The sky isn’t falling, but at the Asheville City Council’s April 15 work session, Council members were told that the city can expect tight budgets and lean times for the next few years—probably moving some Council priorities to the back burner.
That includes such items as property-tax relief, various major capital-improvement projects, and assorted environmental and public-safety initiatives, which collectively could add as much as $40 million to the roughly $89 million projected budget for fiscal year 2008-09.
“We’re going to keep our services and things we need, but we’re not exactly in a position to do other things,” noted Vice Mayor Jan Davis.
In the year’s first official budget preview, Chief Financial Officer Ben Durant said the city would run a $3.9 million deficit if current funding levels were maintained throughout the new fiscal year, which starts July 1. City Manager Gary Jackson said city staff would continue looking for ways to whittle down that deficit and balance the budget before it’s adopted.
“I don’t want to suggest this is a doom-and-gloom situation,” said Durant. “But we’re not going to rebound in one year. ... It’ll probably take two to three years to grow out of it. We need to be geared to address that as we move forward.”
The “it” Durant was referring to is a general economic downturn and probable recession. As a result, the city can expect an anemic 2- to 3-percent growth in sales and property-tax revenues during the next fiscal year—not enough to keep up with the city’s needs and rising costs. Together, those two sources account for nearly 67 percent of the city’s revenues.
The rising costs include fuel and health insurance, the latter expected to increase by $1.5 million in the next fiscal year.
Even if the city finds ways to increase revenues and cut costs, Asheville will also have to dip into its savings, said Durant, warning, “We’re going to draw down our fund balance this year.” Typically, even in tight budget years, the city winds up using less of its savings than projected. “But not this year,” he predicted.
And while the lean budget may mean no property-tax break this year, Council member Brownie Newman said he wouldn’t favor increasing taxes either, adding that city residents already pay enough.
Storm-water update
Last August, the city revised its storm-water and erosion-control ordinance to comply with a federal mandate. Asked to update Council, Transportation and Engineering Director Cathy Ball deemed the ordinance a success.
“I feel very good about it so far,” she said, adding that it seems to have struck a balance of sorts between the interests of developers and affected residents. “I think we’ve equally upset people on both sides, and I don’t see that as a bad thing. On a scale of one to 10, I think we’ve made an eight.”
Since last August, noted Ball, the city has fined developers and others who’ve run afoul of the law nearly $72,000. As a result, she added, builders and developers are now taking it very seriously. To date, the Beaucatcher Heights subdivision off Kenilworth Road has taken the biggest hit, with fines totaling $11,503 so far.
“In addition to the [89] immediate fines, we have issued 47 official notices of violation [which] have resulted in better compliance with the ordinance,” reported Ball.
Mandatory inspections and additional staffing have also had an impact, she said. Last August, Council approved six additional staffers for the Stormwater Services Division to beef up enforcement and help review plans. As a result, said Ball, the average turnaround time for reviewing plans is now less than two weeks—down from three to four weeks. In addition, grading and storm-water permits are now issued through the Building Safety Department’s Development Services Center, to ensure that permits aren’t issued in error, she explained.
And with water-line inspections now handled by the Water Resources Department, those new staffers can focus on storm-water and erosion-control inspections. One of them has been promoted to oversee the violations process, to make sure that follow-up inspections are performed.
“Since August we have performed over 3,000 site inspections, compared to approximately 1,700 for the previous eight months,” reported Ball, adding, “This is an increase of 77 percent since additional staff were approved.”
Mother may I?
by Brian Postelle
Anyone following city policy in Asheville for any length of time has probably realized that in order to implement some of its bigger visions, the city needs the General Assembly’s permission.
But Asheville is not alone, says City Attorney Bob Oast. “Under North Carolina law, all municipal powers come from the state,” Oast told Xpress. “We can only do what the state allows us to do.”
So every year around this time, Oast and City Council hash out a wish list and send it to Raleigh for consideration. Since the Legislature has a short session this year, there are limits on what can be submitted, notes Oast: only noncontroversial issues (those with no local opposition or with unanimous Council support) or ones that have already made their way through either the state House or Senate. The city also can—and does—weigh in on statewide policy matters the General Assembly may be considering.
