As more locals try to speak up, city hall’s increasingly clamped down on any methods to do so. Inside Asheville government’s war on public comment

Graphic by Orion Solstice

It was the dead end of July and yet another Asheville City Council meeting stretched for hours into the night. While delta was already tearing through the city, council insisted on holding the meeting in-person. People couldn’t call in; they had to pack into the civic center with hundreds of others to even comment.

Despite all its talk about equity, council had approved funding for a new $11 million police substation on Broadway. They also signed off on a more restrictive noise ordinance. While cop shops and noise complaints are longtime tools of gentrification, mostly white speakers and official groups were given priority in the proceedings that night. Black and Brown locals, many pointing out how damaging the new law would be, had to wait until the end of the hearing, when Mayor Esther Manheimer promptly cut the time they had to speak down to two minutes a person instead of the usual three. Council, many without masks, ignored what they had to say anyway.

Then, four hours on, council rolled around to the last comment of the evening. But instead of speaking to an almost empty room, a white person held up a phone to let Grits, a quarantined Black local, speak.

Grits:
“I want to acknowledge the loss of Robert Austin, who passed on July 23 in the Buncombe County Jail, murdered by the carceral state. This is the fourth person who has died while in custody in the last year. I will begin by saying why I’m not there, and why I’m calling, is that I am awaiting test results from Covid-19 as the delta variant begins to surge-”

Manheimer [whispering]: “What’s this.”

Grits: “-through our community. I assume that you have seen these spikes in Buncombe County, and I also assume you have the sense to follow the facts, in which the delta variant is three times more transmissible than the first strain of the virus in 2020. It is absolutely mandatory that you allow for virtual public comment at all public hearings as we see cases spike from here forward. Umm, the fact that you are investing 11 million taxpaying dollars into building another police station, as we find ourselves facing the possibility of another wave of the virus and shutdown, as you raise property taxes that will disproportionately affect Black and Brown community members, and as you continue to over-police Black and Brown neighborhoods reveals the blatant lack of care you have for the requests by many of your citizens to reimagine public safety and -”

Manheimer: “Okay we’re going to ask that you -”

Grits: “-divest from the police.”

Manheimer: “-please stop, please, if you could please stop-”

Grits: “-I’m disappointed in you voting in favor of staff’s recommendations regarding the noise ordinance.”

Manheimer [whispering]: “Cut the mic off…”

Grits: “Now that you’ve done this, it’s necessary to review this ordinance within 30 to 60 days…” [Trails off as mic is cut]

Manheimer [breaking the silence]: “I’m sorry, huh but first of all…[sounding exasperated], that…I [laughs] Okay, she’s addressing an item under the consent agenda. This part of the agenda is for items that have not already been addressed…”

[The Mayor, maskless during an outbreak, calls names of people who have already left]

A Latine person in the audience: “I signed up to speak…”

Manheimer: “And we are adjourned.”

The mayor cutting off Black and Brown people was just the latest salvo in city council’s quest to silence the public.

‘The White Man’s Family Council’

“We are so often overlooked…. When I went to apply for affordable housing, I couldn’t apply because I live under public housing. You really have to look at the effects of these decisions….We are so often overlooked…We are Asheville…When you’re bringing in the breweries and they do the job fairs, how many […] really get a job [including] people with criminal records, whatever the barrier is.”
– Dewanna Little, June 9, 2015 Council meeting

“The youth are our future. We cannot stress that enough. Y’all’s decisions and appointments are impacting lives…Year after year, and communities’ voices are overlooked. The community, the most impacted community, Black people have the worst disparities in Asheville…It just bothers me that we can stress and get on these public comments and say that this is not okay…It’s not reparations. Reparations includes education…Our Black kids matter. You had all these protests this summer. Our Black kids matter.”
– Dewanna Little more than five and a half years later at the Feb. 23, 2021 Council meeting. Council chose to ignore community choices for school board appointments

Asheville city government has a long history of changing the rules to block out movements for change. This has been true since the city’s founding, riddled with genocide and slavery.

