City Council - Regular Meeting

Good morning. I'm Antinet Mosley, the vice mayor of the city of Asheville, and I'd like to welcome you to the March 19th, 2026 agenda briefing work session. All council members and staff are participating virtually. This meeting is intended for discussion purposes only. No formal actions or votes will be taken. In addition, no public comment is taken during this meeting. The live meeting will be streamed on the city's YouTube channel, accessible through the YouTube YouTube icon on the city website, or via the live stream. You will also have the option to listen to the meeting live via phone by calling 855-925-2801 and entering meeting code 4898. Mayor Mannheimr is traveling and unable to attend this meeting. Council and staff, when I call your name, please say a quick hello. City Manager DK Wesley,

good morning. Council member Kim Ro, good morning. Council member Sage Turner. Good morning. Council member Maggie Olman. Hey everybody. Council member Shenica Smith. Good morning. Council member Bo Hess. Good morning. Assistant City Manager Ben Woody, good morning. Assistant City Manager Dave Dundis. Good morning. City Attorney Brad Brandom. Good morning. And city clerk Maggie Berles. Good morning. I'll now turn it over to city manager Wesley DK.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Uh good morning everyone. Today we are at our agenda uh review briefing. Uh, as vice mayor mentioned, there will be no actions taken today. Uh, what we'll be doing is reviewing our agenda for Tuesday, uh, March 24th. Our meeting will be held in council chambers here at city hall, uh, to begin at 5:00 pm. In advance of that meeting, we'll have a uh, city council budget work session. Uh that meeting will also be held uh in council chambers at city hall and will begin at 2 pm. Uh on today, Assistant City Manager Ben Woody will be facilitating this briefing. I'll turn it over to him.

Thank you, uh manager Wesley, and good morning, Vice Mayor, members of council. Um we've got a pretty brief agenda, but we've got a lot of content on it. So, I'm going to move through it fairly quickly, and just please stop me if you have questions. Um, as manager Wesley just mentioned, you'll start your day on Tuesday with a budget work session. Among other things, part of the focus of that work session will be expenditures for the next budget year. We'll move into our formal meeting. After that, you have three proclamations. We've got a busy meeting for proclamations. Um, on your Tuesday meeting, procurement month, social work month, and Arbor Day in the River Arts District. Moving into the consent agenda and we've got only three items on this consent. So, one of the smaller ones I think I've seen, but uh we'll start with item B, which is a continuation of embedded behavioral health services. This is typically designed for first responders and their families. So, as you would expect, the services are primarily used by staff and APD and AFD. However, we have other instances where the services are utilized by other departments. So again, we're happy to continue that service for our employees. Item C authorizes the city manager to apply for a part of grant. Part of grants are made available from the state of North Carolina. They're very, very common, oftentimes applied for and received by local parks and recreation departments. And what this grant does in particular, it will support uh continuing improvements at the Walton Street Park. Uh the grant will help fund we understand or we think about three recreational improve or amenities which will draw from the 2025 Walton Street Park engagement summary. So again, excited to apply for that grant. And then finally, item D is a contract amendment in the amount of $13,000. And

what this does um it adds additional capabilities and functionality to Invisio which is a software that we use for our strategic planning and project management. Any questions on the consent items? Okay, we keep moving. Uh we'll have at uh your meeting we'll have a manager report and we'll have an update from Utah Rail or I'll stop there a second. Go ahead, Council Member Hess. I'm glad that we are including the embedded services and renewing that contract. Is there a way to um have those clinicians get a pay raise? I was a little bit uh dismayed at the pay band that they are in for all the hard work that they do.

That is going to be something council we're going to have to follow up on. Unless anyone else on the call is able to answer that, I'm going to guess that's probably a follow-up item, but I'll pause there.

Council member Hes, if I can chime in. Um, that I I don't have all the details, but uh typically those are service contracts that we procure, which means that uh the the price proposed actually came from the service provider um and not one that the city offered them initially. So this is something that only extends for the duration of the contract. Uh certainly these come up just like all of our contracts every few years for reconsideration by the council. But uh with service contracts um oftent times we are getting the prices directly from the provider instead of us proposing a price.

Thank you.

Thank you Brad. Okay. Um I'm going to move to uh manager report again. Uh we have Detail Rail, our parks and recreation director and who is also the layison to our infrastructure recovery board. He is planning to to review, excuse me, the engagement and feedback received from the infrastructure recovery board on our parks recovery project. So that should be a good update on the status of those projects and what we're hearing from your appointed recovery board. No public hearings on this meeting. U we do have three new business items. The first is item A, which you did discuss previously at your March 10th work session. And this is the ordinance adopting the proposed FY27 fees and charges. And as council is aware, we typically adopt those earlier in the budget year and then move into the process of adopting our overall budget. Item new business item B is the adoption of a resolution creating a landhold for an arts and entertainment facility and mixeduse development at the property commonly known as Parkside. and this is adjacent to city hall um off of uh Eagle Street. Uh the commitment included in this resolution is for a period of up to two years and in that two-year period it would allow for additional community engagement as well as necessary pre-development work on this parcel of land. and and those engagement efforts and pre-development work uh would need to be in place and happen prior to making any final decisions for the redevelopment of the property. I'll note that this item is scheduled to be discussed at the economic recovery board today. So, we'll have that feedback when we come back to you on Tuesday of next week.

And finally, item C authorizes the city manager to execute a 4-year contract with RATP Dev in the amount of 55 $54 million for the operation and maintenance of our transit system. As is typically the case, the contract also allows for two two-year options. So, we could have a total of up to eight years of contracted service if the city moved forward with the options. Um, peed heard a presentation on this item at their meeting earlier this week. However, no recommendation was made to full counsel due to the lack of a seconded motion. And I will stop there and council member Turner.

Um, yes. Thank you, Ben. Um, just real quick, I'm wondering, you know, I kind of have this same question with the fees and charges, but we've pretty much processed through it. But if we were to make this decision to stay, it would be essentially saying we're committing to a tax increase to cover the new $800,000 in cost. And I imagine the public thinks it's still 3 million, so it's really 800,000 now. But I'm wondering what happens if we decide not to fund the 800. Do we have any scenarios of what the impact would be to transit? And I don't know if any other council members have this concern, so I don't want to send us down a rabbit hole, but do we know any impacts if we chose not to fund it?

