January 10, 2023 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Okay. Good evening. Welcome to the Asheville City Council meeting. Ju, just a couple quick housekeeping items. If you just take a moment and mute your cell phones and also, if you'd like to speak, there was a table outside in the hall and you can sign up to speak at any time. If you didn't sign up to speak. You can go out there at any time during the meeting and sign up to speak. If you decided you want to speak on another item, you can go,
Most definitely. And so there, we do have a, a matrix as far as what communication tools are used for emergency management and different types of emergencies. Absolutely. The, the lessons learned from this incident will, will drive that, we'll improve that and significantly update how we use those tools.
So one of the things I was hearing during the press conferences and before and after was that cuz some of the communications were taking time because we were having to start from scratch on some content. And I wondered if it's possible for us to maybe get ahead of communications by having some initial emergency response protocols and deepening that understanding and it might save some staff time and help get information out more quickly. Chief, we are in the process of creating an emergency, prepare, well, updating an emergency preparedness plan as well as the continuity of operations plan. And all of these things will be incorporated. And it is unfortunate that we have to have this incident, but I think we will, we will learn a lot from it to be incorporated. And this plan is not just for water emergencies, but general emergencies as, as well. Thank you. And as I'm, I'm getting, you know, I know all of us are getting a lot of input from the public on this. Do we have a clear answer to why not out of a abundance of caution have a boil water advisory system wide?
I mean, I think, I think I'm gonna give a brief answer that I, I think there, there are are impacts to property owners and customers when you issue a boil water advisory in terms of their ability to, to operate their business, to provide services at a medical institution, to have school in session. So I, I think there are implications for unnecessarily casting a boil water advisory citywide. I think that has a pretty dramatic impact on people's ability to, to do business. And that's not something that we would typically wanna do unless we had to
But I do think this is yet another piece that I think this committee will look at. The, obviously we just saw a series of decisions were made and hindsight is 2020. And I think, and, and you know, I am not a trained water engineer, so I don't know what engineers learn in terms of protocols when they're supposed to make a decision about isolating or not. So I think that'll be all part of the re review to, to check those decisions and make sure they are, are appropriate for, for what the situation called for.
All right. I will, I will continue then gonna spend a few minutes talking about after incident action and, and we've really created two slides. One is some of the immediate things that are happening now, and then two will be some of the things that we anticipate happening as the independent review committee does their work. The first thing is, let's talk about what's happening right now. Again, wanna reinforce it. We understand how difficult this was for many residents and customers here in Asheville and we, we know that it will obviously it will get cold again this year. So we are already preparing and I say we really, it's the really our dedicated water staff and, and other departments that are already preparing to make sure we to minimize any risk of this happening again. So one of the first things that we're gonna talk about in a minute is council was forming this independent review committee to do this analysis and help us prepare for the future in terms of the city departments.
They are what are in the lead on this, but all the responding part departments from this incident, they're finalizing their own internal assessments, root cause analysis of these events. Number one is that'll help them prepare for, again, it will be cold again. So we wanna be ready for that. And then also this information that can be shared with the independent review committee as well. So those are things that are already in motion. I'm gonna cover a couple of things that relate really to our water treatment plan, but I want, I want to give a caveat before I do that, I want to make sure that the public understands that the equipment at these plants, there, there is heat tape in place, there is insulation on the pipes, there are enclosures that exist. So these plants were insulated. Staff understands that it, it gets cold and there are challenges.
And so I just wanna reinforce those things are in place and they were in place two weeks ago. But understanding that we did have some equipment that, that really failed or had issues in this cold weather staff has already begun the process of replacing ceiling and closing, doing more to these components and pieces of equipment to make sure they can maintain heat and prevent moisture intrusion. That includes replacing and relocating chemical lines, trying to create redundancies where we can, again, providing additional insulation. So not insulation, but additional insulation to our outside lines to make sure that we're lines passed through walls. We have additional measures in place and, and where we did have some equipment that had malfunctions or failures, we've asked the manufacturer to provide site visits to check that equipment. To be clear, these things are happening at Mills River treatment plants, but they're also happening at the other two plants as needed.
So again, I just wanna give some confidence to the public that the, the staff is already taking immediate actions to try to ensure this doesn't happen again. And then a little, little longer term. So these are things that I, I anticipate will really begin to come out of the work of our independent review committee. So this is probably 90 days out or greater, obviously any analysis and findings that our independent review committee makes and we're about to talk about. That's my next slide. You know, the city will want to consider and prioritize any operational changes that may come out of that if there are equipment or infrastructure improvements that are necessary. We clearly went to prioritize those. I'm gonna jump ahead of bullets as we prioritize any equipment or infrastructure improvements. We wanna make sure that's reflected in the Water's Capital improvement program that Ms.
Campbell referenced earlier. And then finally we talked about this and I think Council one, Ronnie, some of your questions point towards this step is we want to implement the lessons learned from this event into our, what we are moving forward with. And I'll give a little more detail on a, on a new continuity of operations plan and a new emergency operation plan. And of course with any plans that we put in place or new measures, we would also wanna provide training for our staff to make sure we can execute that. So I want to take a second to talk about plans, if that's okay. Let me start with the water department. The water department has an existing emergency response plan. I wanna be clear on that. That plan was adopted in 2021. It's an interdepartmental effort by the water department and other departments. And that response plan included tabletop exercises as recently as December.
So there is a response plan in place for the water department as well as our production services and distribution services have emergency action plans in place. What's great about the continuity of operations and the emergency operation plans that our fire department is taking the lead on, those are all encompassing citywide hazard plans that will also include our water system and water distribution. So I think both those documents and and planning efforts provide a great opportunity to incorporate any lessons learned from this event and any other event that may come in the future. And, and just to give a quick update, fire department told me today that they've selected Purses Consulting to help move those planning processes forward that is scheduled to come to council for contract approval on January 24th. And I anticipate that public engagement on this planning efforts will begin in February. So again, that was work that was already underway prior to this most recent outage.
So I know I'm, I'm gonna take a a stab at your question. Counselman moley, I know that there are communication plans or communication protocol that are part of and embedded in most response plans and operation plans. So I would think that there is information in the plans that we have and the plans that we will have that help inform our communication strategies. I can't give you a specific answer of what those are cause I don't have that in front of me at the moment, but we can follow up with that. And do, would you have anything or my, and I'm sorry to keep turning to my peers behind me, but I do their need, their help for some of this.
I'm, I'm happy to answer the questions. Dowa hitch communication public engagement director. And just to be clear is, are we, so could you ask the question again? I wanna make sure, oh, I wanna make sure that I understand. If we're talking about for the emergency operations plan or just communication engagement planning in general
Communications crisis management, the reason I'm holding in on it is because he took great care to indicate that for other areas there is in fact a plan already in place. And I'm asking the question because what I've heard from some of our neighbors is quite a bit of concern about communications, how they were able to learn what was getting ready to happen next, what to expect and what had happened. So I'm wondering is there an emergency management or crisis management communications plan already in place?
