates are eligible to work in the community with less intense supervision.

Plus, say the officers, they’re pretty hard workers. A common problem with the program was recipients of the inmates’ help overestimating how long a project would take. Sometimes, said one officer, you’d take out an eight-man crew and they’d finish the work scheduled for a week in one day.

That kind of efficiency — and the unbeatable price — will be noticeable in its absence in places like Waynesville.

“There’s no question it will definitely leave a dent in the town’s workforce,” said Waynesville Town Manager Lee Galloway. “We’ve depended on the inmate crews. I‘ve been here 17 years, and we’ve used work crews to do that work continually almost during that time.”

The place where their efforts will be most noticeably missed, said Galloway, is in litter pickup. Crews pick up trash all over the city, and there won’t be anyone left to do it when they’re gone.

“We certainly don’t have the money to hire people,” said Galloway. “We’ve been dropping jobs the last several years, most of which have been in public works, so we don’t have the work force to do that kind of work. Unless it’s volunteers, it’s probably not going to get done unless we put different priorities in our work and not do something else to pick up litter.”

The litter pickup is where prison staff foresee the most impact, too. As one officer noted, the counties will be filthy come January 1. The litter crews pick up trash from Canton to Murphy, and local dumpsters are quite a bit fuller thanks to their efforts.

On one recent trip down the stretch of N.C. 107 that runs in front of Western Carolina University, inmate crews collected 181 bags of trash, and it had only been a few weeks since their last pass over the road.

Loss of jobs

Of course it’s not just local governments that are losing in the prison’s closure. The entire prison workforce — 42 employees — will be out of a job when the place is shut down by the end of the year.

They can apply for other jobs within the N.C. Department of Corrections, but most would have to leave the area if offered a position, and there just aren’t that many jobs to give in the department, said Keith Acree, public affairs director for the department of corrections.

“There is a reduction in force process that we will try to place people in other agencies, but we’re kind of limited in that part of the state,” said Acree.

The inmates themselves will be scattered across the rest of the state’s prisons, housed wherever there’s a bed in the right kind of facility.

That, said Watkins, is likely to put a strain on a lot of the local inmates who have family visitors or are allowed out occasionally on home leave.

SEE ALSO: State prisons, county jails play musical chairs with inmates

“They’ll be housed from Buncombe County, across the state, still in minimum custody,” said Watkins. “They’ll be housed much further east, which will put a burden on family members. You’re going to have a lot of families out here who are not going to be able to see their family members who are incarcerated.”

For the facility itself, its fate still stands undecided.

The state has the option to repurpose it, or it could be declared surplus property and sold or leased to someone else.

That’s an option that Haywood County commissioners are keeping their eye on, considering the possibility of leasing it from the state should the department of corrections offer it up.

If the state decides it doesn’t need the prison, said Acree, priority will be given to anyone who wants to continue using the place for criminal justice purposes.

And until the doors officially close in coming months, inmates will still go out on work detail nearly every day, giving the region a few more months of clean streets before the workforce is gone for good.

After hours of scouring the ground for renegade marijuana plants from the air last Thursday, the pilot of a Highway Patrol helicopter was ready to call it day. But as he crested the Balsams, in the homestretch of his flight back to Asheville, he looked down and hit the jackpot: 664 pot plants clustered in more than two-dozen small plots.

“This pilot is pretty alert. He was just looking out and saw what he knew as marijuana,” said Detective Mark Mease, a narcotics investigator with the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office. “When you know what you are looking for it kind of stands out.”

The cultivator of all that pot had done his best to disguise it, though. The plots were a scant 6 feet across, tucked in to an overgrown pasture awash in all manners of briars and brush.

But once on the ground, it wasn’t hard to figure out who was responsible, Mease said. Narrow but distinct paths led from plot to plot, and eventually back to a nearby trailer on the property.

“It is kind of hard to hide when the trails lead back to your house,” Mease said.

Daniel Keith Messer, 51, was home at the time. He answered the door when Mease knocked, and in short order had confessed. Messer has been charged for now with manufacturing marijuana, but more charges are likely.

Officers worked well into the night chopping down the pot and hauling it off. The pilot, meanwhile, flew back to Asheville to refuel then returned to run air support, both for security and to lend a spotlight as officers dragged armloads of the tall pot stalks down the mountain.