I think Jessica Morris is on here, but I would um presume that not funding this contract would require staff to go back because what it what we're funding in this contract is the same level of service. Um, so it will require staff to have some additional conversations from a contract perspective uh with the successful bidder um which will be challenging. So anything less than the amount that we have here will likely impact the service level in our transit system. And so this is really just

if this is really Thank you for that. If this is really just like our service contract, are there other areas in the budget we can cut to make up for the 800? And I know this is a really hard question. And I'm just and I don't expect an answer today, but I do I am curious, you know, if we looked at what happens if we didn't, you know, and the same thing with the fees. Like we just kind of went through it and said this is what it'll be, but never really did grasp what would happen if we said I'm only comfortable with $50 a year in increases, you know, and against all the tax increases, I'm just weighing it very heavily. So just sharing a little bit of where I'm at. Additional information would help. Thanks for sharing. Council member Ronnie.

Yeah, I know that not everyone had the opportunity to watch the planning and economic development committee update, but it is for those who are watching today um archived on the city's YouTube. Um some of the things that I'm wrestling with are um we got some big longtime community asks in this new contract. for example, um crisis management and connecting people with resources at the transit platform. Um this is a longterm um or a long time advocated for a public safety issue that's coming from riders, it's coming from drivers and staff, um folks who can help to deescalate situations, connect people with resources like health and human services, um services around homelessness, um mental health. Um, so that's a really big win for the community and I think for our organization and the service that we're trying to provide. Um, some other things that our longtime community advocacy points, um, more accountability. Um, the on-time performance goals in our current contract is around 72% on time performance. This is not only when the bus is running late, but if the bus is running early. So if a bus is running early, you don't have the opportunity to catch until the next bus. Um so for South Asheville routes, that would be an hour and a half later. Um in Swanoa routes, that would be two hours later, including for Hall Creek, two hours later. So um addressing the on-time performance is not just about the bus running late, but also running early. And this contract, it increases it to 80%. um having the technology that's in the new contract that allows that per that performance evaluation and accountability to happen automated. That's a really big issue for us um to be able to have accountability. So, I'm kind of wrestling with the fact that we

of of the four contracts only really had one technical um company able to provide the real service that we need. Um, and it is more expensive. Um, and we have had issues with the current management. So, I I still don't think that a for-profit management company is the answer our community needs. I think we need to partner with the county and have a transit authority that has local oversight. But until we get ready for that and take that seriously, um, we have to have a contract to maintain our service. So, my motion um, PED was to only extend the contract for three years. And we had some advice from our legal team there that we can't actually do that. We couldn't say we want to try this for two years because it's a new contract. We can't say three years because it was in the RFP. So if we were to not take on this contract, would it open the door to have a long a shorter term period? Um that's something I would be curious about entertaining, but I'm not interested in renegotiating having the public safety that's needed at our transits. system and I'm I know that we really need the accountability. So, I know I've taken up a lot of space here, but I encourage folks to watch the peed conversation.

Rad, can you address the the thing that Kim just said and then we'll go to Maggie for her question about um extending 43 instead of four? Can you address that real quick?

Yeah, certainly, Vice Mayor. And I I thank uh Council Member Rooney for bringing this up. The term of the contract was actually part of the original procurement. So the RFP as was mentioned was put out asking for a pricing and service structure based upon that term. Meaning that all of the people who and entities that provided bids actually use that term to provide their bidding structure. So at this point trying to suggest a shorter or even potentially a longer term um would essentially be changing the scope of what we bid. I think it would put us in a position where we would actually uh be running a foul of the procurement laws. Uh but even still the vendors have made their proposal based upon that term. So changing that term, even if we restarted the process today, would likely result in a different pricing structure and certainly one that might not be as viable for the city.

Got it. Okay, Maggie.

Thanks, Antinet. Um, uh, let's see. Uh, was sorry to miss peed the other day. Thank you, Sage, for chairing in my absence. Um Kim and I spend a lot of time working on transit together with community members and so this is something just really important and I appreciate um several of the big picture thoughts you were bringing up Kim that I share. Um I really and Sage you as well. Sage kind of hearing you question the budget and the and the spending on this is on my mind as well. What I'm really thinking, and this, you know, I'm looking to DK on, is what if we looked up and said five years, where are we going to be? I don't think that we've been able to do that as a full council in a long time. And I really am curious about what a city county transit authority would look like. I'm curious about it from having better service and also from Sage's layer of I'm curious about what would the cost impact be? Would that um share the service cost? Would that be way more expensive? I don't really know, but I would love to look at that. And um Kim, to your point of um we're kind of now if if this proceeds locked into a four-year window. I think we might need four years to really think about what would the state enabling legislation be to pursue a model. What would the city county strategic conversation need to be? and would the county want to have that with us? What would the preliminary design work need to do? That that might actually take that long. And so I appreciate the um the nudging, Kim, for us to look up towards the future of what we want. And I want to explore what something different looks like from a financial feasibility, from a better service provider, from a fact that we're turning in Punk County is turning into a suburban community before we know it.

and if we only rely on roads, it's going to be really bad for our climate impact. Like all these big big picture things are very much on my mind and I I do think it could take that long. But I would love us as a council to have support from staff to really say okay in order to even make a decision on a regional trans or city county trans authority like what is it going to take? Because it it's not a one year at a time decision. It's it's it's pretty complex and big. So that's that's Maggie's massive big picture idea of the day that doesn't really fit into this budget, but I I I look to my peers on council and say as we pursue strategic planning, this is something that would could be a a a system scale change for our community that I have a real big appetite to kicking the tires on and saying is there a better way from both a service delivery and financial standpoint. So thanks Brad.

