Esther will work with the community to raise the standard.

I want to preserve Asheville and maintain what brings us great quality of life and that’s community.  Asheville is unique in the way that we have a real inter-generational community where people genuinely interact with one another and care for one another.  But how is this preservation accomplished?  In many ways: Through controlled growth, by building greenways, bike lanes, and putting in all the infrastructure that gets people to turn off the TV, get out of their houses and interact with one another.  By supporting the arts, by continuing to support community-wide festivals and other cultural events.  And by supporting and respecting neighborhoods, each with its own community and particular concerns and needs.  Without this active preservation of our community, Asheville will go the way of what I call “generic USA” – strip malls, sprawl, etc.

With regard to development, I favor a system where, with the input of our citizens, the City codifies all the development standards we want and need to preserve Asheville.  These standards could include requirements regarding: height restrictions, green building standards, percentage of affordable housing in any project, impact fees that go to support sidewalks, greenways, etc., and other standards that we think are vital to preserving the Asheville we know and love.  Currently, these standards do not exist in the City’s ordinances.   Right now, projects over a certain size, go before council without being subject to specific standards.  Council must decide the fate of the project based on a standard that is more or less as follows:  “Is this project good for the City?”  This question is obviously answered differently by different people.  Developers try to sell their project by adding components that they hope are attractive to council, such as affordable housing.  However, there are  not specific requirements for affordable housing, height limitations, and other elements of the project.  I am proposing that the citizens decide now, through a public process, what those standards should be and then put those standards into law.  Developers who can meet these standards can do their project.  Under this system, citizens would maintain the right to appeal if they felt the standards were not being enforced or met.  This process allows everyone to have a clear understanding of the strict development guidelines and everyone will understand what they can expect from the process.  With strict development standards built into the zoning ordinances, citizens can be assured that future councils cannot stray from the rules we adopt today.