Talk of the state-budget crisis and errant pets dominated Asheville City Council’s Feb. 19 work session. And for added flavor, Council members let slip that they could be on shaky legal ground if they made American citizenship a prerequisite for serving on boards and commissions. Too many festivals, too little money Council members generally rubber-stamp […]

While the snow turned to slush on Asheville’s streets, City Council members got wind of a lawsuit: Henderson County has sued the city, Buncombe County and the Regional Water Authority over a tangled property exchange that all parties had agreed to back in the mid-1990s. The lawsuit, which made the front page of the March […]

Susan Fisher‘s hair may be a tad grayer than it was when she became chair of the Asheville Board of Education in 1998. And her younger child, Alex, now headed for the ninth grade, “was in kindergarten when [my first term on the board] started in 1993,” Fisher recalled during a March 2 interview. But […]

Asheville is a magnet for diversity, making it the logical place for a discussion of what some term “queer studies.” On March 23-24, UNCA will host the fourth annual GLBT Studies Conference. It’s an event aimed at raising “the question of how the [gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgendered] community is understood and integrated into the larger culture,” says local […]

Read their lips: No Asheville City Council member likes the idea of raising property taxes to pay for renovating our aging Civic Center. But given the questionable prospects for the other funding options, Council members haven’t flat-out rejected a tax hike. Among those options is a 1-cent, local-option sales tax espoused by Buncombe County officials, […]

It’s a question of autonomy: Does the Regional Water Authority of Asheville, Buncombe and Henderson truly stand on its own? Board members are inclined to think not: The Authority’s physical assets are owned by the city of Asheville; its paid staff work under the direction of Asheville’s city manager; and its every budget decision is […]

It was an unusually peaceful day at City Council. Asheville City Manager Jim Westbrook announced that a city/county land swap could resolve the dispute over the county’s proposed satellite jail. Council member Brian Peterson suggested that Council formally ask local delegates to the state legislature to back one or more proposals for funding improvements to […]

Asheville City Council members have learned their lesson well: Not so long ago, they routinely declared dozens of goals for one fiscal year — many of them impractical, much less achievable in such a short (governments, like glaciers, move at a different tempo). In 1997, for example, Council members came up with nearly three dozen […]

Council protests downtown jail It was hurry up and protest — in a polite way — at City Hall on Jan. 16. At 3:30 p.m., Mayor Leni Sitnick received Council’s unanimous endorsement of her letter asking Buncombe County commissioners to delay the purchase of downtown property for a new work-release, minimum-security facility. By 4 p.m., […]

When neighborhood advocates complain about “creeping intrusion,” they’re not talking about kudzu. What gets their goat is the commercial pressure on residential areas — and, often, attempts to build multifamily housing in single-family neighborhoods (a Haw Creek Mews here, a super Wal-Mart there). In fact, however, Asheville City Council has approved few residential-to-commercial rezonings since […]

From Tom English‘s point of view, having city officials tell him the Siberian elm next to his house probably won’t come down in a winter storm is like saying the Titanic could never sink. Earlier this year, he looked at the twisted, 16-inch-diameter tree that leans toward his North Asheville home and thought about the […]

The Grinch may have swiped Christmas from the tenants of 135 Merrimon Ave., but Asheville City Council members came up with their own spirited remedy: In a unanimous vote, they allotted up to $30,000 in relocation assistance for the 30 tenants who lived in the condemned structure. Council committed an additional $200 per tenant for […]

On a wet icy morning, a lone string of Christmas lights brightened the old brick boarding house on Merrimon Avenue. The message on my voice mail that morning had said, “We’re not out of the woods yet, but we do have the Christmas spirit.” It was the voice of Todd Hollar, one of the many […]

Dig into Buncombe County’s cable-franchise history, and your head spins. Since the late 1970s, there have been more franchise agreements, more buyouts and ownership transfers, and more amendments piled on top of amendments than the number of court hearings in the Florida presidential race. County Clerk Kathy Hughes summed things up succinctly when Mountain Xpress […]

In the past few years, members the Asheville Civic Center Commission have felt a bit out of the loop. First, City Council stole some of their thunder by creating the Future of the Civic Center Task Force. Then Council approved the hiring of an outside consultant to study what to do with the facility. And […]

When the Norfolk Southern freight train rumbled past the old Biltmore Village depot on a recent cold November morning, Judy Calvert waved. It was a gesture of hope, framed in nostalgia. Buncombe County Planning Director Jim Coman, standing nearby, remarked that he could remember when passenger trains still pulled into the Village station, built for […]

Once upon a time, affordable housing in Western North Carolina meant log cabins. They were sturdy and could be made from the materials at hand, Patricia Beaver told participants in the first-ever Housing WNC conference, held Nov. 2 at the Blue Ridge Assembly in Black Mountain. “Building on Our Heritage” was the conference’s theme, and […]