It was a big bust, one of the biggest Haywood has seen in years. Mease said there isn’t as much pot grown today as there used to be. Pot cultivation in the mountains has been tapering off since the 1980s.

“It is a lot of labor. If you have it planted out somewhere on a mountain you have to hike in, and they aren’t willing to do that for the reward,” Mease said.

Plus, searches from the air like this one and the ensuing busts have become an annual ritual this time of year. More pot is being grown indoors in hydroponic operations these days.

Mease doubts this was Messer’s first foray into growing marijuana, not with that many plants under his wing. It’s a lot to maintain.

Had Messer gotten to harvest all that pot, he could have made half a million dollars on the wholesale market, Mease estimates. All that for some seeds, potting soil, a little fertilizer and sweat equity.

“It is a huge profit. There is nothing else you can grow that makes money like that. Of course, there is nothing else you can grow that gets you arrested either,” Mease said.

Since 1917, the Red Cross has flown its archetypal white flag in Haywood County. In the 94 years that have since passed, the charity’s presence in the county has been steadily dwindling. First, the Waynesville chapter disappeared. Then the Canton chapter fell by the wayside.

The weight fell on what became the Haywood County chapter of the Red Cross, but now that last holdout is looking at closing its doors as well.

“Our chapter has been struggling financially for several years,” said Kim Czaja, the chapter’s financial director, who will be out of a job in September.

They’ve made some pretty hefty strides in the last few years — cutting the yearly debt from $28,000 down to just around $2,000 — but it just wasn’t enough.

Really, though, said Czaja, what’s happening to Haywood is just a snapshot of a very turbulent climate in the Red Cross around the country.

Chapters in Cincinnati are merging to save money, Buffalo is slashing 50 jobs in their blood division and the agency said it’s cutting administrative jobs, consolidating things like payroll and accounting, which are currently done by each chapter.

“There are layoffs going on throughout the Red Cross as a whole,” said Czaja. “It’s just a change right now, and I’ll be honest with you, it’s like any change, it can be painful but it is a very good thing because it’s definitely going to make the Red Cross stronger.”

Some of the services the local chapter offers will also go through an evolution, probably being administered out of the regional office in Asheville.

The western region of the state has seven Red Cross chapters. Haywood County was the only one west of Asheville, and it’s been that way for years, said Czaja.

“We want to continue to be strong in the community, but it is going to be different,” said Czaja.

She estimates that they serve around 7,000 to 8,000 people every year. That includes all the classes — CPR, first aid, swim and lifeguard courses — blood drives, water safety classes in schools, helping businesses craft emergency plans and local versions of the disaster assistance the Red Cross is known for globally.

They also offer financial help to military families and get them in touch with service members overseas when there’s an emergency at home.

The restructuring is a new proposition; Czaja, who is only part-time and the chapter’s only paid employee, just learned of the changes last week. So that means she’s not yet sure how or when the fallout will actually fall.

“There’s a lot of fear because the doors may be closing,” said said. But she’s hopeful that the group’s role in the community won’t diminish and that they can continue serving the county through volunteers. She started as a volunteer herself.

“I understand decisions like this have to be made,” said Czaja. “The most important thing is that the services continue.”

A new $9.3 million surgery center in Haywood County is being financed with equity put up by 20 doctors in the community who invested capital in exchange for a real estate interest in the project.

The hospital will lease the space, outfit it with equipment and manage its operation, but won’t pay for any of the construction costs.

MedWest CEO Mike Poore said the hospital could have afforded to build the surgery center on its own if it had to, but prefers the business structure.

“We could have taken on the debt, but what’s more important is it has our physicians invested even more in the health care of our community,” Poore said.

Poore said the hospital-physician partnership makes the outpatient surgery center all the more unique.

The business arrangement marries the hospital and physician community. Now more than ever, their success is contingent on the other.

The doctors will profit from the lease paid by the hospital. The hospital profits from the patients the doctors will rake in.

Also involved in the project is Meadows and Ohly, a development company out of Charlotte that builds medical offices and outpatient centers. The firm will act as the general partner and orchestrate the construction.

The 20 physicians who bought shares in the project as limited partners fronted nearly one third of the building’s cost, accounting for all the equity.

At first blush, the number of doctors who bought in to the outpatient center is impressive — more than 20 percent of the doctors practicing in Haywood.

