Locals respond to commissioners’ plan for 2001

By Adam Baylus

Asheville, Jan. 6— The Buncombe County Commissioners set forth priorities and plans for the year at their weekend planning retreat. Area activists, who reviewed the results, questioned the local government’s direction and ideology.

The Commissioners directed the Planning Board to review the County’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan and propose ways to make it enforceable. They also want to evaluate and perhaps amend ordinances dealing with mountain ridges, scenic views, noise, asphalt plants, shooting ranges, and trailer park density.

“Water and air quality must take priority over all development issues, which includes asphalt plants, industrial parks and highway construction,” commented Bill Evans, with Community Supported Development and Asheville Direction Network.

“As far as mountain ridges, complete protection is in order,” he added. “In other words, no development on mountain ridges.”

Jacob Hartman, an organic farmer in Fairview, noted that “there should be an emphasis on local organic agriculture, which could even be a tourist attraction. We also need to focus on greenways, commuter bicycle routes, alternative energy sources, local trade guilds, and barter systems.

“Whatever development takes place, the environmental repercussions need to be looked at in depth,” Hartman urged. “Permaculture is the key.”

The County’s development plan is to focus on providing utility services to areas likely to be developed. Estimated cost for water and sewer infrastructure development is $24,340,000.

To fund this project, County Manager Wanda Green proposed that the County add a one-cent sales tax increase for the next five years. According to data that she presented at the retreat, the County would have a total of $142,926,348 available at the end of that period.

“An additional penny sales tax wouldn’t sit well in a low-paying, service-oriented community likes ours,” said Eric Niwinski, an educator in Asheville Public Schools. “We still have the tax on food and medicine, which as far as I understood was supposed to be instituted as a temporary tax in the 60’s,” he remarked.

Instead of the sales tax, Niwinski suggested that the County “tax some of these churches that seem to stick their noses into politics whenever they deem it necessary to further their agendas.”

“These churches are businesses,” Niwinski stated.

All topics under consideration will be brought to the County Commissioners for public hearings at regularly scheduled meetings, which are the first and third Tuesdays of each month. Those opposed to the commissioners’ plans are sure to voice their concerns.

However, if the county attorneys’ recommendations are adopted, the expressions of opposition may be somewhat curtailed.

County Attorney Joe Connolly proposed that only those who sign up no later than 15 minutes after the start of the meeting be permitted to speak during the general Public Comment section of the meeting.

Additionally, claiming legal liability, he suggested that Public Comment not be televised. In response, Chairman Nathan Ramsey questioned the First Amendment implications of such action.

Kent Richards, local educator and activist, concurred. “Public comment is a vital part of the process.  Censoring the public comment is censoring opposing viewpoints,” he explained.

“If someone makes a defamatory statement, then the editors can ‘bleep’ it out without eliminating the rest of the comments,” Richards said.

Discussion of these issues will continue, with the next County Commissioners meeting scheduled for Tuesday, January 16, 2001, at 4 pm in room 204 of the County Courthouse.

City Council members will gather on January 19-20 at the Pinecrest Inn in Tryon for their planning retreat.

Asheville City Council backs death penalty moratorium

By Adam Baylus

Asheville, NC, Jan. 9— Asheville City Council voted 4-3 to pass a resolution calling for a death penalty moratorium, while studies are conducted by the North Carolina General Assembly to assess concerns about the equity and accuracy of the criminal justice system.

Mayor Leni Sitnick stipulated before a crowd of over 75 citizens gathered inside and outside of Council Chambers that she sent a memo to all Council Members prior to the meeting addressing the State’s preference for unanimous requests.

“My sense is that we don’t have unanimity,” she expressed, which would prevent Council from sending a resolution if the vote is split.

However, Councilwoman Barbara Field established that if Council proceeds with consideration of the moratorium then the stated resolution should be sent to the State with the vote count.

After nine speakers, 7 for the moratorium and 2 against, Council members Sitnick, Ed Hay, Terry Bellamy and Brian Peterson voted in favor, while Field, Chuck Cloninger, and Charles Worley voted against it.

