Reading the staff reports appended to this week’s Asheville City Council agenda, I was overwhelmed by the sense that no government is anybody’ responsibility anymore. Every act is already budgeted or majority-partnered with majority-match commitments elsewhere, or it is mandated by a higher authority, or something to make it look like the decisions about to be made are irrevocable since time immemorial.
The cake-taker, however, is the following. It appears to have evaded elimination when the city clerk was extracting pertinent information for another topic discussed by the Downtown Commission back in May. Do run this through your decoder rings:
Using a map, Urban Planner Alan Glines reviewed four Downtown Investment District areas. He said they will benchmark the valuation of the areas and then track the changes of investment through renovation or new projects, and then at some point do a synthetic TIF or some other funding source that help supports greater infrastructure improvements in these areas. By tracking the changes, we can identify future needs. These areas are generally supported in the Downtown Master Plan as districts. After identification of the areas, at some point staff can take this to Council and say these are downtown investment district areas that we would like to track for future investment. With the Commission’s help, they would like to determine area boundaries.