But it is a fairly fool-proof and risk-free venture. As long as the hospital keeps leasing the space, they’ll get a return on their investment.

Dr. Luis Munoz, a pathologist, said for some doctors who put up money, it may have seemed like an attractive real estate investment. But for most it was out of their conviction to support health care in the community they serve.

The project didn’t exactly hinge on the financial backing of physicians.

“I could always do it with my own equity,” said Jay Bowling, vice president of Meadows and Ohly.

And the firm could have kept all the profits for itself.

“Are we leaving money on the table? Probably,” Ohly said.

But, the project is much stronger thanks to doctors’ involvement, Bowling said. And certainly less risky.

Its success is nearly guaranteed since the doctors are doubly vested: not only in their own practices but also as a real estate investor. The more business they bring in, the better surgery center does, and the more they get back on their lease.

Storied history

An outpatient surgery center has been in the works for more than a decade, but at one time was a controversial undertaking, one that looked much different than the end result today.

Five years ago, the hospital was poised to break ground on a $16.5 million expansion, financed and funded solely by the hospital. In late 2007, hospital leadership held a reception to unveil the blueprints, and even showed off upholstery samples for new waiting room sofas.

But the entire project came crashing down a few months later when the hospital lost its Medicare and Medicaid status after failing federal inspections in early 2008. Savings squirreled away to pay for the $16.5 million surgery wing were spent instead to keep the hospital afloat until it rebounded from the crisis. The leadership in place at the time has been replaced.

More than $400,000 spent on architects and plans went down the drain.

The project today looks much different than the one pursued by the older hospital leadership — both in scope and cost.

While the old project was billed as a “surgery center,” in reality it was a new wing of the hospital. The old plans simply called for a makeover of existing surgery rooms, while the majority of the project was ancillary: a new lobby and main entrance, new administrative offices and two floors of “shell” space for future expansion, for example.

While that project was shelved, the idea for an outpatient center was not.

Starting over from scratch — and without a nest egg to work with — the hospital administration and more than a dozen doctors split the cost of a $40,000 feasibility study in 2009 to reassess the project.

The result is a far different project: a standalone building on the hospital’s campus with the entire footprint dedicated to outpatient services.

New era of physician involvement

Other than its physical differences, the most marked evolution in the project is the business arrangement, namely the partnership with the doctors.

Under the old leadership, that type of investment and partnership wasn’t welcomed or allowed, Poore said.

Doctors had previously sought a seat at the table, offering to partner with the hospital and help finance the surgery center.

But the former hospital CEO wanted “complete and total control” and shut the doctors out, said Dr. Luis Munoz, a pathologist and a partner in the project.

Munoz, one of the physician investors, is pleased with the new approach under today’s hospital leaders.

“I think this is a preferable scenario, when both parties are involved,” said Munoz. “This is another example of this administration being transparent.”

“This is a really good example of how collaboration should work,” agreed Dr. Al Mina, a general surgeon in Haywood.

Better for the bottom line

The new outpatient center should help Haywood capture more market share, namely those patients who now bypass Haywood and go to doctors in Asheville affiliated with Mission Hospital.

Currently, outpatient services accounts for two-thirds of the hospital’s revenue. Not all of those services and procedures will be relocated to the new center, but it provides a snapshot of just how important outpatient revenue is for a hospital’s bottom line.

The hospital hopes to attract more outpatient services — and thus bring in more revenue — to pay for the new building.

While the hospital won’t bear the upfront construction costs, it still has sizeable expenses to deal with: the annual lease on the space, the overhead, the nurses and other support staff to run it. The cost of the equipment, from waiting room chairs to operating tables, will fall to the hospital as well.

But some of the cost to run the new surgery center will be a wash. Nurses and technicians who currently work in the surgery wing, mammography services, and other departments of the main hospital will simply move to the new outpatient center.

Some services will be duplicated in both the hospital and outpatient center, such as MRIs or blood work, and will require doubling up of staff.

In other areas, the outpatient center will operate more efficiently thanks to a better layout. The hospital will no longer need such an extensive transport crew, a by-product of the cumbersome design of outpatient services inside the hospital.

“It will save on this whole group of people who spend all day transporting people up and down from the sixth floor to the basement,” Markoff said.