Asheville’s final list is due to be approved at Council’s April 22 meeting, so some additions and changes may still be made. In the meantime, here’s a tentative menu of items the city may ask for. Some of these, such as justice-system funding, are perennial requests; others, such as Council member Carl Mumpower‘s recently hatched crusade against Salvia divinorum, are brand new. Still others, such as a ban on smoking in public parks, are so fresh that Oast says he hasn’t even had time to compile sufficient information for Council’s consideration. As of press time, the list was as follows:
• An adjustment to the Woodfin/Asheville boundary that stems from annexation talks between the two municipalities.
• Stronger criminal laws relating to gangs, including some bills that are already working their way through the General Assembly.
• A change in the drug laws to address Salvia divinorum—a psychoactive plant sold in head shops.
• More funding for the justice system on both a local and statewide basis.
• Mental-health funding to compensate for cutbacks and closings over the past few years.
• Increased distribution of video and telecommunications sales taxes to local governments.
• A request to study the issue of incorporation.
• A look at banning smoking in public parks.
On another note, Oast told Council members that they may not need the General Assembly’s permission to address predatory towing downtown, since it may fall under the umbrella of public safety. Raleigh, he said, recently passed an ordinance that includes caps on towing charges and allows owners who arrive on the scene before the tow truck has left the parking lot to recover their vehicle for half the towing cost. Expect to see more on that soon.
Nonetheless, there’s still room for tweaking the ordinance, she said. One issue is that it imposes stricter aquatic-buffer requirements than either state or federal law, which don’t require a buffer for development projects involving less than one acre. The city’s ordinance requires a buffer for all new development as well as redevelopment projects that increase a building’s value by more than 50 percent.
Ball suggested scaling back buffer requirements for smaller projects, such as those involving less than 10,000 square feet of disturbed area, because it’s often impossible to build such projects without intruding into the buffer.
Distinctions, said Newman, should also be made between construction in undeveloped, low-density areas and higher-density infill development. In the latter case, buffer requirements should be scaled back to encourage such development, he said.
“This would be consistent with other land-use policies that recognize that some areas near the city center and along our commercial corridors are appropriate for more intense development, while the areas zoned for lower density and residential purposes are generally less appropriate for intense development,” noted Newman.
Other business
Council members indicated support for changing the way the city determines which events to co-sponsor. This year, the city is on the hook for $245,500 worth of in-kind support in connection with a wide array of community events. To trim that figure—and to make sure the events in question bring some tangible benefit to the city—Asheville will soon require more paperwork and due diligence from sponsors.
In the future, the city will issue a request for proposals each fall from groups and individuals seeking city co-sponsorship. The RFP will clearly outline the program criteria and expectations, and the city will conduct a series of workshops to help guide people through the application process.
After an initial staff review, the Recreation Board will evaluate, score and rank all applications and make a final recommendation to City Council. Highly ranked events will receive support up to the approved amount. After each event, sponsors will have to submit an evaluation report, which will be taken into consideration if they apply for support again in the future.
Roderick Simmons, director of the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Arts Department, suggested creating a separate annual budget for co-sponsored events. Currently, money is simply pulled from the city’s operating budget to cover costs as needed, and such unplanned expenses put an unnecessary strain on city finances. A fixed annual budget of, say, $150,000 calculated on a fiscal-year basis, he said in a staff report, would go a long way toward regularizing and controlling costs. “Council could provide additional funding, based on budget availability, to cover additional events,” Simmons noted in his report.
Although a vote on these measures will come later, Council members expressed general support for the new approach. But Mayor Terry Bellamy noted that the new process could have unintended consequences if the city wasn’t careful.
Noting the wide array of events held each year and their importance to various segments of the community, Bellamy said, “We need to make sure there is diversity in these events and ... among those [board members] who judge [which events the city should co-sponsor].”
“A lot of things got continued without looking ahead—that’s why we’re here tonight,” Mayor Terry Bellamy observed during the Asheville City Council’s April 22 formal session. And though her comment came late in a long meeting as part of a request that Council not let agendas get so jammed up in the future, it certainly summed up the list of updates and revisits Council had on its plate.
Nearly two years into the process of identifying possible private development projects for city-owned property, the discussion seemed to indicate that the current slate of proposals is far from a sure thing. As two projects begin to take shape more clearly—and with more developers still coming to the table with ideas—rifts are emerging where there was once unanimous approval on Council.
