City Council - Regular Meeting

All right. Good morning everyone. My name is Esther Mannheimr. I'm mayor of the city of Asheville and I'd like to welcome you to the March 5th, 2026 agenda briefing work session. All council members and staff are participating virtually. This meeting is intended for discussion purposes only. No formal action or votes will be taken. In addition, no public comment is taken during this meeting. The meeting will be streamed live on the city's YouTube channel, accessible through the YouTube icon on the city's website, or via the live stream. You also have the option to listen to the meeting live via phone by calling 855-9252801 and entering meeting code 3181. Assistant City Manager Ben Woody is out of town today and unable to join us, as well as Council Member Bo Hess, who is attending a training at the North Carolina School of Government, so he also will not be able to join us. Council and staff, when I call your name, please say a quick hello. City Manager DK Wesley,

good morning. Vice Mayor Antinet Mosley, good morning. Council member Kim Rooney. Wave. Just wave your hand so we know. Can you hear us? I guess seems to be muted. Oh, there you go. There you go. Um, Council Member Sage Turner. Good morning y'all. Council member Maggie Olman. Hey.

Council member Chenica Smith. Good morning. Assistant City Manager Jade Dundis. Good morning. City Attorney Brad Brandham. Good morning everyone. City Clerk Maggie Berles. Good morning. And now I'm going to turn it over, thank you all, to our city manager, DK Wesley.

Thank you, Mayor Manheimr. And uh good morning again, everybody. Uh on today, we are going to preview in this agenda briefing our March 10th uh regular meeting agenda. Uh Assistant City Manager Jay Dundis is going to facilitate us through that process. Uh, our meeting will be on Tuesday at 3 p.m. in person in council chambers here in city hall. Uh, please join us. He'll also be reviewing two council committees, the housing and community development meeting, which is March 17th at 10:00 a.m. as well as planning, economic development, and environment meeting, which will also be on March 17th at 100 p.m. Uh, we'll take a look at our 8-week agenda. as well. We don't have any other items or updates for this morning. I do also want to remind everyone that on Tuesday, March 10th, we will also be having a budget work session at 3 p.m. uh which will also be in person in city hall at in council chambers. Uh I'll turn it over to Jay Dundis to take us on.

Uh thank you, Miss Wesley. Uh again, Jade Dundis, assistant city manager. Uh good morning, mayor, vice mayor, and members of council. I will jump into the agenda review. Um as mentioned, we'll start with our um Tuesday's regular agenda meeting that will that day will begin with a budget work session at 3:00 on March 10th, Tuesday, March 10th in council chambers. Um at the conclusion of that meeting at 5:00, we will start the formal uh the regular uh council meeting at 5:00. Um uh first item on that agenda is proclamation and it was Red Cross month. Um, and as usual, I will go through and and pick out items on the on the consent agenda that I feel are are worthy of note and highlight, but feel free to stop me uh and we can cover anything on the agenda in more more depth if needed. Uh, the first item I'll highlight is a item D. This is an extension an amendment with Marathon Health to extend uh the current contract to June 30th. This is to provide opportunity for us to uh coordinate the uh the the extension or contract for RFP for new for the additional services beyond this. It also helps us to align with the cal the fiscal year. Um so it's a important part of the employee say health and health and wellness program. Um item E is a contract amendment uh with GHD engineering for work at the water plant. Uh just always nice to highlight the the work that's going on continued work at the water plants to ensure that those those plants are in

good working order. Um items G is uh is a a grant for um Helen damage uh in in uh associated with our our infrastructure. This one specifically is being uh accepted for the uh Aelia Park. This is a budget amendment for Aelia Park recovery project. the council has has seen and authorized this project or in this grant uh in the past. Item H also um is a is a budget amendment. So this is again an item that has been in front of council before to apply for this this loan. This is a loan for uh water resilience improvements. Um is specific to North Northark uh treatment plant. was a $10 million loan from NC Department of Environmental Quality. Um, and it's a there is some forgivable forgivable aspect to this um to this loan, but this just formalizes that agreement or amends the budget so we can start having access to the funds. Um, item I is a uh is a resolution apply for Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance Fiscal. Essentially a grant for uh local law enforcement crime gun intelligence center um integrated initiative. And I'm gonna have Jack interim chief Jackie Steppp is here and I'm gonna ask her actually to to help explain this grant a little bit more. So Jackie, could you provide some additional information?