Patients using the new building also will be able to stay on the same stretcher during their pre-surgery prep, the actual surgery and the recovery. Again more efficient, and cost cutting since there’s not all the sheets to wash or staff to constantly strip stretchers.

In many urban areas, new outpatient centers aren’t being built alongside hospitals, but instead are free-standing medical office buildings across town, sometimes not even run by the hospital. But it is advantageous to have the surgery center on the same campus as the hospital, Poore said. If there’s an emergency, the full resources of the hospital right next door can be brought to bear.

“If you are a free-standing surgery center and something goes wrong, they call 911. Here, we are the 911,” Poore said.

The project should be completed by spring.

“This project has been in the planning stages for many, many years so it is a great thing to see it come to fruition,” said Mark Clasby, member of the hospital board and Haywood County economic development director.

When asked to paint a picture of a dream vacation she would like to take, 68-year-old Hazel Wells began conjuring her image of an airplane en route to Hawaii. With impressive depth and detail, she incorporated her favorite color, blue, and flowers across the bottom.

Wells and other artists who are part of LIFESPAN have become professionals, selling and displaying their work at venues such as the Waynesville Recreation Center and Twigs and Leaves Gallery in downtown Waynesville.

LIFESPAN provides education, employment and enrichment opportunities to children and adults with developmental disabilities. Since 1973, the organization has grown from its roots in Charlotte to 20 locations from Haywood to Alamance counties. LIFESPAN started a creative campus in 2010, introducing clients to art, horticulture, and health and wellness enrichment programs.

Pamela Hjelmeir, the arts assistant of the LIFESPAN Creative Campus in Waynesville, started building the arts program on a local level a year ago. With an art degree from the University of Florida, Hjelmeir had plenty of ideas to inspire the participants.

She has introduced several artistic elements including painting, weaving, drawing and mixed media. Although many participants are non verbal, art allows them to communicate through creativity and illustrate their passions and thoughts.

“Everyone has their own special gifting and their own special talent,” Hjelmeir said. “We all have our weaknesses, but we all have unique contributions to make. You have to look beyond the disability and look at the ability of somebody.”

During the summer of 2010, Hjelmeir worked closely with participants to create art to sell to the community and raise awareness about LIFESPAN’s mission. Their debut appearance was at a booth at the International Festival Day during Folkmoot last July.

Having their work on display is a source of excitement and pride for the participants, who now consider themselves working artists after selling several pieces at various events.

In addition to the gallery showings, LIFESPAN art was used on the Thanksgiving cards for the Haywood County Arts Council. Many participants won blue ribbons for their crafts at the Haywood County Fair and often show their work at state shows in Charlotte and at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport.

Carrie Keith, an owner of Twigs and Leaves, was so impressed with the artworks’ level of professional appeal she purchased one of her own – a vibrant painting of a tractor. She hung it proudly in the room where her grandson sleeps when he comes over.

“I think it has a lot of fun color,” Keith said. “It’s amazing the talent they possess.”  

In March the Waynesville Recreation Center mounted several pieces of their art along the walls facing the new fitness equipment on the second floor. Having LIFESPAN artist’s work at the fitness center has been an effective way to expose the organization to the community and ties into the program’s encouragement of health and wellness.

Each piece of art is priced competitively and fairly in regards to other arts and crafts being sold in the community.

“It’s not as though just because they have a disability we should lower the price,” Hjelmeir said. “It’s very fairly priced, and I have the responsibility to make sure that we protect their interest. They work very hard on these projects.”

In their studio at the LIFESPAN building, Hjelmeir combines group art activities and one-on-one instruction for each of the students involved. While group activities provide a fun atmosphere, one-on-one work allows participants to push their goals and show what they can do individually.

Robert Rogers is also a representational painter with a fascination with farms. His art is full of detailed fences, farm tools, animals and barns, one of which sold at Waynesville’s recent Whole Bloomin Thing Festival. He also admits a love for working with beads and weaving.

Stacey Delancey takes a more abstract approach to her work. She enjoys interactive projects and is drawn to mixed media. During instruction, Hjelmeir sometimes offers suggestions for color mixing and layering and helps them rinse off the paint brush between colors, but otherwise allows the students to create their unique vision.

“We don’t want to box in their creativity and say there is a prescribed formula because there is none,” Hjelmeir said. “It’s individualized just as much as they are.”

