City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, welcome everyone to the Asheville City Council meeting. If you could just take a moment to silence your cell phones. And please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. In addition to silencing your cell phones, if you want to speak on any item on the agenda, please just make your way out into the hall and they'll sign you up and it will show up on our sheet in front of us. Also, I'm going to go ahead and read our decorum statement. Chamber decorum. Members of the public attending council meetings or addressing the council shall abide by the following rules. Everyone shall follow the instructions of the mayor or any other presiding officer or official, and shall refrain from impeding or interrupting the conduct of business. This shall include but not be limited to clapping, yelling, or other audio expressions of approval or disapproval of comments made during the meeting. Persons addressing the council are expected to observe the decorum of the chamber, to be respectful of the council and the public, to refrain from the use of profanity or foul language, to refrain from personal attacks and commentary on candidates for political office, and to refrain from making disclosures prohibited by the Personnel Privacy Act with respect to any city employee. Failure to abide by these rules may subject you to removal from the council chamber.

All right, thank you.

All right, we have one. very exciting proclamation tonight. And that is the 14th Annual Pollination Celebration Month. And everyone who is associated, including people wearing antennae, please come forward for the reading of the proclamation. Councilwoman Maggie Ullman will read the proclamation.

Is this on? It is. Come on up.

Whereas 40% of the world's insect pollinators are at risk of extinction due to habitat loss, climate change, pesticides, and exotic invasive species, and whereas pollinators are vital to the reproduction of nearly 90% of all wild flowering plant species, which are necessary for maintaining healthy, diverse ecosystems essential to mitigating adverse impacts of climate change. And whereas pollination plays a vital role in sustaining the trees and plants of our community, enhancing our quality of life and creating recreational and economic development opportunities. And whereas the City of Asheville manages urban landscapes and public lands that may serve as pollinator habitats and provides recommendations to developers and residents regarding landscaping that may promote habitat conservation and stewardship. And whereas the City of Asheville is the birthplace and inaugural affiliate of the National Bee City USA Pollinator Conservation Program, which has more than 478 affiliates in 48 states. Now, therefore, our mayor, Esther Mannheimer, proclaims June 2026 as the 14th annual Pollinator Celebration Month.

Well, hello, Mayor and council members. Thanks for allowing us to respond. As we begin Pollination Celebration Month, we also celebrate Asheville's leadership. 14 years ago, as we just heard, Asheville became the first VCD USA in the nation, inspiring nearly 500, it's grown since we submitted that text, inspiring nearly 500 communities in over 48 states today to protect pollinators and the ecosystems they support. Pollinators are essential to healthy communities. They help produce the food we eat, support wildlife, improve water quality, strengthen biodiversity and contribute to climate resilience. But pollinator populations continue to decline because of habitat loss, pesticides and climate change. When pollinators disappear, ecosystems weaken, food systems become less secure and communities lose an essential part of the natural world that sustains them. The good news is that cities can make a measurable difference. Pollinator conservation is one of the rare issues where we know change can happen locally, even in cities, because most bees, butterflies, beetles, moths, wasps, and flies, there's hundreds of thousands of species, do not travel far from their nest. That means the landscaping choices we make in parks, roadsides, public spaces, backyards, and balconies can directly shape whether pollinators find the food, shelter, and nesting habitat they need to survive and better yet, to thrive.

Insects truly are the little things that run the world. The food web falls apart without them. It took thousands if not millions of years to build this food web, and as brilliant as we are as humans, we cannot replace it. By following the Bee City guidelines, the city of Asheville can play a significant role in reversing insect decline. Staffing the sustainability department and urban forester positions are certainly steps in the right direction. Thank you. Recognizing that healthy ecosystems are critical infrastructure for a resilient city, we ask that Asheville implement pollinator-friendly policies and practices across city departments. Protecting pollinators is an investment in public health, food security, biodiversity, climate resilience, and the beauty and livability of Asheville itself. On June 2nd, we are hosting a presentation by the Xerces Society's Pesticide Reduction Program Specialist. Sharon Silveggio will address how cities can model pollinator-friendly pest management for the broader community. We warmly invite council members and city staff to attend in person, by webinar, or through the recording. Thank you for your continued leadership and commitment to creating healthier, more resilient, and a more beautiful Asheville. The choices we make today will shape the kind of environment we leave for our children and grandchildren.

Thank you very much.

How does one get a t-shirt? How do we get a Bee City t-shirt?

Okay, we are ready to move on to our consent agenda. Council, do I have questions, comments, or a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Okay. I'm sorry, hold on, let me just make sure. Okay, we don't have anyone signed up to speak under the consent agenda. So all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, thank you. And now we have one presentation tonight, the manager's report. This is the third quarter fiscal year 2025-2026 capital update. And we're going to hear from Walter Eer. Thank you.

Council, let me do this. Good evening, council, mayor, manager, and staff. My name is Walter Eer. I'm the director of the Capital and Asset Management Department. I'm here to give an update on the 26th, I'm sorry, capital update on the third quarter of fiscal year 25-26. So this will be a bit of a simpler update, heads up on a couple projects. So construction is moving, and we have an update on the municipal building project that you'll see come to council in a month for contract approval, some sidewalks and parks projects, and recovery. In case anybody has forgotten, we're still in recovery. Projects are moving in that fashion, either to secure additional funding or actively in design. And we are delivering across the portfolio. WHETHER IT'S REGULAR CAPITAL, BOND, RECOVERY FUNDING, WE HAVE A LOT OF PROJECTS UNDERWAY. FIRST, WE'LL TAKE A COUPLE MINUTES TO REVIEW COMPLETED PROJECTS. WE RECENTLY COMPLETED THE MCCORMICK FIELD RENOVATION. PROUD TO HAVE THAT DONE. Thanks in large part to Dustin Clemons, the project manager and division manager for that capital project division. Bloom Construction, Ewing Cole was the designer, tourists, fans for their patients as we made work to make that stadium up to today's standards. As well as the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, that was a recovery project. to replace the roof and 29 Haywood and Grove Street were two projects that were on our regular replacement cycle. The Western North Carolina Nature Center Gateway to the Southern Appalachians is another project we've recently completed. I see a couple familiar faces in that picture there for the ribbon cutting. Thank you for attending that and glad to have that open and approved as well as the Weaver Park improvements is nearing completion or substantially complete at least. There's a before and after picture right there. And from ending to starting we have a couple of construction projects, sidewalk projects that recently started, Johnson School Boulevard and Airport Road sidewalk started in the last quarter. So a couple of deep dive projects coming up. The Municipal Building Capital Repair and Replacement Project. It's a project that replaces the apparatus glaze suspended slab and a couple of structural members were also working to add new systems or refresh old systems in that building to give us new life in that facility for 20 years and beyond. Some of the goals are to ensure that we have uninterrupted service from Fire Station 1, Fire station, I'm sorry, the fire headquarters and police headquarters will still remain downtown to provide those services and to deliver a structurally sound, weather-protected, safe facility. If you're wondering what's gonna happen, I'll go into the next slide, but the why, we found some structural irregularities, made some temporary repairs to buy us some time, and we're finally getting around to making those repairs. It's a complex project. So this is roughly what the scope. Apparatus Bay is on the third floor. The numbering is a little funny here, but it's the third floor, if anybody wasn't aware of that. The fire station, Apparatus Bay, is roughly here in space. The living quarters are in the back. And we needed a 20-foot construction buffer, which will displace some folks, including forensics for APD below and the combined fitness center. So during construction, Apparatus Bay, I'm sorry, the Fire Station 1 living quarters, the firefighters will still continue to live in this space, and then there's a bay that exits out to Eagle Street, and they will continue to operate out of the building while construction is happening to maintain response times. So it hurts me to show this, but the construction cost is $7.5 million from the General Capital Fund. That's roughly 60% of what would cost to get a new station, but this is required whether or not we were to keep on operating on a facility as a fire station. So if we were to put offices back there, if we were to have an open space, it's a 100-year-old building that has had trucks entering and exiting. So if you take a paperclip and you just go back and forth with it, it gets really hot and then it breaks. That's effectively what is in the rebar inside of the apparatus bay. So we've been continuously monitoring this facility structurally for the past four years to just ensure structural stability and safety. May I ask a question? Sure, please.

Maybe I'm not recalling this correctly, but there's the talk of the performing arts. Can you not hear? I'm sorry. I think I'm trying to remember this. I'm not sure if it's correct, but the talk of the performing arts center nearby also included relocation of the fire department?

That is, there is space for the fire department in that structure.

In which case, does that change this?

No. Again, we'd have to do this no matter what.

I thought you said we'd have to do it because of the fire use.

There is a 70,000-ton apparatus on there, two of those. So we have to do this regardless of whether we do an app fire station or any other use in that space.

Well, and I know that's only a proposal, so it's not a sure thing, but okay.

So if it was a museum, we'd have to do this?

Correct. gymnasium, restaurant.

Okay, I thought you said specific to fire use. Oh, no, no, no.

Okay. There's going to be, it's going to have a thicker slab because of that, but that's the only cost savings that we would realize if it was any other use. It's just a smaller slab.

And how much is that? What portion is that?

I think it saved us like $250,000. It's not a lot. Thank you. It's difficult. It hurts my heart as well. But it's necessary. We've got to keep it operational. And there's nowhere else to put another fire station today. It's a difficult decision, and we have to keep operations moving.

So this needs to happen regardless of the long-term use of the space, because... the fire trucks are so heavy, they've damaged things. So we need to fix it. And if in five years or 50 years, we move the fire station and the trucks don't drive there anymore, we still need to make this replacement because the rest of the building is on top of it. And that would be structurally problematic.

The only thing Walter is saying would be different is the slab wouldn't have to be as thick, which is a cost differential of $250,000. Otherwise, everything else has to be done.

Thank you.

