City Council - Regular Meeting

4:21 – 5:14•EMEsther E. Manheimer

Good morning. My name is Esther Mannheimer. I'm mayor of the city of Asheville, and I'd like to welcome you to the September 3rd, 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 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 cal

5:16•EMEsther E. Manheimer

Council Member Shanika Smith. Good morning.

5:22 – 5:35•EMEsther E. Manheimer

Council member Kim Roney. Good morning. Council member Sage Turner. Good morning. And I can't see yet. Has Bo joined us? And council member Bo Hess.

5:38•EMEsther E. Manheimer

Okay. Thank y'all. And also our city staff, our city manager, DK Wesley. Good morning. Assistant city manager, Ben Woody.

5:55 – 6:09•EMEsther E. Manheimer

Assistant, I'm sorry, City Attorney, Brad Branham. And City Clerk, Maggie Burleson. Good morning. All right, now I'll turn it over to the City Manager, D.K. Westley.

8:15•MUMaggie Ullman

Can you remind me who the donation was from?

11:07 – 11:49•EMEsther E. Manheimer

On the agenda, the way item D is worded, It looks like we're spending $4.2 million on a temporary skating rink, which we're not, because if you look at the staff report, it's talking about the bridge funding for, I think it's for Temporary Bridge at Gaseous Creek and some other park. item. So I don't know if we want to reword that, just so it doesn't get caught in a viral moment of us being misinterpreted there.

I just want to take a step back on that last item about the homelessness. So who is getting that money, the grant money? Is that a city thing? And then we're going to decide how that's spent or is that coming to the city and then we're going to give it to local partners or kind of tell me a little bit about that.

okay um i love that that's awesome i like the first part especially if you i just respectfully asked if you guys can keep council abreast i mean i feel like there's a lot of money coming in a lot of things happening and we've talked about this as a council at our last pfi meeting there was a lot of good suggestions from my colleagues And I would like to see some of these things done. One of these things is having a coordinated entry back into the workforce with some of our day labor programs. Maybe they come to the city and work for Public Works and we have a program for that. Maybe we can hel

21:46 – 22:00•KRKim Roney

Yeah, can you remind me when we're going to talk about the mobile pay app with transit? I feel like somehow that's got jammed up and we're looking for revenue and people want to get on the bus, but they can't pay because they don't have a dollar, but they could pay with their phone.

22:20•KRKim Roney

I'll say if it can skip committee and go to council, I would support that because I think anything that we do that's tying that up is a waste of time.

32:01 – 33:39•KRKim Roney

Thank you, Marcus. I'm really glad that I had the conversation with some of our previous small business owners who have worked with the city in this program this week to help me understand some of these questions. So these are elevated community concerns. There was a concern that there's focus on technical support, but there's already technical support available through other partners where there seemed to be a need for more focus for small businesses, especially you named businesses that maybe have smaller operating budgets or smaller staff. um the size of the contracts always comes up when t

35:12 – 35:53•KRKim Roney

Okay. And then one of the things that's coming up is small businesses locally will see a contract go to the lowest bidder And it's like, the only way they can do that project is they come back and ask for more money later. And then they do. So the question was, what does accountability look like to sort of check receipts so that lowest bidders aren't knowingly going to like have a history of coming back and saying, I'm over budget, I'm over budget. Or let's say they get a contract to do a project at a city park. And then all of a sudden all the money is spent, but the project isn't finished. A

37:24•KRKim Roney

There's a lot more questions about scoring metrics and stuff, and I won't get into the weeds on that because we do keep seeing that pop up. And I know the community has questions, but thank you for letting me dig in a little bit here today.

52:02 – 52:14•MUMaggie Ullman

I have a question about the educational partner. How were they selected to get federally funded technical assistance? And were others able to compete for that?

52:40•MUMaggie Ullman

But would they basically get site plan development for a future campus for them through this federal funding?

