1. What would you like people to know about how you listen, learn, and lead?

I’m running for mayor because I love our community! I believe we can take better care of each other and our mountain home, recover from Hurricane Helene, and secure a hopeful future.

As an educator and community organizer, my hope discipline is practiced in community. 

So I show up:

• By and with the community: I commute, volunteer, engage, and attend community events and actions, making myself accessible for input, accountability, and collaboration. 
• By the numbers: I review data-driven solutions and innovations across the state and around the globe, engage organizations getting into the weeds on issues, and share what I learn so more people can work towards common goals. 
• By the minute: Through my Monday Minute, I invite friends and neighbors to know what’s going on in City Hall and what we can do about it. I believe in collaborative governance, which I model with a collaborative legislative agenda from my own office, then follow up with participants through the year.

I’m motivated to run by my students, their peers and families, my fellow transit riders, former colleagues in the hotel and service industries, my community of artist and musician households, and a love for my neighbors. 

Sometimes the work to change for the better is a serious struggle, and the grief of climate catastrophe post-Helene is heavy. Many of us are struggling to make ends meet on stagnant wages as the cost of living rises and while unchecked tourism strains our natural resources, burdens our infrastructure, and displaces our vulnerable neighbors. We deserve an equitable transition through the overlapping crises of economic uncertainty, systemic oppression, and the ripple effects of climate change, including a just recovery from Hurricane Helene. 

As a community, we’re connected and we need each other. Delivering results will require transparency, open meetings policy, and integrity that we deserve in the mayor’s office. I’m committed to processes that invite and leverage the experiences, talents, and skills of our caring community. 

I believe we can win the change we deserve because we’re in this together, #MountainStrong!

2. How do you most often travel around Asheville in your daily life, and how does that shape your experience of the city?

Since donating our family car in 2008, I have prioritized reducing my reliance on fossil fuels by walking, biking, using public transit, and carpooling. I am a transit-dependent commuter with most of my daily commutes being a combination of walking and using public transit. 

Asheville’s status as one of the highest bike-pedestrian accident ratios in the state is personal to me as my most-recent bike wreck involved a motorist opening the door of their parked car, while another involved being side-swiped by a motorist passing too closely. I experience deficiencies in our infrastructure and know we deserve better, especially safety by design.

My commutes are intentional, and joyful too. Walking, biking, and using transit also means moving at the speed of community: conversations with neighbors sharing our commute, exchanging a smile with a neighbor along the way, and literally stopping to smell the roses that one would miss driving fast and alone. It’s good for mind, body, and spirit, and I want more of my neighbors to have choices for commuting safely without a car.

Using active transportation means bringing my lived experience to decision-making as an elected representative on Asheville City Council, as well as an appointed member of the Metropolitan Planning Organizing (MPO) that oversees our state-maintained roads, as liaison to the Transit Committee, and as a member of ART-C advocating for public transit.

3. What does equitable transportation investment look like to you in Asheville, and what experiences have informed how you think about it?

Asheville has many studies that acknowledge our history that resulted in disparities, and data-driven recommendations for how to repair harms of the past so we can move forward together: Close the GAP, Missing Middle Housing Study & Displacement Risk Assessment, Cease the Harm Audit, Community Reparations Commission recommendations, the Climate Justice Index Map. A serious challenge is implementing change, and allocating the staff and budget resources to get the work done.

An example: Get the Smith Mill Creek Greenway done. The Burton Street community is an historic Black neighborhood recognized as an Environmental Justice population because of recurring land-use decisions, including  urban renewal and redlining, as well as the history of and upcoming highway expansions that remove resources like homes, businesses, and community assets. The Burton Street Community Association has long advocated through neighborhood plans a path towards healing and repair, including reconnecting the neighborhood with the Smith Mill Creek Greenway. Though the City and community organizations often study and implement other projects, equitable investment could look like measurable action to improve transportation safety outcomes and climate vulnerability indexes, especially when neighborhoods like Burton Street are innovating to pilot solutions that can be replicated city-wide so everyone benefits.

What informs my thinking: Relationships. There is a community garden in almost every neighborhood that has a high vulnerability index identified through the City’s Climate Justice Initiative, which shows that communities are building reliance in spite of harms and scarcity narrative perpetuated by systemic racism and classicism. The community garden network needs volunteers, a delightful way to get to know neighbors, build resilience, and grow trust while also growing food to share.

