Asheville City Council

Asheville City Council member Carl Mumpower‘s continuing campaign to beef up drug-interdiction efforts claimed the spotlight at Council’s Jan. 16 session. A heated e-mail exchange in the days leading up to the meeting (see sidebar, “The Straight Dope“) set the stage for Council to tackle the matter.

Asheville police Chief William Hogan said his department is doing twice as much as most municipalities in the state to combat the scourge of drugs, including the blatant drug trafficking in the city’s public-housing complexes.

Hogan bulleted through a PowerPoint presentation showing that city police are on the job. In 2005, he said, the APD arrested more people (per 10,000 residents) on various drug charges than Buncombe County, the state’s other major cities, and even the nation as a whole. The police, said the chief, are exploring other ways to address the problem in cooperation with the Asheville Housing Authority. Emphasizing the difficulties local authorities face in tackling the drug trade, Hogan highlighted last year’s major joint-agency bust of a drug ring supplying Asheville dealers, which netted 27 arrests, 60 pounds of cocaine, 6 pounds of methamphetamine and $750,000 in cash.

It’s not unusual for a police chief to update city leaders on crime-control efforts. But Hogan’s presentation seemed aimed at refuting recent charges by Mumpower that the Police Department has failed to target the city’s open-air drug markets (see “Pushing the Envelope,” Jan. 10 Xpress).

Undaunted, Mumpower bit back with a PowerPoint presentation of his own. During 30 separate visits to city public-housing complexes since Jan. 1, he’d been solicited to buy drugs 20 times — even when the police had recently patrolled those areas. As for Hogan’s numbers, Mumpower said, “I do believe our city and police administration are choosing to stand behind hollow statistics that betray the real-world realities of an unrestrained drug market.”

Both Hogan and Housing Authority Director Gene Bell, told Council that despite the Police Department’s efforts, much more needs to be done to stem the drug trade, which they said is a societal problem exacerbated by such things as the lack of meaningful employment opportunities and reliable childcare. Hogan added that there are “too many social issues involved for police alone to solve the problem.” Citizens, including some public-housing residents, seemed to agree, though some criticized the police for lack of effort.

People living in poverty in Asheville, said Hogan, “simply don’t have the sense of future that you and I do.” The department, added Hogan, is considering other approaches, including saturation patrols in public-housing complexes, to disrupt and drive away the drug trade. But until the larger social problems are addressed and the state’s overworked and underfunded judicial system is fixed, the police are limited to arresting dealers and distributors — who are often back on the streets before the officers can even complete their arrest reports, he noted.

Mumpower made a motion directing Hogan to develop specific strategies for shutting down open-air drug markets in all Asheville neighborhoods. But Council amended it, instructing City Manager Gary Jackson to come up with long-term strategies for creating job opportunities and reducing poverty. The dual-pronged motion was approved on a 5-2 vote. Mumpower and Council member Jan Davis voted against the measure, preferring Mumpower’s original motion. Both men intimated that by trying to accomplish so much, the city would actually accomplish little, but their colleagues preferred a multilevel approach.

The greening of Staples

City Council also continued to struggle with persistent development-related concerns in connection with Staples and Greenlife Grocery. Both businesses have been the targets of complaints by city residents (see “The (Non)Enforcers,” July 12, 2006 Xpress).

There was progress in one area, however. Citing a Jan. 8 letter from Staples executive Ted Frumkin, Mayor Terry Bellamy said the office-supply company has agreed to provide new landscaping around its controversial Merrimon Avenue store. “The design will include a green screen along the brick wall to soften the look from the street, which has been the source of comment,” Frumkin’s letter said. “The new landscaping will also enhance the experience of those pedestrians who use the sidewalk along our store. We are confident that Asheville residents will be pleased with the design.”

However, Staples has told the city it has no intention of changing its wall sign, which the city and some residents say is larger than what the Unified Development Ordinance allows.

“In exploring the request to change our signage, we found that it would require significant investment,” the letter noted. “Therefore, we do not plan to change a sign that was approved by the city and, according to our local lawyer, is in compliance with all of the Asheville codes.”

“I believe we’ve done what we can do,” said Davis. “And I think they’ve made it clear what they plan to do.”

But other Council members, including Mayor Bellamy, weren’t satisfied. “It’s clear the red background [of the sign] is part of their corporate logo and counts in the size, and it clearly isn’t in compliance with our ordinance,” said Council member Brownie Newman.

And while Frumkin’s letter said that Staples had fully complied with the law and worked closely with city staff, Council member Robin Cape declared, “We were manipulated; staff was manipulated.” Bellamy said Council would huddle with City Attorney Bob Oast (who was absent from the meeting) to determine what legal remedies — including litigation — the city might use to settle the matter.

Meanwhile, Newman and Council member Bryan Freeborn said they would revisit various ideas they’d developed with help from city staff for alleviating traffic and noise along Maxwell Street, a residential neighborhood that abuts Greenlife’s busy loading dock. Since the store’s opening in July of 2004, residents have complained about truck traffic on their street.

Newman and Freeborn presented two ideas: installing traffic-calming devices on the street to keep out tractor-trailers, or redesigning the site so trucks could maneuver into the loading dock without having to use the street. The first option would cost the city about $30,000, said Freeborn. The redesign, which would cost about $100,000 and require Greenlife to apply for rezoning, would create a 17-foot vegetated buffer between the dock and the neighborhood. The redesign would also entail repositioning a small house on the Greenlife property to help make room for trucks maneuvering into the dock.

Greenlife co-owner John Swann said his business is amenable to either idea, but he shot down other suggestions by Council members. One called for the store to undertake an expensive remodel to relocate the offending dock. Another involved requiring large trucks to offload onto smaller ones so they wouldn’t need to use Maxwell Street.

Neither of Newman and Freeborn’s two original ideas would “make everyone 100 percent happy,” conceded Newman, but he and Freeborn believe they offer the best chance of placating unhappy neighbors without unduly burdening Greenlife. Other Council members still seemed unsure about the specifics, however, and the two men promised to present more details at Council’s Feb. 27 session.

Other business

By a 5-2 vote, Council agreed to create a “Public Artist of the Year” competition, open to any artist in Western North Carolina. The winner will receive a $10,000 commission to create a work of art to be displayed downtown near Pritchard Park. Although the entire Council supported the idea, Cape and Vice Mayor Holly Jones wound up voting against it because of concerns about how the competition would be run and the relatively small amount of the award, among other things. The city will foot half the bill for the award, with the remaining money to be raised by the city’s Public Art Board. Mumpower, the chief proponent of the idea, said he had already raised the first $10,000.