This was true in 1968 when that council, after the first “urban renewal” referendum failed, called a second referendum in order to approve mass demolitions in the Black Southside and East End neighborhoods. It was true in the summer of 2017 when after dodging the public, city hall gave a million dollar budget increase to then-chief Tammy Hooper’s Asheville Police Department — the same department that less than a year before shot Jerry Williams and let him die in the streets.

The last 16 months have added a new chapter. From early June 2020 to as recently as Sept. 28 council added barriers that have shut out locals, making their meetings often completely inaccessible to entire communities. These barriers decreased public input, but they did not erase it. The result is an increasingly isolated and despised council just trying to pretend public outrage doesn’t exist.

Before Covid

“To the mayor and members of council: you claim that racist laws tie your hands, but you’re stalling…How many more of my Black children must be held back in school or shot just so you and your white children can feel comfortable?…I have a question for your reparations research. How much blood money is on the leaves of your family poplar trees?”
– Andrew James, Feb. 23, 2021 Council meeting

“None of you love Black people like you pretend to. You wrapped Black Asheville in a warm blanket of apologies and promises, and then you held back money, and waited for a viral pandemic to kill us off. I believe it was small pox the last time your fathers tried something similar…Show me the money.”
– Andrew James, March 23, 2021 Council meeting

“From my perspective, no reparations or payment can compensate for the horrendous treatment of my ancestors…the timeline for full enactment of the reparations is at best 2023, but by then, the enactment of reparations could be extended even further into the future…Redlining was swift and immediate. Urban renewal took property and displaced thousands of Black Americans was swift and immediate. If change is to come quickly, it must happen during this administration.”
– Spencer Hardaway, Sept. 28, 2021 Council meeting. Earlier in the evening, council would approve its consent agenda in secret – a brazen violation of open meetings law – while the public waited for it to resolve technical difficulties with its broadcast.

Though it has escalated considerably Asheville government’s hatred of public comment isn’t new. With rare exception, pre-pandemic they held their meetings in their second floor chambers in city hall, a room seating less than 100 in a city of 95,000. When the council chambers filled to capacity, officials would open an overflow room (or two). Some half a dozen police and paintings depicting genocide — council made their decisions under one literally titled “the white man’s family council” — loomed over proceedings. The result was a starkly intimidating environment, especially for many non-white participants.

Taking place at 5 p.m. on a weeknight, these meetings provided no services to those needing ASL and Spanish translation, despite repeated calls from community groups over the years.

That said, if one were one to attend, they would be pushed to give a name to sign up for their chosen public hearings. At the end of signup lists, open calls for public comment would ensue, giving those who showed up late or who were inspired by another speaker a chance to share their perspectives.

Plenty of the time city council made the same horrible votes, but not always. Sometimes anger in the chambers, directly facing them, proved a deterrent. The mayor would insist that there was a ban on clapping (there wasn’t, she literally just made that up), and on multiple occasions residents purposefully broke this “rule”, especially when decisions threatened their communities.

Accessible meetings dissolve the separation between the streets and council halls — a melding that city hall hates because they’re used to asking cops to do their dirty work and face our wrath.

Especially when locals go not to plead or thank but to remind those turning the wheels of gentrification of their rage, to make those attacking their communities more miserable for the officials carrying them out. It was one front of many locals fought the city on, and not one they could easily shut down.

The pandemic would present a new set of challenges — as well as opportunities.

A pandemic, an uprising

“This budget hearing should have gone down today…Take a look at the demands listed by the Black community leaders and really consider defunding.”
– Jazmin, a caller into the June 9, 2020 City Council meeting

“If you’re sitting here and being called to resign, and you are just trying to be resilient and sit through it, then you are wrong…If police here are seriously scared of water bottles then imagine what it’s like to be a Black person.”
– London, a caller into the June 23, 2020 city council meeting

City Council’s first virtual meeting during Covid didn’t actually allow for live comments, but when they finally allowed voicemails on April 14 this brought an overdue sigh of relief to many residents.

