It appears from the letters to the editor in the Mountain Xpress that most of the writers support maintaining the urban forest on land owned by UNC Asheville. I take the opposite position. As a graduate of the workforce, I moved to Asheville to enjoy time in the mountains hiking and kayaking. I retired after over three decades as a university educator at a public university in my state.
UNCA is cash poor and land rich. Currently, UNCA is at a critical level in the evolution of its curricular offerings and in the number of students attending the university. This spring semester, there are less than 3,000 students that are degree-seeking. Compare this number to Western Carolina University with over 11,000 students and Appalachian State University with over 20,000 students.
UNCA’s endowment is $70 million. Western Carolina has an endowment of $130 million, and Appalachian State has an endowment of over $190 million. The smaller an institution is in higher education, the more difficult it is to offer a wide array of curricular opportunities for students and to expand its program offerings. UNCA has been running a deficit. It has cut both academic programs and people.
At the same time, despite there being a surplus in the state treasury, the North Carolina legislature has been less than friendly in supporting the needs of our public universities. Currently, the Trump administration is making major cuts of federal funding to universities throughout the country.
UNCA needs to generate a significant positive cash flow so that it can expand its program offerings, maintain its physical facilities and instructional equipment, supplement student tuition and fees, and create a salary schedule that recruits and retains the best faculty and staff. To accomplish this, UNCA needs to find creative ways to generate an income flow from its land holdings to supplement its other sources of income.
Asheville and the surrounding area need UNCA to be a vibrant institution that has a synergetic impact on our community. Asheville and the surrounding area do not need a UNCA that has to continually make cuts that create institutional and academic anemia in order to balance the books.
For many reasons, these are difficult times in higher education. This is not the time to have a not-in-my-backyard mentality. This is not the time to slay the goose that can produce golden eggs. The intentions of the UNCA administration to utilize the resources of the urban forest to strengthen the university are based on both necessity and good intentions. They know what they are doing. They know why they are doing it. They should be trusted.
— Richard Boyum
Candler
It would be a lot easier to trust UNCA in this matter had its leadership been willing to engage with the community.
Instead, neighbors saw work going on in the woods, inquired to the people doing the work what was going on and were told by those workers that UNCA was planning to develop the property. UNCA then denied there were any such plans. A few weeks later Chancellor van Noort announced that UNCA would develop the property.
So, UNCA, shows disdain for the community by making decisions without any consultation with nearby neighbors or the wider community but also essentially lied when it denied the plans neighbors were informed about by those doing the preliminary work.
Chancellor Van Noort’s failure to engage withe neighbors in this process speaks poorly of her interest in the wider community. Any lack of the trust the letter writer requests rests solely with the Chancellor and it is up to her to restore it. Given her actions from the start of this process to now it does not appear that such trust is particularly important to her.
Just pitiful leadership ability. Will UNCA ever have a decent chancellor who resides in the community full time and stays longer than two years?
The land has never been public property or part of the city Parks and Rec, but instead used by the public because they felt entitled to do so. There wasn’t anything that the University owed the people who were asking contractors what they were doing there.
And the community owes nothing to this university that constantly sends barrages of poorly conceived and barely literate fundraising appeals…
The property is owned by the state of North Carolina, thus NC citizens should have a say in determining its use.
I don’t think we need a Wisconsin retiree living in Candler telling longtime residents what to do with one of Asheville’s last urban forests.
Could K clarify these two statements?
“. . . a decent chancellor who resides in the community full time and stays longer than two years . . .”
” . . . a Wisconsin retiree living in Candler . . .”
Who is the Wisconsin retiree living in Candler?
Does Chancellor van Noort not live in the community full-time?
The LW is the Wisconsin retiree living in Candler.