Lit up

Asheville City Council March 22, 2011 meeting Trash pickup may be retooled Living wage approved for city contracts To some observers, it may have seemed as though Asheville City Council members and Ingles Markets were playing a game of development chicken, reaching the cliff’s edge during Council’s March 22 meeting. In February, Council members balked […]

Reaching out

Asheville and Buncombe County are all a-Twitter. Both local governments are looking to ramp up their online presence, taking advantage of social media to enhance their communications capabilities. For its part, the city has recently shifted staff as part of an ongoing effort to boost its social media involvement and add another dimension to community […]

A growing hunger

A study released this month by the Washington, D.C.-based Food Research and Action Center identified the Asheville metropolitan statistical area as the seventh worst in the country in terms of people’s basic ability to put food on the table. In the Asheville metro (comprising Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson and Madison counties), 23.9 percent of the people […]

ANALYSIS Bean counting

Home to nearly a quarter of a million people, Buncombe County ranks among the state's most populous. Its Board of Commissioners and staff oversee a sizable school system, the Sheriff's Office, the courts and extensive social services. In a previous analysis, Xpress considered the city of Asheville’s fiscal challenges, assessing the likelihood of various options […]