Operationalizing Equity: I continue to advocate for equity and sustainability analyses to be added to all staff reports alongside financial impact, one way to operationalize measurements of outcomes. With new requirements from DOT regarding municipal maintenance for complete street infrastructure, this could be an important tool in addressing the public health and environmental benefits of an improved multimodal infrastructure network designed to ensure everyone gets to their destination safely.  In the absence of these operational tools being in place, I share the work with my colleagues and community partners to bring equity and sustainability analyses as well as available data when making decisions about our budgets, plans, and policies. 

4. Federal transportation dollars to improve Asheville’s streets, sidewalks, and highways are spent according to plans developed by our local Metropolitan Planning Organization. The recently approved Elevate 2050 plan lays out 3 potential growth scenarios for our area: Business as Usual, Consolidated Growth, and Dissipated Growth. Of these three scenarios, which do you think would be the best growth pattern for the Asheville area?

My answer: Consolidated Growth.

Data from Strong Towns and our local Urban 3 professionals acknowledge that density on transit corridors reduces vehicle miles traveled, carbon emissions, cost of living, and the demand for parking. This is also an issue of short and long-term infrastructure planning because we have limited resources to build and maintain above and below-ground infrastructure. With action including anti-displacement strategies, land-banking, and incentive programs, we can achieve consolidated growth with true solutions for affordability and housing for all.

Long-term planning and funding strategy: I will continue to advocate for a second Infrastructure Bill at the federal level to fund housing, rail, and supportive neighborhood corridors to expand on the first bill that prioritized roads and bridges. 

5. Do you accept the premise that housing growth is a strategy to prevent displacement? Share more about your views on housing growth and displacement? 

My answer: Yes

More housing stock is needed, but trickle-down housing without a plan to prevent displacement creates more and different problems. At his presentation in Asheville, Greg Colburn–author of Homelessness is a Housing Problem–noted that he had learned that if communities do not build housing for “incumbent residents, you will build housing and still have a homelessness problem.” This is seen in Oakland, where I visited with electeds wrestling with the problem of having four vacant apartments for every unhoused neighbor. 

So what do we do within the limitations on cities in North Carolina?  

• Reduce Displacement: I invite neighbors to read Chapter 5 of Asheville’s Missing Middle Housing study to understand the Displacement Risk Assessment. The City’s website on Missing Middle Housing also includes a video explaining the Displacement Risk Assessment.
• Acknowledge History of Harmful Zoning: From my perspective, the struggle in City Hall to pass common-sense solutions includes acknowledgment that the City has a history of causing harm through zoning practices. These harms include documented practices of Urban Renewal and redlining that took homes, schools, churches, and businesses in majority Black neighborhoods through imminent domain–residents and owners dragged out by force. The ripple effects of this trauma continue today in outcomes of health, housing, education, economic development, and the criminal legal system. Read more in the menu and review maps here.
• An example: Shiloh neighborhood residents are impacted by higher property taxes yet their homes flood and sewer backs up because we haven’t maintained the infrastructure in their neighborhoods. Urban 3 has provided data showing that the residents of Shiloh pay a disproportionately higher tax rate, and yet many homeowners lack access to City sewerage and stormwater infrastructure. So when there are new developments in the neighborhood that also lack adequate stormwater infrastructure, flooding happens regularly, and back yard sewerage systems downhill don’t work as effectively. Homeowners have to borrow against their homes to pay for damages from this lack of infrastructure instead of being able to send their grandchildren to college or pay for medical expenses. Shiloh isn’t alone in infrastructure concerns, but they are uniquely left out of access to the City sewer system.
• Leverage Lived & Professional Experience: Council needs the courage, creativity, and support to adopt the Missing Middle Housing Study along with meaningful action on the Displacement Risk Assessment. The Legacy Neighborhoods Coalition is bringing lived and professional experience to the table, innovating to help the City of Asheville secure policy and plans to deliver housing for all.

6. Do you think allowing middle housing types like duplexes and quadplexes by right in all residential neighborhoods would be an effective strategy to create more affordable housing in Asheville?