You're muted Brad. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I want to say I really appreciate this conversation. I I don't want to take up too much time, but I thought I might chime in uh just to provide a little bit of additional context. Uh, as I think many of you know, I spent a conservative amount of time as u uh general counsel for the largest transit uh agency in in the state. And I have a degree of of understanding of of some of this and I'm happy to share uh more in detail offline, but I do want to point out a couple of key things here. Um, with regard to a regional transit authority, whether that is is countywide or even larger, it's important to remember that the need for a transit operating agency would still be there. Um, this is not something that the local governments could take on by themselves primarily because North Carolina state law prohibits us from collectively bargaining. and the majority of of bus drivers are are part of unions which would mean we would not be able to have collective bargaining agreements which is a requirement by by those unions. So one of the primary reasons for the existence of these third party agencies is to satisfy that state law requirement which unfortunately we do not have any control over. U so um I do again want to offer myself uh for others who have more questions we can certainly do that offline. and I I am more than happy to talk some of the details of transit and uh larger agency models anytime you would like.

Thanks, Brad. Council, any more questions or comments on this one? If not, Ben, you want to take it back up? Thank you, um, Vice Mayor. So, that without any other questions, that concludes my review of your agenda for Tuesday. And so, I'm going to move down next to council committees. We have one council committee scheduled to review. That's public safety committee. And I will turn it over to Jay Dundis.

Thank you, Ben. Um, again, good morning, vice mayor and members of council. Jade Dundis, assistant city manager. Quickly get through the uh the public safety agenda which takes place next Thursday, March 26, starting at 11:00 a.m. Um, it is uh pretty pretty full the agenda. Uh and we will start um with the uh continued discussion about the revision of the ordinance for abandoned properties. uh Mark Matheni and staff will will be there to present on this. The action uh that is that we're seeking from council is to recommend that the committee uh that they they recommend the abandoned building ordinance uh wording be accepted and approved and moved to full counsel which the anticipated time frame for council uh would be the AP at the April 14th meeting for the full council's um a deliberation and voting on adopting that. Um we have several items of from APD that we'll be discussing. Um two of these are responsive to some some activities that have have come up in the last several months or and and se couple weeks rather. Um the first item though u is uh the approval of uh contracts or seeking seeking the committee's uh approval to move the uh contracts and and agreements to full counsel. Uh, one of a couple of highlights in those um are a receiving a federal appropriations for the community project funding award. Uh, this was representative or Chuck Edwards helped with with championing that uh appropriation through uh getting that approved and and awarded to the city. So, we'll be talking about

more of that in more detail. and then also a an agreement with the Asheville Housing Authority uh to uh for activities and coordination collaboration uh related to uh services there. Um the two the ne next item is community safety and violence reduction efforts. Uh this is really uh responsive to the multiple acts of violence that happened a couple of weekends ago. uh APD uh wants to be able to present uh update on the crime data for 2025 and then also to discuss the efforts that they they are uh undertaking and the and and the partnerships that are in place right now working through the community to ensure uh safety and then also uh violence efforts that are being made to reduce gun violence. Um that that's very important at this point to get that message out there. Um and then council's received a lot of emails around uh traffic congestion uh in the South Bunkham schools complex. This is around TC Robertson um high school and various other schools in that area. um that there this this discussion is coming from there there are multiple parties involved um the school system uh NC do the Bunkham County Sheriff uh APD um and uh city transportation are all at the table uh discussing this there has been work that has been done uh by a NC do and the county school system uh to an analyze this issue and make recommendations that the report that they generated um in that analysis is is linked in the in the council agenda or the public safety agenda. So encourage everyone to take a look that the recommendations are are very

specific. Um and so we'll provide an update on that and then just kind of vision for how everybody's that that group is moving forward. Um, last item on the public safety agenda is the amendment to the graffiti definition. This is another request for council to or for this committee rather to uh consider uh revision to chapter 10 of the Asheville code of ordinances to amend article six regulation of graffiti uh to recommend this to full council for adoption. Um this is specific to the use of um sidewalk chalk uh to uh on on the sidewalks and throughout the city. Um and and clans up the ordinance, clarifies what actions the city will take moving forward. Um and then also just to move that to council for in a further future meeting. So happy to answer any questions you may have. Matt Jade. Um, can you just confirm that 158 South Broad has been demoed?

Yes. Yeah, that is that was under underway. I don't know exact date of that. Um, we actually just before this meeting received an email from one of the residents out there uh that they were expressing their appreciation for that building having been demolished. Okay. Excellent. Kim,

thank you. Um, Jade, just a couple of things. one um for the South Asheville Road conversation. My understanding is there's going to be a pretty significant um community engagement around the public comment and I know you have a long agenda for that meeting. Um so I think something to keep in mind and be prepared for. Um we've also at um our meeting our committee meetings this week had trouble with the public comment um feature um and some people were left out of the conversation our peed meeting. So I don't know if there's a chance to be prepared for that infrastructure and do some testing around it so you don't bump into that again on that meeting. Um, second, do we have a picture of what the budget impact might be if we change the abandoned building um, policy. Um, there obviously will be a lot of requests in our community. Um, and I think our what I'm hearing is that folks are a little tired of us, you know, having recommendations, passing change, but then not actually following through. So it will the budget impact or budget anticipation um be part of the conversation?

Yes, it will be. Mark Matheni is has prepared uh to discuss that. Um and uh and and so there there is some advantage of just cleaning up the ordinance and I think there there's alignment with the the state statute. There is a budget implic implication and that will be discussed. Thank you. Um, and with that, no more, if there's no more questions, that concludes the public safety agenda review.

Thank you, Jade. And, um, real quick review of the 8week agenda. Jade, you you covered half of the April 14th regular meeting agenda through public safety. So, we I'm not going to recover those, but a lot of a lot of the items Jay just covered are scheduled to move to your April 14th meeting. Want to flag a couple of things. At your 14th meeting, we have our annual state of the airport. Once a year, the director of the airport comes and kind of gives us an update on airport operations and improvement plan. So, we'll have that April 14th. Another item that is currently in HCD council committee, but is scheduled to come forward is um the allocation of DR funds to multi-ousing multif family housing projects. So we we did do a a request for proposals and we had a really robust response um from developers. So obviously a lot lot of need for publicly subsidized multifamily housing. So HCD will certainly have their their work cut out for them to work through that list, but hoping to get those to council in April. And then the last item I'm going to cover that's a little bit of a good news story is, and this may change, but the county has submitted their conditional zoning for the property at 50 Cox Avenue. As you remember, that's a property the county identified for mixed use and and deeply affordable housing. So, they're now beginning the process to entitle that development. So that right now is scheduled to come to city council at your April 28th meeting. And that would be a CZ request to entitle their proposed project. Any any other questions on the 8week agenda? Okay, I'm going to turn it over to manager Wesley uh to move us to the other item section.

