Watauga County Winter Access Relief

Watauga County is located in the western mountain region of North Carolina. It is a county that has a population of approximately 45,000 citizens. There are eight K-8 elementary schools and one high school. Appalachian State University is located in Boone which is in our county. There is the Apple-Cart which is our public transportation system. We have 5 official towns and many townships. We have state roads and secondary roads in rural areas. In the winter we have Hawksnest, Beech, and Appalachian Ski Resorts along with retail, restaurant, medical, lodging, hotel , resort and spa, banking, government, and the usual business industry functioning.

The winters have proven to be a hindrance and some would say paralyzing. Due to unsafe road conditions our children have missed 17+ days of school and businesses have not been able to open or must close early to assure that people can get to there destinations safely. This is a repeat performance time and again, year after year. Our Department of Transportation Division 11 that takes care of Watauga County runs 16 plow/salt trucks full time from 6:00 AM until 6:00 PM and 12 plow/salt trucks from 6:00 PM until 6:00 AM during inclement weather. They only use salt. One way across the county not including multiple lanes or return or multiple runs is 560 miles. Not to include secondary roads either. DOT's priority is main roads first Hwy 321, Hwy 421, Hwy 105, etc. Second priority roads that branch off of the main roads and then rural western areas last. Resources are an issue!

Watauga County Schools are currently running buses insufficient for being in an environment such as this. They currently do not utilize snow chains. In the past years a bus driver could not drive a bus unless they where trained to put snow chains on. I often now wonder if the current bus drivers are trained for inclement weather conditions. There are days that school has been called off because the roads in the western rural areas are critical but in the rest of the county they are fine.

There is a definite need for attention in our county from our North Carolina Department of Transportation, State Zoning Department, and from our State Education Department.

When children are missing 17+ days of school and people are having trouble getting to work and it is not considered blizzard conditions outside... Houston We Have A Problem !!!

Please sign this petition if you feel that our state representatives need to focus there attention toward an immediate investigation into what needs to be done to improve our quality of safe road accessibility to enable our children to get to schools and citizens to get to there places of employment during the winter season.