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Duke grant will help Mills River watershed

Henderson County News

LIGHTNING REVIEW: 'Chasing Rainbows' was born here

Chasing Rainbows: The Road to Oz opens with a brief glimpse of the end, which is a good thing. The road to Oz is mighty hard for Judy Garland and company. It’s good to know ahead of time that she makes it.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

Chuckin' it: Filing opens amid departures

Things are rockin' in the new early signup period for local and state elections.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

Rep. Whitmire won't run for re-election

State Rep. Chris Whitmire is leaving his state House seat to take a civilian job related to his Air Force background.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

Chuck Edwards files for state Senate

Chuck Edwards, a Hendersonville business owner and past president of the Henderson County Chamber of Commerce, on Tuesday filed for the  state Senate seat incumbent Tom Apodaca plans to vacate at the end of his seventh term.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

APODACA BOWING OUT

State Sen. Tom Apodaca, a political novice who rose over the past 14 years from back bench anonymity to become one of the most powerful legislators ever to serve from Hendersonville, announced on Monday that he is not running for re-election next year.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

Singleton Centre is now Flat Rock Square

FLAT ROCK — The Singleton Centre has been bought by a commercial real estate broker who promises improved signage and more coordinated shopping events by the center’s tenants.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

Ask Matt ... about local SAT scores

Q. I read where Henderson County students scored the 12th highest SAT scores in the state. Great, but there is a missing piece. How many took the test compared with all the other school systems? This year 374 Henderson County high school students took the SAT, only 44 percent of eligible test-takers. In Buncombe County, 51 percent took the test, but in Polk County only 39 percent sat for it. Wake County (Raleigh) had one of the highest rates at 67 percent. The national average is 52 percent. Henderson County’s test-takers have dropped steadily in the past two years. Assistant School Superintendant Kathy Revis offered that the decline may have to do with the new state mandate that all high school juniors in North Carolina take the ACT — the new kid on the block. Born in 1959 doesn’t sound new, but the SAT was around back in 1901. The ACT and SAT are big competitors and in 2012 the ACT passed its rival. No wonder; the ACT landed sweet contracts with 18 states including North Carolina.A general difference in the tests is that the SAT is trickier, tougher in math and emphasizes verbal abilities and critical thinking. The ACT is more straightforward. It is curriculum-based, measuring what a student learned in class. Currently the SAT penalizes you for wrong answers but the ACT lets you guess your heart away counting only correct answers! Who doesn’t love that?The SAT is not your father’s aptitude test. In fact, they dropped “Aptitude” in the formal name and now call it College Board. Next year changes will kick in that will make it more like the ACT and the dreaded writing test on the SAT will now be optional. Students who want to augment their ACT scores can still take the SAT and a high score there might give them an edge over students who opted out.Either test is accepted by each of our state’s 18 public universities. Yet some 200 schools such as Wake Forest University don’t require either test. It seems that many have found that test scores are not a guarantee of student performance. The bonus? Not taking the SAT will save a student about $50 a pop.Want to play college sports? Freshmen, of course, have minimum eligibility standards, but Division I schools use a sliding scale whereby an applicant can offset low test scores with a high grade point average and vice-versa. Maybe if you play sports in high school and don’t study much, they’ll take you if you’re really, really smart. I’m not sure how that works if you play in the band.     Read Story »

Henderson County News

St. Gerard House 'Expanding Hope' in new space

St. Gerard House has launched a campaign to raise $935,000 to expand autism programs in a house it bought across the street from its Grotto School.   Read Story »

Mills River News

Coroner issues cause of death in festival fatality

The 35-year-old man who was found in a pond at a Mills River festival last summer died of injuries to his head and neck likely caused by a dive into shallow water, the state medical examiner and a sheriff’s official said. The medical examiner, in a report obtained by the Hendersonville Lightning through a public records request, said Jay Houston Marx, of Tryon, died of “blunt force injuries of head and neck.” The medical examiner ruled the death accidental.Marx “was attending an outdoor music festival notorious for involving alcohol and drug use,” the coroner said. “He was last seen alive late night July 18 by his girlfriend. He was found dead in (a) pond” at 2 p.m. the next day.“There’s nothing really suspicious about this,” said sheriff’s Maj. Frank Stout said. “It appears that they found him floating in the lake up there and his injuries are consistent with diving off the platform or the boat and hitting the bottom of the shallow pond. We have found noting to indicate anything different.”The Transformus festival had rented the Deerfields property on the western end of South Mills River Road for the four-day festival. Brothers Gregory and John J. Redden rent the 890-acre property for festivals, weddings and other events under lease agreements that obligate the renters to provide security, emergency services, garbage collection and other management of the site, their attorney said when the Henderson County Planning Department was discussing festival permits last month.The county planning staff and the sheriff’s office are working on a rewrite of the county zoning code to require more stringent permitting for festivals, including those held at Deerfields and at Oskar Blues REEB bicycle and camping retreat on Crab Creek Road. On the same weekend last July, Marx was found dead at Deerfields and Oskar Blues’ “Burning Can” craft beer festival had alcohol permitting issues and traffic problems. The sheriff’s office said it was stretched thin responding to two festivals on the same weekend drawing thousands of people.“We’re just looking for consistency in the permitting process (to ensure) that every venue would have to have some type of security and emergency operations, a plan for emergency services and rescue if something did happen,” Stout said. “With the amount of venues that are in and around Henderson County we are just looking in each venue to have somewhat of a standard plan of operation and a plan of contact so we know what’s going on before these events happen.”During the Planning Board meeting last month, Bill Alexander, the Reddens’ attorney, said his clients require emergency medical support and traffic control for all festivals that use the property. Alexander declined to comment on the autopsy report’s characterization of the alcohol and drug use. The Reddens could not be reached by press time.Dutch Owen of Sylva, the president of Transformus LLC, told the Planning Board that his organization had run the events responsibly and wanted to continue using the Mills River land for its annual festival.   Read Story »

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