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Activists to protest at Sen. Tillis's office here

Hendersonville Politics

LIGHTNING EDITORIAL: Charting a path for the city's growth

City Manager John Connet delivered what amounted to a “State of the City” address before the Planning Board on Monday.   Read Story »

Hendersonville Politics

Volk, Stephens urged no vote on county's HHS plan

In advance of a crucial up-and-down vote, Hendersonville Mayor Barbara Volk and Councilman Ron Stephens urged Henderson County School Board members to vote no on the construction plan for Hendersonville High School that the Board of Commissioners had approved. The calls came in the days before the School Board voted, under pressure from the commissioners, to endorse the $53 million construction plan that abandons the historic core classroom building and auditorium as a part of the county’s oldest high school.School Board members said in interviews this week that they had received calls from both Volk and Stephens. Two members who spoke with the Hendersonville Lightning, Rick Wood and Michael Absher, voted in favor of the county-endorsed construction plan. Chair Amy Lynn Holt, the most outspoken advocate for continued use of the old Stillwell-designed classroom, said she was aware of the calls but had not received one herself. She assumed that may have been because “they figured they had my no vote.”“They basically were encouraging us to not go to forward — to vote no,” said School Board member Michael Absher, who voted with the 4-2 majority for the HHS plan the commissioners first OK’d last spring. “They just felt like they didn’t want to be put in an awkward positon.”Absher wasn’t happy with the communication from Volk and Stephens.“It kind of really irritated me,” he said, “…based on public officials shouldn’t be calling another public official trying to sway their vote. I didn’t think it was right. You didn’t hear the county commissioners calling me and saying, ‘Hey, you got to vote this way.’”(Commissioners had made their position known publicly by demanding the School Board take an up or down vote on the HHS plan and pledging shelve the plans of the School Board voted no.)“Yes, she did give me a call,” Wood said. “I don’t remember the particulars so I’d rather not quote her. If I remember correctly the overall tone I got was that she would prefer we voted to stop it so that the city didn’t have to make a decision on it. I don’t remember if she said she was speaking as an individual. When Ron Stephens called me he did make it clear like he did in the School Board meeting that he was speaking as an individual and not as a member of the City Council. She didn’t put bigtime pressure. I just got the feeling she would prefer that if we voted to stop it the city wouldn’t have to deal with it.” ‘What our voters want’ In one call, Volk suggested that the will of city voters is against the county’s HHS plans.“I just for very selfish reasons hope that you would vote against the proposal for Hendersonville High School Monday night,” she said in a voice mail she left with one School Board member. “That throws it into the City Council’s lap and I know it would be very defensive for us and (it) very well might get turned down for problems with the parking and what our voters want. I know it’s a difficult situation for you and I wish you the very best at that meeting and thank you for your consideration.”In an interview on Monday, Volk confirmed she had made the calls to School Board members.“I called some of them just explaining (that) I hoped they would turn it down because it was going to put the City Council in such an awkward position,” she said. “It was so controversial and they were putting the decision off on the council. It was putting us between our citizens and the voters. I hoped they would just wait until the strong feelings calmed down and it would be discussed in a less emotional fashion.”Stephens defended his public statement at the Dec. 12 School Board meeting in which he accused the Board of Commissioners of bullying the School Board into accepting the all-new HHS plan.Both Stephens and Volk say they saw nothing in their efforts that would disqualify them from hearing and voting on an expected zoning request for the new school.“No, I am not” disqualified, Stephens said. “Before I did that I met with our city attorney and he agreed that if I stated at the beginning that I’m not there as a representative of the city but as a taxpayer and a concerned citizen it would not be (a conflict). I never mentioned the zoning. The only way I ever mentioned the high school is that I asked them to postpone that and my main reason was to to ask them to do the (Edneyville) grammar school first. And I am convinced that they are violating the law and I think that’s very disturbing. I feel like the Board of Education let the county commissioners bully them and I think they joined the county commissioners in violating the law. I wasn’t even thinking about the zoning. That’s not the reason I was there.”Stephens acknowledged that the zoning applicants may object to his comments and to Volk’s behind-the-scenes lobbying.“They may try to make an issue out of it but the city attorney strongly feels like I am not disqualified,” he said.City Attorney Sam Fritschner said attorney-client privilege barred him from answering a reporter’s questions about the matter.“I can’t answer that for you,” he said when asked if their comments would disqualify Stephens and Volk. “I can only give legal advice to my clients.” Nor could he confirm, he said, whether he had spoken with Stephens and/or Volk about their right to express an opinion about the HHS project in advance of a council decision on the matter. Fact-based hearing Mayor Volk said she has not made up her mind about the project and emphasized that in the quasi-judicial setting of a special-use permit her opinion doesn’t matter.“It’s not something that I can really talk about one way or the other because it is quasi-judicial,” she said. “We have to consider what is presented to us at the meeting. We have to go by what the ordinances say. If they can prove that they have abided by all the requirements it would get approved. If they can’t prove it, they would have to go back and make some modifications before we could approve it.”In fact, she predicted that HHS supporters may be frustrated that the council won’t be able to vote no just because some members disagree with the decision not to use the historic building.“In a quasi-judicial hearing we really have to look at the law and whether they have proved that they have fulfilled” what the city ordinance requires. “It’s not just our opinion (or the council’s view that) I don’t like this,” she said. “It’s kind of like a court case. It has to be legally binding. You can’t consider what people would like to see. It has to be what the law will allow. That’s why we have to be very careful. We’ll just wait and see what happens.”Absher also said the city had sent a letter on city letterhead expressing opposition to the county commission-approved plan. The Lightning obtained a copy of the letter. The undated letter was on plain paper and sent to the School Board in a city of Hendersonville envelope. The letter heading said it was from “A Taxpayer and Voter in Henderson County” and was intended for School Board members. “Please vote against the plan the Henderson County commissioners are trying to force upon the taxpayers and HHS,” it said. EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to Stephens' last name as Edwards.   Read Story »