Yes. Thank you for that clarification. That's helpful because there are plans on two levels. There's a general communication, a crisis communication protocol that we follow and we know that that also needs to be updated, which is gonna be part of the, the emergency operation plan that we've just spoke about previously. So to update that, make sure that we know what all of our mediums are, who our contacts are in those areas, and see what new and best practices have been developed since the last time we had that protocol together. So, so yes, we have a general protocol that we follow. And then for specific projects and initiatives, we have a more in depth communication plan that's done for them, which is what I believe Mr. Woody was speaking about. And that's where we're really digging into, you know, who is most impacted by this project?
In the case of the, the EOP recall will be spending a lot of time understanding where our most vulnerable populations are, what their me preferred methods of communication are, and then adding to that database. So I, I guess they're, it's a yes and yes, we have a general protocol and we wanna make sure for, for specific incidents and projects that we go even deeper than our typical protocol where we bring in a number of people and we're making sure that we are communicating across a number of mediums and then reaching into our neighborhoods to help amplify any messaging that we need to get out. Did that, did that answer the question? It did and I do, I'm gonna take that a little bit further and I guess it's for you, is there a communications plan for our finding out?
Yeah. And one of our struggles is, you know, we're already hearing from folks about an issue that you all are trying to gather information about. Yeah. And I, you know, I would offer, this is probably the second kind of emergency moment that I have experienced with the city and I think where we struggle and what I'd like to see us address in our emergency communication is certainly the internal piece. I think, you know, you've been without an assis assistant city managers for a while and now you have two great assistant city managers that are still kind of learning all their departments and figuring everything out. But it's a great time for us to kind of nail down that internal communication piece, but also, you know, it's a struggle when something happens on a weekend or a holiday or an evening. The other piece I think where I've noticed we have this conversation and that is a challenge for us is at what point does it trigger an emergency communication effort?
Correct. Is this an emergency yet? Do we need to have a press conference? Do we need to set up a regular scheduled communication for the next three, four days a week, whatever. And on this one it seemed like there, it wasn't clearly recognized yet that it was going to be a full-blown emergency emergency. It sort of simmered at first and, and then it, you know, became apparent and compounding that, of course the city was, you know, had regular staff out, pulled lots of people back in to work on this, but you know, it was, some people were away and you know, we always have staff on call always covered twenty four seven with staff on call. So that's not, but you know, if you, if you've got folks that have traveled who aren't the staff on call, but you're gonna need 'em back anyway, it, it can be a challenge. So I, I don't know how, how you get to a place where you have, I'm not a communications crisis, emergency management, whatever expert, how, how, how to manage that. But I, I feel like that is the, you know, not that has been the bigger challenges kind of figuring out when did this cross the line, when do we need to enact all of these measures? And so that was just an observation that I had going through this experience
Kind of on this theme to just digesting hearing from the public and as we all continue just kind of learn what's been going on and how we can improve. I think this last part of the conversation about when council, when when something rises to a council conversation, I think it's really important, not even in a like cover ourselves, but in a, we're leaders for this team and we can be of use. And so I think having us as a, you know, when I've looked at emergency management plans before, there's often target audiences and when does audience A get in reach with audience B, right? And we do that with our neighborhood advisory committees, or excuse me, like our neighborhood contacts. And I think incorporating your elected leaders as like one of the audiences in those scenario plans, I think would be really valuable. So that cuz people, people don't have relationships in the water department, but they might have a relationship with us. So they, they come to us for those resources and we don't want to give them stale information or be out of date and we want to serve. I
Mean that, I mean on that note, the, I mean I've really wondered about this. If we were a really large city, if we were Washington DC or New York City, you would not count on, you know, your council members pushing out information, right? So at what point are you a city that's large enough that you need to have institutionalized methods of communicating with the public rather than depending, you know, I mean I saw Mayor Zed Smat of Canton, they had a water outage and he posted it on his Facebook page and I'm pretty sure every person who lives in Canton is Zeb Smatter Facebook page friend. So he's able to communicate directly to them. But I, I think that that we uhoh
And then just the other, the, the second thread on this is I've seen when there's some of these templates that there's just like scheduling. So I think part of where I was hearing folks really anxious and nervous was they were having to make a decision if they were going to get a hotel night or leave and they didn't know when they were going to hear next. And so if we can kind of maybe look at some of those matrixes of decisions around timing and communications and look at if there's timelines that can be built into those protocols of press releases every day
You know, and I think, I think we heard a lot from folks that said you aren't doing a good job communicating, I'm not getting communications. And I think we've seen there was a massive amount of communication, but what wasn't communicated was when can you expect your water to come back on? And that's really all anybody wanted to hear. And that, that was the critical piece. We weren't able to communicate with accuracy. And so unfortunately, you know, is there a way that, is there a way that we could improve the technology and the system so we have more realtime information to be able to say, okay, we're recharging the system, we know that this neighborhood will come back online at this time or that time. But we, we did not, I mean we have updated the technology and we do have what's called smart meters now, but, but it seems like there are more advancements that may be possible in your nodding your head. So than we already know this to be the case.
I would say that in addition to what you've offered, that folks did want more frequent communication, what it seemed the expectation would be is like a tracking bar from a delivery of a package. Here we're looking for a part, the part is being delivered, the part is being installed. Like those are the details of operations that we shouldn't be communicating. But there's some sort of way for us, I think to have more often communication was also deeply anticipated and that seemed to be a disappointment.
Sure. And there's two points. One is the details of an operations like a tracking bar. The second part is frequency. Even if we only had the same information, I think like an expectation of every eight hours or every 12 hours, there were big lags of time where folks were like, where do I get information? What do you mean you're telling wait until tomorrow. It felt like they're, for the people who are most impacted, even if they had the same information, having verifiable, accurate and more frequent information seemed like the trifecta.
Yeah, I I and I agree that I think, again, I've said this before, I think the expectation for customers is that, and I'm saying water customers, is that they have an experience like they do when there's a power outage and Duke Energy is texting your phone and even if your power's not back on, they're continuing to text your, your phone. So they're, they're saying, we know your power's still out, we're still working on it. We know your power's still out, we're still working on it. And you're getting that regular touch so that you don't feel like someone's forgotten about your situation.
And I know we're gonna talk about this with the committee makeup in a minute, but I think that we also have to honor that there were commercial and residential customers that are not the primary contact for water. Whether there's multiple people in a household or renters Yes, you might have, whether it's a apartment building or even a family or there's like, there's a lot of reasons why people weren't getting any information. So that's why they were looking to the organization for more holistic, whether it's press releases or Facebook posts and multiple language for like there's just, there was a need for more.
And and one of the things that I think we learned is that we were, we were pretty conservative in terms of, again, not over promising and under delivery at times. We just didn't have enough information that we felt comfortable putting out that information. But, and and, and that's why in terms of being conservative, maybe we just should have pushed the same message every two or three hours. We also I think
Went out on the limb and said, your your water will be on in 24 to 48 hours. And we did not meet that 24 to 48 hours. Yeah. And it didn't feel good y'all, it really didn't feel good and I'm certain it didn't feel good to our customers. You make this promise, where's my water? I can't tell you. Well you all know how many emails you got, where's my water? But again, that's learned and I know we are taking a lot of time on this particular presentation and we'll apologize to this cause we, I think it's worth it. Get you for the community. Yeah. I think that one of the things you mayor you mentioned about we're still with you, that's what I think people expected is like whether it was the councilwoman Turner did ask can we put something on our own public access television, like something public facing.