Thank you, Ben. Um uh Vice Mayor and Council, I'm going to go ahead and kick off the other issues topic. And um I'm excited for staff to come present this information to you. Um they'll continue to do the heavy lifting and I'll I'll pass it over to them. Um as we continue to see growth in the city of Asheville, uh we're being called to do two things at the same time and do them well in my opinion. Um first, we must uh increase the supply of affordable housing so that our workforce, our families, uh future residents have a place here. And at the same time, we must protect the character and the stability of our historic neighborhoods and the people who have built them over generations. So today's presentation is uh our attempt, our very thoughtful attempt in aligning those goals um together. Um we have done studies that do that and we're going to illustrate from our perspective how we can move forward in that space. Um, we're proposing a uh focused approach that um advances new housing opportunities uh while also putting tools in place to preserve existing affordability, support our longtime homeowners and maintain the cultural fabric of our neighborhoods. Um, so this means that Asheville will remain a place where people can not only come visit, but a place where they can continue to live, work, and belong. So, I won't spend any more time talking. I'm going to pass it over to staff who will uh walk through the project proposal and then we really look forward to your guidance on this. Uh to begin, Dawa Hitch, our communications and public engagement director will start off and then assistant city manager Ben Woody for will take it from there. Thank you.

Thank you, Manager Wesley. And good afternoon, Vice Mayor, Council members. It's really my pleasure to be here today to uh kick off this first part of the presentation. Um and then as manager Wesley mentioned, I'll be turning it over to Assistant City Manager Ben Woody. Um so let me share my screen and we'll hop right in. All right. Again, my name's Da Hitch and I have the pleasure of serving as the communication and public engagement director for the city. And uh just to give a quick overview of what um we'll be reflecting on and sharing today, there's a few key takeaways here about this uh project, this this anti- displacement and affordable housing project. And the first point is that the pro this proposed project aims to pair new housing production with anti-displacement protection. So again looking at those two things uh in concert with each other. Project success depends on authentic community engagement and cross departmental coordination. The project's strategies draw from middle uh the missing middle housing study and displacement risk assessment recommendations as well as affordable housing plan strategies and legacy neighborhood coalition priorities that have been shared with you council a as well as staff. The project is actionoriented and includes multiple initiatives and efforts that can start now and all be accomplished within a one-year timeline. Uh so what you're going to see in today's presentation is an overview and and the approach that staff has mapped out to take. Uh we'll talk a little bit about the uh engagement strategy and the

project timeline. And then we're going to move into some more details about each of those component projects and and those being the missing middle housing study and displacement risk assessment recommendations, the affordable housing plan, specifically anti-displacement strategies, and then the six priority action areas that were shared uh by the legacy neighborhood coalition. Then we'll wrap up today's time with you with next steps and an opportunity for uh council to share questions about this approach. For an overview, uh we've named this project the anti-displacement and affordable housing project. And its overarching goal is to develop communitydriven policies, tools, and processes that strategically strategically pair necessary housing production with clear concrete anti-displacement protections for the most at risk neighborhoods. Uh, as we shared, the approach and proposed actions are drawn from the three previously mentioned studies. as far as the objective. So, so we've got the goal, we've got our northstar, what are we what are we moving towards and then the what is is our project objective and and and we plan on approaching this project by using best practices and engagement and then again identifying and implementing actions to address affordable housing challenges and minimize displacement. So keys to the project's success really lie in the mindful sequencing of the actions that can be taken in each of these areas as well as that cross-dep departmental coordination and collaboration. So making sure that we've got all of the departments that are doing work working together to work

through when certain things happen so that we can be as quick, efficient, and effective as we possibly can. And then another key uh component of of the project is that authentic engagement. And by authentic engagement, we mean being honest about the level of in uh influence on decision making that there will be. Making sure that we're being as inclusive as we possibly can. And um then being real clear and reporting back on how the engagement has informed whatever final decisions are made that relate to the different components of this project. So, our strategy, we've done some early, we've had some early conversations with a number of different groups. This certainly is not a comprehensive list of all of the folks we intend to engage with. Uh, you can see here we've had early conversations about displacement and affordable housing with the Legacy Neighborhoods Coalition representatives, GAPL, Asheville for All, Mountain True. We also know that there are other groups forming and and I'll just pause and say we're always excited to hear when groups are organizing and looking at tackling hard problems from multiple perspectives and one of those groups being the Bunkham affordable housing network. So again, we know that there are different groups that are emerging, people that have interest and welcome. Um any input on who different groups are so that we can again be as inclusive as we possibly can. Uh so back to the strategy, there will be additional focus groups and workshops and and and they will be the intention behind those will be to bring people together, different people with different perspectives focused on different aspects of how we can make our

community better, whether that be anti-displacement or affordable housing, developers, and then of course staff. Um so back to that best practice and and and authentic engagement, we will be looking at input from all relevant plans and and that too will be considered uh as project deliverables are finalized and that's important. We just want to acknowledge that our community's given a lot of input over many years on lots of different plans and that input doesn't just disappear. We do go back and reflect on it and incorporate it into new projects as they um come to be. All right, this is this is there's a lot on this timeline. Uh, and I just want to assure you that we're going to dig into some of the details a little bit as uh Ben we move into Ben's portion of this presentation. But for anybody listening or watching, this timeline shows a time frame from March to December. Um, and that is not to say that this project ends in December, but we do we intend to continue to iterate, adjust however we need to make sure that we're hitting the mark on what the expectations are for what the project will accomplish. Um but here here you will see um just starting in March just acknowledging that uh we're finalizing what the deliverables are going to be in three different areas that being affordable housing anti-displacement and then communication and engagement improvements that works underway um and will continue and then moving across uh so in the April timeline what's mapped out right now is developing the scope for the notification improvements. That's the development notification improvements. Um, and then beginning to draft a homeowner repair policy. And then a deliverable. The deliverables here are in green. And I'll note them as I

