The City of Asheville, more properly, the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, is exploring a new way to synergize our vibrancy. Many opinion leaders from Asheville and Buncombe County learned about it on their InterCity visit to Pittsburgh. InterCity visits are billed as excursions for learning more about cities that face problems similar to Asheville’s. Pittsburgh is recovering from bankruptcy.
Anyway, the new tool for strategic innovation forward into tomorrow is the RAD. Reading about RADs online, one quickly finds that they pay for libraries, parks and recreation, sports, and cultural enrichment. With a little more digging, one finds that RAD stands for Regional Asset District; more specifically, it is just another name for a local sales and use TAX . In Pittsburgh, areas declared to be RADs collect a 1% TAX. Half goes to fund cultural needs (oxymoron acknowledged). The other half goes to local government.
*MLP stands for More Legalized Plunder.