It's like we're still here with you. We've got like six to eight hour updates, even if it's the same information you're waiting for your tap to turn on and we're waiting with you. It's like something that was clearly anticipated and I think you might to nail on ahead also wanna say, you know, mayor, you're referencing, you know, folks kind of have the experience of Duke Energy as their power company. So they have a communications expectation of frequency and the information that's being shared. I don't wanna share that like Nashville does that too for their water, right? So like what I find really hopeful for the future because this situation stunk, it was terrible for everyone without water and it's an opportunity for us to just get better and better at improving is that the good news is we are not cutting brand new trail for water utilities in the world.
This type of real time communication about meter information is possible. It will take investments and we need to look at that based on what we learn. But I I really think that we can continue having better information through technology in our water system so that if and when just one meter goes out on your street or we have something more substantial that the information coming out is what people want. Cause I think that's part of it too. Even had we done every type of communication, best practice possible, and I know we did a lot of them, we weren't able to say, Hey Maggie, your water's coming on within 32 hours and it, but we just didn't have that data yet. And so I want us to really race towards an outcome by investing so that we can have that information whenever any service goes
Out. Well and I'll, I'll be curious to see what, what comes out of the committee's review if this is possible under these circumstances. We, we already do real time, we text people if we're gonna have a planned watered outage cuz we're replace a pipe or something. We do send people text messages and we say this is gonna happen and this is what you should expect. And that's generally what happens and you get a text your water's back on and et cetera and so forth. But this, this, this issue where you lose pressure in this large of a portion of your system and you have to recharge it. I, I'll be glad if there's technology that can help us get more accurate about when your water's restored.
Well we, I mean we didn't, there's a lot of, there's a lot we could learn. Like I don't know that we have a clear number of how many actual households lost their water. Right? Like that data I think would make the tracking bar more effective. Cuz you know, there's 20 of you without water. We're 2% of the way to reaching the goal of restoring all of your water. You didn't have that information. So I hear what you're saying, but I think, I think investing in the best information technology for our utility is in our best interest as we keep adapting
To it. Right? I mean, I hear your point. So even if you couldn't provide a time, if you could say, you know, this many customers didn't have water, this many customers now have water, you would at least be able to kind of extrapolate from that where that you're likely to get it within whatever time period. Thanks for indulging us in our conversation. You've got more to present.
Go ahead. I'm, I'm almost the end. That was a, a great discussion and we appreciate that and already the feedback that we're hearing. So to, to finish up my portion of the presentation on January 3rd, city council at a press conference announced their intention to establish an independent review committee. And so that that is the item that is before you tonight. There is a resolution attached to the council agenda. The city staff's continued to update this resolution to reflect council's intended purpose and goal for this committee. And so what I'd like to do real quick, for those that haven't read the resolution, wanna share some of the, the key takeaways from that resolution. And then of course that'll be on council will be your action to then through that resolution, establish this independent review committee. So first, just to take a second to talk over a few minutes to talk about the scope, the, the independent review committee is gonna be responsible for a number of things.
One is to review the water outage and provide a comprehensive account of that event. So to kind of understand what happened to assess the city's operational emergency response and communication efforts. So that, so the way that the city responded and worked through that event as it as it unfolded. And then the committee will also review and analyze infrastructure needs, identify policy and process changes, improve, communicate, or make an assessment of how we could improve in communication, emergency response and mitigation processes. And all this work is done in these analysis occurs with the goal of maximizing our ability to prevent such a crisis in the future. And that's really the, the scope of the committee as it exists or is proposed in the resolution In terms of committee composition, what is proposed right now is a non-member multi-disciplinary committee. Those nine members will have various backgrounds.
Right now we proposed, or councils proposed two residential water customers, one commercial water customer, one emergency response professional, two communications professionals, and three subject matter experts and public water systems. That would be the proposed composition of the committee. That appointment process would, would include two appointments to be made by the Buckham County or the commissioners. That's because as we've covered earlier, portions of, of the water system are outside of the city of Asheville and exist in Buckham County and even I think some in Henderson County. So it's a very large water system and in the remaining appointment, so the other seven will be made by the city council.
Piece. And the other part of this is that when it was first presented to us in the check-ins, it was just one residential. And I am really glad to see that it's too, because of the number of people who may not have gotten the alert because they weren't the primary contact as the water customer. I'm thinking specifically of commercial and residential renters and who disproportionately pay per gallon per water because they aren't offered a bulk discount. So I think it's really important to have the residential represented. And I realize there may be some Venn diagram overlap where you have a commercial water customer who's also a residential customer. Yep.
So a little bit of a timeline. This, this is really, I think for, for the public and, and people watching and, and just to, to put this out. So we're here tonight of January 10th and, and through this resolution and, and by your action council can establish that committee tonight. We are proposing would like to see that the city council then appoints their committee members on January 24th. So that is your next council meeting. That's a really quick turnaround. I think the county commission would then appoint their members at their February 7th meeting, sep excuse me, February 7th meeting, at which point we would have, have the membership would then be able to formally establish this independent review committee. And what we're asking is in that first 30 days is for that committee to begin their analysis, come back in 30 days and share an update with this body on their findings.
So that puts us, that puts us back in front of council in mid to late March depending on how quickly we get the committee established. And then the greater charge, the larger charge is then within 90 days the committee would provide a final written report and presentation to city council. So that means, again, mid to late May, we'd like to have this independent review committee provide a final report to this body. And I am going to step away for, for this is the conclusion of my presentation. I'll give counsel some space to discuss, but I do wanna make two, two final statements. I want to again, echo Ms. Campbell's comments earlier. And I want to apologize to our residents, to our businesses, to our customers for the inconvenience that we know this caused. And I also want to take a second just to recognize and thank our city employees that actually throughout this incident worked hard to restore word of service to this community. And with that, I'm gonna sit down and I can come back up if you have any questions. Thank
I I feel confidence we do. I I have a lot of confidence in our water staff and, and I think they are well underway in ensuring we don't experience this again. And I want to give confidence to our community that that's gonna be the case. Now things happen, there's always unpredictable events, but I, I feel very confident that our staff is making preparations to ensure the likelihood of this happening again is almost zero.
Zero piece. I I wanna caution us again, don't wanna overpromise and under deliver, but we have on a daily basis we have waterline bricks almost on a daily basis. What we are hoping is that we don't have the complexities of really, really cold weather for several days. We think that we are doing all of the upgrades that are needed to hopefully protect our system. And I think we'll definitely have learned in terms of response. And Mayor, I apologize.
