With a unanimous vote during their Nov. 15 meeting, Asheville City Council members approved their fourth land use incentive grant of 2022. The award to South Carolina-based Orange Capital Advisors LLC brings the city’s spending on the affordable housing program this year to nearly $5.4 million.
Complete Democratic control of the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners, a better-than-expected performance by Jasmine Beach-Ferrara and $70 million in new spending for county initiatives all emerged from this year’s midterm election results.
“More resources without strategy that apprehends the true nature of the challenge won’t get the public safety and public health job done.”
“In this election cycle, two of the most progressive candidates are not Democrats and have no party affiliation. They are mayoral candidate Kim Roney and City Council candidate Andrew Fletcher.”
The mix of working artists and arts advocates resulted in a lively, productive discussion.
General election candidates for the 2022 Asheville mayoral race share their positions with Xpress.
Before the noise ordinance was passed last September, most noise complaints were called in to the Asheville Police Department nonemergency line. While APD still handles nighttime noise complaints and those that might come with safety risks, the city’s Development Services Department resolved 71% of complaints over the past year.
When you donate money to a political campaign, where do your dollars actually go? For local candidates, the answer for the bulk of donations is almost unanimous: mailers.
The lanes are slated to be installed along sections of College Street and Patton Avenue, with both routes terminating at Pritchard Park. The city is prepared to accept bids for the project, which should be ready for installation later in the month.
Mayor Esther Manheimer and climate change consultant Maggie Ullman Berthiaume have raised the most campaign funds so far in this year’s race for Asheville city government positions, according to reports filed by candidates’ campaigns. Manheimer had raised $19,550 as of mid-July, while Berthiaume had taken $29,442 in donations.
The updates, which have been controversial, are meant to encourage the construction of affordable housing by reducing and simplifying building regulations and incentivizing stormwater management.
The approved budget more than $30.1 million for the Asheville Police Department, $500,000 for the city’s reparations fund, $108,000 to create an urban forester position and $300,000 to increase full-time employee salaries, among other items.
Of 80 microhousing units, 16 would be designated as affordable for people earning at or below 80% of the area median income. However, developer David Moritz confirmed that market-price rent for all of the project’s units would be about $1,000 including utilities, meaning that the city-subsidized units would not immediately be cheaper for their tenants.
The Buncombe County Board of Elections won’t officially certify the results until Friday, May 27, and the N.C. Board of Elections will issue its own certification Thursday, June 9. But even with those steps still to come, there’s plenty to learn from the unofficial results.
The city used a scoring system to winnow the field of applicants, but at least one council member questions the fairness of that approach.
Primary candidates in the 2022 Asheville mayoral election share their positions with Xpress.
Members of Asheville City Council discussed transit, parking revenues, personnel costs and weighed funding options for the newly approved updates to Memorial Stadium.
An exchange between protesters and Asheville City Council member Sandra Kilgore marked the start of Council’s March 17-18 retreat, where the elected officials heard feedback from top city staffers and plotted their approach to the coming year.
“There are a lot of conversations that could have been had around this conversation that were limited — they were hindered, they were gaslit, they were triggered and electrified — just because bad information was released to the public,” said Vice Mayor Sheneika Smith.
During a presentation, Capt. Mike Lamb of the Asheville Police Department cited data showing that 10% of overall crime in Asheville from Jan. 1, 2020 to Jan. 9, 2022 — including 14% of violent crime and 8.5% of property crime — occurred within 500 feet of an encampment.
With only Antanette Mosley opposed, Asheville City Council members voted Dec. 14 to approve the conversion of an East Asheville Ramada Inn into permanent supportive housing for at least 100 homeless residents — a project first floated to the public less than two weeks earlier.