My answer: Yes

• In addition to my above position supporting the Missing Middle Housing Study & Displacement Risk Assessment, I add my commitment to a community benefits table for use by right development of housing density on transit corridors–just like the City uses for hotel development. 
  • How it works for hotels: New hotel construction can skip conditional zoning approval at Council if the project passes a trifecta of design, location, and meeting the minimum required points in a community benefits table. This expedites the process, redirecting cost savings from lengthy approval processes into supportive infrastructure.
  • How it can work for housing: Apply design standards, including climate resilience; use the maps from the Missing Middle Housing Study that identify current and future transit corridors that support housing density; and pass a community benefits table that allows developers to expedite the process, redirecting cost savings from lengthy approval processes into supportive infrastructure.
  • Suggested Community Benefits: affordability, renewable energy sources, tree canopy preservation, multimodal infrastructure, and community garden infrastructure. We would need majority Council support to get that passed.   
• Some additional tools for investing in truly affordable housing, anti-displacement, and neighborhood resiliency:
  • Asheville-Buncombe Community Land Trust; 
  • Cottage cluster development like Beloved Tiny Home Village;
  • Eliminating parking minimums on transit corridors, as Council voted unanimously to approve; and
  • Leveraging city-owned land for sector-based housing, like Buncombe’s housing for teachers (could be a model for hotel & restaurant workers, young people exiting foster care, and art & culture sectors).

7. When you think about “complete streets” in Asheville, what does that idea mean to you in practice? Can you share an example of a place where you think we’re getting it right—or could do better?

I’m committed to sharing the work to implement Asheville’s and NCDOT’s Complete Streets Policies with an equity lens. Owning a vehicle shouldn’t be a prerequisite for getting to work, shopping, or school. Asheville has been at the top of the list for most dangerous roads per capita in the state for over a decade and we must prioritize road design so everyone can get to their destination safely. 

• Getting it right: Merrimon Avenue reconfiguration that resulted in almost 30% reduction in automobile accidents; Coxe Avenue tactical urbanism showing the way for permanent solutions; River Arts District protected bike lanes.
• Need to do better: Safely connecting major corridors like Patton, Tunnel, and Hendersonville Road to neighborhood corridors; safe design infrastructure like raised crosswalks to increase pedestrian visibility; and prioritizing safe pedestrian crossings through activated lights and longer crossing times at intersections.

Complete streets are good for the people who live and work here, for businesses, and for meeting our carbon reduction goals. I am committed to budgets, plans, and policies that make our roads safer for all commuters, including cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers, and to advancing ADA compliance to improve safety and accessibility for all. 

8. Aside from budgetary constraints, what’s one barrier you see to Asheville becoming a safer city for people who walk, bike, use micromobility and/or assistive mobility devices?

State-maintained roads are the spines of our neighborhoods, but we’re choosing interstate expansion instead.

As one of two Council members on the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), I voted with Buncombe County Commissioner Parker Sloan to prioritize local corridor infrastructure including Sweeten Creek, Swannanoa River Road, Louisiana Ave, and Sandhill/Sardis Roads. Instead, the majority of the MPO voted to move those funds into the I-26 Connector that is more eligible for state and federal funds. So these corridors where housing, jobs, and neighborhood resources will struggle with supportive infrastructure for decades. 

If the state of North Carolina is serious about reducing carbon emissions related to transportation, we have to invest in infrastructure so commuters have more transportation options. As a member of former Governor Cooper’s Vehicle Miles Traveled Reduction Task Force, I worked in statewide coalition to tie funding solutions to infrastructure needs for safety outcomes. Matching funds and maintenance costs are real barriers to investing in complete streets, especially for smaller cities and rural areas.

9. Asheville is in the middle of a Comprehensive Operational Analysis of our bus system. Residents were recently asked to consider two different network concepts: a coverage concept and a ridership concept. Which concept do you prefer for Asheville?

My answer: Coverage

• This is a false choice, in my opinion as a transit rider.
  • If we reduce coverage in our neighborhoods, working people and their families will have to buy another car, pay a ride service, or relocate.. More cars means more carbon emissions, more traffic, and more parking demand.
  • If we really wanted just ridership, we’d remove the barrier of paying to get on the bus, which is proven to increase ridership including in the fare-free study Asheville conducted in 2006.
• In our Council 3×3 presentation on the current transit study, we learned that the real purpose of the study was not to choose between ridership or coverage, but to make the case for more and dedicated funding to expand transit. So we need both. 
  • The strategy: Coordinate with the County for an efficient, effective Buncombe-Asheville Transit System with dedicated funding and a transit authority that supports our ATU 128 union while partnering to reduce redundancy instead of funneling tax dollars into a for-profit management company, then growing a regional transit system at the intersection of equitable access, economic mobility, and environmental sustainability. A coordinated effort should include dedicated revenue for a transit-connective network including sidewalks, greenways, and safe routes to schools.
  • What’s happening now: The new Transit Management Company request for proposals is expected to cost about $3-million, just to maintain the existing for–profit, outsourced model. This will be part of the City budget decision this Spring at a time when we’re facing a $30-million budget deficit. Meanwhile, Buncombe County is planning its own, separate Transit Master Plan, partially funded through the MPO which also funded a separate Regional Master Plan. If we don’t collaborate, we risk cuts to service–so neither coverage nor frequency. 

