Public outrage finally gets a hearing as the latest city budget promises more of the same and the rift between the public and City Hall widens

Above: Council at their dais. File photo by Max Cooper.

After over a decade of mounting distrust in Asheville City Manager Gary Jackson finally led to his removal, residents have mostly greeted new City Manager Debra Campbell with optimism. However, just six months into her tenure Asheville City Council chambers saw locals outraged over her administration’s first budget, one that appears frighteningly similar to those of her predecessor.

The city’s official May 28 budget hearing showed just how deep the divide runs between those holding the reins in City Hall and the people of Asheville. The budget proposed by Campbell’s administration continues the trend of prioritizing high-level staff pay hikes and inflated police budgets while throwing in some pricy infrastructure projects at the expense of much-needed funds for city services such as transit, a $15 an hour living wage for city workers and environmental protection. This follows over two years of major budget battles, where Council and senior staff faced public backlash over budgets marked by a lack of transparency, prioritized high-level staff pay hikes and a controversial and expensive ramping up of the Asheville Police Department. In 2017 locals packed the chamber for the most contentious budget hearing in memory. Last year saw civil disobedience over the proposed budget and a lack of public comment (last year’s hearing was held at 9:30 at night). In the end, that budget only passed by a single vote.

So locals are pushing back (and perhaps experiencing some deja vu) as Campbell’s first budget (whose priorities have the full support of Council’s more conservative members) looks a lot more like reaction than reform. While the budget hearing took up the lion’s share of the meeting, other agenda items touched on major issues like affordable housing guidelines (which have yet to actually be defined in ways that support Asheville’s low-income workers), and two multi-billion dollar corporations duked it out for naming rights for the Civic Center while gentry Council members wrung their hands about the presence of gambling and denied (really) that “Beer City USA” is based on drinking.

The city of Asheville’s proposed budget is $190.3 million. This amount is nearly $10 million more than last year’s budget, much of it due to the sale of Mission Hospitals (since Mission is no longer a non-profit, its massive property holdings are now taxable, bringing in about $2.5 million this coming budget year and around $5 million every year after).

However, across this year’s budget Asheville’s official priorities look mostly the same, while many residents still lack access to core services and living wages in an increasingly expensive metropolis. Also, increasingly urgent environmental concerns continue to go unanswered. The public comment on this year’s proposed budget was a not so merry-go-round of jabs at this proposed document. In doubling down on more of the same, funding for long overdue bus system needs, an actual living wage for all city workers, and basic protection for Asheville’s rapidly vanishing trees have fallen off the ride.

Voices from the dais

Presenting her first budget, Campbell acknowledged public discontent over its lack of funding for some of those services and living wages, but also maintained that this was the best her and staff could provide.

Campbell pointed to the budget’s proposed $1.56 million increase in transit funding compared to last year, $1.2 million of which is directly linked to the transit master plan (a set of priorities pushed by rider advocates and transit workers) approved by Council last July.

But the devil’s in the details. The initial version of the transit plan, which City Council approved unanimously, called for $2.5 million in investment this year with implementation starting on July 1. Earlier this spring, however, city staff claimed it would now take $3.7 million to put that plan into practice. Staff also claimed that due to a lack of necessary personnel, implementation had been delayed until January. Dividing the amount staff now say is needed by half for a half year (since they’re starting in January), funding should be at least $1.85 million, with some actual assurance the additional necessary funding, already overdue, would quickly follow. But of course this is not reflected in the budget.

Pushback from transit riders, the workers’ union and many locals has grown increasingly severe, because after years of pressure the funds for the bus system still don’t meet what they’ve repeatedly said is needed to make it safe and functional (full disclosure: the author of this piece helped organize the “Transit Can’t Wait” declaration and is one of its signatories).

“It would give me no greater pleasure than to be able to fund the first year implementation from the Transit Master Plan,” Campbell claimed, before declaring that she wouldn’t fund it.

Despite a banner year for the city’s coffers, she claimed revenue shortfalls and complications in the number of available buses were her reasons for underfunding the bus system. Since earlier this year, Campbell and some senior staff have been pushing the idea that the city is running out of money. While Asheville faces real revenue challenges, the assertion is somewhat dubious: the models they rely on assume that raises for senior-level staff and Asheville’s expensive police expansions are treated as sacrosanct.

The issues didn’t end there. Despite Council approving a living wage (the minimum needed to even have a chance of meeting the cost of living in Asheville) for all city employees in 2015, the city has left rank-and-file workers in the cold, with many workers claiming that once the number of hours they work is factored in, their actual pay falls below the living wage ($13.65 in Buncombe County).