Participant Kenneth Grant creates most of his art around political themes and has painted presidential portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as well as military tanks and war arsenals.

Hjelmeir tries to organize regular field trips for the students to inspire their art. Some of these include swimming at Haywood Regional Health and Fitness Center and the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute.

LIFESPAN relies on grant money and monetary donations from supporters to purchase art and craft supplies. They are always looking for opportunities to show the work of the artists.

In the annual report for 2010, LIFESPAN reported that it had sold 1,125 pieces of participant’s art from all the communities totaling $21,667 over two years.

Hjelmeir is currently working to create digital portfolios of each student’s work and hopes to create an online store to sell each piece.

— By DeeAnna Haney • SMN Intern

Property in Haywood County is selling 4 percent higher than the new values on the county’s tax books, refuting criticism that the county blanketly appraised property for more than it was worth.

There have been 215 property sales in the first five months of the year. Collectively, they sold for $36.392 million. Those same properties were assessed by county appraisers for a total of $34.97 million.

“The sales numbers speak for themselves,” said Commissioner Mark Swanger. “Property is selling for a higher price than the revaluation amounts. That would indicate to me the revaluation is accurate.”

The county’s team of appraisers relied on complex formulas to assign each home, lot and tract of land in the county a new value — values which in turn dictate how much people pay for property tax. Critics claim the depressed real estate market should have resulted in lower property values practically across the board compared to the last revaluation five years ago.

But in fact, the revaluation showed half the properties went up and half went down.

“Of course you can find random highs and random lows that sold for more or less. There’s going to be some that are up and some that are down,” said David Francis, head of the county tax department. “You are still going to have that fluctuation in the market. Just because the stock market is down one day doesn’t mean some stocks didn’t still go up that day.”

Francis said he has confidence the revaluation is accurate, and takes solace in the stats showing real estate sales — on the whole — are coming in slightly above the values pegged by the county.

“What we don’t want to see is that sales price below the tax value consistently,” Francis said.

Since property values determine taxes, when the values are too high, people end up paying more than their share of taxes.

Putting stock in comp sales

Appraisals were based on comp sales, the selling price of similar homes or lots nearby. Comp sales are epitome of market value: a cold, hard, irrefutable number of what like property actually sold for.

Critics have complained that the county’s comp sales were poorly chosen, and didn’t always compare apples to apples.

For starters, the sluggish real estate market has made for fewer comps to go by.

Horace Edwards of Cruso said appraisers lacked comp sales in his neck of the woods and so cast a wide a net looking for sales in other areas, landing on houses sold miles away for an ultimately rather subjective comparison.

“They were not at all suitable to my property,” Edwards said. “If I went out and traveled around the county in the same manner I could find houses that were the complete opposite of their revaluation.”

Meanwhile, a state of flux has kept everyone — buyers, sellers, banks, appraisers and Realtors alike — guessing what real estate might be worth one month to the next.

“They postponed it last year with the expectation it would be a stable economy this year, which was a fallacy because they didn’t get any improvement at all in the economy,” Edwards said.

Of course, comps aren’t perfect. Maybe the seller threw in the appliances or living room drapes to fetch a higher price. Or maybe they got a job somewhere else and sold for less to move in a hurry.

“That is going to happen every once in a while. We can’t do anything about that,” said Mary Ann Enloe, who sits on the board of equalization and review, her fourth time in the role.

Despite the many appeals — it will take until August to hear them all — the county’s appraised values seem mostly accurate to her.

“Of course the proof is in the pudding. Right now it is tracking really well,” Enloe said, citing the sales numbers.

There’s only one way to tell how right — or wrong — Haywood County’s recent property revaluation is. Appraisers attempt to peg the price of house or lot, predicting what a buyer would pay should a ‘for sale’ sign go up in the yard.

As hackles fly over whether the county’s assessed values are too high or low, the only way to tell for sure is delving into the world of property sales.

The Smoky Mountain News compared the selling price of 84 properties in April and May to the new values assessed by the county. Of those, 20 percent were accurate within a 10 percent margin of error.

Of the 68 whose assessed value was more than 10 percent off the actual selling price, 37 sold for less than their assessed values and 29 of them sold for more.

Property in Maggie, Crabtree, Bethel and Beaverdam were more likely to be overvalued in the county’s appraisal. Property in Waynesville was more likely to be undervalued compared to the sale prices — more likely to fetch a higher selling price than what appraisers had pegged it for.

