County appoints 11 to short-term rental committee

They may not be the Avengers, but the team is assembled. After three hours of interviews on Aug. 20, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners put together an 11-member volunteer committee to review and recommend regulations for short-term rentals (STRs).

Commissioners chose nine community members from a pool of 113 applicants to continue a process that began in December as part of Buncombe County’s 2043 Comprehensive Plan. They will join two Buncombe County Planning Board members, Chair Nancy Waldrop and Ken Kahn. Commission Chair Brownie Newman and Commissioner Parker Sloan will be non-voting members.

“Many [people] from our community have thought a lot about this really important topic. And there’s a lot of different perspectives, and I think a lot of folks recognize that it’s not a simple issue, but just one that’s important to the future of our community,” Newman said before announcing the appointments.

The community members selected for the committee range from real estate professionals, STR owners and other business owners and affordable housing advocates, Newman said.

They are:

• Matt Allen
• ME Gray
• Matt Lutz
• Jay Gerlach
• Kit Molina-Nauert
• Angelica Cote
• Chris Joyell
• Andrea Golden
• Candice Matelski-Brady

The county’s nine-member Planning Board released proposed changes to STR regulations in December, which were met with both praise and criticism, sparking months of debate, as previously reported by Xpress. The regulations would have banned new whole-house STRs in the unincorporated parts of Buncombe County unless they were located within five commercial zones or in the county’s residential open-use zone, among other changes. Existing STRs would not be affected by the new rules but would require a county permit.

During a public hearing April 22, the Planning Board voted to table the issue for 100 days, responding to complaints that the process was moving too quickly.

Several of the board’s proposed changes had widespread support, including banning STRs from mobile home parks and the steep slope and Blue Ridge Parkway overlays, and grandfathering existing STRs, according to Waldrop.

However, community members opposed restrictions on where STRs could operate and the number of new STRs property owners could build.

The committee is scheduled to meet in September and October before making recommendations to the Planning Board in November. That board will present its recommendations to commissioners in December.

ABCCM to add transitional housing

Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministries is expanding its transitional housing off of Brevard Road in South Asheville.

The N.C. Department of Commerce’s Recovery Housing Program awarded Buncombe County a $1 million grant to help ABCCM expand its Transformation Village, which provides transitional housing for homeless women, mothers with children, and veterans.

Commissioners accepted the funding at its Aug. 20 meeting, which will help build a four-story, 64-unit building with 32 units dedicated to women and mothers with children in recovery from substance use, according to a staff presentation.

Xpress reached out to the ABCCM director, the Rev. Scott Rogers, for comment on the expansion but he did not respond by deadline.

Compost facility coming to the county landfill

Buncombe County is getting into the compost game.

Commissioners approved Aug. 20 the construction of a compost facility at the Buncombe County landfill using funds earmarked for a stormwater ditch establishment project that instead can be accomplished through repair and maintenance, freeing up about $147,000 for the compost pilot program, according to a budget amendment.

The project will gather food scraps from eight food scrap drop-off locations around the county, which produce about three tons of material a week, said Casi Lohmeyer, the county’s solid waste sustainability coordinator. The facility can hold up to 25 tons of material before the county would have to acquire a N.C. Department of Environmental Quality permit.

“Once we are confident in our operations and ability to navigate and produce a successful product, we will look into expansion and [consider] applying for a permit to expand capacity,” Lohmeyer said in an email to Xpress.

Finished compost will not be offered to the public, but instead applied to capped landfill slopes to encourage vegetation growth and reduce the county’s reliance on fertilizer and grass seed.

Construction on the new composting facility will begin this fall and is slated to be completed by June, she added.