Asheville’s city government is considering big changes to how citizens formally advise City Council and municipal staff.
While officials say the moves would promote more streamlined decision-making as Asheville recovers from Hurricane Helene, some local advocates are concerned the plan could reduce civic engagement at a critical time for the city.
At stake are an estimated 15 of Asheville’s advisory boards and commissions. Council members appoint these boards, which are supported by city staff and tasked with weighing in on specialized policy areas. Examples include the Asheville Downtown Commission, Multimodal Transportation Commission, and Sustainability Advisory Committee, each composed of volunteers with relevant professional backgrounds or experience.
Stay in the loop with The Asheville Explainer, BPR's weekly newsletter for Asheville and Buncombe County.
During a June 16 worksession, Research Triangle Park-based consultancy Fountainworks floated a reconfiguration by setting up four “core advisory boards.”
Each of the new groups would draw members from existing boards and would have a broad remit associated with one of the council’s Helene recovery priorities: people, housing, infrastructure/environment, and economy.
“What Council is really trying to do is stay hyperfocused on that piece — recovery — to make sure that we fully take advantage of and leverage all these federal, state, and municipal bond funds that are available and have to be spent,” says Assistant City Manager Ben Woody. “There’s a lot of work to be done, and I do think the community plays a role in that.”
Where the new approach would leave the current boards, however, remains unclear. The city paused all meetings of its advisory bodies following the storm’s impact in September, and Woody acknowledged that there aren’t any concrete plans to resume those meetings.
He said the council is exploring a proposal for the new core boards and would likely make more details available later this month. Broadly, council members would need to vote on any major changes to board appointments and structure.
That uncertainty worries Nina Tovish. Since 2022, she’s been part of the Realignment Working Group, a volunteer effort formed in response to an earlier city proposal for restructuring advisory boards. Although she hadn’t served on a board herself, she became interested in the topic during her run for City Council, when she advocated for a more responsive, inclusive government.
Tovish argues extending the pause on meetings of existing boards will disadvantage the city. During the immediate future of Helene recovery, she says, Asheville should take advantage of the broad spectrum of community members already willing to share their expertise.
And over the longer term, deprioritizing the current boards could lead to a weaker civic culture, she says.
“It seems clear to us that any desire to spin all these back up is going to dissipate,” Tovish says. “It’s going to be very difficult to recruit people for organizations that clearly never had the full investment of City Council or staff.”
The history of Asheville’s advisory boards during the COVID-19 emergency lends some context to Tovish’s concerns. The city paused all meetings at the onset of the pandemic, citing public health issues. Although most boards resumed after a number of months, neither the Citizens/Police Advisory Committee nor Recreation Board has met since March 2020. Woody says that there are no current plans to dissolve existing boards or keep them on indefinite hiatus.
Patrick Conant, a former member of the Human Relations Commission of Asheville and current secretary of the Realignment Working Group, says the city is right to explore tweaking its approach to advisory boards. He points to a report the group authored in late 2023, which found that many board members felt they weren’t making a substantial impact.
Conant says the newly proposed core boards, with their explicit ties to city priorities, reflect many of the recommendations the Realignment Working Group shared with City Council in April.
But he suggests that the existing boards could become an invaluable complement, acting almost as think-tanks for problems the core boards are trying to solve. In recognition that city staff are stretched thin due to Helene recovery, group members have volunteered to provide boards with training and tech support free of charge.
Council members and staff have had productive conversations with the Realignment Working Group about adopting such a hybrid approach, says Mayor Esther Manheimer. She believes it will be possible to reach “a happy medium” where existing advisory boards provide feedback to the Helene-focused groups.
Asheville City Council next meets July 29. Advisory board restructuring, as of Friday, was not listed as an action item on the council’s agenda.
