In a new feature focusing on the tally of Asheville City Council’s latest doings, we look at a bus system overhaul, a grassroots push for community space and the ongoing battle over policing and racism

Above: A map of proposed overhauls to Asheville’s bus system.

Welcome back, readers. From the start, the Blade has prided ourselves on keeping a close watch on Asheville City Council. A lot, more than ever in some ways, is going on in City Hall. But figuring out the most useful ways to deliver that information to the public — while providing key context — is a challenge. Sometimes we’ve opted for more traditional meeting reports, but that format has its limitations. Often big fights at Council meetings are best incorporated into larger longform pieces about the overall issue they’re dealing with, as we did in our recent Reform vs. racism article. Sometimes, in keeping with the Blade‘s commitment to transparency and social justice, they’re best dealt with through shorter opinion columns highlighting an issue of public concern, like my May piece on the major problems with Asheville’s city budget. As a small news organization that does a lot with fairly limited resources, picking which format best serves the public involves a lot of factors and some tough decisions.

But I’ve felt for awhile we needed something additional as well, because a lot’s going on in City Hall that doesn’t fit easily into a longform piece (which necessarily take more time to research and develop) or a short column (which necessarily focuses on a single particularly troubling issue or incident). It’s important for members of the public to get some basic details in easily digestible format, but also a bit of perspective (especially about action they can take).

So, from now on, after each Asheville City Council meeting we’ll do the tally, with a fairly quick list of items in useful format. This will usually come out in the week following the meeting (for this first edition it took awhile to work out a solid format). This will differ from traditional meeting format by having more analysis and potential ways the public can take action thrown in along with who voted how, when and why. It’s my hope that this will help better inform the public. Here’s our first, about the July 24 Asheville City Council meeting.

— D.F.

If May and June’s Asheville City Council meetings were marked by a major shift in the ongoing showdowns over attempts to reform the police department, especially to rein in its racism by passing a series of NAACP-backed reforms, July 24 was more a busy barrage of different items, many of them important but without an immediate major vote or resolution. Things moved forward, to one end or another.

One theme throughout though, was that more left-leaning locals and groups aren’t just making their presence known at the ballot box or in occasional efforts to stop or push through a particular agenda item, but in shaping policy at the broader level as well.

• A new transit master plan — and a promise of major cash for the bus system — The major item on the July 24 agenda was the unveiling of the city’s official Transit Master Plan.

The city has numerous master plans, and they range from mostly abstract goals to serious documents that basically telegraph where Council’s going to put the city cash. Typically local gentry, senior city staff and business owners have played major roles in writing these plans, as they’re usually the ones city government.

But these aren’t typical times. For the past half decade the local transit workers’ union and rider advocates forged a close alliance and fought back against what they saw as a system harming both drivers and riders though drastic mismanagement and an apathetic city staff. Last year they won a major part of that fight, securing a new transit management company and a rewritten contract after years of opposition from senior city staff.

But the bus system remains in dire shape, with breakdowns an ongoing issue, so their next target turned to securing the resources and planning for a major overhaul through the transit plan. That power was on display when, after some of the earlier versions of the plan didn’t meet their expectations, those advocates (including on the city’s Transit Committee) pushed back and secured changes that aligned more thoroughly with their goals (especially on longer hours and getting the bus system back to a basically functional state). The plan presented before Council (you can read it here) was one that the union and rider advocates endorsed.

What does it call for? Longer hours, more frequent routes, and changes to transfers and service to public housing and West Asheville and a new maintenance facility among many, many other overhauls intended to improve the system. The immediate gain is $2.5 million next year to the transit budget for more drivers, buses and service, something that’s likely to become a major discussion in next year’s budget fights. While master plans are generally accepted by Council (they did so unanimously with this one), whether they’ll actually be implemented is another matter. It takes years of policy battles, budget votes and pressure for a master plan to actually become a part of the way the city operates.