Even as some senior city staffers bring in salaries well over $100,000 a year, one hundred full-time workers make less than $31,200 per year, which is living wage for full time workers working 40 hours per week. Many entry-level firefighters work nearly 3,000 hours per year, and despite the level of risk and exposure to harmful chemicals, and claim they only end up drawing $11.94 an hour. By the city’s own admission 143 workers make below the $15 an hour rate many labor advocates say is needed as a more just minimum (by comparison, only 12 workers in Buncombe County’s government make less than $15 an hour).

But Campbell (salary $220,000 a year) suggested that rather than pushing forward with overdue pay raises for the rank-and-file, they’d have to wait. She touted the need for a $150,000 “Classification and Compensation Study”, a go-to move for any city official who would rather overanalyze than depend on hard data already compiled. Here again, locals might get a sense of deja vu. Jackson touted a 2015 compensation study as an excuse to push back against a living wage for city workers and, once again, enact more raises for high-level staff.

Campbell ended her report by listing planning priorities for next year, including “strengthening the link between priorities and budget” as a seeming pass on her current responsibilities. “We need to be sure that we are advancing council and the communities’ priorities,” Campbell noted, signaling that despite the budget’s release only 15 days prior to the hearing, a chorus of public input, though remarkably clear and detailed, has arrived too late.

In fact, at their retreat earlier this year, Council had listed transit as their top priority. It was Campbell and other senior staff who pushed the compensation study instead, and even did so over the concerns of some Council members. Not surprisingly, senior city staff support raises for senior city staff.

Council member Julie Mayfield, who often claims to be a transit advocate, echoed her support for Campbell’s approach, “I think everyone up here would want to pay everyone as much as we could pay them, and I think everyone up here wants to expand transit as much as we can.”

She followed by suggesting that the only way she considers viable to meet those goals is to increase property taxes, which the majority of council rejects.

“People want a lot of things. We’ve gotten a lot of emails from people these last two weeks from people wanting a lot of things that cost a lot of money,” Mayfield asserted. She then claimed that in the 15 days during which the budget was available, she’d not seen any alternative proposals to come up with the revenue. “We have what we have,” she concluded.

Mayfield’s assertion was outright false. Critics of city budgets have for years asserted that Council should decrease Asheville’s massive policing budget and put the funds to transit, equity and housing. They’ve also asserted that the city can do pay raises in a more equitable method that, while using the same or an even lower amount of funds, would direct higher raises to rank-and-file workers while withholding them from already well-paid senior staff. The city’s current method gives a flat percentage across the board, resulting in far higher increases for the upper echelons and increasing pay disparities over time.

Indeed, Just Economics director Vicki Meath had released a detailed proposal days before showing how the city could enact a $15 minimum wage for all its workers while dividing raises more equitably (i.e. real raises for rank-and-file workers, smaller ones to upper-middle tiers and none to the top ranks) and actually spend less money than the $1.9 million Campbell’s budget has proposed for staff pay hikes.

Mayor Esther Manheimer and Vice mayor Gwen Wisler also added their full support for the status quo. Wisler would add that Asheville is sharing federal and state dollars with neighboring municipalities’ transit efforts, seeming to shift blame onto communities and their efforts to provide greater access to their residents and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

Mayfield added her plug for her state senate campaign, discussing the push to add a sales tax to foods and beverages that could be levied by Asheville, but requires state approval (she had pushed this at a forum on the tourism industry and been mostly met by eye rolls).

The public would begin their comments — on living wages, on funding for transit, and on tree protection, which despite the city’s greenwashing, is set to not receive a dime from city coffers.

‘We can’t wait’

Local resident Sarah Benoit, who has become a regular speaker at council, cast doubt on Campbell’s first proposed budget, and the clearly condescending tone some on Council had directed towards the public speaking up.

“I am not sorry that I write to each of you, or that I have been showing up here at every city meeting in 2019, because I want things. I’m not sorry I want them,” Benoit said. “I want to be living a more sustainable life, I want my neighbors to get to work, I don’t want to stress about how I pay my rent. I want Asheville to become a better place.”

“Some of us waited a long time for you,” Benoit said to Campbell, “because we really felt not represented by the last city manager in this place…We’re here because for the first time in 20 years, I think have a city manager that actually gives a rat’s ass.” Her hope for an actual change of course from Campbell was repeated a few times on this night. A similar refusal to be silenced was echoed again, again, and again.