I didn't want you to see this in June and wonder why we're spending that much money on this project. It's important to explain to yourself, to this body, as well as the public to understand why we're doing this project. So you'll see this come from Bloom Construction. It's the same company that did, the construction company that did McCormick Field. We'll start renovations. We have to, again, temporarily relocate APD forensics and the fitness function. And then we anticipate 18 months of construction and to be back fully operational in the facility in late 27, early 28. Thank you for your questions. Moving on to a recovery project, the Biltmore Village Infrastructure Project, otherwise known as the Biltmore Village Public Realm. So we, the scope of the project will replace brick sidewalks, curbing, ramps, crosswalks. If any of you have been down there recently, large trees have uprooted some of the bricks so it's not ADA compliant either from the crossings like this that doesn't have the detectable warning plate. We're bringing it up to today's standards as well as maintaining the historic design standards of historic Biltmore Village. We met with business owners to ensure that we understood what their needs are and we heard them loud and clear. So timeliness is part of what we're working on. We were able to get, I'm sorry, the total project estimated cost is just under $4.8 million to do the entire district sidewalks. The city was able to secure $2.5 million of grant funding from the North Carolina Small Business Infrastructure Grant and staff are pursuing additional grants. So we've kicked off design and we anticipate finishing later in the fall and starting construction later this year. We anticipate doing a unit price contract so that when hopefully if we get additional funding we can increase the scope along with that additional funding. So a lot of folks will probably think, or folks in the village may think, that the lighting project and the sidewalk project are all one, but they're different funding sources. And the lighting project is run by the Transportation Department. If you're wondering which STREETS, THIS INCLUDES, IT IS BILLMORE PLAZA, KITCHEN PLACE, BOSTON WAY, SWAN STREET. IF WE ARE ABLE TO GET ADDITIONAL FUNDING, THAT WILL INCLUDE ALSO CRESCENT, ANGLE STREET, VILLAGE LANE, IF WE GET THAT ADDITIONAL FUNDING. So again, sorry, the lighting infrastructure project is a FEMA PA project, so it's a different timeline and a different process. But ultimately, we are making the village, I'm sorry, the lighting project is gonna be historically appropriate. The lighting that you see here is a historic feature. There's only very few vendors that make that exact lighting fixture, but we're gonna update it and make it more resilient to today's code standards. So we are anticipating one project will go faster than the other so that we will work on installing a conduit ahead of time because we know where the locations are. So we'll be able to ensure that we don't have to rip up newly installed sidewalk if the lighting project is a little bit delayed right after that. All right. So just not to forget some of these other important projects, upcoming milestones. I'm happy to say that the public art project, the harp, that was part of the original intended for the Broadway Public Safety Station. It's gonna get installed along the Reed Creek Greenway this summer. Folks that hopefully participated in the making of tiles, you can see some background images here. The community participated in that. We appreciate Odyssey Clayworks and Ballet Conservatory for opening their doors and helping make that possible. Greenwood Connector project's gonna be done in August. Malvern Hills Park improvements are at the 60% design phase. We recently sent out updates to folks that are on that mailing list, and we anticipate construction starting by the end of the year. I'm not gonna read off the updates. The only one I will mention here is the riverfront recovery projects, which is the French Broad River Park and Azalea Park. We anticipate having updates of the unified concepts. sent out a bunch of updates. We had community engagement where folks gave their input and feedback to those different concepts. So we'll present a unified concept of that to the Infrastructure Recovery Board and as well as doing some community engagement for those this summer. All right, so again, construction's moving forward. We're still under recovery and moving forward with those, and we're delivering across the portfolio of all projects. Any questions?

I really appreciate the analogy, having recently tried to bend back a paperclip and it snapped. That's not the kind of action that we want to have happen when we know it's weak, right? But I was curious how, and this might be a question for follow-up, how does the boosting the block project fit in with that corner of the municipal building and intersect with what that project would look like and fit?

So they're currently in design. We have coordinated with the planning department and fire department to ensure that we can still maintain response times. So it's being coordinated. Okay. Certainly.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Any other questions? Thank you. For any other projects that I didn't mention today, please go to ashvalency.gov backslash projects for updates.

Thank you. Okay, I think that concludes the reports. All right, we're going to move on to public hearings. First, we have a public hearing on the fiscal year 2026-2027 annual operating budget. And I have that Lindsay's, yes, there she is, going to make the presentation and then we're gonna open this up for public comment.

Thank you. Lindsay Spangler, Budget and Performance Manager. I'm also joined by Tony McDowell, the Finance Director. And I'll just give a quick presentation before we hear from the public here. Okay, so here is our timeline for the budget process. It's been a while. We first came to Council in January to start talking about the budget, and here are all the points where we came to council to talk about budget projections and answer questions. The proposed budget was released on May 12th, and tonight we are at our public hearing where council has the opportunity to hear from the community their thoughts on the proposed budget. And of course, the last step in the process will be to vote on adopting the budget, which will take place at the next council meeting on June 9th. Just a little bit about our objectives. As we went through this budget process, we really aimed as much as possible for structural balance, so making sure that we were aligning our expenditures with our revenues, especially trying to keep in mind long-term fiscal stability, so avoiding those short-term fixes and really trying to look at multi-year planning as much as possible. Of course, we want to make sure that we're prioritizing core services, making sure that we're keeping in mind quality of life for our residents, while, of course, also keeping our employees in mind. So the more that we can retain a dedicated and prepared workforce, really the more that we can focus on retaining core services and making sure that we have good quality of life for our residents. That's a really important part of the process. And, of course, Helene Recovery, always in the front of our mind, making sure that we're able to build back more resiliently. So here is a summary of the proposed budget for FY27. It is $275.58 million, which is about a 7.5% increase from this year to next year. And for the general fund specifically, which is the city's largest fund, it's about $187.46 million, which is about a 2.5% increase. And we'll go through some details of what makes up the general fund right now. We've come a long way since January. As you'll recall, we came to Council in January thinking that we were looking at a gap of about $30 million between our spending and our revenues. And some of the drivers of that We had to take some one-time fixes after Helene in this year's budget. A lot of that was we were unable to move forward into next year's budget. We also knew that we're facing a lot of increased costs, especially in healthcare and retirement, which is a nationwide problem. And we're also experiencing increases in some of our contracts, such as the transit contract, which was just rebid, and some other contracts that were increasing year over year. And lastly, The voters approved $80 million of general obligation bonds in November 2024, and we knew since then that we needed to add debt service to be able to start paying back the debt for those capital projects. So adding it all together, we're looking at about a $30 million gap, and we've come a long way since then. In February, we were able to decrease that gap to 26.4 million by continuing some of the cuts that we took this year into next year, and also just refining our estimates based on new information. And March and April is where the bulk of our work was done. Council voted to approve fees and charges that closed the gap by increasing the city's revenues. And we also came to council with about $9 million in budget balancing strategies. And we refined our estimates, and at that point we had a gap of $10.5 million. That leads us to today, where we're able to kind of go back and dig a little bit more and get some additional savings, look at some additional strategies, and we're able to close the gap a little bit more to $8.9 million. And that $8.9 million is what we need to close with property tax rate increase, and we'll talk a little bit about that shortly. So here's a general fund revenue summary. This is what it looks like. So again, that property tax rate increase that I just mentioned, which we'll talk about later, that would add about $15 million to the general fund property tax budget. Some other things to note on this slide, sales tax, which is our second largest source of revenue in the general fund. We are anticipating, based on the trends that we're seeing, both across the state and locally, that that will remain. We'll have to keep that flat next year. And lastly, I'll point out that dip in intergovernmental revenue is caused by the FEMA loan that we had taken to balance this year's budget and FY26 that we don't have access to next year. So that decreases our intergovernmental revenue in 27. So just to show a picture of what our general fund revenue looks like, I think the biggest takeaway from this slide is that property tax makes up 56% of our general fund revenue, so it's really the biggest lever that we have if we wanna make changes to our budget. Shifting and looking at our spending side of the budget. I'll go through on the next slide what some of the drivers of these cost increases are in some of these areas. Oops, I went back. So some of the main drivers of our spending are listed here. Health care and retirement is by far the largest increase. So that is a nationwide problem, which we have very little control over. Health care costs are going up everywhere. So that's expected to add about $5 million to our budget next year over what we spent this year. The proposed budget also includes a 2.8% cost of living increase for permanent staff, which is similar to what other local governments in the area are proposing for their budgets as well. That adds about $2.6 million to the general fund, and I'll note, based on some feedback that we got from the community that that number, all these numbers are general fund only. They do not include enterprise funds. So enterprise funds adds another 600,000 to that cost of living adjustment to those funds, not to the general fund. APD staffing is another $1.8 million to the budget. And I do want to emphasize here that this is caused by increased vacancies that the police department had after COVID and the George Floyd protests when they had a very large vacancy rate. And at that time, the decision was made to take dollars out for some of those head count. And so I just want to emphasize here that when we're adding back $1.8 million, it's not for new officers that are above their head count. It is just filling their existing vacancies. And then we have additional cost increases for community center security and fleet maintenance among some other minor changes. I also just want to emphasize here that this budget does not include any new programs. As we put this together, again, looking at our large gap that we had anticipated at the beginning, we really tried hard to keep in mind the impact to the taxpayer, and so as much as possible, tried to minimize anything new to the budget. This budget reflects just doing business as usual, cost increases that we could not change. I'll also note here what our spending looks like by function. So public safety makes up about 45% of our general fund budget. Then there's another 20% that goes towards community services, such as transportation, public works, et cetera. And then another 10% on parks and recreation facilities. And some other, about 9% on admin and management. And the rest of it is kind of other technical things. So getting to property taxes. So as you all know, the current property tax rate in this year is 44.19 cents per $100 of assessed value. So as part of the reval process that the county underwent this year, we were obligated to calculate a revenue neutral tax rate. which would show what the tax rate would need to be to achieve the same amount of revenue next year as this year with a small amount of escalation built in. The revenue neutral tax rate is 32.89 cents. And so the tax rate that we are proposing in the budget as right now to close that $8.9 million gap and to fund the geo bonds is 37.84 cents. So that's below the current tax rate, but above the revenue neutral rate by about 4.95 cents. For property owners that might be struggling to calculate what this means for you, I provided this handy slide. So if you know your home's new value, which you can find on the Buncombe County website, you can multiply that by the tax rate to figure out what your tax bill would look like for next year. And we have also provided some examples for folks with homes ranging from $250,000 to $1 million, kind of provided a range here so folks can see kind of what that impact would be for the average homeowner. Relatedly, we also wanted to talk about the homeowner grant program, which I believe we discussed at our last meeting, but I wanted to provide a little bit more information as we're getting it. So we have included in the budget $75,000 for the homeowner grant program that is managed by the county. So this year, as part of the county's budget process, they're proposing taking those funds and using them for their health and human services general assistance program. So unlike the current program, the money that goes into this will not be just limited to homeowner assistance. So it's open to a variety of different uses, including utilities, car repair, medical education expenses, and of course, homeowner and rental assistance. So I think this is a great move. It's less restrictive. And it's less restrictive in qualifications as well, so we believe that it will be utilized by more residents. So we just wanted to make Council and the public aware that this program exists for folks to take advantage of. And the agreement will come to Council in an FY27 so that it can be formalized as well. Lastly, we wanted to mention some follow-up from the agenda briefing from last week. There were some questions on one of our budget balancing strategies, the 401 match program. So just a little bit of history. In 2024, the city added a 1% matching program for eligible employees' 401 s. So the city contributes the 5% into 401 s. This 1% match is just if the employee adds 1%, then the city matches it. So about 75% of eligible employees take advantage of this right now. That's under 1,961 employees approximately take advantage of it. So as a budget balancing strategy, we did propose eliminating that 1% match, and that still leaves the existing 5% contribution. So that cost about $530,000 to the budget. So we just wanted to make folks aware that if we were to add that back to the FY27 budget, it would be about a 0.19 cent property tax rate increase to cover that. Just really quickly on capital. So recovery is still a really big part of our capital program. We're doing a lot of work in that area. So one of the things that we've added to our CIP for next year is setting aside $7 million for Helene Recovery as a buffer, a contingency fund so that if there's a situation where the federal government or the state government does not cover the cost of a certain project or the full cost and there's a gap, we'll have this pot of money set aside for that purpose. And here is what our CIP looks like in the budget ordinance. That will be passed by council. That will include only FY27, but in our budget document, we show five years of planned spending. All right, now I will stop and let the community speak about the budget and we look forward to seeing you again at your next council meeting to adopt the budget, thank you. Can we ask some questions first? Yes, of course, questions, sorry.

