A bevy of items — including drug enforcement, housing and the interstate — lead to a long and occasionally contentious Council meeting
Above: Asheville City Council member Julie Mayfield. File photo by Max Cooper.
The Sept. 16 Asheville City Council meeting was a long one, less due to a lengthy debate about any single controversy (though a number of the items tapped into larger issues) than an array of items the elected officials tackled, bit by bit.
It started with the consent agenda, not normally a place for controversy.
Normally the consent agenda is fast, a list of items approves with little comment, as the kinks have all been ironed out in previous committee meetings or the items are uncontroversial and just require a formal sign-off from Council. However, that night there were a few more items than usual that required comment.
Council member Cecil Bothwell brought up concerns regarding the city’s use of independent contractors. Specifically, one resolution authorizing the City Manager to execute a contract with Pinnacle Landscapes for median maintenance and another authorizing a contract with Guard-One Protective Services to provide security guard services at City Hall and the Public Works building.
Bothwell’s concern had to do with the city’s living wage certification: the state passed a 2014 law that forbade cities from directly requiring contractors to pay a living wage (which Asheville did at the time, though the city wouldn’t actually pay all its workers a living wage until last year). However, the way the bidding process works for these available contract means that companies are trying to land the job with the lowest possible bid. Bothwell’s concern was that if the city goes with a company that can do the work for less money, what happens to the workers?
Specifically, he noted that for the guards hired “to protect our citizens and public servants,” the hourly billed rate of $16.86 minus company profits wouldn’t be enough for these workers to earn a living wage. “We’re hiring temp laborers from an entity that is employing people who have trouble getting employment, which seems good. I’m in favor of that. But I’m wondering how much less are we paying and how do we quantify or evaluate the social good versus the wages taken?”
The consent agenda passed, absent the items related to worker compensation (which Bothwell and Council member Brian Haynes voted against), but yet another item was singled out for discussion, and this time, it was about drugs.
Specifically, it had to do with renewing an agreement with the Drug Enforcement Agency, which allows APD officers to more easily participate in anti-drug operations across county boundaries.
Haynes brought up strong opposition to approving this. “Let me start by saying that my comments here today are not directed at Chief [Tammy] Hooper or any officers involved locally in the enforcement of drug laws. My issues are with the policymakers who blindly continue down a failed path.” He cited Nixon’s failed drug war to criminalize minorities and political opponents. He asserted that the war on drugs has hurt our country and that continuing to support these failed drug policies would be remiss.
“In 1973, [Nixon] created the DEA, or Drug Enforcement Agency to fight his war on drugs. Nixon’s aide John Ehrlichman stated in 1994 that the war on drugs was started to combat the enemies of the Nixon administration: the anti-war left and the civil rights movement. By associating hippies and blacks with drugs, the administration could disrupt these communities by arresting their leaders, raiding their homes, breaking up meetings, and vilifying them night after night on the evening news.”
Haynes then spoke on the booming prison population that resulted from these policies.
“It’s time to end the war on drugs. We need to restructure our criminal justice system and begin a time of healing for our society. Therefore I cannot in good conscious vote to re-enter into this agreement.”
Bothwell agreed that he did not want to support this country’s failed war on drugs by re-entering into the DEA agreement.
Mayor Esther Manheimer responded, saying that in this very pro-weed community she wished things could be different, but also cited the high rates of meth and opioid use here in these mountains.
“We have a duty to help our police,” she said.
While approvals of such agreements usually pass without much issue, the DEA partnership only made it through with a single vote, as Council member Keith Young joined Haynes and Bothwell in opposition to the measure.
The debate over the two matters was unusual on a number of fronts, both in the narrow margins the DEA and the wage contracts and the fact that they took place on a part of the agenda where items are supposed to be non-controversial. Indeed, Council also had a brief contention about why those matters were on that part of the agenda at all.
Council member Gordon Smith questioned that aspect of the DEA agreement in particular. “If something comes up at Public Safety in the future that does not have the consent of the committee out of which it comes, maybe we don’t put it on consent next time.”
Haynes, however, replied that Council’s Public Safety Committee (which he and Bothwell both sit on) passed the DEA partnership onto the full Council for more discussion, not because they all agreed on it.
Block by block
Council’s presentations also revealed more about the latest chapters in two sagas tying into controversial changes involving the city’s past and present segregation.