quickly move through the timeline. Um, we've got a deliverable in the April time fra time time frame and that being the legacy neighborhood coalition being identified as a uh required engagement partner in relevant communication and engagement plans. So, what does that mean? In plain language, we develop communication and engagement plans around our major projects. If there's a project that's going to be adjacent to or within a legacy neighborhood, we're going to make sure we're touching base with the legacy neighborhood coalition. Um, that's part of our regular practice to reach out to groups that are impacted, but just wanted to call that out to um so that there can be accountability with that deliverable. uh we'll also begin engagement in the April to May time frame and then there is a council touch point um in the June time frame and that being early missing middle regulatory changes coming to council. And then another deliverable um unless there are changes to the timeline is that there will be an opportunity for uh a resolution to come before council for adoption. And again that resolution we're doing some early engagement to help inform what that draft looks like. And you can see here in the timeline that that's in the May to June um time frame. So now I'm going to move into the August time frame. there. We'll be looking at launching the first project for anti-displacement in middle housing while we are also piloting an anti-displacement tool and that tool will include mitigation actions for development such as the use of community community development block grant funding and um inclusion of public art and history as a potential mitigating factor. We've got to do the work. We've got to engage around that and do the

work before exactly what that will look like is determined. But again, wanting to launch that p uh pilot in the August time frame. I'm going to pause a minute here just to to share too that we're getting to work on developing what this could look like in coordination and co-creating with with community groups. And as projects are coming um before council or operational projects, our intention is to use the tools that we've developed to date to begin getting a feel for what it's going to be like to run projects through the tools. So I I don't want anybody out there to think that nothing's going to happen. We're not going to we're going to be frozen. We're not going to do anything. But but what we're learning along the way, we plan on uh applying. um to projects as as they come about. But uh as far as a accountable deadline, launching that pilot is set for the August time frame. Um then we want to make sure just best practices and engagement. We want to check in and and get some feedback on how the tools being received. There's an opportunity of course for this to be an iterative process so that we can adapt and adjust based on you know feedback that we get after the pilots's launched and then we expect the tool to be finalized in November. Um so also in that same time frame we expect a good bit of money to be going out into the community for affordable affordable housing. So we're looking at about two million of anticipating being available through the housing trust fund about five million available for the right at home through the continuum of care and about a million and homeowner in the

launch of the homeowner repair program. So again you can see that that our intention has been to make sure we're sequencing things in a beneficial way to the community. Last bit on the timeline is another council touch point in November and and and that's around the area of missing middle regulatory changes. So we've got two touch points there. We've got some early things we think that can be done and then um there may be some more um complex regulatory changes that could be prop proposed and and we we've got that slotted for sometime around November to give us time to collect data, get more input from the tool and some of the other um deliverables for this project. So that's a lot. I know I just flew through a lot of different pieces. It's a lot of different departments. But again, um, Ben is going to take us into the next portion of the presentation, uh, where we're going to get into a little bit more details.

Actually, can you go back a slide for just a second because I kind of have a comment. So, um, first of all, I'll start by saying this is really impressive and I love the level of engagement that's embedded as well as actionable items. I think this is fantastic. nothing really has to stop, which was the intention when LNC came forward a while ago. Um, this morning I saw a post um from a member of the LNC um that kind of highlighted some negative push back that LNC had been getting from um pro-ousing groups. one where they are being referred to as the black wall poratively. Um, and what struck me was I immediately thought of save the woods. No one is referring to save the woods as the green wall or the white wall. But what struck me was I believe if a process like this had been underway where the community could have communicated or had some say in what happens uh on the campus the big um push that save the woods now has would not have even been necessary. So for me, this is another instance where I want to highlight that legacy neighborhoods, which are not black neighborhoods anymore necessarily, are the canary in the coal mine. So if we have a process where we lean into them, other groups later will benefit. So thank you for this and then move on to the next slide. I just wanted to highlight that.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Dawa. Uh, great great background information and I'm still amazed that you were able to fit all that on one slide. That was no small feat. Um, it spreads across an entire whiteboard in her office. So, it was a lot of consolidating. Um, I'm going to unpack some of the details. So, you saw the timeline and DA flaged a couple of things. I'm going to talk about what those actually are. So, what what is actionable in those details and I'm going to draw from the three studies that Dawa previously referenced. I'm going to go through these in chronological order. So this will be the the order in which these studies came about or these efforts or these documents. So we'll start with missing middle housing study. I think it's important to note and I think this is often not said but the missing middle housing study included an entire section on displacement risk assessments. There's a lot of good information that study contemplates around how how to evaluate and assess risk and then how to potentially mitigate. I don't know that you can ever stop anti-displacement but you can put in efforts to mitigate it to try to manage it try to minimize it. So next slide da your next slide I think it's okay. Um, so the missing middle housing study was completed, it was not adopted by council, but it was completed in November of 2023. So it's it's been around for a while. Uh, in short, that study was intended to support the city's strategic goal of providing equitable, stable, and affordable housing. and and more particularly and these are words directly from the study uh it was one of its overarching goals was to identify regulatory and policy barriers that negatively impact housing supply production. So that is an effort to look for additional ways to increase the supply of housing. Next slide.

Ben, real quick, what what do you mean by council didn't adopt missing middle? Like were we expected to like vote on something? I feel like I mean, I'll go ahead and say nor did council adopt the affordable housing plan. We'll talk about just I don't mean anything other than to say they weren't officially adopted by council. That doesn't mean we shouldn't follow the recommendations or we shouldn't use them. Okay. I think that question comes up a lot of times. What was adopted and what isn't. So, I'm just noting that for information. I'm happy to adopt it if we need to. It helps us.

