Questions presented to Asheville City Council & Buncombe County Commissioner Candidates
Q 1: What is your personal background and experience in the arts? (check all that apply)
Selected: Instrumental, Vocal, Visual, Theatre, and Other.
Additional Comments: As an artist & musician household with a home studio, I mostly use piano and keyboard instruments, and I have 21 years experience teaching piano. I play with a number of local artists and bands, and have had the privilege of playing multiple times with a group of Asheville musicians as the backing band for Rodrgiuez, whose story was portrayed in the Oscar-winning documentary Searching for Sugarman. With my husband Nathanael, who is a graphic designer and mural artist, we write and perform collaborative pieces of spoken word, often with a music element in the production. We have performed on a variety of formal and DIY stages, including the BMCM+AC’s {Re}HAPPENING.
Q 2: What arts activities have you attended, participated in, or supported in the last year? (check all that apply)
Selected: Music, Theatre, Visual Arts, Dance, Literary Arts, and Other
Additional Comments: Pre-pandemic, I attended and supported events at least twice a week, ranging from open mic night to concerts by national touring artists, from poetry readings to gallery openings, from Fringe Fest to the Symphony. I have 21 years experience in community radio, including founding membership and volunteering 3 years as the full-time Station Manager of 103.3 AshevilleFM, where we amplify local voices and culture.
Background: Americans for the Arts reports Buncombe County arts organizations generate $3.5 M in local government support annually. However, the NC Arts Council’s 2018-9 report shows Buncombe County ranks last among tier 3 counties for local government funding for local arts councils at just $.01 per capita. Average for tier 3 counties is $.67 per capita.
Q 3: Would you support a plan to increase local government funding to the Asheville Area Arts Council to at least $.50 per capita, so that arts organizations can present more accessible arts programs for all its residents? Agree.
Additional Comments: In general, I support additional arts funding as key to our community health and well-being through the healing power of art & music. I would like to hear more from the AAAC about how increased funding can lead to more equitable outcomes including programming with BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists in our community. Many artists like myself are concerned that Asheville is marketed to tourists for our art and beer culture, but the attention and resources mostly benefit a few while the impact of gentrification is widely felt by those most vulnerable in our community. I would invite our AAAC to hold listening sessions, identify barriers to participation, and participate in an equity audit with the intention of ensuring the programs, funding, and decisions are equitable and inclusive at every point of the process. This should include an economic analysis that addresses how the increased cost of living is impacting our industry stakeholders. As leaders in the industry, you have a chance to make these kinds of cultural shifts and deepen local relationships that will be a cause for celebration our community needs!
Background: Before the pandemic, there were over 500 arts organizations and 10,000 creative jobs in Buncombe County. Now, the 100+ organizations that completed the recent Buncombe County Arts Business Impact Survey are reporting $18.7 M in losses since March. Additionally, results reveal 70% job losses, and 40% of organizations are facing closure within 6 months or less without aid.
Q 4: Would you support business interruption grants for arts organizations through local CARES Act funding and/or additional recovery funding sources? Strongly Agree
Additional Comments: Yes. I worked at The Mothlight for just shy of 7 years when we got the news the Hency’s were closing permanently. I am concerned that we will see more doors closing, and know what a huge loss that is for our community to lose smaller stages and incubator spaces. As we know, local galleries & venues, art businesses, and organizations are maintaining a critical sense of place, in many ways community centers that provide social safety networks, which is so important to maintaining our cultural identity and resiliency. Additionally, there needs to be more outreach to get emergency funds to the artists who have lost their entire seasonal income that typically flows Spring through Fall.
Background: This year the state legislature passed a new law requiring ONE arts credit (music, visual art, theatre arts, dance) between Grade 6 and 12 in order to graduate from high school, beginning with those students entering Grade 6 in 2022. While all four disciplines are offered to students through elementary school, program offerings drop off significantly by the time students reach middle and high school and, in many cases, suffer from lack of funding.
Q 5: Would you support additional funding for the enhancement of middle and high school arts programs in order to meet this new graduation requirement? Strongly Agree
Additional Comments: I have studied the role of these classes in exercising creativity, which strengthens skills for empathy, problem solving, and communications. Many of my music students continue their music education in band, chorus, and media classes in their school curriculum. This is part of structuring a balanced education that invigorates mind and body, so yes, I support funding and creative, community-led solutions to helping our students and educators meet the new requirement. This can tie in with participatory budgeting, a key tenant of my platform, to hire local artists to skill-share with students for hands-on experience with members of their community for mutual benefit.
Background: Earlier this year, the Asheville Buncombe Hotel Association proposed changes to the county’s occupancy tax, reducing the funding dedicated to marketing from 75% to 67%, increasing funding available for community projects to 33%. Expanded funding flexibility included non-capital projects, option for bonding funding, administration and maintenance of TPDF approved projects, and funding for local arts projects.
Q 6: Do you support the occupancy tax changes as presented, including funding for local arts projects? Disagree
Additional Comments: This is not enough of the change we need, and we’re not likely to see another change for a long time, so we need to leverage this change for a lot more! Our culture is shifting to hotel-city USA, and we all know it, and we need to stand together if we’re going to protect Asheville. We need occupancy tax reform, equitable representation reflecting our community on the TDA, and more expanded uses for the funds. We may have greater success with legislative changes by tying it to the hotel moratorium. Hotel development as use-by-right is not going to advance our stated goals so long as the percentage and use of the hotel occupancy tax remains the same for the TDA. Before City Council relinquishes their responsibility for oversight, they need to leverage for occupancy tax overhaul for existing hotels before regulating new hotels, and our hotel industry can join in that advocacy. What’s at stake: more low-wage jobs, natural resource extraction, and less land available for housing development and diversification of industry when what we need is planning for a resilient community. If the TDA refuses to advance the needs of the community by lobbying the General Assembly with us, then we need our City Council and County Commission to coordinate a plan to replace and abolish the TDA as we know it.
Background: In January 2020, the city presented conceptual designs for a $100 M renovation to the Harrah’s Cherokee Center Asheville, and more specifically to Thomas Wolfe Auditorium. While this is a large investment in arts and entertainment, it would offer very little support for the local arts community.
Q 7: Would you support changes to this proposal to directly support local artists and arts organizations? Agree
Additional Comments: The plan is massively inflated and doesn’t meet our most urgent needs, so at minimum it needs changes to directly support local artists and art orgs in addition to being a home for the Asheville Symphony. First, we need to ensure a just transition through the emergencies of the COVID-19 pandemic, racism, economic instability, and climate change. At this moment, I’m seeing projections of late 2021-early 2022 for touring acts in indoor spaces of this capacity, and we don’t yet know if they will open at capacity again. We do need to continue to partner for upgrades and maintenance, and I understand backstage upgrades are sorely needed for the acts we would like to attract if/when the industry returns, so this could be a good time to do that work. I am among those who would like to see a comparison of costs between renovations and complete replacement, and how we might put local people to work with the project.