Waynesville sales shows 17 properties outside the margin of error. The majority — 12 out of 17 — sold for more than the revaluation amount.

However, six out of nine properties in the Beaverdam community were valued higher by county appraiser than what the actually sold for. For example, a three bedroom, three bathroom house in Beaverdam valued at $262,900 was sold for $192,500.

According to the data, assessors undervalued three out of four properties in Crabtree and all properties in the Iron Duff community.

Maggie Valley properties were appraised for more than their actual selling price in seven out of 10 instances. A three bedroom, three bathroom house in Maggie Valley that was valued at $204,800 sold for $115,000.

There are few discernable trends when comparing the accuracy of appraised value by price bracket.

Of 14 properties that were appraised at $100,000 or less, 12 of them sold for more than the revaluation assessment.

Of the 42 properties appraised between $100,000-$300,000, 14 fetched a higher selling price than the county’s value and 28 sold for less than the county’s value.

Of the 7 properties appraised between $300,000 and $500,000, four sold for more and three for less.

Only two properties sold in April and May with an appraised value of more than $500,000. One home in Maggie, revalued at $520,400 sold for less at $340,000. Another in Waynesville appraised at $541,000 sold for more at $620,000.

— By DeeAnna Haney • Contributing writer

Haywood County commissioners continue to be dogged by outcries over new property values.

Critics are openly deriding commissioners at every county meeting. They’ve circulated petitions, garnering hundreds of signatures from people who think the county has pegged their property values too high. They’ve held a few citizens meetings around the county to rant about it. Someone even took out a newspaper ad urging everyone to file an appeal over their new property values.

Critics have proffered varying conspiracy theories over revaluation, claiming that the county knowingly and artificially inflated the value of some property as a money grab to boost property tax collections.

One theory suggests the county, run by Democrats, appraised property higher in the Republican-stronghold of Bethel and Cruso to stick them with higher taxes.

The most common theory, however, is that the county is somehow in cahoots with wealthier homeowners and lowered their property values so they wouldn’t have to pay as much in taxes, while hiking the values on lower to median priced homes.

Indeed, higher-priced homes have seen their values fall. And lower- to median-priced homes held their value and went up, as a trend.

But that’s merely a reflection of sales in the market place — not a formula invented by the county’s appraisers, according to David Francis, the head of the county tax department.

“We have no control over the market,” Francis said.

No more so than the weatherman decides what the weather will be.

But, the disgruntled property owners point to the depressed economy and flagging real estate market.

SEE ALSO: How right is the reval?

“The prices are going down and down and down,” said Jonnie Cure, a watchdog for county government. “We are glutted with houses for sale. So when you have a huge supply and very low demand you obviously are going to have a reduction in the price in homes.”

But in fact, property values in Haywood County have not dropped as much as people think, according to Francis. Compared to five years ago, property on average is about the same, although some properties have gone up and others have gone down.

At stake? How much you pay in property taxes hinges on your property’s value. The county recently reassessed every home and tract of land, bringing the book value in line with actual market value. The revaluations are required periodically by the state to ensure everyone pays their fair share of property taxes.

As for the lower- to median-priced homes going up, they held their value because there was more demand for homes in that price range. Conversely, sales at the upper end stagnated, Francis said.

Francis has bowed up over the conspiracy theories that the county was sinister in giving upper-end homeowners a break.

“I was trying to do the best job I could for my fellow citizens. I grew up here, my children go to school here. It was important for me to make this right,” Francis said.

At a county commissioner meeting two weeks ago, the repeated criticism and conspiracy theories proved too much and Francis shot back after particularly insulting comments by Monroe Miller, the county’s chief critic who even has a web site dedicated to his fulltime hobby of attacking county government officials.

“Mr. Miller has insinuated I have artificially propped up the numbers on behalf of the county. That is asinine, insidious and blatantly ignorant,” Francis said. “I would never do anything like that I don’t appreciate that. I would never do anything to undermine the taxpayers of Haywood County.”

SEE ALSO: Sales keep pace with county's new values

Commissioners have grown used to the public chastising and being dogged by a dedicated group of government watchdogs. Commissioners usually keep their cool, attempting to respond to the questions and accusations from critics. But this time, Commissioner Chairman Kirk Kirkpatrick, like Francis, drew a line.