I have a clarification. Are you saying that in the elimination of the 1% match that the AFD accounts will still get the match?

So AFD 401ks are the same as all the other 401ks. They would not get the match. We did have this note here about AFD 457 accounts, which is a different account that's meant to, that AFD has that other folks don't have. It's meant to... AFD doesn't pay into Social Security, and so this account is meant for them to cover that.

I got you. So it's not 457 AFD accounts are not affected. Yes. That is the title of the account. It's like a 401k. Okay. I'm glad I clarified that. Thank you.

Other questions? The recovery contingency, how did you land on that number? And how long will that be contingent? And I see that you're projecting it to be refilled each year. So what happens when we don't use it because everything goes as we planned, but we raise taxes by more than that?

So we're not raising taxes to cover this right now. So what would happen is, so we've built this into our CIP so we can spend it if we need it. If we don't spend it, it can go towards other projects if needed. And if we don't spend it, then we don't take out debt for it. And then we don't need to pay for it.

So it's more holding back by $7 million on what we would have invested in the CIP.

Yes.

And we're doing tons of investment outside of our CIP in infrastructure. So it's kind of...

Yeah, because we kind of try to keep our CIP within a certain range, and so we're still within that same range as before.

But we did increase our annual allocation to CIP in general in recent years, right? Didn't we jump it to $5 million? We did. But so now it's just baked into the next five-year plan, really 10. Yeah, it's baked into our debt model. And this is reallocating.

And I'll also note that... And that was maybe 2022. Maybe best case scenario is we don't end up needing this next year, and then when we come to you again next year, we'll flow this out differently, and we'll need a smaller contingency pot in FY28 and out years. We're going to reevaluate it every year and change it accordingly.

And how did you land on that amount?

It's based on... It's based on the amount of recovery work we have going on right now.

It's a percentage.

Yeah, it's essentially a percentage of the recovery work that we have going on that's funded with FEMA, CDBGDR, HMGP, all that work.

Thanks. I have a couple questions if we're going to go down the line. Both are around personnel questions. And earlier on in the budget process, we were looking at, we just kind of kept saying three million-ish for staff, but there were a few options that we looked at. And this now just says... cost of living increase. So has that been a decision that that's the recommendation or is there still opportunity for the 2.8% figure to be a flat rate? And then the second question is going to be around APD vacancies. If 24 being filled a year is common, if we achieve that level of vacancy filling by APD in an average year. I just didn't think we were doing it that fast.

Yeah, so to answer your second question first, we did model out what we think APD is gonna hire next year and then netted that out against their attrition. So we did kind of like a month by month calculation and what we have in the proposed budget is like an average of what we think they're gonna have on staff next year.

So last year we averaged like 25 new APD positions filled?

Last year, probably not. I don't want to speak off the top of my head, but they have been increasing every year. We're getting bigger classes. Yeah, like this year they had two pretty big classes, and so I think we're anticipating next year maybe not quite the same high amount of classes, but still they're utilizing a recruitment service that's really doing a great job in helping them get recruits. And then the COLA. Yeah, so for the COLA, yes. So we had originally come with a few different scenarios that cost about $3 million. So I'll just say the reason that the number is lower than that $3 million is because as part of our last budget balancing strategies. So in part of our scenarios, we did set aside some money to... After we do a salary study next year, we set aside a part of that $3 million to start addressing what we were seeing out of the salary study. As a budget balancing strategy, we did take that out. So I think that was about $400,000 that we would have used in the second half of FY27 to start addressing some of those disparities. So basically what we're saying is after we do the salary study, we'll start to address that next year. In terms of, yes.

Very good question, because we did have some scenarios originally. What is in the proposed budget today is a 2.8% CPI, cost of living increase for the entire permanent staff. I think it's an important question, so I'm going to ask Human Resources Director Emily to come and give some more information around how we landed there.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, Emily Provance, Human Resources Director. As you mentioned, Council Member Turner, when we started talking about compensation increases for next fiscal year, we did run through some different scenarios and presented those to you all. After consideration and thinking about what was going to be feasible, and as Lindsay pointed out, determining that we would not have funds available to do corrections after the market study. We landed on the 2.8% COLA recommendation for all employees because it is based on a data point, a very highly accepted data point. The CPI COLA is recognized across the country. And we believe that doing a COLA increase will allow us to keep our compensation structure stable as we complete the market study. As I have shared with you all numerous times, Our compensation structure has been impacted by different types of increases over the last few years and it's created a compression and in some cases inversion. And that's when we can't recruit new people for less than we pay current employees. And so sometimes we have situations where we have to bring people in over what current sitting employees are making. And so this approach, the COLA, will eliminate for this coming year adding to that misalignment. And so decisions, the budget driven decisions that we've made over the last few years with flat increases for lower paid employees and percentage increases for higher paying employees, it has helped us with our living wage discussion, but it has created a lot of pressure in the middle of our compensation structure. And so we're getting less and less space between particularly high level line staff and supervisors. And so we believe that the 2.8% COLA would not only keep things stable, it would also signal to our staff that we're moving into new phase with our compensation where we're really looking to make data-driven decisions that protect that structure and that we look for systemic ways to Assess and change pay and so part of the market study would also be an equity analysis as well as a compression analysis and having that third party come in and and give us a level set of where folks' salary should be along with where they see the biggest discrepancies, that would give us the data we need to develop a long-term plan starting in fiscal year 28.

I think it's also important to note that the 2.8% will bring all of our staff above the pledge wage.

The pledge living wage, yes. Sorry, yes. So the 2.8% would mean that all of our permanent full-time staff would be above the pledged living wage. And with the 2.8%, we're also recommending a 1.5% increase to our pay grades, which means that our lowest pay grade would be $19.70 per hour, which is getting us really close to that $20 an hour goal. Any other questions?

Did anyone calculate the cost to get it to that 20? With 1973, what'd you say?

It's $19.70.

So 30 more cents from the goal.

I will also stipulate that while that would be our lowest wage, we do not hire very many full-time permanent employees at that wage. Most are above that.

Any other? One of my questions I think was answered in the May 21st agenda briefing follow-up from Thursday, and that was around seasonal and temp employees being eligible for overtime, that they are eligible for overtime, but that that is not designed for temp and seasonal employees to be working 40 hours a week. Because the HR department has followed up and noted that there will be a review. When can we expect an update on how many folks that are hired as seasonal and temp are actually working full-time regularly?

So my team is in the midst of that, what I'll call audit. They're working directly with departments to determine which of their temp seasonal employees are working more than what we would consider a temp seasonal schedule. I anticipate that we will be able, as far as an update, we could probably give you an update sometime early next fiscal year around our recommendations for how many of those positions should be considered to move to like a part-time non-benefited status and how many should remain truly temp seasonal, which to your point wouldn't necessarily, I think, For me, temp seasonal employees are employees that should typically be working overtime. And I'm hesitating because I do think there are certain situations. So if you think about sanitation picking up leaves, if there is a need in the fall that necessitates having temp seasonal employees and during those weeks there's a great need, it could be for overtime. But that would be still a time limited engagement where you're hired for maybe three or four months. What we're trying to eliminate is when we have temp seasonal employees working for longer than a specific time period. Does that make sense?

Thank you.

Okay. All right, thank you. Council, any other questions before we open the public hearing? And obviously you can ask questions after the public hearing too. Okay, thanks Lindsay. Okay, folks who are signed up for the public hearing, you'll have three minutes to speak. Please watch the lights on the lectern. Green means go, orange means you're getting ready to stop, and red means stop. And the first person signed up to speak is Paul Howell.

Council? City Attorney, City Manager, Assistant City Managers, and Maggie's not here, so I believe Sharon.

Michelle.

Michelle is sitting there for a hundred nights, so hold the group together for everybody. Okay. On June 11, 2024, City Council approved a $250 million fiscal year 2024-25 budget that includes a property tax hike to fund staff salary adjustments. On June 10th, 2025, for the fiscal year, council approved a budget including a 3.26% property tax rate increase. Now, this was to purpose. Key drives for the increase included paying for employee salary adjustments, including police and fire. Okay, then we jump over here to 2026, and we have a 4.95 cent property tax rate increase, which includes a 2.8% cost of living increase for all permanent staff. Now, I'm looking at this in all the last three years or whatever. that the city employees get raises. And it seems like to me that the constituents, with their raises being paid, are covering the property taxes for city employees. I might be wrong, but that's what it looks like. And I just can't believe that every time there's an issue with our city, the first thing that is thought of is to raise the property never fails. Now, we might have had more money if we wouldn't have wasted $55 million on the bus people. Since they want to cut all the routes to people that need them, maybe we should be cutting loose from them. I don't know, what, $55, $27.5 million. They would have saved $27.5 million just to do two years with them. But to keep making The citizens of this town keep paying for everything. 56% of the pie was from tax rates. Lord, how are people going to live right here? Everybody right here on this property ain't getting a CO, what is it, cola? Everybody right here on this property ain't getting cola. I mean, I know I have a hard time. Because people can't afford it. You got people that pay taxes on property they can't build.

David Greenson.

Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, council members, staff, David Greenson here, city resident, part of the GAP AVL team. I want to begin by acknowledging that this has clearly been an extraordinarily difficult budget process, and I believe city council and staff are making decisions that they genuinely believe are best for Asheville under very difficult constraints. I'd like to offer a thought experiment. So a little context first. Asheville has committed to powering municipal operations with 100% renewable energy by 2030, but much of the city's energy use still depends on the Duke energy grid, so reaching that goal is uncertain. So imagine that peer-reviewed research identified a new clean energy source that the city could adopt immediately, one that would significantly reduce costs while dramatically accelerating progress toward that goal, that would be a slam dunk, right? Well, I would argue that we are facing a very similar moment in public safety. Over the last two decades, a large body of research has emerged around community violence intervention, or CVI, evidence-based programs that prevent violence before it happens outreach, mentorship, and conflict mediation. In Chicago, major studies found that CVI programs reduced violent crime arrests by nearly 50% while also increasing high school graduation rates. In Richmond, California, which is a city very similar in size to ours, a CVI-based strategy contributed to an 85% reduction in homicides over several years. Meanwhile, research on expanding surveillance and police staffing shows mixed or inconsistent results in reducing serious violence. So given that, I'm just genuinely confused by the direction of this proposed budget. At a moment when resources are so scarce and difficult choices are unavoidable, why are we continuing to make major long-term investments in surveillance and increased police staff strategies that are more expensive and less effective? Why are we making no meaningful investment in CVI approaches that the evidence increasingly suggests are both incredibly effective and more cost efficient? To return to my original analogy, if we discovered a cheaper and more effective source of clean energy, why would we double down on fossil fuels? I really hope this council will ask why Asheville continues to invest heavily in approaches with mixed evidence while failing to invest at all in one of the most evidence-backed violence reduction strategies that's available. Thank you.