Hendersonville Politics

THE TOP 10: No. 1 and No. 2

2. A taxing year The Henderson County Board of Commissioners, self-styled fiscal conservatives, raised the property tax rate by 5 cents per $100 valuation and charted a course for more than $100 million worth of capital projects in the coming years. The work includes the new Innovative High School on the BRCC campus, Hendersonville High School construction, a new emergency management headquarters, Edneyville Elementary School construction and the law enforcement training center. Early in 2016 commissioners expressed support for a quarter-cent local option sales tax that they said would reduce the need to rely on the property tax. But when commissioners Bill Lapsley and Grady Hawkins failed to win a commitment from the full board to tie a property tax rollback to voter approval of the sales tax, the referendum became an orphan with no support. No one mounted a campaign in in favor of the tax. Voters defeated it by 34 percentage points. Mills River taxpayers saw an even bigger tax increase. A year-long dispute with the Board of Commissioners over the cost of police coverage by the sheriff’s office ended when the Mills River Town Council acquiesced to a new contract. The town looked at providing garbage service, at a cost of $712,000 to $950,000, but a survey found that three out of five town residents favored police coverage instead. To pay for the service, which rises to $775,000 in the third year of the agreement, the Town Council raised property taxes by 6.76 cents per $100 valuation. In December the council received a report from Sheriff McDonald that deputies had investigated 6,338 crime reports through Dec. 1, compared to 4,273 for all of 2015 and 3,586 in 2014. 1. Hendersonville High School It was clear a year ago that a major construction plan for Hendersonville High School would be a big topic in 2016. The Board of Commissioners signaled early in the year that it considered the high school a high priority. The project suddenly got fast-tracked during commissioners’ budget drafting in the spring and soon it turned into the hottest political story of the year. The controversy lasted all year and shows no sign of letting up in the new year. Led by Carey O’Cain, a retired construction project estimator and manager, and current president Bill Orr, the HHS Alumni Association pushed for a combination renovation-new construction plan that O’Cain said would preserve the historic Stillwell building for classroom use, cost less and provide more parking. Despite their efforts, commissioners voted for the new “state of the art” high school on the old Boyd car dealership property and twice more ratified the decision. After a five-hour meeting on Aug. 17 commissioners voted to stick with their original plan. After a Sept. 12 meeting, the School Board sent a letter to the Board of Commissioners making a new Edneyville Elementary School the top priority and reiterating support for the renovation option for HHS. After a joint meeting with School Board on Nov. 16, commissioners again endorsed the new construction option. On Dec. 5, commissioners demanded that the newly elected School Board conduct an up-or-down vote on HHS. A no vote, commissioners said, would mean that the county would shelve the project. On Dec. 12, the School Board voted 4-2 to endorse all-new construction. The issue goes next to the Hendersonville Planning Board and City Council.   Read Story »