“I can assure you the five of us (commissioners) have done nothing intentional against anybody in this county. Any insinuation there is something different going on is completely wrong, and to be honest, I didn’t appreciate it either,” Kirkpatrick said.

The battle of words continued at the county commissioners meeting again this week, however.

“Other than righteous indignation I have not heard anyone attempt to defend Francis’ numbers,” Miller said.

If the revaluation was so off, Francis responded, then why didn’t Miller appeal his property values?

“I think my numbers are so good he didn’t even appeal his,” Francis said.

Horace Edwards, another critic sounding the alarm over property values, got vehement at the county commissioners meeting this week over a warning letter his daughter got after failing to pay her property taxes. The letter threatened foreclosure if she didn’t pay. Edwards grew increasingly upset as he read it aloud.

Edwards called it “the most asinine and crappy thing I have ever heard tell of” and threatened to “sue the hell” out of the county, then pounded the podium.

The letter in fact was a form letter sent to everyone who hasn’t paid their property taxes. Along with foreclosure, the letter warns of garnishing wages or directly tapping the person’s bank account. Almost always, the property owner sets up a payment plan.

“I am in charge of collecting taxes,” Francis replied. “I am not going to apologize for doing my job.”

Kirkpatrick diligently keeps notes during public comments, and afterwards addresses issues brought up by the audience.

“Sometimes I wonder if by responding I don’t bring on more encouragement,” Kirkpatrick said this week, but then dove in anyway. “As for revaluation we did the very best we could.”

Class warfare

Some who saw their property values increase will have a hard time — to put it mildly — paying more in taxes.

Eddie Cabe who lives in Canton says he is one of those people. His $67,000 home in Canton went up to $125,000. But it is a 90-year-old “box” house as he calls it, lacking proper floor joists, no insulation in the walls, and pull strings for light switches.

Kirkpatrick said those are things the appraisers couldn’t have known about Cabe’s house, and that’s what the appeal process is designed for.

“There are 55,000 parcels of property. We can’t come inside and evaluate each one, all they can do is take the sales that have taken place and look at the house from the outside and compare it to those in the neighborhood and put the best price they can on it. The best fair price,” Kirkpatrick said.

Cabe, who came to the county commissioners meeting to share his plight, said it wasn’t fair for his house to go up, while those with half million homes saw a drop in value.

“It seems like the folks that got money and the bigger nicer houses, theirs went down,” Cabe said. “I think this is the thing that people in the community are so upset with. We can debate all day along about whether real estate went up a little bit or down a little bit. But there are still people like me.”

Horace Edwards of Cruso questioned how his average three-bedroom home went up by more than 50 percent when mountainside mansions dropped in value.

“That’s not fair and equitable,” Edwards said. “I don’t belong to the upper end and I don’t get into the gated communities.”

Cure said the reval has created class warfare.

“These county commissioners have cut their nose off to spite their face. The median- to low-income people in the county are seeing their prices raised. They are the registered voters here. The higher priced homes are owned by people who don’t even live here and vote there,” Cure said.

Cure’s camp is calling on the county to throw out the revaluation and instead keep using the 2006 values on the books. Under 2006 values, upper prices homes would continue shouldering the same share of the property tax burden rather than seeing it shifted to lower and median priced properties.

Commissioner Bill Upton said tossing out the new values and keeping 2006 values on the books wouldn’t be fair. People who saw their property values fall compared to five years ago — roughly half the county — don’t want to keep paying taxes on values that are now too high.

“If we went back to 2006 we would have just as many people upset,” Upton said.

Cure agreed on that point. Those with high-dollar homes who saw their values come down would be up in arms if this reval was thrown out and the 2006 values carried on.

“Now you have a county divided,” Cure said.

Kirkpatrick said going forward with the revaluation seemed like the fair and right thing to do.

“If we had waited, some of these folks would be stuck with 2006 values that were by far higher than what their new values are. We weren’t trying to be fair to one class or another, but to as a whole be fair to everyone and go ahead and reval,” Kirkpatrick said.

Appeals

Property owners who disagree with their values can appeal — either an informal appeal with the county’s appraisal staff or a formal one before the quasi-judicial board of equalization and review.

The number of informal appeals this reval were nearly identical to the one in 2006, indicating dissatisfaction was about the same as it is every time the county tackles the mass appraisal, with 5,600 informal appeals compared to 5,500 last time.