Yeah, no, I, well thank you first of all to all the people who emailed us the historical weather data for Asheville for the last hundred years, there's people that did that. And one, one thing that I found interesting, the Mills River plant, which is that issue here, came online in the nineties and we actually haven't had a prolonged period of cold apparently that we just experienced since Mills River came online. And somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but based on the weather history that people have provided us. So hopefully we are taking necessary steps and I'm sure it won't happen again. And hopefully we, I mean we can't count on not experiencing extreme cold weather cause that's probably likely to happen again for this portion. So, so at the conclusion of this part, we're, we're gonna need a motion to create this committee. That'll be the action that counsel needs to take. And we do have a number of people who are signed up to speak. So counsel you, you tell me if you're comfortable with the motion. Now what we would do for at this part of the agenda is here the motion first. And while the motion's pending, then we'll hear public comment on this item. So if anybody wants to go ahead and make that motion in a second, then we can open up the public comment. But if there is further discussion before we do that, please this would be the time.
I, I just have one more thing. I see several water department staff in the back of the room and I just wanna say I am frustrated that this happened in our community and I can also be really grateful at the same time. I know that this meant time away from your families during the holiday. I know that this meant nights and I know that after water was restored, you haven't stopped because you're doing preparedness work. So despite the frustration, I feel that this happened and, and the desire to never happen again. I can also feel deeply grateful. I see you and I really appreciate it
Maggie, thank you so much for highlighting that. And you know, you guys are a great team. You worked together really well. There wasn't any shouting, there wasn't anybody thrown anything. I mean just a lot of determined work to get through it. So that was pretty remarkable to, to witness. You know, I, this is very challenging cuz we are grateful, we know that there are people that experienced water outage for a week, some people up to a week, which is just, you know, I I went through it with kids when I was in 2004 when the city lost water in the back, the back hurricanes. And it is, it is a, it's a real challenge to endure. But I'm thankful that we have so many folks that are here willing to work in our water department and make sure we get our water back. I'm back online and running. Well,
You David. No, it's, it's, it's, it's not a rough one. I also heard from members of the community there is the notion that this happened as a result of development in our area. Can you discuss our current water capacity and the degree to which development, continued development did or did not play a role
Just saying well, on, on, on our average day, which typically we're pretty flat, you know, it's, it's 21 and a half is our average for a yearly average per day. We may get up to 22, 23, 24. There, there, there's bumps throughout the day based based on the man. But we're at about half our rate of capacity now.
Yeah. I I think we, we are fortunate. We have, we own our own watershed property. It's about 20,000 acres and we have these three water production facilities. We, we we're enviable in terms of our water capacity. And, and I think when people talk about infrastructure too, in terms of growth that we're experiencing, it's, it's the pipes in the ground and the tanks and the whole system that you've got to, to maintain. I think our infrastructure challenge has been more around the older parts of the system, I would guess. And so yeah, because the newer pieces are new,
So Yeah. And before anybody is allowed to hook onto the system or be hooked onto the system, we do for a residential, we do a pressure test and we make sure we have to ensure that we can serve that customer. And it's the same, basically the same process for a commercial customer. It just involves hydrants and a lot more flow. Okay. But, but that, those are done up front to make sure we have the
And my understanding too is that there's, providing clean water is really regulated. There's a lot of extremely detailed technical knowledge from the federal government and the state government to ensure that there's consistency of this important resource. And so these layers that we're talking about of like developmental review project by project, actual folks going out into the field and doing tests on the system, that all ties into a regulatory framework that says if we are starting to reach a threshold, like if we're at 80% That's correct. Can you talk to that threshold? Cause I'm gonna botch the technicals, but essentially if, you know, if, if we can fill a pie chart fully with our water, I'm gonna mess it up, talk to it. Because when we talked about that earlier, that really helped me understand that as we grow, there are triggers at the federal level that are overseeing our work to ensure that we start going to expansion planning of our production facilities and our infrastructure.
So is there a way to communicate and follow up to what my colleagues have offered, what role the Mills River facility does an increasing our capacity? Because if that's regularly having issues or offline in a situation like this, is it artificially adding to our capacity? Is it probably a question that goes along with folks asking about the capacity for development?
There's no separate, there's no separate report linked to this agenda. So could I just read the top part? Okay. I can make a motion. Okay. For a resolution establishing an independent review committee focused on reviewing the water outage in order to assess infrastructure needs in the city's response and to determine what can be done to maximize prevention and improve response efforts for future events.
Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm, I'm gonna then we've got a few people signed up to speak under this item. Again, you'll have three minutes to speak and watch the lights on the lectern. And when the buzzer goes, then your time is done. The first person signed up to speak is Bill Robinson.
Good evening. My name is Bill Robinson. I'm an award-winning journalist, a longtime entrepreneur, a father, a grandfather, and a Nashville resident. I live in South Asheville in a building that is a HUD subsidized, a rather large HUD subsidized apartment building for the elderly and disabled. Lots of very elderly people there. And so I'm here to talk about the impact that it had on my friends and neighbors and myself too, but mainly my friends and neighbors. This isn't a luxury water, right? It's like it's a utility much like air. And if we were to suddenly undergo a loss of air, imagine the suffering there. This is kind of different even than that. At least it would be a quick death if we lost air with this. This was suffering that went on for a long time. If I'm not mistaken. We were out of water five or six days, if I'm not mistaken, if next door is any gauge.
And I think it's a really good gauge and I hope the city has somebody monitoring it constantly and really taking tips and understanding better what's going on from it. There were people out of water for 10 days or more. There may still be people out of water right now, I'm not sure, but that's not true. I, I think I saw somebody yesterday complaining about it. So, you know, this is, this is water is a necessity. This isn't a, this isn't a a, a dis a disturbance during the holidays. It's not a a minor inconvenience or even a major inconvenience. This is a betrayal of the public trust. This is a, a public health crisis. Now the heroes in this situation where the fire department, you can't imagine what it meant to have firemen bringing over bottles, drinking water to the elderly, how heartwarming that was.
And another hero is Councilwoman Ronk who was over there. I didn't see anybody else from this room over there in our apartment complex with a clipboard over the holidays taking notes and asking people questions about how hard it was and what they were having to go through that was quite amazing, really blew me away. So, you know, as a journalist and writer, I'm not, we're often accused of burying the lead. I'm not gonna bury the lead. I'm gonna take my closing and move it right up to the front in my commentary, which is what's really ominous. What's really alarming is that nobody's saying it won't happen again. And even when the mayor just led the witness to say what happens if in March we go through a cold snap still nobody's even, you know, painting a rosy picture about it. And I'm not even talking about just having, you know, rose colored shaves about the process and the water system here. I'm talking about having the intention to make sure it doesn't happen again because it's only through having that intention that it won't happen. Thank you. So
Thank you. My name is Raylon Allen and I'm a proud homeowner and community member of West Asheville. I weathered the storm in my hometown of Rochester, New York, which is 65 miles east of Buffalo, New York where the storm was the most deadly. I'm here to talk about my career. I spent 10 years in affordable housing and homelessness in the last five in emergency management. Some of the language that's missing tonight is recovery in emergency management. I started my career in the Lake Ontario flood relief efforts, worked on Hurricane Maria response in Puerto Rico, hurricane Michael and Irma recovery in Florida. And I also worked on Covid 19 response across New York City, Arkansas, Maryland, Illinois, and Connecticut. Currently I support hurricanes Ian and Nicole and Florida.
