Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods Questionnaire
- How can we as a community and city address the lack of generational wealth building within the Black community?
- We have resourceful neighbors in the Black community bringing solutions to the table on how to connect our students, community centers, job training, re-entry programs, entrepreneurs, and local businesses together. I am committed to ensuring BIPOC leadership including the YMI, CoThinkk, and the Mountain Business Equity Initiative is heard and valued by seeking input on what barriers the City is either perpetuating or able to address through land, grants, and partnership so community members and coalitions can make the necessary shift in narrative that leads to equitable outcomes.
- What are your thoughts and ideas on keeping housing affordable in Asheville?
- We will need to advance housing density on major corridors to reduce sprawl and infrastructure costs. Creative and cooperative solutions for deeply-affordable housing and home ownership include partnering with the Asheville-Buncombe Community Land Trust, Poder Emma, and BeLoved Community’s tiny-home village model so we can address the barriers they and others are running into. I’m eager to hear more of what our Asheville Housing Authority neighbors bring to the table for solutions to prevent displacement, and we will need to actively respond to the community engagement around land reparations. Affordable housing also means making sure we’re keeping people in housing, so we will need to partner to mitigate the anticipated spike in evictions and foreclosures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- What ideas do you have to bring the community together?
- Community-led infrastructure solutions is one of the reasons I am running on participatory budgeting, a key tool for ensuring public engagement is met with meaningful action and that barriers to participation are alleviated. This will mean supporting neighborhood plans like Burton Street, and hearing concerns about community center maintenance. When I see what our fellow North Carolinians in Durham and Greensboro are doing with their participatory budgeting program, it looks a lot like what I’m hearing we need in Asheville too. In Asheville, we need this level of public input in our City budget, the Dogwood Health Trust, and in restructuring the Tourism Development Authority so our hotel occupancy taxes are moved from advertising to infrastructure, healing, and structural change.
- What policies would you implement to ensure a multimodal city?
- I’m a long-time advocate for a fare-free, REGIONAL TRANSIT NETWORK, because transit is at the intersection of equitable access, economic mobility, and environmental sustainability. As part of multimodal infrastructure and safer road designs, we can get more cars off the road while getting people safely to their destination. Safe travel for all modes of traffic is part of public safety. It means: ensuring NACTO standards for safer travel designs on roads; finding a different way to enforce Vision Zero design standards for everyone to get home safely; tactical design by and for the neighborhood; and extending constitutional protections via written consent to search for not just cars, but for all modes of travel, including cyclists and pedestrians.
- What is your position on funding an Urban Forester and Urban Forest Master Plan for Asheville to implement the zero net loss tree canopy policy?
- Experts and reporting show that repair and maintenance of our tree canopy as part of our community health will require investment in an Urban Forester. This work should be supported to offset the impact of tourism and advertising by our TDA funds, and could be supported by our next bond if it is focused on our climate emergency. I support and am committed to advocating for more native tree and shrub plantings on City owned properties as part of our formal plans and policies city-wide. The City of Asheville has the opportunity to partner in the work of groups like the Asheville Fruit & Nut Club, Bountiful Cities, and Asheville Greenworks, installing more local and edible plants in public spaces, and incorporating these plants into landscaping contracts while working to stop the rapid loss of our tree canopy.
- What ideas and specific actions do you have for reducing carbon emissions for both the city and residents?
- As Council takes action on its stated climate emergency, we must also ensure an equity lens with a race and class analysis. Boards & Commissions must continue to invite and empower equitable representation and input as advisement moves to Council on our climate goals. We need updates to the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO), and amendments to our budget, plans, and policies. Part of long-range planning means coordinating efforts in the region with Buncombe County and the French Broad Metropolitan Planning Organization (FBMPO) for our mutual success in decreasing carbon emissions while increasing accessibility and mobility.
- Due to COVID-19’s effects on the city budget, which departments/services would you recommend being cut or reduced first?
- This is going to be a very challenging time for our community to back up our shared values with policies and funding. I’m among those who have advocated in the last 6 budget cycles for more transparency in our budget. For example, we need to get compliant with our own living wage policy and pay our firefighters a living wage because more than 70 are making less than $12-hour, but instead City Hall has perpetuated a growing wealth gap between highest and lowest paid staff. In addition to holding staff accountable to transparency and spending of our existing budget, we need to map all of our local resources with an equity lens, that includes hotel occupancy taxes and the Dogwood Health Trust.
- During the recession of the last decade, City Hall managed not to cut core services like transit, but a lot of maintenance was deferred. I agree with those who see our credit rating and low interests rates as an opportunity to leverage for infrastructure investment, and want to explore every opportunity to use this to put Asheville’s people to work with meaningful, living wage jobs. This could include bringing multimodal infrastructure construction like greenways in house.