You can certainly do that at any point. Um, so a couple things from missing middle. This is where we kind of get into what is actually in the timeline. So, first it's worth noting you have implemented parts of that study already. Um, you did that through modifying project level thresholds to increase housing along corridors. You eliminated parking standards in certain areas. You increased building sizes along corridors. And you made some updates to cottage development flag lots. What's important about those three changes are they're not they don't apply citywide. they're all limited to certain zoning districts or certain geographic areas. So, what we've proposed or what we've identified really the planning department has. So, credit to them um is a couple things that the missing middle study recommends that we make changes to and our ordinance. These are things that we as staff are ready to update. So, in the slide deck when we talk about bringing things forward, these are items that we believe we can bring forward relatively quickly. They're in blue. They're at italicized. Three regulatory changes, eliminating minimum parking in all districts, expanding ADU regulations to allow for larger ADU sizes, excuse me, and enabling or allowing duplexes in all zoning districts. So, those are relatively simple recommended regulatory changes from the missing middle study. Another thing again that's embedded in that displacement risk analysis that's important and supports the concept of the tool that dollar referenced earlier is the idea of creating a displacement vulnerability risk data set or or identifying where there is risk for that and then based on that coming up with ways to implement displacement mitigation strategies. So again those are four things that are in that study that we think could relatively quickly be moved forward. real quick. Council member Hes, there are other things in the study that I

think are more complex and perhaps could have more impact on certain areas. And so those are ones that we've listed a couple here. The the larger type of multifamily middle development types and things like small backyard lots. We would propose those being considered ideally as part of a UDO rewrite, but at some point after working through the items we've highlighted in blue. And I'll I'll stop there. Council member Hess,

thank you so much. This is so exciting. Thank you, DA and Ben. I'm just making sure that the anti-displacement quote unquote tool is going to show us a both and uh both what a given project would do to add displacement but also uh what not building a certain project and housing would do to displacement. Again, the idea that anything that the city is doing to adding displacement is a little bit of a logical fallacy because we haven't been able to move forward with these things. So, people are leaving the city because there are no places to live. There are no opportunities here. So, I'd like to have that both and analysis so we have the full picture and all the information.

Great. Yeah, thank you for that comment, Council Member Hess. Um and D if you can move to the next slide and we'll talk a little bit about so let's talk about anti-displacement or I'm sorry like Maggie has comment or a question thank you um back on that uh list one

I'm loving every slide of this presentation I feel like as vice mayor was saying like um I feel like council has seen that there is a both and approach um where we can really engage honestly with community and pursue these goals and I'm like seeing it come together and it's um it just feels like great synergy very hopeful for the impact in our community and on this slide what I'm I'm recalling back to Dawa's slide that was looking at timeline and what I recall seeing was staff is kind of forecasting two batches of regulatory approaches meaning there's like a spring council come look at this regulatory changes and then a winter and if you're saying these are like the ones that are ready to update can I infer that this is like we could see a spring batch to consider these ones in blue or we not ready to put a date to that

yeah you know we've we've talked about that in that's a good question councilman we've talked about that internally and um yeah we are prepared to begin you know we'll have to work through planning and zoning and I I do think there needs to be some touch points through the engagement process. But yeah, we're prepared to start moving these ones italicized in blue forward for consideration. Um, what I'm going to show you on a slide in a minute, I think we can pair that with some real tangible displacement work as well. Fantastic. Thank you.

Go ahead, Council Member Mosley. Um, and also so when I see displacement listed and an index and kind of piggybacking piggybacking on what Bose said, will the displacement tool include different forms of displacement? You'll recall Ben in a previous HCD meeting we talked about I don't know social cultural displacement physical displacement climate displacement what do we mean when we say displace displacement in this uh instance

that's a good question I don't have the correct answer I may never have the correct answer but I I think it can you we haven't created the tool yet but the the tool is envisioned in the missing middle study I think is really focused on housing displacement that that is principally what that tool is laid out would do. I think there's an opportunity and we'd have to work with there's other people that have to be a part of this but yes I think I don't see why a tool couldn't envision economic displacement or cultural displacement. We just have to understand what are the data sets that would under underly that and help us understand when that is happening or maybe close to happening. So I I think the answer is yes, we can explore um different types of displacement. I will say in just transparency, the missing middle where it really focuses on housing displacement principally.

Okay, so this is great. I see Bo has a hand up, but I can't tell if that's a leftover hand up or if you have a question, Bo, it was a leftover. Okay, Ben, back to you.

Okay, good. Thank you for the question. So, moving on to the affordable housing plan. Next slide, DA. Um, this plan was completed as after. So, this was completed after the missing middle study and it was completed in September of 2024. Y'all know a lot of things happened in September of 2024. So, um, one thing I'll say about the plan, we haven't talked about this in a while, but it remains true, is the plan is very much I think it's a very forwardthinking approach. Um, I think it really looks for creative ways to address our housing challenges, but it's very mindful of impacts on neighborhoods and community. And the idea and and I found a a nice I think sentence from that that plan from the early it's the plan sets a course to accommodate future growth but also preserve affordability and increase equitable access to housing for all residents. So again, it kind of has a both and approach which I think the missing middle study actually does as well. Um if you can go to the next slide. So here's a couple things that these are, you know, tangible things that we can and are doing related to um trying to trying to limit reduce the impact of displacement. Um the items that are in black at the bottom of the slide, those are things that are that are really, you know, already in place. Some of it's already there and available. Some of it's happening. You know, those are things that, you know, some of it's just making sure that people are aware of things. We need to make sure that our residents know there's a tax relief um program for qual income qualified homeowners. So, there's a lot of ways this happens. There are three really important things that I want to flag. The these top three italicized blue items. These are dis anti-displacement strategies named in the plan. And we have over $8 million of funding available to support these three strategies. And so first is, you know, typically we've used our HTF funding to

construct new units. Well, what we're doing this cycle is really using the HTF funding to focus on things like down payment assistance, home ownership projects, community land trust, land acquisitions. So we think these, you know, and that'll that's like DA showed, you know, we're hoping to have NOFOS prepared for this this summer and start putting those monies into communities this fall. So, we have a great opportunity, you know, to look for ways to try to support neighborhoods and and maintain, you know, naturally occurring affordable housing. Another big deal, I think, is we have bond funding dedicated for our home repair resources. Again, you know, that's getting partners on board and make sure we're targeted with where we put that home repair bond money. We want to make sure that people can stay in their homes and we can maintain naturally occurring affordable housing. And then finally, our work through the COC, and this is important. This is funding that really belongs to the COC. It's over $5 million, but with that right at home funding, you know, COC is going to be able to work to to find solutions for really our most vulnerable residents when it comes to housing insecurity. So, again, this funding and these programmatic things that really support anti-deplacement, you're going to see these begin to come online this summer into the fall. and and we think that can pair up pretty nicely with some of the regulatory reforms as well as the development of the kind of displacement tool. Councilwoman Romney,

um, thank you for letting me ask this question while the slide is up. Um, so I see the community land trust here and then on the other side with the status, I see land acquisition. So, um, let me make sure I have this right. I think of the example of um the projected on Grail Street that was that partnership and Capidocche as well with the land trust and also the preservation society and I know that the funding stack um was tricky um but we're seeing examples in our community of preserving affordability um and you know guarding against cultural displacement. Um, so is it right for me to be connecting those dots that we're talking about land acquisition funds and we have an existing partner?

