“That sign was selected by a committee,” Asheville Vice Mayor Ed Hay told City Council members during their July 13 formal session. “It looks like it,” responded Mayor Leni Sitnick. She reported having received numerous complaints from city residents about the new sign at Pack Place and wondered if there was anything the city could […]

“Where in the hell are we, how in the hell did we get here, and where in the hell do we go from here?” Doug Clark, board chairman of the embattled Western North Carolina Air Pollution Control Agency, asked rhetorically during the board’s most recent meeting. Citizens who spoke at the stormy June 14 meeting […]

A little competition never hurts, right? But some downtown vendors disagree: Donald Ball, who operates the snack shop in the Buncombe County Courthouse, says his revenues have suffered since a hot-dog cart began operating right outside. Cart owner Anderson Davis can relocate his business, but Ball can’t, he told Asheville City Council members at their […]

The Z-word is always giving someone a nervous twitch, but this time, City Council members were caught in their own knot. The case before them: How to zone 139 acres of recently annexed, city-owned property? City staff considered the surrounding residential area and called for RS-2, the most restrictive residential category under the city’s Unified […]

Have you ever started out in a new direction, only to wind up near where you began? That describes the creative accounting methods Asheville City Council members used during their June 15 work session on the budget: They started out facing a $94,000 deficit in the proposed 1999-2000 budget, spent a couple of hours shuffling […]

When you ask City Council for $25,000, it helps to have a little political savvy. Dr. Gene Rainey — former chair of the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners and a former City Council member — politely acknowledged that current Council members are facing a tight budget year. He joked, “I know the city manager had […]

Long meetings make for tensions that rival the Kosovo crisis, declared one exasperated Asheville City Council observer on June 8. But instead of ethnic tensions, the testy squabble that night stemmed more from philosophical differences (as well as a city-staff-vs. Council spat). Mayor Leni Sitnick said 10-cents-a-day is far too little to charge Honda Hoot […]

Caught between a thong and the U.S. Constitution, Asheville City Council members voted unanimously on June 8 to impose more stringent restrictions on topless bars — but learned that they can’t do much about performer Ukiah Morrison strolling downtown streets clad only in a skimpy G-string. “How is it that we can regulate nonperformers [in […]

Would you like to be able to park in downtown Asheville for a dime a day? That’s the rate proposed for 1999 Honda Hoot participants, and Asheville Mayor Leni Sitnick thinks it’s way too cheap. “They’re going to be paying a dime a day?” she asked incredulously, after hearing a city-staff report during Council’s June […]

Don’t get your G-string in a wad, but Asheville City Council’s new restrictions on topless bars and other sexually oriented businesses turned out to be anticlimatic. “We already have a pretty tight ordinance,” City Attorney Bob Oast told Council members during their June 1 work session. For instance, city zoning regulations already restrict where such […]

Don’t let the recent rains lull you into feeling safe: We still need more water, cautions Asheville Water Resources Director Tom Frederick. Last year’s drought — while eased by heavier-than-usual January rains and more recent May showers — has sounded a warning bell. If summer rains slip below average, the Regional Water Authority of Asheville, […]

If you don’t want to be the first City Council in 10 years to raise property taxes, how do you balance Asheville’s budget? Raise fees, squeeze operating costs, and cut anything resembling a luxury. That’s the approach City Council members seem to be taking toward fiscal year 1999-2000. In two May work sessions, they’ve gotten […]

Say you’re sorry (in a nice way, of course), bring lots of supporters to argue your case, and maybe, just maybe, Asheville City Council will give you a break. On May 25, Council members gave “good” landlords until Oct. 1 to correct housing-code violations, provided that they get their properties inspected before the July 1 […]

“Breathe a bit of fresh life into [this] part of the community,” West Asheville resident Richard Nantelle urged Asheville City Council members during their May 25 formal session. He asked them to support and adopt a proposed Haywood Road Corridor Plan — a planning guide that addresses land use, vehicle/pedestrian traffic, land- and street-scaping, building […]

Pedestrians, developers and sidewalks If City Council members did everything recommended in the new Pedestrian Thoroughfare Plan, they would have to come up with more than $38 million. That’s the total price tag for ugrading city sidewalks to meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act ($1.8 million), fixing those sidewalks in need of […]

Get more eyes on The Block, and the winos and drug dealers will disappear. That’s the operating theory behind a cooperative effort to get the new South Pack Square Community Center up and running. “No one’s going to invest down here until we clean things up,” says Doug Beatty, co-owner of Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria, […]

Peeved is a mild word for Asheville City Council member Barbara Field‘s reaction to city staff who recently restricted the west end of Walnut Street to one-way traffic. During Council’s May 18 work session, she laid into City Engineer Cathy Ball and new city Traffic Engineer Michael Moule: “That street has been two-way for 50 […]

Almost every minute of the five-hour-long, May 11 Asheville City Council session was spent wrangling over zoning cases. An Asheland Avenue case, alone, took two hours for Council to deal with — and it took three attempts before Council members could come up with a motion a majority could agree to. It was the kind […]

For at least 60 years, three large homes on Montford Avenue have been used as offices or group homes. The properties at 372, 382 and 406 Montford Ave. were once part of Highland Hospital, and — before the passage of the Unified Development Ordinance in 1997 — they were zoned Office-Institutional. But the UDO rezoned […]

How do you create a tough housing code without stifling affordable housing? Tweak the existing Asheville Minimum Housing Code, for starters. On May 25, City Council members will consider several amendments to the code, enacted in 1994. Some of the suggested changes come from a focus group of city staff, property owners and affordable-housing advocates; […]