The county plans to spend $844,000 on new tax assessment initiatives over this fiscal year and the next. Actions include asking Buncombe residents to report improvements to their homes, buying software to double-check the valuations county staffers give to homes and reaching out to residents to help them challenge their property tax values.
In preparation for the 2022 general election of Tuesday, Nov. 8, Xpress sent questions to all candidates in contested local races representing Buncombe County voters. Responses from candidates for the N.C. General Assembly, Buncombe County-level races, Asheville city government and local school boards are all collected here.
Code Purple will have nearly 100 beds available for emergency overnight shelter for Asheville’s unhoused population when the temperature is freezing or below. The program will also operate for two additional months in the winter and spring of 2022-23.
Proposed changes on the agenda for the commissioners’ meeting Tuesday, Oct. 18, include adding staff and improving software to make the county’s assessment of home values more accurate, asking state legislators to expand a tax break some homeowners get under state law and increasing efforts to tell homeowners how to challenge their tax value.
The 9.12-acre project s on Woodland Drive in West Asheville and will contain 72 two-story townhomes, 177 parking spaces, a playground and a nature trail along the perimeter.
General election candidates for the 2022 Buncombe County Sheriff race share their positions with Xpress.
Candidates in the Asheville City Board of Education 2022 general election share their positions with Xpress.
General election candidates for the 2022 Asheville City Council race share their positions with Xpress.
In November’s general election, Buncombe County citizens will vote on two bond referendums that could together authorize up to $70 million in county borrowing for open space conservation and affordable housing projects.
Candidates in the 2022 Buncombe County Board of Education general election share their positions with Xpress.
General election candidates for the 2022 Buncombe County Board of Commissioners races share their positions with Xpress.
General election candidates for the 2022 Buncombe County Soil and Water Conservation District Board of Supervisors race share their positions with Xpress.
General election candidates for the 2022 U.S. House District 11 race share their positions with Xpress.
General election candidates for the 2022 N.C. House races in Districts 114-116 share their positions with Xpress.
General election candidates for the 2022 N.C. Senate District 46 and District 49 races share their positions with Xpress.
Xpress answers common questions about voting in the 2022 general election, including where to find your sample ballot, how to vote by mail and if identification is required at the polls.
Of the 20 North Carolina sites in the new report, six are in Western North Carolina — including the nonprofit’s No. 1 site, Interstate 40’s path through the Pigeon River Gorge.
The first phase, which could be voted on as early as December, would prohibit the use of plastic bags for curbside leaf collection.
Western North Carolina leaders have been thinking big when it comes to the region’s affordable housing crisis, with Buncombe County alone aiming to create or preserve up to 3,150 affordable units by 2030. But when it comes to actually building those spaces, some in the area are also thinking small.
According to figures shared with the county Board of Commissioners by Dr. Shuchin Shukla, a physician and opioid crisis educator with the Mountain Area Health Education Center, Buncombe’s rate of overdose deaths has exceeded the statewide average since at least 2016. In 2021, the county suffered 45.2 deaths per 100,000 residents, compared with 35.8 deaths per 100,000 for North Carolina as a whole.
Currently, Asheville prohibits the replacement of any manufactured home by another after its spot has been vacant for 180 days. City planners want to ease that rule and others to “stop the slow attrition of affordable housing units that are desperately needed in our community.”