The two projects in question are a 10-story, 46-unit residential-and-retail development targeting a site between Eagle and South Market streets and a nine-story hotel on Haywood Street with a parking deck that would be turned over to the city. Both proposals are part of a broader city initiative exploring potential uses for assorted city-owned property downtown. Staff has been working with developers who made it through the “request for qualifications” process to ensure that the projects fit the priorities laid out by Council.
Both Council and community members appear to be squarely behind the first project. Darryl Hart, of the Eagle/Market Streets Development Corp., gave the proposal his full-throated support, noting that his group has been working closely with Eagle Market Renaissance LLC, a potential developer. The project, he said, would fulfill a long-standing desire to re-establish Asheville’s historic African-American business district, which predates this particular city effort.
“It is the commitment you gave us that allowed us to get to this point,” noted Hart. “It is the commitment you are going to give us that allows us to move forward.”
The prospects for the Haywood Street development, however, seem less certain. Adjacent to the Basilica of St. Lawrence, the site had been earmarked for a controversial parking deck that was eventually jettisoned. Several business owners said the perceived lack of downtown parking is a constant irritant to potential customers—a situation that could be relieved by a new deck.
“Eighty percent of the people who come in our store are from out of town,” noted Bill Lehnert of the Alexander & Lehnert jewelry store in the Grove Arcade. “The second question people ask me is, ‘Where should we go for dinner?’ The first question is, ‘Where can we park?’”
Other arcade merchants backed up Lehnert, saying the city had long ago promised a new deck for the area.
But a basilica spokesperson said the new structure would block the view of the historic landmark, and public opposition to a large deck there has already begun. (Xpress has received several letters calling for a park at Haywood Street, and the activist group People Advocating Real Conservancy is circulating a petition to that effect.) The spokesperson echoed that view.
Enough already
by Hal L. Millard
After several years of operation, the Asheville City Council’s Sustainable Economic Development Advisory Committee is no more. At their April 22 meeting, Council members unanimously agreed to disband the group because it was, well, unsustainable, says Council member Robin Cape, who served on the now-defunct panel for the past year.
Primarily, it’s just no longer needed and nothing much was getting done anyway, says Cape, adding that in her year of service, no motions were made and no actions were taken. “It no longer had a clarifying goal and function,” she tells Xpress.
“It’s all about the Hub now; the Hub is where the action is,” Cape says of Asheville and Buncombe County’s ambitious Hub Project, which seeks to grow several key sectors of the area economy and link them into a unified economic- and community-development vision.
And while duplication of efforts is not always a bad thing, the area is virtually swimming in economic-development initiatives and groups, further clouding the committee’s purpose. In addition to Hub and the city’s own development office, there are: AdvantageWest and CarolinaWest, the Land-of-Sky Regional Council, the Economic Development Coalition for Asheville-Buncombe County, the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, the Tourism Development Authority, A-B Tech, Self Help, Mountain BizWorks, the Media Arts Project and a slew of others, all working to grow the local economy (and many of them associated in some way with Hub).
The real story, says Cape, isn’t the disbanding of the city’s committee, which is certainly not unprecedented—it’s the fact that Hub, along with the county and an outside consultant, are in the midst of performing an economic-development overview survey to determine, among other things, the scope and breadth of the area’s many economic-development initiatives and organizations.
“They’ve just done about a hundred interviews with different players in the economic-development community, and they’re going to be fleshing out what the field looks like—who’s doing what, what role each agency has, or should have, to start the conversation” of the best course for local economic development, she says. That includes looking at the city’s role in the grand scheme of things.
“We do a lot of things that really aid economic development in our community that we really get no credit for,” Cape maintains, adding that the final report should be ready by the end of summer.
Meanwhile, with these developments starting to look more and more like reality, Council member Robin Cape asked that the city hold off on the development discussions until the downtown master plan is finished. That process, she said, starts next month.
“[Let’s] just take a breath [with] our property and make sure this is in line with what our citizens want,” she urged.
Council member Carl Mumpower, however, said that factoring an as-yet-undeveloped master plan into this development discussion is tantamount to changing the rules in the middle of the game.
Council member Holly Jones, meanwhile, asked city staff if it’s realistic to move forward on the Haywood Street proposal, given the amount of public outcry it’s bound to generate. (Over the course of several years, the city spent $2.8 million to acquire the site for a parking deck, plus $1.2 milliion on design and other expenses, but the plan was killed in the face of negative public reaction and the Diocese of Charlotte’s refusal to give up a key parcel adjacent to the Basilica.)