Henderson County Politics

HHS alumni could block construction at City Council

Fresh off a narrow victory at the Henderson County School Board, advocates of the all-new construction plan for Hendersonville High School are facing a possible veto by the Hendersonville City Council.   Read Story »

Hendersonville Politics

SCHOOL BOARD ENDORSES NEW HHS IN 4-2 VOTE

The Henderson County School Board voted 4-2 in favor of building an all-new Hendersonville High School, averting a power struggle with the Board of Commissioners over school construction authority. Although the School Board's vote ended a nearly year-long conflict between the two elected bodies over HHS and school construction priorities, the action was not the last word on the HHS project. The next step is the Hendersonville Planning Board and City Council, where HHS alumni hope to make one last stand short of a lawsuit against the renovation plan on the grounds of safety and a lack of parking. It was close to a full house at the Henderson County school administration building as the School Board gets ready to make what's expected to be an up-or-down vote on the Hendersonville High School construction. Twenty-one people signed up to speak, nearly all advocates for saving the historic core building. Rick Wood, a potential swing vote, spoke in favor of moving ahead with both Edneyville and HHS. "Imagine, five years from now, we had a new Edneyville Elementary School that the students and teachers are enjoying," he said. It would be safe and secure with a new library, cafeteria and gym, "a source of pride to the community that lost its high school in 1993." At the same time, HHS students would be enjoying a new building with large classrooms, the latest in technology, a new media center, cafeteria, new gymnasiums and and a new auditorium. ""How can we make it happen?" Wood said. "I hope tonight listening to public comment that we can find a way to move forward toward that vision." Walt Cottingham, a longtime HHS world geography teacher and father of HHS graduates, said the issue of community was most important. The faculty heard about all the options in a meeting earlier this year. "In this meeting one unanimous vote was taken in opposition to an all-new school on the Boyd lot," he said. School faculty, alumni and the the School Board favored other options. "Then the commissioners in a show of imperial might threw all the proposals away," he said. He urged the county commissioners to build a school "that celebrates the past and celebrates the future of our school." Former School Board member Melissa Maurer, an HHS graduate, recalled that the School Board and county commissioners cooperated on buying the Boyd property. "At no time did we consider abandoning the Stillwell building or building on the furthest corner of the Boyd dealership property," she said. "In my opinion the commissioners have overstepped their authority and if you say Edneyville is first you need to stand by that. Do not be bullied. Do not succumb to veiled or not so veiled threats." "To place that building on the edge of one of the busiest highways is unthinkable," said Kim Heery. "Are you willing to risk even one student being injured or worse? ... Please do not let your judgment be clouded by fancy buildings and empty threats." Don Ward, a former county commissioner, said he was shiocked to hear about the conditions from lunchroom workers when he toured Edneyville Elementary School on Monday. "They said in the summertime it gets 115 degrees," he said. "We don't have to worry about flies because they can't fly. We can't use but one microwave at a time because if we use two it blows a fuse and knocks a breaker off." Security also poses a threat, he said. "If I was an attorney in Henderson County I would be in the parking lot passing out cards," he said. Ron Stephens, a City Council member who emphasized that he was not speaking for the council, urged the School Board to "stand up to bullying" and vote no on the new construction plan. "I have heard many things tonight and I agree with all of them about what this board should do," he said. Edneyville "sounds like a third world country and it needs to be handled first. ... "If you don't vote no you are joining the county commissioners in violating the state law. I read the state law. I think a 6th grader would read that and understand what you are assigned to do and elected to do. "The other issue is bullying." When bullied "you either stand up to them or it will get worse," he said. "And I think this is a class case of bullying. The Board of Commissioners are bullying. Unless you vote no you will be joining them in making a bad decision and violating state law." Chris Stepp, an attorney, read a statement from former state Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, a 1964 HHS graduate, that reinforced Orr's previously offered legal opinion that the School Board, not the county commissioners, has