Asheville City Council mulls affordable housing solutions, forms ‘innovation districts’ in three neighborhoods and continues its long contemplation of graffiti
Above: the borders for the South Slope “innovation district” Asheville City Council passed Oct. 14
Some of the biggest news at Asheville City Council’s Oct. 14 meeting happened before the formal evening meeting even began. About 50 people packed into a conference room to hear Council deliberate on a series of measures they believe may solve the city’s growing affordable housing crisis. My report for Carolina Public Press has the deal on the possible proposals and how various members of Council viewed them.
In a nutshell, while Council chose to move forward with crafting the ideas into more specific changes, some of the elected officials expressed skepticism about affordable housing programs and Mayor Esther Manheimer hinted at larger political conflicts ahead, especially if Council tries to allow more density.
As it was a worksession, there was no vote and no opportunity for public comment, though city staff and officials promised both as the proposals are hammered into more definite form in the coming months.
From there, Council members boarded the elevator and shot one floor up to the wood-paneled and somewhat roomier surroundings of their usual chamber.
Drawing lines
Unless you were a city staffer or policy wonk, the term “innovation districts” probably wasn’t part of your vocabulary until the term started to trickle into the news last month and became the centerpiece of Manheimer’s state of the city speech, pitched as a way for the city to ensure greater prosperity.
In this view, rather than concentrating on overhauling the city’s aging infrastructure throughout the city (through, say, a bond referendum), local government will instead focus on key neighborhoods where staff and Council believe they can get the most “return on investment.”
In this case, city government designated three areas — Charlotte Street, the South Slope and the River Arts District — as “innovation districts” that will get increased funds and attention in an attempt to create more areas that bring in the kind of tax revenue and economic activity the city’s seen from downtown.
That’s the plan, anyway. It’s worth noting that the idea has its critics. Some responses to the mayor’s speech, for example, asserted that the innovation districts idea sidelines many neighborhoods’ needs in favor of concentrating on a few select areas.
Technically, the areas were designated “municipal service districts,” a tax status that, under state law, allows the city to take out loans backed by its sales tax revenue to improve infrastructure in the area.
Downtown Asheville is already part of such a service district. When Council voted to create the incredibly controversial proposal for a Business Improvement District, it put most of downtown into such a district. While the BID ended up going on a hiatus when Council refused to give it the tax it required, the area is still officially part of a the district, so it’s already eligible for bonds to fund improvements.
Unlike the BID, these districts won’t have an independent non-profit running them, or an additional tax rate. Right now, it will just allow the city to take out the debt.
The situation, Assistant City Manager Cathy Ball admitted, is “difficult to explain and complicated to understand,” but the bonds the service districts offer “are a cost-effective way to finance project, particularly multi-modal or infrastructure.”
And indeed, throughout public comment, there was some confusion, with property owners in the new districts questioning if they’d have to pay more taxes or not, and Ball noting the city had erred on the side of notifying too many people. That meant some property owners who were told they were included in the districts weren’t actually included or didn’t understand what their inclusion meant.
“It’s a residential lot in a residential neighborhood, I’m concerned that it’s not in context,” Keith Jackson, who owns property in the River Arts District, said.
“This is a way for the city to be able to finance these improvements,” Pattiy Torno of the city’s Riverfront Redevelopment Commission said. “This is one way for us to get affordable lending to do more sooner than if we just depended on the income we have.”
Former Mayor Ken Michalove, however, said he believed the efforts on Charlotte Street were “a waste of money” as the area was and would remain largely a residential neighborhood street.
Steven Breen, a property owner on Charlotte Street, said he was tried of city plans regarding the area as “a corridor for affluent North Asheville residents, they say that while it’s not really an eyesore, it doesn’t represent that what they want to see.” But “Charlotte Street is really a neighborhood street” and he worried that was being ignored.
Council member Cecil Bothwell, who opposed the BID, noted that he did so because “it included a special tax and a non-elected body that would administer those taxes. We’re not doing either of those things in these cases. Though it does leave it open to a future Council to impose special taxes, I’m still pretty comfortable supporting this at this time.”
Council member Jan Davis emphasized the same point, “hopefully the return on investment will generate the revenue to fund the infrastructure, make it a better place to be and your property’s going to be more valuable.”
The creation of all three districts passed unanimously.
A game of tag
Once again, graffiti also came before Council. A controversial program to use $300,000 in city reserves to foot all or most of the bill passed earlier this year, and Council chose to extend it last month. While city officials and supporters have touted it as a way to clean up what they see as a major social ill, critics have blasted it as an ineffective giveaway to private business of funds that could be better spent on other problems. So far, the city has cleaned up 199 sites, with 107 more on the list.
However, Public Works Director Greg Shuler noted, the problem is now several large sites where the costs of extensive graffiti clean-up well exceeds the credits the city’s offering.
Furthermore, the owners are reluctant to do so, even though the city’s new ordinance will eventually require them to do so (if they don’t, they city will clean up the sites and bill them).
“They didn’t feel like it would be successful because it would just happen again,” he said. “They stated that they’d already cleaned it up before only to have it vandalized again. Some said they couldn’t afford to”
Shuler also added that while in September he could brag that sites the city had repainted over twice had avoided being retagged again for a month, “I can’t say that anymore.”
“Enforcement is tough but even if you do catch them [the taggers], there’s little you can do.”
He offered Council the option of spending as much money required (staff estimated it as costing over $200,000) to clean up the larger graffiti sites and hope that improved enforcement by the Asheville Police Department would keep the tags from reappearing.
But Council, on staff’s recommendation, stayed with its current course, declining to shell out the extra money to clean up the larger graffiti sites but keeping the current program to subsidize business clean-up in place.
Next round
The public comment portion of the meeting saw continuing criticism on a number of issues, with former Michalove, who’s often criticized Council on reorganizing Pack Place, accusing city government of being dictatorial and blasting the changes as “a colossal, illegal boondoggle.”
The Asheville Police Department’s leadership also came in for some criticism, with resident Jonathan Robert, who’s often targeted Council and city staff over the past few months about the conduct of the department, particularly the conduct of Chief William Anderson. Robert accused Anderson of “severe mismanagement,” including in his previous command posts, and said Council should “do your jobs.”
The APD’s been the subject of a barrage of controversies in the past month, as an Asheville Citizen-Times investigation found videos of local protests weren’t stored properly and that city officials had contradictory explanations for why they were keeping such videos in the first place. The situation had Council members divided, with some sharply criticizing the APD’s conduct and others defending it. Last week, the district attorney suspended all speeding ticket cases involving radar detectors after finding that out-of-date detectors were used, despite commanders being aware that problems with the devices existed.
Last week, WLOS broke a story about a shortage of manpower, with officers working an unusual amount of overtime, and criticisms from police Lt. Mark Byrd about Anderson’s conduct. Since then, 44 officers have signed a petition highlighting serious issues and some have called for Anderson’s resignation.
After the meeting, WLOS reporter Mike Mason questioned Bothwell, who’s condemned the APD’s conduct on the surveillance issue but has sometimes defended Anderson in the past, about issues with the department.
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