Correct. Thank you. And we may we may find other partners along the way as well. So um and again all all this work you know these these are things that the our advisory boards will discuss the community will be a part of. So you know we have time to flesh these things out in the coming months.

And then a second question I have is around home repair. Um, one of the things that I'm learning through our recovery funding process is that, um, it hasn't exactly been easy or even possible for some of our homegrown um, organizations to participate in the repair programs through the CDBGDR funds um, at the state level. So because the way I understand it, you have to have experience utilizing CDBGDR funds in the past four years to even participate. Um is this an opportunity for us to work within our guidelines instead of having to use um the state guidelines to bring on board some of those um homegrown repair organizations.

Absolutely. And that's what makes this a really unique opportunity and where I think council can develop a program and an approach that really directs the the program and the monies in a way that is meaningful for Asheville the way the way we think it needs to be. So I think this is a great opportunity. So, one of the reasons why I'm hearing that that that would truly help with the anti-displacement part is we're then um allowing like I think of the youth build program in the Burton Street community that they're developing um that young people would have good paying jobs and at the same time we're addressing the fact that our um the population that is in the profession of um construction is aging out. So, we need more people in our community to have that skill set. Um, but it also means good paying jobs in the communities that are impacted by displacement, which means you're more eligible or um have the funds and capital to buy a home in the neighborhood you grew up in. Um, so that's why I'm seeing that connection. Um, I just wanted to share some curiosity around what are our u metrics for measuring if it worked. Yeah, I mean I don't I don't know those specifically, but that has to be a part of this process and those are things that we have to bring back to council to evaluate. All all of these, whether it's a regulatory change or a programmatic addition, we have to have we have to demonstrate if they work or don't. I don't know if all these will work as intended, but we have to track metrics, bring it back to council, be willing to pivot where it's necessary. And it's not my intention to cause any more delay than we already have, especially on the anti-displacement part. Um, but it does seem to me an opportunity to make sure that we're collecting data at the front end.

Right. I agree. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to move the next slide. This is the last piece of the presentation. So, the most recent kind of document or framework that we have is the priority action areas. There's six of those. They were developed by the LNC. um they've had a representative that spoke to council. So I think everybody's familiar with the six kind of categories. I'm not going to read those to you, but we'll go to the next slide. So this is this is again within the timeline. This is what some of that begins to look like. Um you know, I don't I I don't want to speak for the LNC. So I'm trying to very carefully I'm framing this as the discussions that we've had around these six categories to date. And you know, we've drawn from some of the documents they've shared with us and the slide deck that was presented to HCD in January. But what what you can see and a lot of this is present in the timeline as well. Um is the idea of this index and review this displacement impact tool. Um that is something we're committed to developing. I think the missing middle displacement risk assessment supports that type of tool. Um and that's a kind of a critical thing that DA showed in the timeline. And so it's the development of a tool so you can begin to assess and see where risk may exist and then ideally you can begin to imagine what are mitigation measures that you can help to reduce or minimize. I don't think we can ever get rid of displacement risk but we can probably find ways to help reduce or minimize that risk. Another thing is the idea of having a better notification tool. We have a great tool but we need to make sure it works for the people that need it to work for them. And so we're committed to working with any neighborhood for that matter. It's a good tool for every neighborhood and looking for ways to enhance that. Another thing is having, you know, again, neighborhoodbased bodies such as the LNC that can be named as a required stakeholder. That's just us making the effort to include that in as part of the

way that we do business in terms of project management and how we share information. Next slide. Dawa, neighborhood based zoning protections. You know, one of the things we've talked about is this is really hard to do, but you know, where are the impact areas in our most vulnerable neighborhoods? What are the boundaries? What do those look like? How do we how do we address those or or name those? So, just continuing to work through are there placebased zoning standards that can protect community character, limit displacement, but also allow some flexibility in terms of housing supply. That's a very challenging uh topic area, but one that we're committed to working on. Um there's some there's some legislative limitations on some of that as well from Raleigh. But um another thing is the idea of using our CDBG and our public investments in a way that helps to actually stabilize vulnerable neighborhoods. That could be through investing in infrastructure. That could be through the way that we deploy homeowner repair programs. there's a lot of ability to take a look at um those types of investments and the impact they have. And then finally, the idea that when we are in a neighborhood, legacy neighborhood for that matter, um making sure that our capital projects and our investments um recognize and understand the art history and culture that exists in those neighborhoods. So being more mindful of maybe the impact that our own investments can have in neighborhoods.

Next slide. Can you hold up? Can you go back one second? Sure. Um, Sage, when I'm looking at the CDBGD CDBG, I'm going to say DR, an example of this would be the water department request. Okay, Ben. Yeah, agree. I was actually thinking similarly.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a actually great example that we talked about at um HCD and um and it's not just that you invest, but it's also like how is that investment occur? What's the impact of it? So, yeah, good example. So, that puts us here. I'm sorry it's been a long presentation, but um our intent in this project and what we're proposing is to leverage community partnerships and we're willing, you know, uh to adjust department work plans to prioritize this work. Then I think our big question for council is your feedback on the scope and timeline. Any other questions you have? And I I'll stop there and councilman Romney.