the authority to make decisions on school construction. Boyce "Blondie" Whitmire Jr. used a cane to walk to the lectern and address the School Board. Whitmire and his brothers have more 170 years of service to the school system in teaching, coaching and administration "and five us belong to the Henderson County Education Hall of Fame." A principal for 28 years, Whitmire urged the board to reject the Boyd lot and preserve the historic core. The board began its deliberation on the issue with a motion by Mary Louise Corn to endorse the new construction. Blair Craven said he had received assurances that "If we do table this and we do vote no that there's no repercussions. If we were to say let's go ahead with Edneyville.... we can have Edneyville completely done in 26 months. That's not 2021. That's 2019. That is significantly sooner than the commissioners would lead you to believe. Hendersonville High School is its own issue." When Corn asked who made the assurances, Craven responded: "I met with Mike Edney on Saturday for coffee and he assured me thare's not going to be any type of vendetta, we're not cutting the budget or anything of that nature." Lisa Edwards, one of three members who had supported new construction, said she still believed that new construction was the right option but objected to commissioners' decision to delay the Edneyville work. "There are 5- and 6-year-olds walking in holes between buildings," Edwards said. "I will not support that and that's why I will be voting no." Michael Absher, like Blair a newly elected member, said he had met with all five county commissioners and heard their promises that Edneyville would start immediately after HHS construction. "I received 117 phone calls since the county sent out that letter, two thirds of those were primarily for Edneyville," he said. "They are looking at how they're going to fund the Edneyville project.  I love the tradition of HHS but after touring some of the high school I would have to support that we do support a new Hendersonville High School." Wood spoke in favor of the new school. "Even though the two projects are not linked I believe the county commissioners will be much more agreeable to consider that new school option (for Edneyville) versus renovation if we support their plan on Hendersonville High School," he said, drawing  hoots of derision. "Another factor in my decision was the promise that the historic Stillwell building will be preserved for use to be determined by the School Board," including the idea of a ninth grade academy. Corn announced her support for the new HHS, becoming the fourth yes vote. Voting yes were Corn, Wood, Absher and Colby Coren. Voting no were Craven and Edwards. The chair, under School Board bylaws, does not vote. Coren said the future of schools was more important than making a statement about the School Board's authority. "Based on current estimates of projects, over $100 million will be allocated by Commissioners for the Innovative High School, HHS, and Edneyville projects for our school system," he said. "It’s no secret that school systems across the country struggle to obtain funding for even the basic necessities. We are blessed to live in a county that sees the importance of providing for our children. The bottom line is this: sometimes, in order to do what is best for everyone, we need help. Is voting to move forward with new construction at Hendersonville relinquishing our boards control and authority? You could see it that way. Or, you could see it as I choose to, as an opportunity for our board to say, despite our differences, we are going to move forward and continue to work together for the sake of our students! I am not willing to gamble with the safety and well-being of children to prove our control and authority."     Read Story »

Hendersonville Politics

Holt elected School Board chair

Amy Lynn Holt, a Hendersonville High School parent and the board's most vocal advocate for saving the historic core building for HHS use, was elected chair of the Henderson County School Board Monday night. In a 5-2 vote, board members elected Holt over Mary Louise Corn, the top vote getter in the Nov. 8 election and a former West Henderson High School principal. In electing Holt, the board chose a leader who has argued strongly that the Board of Commissioners had usurped its authority by overriding the School Board's recommendation on school construction priorities and design. The School Board voted 4-3 for a renovation-new construction option that would have saved the Erle Stillwell-designed classroom building and auditorium for future HHS students. Instead, commissioners voted unanimously for a new construction plan that would preserve the historic building for a future unspecified use. The School Board also has voted to put Edneyville Elementary School ahead of the HHS construction, a ranking that the Board of Commissioners also rejected.           Read Story »

