Canton manufacturer ConMet now hiring

Haywood Community College registration for spring semester is now open for both new and continuing students.

Students will continue having the option of taking hybrid or fully online courses in Spring 2021. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 response, on-campus activities will be limited to primarily technical skills and lab-based courses.

The Computer-Integrated Machining program will start an evening cohort this spring. This program is a great fit for people who enjoy technology but also like to create and build things with their hands. HCC’s Information Technology program is available completely online. With more and more people working from home, a skilled Information Technology professional is behind the scenes to ensure programs are running smoothly and the risk of cyber-attacks are kept low.

For students planning to pursue a four-year degree, working from home during the pandemic is the best way to complete transfer requirements at a fraction of the cost. Instead of putting your degree on hold or taking a gap year, HCC offers classes to keep you on track so that when the time comes, credits will transfer to any college in the University of North Carolina System.

Most students qualify to receive tuition assistance through the HCC Foundation, in addition to federal financial aid programs. For more information about registration, visit www.haywood.edu or email hcc-advising@haywood.edu.

FOR SALE

114 Banjo Hollow Lane • $669,000

JUST LISTED

BY BOYD ALLSBROOK CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Before the Coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns gutted U.S. commerce back in March, the Canton Consolidated Metco manufacturing plant was thriving. This leading supplier of molded plastics for semi-trucks provided nearly 500 jobs for workers in Canton and the surrounding towns. Good manufacturing jobs are harder and harder to come by; that this international corporation would open a branch in Haywood was a major boost to the regional economy.

This all changed as the trucking industry slowed in the chaos of spring 2020. The Canton plant was forced to lay off 120 workers to combat significantly reduced demand for their product. “When we laid the employees off at the end of March that was 100 percent due to Covid,” said Everett Lynch, human resources director at ConMet in Canton. “We just didn’t have the orders because the truck plants were also down.”

Now, however, they’re ramping back up. In a world where online shopping has become the norm, parts for semi-trucks have never been in higher demand.

“If you think about Amazon, we make parts for every truck they have,” said Lynch. This resurgence in shipping has enabled ConMet to rehire every worker they laid off in the spring. “We’ve already brought all of them back,” Lynch said.

Even better, as the economy recovers by the day, ConMet has begun actively hiring new talent.

“Right now, we are in a position where we’re needing additional labor because of where the market’s at,” Lynch said. “We are direct hiring right now.”

This is excellent news for the local economy. Manufacturing jobs are solid indicators of economic health. As plants like ConMet rehire and grow, we can look to the mountains’ postCOVID market at large for recovery.

ConMet’s plant in Bryson City remains closed, however. After stripping the factory down to a skeleton crew in 2018, ConMet’s been largely silent on the future of the Bryson City location. Many one-time workers from Swain now commute to the Haywood County plant.

“We don’t have plans there [Bryson City] at the moment,” said Lynch. “We’re focusing in on Canton.”

Lynch encouraged anyone in search of a job to consider ConMet.

“I don’t think a lot of people know about us,” he said. “Right now, we’re just trying to get our name back out there. We’re an employee-owned company, we have our own stock, our benefits are super competitive. We are direct hiring, and we just want to be the key leader as far as places to work in Haywood county.”

David Francis, head of Haywood County’s economic development council, is excited about the implications of a resurgent ConMet.

“It’s great news for a fast recovery, great news for the town, great news for Haywood county,” he said.

FOR SALE

4894 Soco Road • $375,000

JUST LISTED

737 Setzer Cove Road • $350,000

JUST LISTED

242 Way Up Yonder • $475,000

INVESTORS SPECIAL

Pamela Williams RESIDENTIAL AND COMMERCIAL BROKER ASSOCIATE

Mark Letson. Mark Jones.

Outcome still uncertain for Jackson’s District 4 race

BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER

Election Day results showed Democrat Mark Jones edging Republican Mark Letson by a slim nine-vote margin in the race for the District 4 seat on the Jackson County Board of Commissioners, but Jones’ victory is far from assured.

“I’m holding out hope that we find out on Friday (Nov. 13) that I won,” said Letson.

Jones, meanwhile, has high hopes that he’ll retain his lead.

“I’ve got a nine-vote lead, and my gut tells me that the remaining ballots, if they come out 50-50, I’ll have a nine-vote win,” he said.

Among in-person voters, 336 people cast provisional ballots, votes that are set aside for later verification when there is a question about the voter’s eligibility to vote in the precinct where they show up. Election officials are now researching these ballots, and during the official canvass set to start at 11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 13, the Board of Elections will vote as to which ballots are legitimate and which are not.