Thank you. Jason, you rose?

Good evening, mayor, council members, city staff. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight about the proposed budget, and specifically the importance of recreation for our community. I know there's a lot of big things that are on the budget, and I'm going to speak more about recreation, which is a small piece. My name is Jason Uros, and I've spent most of my life and my career working in parks and recreation. In my current role, I work with federal, state, county, municipal governments throughout the country. And I'm also a resident of Asheville for the last 17 years. I know that these are hard times. Everything's more expensive. Bread's up, eggs are up, milk is up. The refurbishing of a fire station is up. Getting the poles for the Biltmore Estate, the right lightning is up. And I know that you are all facing a lot of pressure and it's a hard decision. However, I also know that every time budgets get tight, we just look at arts and culture and recreation and make cuts there. And I'm not saying that that's necessarily what's happening in this budget, but I definitely want to make sure that we're doing what we can to sort of respect our parks and public lands and to do what we can to allow people the opportunity to create. People need the opportunity to recreate themselves or to rec-reate. And recreation does more physical health. It improves your mental health, your emotional health, your cognitive health, your spiritual health, your social health. And it improves the community's health. I don't think it's parks and recreation centers that simply play spaces. I think of them as public health centers. And maybe we should all think of that the same way. And so I was concerned when I heard that there was discussion about closing rec centers on Saturdays as a way, or Saturdays and Sundays as a way to reduce the gap. And I want to just recognize that working families who are stressed out and overworked need places to go on the weekend when they're available to go and recreate. And closing them on these days would probably be the worst day to do it. And I am here to represent the Asheville Badminton Club and we are a small little group and I appreciate that. But I don't want to only represent the actual badminton club. I want to represent the senior yoga class, the Zumba class, the table tennis club, the accessible basketball league, the three to five year old basketball teams, the people that want to have their birthday parties at a rec center or use it for a community meeting or for an art class. And so as you all are making your decisions, I recognize this is a difficult decision, but weigh these choices and then do whatever you can to balance the budget and do as little harm as we can to our Parks and Recreation Department. So thank you.

Thank you. Line dancing, too. Okay, the next speaker is Wilco Eshbach. probably slaughtered that. We have three people seating their time. If you could just raise your hand when I call your name. Jeremy, Jeremy Raybach. Yep. And Hank Neal. Okay. And Susan Levy. All right. Thank you. You'll have 10 minutes.

My name is Wilko Escherbach. I'm the treasurer of the ATTC, Actual Table Tennis Club. We play on Saturdays at the Montfort Center, and I want to talk about the same subject as Jason. Yeah, we have been around, the club has been around for more than 50 years. We have more than 90 members. Just this year, we grew by like 17 members, almost 20%. And so we provide competitive and social table tennis to all ages from eight years to 88 years. And all skill levels from beginners to quite advanced. We... run tournaments on Saturdays, and we have a youth program, 6 to 12 years old, also on Saturdays. Basically, taking out the Saturday from the Montfort schedule, it would cut down our playing time by one-third. And 40 plus members come to the Montfort Center on Saturday. It's quite crowded, sometimes difficult to get through. And yeah, it's our highest attendance day. So it would be quite damaging in that respect. We also run these tournaments, as I mentioned. So 48 players from hundreds of miles away come to Asheville to play there. They express that they really appreciate this tournament, this city, and playing here. So we roughly calculated that about $12,000 of local economical activity is incurred per tournament. And yeah, the youth program, it takes also place on the Saturday, right? That's when the kids have time. During the week, they don't have time, so we would have to cut it. So it's quite damaging, right? So we did some rough calculations with an estimated cost savings per Saturday. We had trouble to get some concrete numbers from the officials. So we went with $700. The total savings would be $36,000 per year. Compared to the fiscal year 27 general fund budget of 187 million, that would be 0.02% of the general fund. So it's a rather small cut with a disproportionately large community impact. It's not just table tennis, right? So Jason talked about bandmen, their working families having their birthday parties, Zumba classes. Some members, they have a round trip time of three hours. They come from Greenville, three hours to come to the club. There's a club in Greenville, but some people consider this Saturday event so important that they travel for three hours. So we also started a petition yesterday It was a little bit late, but we got 120 signatures from 25 zip codes across WNC as well as beyond. And more than 30 of those people basically expressed that Saturday is the only day they can actually make it. So 30 people wouldn't really be able to come to the club at all anymore. Here are a few quotes from people who provide a signature. George Sayar, nine years old. I'm nine years old. Saturday is the only time I can go to the center. Jenny Wilker, Montfort. The parking lot is always full. The table tennis tables are full. Kids are inside laughing and playing. The basketball court is thumping. It's a huge hub of activity. And then Ben Miller. Saturday is the only day I have to play in full. Please don't remove my access. So I actually handed out some survey, some petition information there, right? So I will ask. Yeah, we really would like to maintain the Saturday hours at Montfort Center in the FY27 budget. And if cost is a barrier, we would really appreciate if you would be included in working groups exploring cost-saving alternatives for community centers. So let's do it collaboratively rather than having the city impose this on us. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And we do have a handout from you at each of our stations, our seats here. Emily Argonada.

Good afternoon, good evening. I'm Emily Argonada. Thank you for listening to my public comment this evening. I very much appreciate the HR director's comments and answers to many of the questions. And I also recognize this is going to be a very difficult decision, as many other people have noted. However, a city that doesn't keep its promises is a city that won't survive. and getting really close to a pledge is still not living up to that pledge. This budget proposal will not live up to living wage pledge it made to our city's lowest paid workers. We are only two springs away from Helene, obviously. Many of our city's residents' generational wealth was destroyed by trees and water. If this budget is adopted, that 1% for those 961 employees will not help build back that wealth. After Helene, we learned the power of sharing. If we follow our lessons learned, we realize that many of us must make sacrifices to survive, much less for us to thrive. Just Economics has made recommendations to ensure city workers can make a living wage. I recognize that there has been a discussion tonight about the reasons for why they are choosing to do the cost of living increase in the manner that it is. However, again, a city that does not follow through with its pledges is a city that will not survive. Those changes that can be made include capping dollar amount for raises for employees making 100K over 100K. and changing raises to a dollar amount instead of a percentage. When our city workers cannot afford basic needs, the whole city suffers. People are assets to our city. Quality of life in words is what I hear. Words do not pay our bills. that extra 30 cents that's not even near the 2410 that is the living wage right now, that's 1970, that 30 cents an hour makes a difference, y'all. I also heard that that was, that the percentage notice was something that was similar to other governments locally. Y'all are aware that our cost of living here in Asheville is so much more expensive. I ask that you please take a look again at how much we are paying and how we are taking care of the people that take care of us. Thank you. Thank you.

Thomas Belmore.

Hello, Council, Mayor, and staff. I'm Thomas Belmore, Master of Science in Human Resources. I've lived in Asheville for 18 years. I'm a property owner and I'm a business owner where we manage a contingent staffing workforce of janitors. I guess I just want to talk to you about some discussions that I'm having with some of the people with other HR thinkers outside of the city of Asheville around cost of living adjustments and also to provide a suggestion. I have a lot of respect for the difficult choices with the budget that you all are making. I have a lot of respect for the work that your HR department has done. But conversations that I'm having with other people in my field are that the cost of living crisis disproportionately affects lower-earning people. And the – oh, I'm sorry. I get nervous up here. But the –

You're doing great. Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you. And that flat coal increases widen wage gaps and widen inequality. I was moved hearing about the city employee at the end of last meeting who waited until near midnight or after midnight to talk about how he was struggling. That made me want to look at this more. I know that y'all have been working on this much harder than I have. I think just to illustrate, I looked at, and forgive me, the city manager's salary versus what a starting custodian makes. That's a place close to my heart. I haven't been on that field. And then also that, which is the same, coincidentally the same as the average wage of a sanitation worker. I'm sorry, average custodial salary starting wage for sanitation worker. So it is city manager makes $265,000 a year versus the $40,000. of this average worker or hourly salary, I know that you work more than hourly and respect, more than overtime, is about 120, 100, sorry, 126.92 an hour versus 1940. If you look at the change that we're looking at, that's like an adjusted hourly change of a $3.50 increase versus a $0.54 increase, or about $3 difference. I think the beyond justice issues, this is a strategic choice if we're looking at retention and attraction of big positions that are hard to fill. And also you can influence the local labor market and bring more justice to the city and help other workers. Thank you all.

Thank you. Vicki Nee.

Hello, good evening. I'm Vicki Meath. I'm the director of Just Economics and you well know me because I have been coming to budget hearings for a very long time and this will likely be my last as director of Just Economics. Just Economics has long fought for living wages. And we passed the first part of our living wage policy before I started here, which was way back in 2007. But my first budget hearing was in 2011. And I'm so proud of the work that we did to advance our living wage policy to include temporary part-time seasonal employees. to add wage adjustments, to make it one of the most robust living wage policies in the state, and to signal to employers in our community what a more just and sustainable wage floor means. And a couple of years ago, the city decided to set aside the living wage policy. And I get it. Our living wage rate is based on the cost of housing, and housing has increased so drastically. And I understand tight budgets. Non-profit executive directors understand tight budgets. But today I want to just call out or name some things, what it's like on the worker side when you're not making a living wage. So our living wage rate, again, is based on the cost of housing. It's based on the premise that many landlords require you to prove that you make three times the rent in order to qualify for a lease. And so we're using that as a base for our formula. and looking at what it would cost. We come up with 2410 as a bare minimum. That is a bare minimum for a fair market rent region, which includes two other counties. And what it means if you're not making a living wage is that our city, we're doing work for the city. I want you to think about our sanitation workers, our parks and rec department. Folks that are doing work for the city and making this city work are not able to afford to live in the city that they work. I also want to just have you all think for a moment what's happened to things like gas prices here in 2026, what that means for your own budget, and what it means when we are doing raises based on percentages as a cost of living adjustment. That means that someone making $100,000 is getting about an extra $200 a month, whereas someone making $50,000 is getting less than around $100 a month, right? And the people at the lowest end of the income spectrum are the people struggling the most. So at my last public budget hearing, I'm going to ask you to reconsider how you do wage raises. Thank you. Thank you.

Chris Peterson.

Yeah, I usually come every year, budget. If I was sitting on council, this budget is a disaster. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Seriously. You know, you can make everybody else think you've got a balanced budget. You don't. You're still $30 million in the hole. You people need to be honest. Quit doing what your party tells you to do. Let's look at your numbers. Wait a minute. Let's look at your book. I urge everybody in this city to go online. You can look at it. It's simple to read. Now, I like Tony and your budget department, but you people couldn't budget an ice cream parlor. You really couldn't. First year, let's see, one year. Your budget went up in one year, 19 million.

I want you people to count.

19 million. Salaries, 10 million. Your property tax, one year. It's all here, 15 million. Y'all listen to these people? It's a joke. You need another fund. Your two major funds are your property tax, about 108 million, I think, this year, and your sales tax, 42 million. What I saw in your budget here, very sneaky, your sales tax for the next three years, you got 42 million. You didn't go up because you didn't make 42 million this year. You fudged that number. Your tourism is way down, and you're expecting it to be You know, go up. You're flat. You're going to lose money. You know, I'll sit here. I did it last year. No one wastes my time. It's a shame a city that brings in $276 million a year, you own the civic center, you own the water system, you own the parking, you own the bus system, you tax people every year, property tax, and you're losing millions a year. You are a failure. In the business world, you wouldn't last five minutes. So what you really need is a group or get some business people on here. You have no business people. Your Chamber of Commerce, all they do, they don't have business people. All they do is push tourism. Well, guess what? People in Greenville, Charleston, I see them all the time. We're not coming to your city. It's dirty, it's full of bums, and we're scared. So you people need to wake up. And Mayor, you've raised taxes for the last 12 years. We're going to probably get you again. You've always raised taxes. You love to. You are a failure.

Thank you. Soren Peterson. And wait, no, Sorin has three people yielding time to him. If you just would raise your hand when I call your name. Evelyn Johnson, thank you. Joshua Jones, thank you. And Nina Tobish, all right. All right, Mr. Peterson, you will have 10 minutes.

Hello, council. I want to start by reading you the transcript of the public service appreciation week proclamation that you adopted during the April 28th council meeting. I want to read it back for two reasons. First, to make sure that what I am saying is both fully contextualized and does not miss summarize what was said. And second, to emphasize the importance of the work that is done by the city's employees every day. It is one thing for me to come here and tell you why the work of the city workers is important. It's another for you to reflect on what you yourselves have already said. So here it goes. Whereas residents of Asheville are served daily by dedicated professionals of the federal, state, county, and municipal levels of government, and whereas these public servants often go unrecognized as they perform the essential labor and keep our city, state, and county running, And whereas many public servants, including police officers and fighter fighters, risk their lives daily in service of our community, while others, including inspectors, IT specialists, accountants, water and public works crews, engineers, community center staff, administrators, and many others, work tirelessly to serve Asheville with efficiency and integrity, And whereas public employees across all levels of government are committed to the highest professional standards and are dedicated to providing excellence in service to our people. And whereas public servants provide the vital continuity and stability necessary for a functional democracy and regular transitions between elected leaders. And whereas the city of Asheville recognizes the immense contribution of time and talent provided by these employees and honors the critical importance of your work. Now, therefore, our mayor, Esther Mannheimer, of the city of Asheville, proclaims May 3rd through May 9th, 2026, Public Service Recognition Week. Thank you so much for all that you do. And you know what? I agree with that sentiment. The people that I have the privilege of working with every single day are, to use your words, dedicated professionals who, through their immense contributions and essential labor, work tirelessly to keep our city running. But it's one thing to say that you give that recognition and another to actually act on it in a meaningful way. I am, of course, speaking about the budget and specifically the inadequacy of the raise that is being proposed for city employees. If you truly consider city employees essential, dedicated professionals, then I ask that you treat them as such. It's hard to attract and retain dedicated public servants when the pay is not even enough to maintain a basic standard of living in this community. I am a city employee. I was hired in September of last year as a temporary seasonal employee, and that season has been the longest season of my life. I have now been a temporary seasonal employee working full-time without benefits, without sick or vacation days, without holiday pay, without 401 contributions, without a retirement or pension, and without other forms of contribution for nine months. In addition to all that, despite again working 40 hours a week for the past nine months, the proposed cost of living adjustment would not apply to me because I am not a permanent full-time employee. I did hear before that I'd get a 1.5% adjustment, but the issue is still there. I use myself as an example, but this is a problem that applies to all of the city's non-permanent workers. Our cost of living will still go up the same as everyone else's, it's just that we will not see the same adjustment made to our salaries to accommodate for that increase. Similarly, any permanent employee hired after the cost of living adjustment is implemented will likely face the same issue. not adjusting the base salaries for employees, or rather adjusting them by 1.5%, but only for permanent staff means that everyone that the city works to recruit in the future will be making that much relatively less. If we're saying that the work on this budget is to adjust relative salaries so they are not decreased by other cost of living factors, then we leave a significant block of our current and future staff out to dry. That's not actually adjusting for cost of living. If this sounds familiar, it should. Because last year, after fighting to make sure our firefighters were paid fairly for their work, 13 firefighters formally hired after the adoption of the budget saw their paychecks did not reflect the salaries of the firefighters and increases they had just been fighting for. As such, my first ask is this. Instead of primarily adjusting only for permanent full-time employees, make adjustments in this year's budget to apply to the underlying classification and compensation pay plans of the city. If a laborer is classified as a non-exempt grade two worker, make it so that their salary range is what is adjusted so that all employees, including seasonal, temporary, and future employees benefit from those adjustments. But it's not just an issue of temporary or future employees. Permanent employees working for the city are also struggling to make ends meet. The cost of living adjustment does not adequately adjust for the actual local costs that we've been seeing over the past year. For those at the bottom of the city's pay scale, disproportionately those doing the physical tasks that keep our city running, the 2.8% cost of living adjustment amounts to something between 55 and 60 cents an hour. With his permission, I want to tell you about one of my coworkers. He's a driver for our city, so I'm with over six years of experience with a commercial driver's license operating heavy vehicles. Yet despite that experience and his status as a driver, which comes with a small salary bump, he is one of the many people working for this city whose paycheck leaves him next to nothing at the end of each pay cycle. To stretch every dollar, he lives in hot springs to afford rent, commuting over 35 miles a day to and from work. And as I have worked with him across the city, we have stopped and looked at every place with a for rent sign in their window, and so far have found none that would allow him to live within the city limits. The 60-ish cent raise he could expect from the current recommended budget covers less than half of the increased cost of gas of commuting to and from work, let alone factors like the local spike in rent or other more general inflationary numbers. This is someone who knows the long-term benefits and advantages of being a city employee and wants to be here until he retires, but who is struggling to put together enough money to survive in our area. Before he worked for the city, he was on a job site where his CDL afforded him $28 an hour. And with the I-26 project beginning development, there are already opportunities being posted that would give him a substantial raise over what he currently makes. And his story is not unique. I have co-workers from crew to super wivers who work second jobs, who come in to work overtime every week, or, like him, live far away from the city itself to be able to afford to work for our city. This includes everyone from, like I said, laborers to folks working in the office directing the functions of our city. I have folks who have taken out payday loans against their salary to cover expenses. And I have folks who are looking at nearly 25 years of experience working for the city, who are planning on retirement, who have never seen a paycheck where they are making above $23 an hour. It is an embarrassment when our employees cannot cover that $400 cost of living emergency expense. So my second ask is to familiarize with the people that you are asking to live off of this budget. If you have an opportunity to meet with them, please do. If you have an opportunity to work with them and see what they are doing, please do. If you don't have that opportunity, but maybe you've got an hour where I can talk to you, please do. The final thing is that in the past, when I have come forward and made this ask to you, I've received two questions back. The first being, give me a realistic estimate of how much this would cost for us to implement. And the second being, where does that money come from? Should it be implemented? And while there is always a question of compression and the impact on those workers, I want to let you know that from what I've been able to do, from looking at the budget, from asking people within the city to provide me that information, you could get all the employees in the city up to that $24 an hour mark or 20, or excuse me, $22.40 an hour mark or $21.60 an hour mark. have 20% compression, which means a relatively small amount of compression between the different salary positions, and provide the 2.8% cost of living adjustment for our higher paid employees. And that would increase the tax rate by less than 1%. The city uses the $350,000 property as the basis for a lot of that. That would mean a $350,000 property would see somewhere between a $15 to $35 a year increase in their taxes above the recommendation. And you could say as council that that entire difference is because it's going to make sure people make a living wage working for our city. I do want to send you some information and supplement to this that goes into the data a little bit more, but I hope that that makes my point. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, that concludes the folks that are signed up to speak under the public comment for the budget. Thank you very much for coming to City Hall to speak to us about the budget tonight. We do not vote on the budget tonight. We will vote on the budget at our next meeting, I believe. Because the budget starts July 1, so that's a very important deadline for us to hit.

Yeah, did you just one question for staff? I heard some information tonight that I guess could be in an email update somewhere But around the living wage and getting close to it and there were just some can we get that slide of information? And I'd also like to know What the cost of that 30 cents would be if possible?

I want to make sure I understand what you're requesting.

So there was just some information in the presentation. The $20 an hour bill wasn't actually. It was 1970. Right. So I'm curious what the cost would be to get them to that $0.30. And then there were just some comments made real quick that were great, but I don't know that they were on a slide. And they might be in an email to me or something, but I don't know that I've heard them necessarily.

From staff.

Yeah. So just a summary. I mean, I guess really, like, so full-time permanent workers, to Soren's point, which I really appreciated, Soren, thank you. You know, what does that mean for what percentage of staff is left that's not a permanent full-time worker? Like, who's not getting impacted or getting one and a half percent? I just don't feel like I have all the data. Maybe I do in an email. I don't know.

All right. So I'll provide you with the percentage of staff that's temporary. I think that's what you're asking for. And then what the cost would be to raise all staff up to $19.70? From $19.70 to $20. Which is the living wage pledge to the $20.

I just never heard that number.

No, we are at the living wage pledge with this budget. That was what Emily was saying. She just threw out we're $0.30 below $20 an hour. $20 an hour isn't, it's not anything identified as a thing.

Emily, could you come tell us some more about that? Yeah, Emily, I just want to clarify that point. And there was a living wage email that mentioned the $20. Yeah.

So while Emily's coming, yes, this 2.8% does get all of our permanent staff to the pledge minimum living wage.

I guess I just need to know who that doesn't help, who are not permanent staff.

And so the living wage pledge, though, was the $19.70 is what?

No, it's $20. So that's not, okay, I'm not confused. Okay, we are $0.30 from that. Under $20 an hour. Yes, and I would like to know the cost.

So what is the living wage pledge?

$20.

I think I heard just economics.

They're here saying 20. 20. Yes.

Okay, so when the manager said we are at the living wage pledge, I think you were thinking it was 1970. We're hearing tonight that it's 20.

Everyone's looking at each other like we don't know. We'll verify.

I can clarify this.

Okay.

Wait, Lindsay's jumping up on us too. I'm glad I'm not the only one confused. Okay. Okay.

With the 2.8% COLA increase, all of our current permanent full-time employees will move to the pledged living wage, which is $20 an hour. With the 1.5% increase to our pay grades, which is separate. Our floor will be 1970. Our minimum hourly rate will be 1970, but we will not have any permanent full-time employees under $20 an hour. The pledge is met.

But this is how that happened with the firefighters last year, because we're not raising the floor to 20, so we may still hire people that are in 1970.

But you were saying we don't typically do that.

We don't typically do that.

Right.

So, Sage, is your ask, what it would cost to get there? Taking into account the 1.5 change. how many people would still not be at 20? And of those people.

She wants to know how many temp seasonal part-time.

She's saying temp seasonal. And that's where I think we can get you the temp seasonal data, yes. Does that make sense?

And then she's asking the cost.

Yes. I need the whole picture. Even if it's two people.

Do you know approximately the breakdown between permanent versus temp seasonal? I mean, we know we employ approximately 1,400 or so.

Temp seasonal is like 200?

I wanna say between 250 and 300 over the course of the entire year, but I also want to go back to what Council Member Roney spoke about earlier or asked about earlier, which is that we're in the middle of an audit because we do think that some of our temp seasonal employees would be better classified with a part-time status or potentially a full-time status.

I want to clarify that, though I did ask that question, the spirit of it is to better understand the floor because if we are not currently having a class of folks in training that are about to be hired in a couple weeks like we did last year, it is probable that we will hire someone this year and they will be paid potentially $19.70 an hour. So we would be knowingly walking into a budget season not at the pledge rate. So how do we claim the pledge rate?

And I think that's what Councilwoman Turner is also asking is how do we raise our minimum to the $20 pledge?

And I know we're here tonight mostly to hear from the public, so just getting information back to us would be helpful. No, I appreciate that.

And I appreciate the opportunity to clarify.

I'll just add that I think the salary study does help us to understand what the minimum rate should be per classification. That's why that study is so important. It looks at the classifications. It also looks at cost of living locally as well as within the region. So that study is really important. So looking forward to moving forward with more informed information.

And I guess I'd be remiss if I didn't share what I always share, which is the living wage certification program used to include the value of benefits. And that was a big deal at the city level, right? So when that component went away, it impacted our ability to achieve that rate. And at the city, benefits are a big part of our environment with employment. So I'd always like to add that as a little caveat.

Yeah. Yeah.

And as Manager Wesley noted, the city has not done a comprehensive benchmarking of our salaries for six years. And so that's one of the reasons why it's so important to do the market study this year, because we don't have real verified data of any of our salaries. So much has changed in the last six years with our economy across the country and locally. And as she pointed out, that would help us to level set where people should be.

I still think I'd have been more comfortable if we raised the floor and did the study and did adjustments then. You know, like at more of a flat rate. Just sharing that perspective. But I understand where you're coming from, too. We have a lot to learn.

Yeah, I mean, I would support that too, although we're gonna have, I'm certain we'll have property tax implications, and also the dreaded word compression, I'm sure, that comes into play. So I'm not exactly sure how to resolve that.

We can get the data of how many people it would impact to raise to 20, and we can also get you the data around how many employees would be left in the temp seasonal status.

And we do, I mean, I think it's good to ask questions tonight because we're voting on this next time. So there's not an in between meeting where we have an opportunity to discuss it further.

I mean, on that note, I met with individual y'all repeatedly about various ideas, and I'm so thankful to the city manager's office, who in her first year has done an amazing job of working with me and my million questions and really adopting some of the ideas. I mean, we really have come a long way, so I appreciate that. There were still a couple things lingering that I had ideas on. One of them that's still lingering to me, and I won't go into some long list, but the one that still bothers me is this overtime situation, and I know that we're planning changes, But when I see like a request from APD for $1.8 million to fill vacancies that we may hopefully fill but may not, and then we know we have this overtime kind of adjustment policy review coming, I was hoping to see us kind of really just plan for a reduction in overtime to help offset that. that ask of $1.8 million. Additionally too, since we had been doing some extra work with APD in downtown recently, I was hoping that that surplus of sales tax revenue from the Business Improvement District could contribute another 200 or so thousand dollars to reduce the ask of the police department. So there's just some ideas floating out there. I'll share with my colleagues. I'm still open to talk with y'all about it because I really am concerned overall about the cost to residents. When you include our fees and our median home price, we're talking about $25 a month from the city. So $20 in taxes, around five or six in fees. And then the county, if I recall, is looking at It's somewhere between $20 and $25, around that same median. They have a different median home. So it's about $50 a month for a median home. And I think that's a lot. And that doesn't count for what I know happened to a lot of people, happened to me after Helene, which is an increase in homeowners. Do you need some water?

Yes.

which doesn't account for the increase in homeowners insurance that people also incurred. So I'm really just generally worried about it. and I'll say more when we actually get to a voting. I don't need to elaborate tonight.

I appreciate those thoughts, Council Member Turner. I'm having a lot of heartburn about the 1% contributing match that the city does, especially for our first responders. Our firefighters don't get access to Social Security, so they really rely on that. And when we're talking about benefits and we're not able to get folks to that 24 or even 20, then I think keeping as many benefits as possible is a positive thing. and where would the money come from? I think, again, moving money from that community center security over to supporting our first responders and keeping that 1% contributing match.

Is your ask just for first responders or for everybody?

Good question. I would prefer all staff. but open to hearing my colleagues' thoughts on that as well.

What's that figure? It's 530,000, it's .2 property taxes, property tax. For just firefighters? No, for all staff. We have a 75% participation rate in the match right now, so that's the number.

One of the things, I don't bring this up lightly, but, you know, we do a lot of studies and plans. And one of the things I had mentioned was, is there a kind of a buffer or a budget out there, some kind of contingency for if council comes up with some wayward new idea in the next 12 months and wants it studied? We do this. And I was going to suggest if there is such budget that we call that this year and just agree to not take on any new initiatives in a recovery cycle, but. I'm not clear to me if we actually have that money. I thought you asked that question.

Yeah, I did, but it was kind of unclear.

We do not.

I thought I'd know if we had a slush fund.

Well, but something always comes up and we always find a way. That's all.

We don't have any contingency in the budget.

It wouldn't be a solution to a recurring funding issue like the 401k match. So... You know, it's interesting because I guess what we're hearing tonight is more around pay, and I didn't hear so much around the 401k match, but I think that it does give me a lot of heartburn to roll it back to. You know, just as an employee, if my employer did that, that would be somewhat jarring in terms of, you know, just your long-term planning. So I... I appreciate all the comments that we've heard here tonight and I think, you know, we obviously have a difficult situation. We're looking at a 4.95 cent property tax increase and that's on top of significant cuts that are proposed in this budget. This is not, you know, this budget doesn't have lots of fat in it. It's a relatively modest budget for a city our size that does the work that we do and has to manage a city that has a lot more activity in it than another city our size that doesn't host millions of visitors every year. And so I just want to take this opportunity to get back on my soap box about taxes. And this is something that I've talked to legislators about, which is, you know, in North Carolina, we do have Cities have to rely primarily on property taxes. And so we hear that from people. And that's unfortunate. Right now there are legislatures considering a referendum issue that would cap property tax net increases at 3.5% per year. And that will be challenging for cities because the cost of doing business is just keeping the... ship afloat and providing the same level of services doesn't cost the same every year it's to cost more and more and more because you saw their health care expenses we need to pay our employees more um so we've got to pay our own light bill and and you know it's not going down it's going up so that's going to be really challenging and Strangely, in North Carolina, cities don't have a lot of other revenue options that you see if you travel to other states. So, for example, we don't have a food and beverage tax here. So we have all these tourists that come to visit Asheville, but they don't pay a food and beverage tax. And if you were to go eat out in a lot of other cities in other states, you'd be paying a food and beverage tax. We don't have... a transit, a sales tax for transit in Buncombe County like they do in Orange and Durham and Wake County. I mean, that's a significant amount of revenue that can be used to support a transit system. We don't get a car rental fee like they do in Charlotte because we don't own and operate our airport. It's an independent authority. We don't directly get the room tax. Nobody, well, other cities in North Carolina do, but they still are limited to what they can spend it on.

We don't get a vacancy tax in North Carolina.

I don't know what a vacancy tax is.

Vacancy tax is something we've talked about a little bit in the eyes of a second home or an empty home.

Oh, that's what you asked. We don't have a differential tax rate, property tax rate for second homeowners like they do in South Carolina. So, I mean, the list goes on and on and on. So we're basically having to balance a budget a little bit with our hands tied behind our back because we have these limited resources and we're trying not to place too heavy of a burden on our residents who are struggling with the cost of living and at the same time our major driver in our budget is paying our very valuable employees. Their salaries and benefits are, if you look at our pie of our expenditures, that's going to be over half of what we're spending this budget on. I do commend the council and the manager and all the staff who have worked on this and the community who has weighed in because this is a really challenging budget and we started in a difficult place and we've come a long way and we're having to make hard decisions and And it's obviously difficult and it's not for want. We would love to do more and more and more if we could, but we've gotta find that spot where we balance these decisions so that no one group is feeling too much pain. So that's the goal anyway, and to continue to deliver the services that the community expects and deserves.

I just want to put on the record as well the community centers and them closing on the weekends. Again, where would we get the money? Maybe instead of the downtown. It has to be used in downtown. Well, maybe we can put that towards public safety. And then maybe we can do a switch and use the the security for the community centers and move that over to keeping them open. Because again, I just see that duplication of the security because they're gonna have to call APD if anything goes down anyway. And if we're already funding 24 new officers, then I think that takes care of that security piece the way I see it.

What's the saying, Peter and Paul? Right. We need more revenue.

Yeah. Okay. Anybody else? Okay, we are gonna close the public hearing on the budget. Again, we will be voting on this next time, and also thank you again for coming and providing us comments on the budget, and thanks to everyone who's participated along the way.

Mayor, if I may, I think that there was somebody else added to the general public comment before you closed it, and I didn't hear that person's name. I don't know what happened with the timing.

Are you talking about under the budget item? General public comment. Okay, I see, I see. Yeah, I think, yeah, there we go, okay. Okay, so we're going to move on to public hearing item B, CDBG and home annual action plan. This is a public hearing only. There is no vote, but no one has signed up to speak under it yet, but we're still going to hear about it. So James Shelton is here to present on this item.