53:15•MUMaggie Ullman

And so that decision was made by staff, like was there a competitive process?

54:12 – 54:35•MUMaggie Ullman

Yeah, I just, I guess we've talked about this partner before and I've expressed concerns about us supporting private charter schools or that are NGOs since education is not typically in our lane. And so I just, I'm a little confused or surprised to see, I mean, us partnering on housing is clearly part of all of our comp plan goals and council goals, but yeah, this just kind of catches me off guard.

54:43 – 56:19•STSage Turner

I appreciate that comment, Maggie. I hadn't really thought about that. Not what I was going to discuss. So jumping topics a little. I just wanted to express some really excitement. Yeah. reflecting on like all of the projects i've seen come to the city that involve housing partnerships this might be one of the more interesting impactful and exciting ones i've seen so i'm really thrilled to see a large group of people involved all types of skill sets really solid groundwork to get it going um Yeah, more of an appreciation statement, really. I hope this is a new, better way to redevelop some of

56:20 – 57:02•KRKim Roney

Thank you. I just wanted to echo the appreciation for partnership and enthusiasm for supporting whole neighborhoods. What I'm hearing from our neighbors is the things that would make their neighborhoods more resilient is having things like access to groceries, access to jobs, access to child care and education opportunities, being able to have access to transportation options. So a neighborhood. And well-resourced neighborhoods are often the safest. And so what I hear some enthusiasm for from residents and folks in close proximity is this sounds like a well-resourced neighborhood and it's time

Well, I guess, so let's say instead of 12 months, it was 10 months. Would that have lowered the price?

Okay. Yeah. Thank you guys for that clarification. So, I mean, essentially you're saying I hear you and we're actually kind of making this as fast as we can based on your feedback.

1:11:12•MUMaggie Ullman

Me again. So when would the community and council conversation be for approving changes to the UDO?

1:11:31 – 1:12:25•MUMaggie Ullman

Yeah, I guess where I'm getting at is we have a housing crisis. We also just experienced Hurricane Helene. I understand it takes a lot of time to do this well and a lot of community engagement to assess what potential changes we would make. But the goal to me is to change the laws, right? Is to change the plan, not to do the planning process. The goal is so that we can reshape our development rules so that we start getting the develop we need for a climate safe community and a community that has better housing solutions. So what I'm trying to understand is there's a long planning process. I un

1:14:45 – 1:16:25•STSage Turner

I have a concern about what feels like a moratorium on any kind of housing policy until the end of 2028 or early 2029. I think that some things might come up. And so I just want to kind of raise my hand and say, hey, I think things might come up and we might need to tackle them as they happen. But I can get behind staff's effort to do this in as much of a chunk and full way as possible. But I do think things will come up. I don't think we should treat this like a moratorium. um additionally i want to highlight a concern that i've experienced in this kind of timeline and process and that is we

And maybe I misunderstood. So we're not saying that we're not going to make any amendments up until then, correct? Because there are things that I think we could do. Or is that what you were saying?

1:24:46 – 1:25:12•STSage Turner

you may be on mute yep sorry about that so uh you just mentioned the downtown and riverfront guidelines i was under the impression we had already funded that update maybe something that was really a concerted effort for many years maybe it fell by the wayside in planning because it was around covet or maline time but we had already acted on that and council

1:26:50 – 1:27:22•STSage Turner

please do because it wasn't for nothing that we prioritize that. Council may not fully recall, but you know, we've got this amazing downtown and we've got some very old design guidelines. And quite frankly, the guidelines themselves still have pages that say insert picture here. So there's just a glaring unfinished document guiding our downtown and riverfront areas. Like it's, it's a, You broke up towards the end there.

1:29:50 – 1:30:11•EMEsther E. Manheimer

Okay. All right. So that's it. We'll see everyone Tuesday night. We do have a manager's report, a consent agenda, and then just the one item regarding tenants. So kind of a short agenda for Tuesday night. So see you all then. Thank you.