The first had to do with the an update to the Lee Walker Heights saga, an ambitious and controversial attempt to overhaul the city’s oldest public housing complex into new, mixed-income housing. That complex deal (including over $4 million financing from the city) between local government, the Housing Authority, non-profit Mountain Housing Opportunities and even Duke Power has been touted as a way to deal with major issues in the city’s public housing. That system is home to over 3,000 people and no shortage of controversy about its future, with HACA, resident advocates and others all having some very different ideas about where things should go.
Unfortunately for this particular push, the application for the state grant funds to undertake this project was denied last month. David Nash, the COO of the Housing Authority, explained the funding woes, noting that the next step is to work to improve their application such that they can get funded and give Lee Walker residents relocation benefits and a right to reentry after improvements.
“Unfortunately we weren’t selected in this highly competitive program, as it were. Less than half of the applications were funded this year, so we knew it was going to be competitive and that we might not get it in the first year. It certainly is our intention to go back, listen to the feedback that we’ve got and either submit another application this coming January,” Nash said, adding that HACA could also get into another program that “requires more local subsidy, that would require us to reach out to the county. We haven’t made a formal request to the county yet bet we are considering doing that if it looks like that package could be put together.”
The next presentation had to do with one of our hotter ongoing political shitshows: it was the quarterly I-26 Connector update. The I-26 project, controversial for over three decades is slated to have a massive impact on surrounding neighborhoods, tearing down homes, parks, businesses and churches, particularly in the historically African-American Burton Street community. Its proponents claim it’s nevertheless a necessary change that will help the area’s economy and safety, while opponents assert that as currently planned it’s unnecessarily large and that many of the designs from the state Department of Transportation is based around outdated assumptions.
Council has, over the years, criticized some aspects of specific NCDOT plans, but also largely endorsed the project moving forward, asserting that they have better odds of lessening the damage to Asheville that way while possibly getting some substantial improvements. City leaders and some transportation advocates have asserted that such local pressure resulted in NCDOT adopting a design pushed by some local groups as a better alternative.
Transportation Director Ken Putnam, however, instead discussed how noise ordinances are affecting 1-26 planning, and mentioned that his team and the DOT were working to put together an aesthetics team for the project. The whole thing, he said, seems fairly messy and improbable at times, but the city is determined to get through it,
This was a sentiment that Council member Julie Mayfield echoed when, in one of the most Asheville things ever uttered in City Hall, she compared the I-26 project was “a very large elephant and we are eating it one bite at a time and that’s a terrible analogy for a vegetarian.”
Follow the signs
The array of public hearings also saw a parade of key matters on housing, development and more. A public hearing to consider amending the requirements for utility substations was delayed until January. Duke Power is trying to build a new substation, but the location of the project is controversial. The power giant’s agreed not to build before February.
This was followed by a lengthy discussion to consider approving a sign for the new Ingles on Brevard Road.
As Shannon Tuch, the city’s principal planner, explained, Ingles wanted an exemption from city sign rules for their new store. Historically, Ingles has received such requested exemptions from city guidelines, which they typically request for some of their new locations. But this time, Council wasn’t having it. They’d sent Ingles back to change its proposed plans on July 26, but at this meeting they still didn’t find that those revisions met muster.
Despite the fact that, as attorney Wyatt Stevens, representing Ingles, pointed out, the sign proposal was almost identical to one council approved for someone else in 2007, council did not approve the request, with council member Bothwell noting that other businesses follow local sign ordinances, saying “Rules are rules.” Bothwell’s had this issue with developers requesting exception to the sign rules for some time, but over the past year the rest of Council has more frequently agreed with this assertion as well, ending up less receptive to such sign changes than before.
“Historically, out of the following —Fresh Market, Whole Foods, Aldi, Publix, Earth Fare, Trader Joe’s, and Wal-Mart — how many exceptions have we made for sign ordinances?” asked Council member Keith Young. Manheimer responded saying she wasn’t aware of any, save for a pharmacy sign, and that she wasn’t sure how that sign got permitted.
The application for an exemption was withdrawn, after it was clear that the majority of Council was opposed (an outright rejection would have delayed Ingles’ project further).
