Cashiers and Highlands may soon find their road services stretched thin.
Wanda Payne, division 14 engineer with the NC Department of Transportation, confirmed plans to close the Cashiers DOT office and merge it with Highlands.
Payne said Cashiers and Highlands will still be serviced, but the plan is both areas will only be serviced by the Highlands DOT shed.
“Looking at our facilities and our budgets, the decision was made to combine the effort so when we send one crew up to the mountains, they can do all the needs in that area. We don’t need two facilities up there,” Payne said.
This merge will require DOT workers, who are currently located in Sylva, drive through Cashiers to Highlands to retrieve any equipment needed for their work. If DOT workers must service roads in Cashiers, they would then have to backtrack. The DOT is responsible for all state-maintained roads, including pavement, debris removal, traffic lights, and clearing snow.
Payne said NCDOT is doing a slow-close. They are first transferring workers to the Macon County DOT shed. Once those vacancies are filled, the DOT will then begin moving vehicles from Cashiers to Highlands. Payne said the DOT plans to transfer vehicles in the spring of 2024.
Some worry closing the Cashiers DOT office will negatively impact Cashiers, leading to delayed emergency response times and delays in road maintenance, especially during inclement winter weather. Payne, however, shrugged worries off.
“No, there’s no concern with the response times. It’s not actually all the way into Highlands where the shed is. Yes, there is a distance there, but the response will be no different than what we have today. We don’t have people that actually live and work up there so they’re still coming from Sylva,” Payne said.
Cashiers Fire Chief Randy Dillard doesn’t buy it. He said it will be ‘devastating’ to Cashiers.
“It will be the worst thing to happen to Cashiers in years,” Dillard said. “Anyone who knows anything about this area knows you can’t get to Highlands and back to Cashiers in winter when it’s snowing because there’s so many wrecks and the roads are so terrible. It’s the worst thing in the world [the DOT] can do.”
Dillard believes the tax-paying residents of Cashiers deserve a DOT station to service their area and they deserve a nice building. Dillard said some complain that Cashiers’ current DOT shed is an ‘eyesore’ but he thinks it would be a better investment to fix the building they currently have rather than strip the community of what can be a necessary service.
Dillard said removing the Cashiers DOT will have the hardest impacts on the fire department and the rescue squad. He questioned what will happen if somebody calls EMS and first responders are not able to make it to the caller in a timely manner due to road conditions or something like a fallen tree blocking the road.
Jeff Stewart with the Glenville-Cashiers Rescue Squad expressed similar, although milder, concerns. His biggest concern was if road maintenance is delayed, it could have negative impacts on the rescue squad’s abilities to serve the community.
Stewart said the rescue squad has a pretty solid relationship with the DOT workers.
Dillard also said the DOT has been outsourcing removing fallen trees to the fire department, especially after hours. While the fire department can respond quicker than a DOT team from Sylva, Dillard said the fire department lacks the equipment to take care of fallen trees. It can also be dangerous for the fire department.
Dillard said the DOT has claimed they were going to have a meeting with emergency services to discuss the impacts of closing the Cashiers shed, but that has yet to happen.
“They’ve had no input from emergency services asking what the impacts will be,” he said. “We’re the ones that are going to be out on the roads with the people.”
Dillard praised the five DOT workers who commute from Sylva, but he also encouraged community members to contact congressional representatives, senators, or other parties who may be able to prevent the closure of the Cashiers DOT shed.