By May 26, city hall was allowing live callers. Those who commented would simply dial a phone number, enter the meeting and participation codes, and wait for their line to open. Moved by another speaker or noticing a change to the agenda, locals could still call in. But it took an uprising for locals to truly realize just what this meant.

A few days later locals in the streets, outraged by racist policing and the city’s segregated status quo, forced a then much better staffed department to call in backup. Drawing strength from that anger and the demands by collectives like Boots on the Ground and Black Avl Demands, callers pushing for abolition and defunding overwhelmed the next council meeting. They also demanded real reparations, and the resignations of the mayor, police chief, and city manager.

By this time APD and multiple other departments had thoroughly brutalized protesters. The vicious crackdown, especially the destruction of the medic tent, even made international news.

City hall was rapidly losing ground, with even their own meetings becoming reminders of the public’s outrage.

So, like any band of petty despots, they changed the rules.

Officials were terrified at the unprecedented wave of comments submitted for its June 9 meeting. Nearly 1,400 voicemails and over 900 pages of emails, many supporting 50 percent defunding of the apd (as a start).

So city hall promptly trashed this mountain of input. While they previously had played voicemails, they suddenly decided to just scrap them, they just chose to ignore all that comment. None of it made it into the meeting.

Instead, in a move that made clear the fact that city hall just hates the public, they preferred to stretch out the process like a long drive to Florida.

Central to this was Manheimer. The mayor has a lot of direct control over public comment and the agenda, often taking pointers from the city manager. It’s no accident that as locals increasingly called for their resignations, the same officials were the ones who clamped down on public comment.

However that doesn’t erase the responsibility of the other council members. Two of them could force a vote on a measure to open up public comment. Four could override the mayor and manager. So far, not only have they not done so, but they have acquiesced to the new status quo. No council member, including ostensibly left-leaning ones like Brian Haynes and Kim Roney, even seriously challenged it.

Despite their desperate maneuvers, the June 9 meeting still saw a wave of public condemnation of council’s actions and calls for resignations. Even during their July 14 meeting when their shallow “reparations resolution” was approved, locals hurled expletives at their failures to take meaningful action.

So at their July 28 meeting they promptly announced a byzantine new set of rules that made signing up for public comment far more difficult. Gone was the ability just to call in live. Callers now had to register in advance, provide detailed personal information to a notoriously vindictive city hall and go through a system that often just dropped their calls anyway.

Predictably, public comment plummeted.

Though the July 28 interim budget hearing was heated (and greatly suppressed by means of a host of new rules for public comment), the participation in the Sept. 22 budget hearing slowed considerably. Council, having successfully shut out the public, would approve a budget that cut APD’s budget by only $700,000, mostly by shuffling funding for the same policing as before to other departments.

Waves

“It matters not if the glass ceiling is broken if this council continues to work with the status quo of backdoor meetings and decisions being made based on what is now the ‘good ole girl’ network vs making decisions based on what is best for our community and in the case of the school board, what is best for our children….The Equity and Inclusion Office [needs] to be fully staffed. [Former head of the office] Ms Archie has been gone now for six months, and we are yet to see a job announcement…Our communities should decide who represents us.”
– Libby Kyles, March 9, 2021 City Council meeting

“It took us hours to comb through [the new hotel rules released just days earlier]…I’ve heard it expressed that some elected officials are tired of hearing from white people and would like to hear more from Black people. Like I said, these meetings are not very accessible to even a lot of white people…at the end of the day, you as elected officials don’t have to listen to anything that we’re saying. A lot of us as people of color don’t even want to engage in these systems at all…we need something better.”
– Rob Thomas, Feb. 9 2021 Council meeting

“You may live in the same town as us, but you are not our community.”
Abbie Young, Feb. 9 Council meeting
Staff introduces the next commenter, Rob Thomas.
Thomas opens his comment:
“Thank you for the interesting comment, whoever the previous caller was. A lot of truth spoken in there.”