Lived experience with the ice storm of 91 in Western New York and tropical storm Henry and deadly hurricane Ida in New York City. Well I fully support the formation of an independent review committee. I see two gaping holes in the proposed composition. The first is intentionally to include our rental population cuz they don't have the same access to resources and communication as homeowners. The second is adding an emergency management, disaster recovery specialist subject matter expert to this composition. While the inclusion of emergency response is vital disaster recovery or response is only one fourth of emergency management response. Recovery, preparedness and mitigation are the four pillars. So I ask the council to consider an emergency management specialist in either recovery, mitigation, or preparedness to this team as well as think towards equity and not to exclude our renters. Judy Dale, my name is Judy Bell and I'm a lifelong resident in South Asheville. Never having experienced water out, it's like this. I was out for six days. My son actually brought me water from Charlotte because we couldn't find it. And then Engels when you could find it, they went up on the price.
My opinion is the south end is growing rapidly and this is, a lot of these things have been improved, increasing tax base, but the infrastructure has not been worked on to handle all this. We've even got another big apartment complex going on in Swing Creek and that's just my personal opinion and I wanted to express it. And as far as these task force go, I'm a retired city employee, I've seen these task force formed and they make recommendations and then they're just pushed to the side. Recommendations aren't taken care of. I just don't wanna see that happen again. Thank you. Thank you Burns. Thank
You mayor. Member members of council. My name is Chris Burns, I'm here with Tommy Lauder and we're here representing Congressman Chuck Edwards. He like you, he's received many, many phone calls, emails, Snell mail letters over the course of the last week and a half, two weeks, both as a member of the Senate North Carolina Senate and now as a, as our congressman. And we just want to, you know, first I would like to say thank you Ms. Campbell. You've been very responsive in terms of answering our questions and getting information back. And the congressman wanna be relay on to you that he is very interested to continue to hear what you're going to do to make sure that this doesn't happen again. And, and the answers of what caused it. I know looking at your faces and, and your questions in your eyes is this presentation was made over the last hour and a half. You guys still have a lot of the same questions that our residents and constituents have. So I thank you for what you're doing and we look forward to hearing more of the coming months. Thank you.
Good evening mayor and council members. First of all, I'd like to start by expressing my appreciation as well for those who are out in the cold fighting unknown situation and circumstances around the holidays and the sacrifices and the efforts they've made in an attempt to restore services. I'm grateful for that. Those frontline folks deserve a lot of praise for their efforts. I'm also pleased that counsel is establishing a review committee for this particular crisis, but I'd like to emphasize that I think it's really important that we be assured as public that the city is out in front on emergency preparedness, not only around our water system, but around any number of potential serious crises that could affect the health and safety of our population. Wildfires, other extreme weather events, toxic contamination of one kind or another, heaven forbid, some kind of terrorist event. There are all sorts of ways that people could be at serious danger and we need to know that our city has robust plans in place to deal with each one of these kinds of crises.
It is my hope that the committee's work will provide you at least some categorical templates for how to respond better along all the different axes that we've discussed so far this evening. So that there are plans in place for communication, for remediation, for neighborhood coordination, for maintaining, and then distribu distribution of basic supplies and ultimately often accessibility of emergency shelter in the case of some kind of disaster. Frankly, at the moment I am not filled with confidence that the city is prepared to deal with the broad spectrum of potential, truly catastrophic events that might take place here. And I think as citizens and residents, we deserve to know that the city has fully planned for and put in the materials and the management that we need to make sure that we can address those situations if and when they arise. Frankly, given how important health Whole Water is to folks, we're kind of lucky nobody died in this particular crisis. And who knows, maybe somebody did. Let's make sure that we have plans in place so that next time around everyone is safe. Thank you for your attention. Thank you Jonathan. Wayne. Scott.
Hi, name is Jonathan Wayne Scott, and I'd like to thank all the boots on the ground that kept everything going and trying to get it back online as quickly as possible. I know that there's a lot of search for blame in this and you know, as one of the harshest critics in town, you might think that that's coming from me. I, I'm having a hard time finding any single place to blame. I mean, this is a unbelievable, I guess, weather anomaly. I used to live in Chicago before I moved here in zero degree temperatures or no joke. And we do have an old infrastructure problem. To me this isn't a a water problem, it's a money problem. And we have, we talked about our legislative agenda tonight. Maybe you could explain to everybody our unique, the unique law that Asheville is under, whereby we can't charge the extra rate outside of the city limits as a prudent bus.
I'm here all the time, why don't you run the government a little bit more like a business? And that's a prudent business thing to do and we're not allowed to do that. And we're the only city in the, in the state. I believe that this pertains to. So this special treatment of Asheville, if you wanna take that back to Chuck Edwards and you want a little cooperation from the higher ups, you know, why don't, why don't you get off our neck with that? You know, how are we going, we, it's not that we don't have great plans, we just don't have the money to put in the plans. We got copious amounts of fresh water down in Mills River. You can tap a hole in the ground and pull up water from an ancient glacial aquifer, which is what Sierra Nevada did. Of course if Nestle did that, we'd be up in arms about it.
But we don't talk about the brewery industry and how much water there taking up new Belgium pays half of what we do. I mean, I got a lot of gripes about the water situation, but you know, I don't blame council for this. I don't blame the mayor for this. I know that people want information right now because we are all on Amazon Prime and you know, we want everything right now. And sometimes the answer is, I don't know. You know, and then I don't wanna be over promised and told that the water's gonna be on tomorrow if it's not and you don't know. It's just a, a pretty unfortunate situation. But, you know, we we're spending 10 million a year on the, the water improvement. I, I don't think that, it's not that we're not spending any money, we just don't have enough. And it's not that you aren't spending enough attention on this.
I mean, you gotta pay attention to pickleball too, you know, I mean we got all these other things that everybody wants right now and you know, the humanitarian crisis of the water being turned off. I mean, I've had that happen in my life. I've been to blame for that and that's really no fun also. And you know, but we lured over everybody. If you can't pay your trash bill, the the storm water fee, you know, I use $28 worth of water, which requires $30 worth of sewage maintenance. My bill is $127 a month and we will turn it off. We'll turn off your water, you know, so that's kind of thugish in my opinion. But thanks for all that you've done. Merry Christmas and happy Holidays beated, and thanks for all that you've been doing. Thank
I'm glad to see you're doing this after action report and the formation of this commission. And I've been really encouraged by some of the great questions you've asked here so far, and that my neighbors have asked here tonight. I'd also like to take the time to acknowledge that the last after action report that the city put together failed to mention severe injuries that the police inflicted in the summer of 2020. Understandably, the community has lost a lot of trust in the things that you all say you'll do. Basic communications were lacking throughout this process and it took two full days before the city even acknowledged that it was happening. I was on the ground working with local mutual aid, which by the way is currently being criminalized by the cops in your city. And I heard the stories of folks who are experiencing the crisis because getting water in people's hands was the number one priority.
