As part of Xpress’ annual Kids Issue series, we reached out to the members of Asheville City Council and the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners to share their childhood recollections. Not all elected officials were available.
Below is our conversation with Buncombe County Commissioner Parker Sloan.
Xpress: Most people have at least one story their family and relatives can’t help but retell at reunions and/or holiday gatherings. What is the quintessential story from your childhood that you can’t seem to escape at these types of gatherings?
Sloan: I grew up in a large Catholic family on my mom’s side, and I was the youngest grandchild. So I went to a lot of weddings growing up and ALWAYS got made fun for my not-great dancing skills. I’m not sure much has changed.
How would you describe yourself as a teenager? And how do you think your former teenage self would have reacted to learning you ended up serving as an elected official?
As a teenager, I bounced around with different interests like youth group or Boy Scouts, but I was lucky to have classical guitar as an elective at my high school and loved it. So eventually I was convinced I’d be a professional musician one day, and that ended up being the reason I went to college. Growing up, my dad was a union organizer, and his father used to be a lobbyist who (for a period) worked at the state level to bust unions — so that Thanksgiving table, let’s say, involved a lot of debates. That led me to believe that I should at least have an opinion about things, but I never thought I would run for office.
The young people in our community have been through a lot since COVID and Helene. What is your top concern for our area youths, and what influence do local officials have to address it?
Our kids locally have been through a tremendous amount between COVID and Helene. My kids have really only experienced Helene, which was traumatic. I can’t imagine them having gone through both. I remain concerned with the mental health of our kids and how that impacts behavior — both in home and in class learning.
At the highest level, my concern is that we have spent the last 20 years defunding public schools for senseless culture war reasons and with it the ability of our kids to learn reading, writing, science and math. Which, lest we forget, is the entire basis of a modern economy. Our future quite literally depends on reversing course.
I couldn’t possibly overstate the importance of every person in Buncombe County and North Carolina understanding that local governments do not have the taxation tools at our disposal to address this issue adequately. One thing we must do locally, no matter how hard things get — and it looks like Washington is trying to make everything harder for everyone but billionaires — is advocate for the tremendous job our Asheville City Schools and Buncombe County Schools are doing. Our teachers and principals are doing extraordinary things in the classroom right now, and I think parents should enthusiastically send their kids to public school.
Lightning round: As a child, what was your favorite …
- Book: The Giver by Lois Lowry
- Album: Magazine by Jump, Little Children
- TV show: “The Daily Show”
- Movie: The Shawshank Redemption
- Publication (magazine or newspaper): Rolling Stone
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