Remember Friday, Aug. 7 — when ozone levels at the Great Smokies Mountain National Park reached the unhealthy level of 113 parts per billion over an eight-hour period? That same day, Asheville’s average was 106, according to state and local reports. That’s well above the 85 ppb ozone level the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says […]

Should Asheville City Council impose restrictions on what people can talk about at formal meetings? “With all due respect … why sit here and waste the taxpayers’ money?” asked Council member Chuck Cloninger on Aug. 11, faced with numerous speakers urging the city to ease up on prosecuting people for personal marijuana use. City Council, […]

Asheville City Council members took one hard look at Goliath — and dropped their slings and stones. In a 4-2 vote on July 28, they agreed to accept InterMedia’s $175,000 offer for settling a long-standing franchise-fee dispute. Just two weeks earlier, Council had voted not to accept the offer, arguing that it was too low. […]

You’re cleaning out your basement, and you find a small, unmarked bottle with blue crystals ringing the rusty cap, as if something had leaked out. Don’t touch it: That compound could blow up your house. A Haywood County realtor found such a bottle recently, while cleaning out a home she had just sold for an […]

Should an old granite bridge on Beaucatcher Mountain be restored — or torn down? To get an answer at Asheville City Council’s July 21 work session, you first had to clear away the smoke from dueling engineers. Nearly a year ago, the city’s Public Works Department recommended demolishing the 91-year-old, unused bridge, claiming it’s a […]

InterMedia gets a new Asheville cable franchise — but City Council members reserve the right to sue both them and former franchisee TCI for alleged underpayment of fees to the city. After hours of haggling over percentages and details — and two years of negotiations before that — Council voted 2-5, killing Chuck Cloninger‘s July […]

“Welcome to the award-winning WRATT hole!” says the sign on Don Hollister’s office at the Land-of-Sky Regional Council in west Asheville. The sign includes a picture of a tie-wearing rat — pencil and clipboard in hand. “We get a lot of mileage out of the name,” notes Hollister, a retired engineer who, with partner Gordon […]

If you merge it, they will call. That belief seems to be part of the driving force behind the recent merger of AT&T — the country’s largest long-distance telephone-service provider — and TCI, the nation’s second-largest cable company. AT&T gets a conduit for breaking into the local telephone market (10.5 million U.S. customers have cable […]

“I feel like singin’ and prayin’ … it’s so hot in here,” said Asheville Police Capt. Ted Lambert during City Council’s June 30 community meeting at the Burton Street Recreation Center. That was one sentiment that all assembled could agree on, as many tried to keep cool by waving makeshift paper fans across their faces […]

You don’t see this too often: Minutes after adopting eight broad strategies for increasing the supply of affordable housing in Asheville, Council members did something tangible. During their June 23 formal session, they agreed to reduce permit and inspection fees for new single-family homes valued at less than $100,000, as well as multifamily developments built […]

Build your own outdoor oven Ah, the smell of fresh-baked bread — especially if you just baked it in your own outdoor, wood-fired, earthen oven! Culture’s Edge can teach you how (to build the oven, that is). On Monday and Tuesday, July 6 and 7, the organization is offering a hands-on oven-building class in Black […]

They hooted and hollered, jumped their boards off wooden ramps, then slammed back down to earth. But they still weren’t louder than the big air-conditioning unit that hums continually atop downtown Asheville’s Pack Memorial Library. The hooters, hollerers, jumpers and slammers were a test group of skateboarders, gathered one Friday by city Parks and Recreation […]

He was just a boy, looking for a ride. That’s what Physician’s Assistant Kathlyn Stein first thought on the evening of March 17 — until a second boy opened her car door, and she saw the gun. That night, at approximately 8:15, Stein pulled up to the stop sign at Livingston Street and Victoria Road, […]

Appearances can mean everything. Take the case of a duplex proposed for a corner lot at London Road and Shady Oak Drive in Shiloh: The developer, Emory Mitchell, plans to install and refurbish a unit that was once part of the West Terrace Apartments off Patton Avenue. But residents — noting the unsightly appearance of […]

Is the new cable contract worth $46.42 to you? That’s how much the average InterMedia customer will pay over the next 12 years, if Asheville City Council members approve the latest franchise proposal. Pocket change to some; but with approximately 23,000 cable subscribers in town, it adds up to nearly $1.1 million for Intermedia over […]

When politicians start talking about “taking bold action,” you can almost bet it’s going to affect your taxes. Just look at the dilemma facing Asheville City Council members for upcoming fiscal year 1998-’99: Buncombe County property values have risen dramatically, and both County Commissioners and City Council members must soften the resulting tax blow by […]

Gabriel Ferrari follows the Ten Commandments of our Heavenly Father, not the city of Asheville’s building codes. For the past nine years, Ferrari and his wife, Livia, have battled with city officials and neighbors about the way they maintain their home: Religious signs plaster their front yard; the basement is accessed by ladder rather than […]

How do you gracefully back out of an unpopular proposal? “A proclamation that we’re not going to sell Memorial Stadium would be helpful at this point,” suggested Asheville City Council member Chuck Cloninger on May 19. Council members had just heard Parks and Recreation Director Irby Brinson‘s final recommendation concerning the stadium and the five […]

Regional Water Authority board members just put their money where their mouths are: On May 19, they voted unanimously to include a $33,000 line-item in the coming year’s budget — in order to move several pesticide-mixing stations away from the banks of the Mills River. Those mixing stations are upstream from the Authority’s new water-treatment […]