City Council - Regular Meeting

0:00 – 0:21•EMEsther E. Manheimer

Okay, welcome to the city of Asheville agenda review. Today is August 20th, 2026. We are doing the agenda review for the city council agenda for this coming Tuesday, August 25th. And I'm gonna turn it over to the city manager.

6:24 – 7:16•KRKim Roney

I have a question about that one, Jade. I talked about this with Brad earlier this week. And it doesn't seem like we're limited in not doing this. I think in 2017, Buncombe County built housing for teachers and teachers live there. And so the question was, could we leverage this site to build housing for workers downtown? So for example, I know we did, the year before I was on council, a study looking at housing for the arts sector. So if you did arts, music, service industry, but also had the caveat of downtown, if somebody started as a dishwasher in a restaurant, but they got hired by a desi

8:00•KRKim Roney

Do we still have that study on a shelf gathering dust somewhere about the art sector housing?

10:22 – 11:02•KRKim Roney

Jade, I have a question about that one. So in the staff report, it says these funds will be prioritized for pedestrian and sidewalk improvements at intersections with complex geometry, pedestrian facilities and school zones, and to supplement pedestrian improvements administered by DOT. I know we have a sidewalk prioritization list, and we also have the gap plan that has a prioritization list. Are those being incorporated? Because it also says... discrete small-scale spot improvements, and it could be hard for us to communicate outcomes if we're not somehow connecting it to knocking some prior

11:39•KRKim Roney

And then this I guess is for Brad, but it seemed pretty easy to make our sidewalk fee-in-lieu get on the ground. Why is it so hard to get the tree fee-in-lieu on the ground again?

11:51•EMEsther E. Manheimer

That's not really so much a Brad question.

12:24•KRKim Roney

I'm sure the public will appreciate that.

15:46•EMEsther E. Manheimer

It was really to bring them up to baseline. That's right. hopefully get us on a rolling maintenance schedule. Thank you.

24:40 – 25:14•EMEsther E. Manheimer

I'll tell you why they did it. The reason they did it is because the, I think the ADU movement, if you will, is seen as a very... and there are a lot of more moderate to conservative towns that lobby against the allowance of ADU proliferation. And so this was a way to limit their ability to be constructed. It's a reflection of our state arguing with itself about this.

25:24 – 25:36•EMEsther E. Manheimer

I assume that's being legally challenged. someone will challenge it. I mean, because it's such a bizarre.

25:39•EMEsther E. Manheimer

You know, for the state legislature to attempt to restrict a building size like that seems somewhat challengeable.

26:29•EMEsther E. Manheimer

This was all in the. Wasn't it all in the budget?

31:05 – 31:55•KRKim Roney

Well, I'm curious where this fits with HCD, too, because it seems like in my review and input that I'm getting, we have some neighbors who... forgot that we had a missing middle housing study and displacement risk assessment and affordable housing plan, and that we didn't adopt either of them, but we're making some changes. And so now they're reaching out to us saying like, wait, wait, there's changes happening. So there's a need for more public awareness, whether it's even in our own networks for the city. But at the PNZ level, it seemed like One of the reasons PNZ members were recommending a

34:48 – 35:01•KRKim Roney

Well, it did seem like there's that missing part that I'm hearing from my colleagues as well around the missing part of having their recommendation come forward in the staff report. So I do think it deserves some follow-up on the lot size.

36:37 – 36:55•EMEsther E. Manheimer

Okay. So for all the topics under this public hearing item B, this is our moment. So if there's anything else that, right, there's anything else council wants to say about it or any questions about before Tuesday, this is our opportunity. Just try to clarify that. Yes.

37:17 – 38:03•KRKim Roney

I think my main concern in talking with neighbors is that they have seen so much high density, unaffordable development and not enough supportive infrastructure that now the solutions that they actually maybe want feel like too much. That's the temperature that I'm getting across the board. And so conversations have been helpful, and it seemed like more awareness from the city as an organization to neighborhoods and addressing community concerns would be helpful. I don't think that they're wrong to be upset. I think that they're just, it seems like they're overloaded. It's a bigger conversatio

38:31 – 41:54•EMEsther E. Manheimer

So on that note, we are going to hear about the parking minimums. This is another topic that's out of our hands because the legislature has now eliminated parking minimums, so all we're doing is amending our ordinance to conform to the requirements under state law. One thing I did want to mention, and I hope there's a way to communicate this to the broader community, but a lot of Ashevilles, residential neighborhoods are actually subject to their own private restrictive covenants. So we're getting a lot of emails from folks in South Asheville. In fact, I was responding to a person who emailed

43:17 – 43:37•EMEsther E. Manheimer

And on that note, if there are other things that this council wants staff to look at before we revisit this, please speak now or let DK know pretty quickly so that they can do that work. So this is our opportunity to kind of do that deeper dive.

44:49 – 45:39•KRKim Roney

I brought this up to staff already, but just to reiterate, the transportation department, maybe back in 2017 or 18, revamped all of our materials for the passport program. And the goal was to invite more private partnership to help fund as a funding partner with the city by paying for their employees to ride the bus. So essentially marketing our system as a solution for transportation. And I never saw us really use those materials, but they would probably need significant updates. And in the conversations with businesses, especially on corridors that were considered for cuts, I heard folks say

45:44 – 46:21•KRKim Roney

But it did make me wonder if on corridors that could, like South Asheville, have more transit service, could we also reach out for potential private transit? public partnership with the Passport Program. If we're not selling our own program, then we're not doing what we can, I think, to seek funding solutions. And I know it's small, but it also has that ability to invite more riders, which I think is a goal. So that would be a helpful update. If we're gonna use the Passport Program, can we make it visible, make it easy, and for us to share?