Good evening. Thank you, Mayor, Council, City Manager, and fellow staff. I'm James Shelton. I'm the Community Development Division Manager for the City of Asheville. Tonight, we are having a public hearing on the fiscal year 26 to 27 CDBG and HOME programs. We are required to undertake a public hearing because our citizen participation plan, which governs how we engage with our community for these two programs, requires that we do so and undertake a 30-day public comment period. This public hearing is taking place in the middle of that public comment period, and I'll outline how the community can provide input during tonight's presentation. So the CDBG and HOME programs are from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and they fund opportunities that support community development and affordable housing activities in the city of Asheville as well as within our consortium area for the HOME program. The grant funding that we will receive for fiscal year 2026 and 2027 are 1.04 million for CDBG and 1.07 million for HOME. And tonight we're seeking public comment on the 2026 to 2027 annual action plan and the funding recommendations for those two programs. Let's talk about CDBG first, and then we'll talk about the HOME program. The funding available for the CDBG program this year is $1,046,468 of which we are allowed and do use 20% for administration. So this makes the CDBG program for the city budget neutral. So this pays for staff time and benefits and makes the program funded with how we administer it at the staff level, as well as pay for services and training that we need budget neutral to the city. We have a public service cap of 15%. We are not required to fund all activities up to that cap. That is a cap, not a floor, which leaves $680,000 that we can use for other activity types. But the main takeaway is that after administrative costs, we have $837,000 that we have available to award. This actually represents a 7.6% increase from last year's funding. We were a little bit surprised, but grateful to hear that this year's funding would be greater than last year. And it's actually the highest award that we've received since 2021. Each year we typically factor in program income into what we anticipate being available to award. Program income comes from a lot of different sources. It can be lease revenue from activities that we funded in the past, or it can be payoffs of loans that we've made in the past as well. I believe Walter Ear touched on one of our revenue sources earlier tonight where the ABC store on South Charlotte Street terminated their lease. That was a revenue generating source of income for this program, but that has since been terminated. So we don't have that source. So we are not anticipating any program income this year, but any program income that we receive, we will come back this time next year and use that to fund next year's activities. We recommend waiting until the next year to see how we use those funds. I want to talk a little bit about the 26 to 27 strategy. Back in November of last year, staff consulted with the Housing and Community Development Committee, and we established the following strategies for this year's funding cycle. The first was to encourage internal city departments to apply for funding. This would allow us to direct investments for LMI neighborhoods and residents. It allows us to lean into and build on our citywide expertise and federal grant administration, as well as potentially develop a year to year pipeline of capital projects that we can support with this funding. So kind of building some anticipatory strategy into this into this funding source. We also established award minimums to reduce the overall number of awards made to increase the impact of our investments and also increase staff capacity to effectively administer our grant agreements as well as allowing capacity for disaster recovery initiatives too. We set a cap on public service type activities at $40,000 and on non-public service type activities at $100,000. So we undertook an application and project selection process beginning back in December through February, where we open our applications, partner organizations, as well as city departments were noticed and allowed to apply for funding. In February to March, we reviewed those applications as well as develop strategies at the staff level based on the applicant pool. Anticipated staff capacity and our overall program strategy that I touched upon a moment ago on March 17th We presented our application pool to the HCD committee where we reviewed and provided input The committee did provide input on those applications We presented several scenarios that they could work with and find a little ground and then on April 7th We brought a final recommendation to the Housing and Community Development Committee for them to make a recommendation for City Council to approve That then kicked off our annual action plan process, which we are under right now. On May 4th, we published our draft action plan. That action plan is open for public comment right now. Tonight, we're having a public hearing and receiving comment tonight on the draft action plan and the funding recommendations. The public comment period will close on June 5th, and we'll be back at council on June 9th asking for your approval and authorization for us to submit that action plan to the federal government for their approval. These are our 2026 to 2027 CDBG proposed awards. The first, the largest is by far the Asheville Water Resources Department. This is the first time again that we've opened up applications to city departments and we received a sizable application and HCD has recommended an award to the Water Department of $500,000 to replace lead service lines. This is an activity that the city's water utility is required to undertake, which is to do an inventory of the full water utility system and document where there is or may be lead service lines on that homeowner connection between the main line at the street and where the water line connects to the house and replace it. I'm not a technical expert on that, but the concept here is to identify any actual lead pipes or potential lead pipes and replace them on that homeowner portion. So this is again focused on LMI households and their ability to likely not be able to pay for that themselves and being able to do that from the city's perspective.

We're required to identify the private property lead lines or we're required to replace them?

Yes, and.

And it's actually, this is partial, right? So the entire replacement cost is $800,000 for a few dozen more houses, if I recall, right?

For what they've identified so far, they're still in the inventory process. We anticipate it being a multi-million dollar need over the next 10 years. It's an EPA mandate that came down the last couple of years, and I believe we have until 2036 to fully implement the replacement mandate. So this is going to be a long-term need that we'll need to identify a funding source for. There has been some state funding that has come through the EPA to do this kind of work, and we've already done a multimillion-dollar project in Shiloh to do the inventory and replacement work. This is looking...

across the entire service area of the water system and and doing that mandate i don't know about others but i would love a briefing at the planning economic development environment committee on this entire conversation this is information i am learning and the scope of this i know that we talked a lot about lead in water with helene when we were flushing with lake water but i just would love to be more aware of what we know now, what we need to plan, and big policy questions coming up.

Remind me, wasn't the original ask 800, and our plan was to fund this for multiple years?

Yes, ma'am. Councilwoman Mosley, they requested the full available funding for this year. So they did not request above and beyond what we had available in this year's funding. But the need, we do anticipate that being in the $2, $3, $4 million range over the next five to six to 10 years to fully undertake the mandate from the EPA.

And also, can you repeat the date that HCD saw this, just in case you want to go back and look at that report? It was April.

March 17th was when we first presented. Okay. Was the HCD committee meeting. And then April 7th was the final recommendation.

Okay.

And we really made some moves on it because we saw it as a strong anti-displacement strategy. And I know that's kind of like written in the fine print down there. But that really was because it's unusual for a city to repair private property. Yeah.

And the EPA actually recommends CDBG as a good source for that because local dollars, local tax dollars, aren't usually a good fit for doing work like this on private property. CDBG, being a federal source, allows you to use those funds for that activity, and it will classify it as a home repair or home improvement type of activity. So we anticipate being able to fund 142 households today. Repairs with this initial funding, but it is going to need to be an ongoing conversation of whether this is the funding source long term that we look at, or where that funding might come from elsewise. As part of that conversation with HCD, the Housing and Community Development Committee recommended funding the Asheville Area Habitat for Humanities Home Repair Program to repair and alleviate emergency health, safety, and accessibility issues. We anticipate being able to support seven activities, seven households with that funding. We also recommended funding Help Made Incorporated for paying for the administration of their tenant-based rental assistance program. historically received tenant-based rental assistance money through the HOME program, which we'll talk about in just a moment. This helps that funding that we give them through the HOME program go entirely to support tenant rental assistance, and it covers their administrative costs. So we're happy to support them and being able to do that with six households. We also recommended funding physical legal services, $60,000 as part of their overall homelessness and eviction prevention program. It's part of their very large portfolio of activities that they do, so we're anticipating that to support 350 households. And then again, administrative costs, $209,000 makes it a budget neutral program. Overall, 505 households will be impacted by this year's program. So this honors the needs of the highest scoring applicants from the pool that we got. It aligns with HCD's strategy of using CDBG, as Councilwoman Turner mentioned, as a potential anti-displacement tool. It does reduce the number of overall awards that we make, but also improves staff capacity to effectively administer the program. And it supports partners that can effectively administer federally funded programs.

So, and I know the next slide you're going to move on to home funds. One of the things that would be helpful to me is to know what was left on the chopping block. I know at this last COC meeting we heard from Homeward Bound that they did not receive funding here that they historically have received. So making changes like that for organizations that are providing services in the community that are counting on recurring funding, even though obviously it's not guaranteed, is some context that would be helpful to understand. because it has such serious implications for these organizations and they don't have a lot of other options or none, well, private fundraising or something like that, or they can try some other organization. But other than Homeward Bound, which I, or maybe you can talk more about that, but are there folks that have been regular recipients that are not going to be this year?

Yes, certainly Homeward Bound is a historical partner that was not part of the funding strategy for this year. I'll also mention that Mountain BizWorks is a historical partner as well for the micro enterprise coaching support that they have. So they were not funded this year. OnTrack Financial, which does financial educational services, was not funded. Those are a few that I can think of off the top of my head, but I'll be happy to provide you with a full kind of picture of what the application pool looked like.

And Eblen might have been on there. And at the HCD meeting, we'd actually reallocated some of these because we recognized and brought PISCA back in for that reason because it was their evictions protection program, we realized, with raising rents and everything going on. that would be a harsh thing to remove. And they're all, it was all a difficult decision, but really what's fueling that change is this lead pair. Yeah, and I appreciate that.

It seems like such a great program. You know, again, really hard decisions. I mean, thinking about what we're losing in the community.

We did have it as a smaller number at first. We had it at 300,000 in the first iteration of this program.

There were several scenarios where this one I think was funded at like $600,000 and then $100,000 for help made and then we ranged up to splitting in many different ways.

So sometimes when the city decides to do something new that it's never done before, it struggles to do it. So I would hate for $500,000 to be allocated to this and it not happen and we miss an opportunity to fund a partner that can deliver the services they've historically provided. What is the plan to actually make this work happen?

So we've been in close conversation with the Water Resources Department. As I mentioned, they've already undertaken a similar activity in the Shiloh neighborhood to do the full inventory and start working with contractors to do lead pipe replacement in that neighborhood. And that's a federally sourced program. It is a pass-through through the state of North Carolina. But they're already familiar with the complex federal requirements that come with a CDBG-funded activity. So we're fairly confident that they're going to be able to move forward with that. One of the big things that brought me concern with this is the number of households required that would be served with this. It's really not that expensive, comparatively, to replace a lead service line. I think we're anticipating $5,000 or so each house.

Just to replace the service line. So this is where it leaves the city system and crosses into, so it wouldn't be replacing the pipes in the house if the house has lead. It's just the service line. And that's a meaningful thing, we think, to do without changing out the lines in the house.

It's meaningful and it's the EPA mandate to do that. There's not a mandate from the EPA to do the work inside the house. You cross different environmental thresholds when you enter into a person's walls or a homeowner's walls to do that kind of work. Obviously, I think there's certainly an opportunity to look at what kind of programs are out there. And HUD does have lead water programs that we can look at, too.

Because I guess if lead pipes were being used at the installation of the yard line, they were likely in the same era that they could be used inside the house it's not the line it's the soldering of the joints right it's that that's what that's usually the lead leaching um okay we're just trying to make sure this isn't for nothing i have a question if you can remind me um

That's a good question. The home repair with Asheville Habitat for Humanity, are these seven households meant to be part of the Haleen home repairs, or is this otherwise in need of home repair?

That's a great question, Councilwoman Roney. It is either or. So they can use this funding to help replace, not replace, to help repair Helene-affected homes or non-Helene-affected homes. It's really actually looking more at homes that have long-term deferred maintenance issues, accessibility issues, safety issues that existed before Helene. But we're not placing any requirement or restriction on this program that says you must only address deferred maintenance or you have to look at Helene-repaired homes. We want them to address the needs that they identify. We'll lean on them to do that identification.

Sounds good. Thank you.

