Last night’s Asheville City Council meeting went by lickety-split. In about eighteen minutes of business, council covered a consent agenda and decided whom they should interview for school board. In spite of media hype, nobody showed to complain about outlawing vaping. As you will recall, the carrying of the fashion accessories was deemed evil because insufficient scientific studies, commissioned by competing special interests, had been completed. The only public concerns expressed at council’s formal meetings came from one girl who kept importuning council as if they were some kind of unwise judge. Other than that, the matter was handled at council’s Public Safety Committee meetings. Councilman Chris Pelly argued committee members would rather single out the doohickeys for erring on the side of caution. Councilman Cecil Bothwell was the only person making sense. He said there were 250 thingies going around under the moniker “e-cigarettes.” Some were harmful, and others weren’t.
So, when that was done, council narrowed a list of twelve school board candidates down to six. After the finalists were selected, Councilman Gordon Smith said what he wanted to hear the candidates say in their interviews: They had to want to and have ideas for collaboration (i.e., government can no longer fund public schools, they need to tap into private sector services), they had to have proposals for justice for Randolph School children, and they had to want to work toward improving school food access. Two chefs just happened to show up that night to also urge council to make appointments that would advocate increasing access to locally-grown, organic produce menus for school children. Personally, I would have sought somebody more into education.
