On the Record: Music, mountains and thoughts on self-determination with Asheville City Council candidate Charles ‘CJ’ Domingo

I have a tendency to get lost when I’m driving. So when Asheville City Council candidate Charles “CJ” Domingo suggested we meet on the Blue Ridge Parkway, I knew there was a chance things might not go my way.

As if sensing my unwritten concern (we’d planned our meeting over several emails), he suggested I select the overlook. I opted for Craven Gap Trail, where he and I agreed to gather at high noon on a recent Thursday as part of Xpress‘ limited, six-part series, “On the Record,” wherein I meet with an individual Council candidate to listen to an album of their choosing and discuss the local arts scene.

Despite being in charge, I somehow managed to get Domingo lost, sending him in the opposite direction of my intended location. But we figured it out over the course of a couple of texts. And eventually, with great embarrassment, I found my way to the candidate, who — because of my poor directions — sat parked in his 2003 Toyota Echo at the Haw Creek Valley overlook.

After some initial small talk, I hopped into the passenger seat of his car, where we listened Jim Croce’s 1973 album Live: The Final Tour.

‘Nobody up there cares’

Domingo’s affinity for Croce is tied to his father, Gilbert, who had aspirations of becoming a professional musician.

“All through my childhood, guitar music was a backdrop,” Domingo says. “And Jim Croce’s style of playing is kind of in the vein of what my dad tried to reach.”

Ultimately, Domingo’s father put down his guitar and worked 40 years for the City of Asheville’s Information Technology Services. Growing up, Domingo remembers getting out of school and going downtown to visit his dad. These daily trips inspired him to work for the city, joining the Transportation Department from 2022-23.

But his experience as an employee proved dramatically different from his childhood memories. “The gist of it is, City Hall is the pink palace where ideas go to die,” he says, as we listen to Croce. “Nobody up there cares about what anybody out on the street is actually doing. And that was consistently the feeling of so many employees.”

This disconnect led to Domingo’s departure from his post. (Today, he works for Securitas Loomis as operations supervisor.) It was also the groundwork for what eventually inspired him to run for office.

“I don’t want to sound overly negative,” he says of his time with the city. “But because of my experience, I was really disillusioned and upset. … You can only really be that hurt and broken over something if you loved it in the first place.”

Speaking the language

Unlike the other five candidates running for Council, Domingo is the lone registered Republican. But his party affiliation, he notes, is not what matters.

“I’m an Ashevillean first,” he says. “I love this town. I was born and raised here. … I want to make sure that we’re taking care of our people, taking care of our city and doing stuff that we need to do.”

When it comes to the arts, Domingo views it as an essential component of the community’s fabric, noting his fond recollections of attending Bele Chere and the rich artistic experience he had as a former student at Francine Delany New School.

“Art is another language,” he says. “It is the language that we use to express some of those hidden parts of us. Some of those true parts of us. … If not everybody’s speaking that language, it diminishes.”

But government’s role in such expression, Domingo continues, should be approached with caution. He is in favor of community spaces and programs that provide opportunities for residents to learn new artistic skills such as pottery and metalwork. But he is opposed to the idea of local government having artists on the payroll.

“I tend to have a view that if the government is paying for the art, that kind of changes the art,” he says.

A different approach to housing

Similar to my previously published conversations with candidates Tod Leaven, Kevan Frazier and Kim Roney, housing is a major priority for Domingo in his run for Council.

While he supports incentive programs that encourage developers to include affordable units within a given project, he also advocates for community members taking matters into their own hands.

“My housing plan tries to invite the neighborhoods to join in helping make their neighborhood more dense,” he says. “If you’re renting out a room in your house or an ADU [accessory dwelling unit] on your property, you decide how much you want to charge at that time. And because you’re not a faceless corporation … if the arts is really important to you and you see an artist [applying], you can say — ‘I’m gonna cut that person a deal.’ That allows for the natural goodness of the community and the community’s love of art to come out.”

Domingo also favors grants for homeowners to convert larger units into quadraplexes, instead of potentially selling their property to a large corporation when it’s time to downsize. Additionally, he’d like to see the city implement a program that eases the permitting process on individual properties, so homeowners could build grant-funded, preapproved ADU models on their land, which he believes could create quicker turnaround on much-needed housing.

“Building several small ADUs could be done parallel by multiple construction companies, so you can get dozens of them up at the same time, where building one apartment complex can take you a year to years,” he says.

A stitch in time

When Croce’s album ends, we step outside Domingo’s car. Storm clouds roll in over the mountains. He looks out across the parkway and brings up a previous job he had during the COVID-19 pandemic. His position involved delivering medicine to individual homes. Despite the risks associated with these close interactions, he says he went all in. In part, because he was single and in his mid-30s.

“I was the most expendable to society,” he says. “I know that sounds a little macabre, but that was my hard-nosed assessment. … I’m not a doctor, so I couldn’t help in that way, but I could run stuff to people and keep myself as safe as possible so I could be a conduit for people to get medicine.”

Throughout that period, he continues, he regularly took the parkway to and from the office. “It was a solemn time, but I was reconnecting with music, having long periods of listening to some old albums,” he says.

I ask Domingo if I can photograph him posing with the Croce CD. Despite being one of the youngest candidates (Domingo is 36), I point out that he’s the only one who brought a physical copy to the series interview.

“I’m kind of a throwback person,” he says.

To emphasize his point, he turns to his car. The windows, he notes, are manual. The reason, he explains, is because as a child he survived a car accident in which the vehicle crashed into a lake. “We had early automatic windows,” he says. “They couldn’t roll down.”

Everyone survived the event, but it left an impression. “I like things that are mechanical because I can learn how to fix it myself,” he explains.

Which brings him back to why he’s running for Council. His major criticism of the city, he says, is its seeming inability to stay on top of maintenance — be it the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium or the parking garages. These delays, he stresses, cost taxpayers more money.

A light rain begins to fall.

“How did we forget that a stitch in time saves nine?” he asks.

Soon thereafter, we shake hands and part ways, just as the summer storm fully unleashes.