Asheville city council voted to spend $97,500 on a parking study (Dr. Carl Mumpower against). A local environmental group, PARC, overrode the recommendations of the last parking study, scaring senior citizens into thinking they’d get asphyxiated by the automobile fumes and ecclesiastical authorities from the nearby basilica into thinking the construction would crack the foundation of the historic monument.
Council also approved $70,000 for the engineering analysis of an alternative to highway interchange designs proposed by the NCDOT (Mumpower against). In a collaborative process, the people came up with a design that was not engineered, but was deemed by the DOT to be “fatally flawed.” The city will now see if it can contract with engineering expertise that will make the design work.
Then, council decided they needed more information before they could approve spending $70,000 for a consultant to, as Councilwoman Robin Cape said, turn downtown into another Orlando. The original intent was to sell city-owned property to further council’s strategic objectives, like increasing the amount of affordable housing stock available. The project morphed somewhere down the line. Mayor Terry Bellamy wanted to explore Tax Increment Financing as an alternative to council’s current, creative course of action.
Fortunately, they decided to postpone spending $302,290 on a study to evaluate the feasibility of putting a green roof on top of the Civic Center. This was because they might be giving the Civic Center to the county, according to rumors about the closed-door water negotiations.