Cloninger stated that City Council’s role is to “do the business of the City. We have no control over the imposition of the death penalty.”

He argued that this issue should be debated by the General Assembly and wanted to avoid precedents that may force Council to address other issues, such as abortion, euthanasia and the legalization of marijuana.

Worley agreed, stating that “My heart says that the City Council should not take a position on the moratorium.”

Following the actual vote, Field explained that her position was based on a separation of church and state. She suggested that if the petition submitted by People of Faith Against the Death Penalty had “come under a different guise” then she may have been more receptive.

Yet she expressed her faith in the rehabilitative potential of people, saying “I am totally against the death penalty…If you take someone’s life, then you’re saying someone can’t be rehabilitated.”

In support of the moratorium, Peterson refuted Cloninger’s and Worley’s arguments, stating that “the City does have responsibility” to review the proposed resolution given that criminal investigations begin with the Asheville Police Department.

He also advocated that the State should ensure that all police departments are properly funded so that they are equipped to conduct accurate investigations.

“I see this [resolution] as supporting our state representatives,” said Sitnick in explaining her vote of approval. She explained that the State is already calling for a thorough investigation and that she “supports their work to fix the system.”

The reasons that so many citizens are calling for the moratorium were spelled out on the T-shirt of one person at the hearing. On the front of the shirt was “I oppose the death penalty. Don’t kill for me.”

On the back was this description and command: “ The Death Penalty — racist, not a deterrent, targets the poor, costs more than a life sentence, does not restore victims, kills innocent people, teaches violence, a human rights abuse. Abolish it.”

Helene Hill characterized our current system as racist and genocidal.

“We are executing our minority citizens,” she stated. She also pointed out that the United States stands with China, Iran and Iraq as using capital punishment, while most others have abandoned the practice.

Quoting Gandhi, Daniel Breen said, “An eye for an eye, and the whole world ends up blind.”

Representing the Libertarian Party, Kevin Rollins stated that “an individual may not kill”…therefore, “the government should be held to the same standards.”

In opposition to the resolution, Fred English urged the Council to make statements as individuals, and added that the lawmakers in Raleigh are “not going to pay attention to you, and I don’t either.”

Kate Dreher, an attorney from the District Attorney’s Office, recommended that “you defer these people to Raleigh,” which she described as the appropriate forum for this discussion.

She also suggested that the moratorium would “make a mockery of our Constitutional system and our laws.”

The last speaker before the Council vote, Attorney Frank Goldsmith, noted that in the last month, four more people have been released from prison and death row due to new DNA evidence. One of those had served in jail for 32 years. Another who served 14 years and died in prison was posthumously exonerated due to DNA evidence.

Goldsmith, speaking for the moratorium, asked what could be more demoralizing to victims’ families than knowing that “an innocent person has been put to death and the murderer is still free.”

After the vote, City Attorney Bob Oast said that he would send a copy of the resolution and the meeting minutes to Raleigh.

Local residents join peace group in Colombia

Asheville, NC, Jan. 10-- Two members of the Warren Wilson College community are traveling in Colombia from January 5-17 as members of the first Colombian delegation organized by the international human rights group Witness for Peace. Andrew Summers, Minister to Students, and Christopher Berthiaume, a second year student from Memphis, will go with a group of 23 citizens from all over the United States, to Bogota and to the countryside to learn what Colombians are saying about Plan Colombia, the $1.3 billion in US aid (mostly military) approved this fall by Congress to “fight the war on drugs.”

This delegation is a response to the US aid package and to the request by Colombian human rights groups and church groups for citizens in the United States to inform themselves about the situation in Colombia and about the expected results of further military aid.

Witness for Peace is a politically independent grassroots organization.

Andy Summers and Chris Berthiaume will be available to speak to groups when they return.Contact them at 828-771-3747.

For more information: Witness for Peace: www.witnessforpeace.org