Next was the approval of 70 units of affordable housing, the Simpson Street Development by Beaucatcher Commons, seeking to build 10-unit buildings near Tunnel Road. Planner Vaidila Satvika described the proposed structures, which would be elevated, as the land is in a flooding area, with one of the buildings to have ADA-accessible units. Chris Day, the project’s designer, spoke as well, noting that the municipal infrastructure was already in place.
Rent at these proposed affordable housing structures would be $544. Mayfield expressed some concern that the housing complex would not be close enough to transportation.
Bothwell asked how long the housing would remain 100% affordable. Day said “I think it would be for 30 years,” and expressing an interest in keeping it affordable housing for as long as they can.
This affordable housing complex passed unanimously.
Council also signed off unanimously on longtime downtown restaurant Bouchon opening up a second location in Haw Creek, with the only concerns coming from Vice Mayor Gwen Wisler, who was curious how noise from the restaurant’s patio would affect the largely residential surrounding neighborhood (owner Michel Baudouin replied that dinner hours would wrap up early enough that it shouldn’t be a noise issue, and that satisfied Council).
The next hearing involving the former BB&T building, soon the site of the Arras hotel and condos (continuing the Asheville gentry’s fascination with faux-French names). Approved, with some contention, back in January, the developers now needed the city to sign off on changes to their plans. Planning director Todd Okolichany explained their plans to replace some hotel rooms with condos; there will be no change in site design, but it would slightly cut back on available parking. This time, the project didn’t receive the same amount of controversy, and the motion to approve this zoning proposal was approved unanimously.
The final bit of public hearing was another zoning change request, this one involving changes to the parking lot for Asheville Eye. Planner Sasha Vrtunski introduced the proposal, explaining the parking and space needs of the clinic. The proposal would allow for more parking and Norma Baynes, liaison of the Shiloh Community Association, in which the medical business is located, spoke in support of the proposal, saying she had been involved with the planning and that the community association supported the proposal. The motion to approve the proposal passed unanimously, with some of the re-zoned land going to the Shiloh community for their own use.
Questions for another day
In new business, the city confirmed plans to turn a piece of its property on Hilliard Street into affordable housing, the property was formerly its parks maintenance facility. The whole “turning city property into affordable housing” is kind of experimental, and observers both inside city government and out are keen to see if it can work. Specifically, the matter before Council that evening was authorizing the selection of Tribute Companies as a developer for the property, building 60 units that would stay at an affordable rate (as defined by the city) for two decades.
Jeff Staudinger, the city’s point person for this kind of housing, explained the details, and got the necessary green light from Council.
Bbut othwell inquired about the worth of the property, which was recently appraised at $937,000 (as part of the deal, Tribute will receive it for $1). He noted a potential worry.
“One of the things I’ve been concerned about with affordable projects when we have a very short window”–that is the amount of time the housing must stay affordable — ”twenty [years, referencing the current project] is better than some that we’ve done, is that we’re basically offering a balloon payment to the owner.”
“Twenty years from now the company can sell the thing for condos and make the $900,000, which will be much higher in 20 years for the dollar investment that they’re making today to buy the property.”
He wants to discuss ways to extend the time that housing must be affordable. “If we’re giving away $900,000 worth of property, why don’t we have 50 year affordability? Or 99 year affordability?”
There was also one more normally-routine-but-now-contentious vote to be had. Council split 4-3 over appointing the Beaufort House Inn’s Jim Muth to the Tourism Development Authority, a hotelier-run board that oversees hotel tax revenues (which controversially go to the TDA’s efforts, especially marketing, rather than the public coffers). Smith, Bothwell and Haynes all voted against Muth’s nomination, citing his refusal to support the city’s position that at least some of that money should to it rather than the TDA. That could show that such board appointments will become more controversial from now on.
But the resolution of those matters, like a lot of other aspects of the issues raised at the meeting, will have to wait for a future Council session. Including an unusually lengthy closed session, Sept. 6 saw nearly four hours of government deliberation before the public, city staff and government officials were released into the humid summer evening, cicadas singing.
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Leigh Cowart is a freelance journalist and writer covering science, sports, and sex. Her work has appeared in The Independent, Hazlitt, Vice, The Daily Beast, Buzzfeed News, the Verge, SB Nation and Deadspin, among others. She resides in Asheville.
Blade Editor David Forbes also contributed to this report.
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