Sure, absolutely. Hey everybody. Um, so what this grant will do is it will really allow us uh to really uh advance our forensics um area specifically related to our anti- gun crime initiative. It allows us to advance our ballistics processing, which means uh shell casings from seized guns and then tying them to crime scenes. It reduces our lead times and expands our ability uh to send cold case evidence to the lab. Um and it really changes our ability from producing a presumptive test inhouse uh to providing a court assembled piece of evidence. Currently, we we process uh in-house fingerprints and DNA to a degree. Uh but we still have to go through APHUS, which is our automated uh fingerprint uh identification system. This would allow us to do it uh 247 uh with no lead time. Uh it improves our ability to detect and document latent fingerprints uh which are invisible to the human eye. Uh it would allow us to purchase a fingerprint scanner uh which it obviously enables us to identify individuals in real time and it produces major advancement at our in-house uh gunshot residue detection. Currently what that looks like is we have to take uh complete a kit send it to the lab. Uh sometimes we have to wait for those results for months. Uh this would allow us to do it in seconds. So really, it's just a a major advancement in our gun technology. It also is a another major advancement in our ability to detect bodily fluids on persons and pieces of evidence. Um, and then um and allow us to get a fusing uh chamber uh to better

uh do fingerprints inhouse instead of sending them off. So, just really looking at it as an opportunity to advance uh all of our uh forensics technology specifically around uh our gun crime. Council member, thank you, Chief Steppp. Um explaining how this could expedite processes is very helpful. Um, usually, um, a system like this is paired with other tools like Shot Spotter. Is that our current trajectory?

Uh, you I don't know if you recall, uh, Councilwoman Ronnie, but we did explore Shot Spotter a while back, probably two years ago. Um, number one, it's just a really expensive system. uh but the research we did in comparison to other agencies was that it was just not that reliable yet. Um I think the technology needed to advance and it may be something we can explore again. Uh definitely not opposed to that but when we explored it a couple of years ago it was far too expensive and then uh the reports that we had from other agencies were you know a a slamming door and other things like that would trigger it. Uh so happy to look into that again if that's something

I don't I don't think that we should I'm just glad to hear that we're not because um exactly is the reason you mentioned um usually folks or cities would make this step first and then shot spotter second but Charlotte has canceled their shot spotter Chicago Atlanta for a lot of the reasons you've already stated so I wanted to make sure that we weren't headed in that direction because I don't think it's a good investment. Yeah. No not at this time.

Thank you. All right. Thank you, chief. Um, moving on. Item the last item I'll cover on the consent agenda is item J. This is a uh application authorizing the city manager to move forward with an application to the NC Department of Commerce Small Business Infrastructure Grant. Uh, this is will be directed at uh the a sewer line extension in Inca Commerce Park. um that has the the area had sustained damage uh during the the the tropical storm Helen. And this is the grant that is intended to help with infrastructure investments uh for damage that was caused by the storm. Okay. Well, that concludes the consent agenda. Um presentations and reports. There's one and this is the uh recovery progress update. Bridget Herring will present that and tell you great great news about our our recovery. It's continues to move forward. So, um public hearings, we have two um 230 Sardis Road. These are both conditional zoning. Uh 230 Sardis Road from industrial district to residential expansion. Um and then um item B is uh 383 North Louisiana Avenue from office district to office district. And um Chris Collins is available to answer any questions that you might have on either one of these items.

Okay, hearing none. Um could we just hear a little bit more about them? Yes, I see Sage raised her hand, but is it maybe we just hear a little bit more about Yeah. Good morning everyone. I'll start with the Sardis Road property. Um, I can't hear Chris. Am I the only one? I can hear him. Good. Okay. No.

Yeah, it might be you, Mayor. Are other people hearing him? I hear him. I can hear. Okay. Yes. All right. I'll talk one more time. See if it No. Okay. You might you might pause just a minute so the mayor jump back. Bless you, Maggie. Okay. Mayor, are you there? I'm here. I can hear you. All right. Can you hear me?

Peggy either. So, I thought it was me, but All right. I can hear you, Chris. Yes.

All right. I will reset now that we got that working. Um, so we'll start with the conditions on your request for 230 Sardis Road. Um, as Jade said, this is going from industrial to residential expansion. It is a conditional zoning because the industrial district was not included in those transit supportive corridors. Um, and also because it does not contain any affordability commitment. Right. So, um, this is a 180 unit multif family building uh, primarily in one building. It is adjacent to the existing Greymont apartments which part of which one half of essentially is in the city and one half of is in the county. Um so this is kind of in a multif family site already. Um recommendation for approval was unanimous from the planning and zoning commission. I'll stop. Any questions or further detail on that one?

Is that is it the same developer bill or another that did that the other piece different developer? Okay. Just curious. Yeah. I believe it's a different developer. Yeah.