Amy Cantrell of BeLoved House and Asheville native and survivor of police violence Amber LaShae Banks, some of the first speakers of the night, took turns sharing the collected stories of transit riders which had been gathered on postcards earlier that day. Stories included one from a nursing home worker who spent more than $20 a night to get home because buses don’t run at the times workers need them, as bus riders work the many late night jobs both Ashevillians and visitors rely on. Bus riders, among many other needs linked to extended hours, require assistance dropping off and picking up their children from school and doctors appointments, attending Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and affording necessities such as rent and food due to limited work hours.

These were some of the more than 100 postcards collected, with dozens read as transit riders made clear their need for extended service hours (at least 10 p.m. Monday to Saturday and until 8 p.m. on Sunday). The Transit Master Plan, approved unanimously by Council last July, calls for this service in its first year (i.e. now). Overwhelming majorities of the city’s own Multimodal Commission and the Transit Committee, both requested the additional service hours be a priority this year.

Of note in Beer City USA, residents can’t make it home after late night shifts or attend recovery and support group meetings and still make their bus. Repeatedly, residents cast doubt on the very priorities Council has claimed to support as recently as March.

During their readings, Manheimer appeared to drop her eyes, her expression growing concerned. This night would see no enthusiastic endorsement of Campbell’s budget from the public; comment was overwhelmingly against it. Cantrell and Banks were followed by a ten-minute data-packed comment by a member of the city’s own Tree Protection Task Force.

Katherine Walsh shared that eight to 10 percent of Asheville’s tree canopy has been removed in the past decade. That’s 1600 acres. And yet the 2018 Urban Forestry Master Plan, approved by Council, is mentioned nowhere in the $190 million budget, which also doesn’t provide a salary for even a single urban forester position. Walsh questioned the addition of funds for methods for dealing with stormwater problems, which of course increase as trees are removed.

“This is not a new problem. This is not a new request…the [2018 comprehensive plan] calls for naturalized stormwater management techniques. We have these already,” she said. “They’re called trees.”

Dawn Chavez, executive director of Asheville Green Works, told City Council that each year, she finds $150,000 for tree work. She and her organization, she noted in a pointed rebuttal to Mayfield, also want things but unlike the city of Asheville they actually manage to fund them. Furthermore, Asheville residents, according to the city’s own 2018 Citizen Survey, overwhelmingly support environmentalism and sustainability.

“We can’t wait,” Chavez told council.

“We can’t afford to continue uttering noble words about climate resiliency while refusing to budget for it,” said Steve Rasmussen, another member of the Tree Protection Task Force.

The transit workers also spoke up loud and clear. Diane Allen, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 128, shared drivers’ support of full funding for the transit system’s needs. “The union feels the pain of daily struggles for our riders.”

Allen said she noticed similarities between the way the city was neglecting its new transit plans and the way it had botched previous ones.

“The ‘new’ transit, which has been in the headlines so many times, news of people being left behind, buses breaking down, buses catching on fire, no AC, no heat, no driver to drive a bus, no bus for a driver, and the list goes on and continues… Just recently we had a driver. With her experience of the brake and steering, [who had to] to stop her bus in the side of a bridge.” Explaining an explosion in traffic caused by an influx of tourists and wealthy new residents (who are both disproportionately served in the proposed budget), Allen continued, “we just can not keep these buses on time. We’ve either got traffic or we’re getting broken down.”

Jeff Jones, a Unitarian Universalist minister, even promised that, in solidarity with the thousands of Ashevillians who rely on the bus, he would be walking home 3.2 miles to Haw Creek, as his bus ironically left the station while he was finishing speaking at around 7:15 pm.

He also suggested that as additional funds were continuing to become available due to the new property taxes from Mission Hospital, these could easily provide funds for transit.

By the time the public comment ended after 8 p.m., service remained available to only 10 of the 18 routes, with limited service on routes such as E1. By the end of the council meeting at 10:30 pm, the last bus north had left at 8 p.m., the last bus west had left at 10 p.m., and the last bus South had left at 9:15 p.m.. The only areas that could be reached by bus were Hillcrest Apartments and Bleachery Boulevard along with areas in Montford and along Tunnel Road.

“If we can’t get year one of the transit master plan funded, how are we going to surmount the even bigger hurdles of how to transition our entire system to renewable energy?” asked Michelle Myers of the NC Renewable Energy Coalition.

Ashley McDermott, the hub coordinator of Sunrise Movement Asheville, added her support for transit as well, noting that such service was a pillar of the proposed Green New Deal.

“You suffer from a tyrant. You are under a tyrant of the way we’ve done things before,” Brad Rause of the Energy Savers Network told Council, warning city officials against adhering to their status quo.