I talked to families, utterly folks, disabled people, and Spanish speakers. I heard lots of residents in the Shiloh community who have come to expect being ignored as they were at your press conferences. I talked to one resident in the western region who felt he was being forgotten and described himself as an endangered species. I asked for the city's health water supply for our outreach efforts to no avail. I was watching live updates of the maps, knowing they were inaccurate as neighbors were coming through to tell me they had no water, a trickle or brown water. After we were told that the city had fully restored water and was no longer under our boil advisory, I heard from people who told me they didn't even know there was a boil advisory because the communication was so poor was suddenly even being sickened by the water. Meanwhile, the hotel is welcomed to tourists and we were being asked to conserve breweries, catch brewing their beer instead of bottling water for the people all while paying less than residential customers and far less than the national average for their water.
Failure to pay a residential water bill can get your home disconnected from a life sustaining resource within two weeks of non-payment. If the city can freely fail to provide water to customers for two weeks, will people be compensated for lost water and wages? Disasters will continue to happen as the climate changes and slate stage capitalism ro roars forward. This is our new normal and we must be planning for more to come. I'm deeply appreciative of the work of city workers. I'm thankful to the neighbors who helped us all get through this. The spirit of community here is alive and well, and without that I'm sure more people would've been left behind. Your communications must be in Spanish at a minimum. We serve so many Spanish speakers who are systematically excluded from this important information. These meetings should also include translators every single time. Please don't let this process become another stunt to make the city management look good with no change. Community members need an honest accounting and a new emergency plan that centers serving immediate needs and our most vulnerable community members. I'd also like to remind my neighbors of how much our existing networks and love for one another can keep us safe when the city systems fail to do so. So let's plan with one another in our neighborhoods in preparation for the next crisis. Thank you.
Hey, y'all. Okay, first and foremost, clean potable water is the first priority in a water outage. I don't mean to sound infantilizing with my tone here, but I, I want to be super duper clear that our water pipes are not the only way to get clean water to citizens and customers. You also need to have a backup plan of what your trust coming in, what your grocery stores, what your local mutual aid groups and nonprofit groups are going to do. That's part of our city water map. It extends beyond the pipes. We need to have solid plans in place of how we are bringing in additional water if our infrastructure fails. Next, you know, stop gap measures are more important than updates on the process of fixing it. We need to stop gap measures to stop the gap. All weather extremes could cause issues and weather events are getting more extreme, more unpredictable, and more frequent in insistent we're we're having a higher frequency, we're going to see more mud slides, we're going to see more floods and infrastructure fails and significant changes in temperature.
Like in the past we've had these cold temperatures, but it wasn't as rapidly on set as it was this time. Like we're going to have those weird mountain winters to more extremes in the future. That point is to say we need a meteorologist or climatologist on this committee to examine whether we need to be preparing for a higher occupancy and how, how. What I'm saying is we need to plan for worse than the worst because the baseline is changing. We're not gonna be able to just come into compliance and think that that is enough. We need to be planning proactively, and that includes making our occupancy include hotels at full capacity and residents having their families in for the holidays. We need to be able to serve at maximum capacity at a minimum as a Christmas time brewing tourist town, we must weatherize according to max actual occupancy. Finally, we trust the city with our water rights at the cost of our self-sufficiency, which we would have. We, we trust you with our water rights and we need those water rights back if we cannot trust you with them. What I mean by that is the legal right to collect your own rainwater, use your own water treatment systems at point of use and put less burden on the larger infrastructure. We need to think about future proofing our city. Thank you. I'm Kim Murphy.
Oh, there it goes. All right. So anyhow, I'm not here to cast blame. I'm here because I actually want to serve on this committee. I'm an urban farmer in West Asheville, and I so at a couple of different tailgates and some of my farmer friends were negatively impacted by this far worse than I was. I'm concerned that there aren't enough people on this committee. I know that that's what I'm hearing from a lot of other people. I have a background in working in an aquatic toxicology lab. We do have issues whenever we have unreliable water and unreliable sanitation. As far as biological issues, I don't see anyone fulfilling that role on this committee and I would like to see that. And that's really all I have to say. Oh, and also I would like to thank Sage Turner because she showed up in Canr and she didn't have to because she's city council, but she came out of the city and I appreciate that.
Thank you. Okay, counsel, those are the folks that we have signed up to speak on this matter and I, I do actually appreciate, I don't know if Jonathan already left, but one, one thing, we haven't talked about this in a long time. Just to note before we talked about this committee, Asheville does have a long history of political water wars. I will say whether long ago it was between the city and the county when there used to be a water authority and the termination of that authority resulted in a lawsuit, which wasn't the first lawsuit over the water system. But as a result, Asheville is under some unique restraints with regard to how it funds its water system in the rest of the state. Cities that have water systems charge a differential rate for customers outside the city limits than within the city limits. And whether you think that's fair or not, that's the practice and that is used to that.
The, I believe the thinking there is that customers outside the city limits aren't also paying city property taxes. That's a differential rate is charged and it, those funds are used to fund the capital needs and repairs and maintenance of the water system. Asheville has local legislation that restricts that we cannot charge a differential rate to customers outside the city limits, which, you know, I don't have an, I'm not saying whether that's good or that's bad from a fairness standpoint, I'm, I'm merely pointing out that it is a limitation on the revenue collection to help fund the system. More importantly, one of the bigger deals for Asheville is that we have normally, if you have a water system in the state of North Carolina, is that a hint, Maggie? If you have a water, if you have a water system and somebody builds a subdivision or an apartment outside the city limits, if they want municipal water, they have to come into the city limits.
They have to be annexed into the city. If the city wants it, city may not want it for various reasons, but they, it is, it's called voluntary annexation, which is sort of ironic cuz it's not exactly voluntary, but it it means that as a city's water system grows, so does its city limits and therefore also its tax base to support its entire city. Again, there is local legislation that restricts Asheville uniquely from requiring this. So you see neighborhoods like Biltmore Lake for example, or the ramble or other neighborhood, other apartment complexes in, in South Asheville, actually even extending into Arden and down into Northern Henderson County, which are not in the city limits of Asheville and don't pay property taxes to the city of Asheville. But Asheville provides water to those, to those folks and businesses and residents. So we haven't talked about this in a long time. That legislation was passed some time ago.
And additionally, the water system, and this is a good thing, I think we also have local legislation that does not allow us to transfer our water revenue outside of the water fund to fund the rest of the city operations. This is a bad practice that happened a lot happens a lot in some communities where they use their utilities to subsidize their general fund because it is a revenue maker. And so there's a temptation to use those funds to supplement other non-revenue generating functions of a city, if that makes any sense. It's not a good idea to do it. When I was in my master's in public administration zillion years ago, we were always taught don't transfer your enterprise funds to supplement your general fund specifically with regard to utilities. So, but, but we do have that restriction. And I, I wanna make that clear too, because I've heard at least one person say, well, are you using your water revenues to improve your water system?