Many in the public may have hoped that new faces on council brought at least the potential for some concessions to widespread rage over an unjust status quo. The new all-women council — including three Black women — however, wasted little time in taking an even more conservative course than their predecessors. They doubled down on enacting the same racist and anti-feminist platform to gentrify Asheville – during a pandemic no less. Black communities, just like women, are no monolith.

Council member Sandra Kilgore’s vehement defense of the Vance Monument against the insistence by numerous Black community members, and even the other two Black council members, to tear it down was an early example of the degree to which Black locals, like all people, disagree.

Other movements of course included those favoring defunding APD, those advocating for tangible reparations, less hotels, and a less racist local school board. Council has opposed every one of these multi-racial efforts.

Those following the hotel war witnessed council balk on requests to send proposed hotel rules back to the Planning and Zoning Commission. That board, in violation of open meeting laws, had refused to hear public comment on this item during its meeting days before. City attorney Brad Branham’s actual defense for this was that public hearings weren’t required to be public.

Despite calls for “No more hotels” overwhelming its hotel survey, city hall announced a public hearing on whether or not it should relinquish the reins of hotel approval to development-friendly staff (to approve hotels in secret) that same day and then approved these new rules at its Feb. 23 meeting.

Closed meetings are very much council’s style. As recently as Aug. 24 during its 10 a.m. Boards and Commissions meeting, council decided it would replace a departing school board member that night. Of course, the person they selected wasn’t part of the slate put forward by the Asheville City Association of Educators (ACAE), who they had been turning down since March. The deadline to register to give public comment during that night’s meeting had been 9 a.m. that morning, meaning locals were denied even the pretense of an open meeting.

They could have waited until the next meeting to approve a replacement board member, but that would have meant listening to locals.

Closed session

“With a third of your police department gone, most of the ‘equity focused’ budget work has been done for you. Good thing, because your survey was taken down the moment the defund movement started to give input. That $4 million in cops’ salary could be redistributed to housing, zoning, and services.”
– Mel Noyes, April 13, 2021 council meeting

“I’m glad to be here, where I can have your full attention. And I’m sorry you can’t mute yourselves and carry on conversations off screen.”
– Noyes, again during the June 8, 2021 council meeting

“They don’t have to be here. This is triggering. This is trauma that all these people are sharing with you right now. And to look at us, make eye contact, and then to go forward and not follow through on things we’re asking you to do is violence. I really hope you take the time to thank these people for their emotional labor, today.”
– Shay, June 8 council meeting. Another commenter had just shared a heartbreaking personal account of how state violence had harmed their family

Those who were surprised weren’t paying attention when city hall tried to conduct its spring retreat in secret. Only a court order – Branham once again asserted a public meeting didn’t have to be public, and lost – would force city council to open the meeting up to the press, let alone the public.

Locals had already issued dozens of calls to defund APD in January and February, giving Asheville government, who had already promised to ‘re-imagine public safety’ plenty of time to act. “Hey Esther, we are giving you direction, as loud and as clear and as early as we can: defund the police,” Greenleaf Clarke said during the March 9 meeting.

March had seen 919 confirmed Covid cases and killed at least 12. But the majority of council refused to mask for extended periods of this now public-facing retreat on April 1 that featured no public comment period. Locals in turn, sick of being sidetracked, dropped banners demanding funding for “community, not cops”.

For the second year in a row city hall shut the door on direct engagement, because ‘defund now’ was an increasingly popular rallying cry and they really, really hated to hear it.