Yeah, I just wanted to start with um gratitude for this the not just the work that staff is doing but the way staff is doing the work um to seek understanding from our community. That's um I think of the legacy neighborhood's work volunteering so much time and energy um to be proactive in preserving our existing affordability. Um but the fact that our staff has taken the time and energy to make sure that we try to get it right and we're we're going to have hiccups along the way and um we'll learn and we'll make adjustments as we need to. Um, but you know, this this is a this is a human effort to to write some wrongs of the past and that's not an easy thing to do and I just really appreciate the intention

and I'll speak in agreement to that. I definitely want to give a a shout out and a thank you to the Legacy Neighborhoods for holding our feet to the fire and requiring us to follow our own plans. Um, you know, thank you Doll, thank you Brad, thank you DK, thank you everyone for this. I see that Sage has her hand up and so you have a comment. Oh, and because if we adopted actually if we actually adopted the plan, we would be required, we would be saying we're going to do anti-displacement work. So, the legacy neighborhoods again are asking us to do what our plans say is best and what we say our um values are. Sage,

um I'll share additional appreciation. I'm thrilled that some of this is getting some action behind it. The timeline to me feels really good. Um I feel like we have I feel a little bit of a responsibility. I feel as this council does too that it has taken us a significant amount of time to get here. And I always try and think what that means for the actual resident because when we're talking about displacement, it means they might already be displaced. When we're talking about home ownership, it might mean that they've been priced out. So expeditious advancement with thoughtful process is ideal. So I'm thankful. I also have a curiosity um just generally speaking. you know, we do these big studies and we get these big list of ideas and then they get boiled down to kind of like a plate of options for council to kind of surf through and what can staff really, you know, physically accomplish gets weighed in. Um, but along the way things, ideas, concepts, values, policies kind of get pushed off the plate for one reason or another. We can't do that one. The state won't let us. We don't know if we have a desire for that. It might be too hard. Whatever. I'm curious what that whole list looks like before I say this is great and I you know this is awesome. Those four things that are in blue get me really excited. Let's start. Let's start. Let's start. I'm wondering if there's six. Do you know what I mean? I just don't know how to gauge what else we could be doing because I don't have that information. And I think I've made a request in the past similar, but I don't know how to gather that. I mean, if I need to pour through studies or if there's already staff reports where it's like these are identified things, here's what we can handle. Here's what we are shelving. Is there a shelved list somewhere?

Yeah, there's there both both both the plan and the study have implementation tables. So, there's absolutely a list that we can share. We can put it in the follow-up document. Um I I want to know and that doesn't we should you maybe we do all of it, maybe we don't, but I do want to note for this presentation all this is happening in the window of one year. Yeah. So yeah, there are a lot of things that need to happen in year two, three, four, five, six, and seven, but we can yeah, we can share those. Year one should have some things that I'm not aware of because I wasn't involved in this whole process, right? And and there may not be and this may be all that we can do. I just wanted to do my due diligence on what other things there might be.

We we can share the full list. You know, some it's like any plan. Some are doable, some are more challenging. But again, our focus is what can we do by the end of this year,

which I think is wonderful. I really appreciate u taking some action and getting this hard work done. It's hard, but you know, we have been approaching it very strategically and slowly, and it's it's causing pains in other ways. So, let's just get through it. We'll get through it together. I'm excited. Thank you, everybody. I'll jump in on um kind of feedback. You know, earlier I expressed appreciation and I'm hearing that from a lot of council members, so I just want to start with that again. Um building on Sage's point, something I don't necessarily see in this timeline is a council prioritization conversation for what is next. I think that you've basically done a good job of hearing what key community leaders and council has been saying the last couple years as we've been preparing to get this moving again. Um, but I think that I'd be curious to see if there's bandwidth to entertain that type of conversation. And it could really be as simple as a peed meeting and an HCD meeting of like here's the whole list. Is there anything that we want to put on deck for next year? Um, but I think that continuing to have council's policy direction setting the tone for the strategies from these plans is needed. Um, and I I don't see that this year. I don't know if that's just a comment or we're expecting a

I mean, I guess it's a request for question followup.

I agree, Maggie. And I'm kind of in my head thinking, should I be doing more personal homework on this and proposing things to you or do we want to have this as a broader discussion amongst the group, which is what I'm kind of hearing you say in that, but I also don't want to cause delays. So, you know, how we get there um I guess can be flushed out. I'm willing to invest more time and go back through the studies and look at the list that's sent and see if anything really pops out as gosh, it'd be a really good thing. Like for example, I'm really thrilled to see down payment assistance was in there because I'm carrying this heavy weight of watching the market slowly um lower and finally seeing those home ownership prices that we were so desperate to get when we launched DPA before like the 250 range. Those things are back and I think we the onus is on us to move quickly, right? To be like, "Holy cow, this is a this is a moment in time and we better grab it while we can." So, I'm glad it's in the list, but I just wonder, are there some other things like that?

So, I I'll add that this is the start of the conversation. You're right, uh, Council Member Omen. What we did was look at the studies and reflect on what we've heard from you all thus far to build this timeline and um, evaluate that against the capacity that we have here. I'm very grateful uh to Ben and Dawa and the rest of the team because it's it's a team of folks working on this um that they've been able to consider what it could look like to get started. So, this is just a start. Uh I think if uh we'll we'll take a followup and share more information with you all and if you see things that you think we might not have considered um share that with us and we will it will likely either we'll have to adjust the timeline uh or consider taking some things off. So there'll be some conversation around that but this is just the beginning of this conversation. Our intent is to really build this kind of both end into the infrastructure of how we do our work. So, it will continue and we'll continue to seek policy direction as we move forward, but we'll send a followup to try to get uh condense or make concise the information that we have for your consideration.

Thank you. And and DK, I want to express just a particular thank you to you for taking this under your wing right away. Yeah, that's good work. Thank you so much. So, and if what I'm hearing from council is a general consensus to move forward for now with what has been presented, that's what I'm that's if I'm gauging the temperature, right? Absolutely. Thank you so much. So, Ben, is this the end of your presentation and then do we need to and Dala, do we need to hand it back to DK who's up next meeting? Right. Yeah, that's all we have today. Thank you for y'all's um consideration and listening. And that's it.

Okay. If there are no other questions, we can go ahead and adjourn. Thanks everyone. Meeting everyone. Have a good rest of your day. Bye bye.