While many local school districts are struggling to make ends meet these days, Swain County Schools is facing a much steeper battle to qualify for state and federal funds the district feels its students deserve. 

“We’re struggling as most boards are trying to look at our financial situation and fund things we crucially need,” said Superintendent Sam Pattillo.

Jackson County Schools has found itself at the back of the line to get a piece of the quarter-cent sales tax voters passed last year.

A little rain couldn’t drown out the voices of a small group of protestors who gathered at the Historic Haywood County Courthouse on Tax Day, April 18, to demand President Donald Trump release his tax returns.

Sylva is just starting budget planning for 2017-18, but this year’s process promises to be less arduous than last year’s, when revenue uncertainty and the need for a tax rate increase clouded the enterprise.

Canton officials and town staff met for four hours Feb. 16 to discuss achievements and goals, but will have to spend even more time discussing revenues and expenditures.

It isn’t often that citizens avail themselves of the public comment session offered by local governments.

About 58 percent of voters in Swain County voted against increasing the sales tax from 6.75 percent to 7 percent.

Harris Regional Hospital saw its tax value slashed by 36 percent in the minutes before Jackson County’s Board of Equalization Review adjourned for the year, and while its new $27.2 million value is still more than twice the $13 million the hospital had argued it was worth, it’s quite a drop from the original $42.3 million appraisal.  

At least one local property owner plans to take advantage of a new law allowing for withdrawal from Waynesville’s Municipal Service District.

Swain County residents will get to decide whether the county can levy an additional quarter-cent sales tax when they vote during the Nov. 8 general election.