Henderson County Politics

Meadows confirms bid for Freedom Caucus chair

U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows on Wednesday confirmed what the Washington press corps had been reporting for several weeks. He is officially running to chair the House Freedom Caucus, a Tea Party-oriented group that has sought to steer the Republican leadership to a more conservative agenda. “The coming year will be a critical period for the Freedom Caucus, and I am humbled at the opportunity to speak with our members and hopefully earn their support for chairman," Meadows, who won a third term in the Nov. 8 election, said in a news release. "From day one since our founding almost two years ago, the mission of the Freedom Caucus has been to give a voice to the countless Americans who feel that Washington does not represent them. Our members are committed to developing and advancing a policy driven agenda that supports accountable and limited government, Constitutional rule of law, and principles that foster the liberty, safety, and prosperity of Americans. I look forward to hopefully earning the support of my colleagues and to building on the great work of my good friend, Jim Jordan, as we continue working to return our government to its rightful owner: the American people.” Reports from Washington since before the election have said that Meadows has strong support among his Freedom Caucus colleagues and that he appeared to have a clear path if he ran for the chair's seat.   Read Story »

Henderson County Politics

Sun shines on opening of Health Sciences Center

Rain was the theme 20 months ago when officials gathered for the groundbreaking of the three-story health sciences building on the Pardee Hospital campus and it was the theme again Tuesday morning — for a while. Rain fell for the first time in three months on Tuesday but as if on cue the sun came out just as the ceremonial ribbon-cutting finished up at 11:20 a.m.Hundreds of people gathered to celebrate the opening of the Health Sciences Center heard local officials praise the unprecedented five-party agreement that resulted in the building.“We want to welcome everyone to this beautiful facility in the city of Hendersonville,” said Mayor Barbara Volk. “That’s one of the things that we’re most pleased with is that it’s here in the city of Hendersonville.”When Wingate University began looking for bigger quarters, city officials scrambled to make sure the college didn’t leave the city. In the meantime, County Manager Steve Wyatt, then-Wingate president Jerry McGee, Pardee CEO Jay Kirby and BRCC president Molly Parkhill began working on an ambitious and unprecedented effort to cooperate on a major building that would serve them all.“It’s amazing when we pick up the paper today and see the divisiveness around the country and sometimes in our own community what can happen when you check your egos at the door,” said Pardee CEO Jay Kirby. “The fact that our county, the city, Wingate, Blue Ridge, Pardee all came together, put their egos at the door and did what was best for our community, for our patients and for our teachers and what you are standing in today is a reflection of that — nothing more, nothing less.”The Comprehensive Cancer Center, using Pardee oncologists and those from UNC Health Care, will “bring advanced healing close to home,” Kirby added. “We treat over 500 cancer patients each year. Eighty-five to 90 percent of all cancers on this earth can be treated in this building.”Wingate President Rhett Brown recalled a meeting early in the process when he visited Hendersonville and asked Wyatt, “Tell me again what we’re doing up here?”“And he said, ‘Walk with me.’ So we walked outside and we were standing in beautiful downtown Hendersonville and he put his arm around me and he said, ‘Imagine, if you will, that a young person born in Henderson County could not leave Henderson County and become a pharmacist, physician assistant or nurse anesthetist in our county.’ And it was at that point that I got the vision.”Brown thanked his predecessor, McGee, and Wyatt for their dedication to the project.“It was their shared vision and their sheer tenacity that brought us to this day,” he said. “Wingate University in Henderson County will eternally be grateful.”   Read Story »

Hendersonville Politics

School Board grudgingly accepts new HHS

If the road to this point had not been so contentious, three other high school districts in Henderson County might well be grumbling about what the $53 million Taj Mahal Hendersonville High School is getting. The county rivals may yet look upon it with envy when the doors open to students in August of 2020.   Read Story »

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