On Wednesday, Aug. 19, the Asheville Citizen-Times hosted a forum introducing the 15 Asheville City Council candidates.
Each candidate was given four minutes to make their cases for the three open Council positions.
To ensure fairness, Executive Editor Josh Awtry pulled the candidates’ names out of a hat to determine the order in which they were to speak.
Keith Young was picked first, followed by LaVonda Payne, Richard Liston, Corey Atkins, Rich Lee, Ken Michalove, John Miall, Brian Haynes, Lindsey Simerly, Julie Mayfield, Carl Mumpower, Dee Williams, Marc Hunt and, finally, Joe Grady.
If you missed it, there’s no need to worry: The Citizen-Times taped the event. Click here to watch.
In case you’re looking to brush up on a specific candidate, here’s a list of start-times to skip to:
- Young begins at 4:33.
- Payne begins at 9:07.
- Liston begins at 11:13.
- Atkins begins at 16:33.
- Lee begins at 22:28.
- Michalove begins at 27:02.
- Miall begins at 31:30.
- Haynes begins at 35:50.
- Simerly begins at 39:56.
- Millin begins at 45:47.
- Mayfield begins at 52:20.
- Mumpower begins at 57:30.
- Williams begins at 1:02:18.
- Hunt begins at 1:06:23.
- Grady begins at 1:11:17.
For more information, Xpress printed a series of candidate introductions, which can be found here:
- In week one, we met incumbent Marc Hunt, LaVonda Payne, Richard Liston and Ken Michalove.
- Week two introduced Corey Atkins, Carl Mumpower, Lindsey Simerly and Dee Williams.
- During week three, Xpress ran profiles on Grant Millin, Julie Mayfield, Rich Lee and Brian Haynes.
- And the final week brought us John Miall, Joe Grady, Keith Young and a withdrawal from Holly Shriner.
The crisis is one of total housing supply; not enough units. and it is caused by the UDO, with its single family zoning, unit density limits, residential height limits, setbacks, and parking requirements. Reversing the crisis will require the total defeat of all neighborhood activists. At this time it looks to me as if Lavonda Payne, is the only one who can reverse the housing crisis, but Grady and perhaps Simerly might slow it down a bit.
Simerly’s priorities were dissapointing. she said transit was first priority, which means affordable housing is not. Also, on affordable housing she demoted increasing density to number 2, behind the trust fund, where it was density was solution #1 in her essay. She is also heavily tainted by endorsements from those who caused the housing crisis to begin with.
The conservatives, like Williams, Miall and Michalove seemed to think that high rents are caused by high taxes. This is only slightly true. zoning and other supply limiting regulation dwarfs taxes as a cause of Asheville’s rent crisis, and the conservative candidates would do far better to focus on deregulation than on cutting taxes. Though the conservative town of Biltmore Forest would then fail to be an example to them as it is highly regulated; even more so than Asheville.
Payne is being a bit of a blank slate, so all I can really do is hope she might repeal the UDO since she has not promised not to.