FROM THE ASHEVILLE CITIZEN-TIMES (excerpt)
State Rep. Tim Moffitt promised a business group Friday that he has no interest in privatizing the city’s water system, a belief that has taken on momentum in recent weeks.Read the full article
But in an interview later, the freshman lawmaker also called odds that Asheville would be stripped of control over the the water system “50-50.” Control over delivering water and setting rates could go to another agency not under the city’s direction, he said.
Moffitt has often clashed with city officials over the water system and other issues, and he has supported the idea of businesses taking over some government functions.
The south Buncombe County Republican spoke about the highly charged water system issue and other legislative work during a meeting of the conservative Council of Independent Business Owners at Biltmore Square Mall. ...
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"“There is a rogue element of what I would consider folks who have moved to Asheville..."
People who have moved here are 'rogue'? He's talking about me, mainly. He called me at home after my blog came out, and among other things, asked me how long I have lived in Asheville. When I said around 15 years, he scoffed & told me he had lived here all his life, and implied that I didn't know what I was talking about, and therefore didn't deserve to express an opinion. I'm happy to see here that I wasn't wrong in that impression.
http://www.ashevillewater.blogspot.com
By Barry Summers
01/07/2012
Moffitt likes to remind everyone that he's FROM HERE, as if that gives him special status, or unique insight or authority when it comes to local affairs. But that perspective doesn't hold water (pun intended) -- if you pay taxes here, if you vote here, your opinions and insights hold the same weight as someone who happened to be born here based on the circumstance that your mother was here at delivery time. Perhaps people who CHOSE to move here actually should be accorded MORE authority, since they made that move deliberately, rather than having ended up here by accident. Moffitt's presumed authority doesn't carry any special weight with me.
By Susan
01/07/2012
Oh, my God! I'm rogue? I never knew. How terribly chic.
By Ken Hanke
01/08/2012
I know - isn't it great? We're gonna get matching jackets, like a gang.
By Barry Summers
01/08/2012
Hmmm, we're a "rogue cesspool."
Seriously I wonder just how bonefide Mr. Muffit considers himself.
I might have to get all haughty and differ. Since my ancestors were some of the first settlers, back in the mid 1700s. He just might be considered a newcomer, interloper when dates of arrival are compared.
By D. Dial
01/08/2012
Moffitt is a corporate recruiter who's currently working a deal to benefit interests that are in the business of privatizing public utilities. Where he's from, where you're from, and politics in general don't really matter. It's strictly business. If this or that noise emanates from his head, it's his hope that it distracts you from the central issue: Stealing public property and revenue.
By sharpleycladd
01/08/2012
Well said. Question is, do we sit by & watch it happen?
By Barry Summers
01/08/2012
Yes, we know. We're just having some fun.
By D. Dial
01/08/2012
The resource and the delivery system are, legally, two different things. That is to say, while one can quibble about this district or that district laying that pipe, there's no question the City of Asheville financed construction of the Bee Tree and North Fork Reservoirs, to the tune of in-technical-Chapter-11-until-nineteen-eighty-something.
The City of Asheville can develop two beautiful mountain reservoirs with "workforce housing," and Mr. Moffitt can, beg pardon, suck hind tit.
By sharpleycladd
01/09/2012
Mr. Moffitt's position is that the City of Asheville does not own the water system. It is owned by the "ratepayers". When I asked to see any documentation to support this rather radical viewpoint, he was a little vague. Myabe there's something somewhere, but he hasn't produced it yet.
Every document I can find on the City website, or filed with the State, explicitly says that the system is owned by the City.
This should be interesting...
By Barry Summers
01/09/2012
The root of the conflict is the post-crash default by some of the 11 (?) water districts that bought City water and resold at retail, or distributed City water under other payment schemes. The County stepped in a picked up some maintenance costs after the crash of '29, and the title search does, in fact, get complicated there. There is nothing in the long and complicated series of refi's, deferred maintenance, assumed maintenance, and haphazard capital investment that is the water system that has anything to do with the reservoirs, which were built, bought and paid for by the City of Asheville, mountain water-skiing capital of the world.
By sharpleycladd
01/09/2012