However, the lack of transit funding in this year’s budget was a big source of contention and Council is now feeling some serious pressure. This is especially true for Council member Julie Mayfield, who’s tried to position herself as a defender of transit. She’s supported repeated increases in funding both before and during her time on Council, but also initially opposed the union and rider efforts to switch management companies and also cast the deciding vote to pass this year’s budget (which opted for pay hikes for top-level staff and a controversial police expansion instead of funds for housing, eviction relief, social justice initiatives or transit). Mayfield was notably vocal in her support for the master plan.

While $2.5 million is a major increase, longtime transit advocate Sabrah n’haRaven, who helped craft the plan, emphasized that the increases it lays out over the coming decade are just what’s sufficient to start getting the system up to a basically functional one after a disastrous 2012 overhaul and years of neglect.

“Now we have a whole new set of problems, but we must solve them,” n’haRaven said. “People need to know they can get to work on time, that they can get to a doctor without worrying about missing an appointment because the bus didn’t show up.”

Still, some divisions remain, especially over making Asheville’s bus system fare free. The idea’s a popular one on Asheville’s left, especially as a way to make a key system for cash-strapped locals more accessible while actually reducing some costs and delays (it takes time and equipment to collect fares rather than just let people ride). But senior city staff, especially the managerial and budget officials that wield a lot of the power over where Asheville’s government dollars go, are firm believers in “cost recovery.” This is the more conservative idea of getting as much money from a system’s users as possible, regardless of their level of poverty, so they’re more inclined to keep fares or even raise them. Right now, the plan calls for testing out fare free bus system in weekends starting in 2019. Expect a major conflict over this issue in the years to come, especially if staff claim that more funds are necessary and that a fare hike is the way to extract them.

• A push for a community center to focus on black Asheville — The Stephens-Lee community center has a long history. The building was the gym for the Stephens-Lee school, renowned for its excellence and key role in Asheville’s African-American community and civil rights movement. But during the days of urban renewal, much of the surrounding black community’s homes and businesses were demolished. Stephens-Lee was also shut down and mostly leveled, with only the gym remaining.

But it’s run by the city’s Parks and Rec department and, on July 24, local activist and teacher Libby Kyles told Council that needed to change, asserting that the city needed to turn the center over to an alliance of community groups.

“Stephens-Lee was purposed for the gathering of children of color in a positive way,” Kyles said of her experience with the center growing up. “There was a great community that was built in that place. Today our children are missing out.”

Importantly, Kyles mentioned that she was appealing to Council directly because her ideas had been ignored or shut down when she took them to the Parks and Rec department and to the city’s nascent Equity Office. This theme, of staff basically acting as a graveyard for new ideas, is a familiar one, and it’s been a major factor in more Ashevillians taking proposals straight to Council and the public in recent years.

Local governments leasing out centers in black communities to community groups is a long-standing idea aimed at making local infrastructure more responsive to communities who’ve traditionally been ignored by local governments. Kyles, notably, was calling for Stephens-Lee as a starting point, and wanted the city to seriously consider doing the same with other rec centers that had once been mainstays of the local black community.

“One of the most upsetting things in any community is when you have people come in and mandate what they think you should do, versus people who are on the ground doing the work on the daily basis,” Kyles said.

Kyles proposal found ready support from BeLoved House, Just Economics and a range of other community groups, as well as from Asheville Housing Authority CEO Gene Bell, who noted that volunteers were already organized to help operate the center.

Overall, Council members were open to the idea. But both they and senior city staff noted that a range of boards and other groups would need to be consulted, so it remains to be seen how Kyles’ proposal moves forward.

• A land trust moves forward —  While there wasn’t much discussion about the issue at the meeting, Council did unanimously agree to reiterate their support (including $1 million in bond funds) for a land trust, an organization that would purchase land to provide permanently affordable housing, especially in gentrifying areas. Unlike the non-profit-owned housing complexes the city has traditionally incentivized, the residents would have a share and say in the ownership and use of the property, which would be assured to remain affordable.

