Board gets bitten by appointment When the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners named Friends For Animals representative Bill McKelvy to a newly created animal-control board, some animal-rights advocates went for the jugular. “Putting … McKelvy on the board is like having the fox guard the henhouse. … It’s like spitting in our face,” proclaimed Buncombe […]

Young heroes “You played as a team: That’s why you won,” Buncombe County Commissioner David Gantt told local high-school football players and coaches on Dec. 21. At their last regular meeting of the century, commissioners congratulated the A.C. Reynolds Rockets on their 4-A state football championship and the Asheville High Cougars on their 3-A Western […]

A basic state of alert You better watch out, you better not pout: Y2K is coming to town. So, who’s ready? Are you? Asheville Police Chief Will Annarino says he’s usually in bed by 10 p.m., most nights — but, this year, he’ll join scads of emergency/city/county/information-system/utility crews who’ll be standing by at midnight on […]

Opening a small downtown office, decorated with secondhand furniture, might not seem like much. But for the Western Carolina Women’s Coalition, it’s a holiday dream come true. “For the past 10 years, we’ve usually operated out of some member’s basement, or the president’s back seat,” said current President Vera Holland Guise. Scheduling meetings, conferences or […]

The numbers speak more than the women do: Although the majority of Buncombe County residents are women (52 percent), only 44 percent of its registered voters are female. And women number a mere 38 percent of the citizens appointed to Asheville boards and commissions; Buncombe County does a little better, with 41 percent of its […]

Sometimes city officials have to dig a little to get results: They dug up a Brotherton Avenue water line and found — contrary to popular opinion (not to mention, city-staff guesstimates of five years ago) — that it’s 6 inches in diameter, not two. “We exposed the water main … at both ends of the […]

The votes weren’t quite there for adding “new blood” to the Asheville Board of Adjustment: Four City Council members supported current member David Young‘s reappointment; three made the case to replace him with Chris Goodwin. It’s Council’s unwritten rule to allow board and commission members only one full-term reappointment and then only if they have […]

A new state law adds another twist to the city’s decades-long effort to clean up The Block: Asheville City Council can ask the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission to audit the sales records of a convenience store located at 55 South Market St. If alcohol sales exceed 50 percent of total store sales, the Commission can […]

Have you ever tried to persuade a bank to lend you the money to buy a bunch of trash cans? According to Asheville Finance Director Bill Schaefer, it’s not easy, even when you’re talking custom cans designed to be picked up by a semiautomated, new-fangled garbage truck being tested by the city this year. “A […]

Size has always mattered. And for West Asheville residents around Brotherton Avenue, the difference between a 2-inch and a 6-inch water line could determine whether there’s enough water available to save the neighborhood, in the event of a fire. At issue at Asheville City Council’s Nov. 9 formal session was whether the city should add […]

Folks just can’t abide that Pack Place sign: On Nov. 9, Nan Davis and Julie Brandt begged Asheville City Council members to take a closer look at the special agreements that cleared the way for the sign — and then to take it down, especially in light of current plans to redesign Pack Square. “In […]

It’s time to ante up: Asheville City Council members say they support affordable housing; neighborhood residents claim to, as well, although they qualify their support, urging single-family homes, rather than multifamily units. This is your chance to come through, Community Development Director Charlotte Caplan told Council members on Nov. 3. City staff and Council’s Housing […]

Less alcohol, more money: For the fourth year in a row, Bele Chere made money this summer. Despite the new ban on alcohol sales on Sunday — which shaved about $13,000 from festival revenues — the event still netted about $67,000, Asheville Superintendent Butch Kisiah told City Council members during their Nov. 3 work session. […]

Once upon a time, proclamations marked the everybody-feel-good, motherhood-and-apple-pie start of Asheville City Council meetings: Heritage Week, Honor America Days, Asheville Sister Cities Month, Goombay! Festival Days, or even Asheville an International Peace Zone at the Year 2000. But there’s been little peace since Oct. 2, when Mayor Leni Sitnick proclaimed Oct. 25-Nov. 1 to […]

For 45 years, William Wolcott served the city of Asheville: At various points in his career, he was the city engineer, the city clerk and the assistant city manager. If you had a question — any question — about city business or trivia, Wolcott could answer it. Says former Mayor Ken Michalove, “Billy knew everything […]

It’s not hard to frown, when the hour’s early and you’ve just heard (surprise!) about yet another delay in getting the Mills River Water Treatment Plant on-line. That’s what Regional Water Authority board members did at their Oct. 19 meeting, when they got the news from Water Resources Director Tom Frederick. The bad news this […]

“Keep working on your chicken, but we have some fish to fry up here,” Larry Fincher told the small crowd gathered for the first post-primary candidates’ forum — a Leadership Asheville luncheon on Oct. 13. He might have added that it could be a challenge distinguishing the fish from the chicken, because the six people […]

Short of tossing the six candidates into a mud-wrestling pit and letting them slug it out, how do you make that final cut and pick your favorite three? You do what they all assure us they’d be so good at, if elected: You listen to what they have to say (though what you hear, of […]

Asheville City Council members voted unanimously on Oct. 12 to approve a new zoning overlay that sets the stage for a new Chamber of Commerce facility to be built at the head of Montford Avenue. Council’s action elicited “cautious optimism” from concerned Montford residents, who have traditionally been leery of (if not downright hostile) toward […]

“This is definitely kids’ day,” Asheville Mayor Leni Sitnick observed at the start of City Council’s Oct. 12 formal session: A handful of children sang in honor of the city’s proclaiming Oct. 25-Nov. 1 Earth Religions Awareness Week, and a classful of Carolina Day students swarmed her at the podium when she asked them to […]