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Don't miss this week's Hendersonville Lightning (98)

Henderson County News

Noted sculptor dies as statue is dedicated

James Killian Spratt, the Hendersonville sculptor whose work included the recently completed bronze statue honoring Korean War Medal of Honor winner Charles George, died on Saturday — minutes into the dedication of his life-sized sculpture of the war hero at the V.A. Medical Center that bears his name. He was 66.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

Veterans thanked for 'the forgotten victory'

When WWII began, Bill Teal was 18 years old, unaware that he was about to fight in some of the most crucial battles in an epic conflict that shaped the 20th century. At age 93 — 70 years after the war ended — Teal got to see the memorial to his war for the first time.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

Ask Matt ... about lottery scratch-off tricks

Q. I keep seeing this funky TV ad with a guy in a calendar costume doing a jig for new scratch-off lottery tickets every first Tuesday of the month. What does he mean by that?   Read Story »

Henderson County News

County Commission chair recognized for continuing ed

Henderson County Board of Commissioners Chairman Thomas “Tommy” Thompson was recently recognized by the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners for meeting the Practitioner level in the Local Elected Leaders Academy.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

Village drops idea of
 relocating playground

FLAT ROCK — Among the ideas for noise reduction at the Park at Flat Rock are sound barriers, plugging a tunnel or moving the playground farther away from a neighborhood.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

School Board 
stands by plan that maintains
 Stillwell core

In a letter it sent to the Board of Commissioners last week seeking clarification of commissioners’ direction on use of the Hendersonville High School, the Henderson County School Board expressed support for a full renovation of the core classroom building and opposition to joint use of the facility by school administration and students.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

Don't miss this week's Hendersonville Lightning (97)

You won't want to miss this week’s Hendersonville Lightning.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

Commissioners shoot down waste-control ordinance

The Henderson County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday killed a proposal that would have required that waste collected in the county stay in the county, a measure the county manager and solid waste officials had proposed to shore up the money-losing landfill.Commissioners Charlie Messer, Grady Hawkins and Bill Lapsley all said that the flow control wasn’t needed or that other solutions were less disruptive to the market. Commissioner Michael Edney said the ordinance would penalize Laurel Park, which contracts with a private hauler to pick up garbage.“I believe that the cost of operating the recycling center should be borne by all the taxpayers and the tipping fee should be reduced to where our neighbors are at, and I think if we did those two things we wouldn’t have to worry about the tonnage going outside the county,” said Lapsley, who supports instead an annual fee that all taxpayers would pay to balance the solid waste budget.Hawkins said his check of the county budget so far this fiscal year shows that the net revenue is $800,000 over expenses.“That in itself I guess based on good work of the solid waste folks in my mind doesn’t necessitate any kind of additional ordinance at this time,” he said. “In addition to that, we have had a huge tax increase in this county. If we need to increase spending because of the federal or state, we certainly have the funds for that.”The ordinance, which has been in the works for a year and a half, would have required licensed haulers who serve any part of unincorporated Henderson County to dump the waste at the county landfill, which has a higher tipping fee than neighboring counties. The ordinance would not have applied to city of Hendersonville, which has its own sanitation department, but would have increased garbage collection cost in Laurel Park, which contracts with a commercial hauler to pick up waste in the city. The ordinance was needed, county officials said, to balance the landfill budget, which is set up to run on a pay-as-you-go basis. That cost includes not only the cost of hauling the waste to its ultimate destination — a landfill in South Carolina — but also the free disposal of household recycling and the future liability of landfill even after it’s closed.“You are dealing with federal and state mandates that say you will monitor the landfill for the rest of time and when they find that, for example, groundwater shows signs of having solid waste deposits, you will have to deal with that,” County Attorney Russ Burrell said. An array of recycling, from appliances to household hazardous waste, are all controlled by government regulations, he added. “There are lots and lots of things that cannot be landfilled,” he said, and must be dealt with in a more expensive way.County Commissioner Charlie Messer opposed the ordinance, saying he could only support it if the county lowered the tipping fee to match Buncombe County’s, which is $10 less per ton. Commissioners defeated the so-called flow control ordinance after three speakers expressed strong oppostion. "The monopolilzation of the transfer station seems a desperate attempt to continue operation of an inefficient facility," said William Vine, a resident. "The transfer station faces about a 10 percent deficit in spit of charging 25 percent more than adjacent counties. The proposal is a classic example of government overreach, making a bad situation worse by failure to understand how enterprise works." The flow control ordinance gave an opportunity for Vine to further castigate the commissioners for enacting a 5-cent tax increase, for the "sudden appearance of new spending not adequately vetted or prioritized" and for supporting a quarter-cent local option sales tax. "To add insult to injury, the commissioners usurped the power of the School Board to plan and execute the renovation of the high school," instead choosing a plan that is "more expensive than the more popular designs," Vine added.     Read Story »

Henderson County News

Weather Channel to feature Hendersonville in fall celebration

Hendersonville is among four cities across the U.S. that will be featured when the Weather Channel celebrates the first day of fall on Thursday.   Read Story »

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