Larry Griffin
lgriffin@thesmokymountaintimes.com
As of the Tuesday, June 20 Swain County Board of County Commissioners meeting, Commission Chairman Kevin Seagle will have a voting seat on the Swain County Tourism Development Authority (TDA), per new rules the county has passed for that board.
Before the appointment, there was an ideological split between commissioners as to the need for the TDA at all, which reflected their differing values on what the priorities of the county commission should be.
Commissioner Kenneth Parton made a motion to abolish the TDA, reasoning that the county doesn’t need to keep spending more and more on tourism-related marketing.
“I’ve had my fill with the TDA,” he said. “We don’t need the tourism; we don’t need the marketing. We have the casino, we have Cherokee, we have the train, we have lots of marketing. Unless the law is changed, and we can use the money for things besides marketing… tourism is not just a big golden goose that feeds everybody. It takes care of some, but we spend more.”
Parton cited traffic issues, stress on infrastructure and emergency service employees, and a lack of affordable housing as reasons he didn’t think the TDA needs to continue its work.
“We’re not helping our community out by overloading what we have,” he said, adding that it was also a concern for him the county doesn’t have the manufacturing jobs it used to.
This was met with disagreement from three of the other commissioners: Seagle, Roger Parsons and Phillip Carson.
Seagle inquired what would happen to the money the TDA has now if it was shut down. County Manager Kevin King said it would go away, and added that in his opinion, it would be better to take a slower approach to getting rid of the TDA if that’s what all the commissioners ended up wanting to do.
King added that abolishing the TDA would have other effects – as the TDA funds the fly-fishing Museum and the aquarium, employees working in both of those places would lose their jobs if the TDA was nixed.
Parsons said he thought it would not be a good idea to simply get rid of the TDA.
“It’s our economic engine,” he said. “I don’t know if we have anything that could take its place.”
Commissioner David Loftis was the only other commissioner in favor of Parton’s idea to abolish the TDA, saying the tourism had the effect of splitting the town in half, where locals mostly lived on one side and the other was solely for tourism.
“Is this what the majority of the people want?” he asked.
But as the commission took the issue to a vote, it failed 2-3, with Loftis and Parton voting for it and the rest voting against.
Seagle joins TDA
Then, Seagle was appointed as the commissioner who will sit on the board of the TDA. This comes as the county recently passed a change to the TDA rules to have a commissioner as one of the board members in an attempt to make sure the TDA’s decisions are in-line with the county’s goals.
The TDA has objected to this, saying that the commissioners could easily just attend their meetings as regular guests.
Seagle himself did not seem too enthused about it, saying he would only do it if no one else wanted to.
The vote came down 3-2, with Parton and Loftis voting against.
“I promise I did not want on this board,” Seagle said with a laugh.
Recognizing a long-term library worker
The beginning of the meeting saw a recognition for long-term library employee Diann Ball, who is retiring after 50 years.
Ball started her career Feb. 3, 1973, and said she had been happy to serve the area for so long and have been able to live in town while doing so.
She said she had watched the library grow into a vital service for everyone, not just for checking out books but as “a service to our whole geographic area.”
Board appointments
Otherwise, the meeting was relatively uneventful, with few decisions made except for the commissioners going through appointments for various boards, including the Broadband Advisory Committee, the Dangerous Dogs Review Board, the Four Square Board and the Nursing Home/CAC Board.
On the TDA, three board members’ term limits were coming up – Janene “Pooh” Lancaster, Jeremiah Wiggins and Erin Smith. One new member, Jason Boston, was nominated, too. The commissioners chose to reappoint Wiggins and Smith as well as add Boston to the board.
For the Marianna Black Library, employee Stephanie Rodeck chose not to stay on, so the commissioners added Christian Siewers as a new employee there.
Whittier HVAC issues
The commissioners also heard a request for the Whittier Community Building, in need of $8,000 to fix its HVAC issues.
According to documents from the Whittier Community Building board, the current system they have is “very old” and everything they can do currently is tantamount to “just putting a Band-aid on it.”
Loftis said he’d like to get someone associated with the community building to come and speak with the board at a workshop in the future before they voted on the matter. The other commissioners agreed, and no decision was made.