Also still in play are the 75 absentee ballots received after the Election Day tally as of Monday, Nov. 9. More than 800 absentee ballots that were sent out for this election have yet to be returned, said Board of Elections Director Lisa Lovedahl, though she is not expecting anywhere near that number of votes to come back. To be counted, absentee ballots must arrive no later than Nov. 12 and be postmarked no later than Nov. 3.

“A lot of those just went ahead and voted in-person instead of returning the absentee ballots,” she explained.

It is likely that absentee votes will favor Jones, who received 72.3 percent of the 2,721 absentee votes counted on Election Day. Provisional ballots, meanwhile, will likely favor Letson, who received 65.2 percent of 3,631 in-person Election Day votes. Early votes cast in-person make up the largest share of the tally and were almost evenly distributed between the candidates, with Jones receiving 49.6 percent and Letson 50.4 percent of the 14,387 votes.

Lovedahl said there should be no issues with the validity of the absentee ballots, but there’s no way to tell how many of the 336 provisional ballots will be accepted until staff research them.

If the votes are still within 1 percent of each other after canvass, the losing candidate has until 5 p.m. the next business day — which in this case would be Monday, Nov. 16 — to request a recount.

Letson said that he expects a recount regardless of the outcome.

“Even if it was flipped the other way, I would hope Mark (Jones) would want to do a recount as well,” he said. “Depending on the canvass results, I should probably go ahead and say I will have a recount.”

“If they (the Board of Elections) said there could be a margin of error, I would have to entertain the idea, and I expect my opponent would too,” Jones agreed.

If a recount is requested, it would likely occur on Wednesday, Nov. 18, said Lovedahl. However, if the large ballot scanner the board has requested from the state is not available on that day, the recount might be held on a different date.

“We’ve already put in a request for one of those, so it should not take as long as the process of having to put back all of those 21,000 ballots we have right now,” she said.

Voter turnout was much higher this year than the 66.98 percent of 28,195 registered voters who turned out in 2016, with turnout this time around coming in at 72.07 percent of 29,593 registered voters.

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Judy Hughes of Franklin is the new Colony Governor for The Society of Mayflower Descendants of WNC. Donated photo

Mayflower anniversary celebrated

Families observing Thanksgiving this month will be following a tradition that arose several hundred years ago from events in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The “First Thanksgiving” took place in the fall of 1621 as Pilgrims celebrated their successful first harvest with local Native Americans.

The Pilgrims, who were seeking a place where they could worship freely, traveled to the New World aboard the British ship Mayflower. The 66-day voyage from Plymouth, England, was grueling and the weather they encountered was harsh. Fortyfive of the 102 passengers aboard the ship died in the first winter.

Nov. 21, 2020 marks the 400th anniversary of the landing of the ship Mayflower.

November is Native American Heritage Month and events adhering to pandemic protocols have been scheduled for Western Carolina University.

Many of the events will be held virtually, with the recognition intended to provide a platform for native peoples to share traditional culture, music, crafts, dance and concepts of life, as well as raise awareness of their history and challenges. The monthlong activities are sponsored by the Cherokee Center, Cherokee Studies Program, Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity Programs, Intercultural Affairs Department and Digali’i i Native American Student Organization.

“This month is an important opportunity to share our cultural values and recognize our place within regional history and the campus On that day, 41 of the men onboard the ship signed the Mayflower Compact consenting to live under a mutually established civil government. That agreement was the first attempt at self-government in the New World and it laid the basis for both the U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

The Society of Mayflower Descendants in WNC is recognizing the 400th anniversary by gifting books about the Mayflower journey and the First Thanksgiving to select libraries in WNC. Judy Hughes of Franklin is the new Colony Governor for WNC. People who think they may be descended from a Pilgrim can contact themayflowersociety.org

WCU celebrates Native American Heritage Month

for help in preparing a genealogy. community,” said Sky Sampson, director of the Cherokee Center, the university’s office for tribal outreach and partnership development, with a broad range of services, including college applications and alumni engagement. “This year, many of the events that traditionally involve gatherings of people will still occur, only in social media and online platforms, or in safe, limited capacity settings.”

Throughout November, WCU will host “The Art of Native Photography Exhibit” in the Intercultural Affairs gallery in the A.K. Hinds University Center. Other scheduled activities include Tribal Identity in Public Settings panel discussion, 5:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9, on Facebook Live and a Native American Heritage Festival, as a social media event, Tuesday, Nov. 17.

WCU’s Cherokee Center is located at 1594 Acquoni Road, Cherokee, and is the headquarters for communication between WCU and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. For more information, contact Sampson at snsampson@wcu.edu or 828.497.7920.

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