Land trusts are a popular local government idea among both more progressive liberals and left-wing movements, though they can vary pretty considerably about how those should be implemented. So far, the board of the Asheville Buncombe Community land trust is composed of a combination of experienced community activists as well as government officials, and plans to focus on predominantly African-American communities.

• Incentives for a giant corporation unchallenged — While the evening was marked by examples of how left-leaning Ashevillians are having more of a say in city policy, on one front it was business as usual. Giant industrial company General Electric got a $900,960 property tax incentive to expand its aviation manufacturing operations. Its proponents touted the number of relatively high-paying jobs and the fact the incentive was tied to the expansion’s completion.

Notably, and perhaps somewhat surprisingly, no Council member objected and the measure passed unanimously, with several Council members enthused about it. These kinds of incentives are a mainstay of centrist local economic policy, and their advocates assert they’re a relatively small investment for the return they provide. Their detractors, who’ve typically come from the left, assert that they amount to corporate welfare for the already-wealthy and that any incentives that are used should go to local enterprises willing to commit to more equitable hiring practices. However, though left-leaning ideas are clearly a bit more influential in Council these days, on this matter the center still holds sway.

• ‘The Asheville Police Department is imploding before your eyes’ — While a major vote on local policing wasn’t on the agenda, policing was once again from and center as a matter of debate in the open public comment at the end of the meeting, especially in the wake of revelations that the APD had surveilled peaceful civil rights groups, specifically the local Showing Up for Racial Justice and Black Lives Matter groups.

Things started off with local conservatives bluntly defending the police department and wanting the repeal of the NAACP reforms passed just under a month before. Most of this opposition came from the Council of Independent Business Owners, which wanted less funding for the bus system and still more funding for policing.

They also wanted Council to adopt a resolution praising the APD, in the words of CIBO rep Mac Swicegood, as “the guardian of peace and order, ready to protect our homes and businesses.”

CIBO is a far-right business group whose members have repeatedly advocated using police violence against everyone from protesters to graffiti artists. During the Occupy Asheville protests, one member told elected officials to violently disperse the camp (specifically that police on horseback should line up “and do a baton charge”). Members later advocated felony charges for anyone caught painting graffiti and also advocated that police brutally injure them. One even bragged that he would personally break the arms of anyone caught carrying out acts that are, at worst, minor vandalism.

Given that history, as well as the eclipse of the local far-right, CIBO’s proposal didn’t get much traction from the dais. FOP President Rondell Lance also accused (without any evidence) SURJ and Black Lives Matter of threatening police and vandalizing the FOP lodge. He also claimed that the 2016 police brutality protests endangered the public by blocking their access to the police station during a sit-in. This is factually untrue. This reporter was there for all but a few late night hours of the sit-in, and repeatedly saw protesters let members of the public through if they had business at the police department.

But then pressure came from the civil rights groups themselves, who vollied back and added to the pressure to oust APD Chief Tammy Hooper (disclosure: I’ve written in an opinion column that Hooper’s merited firing for multiple reasons). Elizabeth Schell of SURJ (“police are being used to attack our communities and movements for change”) and Delores Venable of BLM both criticized her or pressed for her removal.

“How much more do you not know about what’s happened with this police chief?” Venable said. “The Asheville Police Department is imploding before your eyes, for the last two years, since this chief has been here, we’ve seen nothing but disaster after disaster.”

That wasn’t the only controversy the APD was embroiled in, as just a week before it emerged that crime numbers the APD released to WLOS were inflated from the actual totals, something they blamed on a “cut-and-paste error.” Venable criticized that, as did local Michael Carter, who noted that “in the past six months, this is the third time we’re talking about a major issue with the police department… it’s seriously an issue of competency.”

Under the city charter, Hooper’s fate is in the hands for acting City manager Cathy Ball, who’s the one official who can directly remove her from office (though Council could do a lot more to scrutinize Hooper’s actions). Members of the public can contact Ball if they wish to call for her to do so, or if they just want to weigh in on the operations of the city in general.

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