From child care centers to colleges, Glenda Weinert’s education experience has influenced students young and old. But it’s her business expertise and political leadership as former chair of the Buncombe County Republican Party that make her a unique addition to the Buncombe County Board of Education.
Commission member MZ Yehudah cut right to the point at a recent meeting of the Community Reparations Commission. “Are reparations for Black Asheville legally defensible?” The answer, according to city and county attorneys, is complicated.
The Buncombe County Board of Commissioners voted 6-0 on June 18 to approve a $440 million general fund budget for fiscal year 2024-25. Chair Brownie Newman said the decision to raise taxes is not easy, and this was the toughest budget season he’s been through in his 12 years on the commission.
From Asheville’s first elected Black person in 1882 to the destructive outcomes of one of the South’s largest urban renewal projects in the 1960s and ’70s on a previously thriving Southside community, the mile-long trail takes visitors through the under-told stories of Black Asheville’s long history in three sections.
If passed, the new rate — 52.35 cents per $100 of value — would mean the owner of a home valued at $400,000 will pay $2,094 in taxes to the county, $102 more than last year.
As the pandemic-era backlog of emergency vehicles continues to delay new trucks from reaching Buncombe County, paramedics are left driving aging ambulances longer than they should just as they are needed more than ever before.
On June 10, the Asheville City Association of Educators delivered a letter signed by the Parent Teacher Organizations or parent teams from all eight of the district’s schools.
After several months of discussion, including a contentious meeting with the Asheville City Board of Education June 3, Mike Sule, who was spearheading the project, asked the board to remove the project from its agenda June 10.
At a rally in Pack Square June 6, the Buncombe County Association of Educators, an organized advocacy group for teachers, argued that the state of North Carolina and Buncombe County governments should allocate more funding for education.
Former Buncombe County GOP Chair Glenda Weinert, who is a current member of the Buncombe County Schools Foundation, received the most votes on June 6 in the opening round of an open-ended series of votes among the six sitting members of the board.
More than half of Warren Wilson College’s 1,100-acre campus is on its way to permanent preservation after the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners agreed to chip in county funds to make it happen.
Your chance to address the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners on its proposed 2024-25 budget, including a 2.55-cent property tax hike, has arrived. Commissioners will hold its annual public hearing on the budget at its meeting Tuesday, June 4 before voting on the budget later in the month.
When it rains on the campus of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, stormwater pours off its plethora of parking lots into the neighborhoods, forest and French Broad River below, taking pollutants with it. Now, the community college, which sits at the headwaters of one of three primary tributaries in the Central Asheville Watershed, is working to reduce the volume of rainwater that flows from its campus.
County manager Avril Pinder’s proposed $441.9 million general fund budget, which still has to go through a public hearing and final vote next month, includes a 2.55 cent property tax increase next fiscal year.
The last time the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners met on May 9, it was facing an almost $14 million spending gap and the possibility that it would have to raise property taxes to fill it.
Last month, the BCTDA awarded its first slate of 12 grants from the fund, helping finance projects for organizations from the Swannanoa Valley Art League and Black Wall Street AVL to the Asheville Museum of Science and the City of Asheville.
In a statement to the board at a special called work session May 15, an emotional Simpkins said she was stepping down for “personal reasons” and because of “some changes going on.”
The Community Reparations Commission of Asheville and Buncombe County passed three education-centric recommendations May 13, adding to the four endorsed earlier this month, informing how the city and county can make amends for generations of discrimination towards Black residents.
Less than two weeks before County Manager Avril Pinder must present a balanced budget to commissioners on Tuesday, May 21, the county has a $13.9 million funding gap in its projected operating budget, without considering requested increases for schools.
For the last year, officials with both Asheville City Schools and Buncombe County have debated what to do with the centrally located, ACS-owned facility on the corner of Haywood Road and Interstate 240. The Buncombe County Board of Commissioners got a plan update at its May 7 briefing meeting.
The Buncombe County Board of Education passed an increased funding request of $13.5 million from the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners at its May 2 meeting based on a “vast number of assumptions and projections,” according to BCS Chief Financial Officer Tina Thorpe.