And the answer is yes. And I think you saw in the presentation tonight, the five year capital plan is over 70 million. And this is an ongoing project. Now, one point of history, when this system was governed by an authority between the city and the county, the city and the county were allowed to use monies from the water system to supplement funds. I believe it was up to 5% each, also both bodies, the city and the county, which predate us and all existing county commissioners had to approve the budget for the water system. And I understand that there were a lot of conflicts over decisions about putting money in investing in the system to maintain it. And so it is fair to say that for a period of years, and I see some nodding of those who know this history, the system was not properly maintenance.
And, and so we're playing a lot of catch up. But the good news is for the last several years we have been doing a lot of catch up and making significant investments just completed the North Fork Reservoir project, which was around 38 and a half million dollars. So, so significant investments are being made into the system to play catch up. And as a lot of people know, there are parts of it that are quite antiquated. So I hope that casts some light. Once again, we're sort of doing a, i the best job we can do with our fiscal arm tied behind our back if that, if that makes any sense. So, you know, you have to balance what customers can reasonably pay for water service with the needs to invest in the system. And I think we're always working on striking that balance within the constraints that we have to operate under from a legal standpoint. And I'm sure anyone who comes to these meetings all the time is absolutely tired of hearing about legislative restrictions to how we do our business. But it is what it is. So you missed it, Jonathan. I was highlighting some of the points you were making during your speech. Thank you.
All right. So I just hope that's some helpful history and context about what, what we're doing here. And with that we have a motion before us to approve the creation of a committee consisting of nine members. The county will appoint two of the members to it. And any other questions or comments for you
And chief, you may wanna speak to this. I think we, the description we have here was trying to tie into the system we're using in Buncombe County in terms of emergency management. Yeah, I think that it would be impossible to have somebody that, I mean those are, are so that disaster management, emergency preparedness are, are the same discipline. So I think that would absolutely capture those concerns with that, that representative.
Amendment. Sure. Yeah. And then, and so there, there's, you know, there's not an emergency responders that's also not a, an expert in disaster preparedness. They, they go hand in hand. They, you can't do one without the other. Because I've seen the list of certifications. Yes. Yeah. The, the, but I think for explaining who that, what that the role is that that person would fulfill, we could add the descriptor to the, to the resolution. Brad, I like that. Brad, did you amendment? Did you get that? I did.
To ramble. I'm still hoping the county will be the one to appoint this position, but maybe we'll, but, but this will help them as well. Any other tweaks or concerns? I I I, I know the temptation is to make this committee larger and larger and larger cuz we can think of so many folks that have a lot to contribute to a committee like this. So I, I empathize with the desire to make it bigger. I'm also very concerned that it'd be agile, be able to move quickly and bring reports back to us. And I know that's incredibly difficult to do the larger and larger you make the committee, but, so I'm hopeful we've struck the right balance in terms of the quality of the content we're gonna get versus the need to represent, you know, all the different professional aspects of this and the, those who are affected. Okay. So with that you've made the any other, okay. So can we just have a friendly amendment to the motion to add the
Okay. Okay. All right. So, so with that change of, or additional wording, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, thank you. All right. Thank you all for coming here tonight. Talk to us about this issue. Okay. We have next switching gears entirely a resolution appointing a member to the Asheville City School Board of Education, Maggie Burleson. I'm gonna propose that we just kind of go down the row and everyone say who they want and see if somebody gets four of us, if that. So earlier today we, we interviewed four folks for the vacancy on the Asheville City School Board. And Will, we are now gonna fill it. We, and we, just so everybody knows, we interviewed Jesse Warren, William Young Jr. Mary Massachi and Peppi <unk>. So you wanna start on that end?
Okay. So the school board vacancy appointment will be Jesse Warren. And thanks to everyone for coming down here and interviewing with us earlier today. For, for that position, I'm gonna hand it over to the Vice mayor. You're our vice mayor to help handle the boards and commission
Appointment. Thank you ma'am. And Hier. Okay. The board of Commission Committee met earlier this afternoon to review 16 appointments. Those appointments are as followed, Asheville Area River Front Development Commission. There were two seats open, both were for business or property owners within the riverfront district. No eligible applications were received and so the clerk office will re advertise those seats. And for the audit committee, no applications were received. The clerk's office will re advertise. Both these seats are for CPAs and we've had a difficulty, difficulty in finding people for this, these particular seats at the Board of Adjustment, the Board of Adjustment recommends a reappointment of Elliot Smith and the appointment of Christopher Vanish. This particular appointment basically has two actual votes. And so first we'll like to take this vote for the recommendation for Elliot Smith and the appointment of Christopher Van Danish. So can I get a second, Sandra, can I ask a question? Are we also gonna go ahead and make a motion to appoint Antoinette Wise to, that's gonna be the second part because we're gonna do it in two parts. Yes. Okay. Very good. Yes. Okay. So motion to approve? Yes. Second. Second. Okay. So we do a roll
Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. And so Christopher ish, who was basically the alternate for this particular board, now that he's a member of the actual board, we have that position open. So therefore we are recommending that Antoinette Wise, to fill the Christopher current alternate role. I would make a second that Annette wise be the alternate. Yes. Thank you. Can I get a second?
Those in favor? Favor say Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Historic Resource Commission, the board to commission recommends the appointment of Alexander Ellen Bogan. Is there a second? Second. Maggie made it. Maggie. So I, all those in favor? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. The Homeless Initiative Advisory Committee, the boards and Commission Committee recommends the appointment of Celeste Order Way. Can I get a second? One second. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. The Metropolitan Sewer District, the board and Commission Committee recommends the reappointment of Mayor Esther Manheimer. Can I get a second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye.
Multimodal transportation committee. The boards and commission Committee recommends the appointment of Joseph Chesler. Thank you all. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. The Sustainability Advisory Committee on Energy and Environment, the Board and Commissions recommends the appointment of Joel Osgood, Ashley Case, Alicia Goldstein and Sophie Molinax. Kim, can I get a second? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. And the last but not least, urban Forestry Commission. The board and commission Committee recommends the reappointment of Patrick Gilbert and the appointment of Charan. Is there a second? Thank All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. That concludes the board's and commission's business. And I'll turn it back over to Mayor Manheimer. Thank you
Minutes to speak. Thank you all for having me. I was asked to address the mayor and city council by several businesses in, in Aspen. I both work in Asheville, downtown on Cox Avenue and I own a business on Cox Avenue. So both are very important to me. Obviously, while I'm not fully in the loop, I feel allocating funds from the Buncombe County tourists and development towards the Cox Avenue Green Street. And the amount of I heard tonight it was one and a half million dollars is like painting a messy house in hopes it makes it look better or putting a bandaid on a broken link. Yes, it might look better, but there are far better ways to spend these funds that are long term and our dire need that will make the entire city look better for all and safer. We need to clean up Asheville in more ways than one first.
And we've spoken weekly street sweeping weekly litter pickup by the property owners, which I personally do every day. And the city, if it's on city property or sidewalks, which I also do, staying on top of graffiti by all possibly creating jobs for to help property owners stay on top of and clean it, it has to be removed immediately and possibly, you know, it it, people don't realize that tagging is an advertisement of their business or their products and to share their voice on politics. If it is not removed immediately it's, it's going to grow as it has been. If it is removed immediately they will move on. And we all have to do this even outside of the city. Tags are mostly done by gangs. They're fighting over turf, they're notifying where to buy their, their product. Doing this will help lower the gang activity that has been on the rise since covid the shootings and the drug activity.