After more than an hour of wrangling, the mayor—visibly frustrated with Cape’s request to delay the whole process—ticked off every appearance the initiative has made before Council as well as various boards and commissions, arguing that the discussion has played out in the public arena. But Bellamy said her main concern is that the money from the sale of the Haywood Street property—if it goes through—be used to support affordable housing in the city (one of the priorities Council spelled out at the start of the RFQ process).
In the meantime, City Attorney Bob Oast reminded Council that staff was merely seeking guidance on whether to continue a conversation with developers, and that this would not legally bind the city to any agreement.
Further conversation, added Jones, could bring concerned parties to the table and perhaps smooth out rough spots before a project came before Council for approval. “There’s no promises of ‘kumbaya,’ but there’s a conversation that could unfold,” she said.
City staff got its authorization to proceed on a 5-2 vote, with Cape and Mumpower voting no. Another motion, to open communication with representatives of the Basilica and to emphasize affordable housing and open space in future discussions, passed 6-1 with Mumpower dissenting.
Now playing at Pritchard
The city is getting behind the Pritchard Park Committee’s proposal for a cultural-arts program, helping fund performances at the park by waiving $9,000 in fees and chipping in $10,000 in matching funds. The program is designed to bring more people into an area that’s been noted for its concentration of homeless people. The park, said Cape, “is known as an extreme detriment and stressor in our community. We’re going to try what other cities have done and see if it alleviates that stress.”
A nonprofit group called the Friends of Pritchard Park will oversee the programs, which will include lunchtime, evening and weekend performances.
Council member Brownie Newman voiced support for the idea but emphasized that the city’s participation should not be considered an annual commitment, due to budgetary uncertainty. The co-sponsorship was approved 6-1, with Mumpower opposed.
Between the lines
Back in February, a bevy of helmeted bicyclers came to Council in support of the Comprehensive Bicycle Plan, applauding when it was adopted. This time, however, a lone biker—helmet in hand—encouraged Council to support the first small steps of implementation.
Staff was recommending 20 new bike racks in downtown parking garages, bike lanes on uphill stretches of Lexington Avenue, and shared lanes on South French Broad Avenue. The measure passed 6-1 with Mumpower voting no.
Maxwell smarts?
Among the most frequent issues to visit itself upon City Council in recent years has been the long-running friction between truck traffic serving Greenlife Grocery and its Maxwell Street neighbors. This time, Traffic Engineer Ken Putnam laid out several traffic-calming options. And though his presentation included things like building concrete islands, Council chose to go with replacing a single parallel-parking space—the cheapest and easiest way to prevent truck access to the grocery’s parking lot via Maxwell Street, said Putnam.
Neighbors, however, called the move inadequate.
“I’m afraid we’re looking at the symptom here,” said Maxwell Street resident Brandy Boggs. “The symptom is crazy traffic on a residential street; the root of the problem is Greenlife.” Maxwell Street property owner Reid Thompson, no stranger to Council himself, said the city needs to issue a notice of violation. “How about following the laws that are on our books? The ones that say if you have other access, you can’t use my residential street.”
Council members unanimously voted to reinstate a strategically located parallel-parking space that blocks truck access to Greenlife when in use. The city had previously removed parking from the street because it interfered with trash pickup.
But that was not the end of the conversation. Bellamy noted that she’s asked for a list of vendors who deliver to the store by truck, so they can be notified individually to stay off Maxwell Street. City Manager Gary Jackson, meanwhile, said he’s still waiting for a report from Greenlife on the grocery’s mitigation efforts. Greenlife has proposed creating a truck turnaround in their parking lot, but Jackson said he hasn’t been getting the requested updates on the project.
Condos make good
When the Ravenscroft hotel/condominium project was first proposed, it drew the ire not only of neighbors but also of the Downtown Commission because of its size and potential impact on a nearby stand of trees (see “Saving Which Environment?” Dec. 6, 2006 Xpress). But now that the developer has addressed those concerns, the picture has shifted dramatically. Power Development LLC has scaled back the project to six- and seven-story buildings, promised to preserve the trees on downtown’s South Slope, and is continuing to pursue LEED certification (a national standard for green building and energy conservation) for the project. Accordingly, Council unanimously approved a conditional-use permit.