Appreciate y'all's questions, thank you. And we'll be sure to follow up with kind of the picture of what may have been left on the table with this year's funding. With that, I'll move into the 26 to 2027 home funding. Just a reminder that the home program, which is a separate Department of Housing and Urban Development program that we administer, is steered by the Asheville Regional Housing Consortium or the ARHC or the Home Consortium. This is a consortium that's made of member governments that represent municipalities within Madison, Buncombe, Henderson, and Transylvania counties. And we, the City of Asheville, serve as the participating jurisdiction or the lead entity for the consortium. So Councilwoman Turner acts as our chair for the consortium, and that body acts as the recommending body for how we use the funding that we get each year. And they voted unanimously on June 14th that we undertake affordable rental construction as the sole activity type for this year. We came to Council back in March asking you to authorize us to submit an amendment to our five-year consolidated plan to undertake that activity type. Thanks for your authorization and approval. We also submitted that to HUD and they approved that on March 24th so that we are now clear to undertake that activity type in the 26 to 2027 action plan. So our action plan for this year will allocate all of the home funds that we have available for affordable rental construction. What that typically looks like is providing gap financing for new construction or the substantial rehabilitation of rental housing that is affordable to households at 60% AMI or less. The projects are five units or more, so you're thinking multifamily. And the home funding typically represents 10% to 20% of the overall construction project's capital stack. So if we put $1 million into a project, we typically expect that that project will be overall $10 million to $20 million total development cost. The applications for the home rental construction funding will be held this fall to align with the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency's tax credit cycle. We'll review applications along with the consortium, the ARHC, and then we'll make They will make an award recommendation and we'll be back to City Council in early spring, late winter next year to review those recommendations and y'all will authorize the awards for the funding cycle next spring. That gets us in line for, I think, if y'all remember the CDBG-DR multifamily conversation where we were trying to get those applications and authorizations to move forward done. this month so that those projects could get their NCHFA's applications done. This is where we'll be aligning this program this coming year to get ahead of that tax credit cycle too. The FY26-27 allocation for home funding is $1,075,138. Again, we're not anticipating any program income. Same strategy as CDBG, where we're gonna look at what we do actually get. We've already allocated all the program income we received this year into activities, so we don't have anything rolling forward in program income this year. So we'll come back this time next year and say, we did receive this much money, so we do have this much to actually be able to allocate. We do set aside some money for community housing development organizations, CHOTOs, for their operating reserve, and we set aside 10% of the allocation for our administrative costs. That helps make this a fairly budget-neutral program, and that leaves $915,029 for CHOTOs. rental construction projects. And one thing I will note is that this slide needs to be updated. We do have about $400,000 of funding that we will roll forward from prior years. So when this actually comes before you for a vote, this will be updated to actually reflect about $1.5 million available for funding rather than this $1 million. So we're moving that forward from prior years just to reflect that. Just want to note that that's updated.

Did we have trouble spending it?

We didn't have trouble spending it. When we made awards from this past year's grant, we did not award the full amount that we had available. We had some of our programs, like down payment assistance, we had an under application Some programs we did not award the full amount because some applicants didn't score as high as we would have liked for our risk tolerance to be able to make awards. So we withheld some funding from this past year's allocation, and we're now rolling that forward into this year's funding. So this slide does not indicate that, but we will, in the actual resolution for us to submit our action plan, it will include those prior year's funding to move forward. So that's the CDBG in-home program, our action plan approval process. Again, we're in our public comment period right now in alignment with our citizen participation plan. It will close on June 5th. We have a notice in the Citizen Times that the comment period is open. We have that published on our community development web page as well as the draft action plan. And we've sent out an email to all of our subscribers to the community development email blast. Here we are, May 26th, public hearing, and then June 9th, we'll be asking y'all to approve and authorize submission of the annual action plan, and then we'll submit that to HUD for their review and approval, and once that's done, we'll be able to move forward with the grant allocations. So again, CDBG and HOME, a little over a million dollars each that we will receive next year, and we are appreciative of Council and HCD's input in this process, as well as our community's input as well. Any other questions from Council?

No, thank you.

Thank you all.

Thank you, James.

Okay, I will open the public hearing, and then I will close the public hearing. We do not vote on this tonight, as was mentioned. Okay, council, that concludes our printed agenda. And so now we're gonna do general public comment. Folks who are signed up under general public comment, you'll have three minutes to speak on each item. I'm sorry, you'll have three minutes to speak for each speaker. The first person signed up to speak is Simon Dwight.

Hello, hi everybody. I'm Simon Dwight. I'm the CEO of Homeward Bound. Perhaps I should have signed up under the previous area, so apologies for that. But more broadly, I just wanted to highlight again something that you've highlighted rightly this evening, the financial challenges facing not just Homeward Bound, but all homeless services in Asheville. As you know, homelessness has increased 9% in Buncombe County relating to the last point in time count. But over the next few months, and certainly over this year, we will see a reduce in funding for services supporting homeless people. Specifically, actually, I did want to highlight the funding in rapid rehousing decreasing and permanent supportive housing decreasing. As it stands, city funding for rapid rehousing, as you've just heard, for rapid rehousing for civilians not experiencing domestic violence will end. There will be no funding for that anymore. And we've unsuccessfully applied to continue the funding so that we can continue rapid rehousing. That reduction is in addition to the reduction we face through HUD-driven reduction in permanent supportive housing. I really just wanted to come tonight to ask you as elected members to continue to do everything you can to protect our homeless services and advocate for funding wherever you can. as I do suspect that if our funding continues to decrease, the problem will increase. We're not cutting at fancy services at the moment, we're cutting at bone. Rapid rehousing is a core and fundamental service that will be very hard for us to continue to deliver without funding. I am the CEO of Homeward Bound, so obviously I have a heart for us and us as an organisation, but I am more concerned about the rising numbers of homelessness and the amount of money that's becoming available to provide support for them. I don't mind so much who delivers the service, but service must be delivered. I want to thank you all for your service. I'm happy to talk about that more individually or collectively, and I'll also keep working with the COC, but thanks for what you do and for my time.

Thank you. Nina Tovush.

Good evening council members and city staff. A couple of weeks ago we had a long and challenging meeting. At the end of the session around the RTIC as folks were groaning and complaining from the audience about the end of comment there was a vote that happened and it happened really quickly and most of the the majority of the council members didn't choose to make any comment about their choice of why they voted the way that they did. And I think that surprised a lot of folks because from their perspective, it was a contentious question and the way that played out, it seemed like council didn't think it was all that contentious. And I'd like to suggest that one reason for this is that the public really hasn't had as much of a window into your deliberations around these seemingly high stake matters as they would like. We don't see, as you do, the staff work in progress documentation and staff advice as it's being formulated. As council members, that's important for you to have in front of you in order to make decisions. It would be so helpful to us if we also had access to see how these policies and decisions are being formulated. And I understand that one of the reasons that private briefings or check-ins are favored is that council members prefer not to be seen asking perhaps awkward questions or feeling like they need to get information that they didn't have otherwise. But this is a human thing when you're learning about new and complicated topics. And the public, too, has these kinds of questions. It's a humanizing thing to see council members struggling with these difficult topics. And of course, we voted for you to do this work. And it would be lovely for us to have the opportunity to assess how you're doing this work, to see you in action as you're wrestling with these complicated topics. One other valuable opportunity were we to have a clearer view of your work in progress is the public would benefit by learning more than it is presented in the final polished reports and summaries. We could learn alongside you. Sometimes the devil is in the details, but sometimes also angels dwell among the minutiae. And it might be that a citizen would spot something that you wouldn't and could solve a problem.

Thank you.

Please consider opening these briefings. Thank you for your consideration. Thomas Belmore.

Hello again, and thank y'all. Just for a point of clarification for an earlier item, the living wage pledge is the $20 an hour plus a commitment to a 3% increase on top of another increase for inflation. So it's not that there's a higher living wage certification and a lower baby certification. It's a commitment to work there from the 20% with two additional increases. So I just thought that was important for y'all's conversations. I CAME TODAY TO TALK ABOUT PROCESS AND HOW I GUESS LIKE I FELT SAD AND AFFECTED BY CLOSING COMMENT AT THE END OF LAST MEETING DURING THAT CONTENTIOUS ITEM AND LIKE I WANT TO APOLOGIZE FOR US BEING OUT OF ORDER, FOR THE BODY BEING OUT OF ORDER, BUT THAT I HOPE THAT YOU WOULD WAIT UNTIL WE'RE BACK IN ORDER, WHICH DIDN'T TAKE TOO LONG BEFORE VOTING AND ALSO THERE WAS A DISCUSSION ITEM THAT WAS STILL PENDING. I don't want to give too much and it doesn't seem helpful. And on reflecting sitting there, I thought that like knowing that we can, we all have, we all can break process. I just wanted to maybe be a bit of a hypocrite and say just like I didn't, every now and time during my comment, maybe it could be more concise. And I just like recommendation of an idea because I know you were looking for ideas. is capping or reducing the COLA percent at the top of your pay scale in order to fund to raise base pay for the bond percent and to correct issues like the salary inversions that you're dealing with, because I do know that that's a real problem. Thank you all.

Thank you.

Sorry. Okay, here we go. Paige Husiak.

Sometimes in leadership, it is difficult to balance competing interests. I see this in discussions around housing in our community all the time. I see how city council members are able to recognize the importance of residents of these communities, welcome their input, and respond meaningfully to their concerns. Other times I see our city council members make deals in closed door meetings, let constituents talk to a brick wall for the bare minimum amount of time legally mandated, or less in the case of the so-called business improvement district until Sunshine Labs called them out on it, then railroad through whatever crooked policy they had already made up their minds about with as little public input as they can get away with. It's funny, but these times are pretty much always when wealthy people or cops want something and the people of Asheville broadly oppose it. I can see in the former case how you are actually capable of being thoughtful leaders, but when push comes to shove, you demonstrate your utter lack of integrity and contempt for your constituents, rolling your eyes at your well-informed constituents, pointing out vulnerabilities in the surveillance systems you decide to pay for with our tax money, despite overwhelming public opposition. Two weeks ago, this room was overflowing with people who waited nearly seven hours in the hopes of being heard by their representatives in the measly 60 minutes afforded to the public, and they were rightfully in an uproar when the public comment period was not extended out of respect for their time. I am so glad that this is the time that one city council member chose to perfectly reflect the attitude and actions of the city council and scold us with, and I'm not going to argue, deliberate as though the disgruntled citizens were naughty school children whose bedtimes can't be negotiated. Just because you can set the rules so that you can barely have to pretend to listen to your constituents doesn't make it right. When people demand to be heard by their supposed representatives and then they are treated with condescension and with disrespect, it is a sad state of affairs. It is a shame that the thoughtful, intelligent, and caring people I've come to know and love in Asheville are represented by people who sell them out consistently.

Thank you.

We don't have anyone else signed up to speak under general public.