“You cannot both be a transit advocate and say that you also support partial funding,” Kim Roney, a member of the city’s transit committee, said. “Blanket support for our new city manager at this crucial beginning of our working relationship is not what we need. But it sells well.”

Michael Stratton of Oakley gestured to the wall facing Pack Square, the center of Asheville, “I can almost feel this wall vibrating with the chorus of folks who really want you guys to fully fund the transit system in Asheville.”

Residents entering retirement age are also affected as transit continues to lack funding for basic operations. Roy Harris, an Asheville resident for 36 years, spoke in support of full funding for the transit system goals and in hopes for real support to end the ceaseless inflation of property values in the Black majority Southside neighborhood and throughout one of the fastest gentrifying cities in the nation.

It didn’t end there. The focus on raises for high-level staff, while neglecting many desperately underpaid workers, came under fire from the city’s own firefighters. Scott Mullins, President of the Asheville Firefighter Association, reminded council of the dangers firefighters encounter every day and the long term health effects intrinsic to this horrifically underpaid job.

“Like you and the community count on us, we count on you to compensate us adequately,” he pleaded. Continuing with the theme of empty promises, Mullins asked for the implementation of the city’s own pay plan for firefighters, which he claimed isn’t happening as Asheville continues to fall away from its living wage goals.

Mike Silver, also a firefighter, joined several of his cohorts in requesting better pay. “There’s gotta be some way for someone coming into this city to make more than $11.94 per hour.” And reminding Council of long term health needs, he exclaimed, “There’s no telling what I’m being exposed to.” Brenton Cooper explained that he has gone into debt as a firefighter and expressed hope for the city getting this right with its new recruits.

The concerns were many, and from many directions during the two hour hearing. Whether it was the environment, racial justice, transportation for low wage workers, wages for firefighters and the more than 100 full time workers making less than a living wage, the tone was often sharp. This isn’t a surprise, relentlessly passing right-wing budgets in a left-leaning city isn’t going over well.

And for many wielding scientific data and laying their heart on the podium for all to see, waiting is clearly not an option. Will Council listen? We’ll find out tomorrow, June 11, when they’re set to vote on the annual budget.

‘Affordable’ development, naming rights and the rest of us

After the budget hearing was done, two major topics remained on the agenda, one that had absorbed nearly all media attention and one which had received barely a peep.

First, Council considered a 56-unit addition to Verde Vista Luxury Apartments, owned by Pike Real Estate Development, LLC. Though the staff report made no mention of affordability, which can mean rates available to those making as much as $41,000 per year, six affordable units were added to the proposal when presented to Council.

Running through a list of prices for these apartments, one bedrooms start at $1,065 per month, two bedrooms start at $1,170 per month, and three bedrooms at $2,175. Doing a little bit of math, housing costs should only be 30 percent of income, and proof of such income is usually required at signing. Many complexes such as these ask for pet fees, trash pickup, and sometimes even the last month’s rent. Occasionally an additional security deposit will be thrown in, yet another deterrent for working people.

Often now, even co-signers are not permitted. The most cost efficient deal is to find a roommate you trust who will rent a “Verona” 1134 sq ft two bedroom, and pay $585 a month plus utilities. Showing income of at least $1,950 per month is becoming customary, and that means housing such as these are accessible to those making at least $23,400 per year. Working in a local service job such as Walmart for $10/ hr, one would have to work 45 hours per week, and would most likely need a second or third job.

To afford the cheapest apartment at Verde Vista, living with a trusted someone, the Verona is best choice, and this is common in a town where tenants must often find new roommates at a moment’s notice, in a town built around low service jobs, which are incredibly stressful, working in an industry where substance abuse is incredibly common. With the addition of six ‘affordable’ units, the proposal passed 6-1, with Council member Keith Young the sole no vote.

Then Council geared up for an issue that had received far more attention: naming rights for the Civic Center. Specifically, they were voting on whether the city should grant them to US Cellular or Harrah’s Cherokee Casino. The latter, a business mostly run by individuals who are indigenous to the area and disproportionately starved of other business opportunities as is common throughout Indigenous communities of the United States, was slammed repeatedly by (mostly white) residents incensed by the prospect of Beer City USA being linked to casinos rather than a cellphone giant.

Both are massive corporations. Harrah’s is owned by Caesar’s Entertainment Group, which brings in nearly $5 billion in annual revenue, and had promised $500,000 annual for up to ten years (more than three times the amount US Cellular had offered). US Cellular rakes in nearly $4 billion in annual revenue.

