Asheville City Council held its retreat today at Warren Wilson College. Most memorable were the meetings about meetings. Second was the debate over whether or not the city should dedicate more resources toward cracking down on people who buy, sell, or view internet videos of children being tortured and otherwise abused. Councilman Gordon Smith brought up the matter. His peers were reluctant to consider it a priority. After all, its just a few children who are being violated, and council has higher priorities. Among priorities making the cut were re-assessing tree spacings to see if plantings shouldn’t be closer and more lush in parking lots. The encouragement of multimodal transportation was big enough to become a sixth category in and of itself. Mirroring arguments made about drug sales, Smith explained that eliminating demand could reduce supply. Even if no child had ever been rescued in Asheville, putting the video producers away would spare some kids some agony. Council finally conceded and added to their list of priorities a request for staff to explore the utility of increasing resources to protect the rights of innocent children to live free from torture.