I leave work in fear for my life every single night working on Cox Avenue and I do for my employees. I suggest citywide cameras and intersections to help monitor our city. I have security cameras all the way around my business and my building and I have turned in a lot of footage of people tagging other businesses, homeless camps. Hear me out and I'm gonna go over for a second cuz I think I might be the only person, but in the twenties and thirties there were homeless camps. We need to have some sort of homeless camp come up. I know it's an issue and we've all talked about it, but it's the white elephant in the room. They have to be monitored 24 7 by security and checked by APD with drug dogs because that's for the safety of the people living near whether it's temporary or not. And they have to be cleaned.
I'm returning to an example from our recent experience, but I hope you understand that it has broader implications. One thing citizens want from their government is the truth. We don't like being lied to. We were told the city couldn't provide water outage maps because of consumer privacy concerns or homeland security regulations. Information about the location of public water infrastructure is readily available. An outage map was never going to reveal any information that wasn't easily obtainable by other means. Let's face it, if terrorists want to sabotage our water system, an outage map wasn't going to make it any easier than it already is. Admittedly I'm not a lawyer. But even if there were actual legal obstacles, who exactly was going to prosecute or pursue civil suit? The federal government. I can't imagine a court looking kindly on federal prosecution for publishing an outage map during an officially declared state of emergency when citizens safety and wellbeing was at stake.
Similarly, a private citizen who's gonna bring suit based on what harm to them exactly such a grievous breach of their water supply privacy, that they sustained actual damages of some sort. I can't imagine a court giving the time of date as such a claim when government tells citizens that they can't have information supplies, dubious reasons why not, and then two days later actually provides the information they asked for. It loses trust. It turns out it was possible to give us a GIS map of the outage areas. Other municipal municipalities of course do this on the regular when citizens see the government spinning excuses and explanations that neither hold water nor last very long. People's trust is eroded. And that's the very trust that is vital in getting important things done. When people don't trust their government. Conspiracy theories proliferate important. Safety announcements aren't taken seriously. People start wondering about widespread corruption and confidence in confidence. These responses erode the ability of government to actually do the people's work. It's a downward spiral of mistrust and ineffectiveness. What happens during the next emergency? Truth telling means taking responsibility, truth telling enables accountability. If there's an actual reason you can't provide mats, own it. Maybe no one was available to make them or a lack of actual data about where the outages were. And if it's because a map would make the city look bad, admit it. But please, next time don't lie to us.
Good evening Counsel. I'm Diana D. Pierce, the secretary of the actual Pickleball Association. Now there have been some very heavy conversations here tonight and as a local citizen I just wanna say I do appreciate all that you're doing to solve these many issues to help try to move this city forward. But I'm here to share four quick points on behalf of our association. Appreciation number one, the Asheville Pickleball Association would like to express our appreciation to the council and our city manager and to the Parks and Recreation Department as led by Dee Tyrell for handling the process of negotiating to a shared court concept, which you all have been part of for both the pickleball and tennis user groups. The solution calls for all Asheville, Asheville Public Courts to be lined for pickleball with some courts receiving semi-permanent nets. What remains this finalizing the user schedule, which defines what group has priority access at what days and at what times.
Three meetings have been jointly held so far between tennis and pickleball representatives as led by Asheville Parks and Rec to develop this mutually agreed upon and supported schedule. And we appreciate the opportunity to have an active role in developing this schedule and we look forward to its implementation as actual pickleball association is well on its way to becoming a 5 0 1 <unk> <unk> nonprofit. We've completed each of the required steps and at this time are just awaiting the certification letter from the state confirming our status, Manford concerns. The actual pickleball association is well aware and shares in the concerns expressed about pickleball play by the Manford community and in particular the Manford residents surrounding the public courts. We understand that it is the responsibility of the city and the Parks and Recreation Department to work these concerns out. We've offered several suggestions to Parks and Rec that may be helpful and we are ready to participate more deeply in the process if that would be helpful. Lastly, we wanna thank you again and we, we wanna thank you for all your support. We wanna also welcome to counsel the newest member Maggie. And we'd also like to end by saying Jonathan, we know you secretly love pickleball.
One day. I don't know who you are. And then she said that she was a pickleball person. I think I, oh my God, you're a pickleball person. And then I said, you know, I really like pickle and I don't have a, an issue with the pickleball people and I also recognize that there's a lot more of you than me. And she said, yeah Jonathan, we chilled it down my spine. I forgot an important piece of history that I don't have any data to back up, but I'm certain that Councilwoman Smith broke some kind of record in the least amount of money spent on the most amount of votes ever gotten. Zero money. Bam. That's doing more with the least amount. I think it just speaks the amount of respect that the community has for you over the five years that you put into that. So, yay that And Sage asked with who the first mayor was that was directly elected.
And I still don't necessarily know, but I think Lenny was the first one that served a four year term Lenny sit. So there was that. And as we were talking about special laws that pertain to Asheville, bunum only my very favorite special only Bunum County law is the Reed Howell Act of 1931, which I don't have a whole lot of time to get into tonight, but don't worry, it's coming great. And again, I just appreciate everybody's services, you know, over the years and looking forward to all that you do. I've considered making a pitch to be on the the water committee thing cuz I'm a, you know, you know, no one could accuse you of stack in it with yes men, you know, I mean I would be in there as the city's harshest critic, but I'm gonna focus on other things. So there you go.
Got any other questions for me? I'm always available. I had a moment on New Year's Eve I thought to just email the mayor and say, you know, I don't, I don't blame you for this. I know that you got a lot going on. I got an automatic response. Of course, you know, and then like an hour later she actually responded to me and make people a lot about my too, somebody responded, did they? Anyway, I thought that that was nice. And again, I know that you've been in a, a tough spot and thanks for handling it so well and everybody else. Thanks. That was me partying up New's Eve, Katie Hudson.
Hello again. Just wanted to a a little bit off topic of my last one. Just wanted to follow back up with actionable buy-in is a lot more efficient at establishing public trust than PR spin. And I, I don't want to, I don't say that derogatory, I, I mean like PR has this place, but you will not waste as much time with communications if the communications make people feel heard and seen as equals. And that would include things like gating US access to water bottles or water test strips in the event of an emergency to trust that we know how to take care of ourselves and each other in partnership with you. I think if you give action items to the public, we can be trusted to act in our collective best interest and it would save everyone a lot of time and hassle if we used existing infrastructure like the Asheville app to be able to communicate the veracity of the claims by the water department of whether it is clean and back on.
People would feel listened to, heard and respected if we had an opportunity to provide feedback in a real time manner in future disasters. Which again, I don't want to sound too negative, but extreme weather events are going to happen more and more regularly and we can survive them together if we just like trust and be humble about it and not try to cya, let's just like see each other, you know? Okay. That's, that's all I gotta say. We, we can be trusted to do stuff, just, you know, let us do something, we wanna help. Okay,
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