Chris, one of the things I'm going to be asking, and I don't know if we can really ascertain it, it might just be a range, but I'm curious when we review these big projects, um, if we could speculate about how much future property tax revenue they may generate. I know um the other project is a LITC project so it has a reduced valuation but it still creates some property tax and just in light of this budget and the constraints and you know having so many housing projects not quite getting out of the ground I think it might be an interesting component to add speculative but if you could that would be helpful we can we can take that back and take a look at ways to do that definitely thank you for that input All right. So, I'm going to take that as nothing else on Sardis and move to Louisiana. Um, so at 383 North Louisiana, this property is a request to conditionally reszone from office one to office one conditional zone. And the the big thing I want to make sure everybody understands this would qualify as it is a 100% affordable unit quantity commitment for the incentive to be reviewed as a level two. However, the office district office one district has a 4,000 square foot building footprint limitation that the developer cannot fit within. Um so that's why you're seeing this as a conditional zoning. Uh this was uh we're looking at where my unit count go here. I believe it's I lost it but I believe it's 89 units. Yes. And um was also approved when I the unanimous vote by the planning and studying commission. Um the affordability commitment is 80% AMI for

100% of the units. um answer any questions you'll have about it. Did I also hear that the um Poter Emma community was supporting the project? Yes, we have not had any um well, yeah, we have had support. I believe that Potter Emma Andrea Golden actually spoke in favor of the project of the planning and sighting commission meeting. Okay. What about the Sardis Road one? Was there any neighborhood input or neighborhood meetings, push back, anything? I didn't hear much in my email. I am not aware of any um back or complaints on this one that have come to staff. Thank you. Okay.

Um on the Sardis Road one, I remember something funny about the the the previous development where it was partially in the county or partially in the city. there was something to do with the access and fire trucks and a whole, you know, building code kind of a thing. Are there any issues like that regarding the Sardis Road one? Um, or we we're all good there.

We're we're all good there on this one. This one is entirely contained within the city. Um, I remember that a little bit too. That was in my early years with the city, but um this one we haven't encountered any jurisdictional issues. So, All right. Thank you, Chris. Any other questions? Council hearing none. Um that will that concludes the public hearing section of the agenda. And then in unfinished business, um we have an item to uh a resolution to amend the city's 25 uh 2025 through 2029 consolidated plan. There was a a p this was on council agenda, I think, for public hearing uh last last meeting. Um and so this just formalizes that action. Um, no other. And then that would conclude the regular agenda for next Tuesday's meeting. Any questions before we move on? Okay. Um, next on our agenda is our council committees starting with uh the housing and community development meeting. Um we have two items on here and the first is the CDBGDR multi-family housing program update. Um and then the uh second item is CDBG um program update and 2026 funding discussion. Nikki Reid here is here today to answer any questions you may have on either of these topics.

And just regarding both of these items, they're both structured as updates. Um, no vote will be required. It's really just to hopefully prep us for the April HCD meeting where action will be taken. So, just info sessions to really prime us for those votes in April.

Thank you, Nikki. Um, if there's no questions on that, we can move to uh the PED meeting. Um and that will be on March 17th. There are the first two items on this are transit related. Um Ashley her is uh is with us today to to go into detail. The first those two items is uh Asheville writes transit comprehensive operations analysis update. This is information sharing as well. Um and but it just really is going to kind of give an update on where we are with the process and what the timeline looking forward is. Um and then also uh Asheville rides transit contract operations and maintenance. Um that's this is another update on the uh the progress of moving forward through getting a new contract in place for this service. So again, Ashley's here to answer any questions you might have on either of these topics. Okay. Hearing none. Um Oh, yeah. Council woman.

Um it comes to mind that because this came up in our budget 3x3, the community who's been eagerly awaiting transit updates may be confused that we're not having a deeper conversation here. So, um, staff has also submitted, um, some information to questions that I've compiled from a variety of neighborhood and advocacy groups. Um, could we hit some high notes on um, what's going to be coming to peed around the transit management contract? Do we still have four applicants? Are we on track to sign a new contract in March? because some information seems to be leaking or scattering around and what does the process look like are we using a like a a group to advise us on this process? So we are still planning to bring the contract council on March 24th. And so this meeting, the petty meeting on the 17th is obviously a prelude to the agenda briefing that will be on the 19th in advance of the council meeting on the 24th. And what we're planning to talk through at the petty committee meeting is the process we've gone through. We're still in negotiations at this stage. So there's only so much I can say in this forum until we get out of that negotiation stage and have the contract a little bit more fleshed out. But by the time the coun the committee meeting rolls around on the 17th, we will be able to share more of that detail, the process we've gone through, um the the purchasing uh processes that we applied, who all was involved in that review, and sort of where we're landing in terms of the selected vendor and the cost associated with that.

Thank you so much for that general update. As we look forward, I think one of the major concerns I'm hearing right now is that it it appears or people's experience riding the bus um is that our management company has gotten really comfortable with cancelling routes. So, I think that's something that we have to wrestle with um as providing this public service is the public perception of what accountability looks like and what our metrics are in the new contract um for more accountability for that. We will touch on that during the committee meeting and that overview of the new contract. Some of that is built into the new contract. So that's in response to the concerns that have been raised along those lines.

