During meetings of Asheville City Council last night, Mayor Terry Bellamy noted a lot of state bills had been introduced that impacted Asheville. Unfortunately, the city had not been consulted about any of them, nor had it been given any advanced notice. Bills include changing the governance of the Asheville Regional Airport to a regional authority, dividing the county into districts and electing commissioners to represent each, de-annexing Biltmore Lake, and putting a five-year moratorium on any annexations by the City of Asheville.
A lack of transparency was also noted in the operations of URTV. Bellamy has been finding out about the organization’s decisions with the rest of the public, and did not think the city was being treated with the respect due a partner. Council liaison Jan Davis said the URTV board had not complied with any of council’s requests for things like taking minutes of meetings and giving proper notice for meetings. Councilman Cecil Bothwell said he wanted an audit of the organization’s capital assets, as rumor had it that things had been disappearing. Davis said he wanted the finances audited, too, and ASAP. URTV has threatened it will close its doors at the end of the month, but it has been known to publish misleading information in the past.
A surprise item was added to the agenda, reportedly in response to the 6:00 news on WLOS. DA Ron Moore and APD Chief Bill Hogan came into the meeting. Moore was talking like the chief’s goose was cooked. Hogan hastily signed a couple papers. The mayor walked straight past him and motioned for the city attorney to go with her to council’s closed meeting room. The two were late coming back from council’s break. Later, it was announced that permission was sought from council to conduct a complete audit of APD’s evidence room, and a budget amendment was also required. Estimates place the audit at $175,000.
During the closed session, council reportedly settled complaints from one police officer about another sending her harrassing text messages. The amount was slightly over $40,000.