47:42 – 48:15•KRKim Roney

That's my hope. I know we're talking about this at PEDE soon, but we have a community-led and transit committee member-led recommendation to have mobile fares. And I heard from some of our staff that when they drive the bus to the airport and then there's people who are visiting our city who want to get on the bus, they can't because we don't have a way for them to pay. So if this is a fast, cheap solution where we don't have to have an RFP and a big expensive piece of equipment and we can get more riders on the bus, I hope we can expedite that.

48:40 – 54:28•EMEsther E. Manheimer

Council, I sent you all an email with a copy of the resolution and I think it's attached to your agenda as well. And this is under new business. So there are a lot of community concerns regarding the use of the flock system and I have released some messaging myself around this issue. I think In hearing from the community and studying the issue, FLOC is standing out as a different type of technology than other technologies used for public safety and law enforcement, and of particular concern, as reported in a lot of news outlets, is the way that the system is scanning every single license plate

55:04 – 56:22•EMEsther E. Manheimer

And I should have said at the beginning, and this is another point of confusion, the city has 11 flock cameras. That's it. And they're all stationary, meaning they're mounted somewhere. They're not in a vehicle. They're not on a person. They're mounted somewhere. And there are other flock cameras all throughout this community that are either owned by other public entities like a university or the sheriff's department, or they're owned by private individuals or private companies. And we don't have any control over that, whether or not those other groups want to operate flock cameras. We just ha

1:00:31 – 1:02:13•KRKim Roney

Okay, so a couple things. I want to start with appreciation. I'm glad we're on the same page with the Flock contract because of the specific vulnerabilities of Flock. These are well documented by the ACLU and Electronic Frontiers Foundation. So it's an important first step. I'm grateful for that. The community concerns I'm hearing are around for-profit data companies that sell equipment for license plate readers that collect information, compile information, and share our information, and that in itself creates the warrantless search that violates the constitutional rights. But I do have some

1:02:14•EMEsther E. Manheimer

And just to clarify, the chief is working with someone with the ACLU on that?

1:02:21•KRKim Roney

It is a committee of eight people, 16 people, unclear. Some people in the public are on that committee and are talking about who's on it. We don't know who's on it. Do we want to talk about that?

1:02:42 – 1:03:38•KRKim Roney

Okay. Transparency is an ingredient in the recipe for public trust, so having more contracts on a public-facing dashboard is very much appreciated. I think that's the right direction. There's still one, I think, that's outstanding, and it's the Axon Customer Experience Improvement Program documents that it seems like it's going to be part of a public records request, but we may or may not put it on the dashboard. It seems like if it's going to be available in a public records request in a FOIA, we should just put it on the dashboard. And then the last is the logistics question. Because this is

1:03:40•EMEsther E. Manheimer

We could meet at the Civic Center. I don't know what's going on at the Civic Center, though, maybe if they have.

1:04:05•KRKim Roney

Well, we're sharing. We have sharing agreements, right? We have interlocal agreements that we voted on.

1:04:13 – 1:04:47•KRKim Roney

So for-profit data companies collect the data. We have our own interlocal. Well, okay, so an example. The housing authority used to have a closed-loop system, and if there was evidence, could turn it in. Now it's part of the city and county system. So it applies, my understanding from the city attorney's office, the same rules at the state statute level apply to body cam footage as now apply to those camera footage as well. If we're getting new information, then we should share it with the council.

1:08:45 – 1:09:27•KRKim Roney

So the memo that I suggested that we share publicly that was informing our decision doesn't say body cams and dashboard footage. It does read We are working to right-size our flock deployment while expanding and integrating Axon's automated license plate reader capabilities based on our operational needs. So the community question that I'm hearing is if we cancel the flock contract and replace with Axon's same functioning equipment, then we still have a violation of our constitutional rights problem. Canceling the flock contract is important, but replacing it just with Axon is still a communit

1:09:46 – 1:10:23•EMEsther E. Manheimer

Yeah, Axon has a lot of different. Axon has the body cams, the dash cams. I mean, they're a company. They even provide tasers, all kinds of things. That's right. So I think what Councilwoman Monroney is citing is if we were to move ahead with replacing flock-style stationary license plate readers with axon stationary license plate readers, the question around constitutional protections would come back into play. So in this resolution... Oh, outside the car. Yeah, like if you were to put up the...

1:10:24•KRKim Roney

Same for same is the same problem. That's the concern I hear.

1:10:30 – 1:11:57•EMEsther E. Manheimer

Which is why this resolution that we have an opportunity to vote on Tuesday night not only cancels the flock contract, but asks for information and policymaking around the collection of this type of data. It could be that we land in a place where there's not a resolution to a replacement that's a same for same. Or we could even get a court opinion between now and then that says, you can't even use this technology. I'm just saying there's a lot of things that could happen. We're not about to pull down these cameras and right at this moment put that new technology up, but it is something that is

1:15:40•EMEsther E. Manheimer

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed?