ANDREWS
Spring Fling set Saturday
The annual Andrews Spring Fling & Nature Expo will be held from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, when Main Street will be awash in vibrant colors among 75 vendor booths.
Be among the thousands of folks who enjoy the sunshine and browsing a wide variety of arts and crafts. The Spring Fling will feature plenty of live music, including The Steve Jordan Band, Betty Vaughn & Friends, The Brothers Grimsley and Music Express. And when your tummy starts growling, head over to one of several food trucks on site.
New to the Spring Fling this year will be the first Doxie Derby, at Main and Walnut streets across from the Andrews Public Library from noon-4 p.m. Dress up your wiener dog up in their best outfit, enter the contest for $20 and enjoy bragging rights for a year.
There will also be plenty of activities for kids, including a bounce house, Gyro-ride and face-painting. Step into the photo booth that will be setup, and the picture that gets the most votes will win a gift card.
The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission will be displaying a 300-gallon tank containing Rocky the Hellbender – a giant salamander. If gardening is your thing, be sure to stop by and check out the Garden Club’s plant sale. There will also be a variety of educational seminars throughout the day at the chamber office.
Everyone is invited to come out and enjoy the day. The rain date is Sunday. This event is presented by the Andrews Chamber of Commerce and Virtualstorefronts.com.
BLAIRSVILLE, Ga.
New Home & Garden Show
The spring 2022 Home & Garden Show is coming to the Union County Sports Center from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday.
See the newest in home improvement products and services, furnishings, accessories and all the latest from patio to pool, inside and out. Free admission and parking.
The center is at 519 Industrial Blvd., across from Union County High School. The Cherokee Scout is one of the sponsors. For details, visit hgshows.net.
RALEIGH
Data shows lead in water
Lead contamination of school drinking water is more pervasive than previously thought, according to testing data from across the nation published Thursday by the Environment North Carolina Research & Policy Center, which urged North Carolina public officials and school officials to take swift action to “get the lead out” of schools’ drinking water.
“Wherever there are fountains, pipes or plumbing made with lead, there is a risk of contamination,” said Krista Early, advocate with the Policy Center. “So alarmingly but not surprisingly, as more schools test, they are finding this potent neurotoxin in the water our kids drink every day.”
North Carolina still has very limited data on testing results. While Cherokee County Schools are not over the limit, you can find your child’s school and whether it has reported test results online at https://www.cleanwaterforcarolinakids.org/data.
Schools can start preventing contamination by replacing fountains with water bottle stations that have lead-removing filters, Early said. Installing these filtered water stations would only cost a fraction of the nearly $110 billion in federal stimulus that school districts are receiving.
MURPHY
Debates set at courthouse
The Cherokee County Republican Party is planning the following debates at the courthouse before the primary election Tuesday, May 17.
All debates will start at
6 p.m. and will be streamed online by the Cherokee Scout. GOP Chair Leo Phillips will be the moderator. Early voting starts Thursday, April 28.
- Thursday, April 21: County commissioner candidates.
- Tuesday, April 26: Board of education candidates.
All candidates and the public are invited to attend live or watch via the Scout’s Facebook page. Debates with candidates for sheriff and register of deeds were held Tuesday night.
MURPHY
‘Politics on the Porch’
Cherokee County Board of Commissioners candidate John Worden is inviting the public to attend “Politics on the Porch” from 2-4 p.m. Sunday at New Old Stuff, 93 Rockridge Road.
The goal of the informal event is to allow residents to have one-on-one conversations with several people running for local elective office. Those include commission candidates Dan Eichenbaum, Jeff Tathum and Worden; board of education candidates Allen Denny, Jose “Joe” Barreiro and Joey Shore; and sheriff’s candidates Dustin Smith and Heath Woodard. For details, call 828-516-2259.
RALEIGH
Voter guide for judges
The Judicial Voter Guide for the 2022 Primary Election is available online at the State Board of Elections’ website. The guide contains information about candidates for the N.C. Supreme Court and N.C. Court of Appeals who have primary contests in 2022.
For the appellate courts, there are three contested GOP nominations – one for the Supreme Court and two for the Court of Appeals – in the Tuesday, May 17, statewide primary. The seven candidates included in the voter guide will be the only appellate court candidates to appear on the ballot in the Republican Party primary. To vote in the Republican primary, you must be a registered Republican or unaffiliated voter that chooses the ballot of candidates for the Republican Party.
There are no Democratic or Libertarian primaries for appellate court seats in 2022. Democratic candidates who filed for these offices have no primary opposition and will advance to the general election in November. No Libertarian candidates filed for these offices in this
election.
Absentee-by-mail voting for the 2022 primary has begun. The in-person early voting period runs from April 28 to May 14. For details, visit www.ncsbe.gov.
HAYESVILLE
Naloxone stops ODs
The use of opioids, prescribed or not, comes with significant risks. In the United States, opioid overdose remains a leading cause of accidental death and accounts for more than half of all overdose deaths, according to the latest statistics from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
People who use recreational drugs, including cocaine and methamphetamine, also face an increased risk for opioid overdose. Recreational drugs may be contaminated with unknown amounts of potentially deadly opioids, such as fentanyl.
Naloxone is a first-line
defense against such overdoses. If there are opioids in your home or you use recreational drugs, keeping naloxone on hand can help save a life. To get naloxone, which is free to veterans, call Rex Ledford, veterans service officer for Clay County, at 389-6301 or email rledford@claync.us.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Public meetings
THIS WEEK
- Cherokee County Board of Education meets at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Central Office, 911 Andrews Road in Murphy.
From staff reports.