For instance a city government survey unveiled in mid-March was promptly withdrawn as city staff realized that advocates for defunding and reparations would participate. On the morning of April 13 the city’s social media called for public participation. Hours later, less than a month after it had opened, city staff disabled the whole survey to halt those calling for defunding from giving city hall results they didn’t want.

In a meeting with Black locals, one of the facilitators of its budget input sessions scoffed at the idea of real reparations. By the end of May, it appeared some council members didn’t even have the volume on during locals’ comments.

From early on in 2021, open meeting advocates such as Patrick Conant and Nina Tovish consistently spoke to the inaccessibility of its meetings.

“You’ve changed public comment rules at council repeatedly over the past year,” Conant, who’s dealt with open government issues for over a decade, said at the Feb. 9 meeting. “Our council can’t do the work of the people when they make it impossible to participate.”

“At the risk of being repetitive, I would really urge council to reconsider the way it handles public comment for remote meetings,” said Nina Tovish during the March 23 meeting.

“Not giving the public a chance to comment on the fly after having heard something being said in the meeting really deprives people…And for those of us who do take the time to prepare remarks […] not having the opportunity to be able to step up and deliver them…is incredibly frustrating. I do believe council is depriving itself of valuable input.”

Tovish on May 25 would repeat herself once again and urge council to maintain its virtual public comment feature when it returned to in person meetings.

Council then insisted on disabling virtual public comment and returning entirely to in-person comment during its June 8 budget hearing anyway. Notably, the budget they were considering included a major tax hike that would disproportionately hit Black neighborhoods, as well as a refusal to scale back the APD at all.

The meeting opened with proclamations marking Juneteenth and Pride Month, read by Council member Gwen Wisler — a conservative white millionaire — to a council set on approving a budget that would further the assault on many in Black and queer communities.

The no clapping “rule” was back. Not long into the budget hearing, Manheimer would threaten to sic officers on those who “violated” this made up rule. Then the barrage of defund comments would begin.

“Do what you’ve got to do for our community. For our kids. Defund these police who want to kill us. Kill us, the Black people,” said Daniel Young. “Stop wasting our time.”

“The support for reallocation from the police budget to reparations and to community safety is large,” followed Cappy Phalen. “We all desire safety in our communities. We want to sleep peacefully, and wake up, and have our neighbors be safe and have their needs met, and that will not happen if we’re not caring for the most marginalized among us.”

Manheimer flashed yet again her vehement hatred of the public by immediately attempting to adjourn the hearing, but to no avail as multiple people pushed to speak. Her face twisted as Victoria Estes approached the mic. “Defund the police. 50 percent. No more excuses,” Estes said.

Manheimer pushed again to shut down comment. The second time, she succeeded, abruptly adjourning the hearing. City hall refused to hear from at least two locals who were raising their hands as the mayor rushed into a 6:30 pm recess.

This actually violates even the state’s own open meetings law on budget hearings, which reads:

Before adopting the budget ordinance, the board shall hold a public hearing at which time any persons who wish to be heard on the budget may appear.

Notice that law says “any,” not “only people who sign up according to city hall’s byzantine process” or “only people the mayor agrees with.”

The hypocrisy was made even more clear when Manheimer allowed clapping supporting a measure city council passed under the “celebratory clapping exception.” Like the “no clapping” rule she often invoked, this was completely made up.

While council’s certainly been averse to public input before (that’s basically the point of them), this marked a new turn of tide. Increasingly, officials dropped even the pretense of giving a shit and just outright shut down comment they didn’t agree with.

What matters

“I’ve seen a lot of things change in the East End community. I have four kids…We didn’t have this noise ordinance when eight hotels went up in the last five years, either…But now it’s a problem…Our kids need something to do…Somebody complained about Rabbit, Rabbit for a movie, ‘Frozen’ being played, let it go! LET IT GO! [audience claps]…We need something for the kids.”
– Nina, July 27 2021 council meeting

That contempt would be on even more display during its July 27 meeting as city hall continued its gentrifying (and potentially life ending) mission. By this time the situation in Asheville had become truly devastating. Weekly case totals had shot up from 22 to 225 in four weeks, and hospitals were running dry of life-saving equipment. Council held the meeting in person anyway.