The debate marked an interesting shift from when US Cellular first gained the naming rights. Then, selling the naming rights to a public facility to a giant corporation at all had been controversial. By 2019 it was a question of which megacorp would win.

Part of the situation’s drama lay in whether or not pressure from the Tourism Development Authority, who wanted to keep us cellular would hold sway over Council, forcing them to take the lower offer and supposedly preserve its brand, by some strange gentry logic. Council, by a 6-1 vote chose to rename the US Cellular Center the Harrah’s Cherokee Center, thus linking Asheville to part of its Indigenous heritage — and to an even wealthier corporation.

Yet Mayfield, who is liaison to the TDA, pontificated about values over money, as she seemed to associate Asheville progressivism with beer more than transit, or at least saw the association with beer as far less damaging than the association with having an unreliable transit system in a city with fewer and fewer trees and firefighters who receive only $11.94 per hour while rushing into burning buildings.

“When I think about Asheville, when I think about the things that drew me here, it was that Asheville is a progressive place, it was that Asheville celebrates the natural environment in which we find ourselves,” Mayfield said. “We celebrate Southern Appalachian culture, we celebrate local…and yes now, we celebrate beer. I would suggest that there is not an equivalency between Harrah’s and beer”

“The reason that we are ‘Beer City USA’ is because we have created a craft of making beer, here,” she continued. “I’m not saying there’s not a lot of drinking that happens here, but it’s a fundamentally different thing.”

Eighty-eight thousand Americans pass on due to alcohol related deaths each year. The deaths due to suicide, homicide, and other causes linked to gambling addiction are serious, but they are not 88,000. The assertion that Beer City USA isn’t about drinking is a statement so absurd it doesn’t merit a response.

People do want a lot of things

Actually they do. However, the ones continuing to get their way are relatively small in number. These include Campbell, who has a salary of $220,000 per year, City Attorney Brad Branham, who makes $185,000, Assistant City Manager Cathy Ball rakes in $173,457, Capital Projects Director Jade Dundas brings in $160,201, and Director of Human Resources Margaret Rowe gets $158,907. Only 19 out of the remaining 1,213 city staff make between $100,000 to $150,000 a year. All will currently receive a 2.5 percent raise, giving the City Manager $5,500 in pay raises this next year, while the lowest paid workers, some of whom have been on the job for nearly two decades, will bring home a raise not even a tenth of that.

The combined income of these five individuals is more than the highest estimate of the funds needed to fully support our transit system. The combined income of the top 24 city staff (nearly 5 percent of the total salaries of all city staff) is equivalent to the income of the bottom 110 workers, 100 of which do not make a living wage of $15 per hour. The income of these top 24 is nearly four times the high estimate needed for transit.

The 55 highest paid city staff, in fact, all make more than $85,000 per year. They are certainly not dependent on transit, tree cover (for now), or living wages. Combined, they currently draw a salary of more than $6 million and stand to earn $151,242 in raises.

The Asheville Police Department, despite its dismal record under former chief Tammy Hooper, and despite many unsolved issues at a department which continues to over-police Black neighborhoods, despite repeatedly hesitating to openly share its traffic stop numbers at public meetings, despite continuing to skirt implementation of NAACP-backed policing reforms passed last year, is of course requesting an additional $600,000, rocketing its total budget to just shy of $30 million. “A lot of things which cost a lot of money” apparently sometimes includes military equipment so cops can further terrify the public, and yet many city workers aren’t earning enough to live in their own city.

If this latest increase passes, the police budget will have ballooned by over $3.5 million during the past three years, nearly reaching four times the highest estimates required to fund the transit system.

The costs of some infrastructure projects that only help a relatively small number of people, like the $1.25 million Charlotte Street overhaul, are set to inflate also.

Though Council voted contrary to the wishes of the Tourism Development Authority, it continues to prioritize the appearance of Asheville in the eyes of tourists and wealthier residents.

“People want a lot of things.”

At a time of deepening disparities and serious warning signs from our environment, few residents are willing to accept that hiring a Black woman as city manager is, without the city actually changing the way it distributes power and resources, enough to turn the corner on equity.

The stakes are simply too high and the wounds too deep to not take the need for real change seriously. We want the things we need to live in our city. We deserve them. We will keep fighting until we get them. We are not sorry.

—

Matilda Bliss is on the core team of Asheville Showing Up for Racial Justice, and also works with the Real Asheville Initiative, the Green Party, and Better Buses Together. When she isn’t petsitting or making schedules of events, she strives to live an off-the-grid lifestyle and creates jewelry from local stones

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