“We are in a crisis in North Carolina in terms of affordable housing,” Edwards told Land of Sky Regional Council members last week. “It is rare that I speak to any group of folks where I’m not asked, ‘What are we going to do about the housing in this state?’”
Edwards’ solution, which he says could make buying a home affordable for 1 million North Carolina families, is not going over well with towns in Henderson County or the North Carolina League of Municipalities.
The bill requires cities and counties to permit duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes in all residential districts, including those currently zoned for single-family homes. It also requires local governments to allow an accessory dwelling unit on a lot occupied by a detached single-family home and restricts local government’s use of conditional zoning.
Commissioner Rebecca McCall spearheaded the effort starting in February after she noticed a substantial increase in the amount of roadside trash and larger household discards. There was a box spring and a mattress across from Blue Ridge Community College there was a recliner, she told the Local Government Committee for Cooperative Action last week. So if you needed furniture for your house you were all set. Since then, she said, she s noticed a great improvement.
McCall got a lot of reaction from people who said they, too, had noticed the proliferation of roadside litter. One man called her about a bag of trash someone had collected and left on the roadside near Glenn Marlow Elementary School in Mills River. He said he kept wondering when someone would come pick it up. Then with these words in my head from McCall and her Keep Henderson County Beautiful campaign, I went and picked up the big bag of trash.
Contractors bids ranged from $6.1 million to $7.2 million, Mayor Nick Weedman told the Local Government Committee for Cooperative Action last week. The low bid exceeded the original estimate of $2.6 million by $3.5 million. Because NCDOT rules won t allow a bid award that much higher than the projection at the division level, the job is being rebid out of Raleigh, DOT engineer Lonnie Watkins told the Henderson County Transportation Advisory Committee last week. The contract let date is now May 21.
The construction price does not include right-of-way the state has to acquire from property owners, including part of the Park at Flat Rock owned by the village.
One of the things we ll announce publicly is that we want to consider funding requests from nonprofits, Lapsley told the Local Government Committee for Cooperative Action, a quarterly meeting of elected leaders of the county and five cities. The county plans to draft a common application, he added, that cities could use, too.
Flat Rock Mayor Nick Weedman endorsed the idea of a coordinating committee of representatives from the county and each city that would review applications to prevent a large sum of money flowing to one organization and none to the others.
Lapsley said the county expects to receive the first half of its $22.7 million rescue act allocation in the next 30 days. When they wire that money to us, we will receive a list of restrictions, he said, things that are eligible programs we can consider using those funds for.
A divided nation made its choices in the elections. A long-running zoning dispute over housing on the Tap Root Dairy property finally came to an end while the land-use fight over an asphalt plant in East Flat Rock fizzled to an uncertain resolution. Downtown could be transformed by hotel and parking deck plans that neared the dirt-turning stage as the year drew to a close. Cloaked over every hour of every day from March 3 on was the coronavirus and its wide-ranging impacts. Covid-19 cases devastated long-term care facilities as the virus swept in. The pandemic claimed the Flat Rock Playhouse and Hendersonville Symphony Orchestra seasons, the North Carolina Apple Festival, prep football and more. Here is the Lightning’s annual Top 10 news stories from an unforgettable year.