While members of the newly formed Pritchard Park Committee bandied about ways to make their board more diverse, many of the roughly 20 audience members who’d turned out at the Asheville Civic Center banquet hall for the committee’s May 4 meeting were more interested in getting down to the business of addressing the park’s problems.
Along with drum circles, tourists and assorted passers-by, the city-owned park has attracted homeless persons and vagrants, and some city residents and business owners say that presence has cast a pall over Asheville’s downtown core.
During the two-hour meeting, tempers began to rise in the audience as the committee deliberated for some 40 minutes over whether to bring on a new member. The 10-member body is appointed by City Council and tasked with making policy recommendations for Pritchard Park.
The committee’s charge is to gather public input for addressing and correcting the various issues surrounding the park, including crime, aggressive panhandling, public urination, vagrancy, litter and a host of other concerns.
But the Rev. Amy Cantrell, a homeless advocate who sits on the committee, said that while she was confident that the current board was sufficient, any additional members should represent a stakeholder group not currently on the board. “This table does not look like Asheville,” she said, noting that there was nobody on the all-white board to represent blacks, the elderly, people with disabilities or others who enjoy the park.
Eventually, the group decided in a split vote to keep the membership at 10 persons and seek out special-interest focus groups in the discussion of the park’s future. And, if Council adopts a resolution to add an 11th member, the group decided to lobby Council members to consider someone from one of those unrepresented groups.
Later in the meeting, Paula Dawkins, who owns a store near the park, said she considered herself compassionate and liberal-minded. But, she added, she’s fearful for her 11-year-old daughter and her employees—one of which had a knife pulled on her.
A portion of park denizens “are wreaking havoc,” she said. “We can’t keep going on like this. We are accosted daily. I’m asking you to recognize the plight of those of us who are faced with this daily.”
Dawkins wasn’t alone, as several others also recounted tales of woe. However, there were a few who told the committee that the crusade to control the park must not turn into a witch-hunt.
One audience member, a local pastor, warned against profiling all homeless people there as bad. Another woman, Donna Wilson, whose family spends considerable time in the park, said she and her family were not homeless and pose no threat, but nonetheless have been treated poorly by surrounding merchants.
“We’re not homeless people, and not all homeless are bad,” she said. “My husband was turned away from a store just because he came from the park. … We had the money to pay, and all he was trying to do was buy something to drink for our son.”
The Pritchard Park Committee will meet the first Friday of each month at 8:30 a.m. Meetings are open to the public, which is welcome to give comment at the end of each session. For more information, contact city staffer Debbie Ivester at at 259-5804 or divester@ashevillenc.gov
Who enjoys this park? With the exception of the occasional drum circle or silent film in the park Pritchard Park is inhabited by (for the most part) caustic homeless people and even more caustic religious zealots. So once again, without sounding like a jerk, who enjoys Pritchard Park? I frequent downtown Asheville quite a bit, and I’d love to eat my lunch outside, but I wouldn’t dare go there. Instead of a quiet place that promises a relaxing atmosphere (what I like to think of as a park), I get constantly asked for money, or about my soul’s eternal salvation.
I’ve joked that the homeless should be tasered, but I don’t know what the right answer is. People tell me that you have to approach this on a case by case basis, but I don’t see how that would even begin to work.
All I want is a quiet lunch alone, instead I get the fat guy that’s been drinking mouth wash all morning peeing on himself and swearing randomly.