Want to join in advocacy for public transit funding and planning? Consider Better Buses Together, coordinated under Just Economics.

10. What informs your vision for Asheville’s trails and greenways, and how would you move that vision forward?

I advocated with community for the Close the GAP plan to include accessibility. When we ensure our infrastructure is ADA compliant, we’re investing in infrastructure that benefits everyone. Here are a few ways to move forward together:

• Dedicated transit funding that includes connective infrastructure including sidewalks, greenways, and safe routes to schools. 
• A community benefits table for housing development that expedites the process, redirecting cost savings from lengthy approval processes into supportive infrastructure.
• Partnering with NC Department of Transportation (DOT) and Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) staff to expedite construction of approved projects that have been delayed, likely through adding staff capacity for project management. So getting projects done that have been approved and funded for years, especially while our community rebuilds post-Helene. 

11. In your view, can investments in greenways and trails support affordability in Asheville—and where should we be thoughtful or cautious?

With location affordability data analysis showing how affordability links both housing and transportation, development of deeply-affordable housing on transit corridors close to jobs, groceries, education, and childcare options will be important for future development in Asheville, but is also important for us to coordinate with the County as part of our Living Asheville Comprehensive Plan’s goal for Responsible Regionalism along with the County’s new comprehensive plan. With access to housing and transportation options being linked to the social determinants of health, it is also part of achieving a Healthy and Well-Planned Community, which is a benefit even for those who do not choose or rely on active transportation. 

We can build trust to move projects forward by:

• Following through with Legacy Neighborhood Coalition recommendations on anti-displacement;
• Implementing a community benefits table for new housing development that includes climate resilient infrastructure;
• Bringing back an amended Land-Use Incentive Grant with an equity analysis that works effectively like voluntary rent control; and
• A process for documenting Source of Income Discrimination Protection as recommended by Asheville’s Human Relations Commission.

12. The City has been allocated $225 million in CDBG-DR (Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery) funds from HUD to aid our recovery from Hurricane Helene. HUD approved the city’s initial plan to spend $125 million on infrastructure, $52 million on Economic Revitalization and $31 million on housing. Within the $31 million to be spent on housing, $28 million is dedicated to building affordable housing while the remaining $3 million is for single family home repair. Recently, the city has proposed shifting over half of the funds originally planned for affordable housing construction over to single family home repair. Would you support that proposed change?

My answer: No

I appreciate yes/no questions because that’s the challenge of being in elected office: weighing the available information and making a decision within the limitations of the role. And yet life is not binary–there are lots of layers and nuances behind votes. 

So let’s look at the harsh reality: Asheville received $225-million in CDBG-DR funds to address $1.1-billion in damages to our housing, infrastructure and economy. This housing decision reveals that we need more funding to fill the gap because we need both single-family home repairs and new housing construction to deliver a true recovery from the catastrophe of Hurricane Helene. 

There are more questions that need answers, like: Is the state program the most efficient solution for home repairs or are there local partners that can move more quickly and efficiently? When speaking to 5th graders last semester, I heard from a student who’s family still had windows broken by a tree during the storm. The application window for repairs just ended January 31st, so we need to review the demand as part of advocating for additional funding.

I look forward to gathering more information before this final decision comes to Council and sharing the nuance with the community before we vote on it. My “no” position in this questionnaire may shift with new data and analysis, including hearing staff and Council recommendations at the Housing & Community Development Committee level.

13. Director D. Tyrell McGrit recently shared an update with City Council on the Riverfront Parks Recovery outreach and findings at the Jan. 13, 2026 City Council Work Session. What stands out to you about the work so far, and why?

We have a long way to go in rebuilding, and opportunities to secure more resilient infrastructure by making time and setting intentions to get it right. City staff are committed to synchronizing our plans, including the new Recreate Asheville 10-Year Parks & Rec Plan, and engaging our community along the way. 

Beyond home and commitments to work or school, public “third spaces” including parks, libraries, pools, community centers and gardens are affordable, accessible locations for residents to gather, connect, and build relationships that are key to neighborhood resiliency. 

Many of our public park facilities are adjacent to our rivers and streams, an added community benefit as they are also woven into our multimodal transportation network. Karen Cragnolin park is an example of how riparian buffers and native plant species can make our parks and multimodal infrastructure more resilient during flooding, and a model for multisolving this recovery and being better prepared for the future.

Thank you to Asheville on Bikes, Mountain True, and Strong Towns for this opporutnity to engage voters!

With gratitude, Kim