“In this time of divisive politics, how will you help bring people back together?”
John Carroll’s question wasn’t an obvious punchline, but it threw the crowd at the Sept. 11 Council of Independent Business Owners meeting into hysterics nonetheless.
That’s because Carroll was moderating a mayoral candidate forum between Esther Manheimer, Asheville’s current mayor, and Kim Roney, her opponent and a current City Council member. And Manheimer, for the first time this campaign season, had just called Roney a liar.
The forum’s tone was markedly more negative than the pair’s last head-to-head meeting, hosted by the Leadership Asheville Forum in late May. At the CIBO event, Roney and Manheimer traded barbs over transparency, community engagement and approaches
to homelessness in Asheville.
‘That is a lie’
Manheimer’s accusation came in response to Roney’s remarks about private meetings between Council members and city staff. Because these “three-by-three” or “check-in” meetings do not convene a quorum of the seven-member Council, state law does not require the city to open them to the public or create minutes of their proceedings. Roney said those meetings are designed to circumvent public scrutiny and pledged to end them if elected mayor.
But Manheimer argued that Asheville already conducts the vast majority of its work in public, and that the check-ins were for informational purposes only. She said Roney had deliberately mischaracterized the city’s approach.
“I can’t tell you the last time we had one of those meetings, but in our last candidate forum, Councilwoman Roney said that half our meetings were in private, and that is a lie,” Manheimer said. “That is not true. So please, do not be deceived by this rhetoric.”
Roney countered that, because minutes and notes of three-by-three meetings are not public record, voters couldn’t verify the mayor’s claim. She referenced check-ins on the city budget — at least three of which took place this year, as first reported by NC Local — as well as public safety, land use and the Malvern Hills Park pool.
“We can have less chaos. We can have more inclusive meetings. You don’t have to just wait until the headlines are reading bad news,” Roney said.
Manheimer to Roney: ‘You’re the one creating the chaos’
Manheimer seized on that remark to criticize Roney about her approach to engaging the community. “It takes a lot of chutzpah to talk about chaos when you’re the one creating the chaos,” the mayor said.
As an example, Manheimer said Roney had “called on her minions” to protest Asheville’s adoption of a business improvement district. Two local business owners subsequently had their cars vandalized, with self-described "anarchists" claiming responsibility in an Abolition Media blog post.
“That’s collaboration. That’s chaos created by my opponent,” Manheimer said.
Manheimer also referenced a Citizen Times story, published earlier that morning, which showed Roney had contacted small businesses asking if they would reconsider their support for a controversial transit plan. She called her challenger’s approach “behind-the-scenes, sneaky play to bring chaos to a City Council meeting.”
Roney argued that the city often drew impassioned protests because Council failed to include community members when deciding on policy. She said residents too often believe that decisions were made in advance, with little regard for public input.
“By the time the train has left the station, your best choice in change is to throw your body on the tracks. And a lot of people are coming to City Council and throwing themselves on the tracks,” Roney said.
Responding to Manheimer’s critique of her transit outreach, Roney called it “due diligence” meant to update residents about city planning. When business owners had signed a letter in support of more frequent ”ridership-focused'“ transit, she pointed out, the details of which bus routes the city would cut to achieve that goal weren’t yet available.
Mayor says Roney's ‘disparaging all of our first responders’
Asked how local government should respond to Asheville’s challenges with homelessness, Roney suggested the city adopt a program similar to Durham’s Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Teams, or HEART. She said that effort approached the problem from a mental health perspective, rather than relying only on law enforcement, and had been highly successful.
Appealing to her audience’s business sensibilities, Roney compared her willingness to try new things to a shift in corporate hierarchy. Although she has served two terms on City Council, she would be new to the mayoral role; Manheimer has served three terms as mayor.
“When you have an issue where your customer satisfaction is so low that it is in the basement, and you’re not seeing the return on investment, what do you do? You change the management,” Roney said. “I am literally offering you new leadership after 12 years of dissatisfaction.”
But Manheimer suggested that Asheville already had in place many efforts similar to HEART. She pointed to the Asheville Police Department’s mental health co-responder program, the Asheville Fire Department’s Resource and Engagement Support Team, and Buncombe County’s community paramedics.
The mayor suggested Roney’s emphasis on new programs ignored the real progress the city had been making. “I don’t know why we’re disparaging all of our first responders here,” Manheimer said.
Voting by mail is already underway in Asheville's mayoral election. In-person early voting in Buncombe County runs Thursday, Oct. 15, through Saturday, Oct. 31. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.
The last day for voters to register is Friday, Oct. 9. More information is available through Buncombe County Election Services.
Daniel Walton is the City Government Watchdog Reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times. Email him at dwalton@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville mayoral candidates go negative in CIBO forum