During the hearing on the noise ordinance the mostly white spokespeople for business and industry groups got their full time. But when mostly Black locals, many facing circumstances that don’t permit signing up well in advance then sitting in a meeting for hours, tried to speak later that evening Manheimer was far less giving: they had their speaking time cut from three minutes to two minutes. It was a neat summary of council’s whole approach: a white person with money will always receive more say.

Over the last 16 months especially, Asheville City Council has prioritized its own comfort and doubled down on its violent status quo. Black and Brown communities have been disproportionately harmed by the local pandemic. With these locals speaking directly to city hall’s failures on a variety of issues, the ‘silent majority,’ invoked repeatedly to defend council’s horrible decisions, rings as hollow as a reel of tourism marketing in a cemetery.

Sixty-nine locals have died since the July 27 meeting and case numbers have sometimes surpassed over 1,000 per week. The meeting — with hundreds packed in the civic center and an overflow room for hours — was likely a super-spreader event on its own.

The only constituency council has listened to while enabling this amount of death are tourism barons and their wealthy friends who would if they could give APD millions more than the $30 million it already sucks from this city like the marrow from a bone.

‘Absolutely fucking fed up’

“You don’t want to listen to us all night? Well this is the job you signed up for….I stand in solidarity with everyone seeking safe abortions at Planned Parenthood. Let’s be clear though. Giving the cops more power will not help. Such prohibitions will always be used more harshly against Black Lives Matter protesters.”
– Greenleaf Clarke, July 27 Council meeting

The day after the July 27 council meeting Grits, the local abolitionist who the mayor so abruptly cut off, tested positive for Covid.

When asked to explain why they delivered their comment through another person’s phone, Grits tells the Blade that “my decision was rooted in community safety…and being absolutely fucking fed up with the fact that they had made that such an inaccessible process.”

They also took the opportunity to finish the comment they would have delivered had the mayor not muted them mid-sentence. This is what the comment they finished:

“It’s necessary to review this [noise] ordinance in 30 – 60 days and really see whose communities it is impacting. I ask for it to be done equitably, though I am unsure how possible that is with our Office of Equity and Inclusion dissolved. I would suggest hiring community members. I personally do not like the tourist industry, especially in the middle of a pandemic, but you will realize quickly if you operate based on the opinions of rich white people who line your pockets that the impact of this ordinance on local venues, businesses, and musicians will cause city revenue to decline exponentially. Then what will you do? You will raise property taxes again and continue your crusade of trying to cleanse Asheville of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people as well as poor folk.

Trigger warning: state violence. I’ll also add that I believe the firing of tear gas and flash bangs into groups of people is above the decibel level reading as well. I don’t foresee you holding cops responsible for that violation as you didn’t when they violated Geneva code and brutalized countless peaceful protesters. I also believe we have the ability to ensure that people with clipboards are going to all communities, including public housing. I suggest defunding the police and hiring community advocates to respond to noise ordinances.

And I agree with Greenleaf Clarke. As we saw the juxtaposition of the police state when confronting Black liberation vs the capital raids, it’s clear who the police will protect and serve. I have not seen the evil that protest outside of Planned Parenthood be kettled, flash bombed, tear gassed, or attacked in alley ways. I fear that if parents protest outside of schools and school boards against racism, attacks on critical race theory, or inequity, or if people protest outside of hospitals for an equitable pay and work hours, they will face more brute force from APD than these Planned Parenthood protesters. Police do not stop or mitigate harm. They cause it.”

That, apparently, was what Asheville city council found so terrifying.

—

Matilda Bliss is a local writer, Blade contributor and activist. 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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