Thank you, Ashley. Of course. Uh thank you Ashley. Any other questions for Ashley before we go on?

Okay. Um the uh last item or the item number four on that PD meeting is C CDBGDR small business support program update. Uh again if there is any questions on that um Nikki's could here to answer those. Okay hearing none that concludes our review of the council committee's agendas. and we'll move on to the 8week look ahead. Um so we just covered the March 10th um council meeting, no meeting on March 17th. On March 24th, we have a few items listed. Um there is a uh tenatively we're looking to have a resolution for a believe it's a part of grant for increasing the the amount of funding we have for the improvements to the Walton Street uh park which that activity is going on. Walter updated on gave it a high level update on that activity last last council meeting and the quarterly update. um their audit contract amendment on new business. That's where we'll be talking about um fees, fees and charges. Uh the ordinance for adoption there. Um, and then also that's the the information that we've already that we've a topic we've talked about before, the resolution to hold uh do the land hold for the arts and entertainment facility here um near city hall that uh will be come to council for approval. No meeting on March 31st or April 7th. Um looking ahead to

um the April 14th, we have a budget work session that day at 3:00. On the consent agenda, we have a ordinance of tenatively all these are tenative ordinance for graffiti definition. This is a revision uh that we were asked to bring for in front of council. We are also going to planning on talking about this in the public safety committee uh in uh March as well prior to the getting this in front of council. Um AP APD has got a couple of contract um resolutions on there. Um actually three um or two two looks like two contracts and then a community project funding award. So a grant um and a budget amendment accepting that those funds. Then on the uh that meeting there will also be a state of the airport updates as part of the reports and presentations. So with that um that concludes the agenda review. Um open for any questions and any comments council might have. very thorough and quick today. Super quick. Um I I unless there's anything else. Does anybody have anything else? Manager Wesley, anything else?

Nothing from staff. Um I I thanks I did I wanted to give a Costco update everybody. Um the planning staff did a great job and met with um the DOT and the seller of the property to review the list of items that Costco provided as to what were their sort of barriers um to completing this project. and I I was able to meet with them and they we have a uh worked to assemble responses to all of Costco's items. Um and the staff the planning staff provided their own letter which I haven't read yet but I'm sure it's good. Um and I have provided a letter uh as well that um that we put that we sent over today. Um, and the DOT is going to provide uh their information as well as the seller to try to ask Costco to come back to the table and um so so everyone just know that we have some good indicators that they they're considering that uh but you know obviously nothing's done until it's done. So so hopefully we'll see some progress there.

Thank you mayor for working so hard on that. Yeah, you have questions. Any questions or comments?

I have a question. Um, talking with folks who were at the technical review committee, um, there were some red flags around what caused the Amazon distribution site to fail there and they seem to be similar around the storm water issues and the burming around the property. Um, is that included in the list of concerns? because it sounded very expensive to fix and that would explain why two properties have now or two projects have failed.

So yes, uh there are apparently some challenges with that site for whoever is going to develop it that are really not city issues, they're really just site development issues. So, for example, one of the items that Costco flagged is that they have to bring in a tremendous amount of fill dirt to build up the site where the store would be located and the parking lot would be located. They also have to build a fairly expensive retaining wall uh on the site. Again, it's a site, you know, site issue. Um, so those are some items that we don't have control over, but that they can kind of address with the seller if the seller wishes to engage in, you know, obviously knocking some dollars off the price tag, for example. Um, where we are going to u be able to assist is in supporting the grant application for a sewer connection. Uh, that site does not serve by sewer yet. So, um, the state has some funding available, but the applicant for that funding has to either be the city or the county. And so, uh, we we can support that application, and staff is already working on that, uh, to to make sure that's about an $850,000 price tag. The other issue is that um Costco knows that they will have to make some improvements to the exterior transportation infrastructure on Sand Hill and Smokeoky Park, but down by the exit 44 um where Highway 40 intersects with Smokeoky Park, there are planned but not yet funded additional improvements to help traffic flow off of exit 44 and onto Smoky Park Highway. you, as you all know, they're already doing a bunch of work out there, but there's some pieces that are not funded yet that would improve that intersection even more to ensure that traffic doesn't back up on I40, which of course is very dangerous. Um, and so I' I've had a chance to talk

with state legislators about funding opportunities for, you know, funding the rest of the improvements that are planned for that intersection that will help traffic move, which supports Costco, but also supports the other uh things that are planned along that highway corridor along Smokeoky Park like the Aldi and potentially Harris ter. There's also a medical park and we've already approved um some housing. So, so a lot of lot of growth in that area and really just a need to continue to prove the transportation infrastructure. Thank you. Thanks.

All right, that's it for the Costco update. All right, everyone. H have a good day. Thanks everyone.