But formal appeals are up by 20 percent over 2006.

Francis thinks the newspaper ad contributed to a rush of appeals just before the deadline. The day the newspaper ad came out, the county only had 600 formal appeals.

It grew to 1,800 just four days later.

That’s compared to about 1,500 appeals in the last revaluation in 2006, but nearly the same as the one before that in 2002.

Of course, some wait until the appeal deadline approaches, so the surge in the final appeal stage can’t all be chalked up to the ad. But he thinks a good number can.

“The appeals were extremely low until the advertisement hit the paper. A lot of people came in not knowing why they were appealing but they had the ad,” Francis said.

At least we have our jobs.

That seems to be the reaction to cost-cutting measures taken last week by Haywood County Schools in response to up to $4 million in cuts from the federal, state and local funding.

More than 200 Haywood County school employees will see their work year shortened, allowing the school system to avoid outright layoffs.

School officials are cutting 12 days out of teacher assistant contracts, trimming assistant principals from an 11.5-month year to only 11 months and taking two weeks salary from food-service workers. Bus drivers are also losing some compensation, namely the bonus they got for perfect attendance and a good driving record.

Assistant Superintendent Bill Nolte said he knew this was a tough pill to swallow, but the school system was trying to save jobs by spreading the pain a little, and, he said, the employees seemed to understand that.

“You think that when someone gets their time and their pay cut, they would be upset, but I’ve had several calls saying it seems like it would be a difficult thing to do and it seems like the right thing to do to save as many jobs as you can,” said Nolte.

That’s exactly what Sherri Green thinks. Green is a first-grade assistant at Jonathan Valley Elementary in Maggie Valley. She’s been a teacher assistant for 11 years now, and prior to last week, she and her colleagues were concerned that their jobs would be lost along with state funding.

“It’s certainly not an ideal situation, but we are relieved that we got keep our jobs. I understand the state cuts and how that works, but locally we’re really glad, because they’ve had to make some major adjustments,” said Green.

Nolte said that when they broke the news to staff, some were ready to volunteer their time. But, said Nolte, it’s just not allowed.

“It’s illegal,” said Nolte. “You can’t force someone or expect someone to put in hours that you don’t expect to pay them for.”

Green said that, though she and her compatriots are relieved, the cuts are going to force some into a search for a second job, especially if the lost pay checks become status quo.

“You could tell so many of us were relieved. There were a few tears shed,” said Green “But yes, it is going to be hard, 12 days without pay. To us, that’s over $1,000 to most of us, and that’s a lot of money. We’re relieved but we’re still in that position that, yes, some of us might have to take a second job.”

The cut work hours will save the school system roughly $325,000. It’s not quite enough to cover what they’re missing from local funding, the part of the school’s budget that comes from the county commissioners, allocated out of their annual expenditures.

Nolte said that’s part of the problem: they expected cuts from the state level. That whisper has been coming down from the governor’s office since snow was on the ground. But they weren’t quite ready for the 3 percent local cut, which works out to around $430,000, or the federal cuts that they’re going to face, around $100,000.

When commissioners proposed cutting school funding, County Manager Marty Stamey suggested educators dip into their robust reserves to cover the losses. The school system has a sizeable fund balance. But, said Nolte, they were already planning to use that.

“We’ll definitely be using the EduJobs money [federal funds allocated last year] and some of the fund balance,” said Nolte.

But, he said, they’ve only got the fund balance because they’ve been careful with the money they get. In essence, said Nolte, they’ve been carefully squirreling away in the rainy-day fund, but it’s still not enough.

They haven’t touched teacher positions in the work-time reductions because they can’t; that’s negotiated at a state level.

But Nolte said they’re also trying to stay as far away from the classroom as they can for as long as they can.

“Always, we want to, if we can, look at administrative reduction,” said Nolte.

And the school system is going to lose eight non-classroom positions, seven teacher assistants and 10 teachers, though they’re frozen positions that former employees have left, not been laid off from.

And now, as he has been throughout the recent budget debate, Nolte is warning that only so much cutting can be done without damage ensuing.

“At some point in time, cuts of that magnitude begin to affect quality and service,” said Nolte. “At some point in time, if you cut off enough parts, things don’t work as well as they did before.”