In this Issue of Hey Cherokee County…

✅ The Fights on Conley’s Desk and What She Intends to Do About Them

✅ Cherokee County Wants Answers from Phone Carriers Over Landline Cuts

Cherokee County Events

August 26th

September 4th

September 10th

September 16th-19th

September 26th

October 31st

November 21st

Publisher’s Note: This is Part 2 of a two-part series based on an interview with Dr. Jeana Conley, Cherokee County Commissioner for District 1. 

Letters started arriving in mailboxes across Andrews, Murphy, and other areas of Western North Carolina earlier this year, notifying residents that their landline phone service is being retired. AT&T and Frontier are phasing out what the industry calls POTS lines — plain old telephone service — and their proposed replacement is voice over IP, an internet-based system.

There is one problem with that. Large portions of Cherokee County still don't have reliable internet access.

"It doesn't matter how robust it is if you don't have internet access," Commissioner Jeana Conley said. 

The county has been meeting with carrier representatives, filing complaints with the FCC, and is contemplating whether to draft a formal resolution. That last move got attention. 

"When AT&T and Frontier heard that the commissioners were considering a resolution," Conley said, "that's when we started getting some calls." 

The immediate concern isn't convenience. It's 911. In a county where broadband remains out of reach for thousands of residents, pulling the landlines before a replacement is in place is, in Conley's framing, a safety issue and one she intends to push hard on.

The telecommunications fight is one of several running simultaneously on her desk. Another is the quieter but equally pressing problem of how to hold the tax line without hollowing out the county's future.

Residents are clear about what they don't want: higher property taxes. Conley says she hears it constantly, and she shares the concern, particularly for the third of Cherokee County's population that is 65 or older and living on fixed incomes. But holding that line requires a broader tax base, and that requires growth — and growth is where the politics get complicated.

Her answer, at least in part, is already sitting empty on lots in communities across the county. Andrews carries a federal Opportunity Zone designation, a program that offers private investors significant tax incentives to put money into rural communities that struggle to attract it. Conley wants to use that designation to bring private investors to the Valley, where an abundance of industrial space sits empty and waiting. 

There is a condition, though. When the crypto mine turned AI data center came to Marble, it received both federal and local county tax breaks. Conley says she will fight to make sure that Cherokee County doesn't give away what it doesn't have to. 

“I believe having your federal taxes waived is enough,” she said. 

On property taxes specifically, Conley is pushing for what's called a revenue-neutral rate, meaning that as property values rise with inflation and revaluation, the millage rate drops proportionally so that actual tax bills don't increase. 

"There are ways to increase tax revenue without burdening the people who live here," she said. "I have very strong feelings about people who have their homes paid off and all of a sudden having to go into debt or spend a lot of money to pay taxes on something they already own outright. As an American, that just sounds insane to me."

The housing shortage and the healthcare shortage are, in Conley's view, the same problem. Cherokee County cannot attract or keep the medical staff it needs if those workers have nowhere affordable to live. The county trains nurses, teachers, and law enforcement officers then watches them leave for Georgia or Tennessee the moment a better offer comes along. Fix the housing, she argues, and you begin to fix everything downstream from it. 

"We need to make sure that people have access to good healthcare," Conley said, "not just whether or not they can afford it, but whether or not it exists."

One effort already underway offers a model that Conley says the county must try to replicate. Through the help of a multimillion-dollar grant, Tri-County Community College is developing 17 price-controlled homes in Andrews to be offered first to teachers, nurses, and law enforcement officers, the people Cherokee County keeps training and losing to higher-paying counties across the state line. The homes are being built by the college's carpentry students, making it a workforce training program and an affordable housing program at the same time. 

"We need more opportunities like that. That's the model,” Conley said. "We're training people in a career and also building homes that will support people who are going to be in a career and become members of our community."

Perhaps the most urgent piece of unfinished business is the high-impact land use ordinance, the county's attempt to establish environmental guardrails on industrial development before the next AI data center shows up unannounced. The previous board had placed a moratorium on data centers, then let it expire before writing any actual policy. 

The current board has drafted a 17-page ordinance that establishes environmental and operational standards that apply to any new high-impact industry, not just data centers. It was, Conley says, one of the first things she and fellow Commissioner Sue Lynn Ledford insisted on after taking the oath in March.

"We're not saying we're anti this or anti that," Conley said. "We're saying we're pro our environment and our community, and this is what you cannot do to it."

All of it — the phone lines, the tax rate, the housing, the healthcare, the land use ordinance — connects back to the same argument Conley has been making since before she ever filed to run: that Cherokee County has governed reactively for too long, and that the cost of waiting shows up eventually whether you plan for it or not.

"When you react to something, you are forced to only utilize what you have on hand at that moment, in order to stop the bleeding, or put a tourniquet on whatever is going wrong,” she said. “But if you anticipate and plan, you can actually not only grab the low-hanging fruit but get excited about what the possibilities are."  

Paid for by Dr. Jeana Conley, candidate for the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners District 1 seat. Hey Cherokee County accepts paid political advertising. Candidates and campaigns may contact us for rates and availability.  

The Cherokee County Board of Commissioners sent letters of inquiry last week to AT&T, Frontier, and Verizon regarding the future of landline phone service in the county.

County Manager Randy Wiggins explained to the board that the carriers are in the process of retiring their copper landline networks. Based on conversations Wiggins said he had with representatives from the carriers, providers have lost roughly 90 percent of their copper line customers as people have shifted to cell phones over the years. 

Maintaining that infrastructure for the remaining customer base has become increasingly costly and keeping it operational would likely require significant rate increases for those still on the service. The replacement being offered to customers, Wiggins said, is an IP-based phone system — commonly known as Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

“That’s an easy fix if you have broadband access,” Commissioner Sue Lynn Ledford said at the August 18 meeting. “But if you do not have broadband access, you’re up the creek without a paddle.”

The issue isn't unique to Cherokee County. Major carriers nationwide have been phasing out copper landline networks, with AT&T announcing plans to retire most of its copper operations by 2029. Frontier and Verizon are at various stages of similar transitions in their markets.

The letters, sent to government affairs contacts at each carrier, ask specific questions: which services in Cherokee County are currently discontinued, grandfathered, or pending retirement; what the timelines are for any planned changes; what notice will be provided to residential, business, and public safety customers; what replacement services will be available; and how those replacements will handle 911 access, backup power, alarm systems, and medical monitoring devices. 

Each carrier was also asked to provide a written plan ensuring that no impacted customer is left without phone service.

Wiggins said representatives from the carriers are expected to attend upcoming Cherokee County Board of Commissioners meetings to speak directly with local officials and residents about the transition and what it means for the county. 

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