Asheville NC, the good, the bad, and the ugly (Charlotte: property taxes, place to live)

[fastfilm]

The last several posts have offered great opinions on trade-offs. I want to know the opinion of you expert locals on the following projection. With its lack of commerce, is Asheville in danger of becoming a spiralling out of control taxing machine? I live in Los Angeles, which has become same and is one of many reasons we are moving: with the same low-ish income over the past 2 decades, I now have a diminished quality of life due to extremely high costs of all things L.A., i.e., phone bills quadrupled every year, water and power bills doubled every year, etc. on top of outrageous Calif. income taxes and local property taxes (the infamous property tax-lowering Prop 13 never applied to any homeowner who bought after 1978, like us.)

Socially we are fine with everyone: we are from L.A. after all. But I am worried about another possible projection. Will Asheville/Buncombe County become so knee-jerk liberal/nanny state that it will regulate against everything we personally love, like unsterilized show dogs, marksman sports, horse-zoning etc.? Could it incubate horrendously destructive policies like pro-illegal immigration? (I live with them in L.A.- illegals make the homeless seem like etiquette instructors for the Court of St. James in comparison.) Will the renting population make punitive taxation for homeowners to further their own agendas?

[Asheville Native]

Originally Posted by fastfilm

Will Asheville/Buncombe County become so knee-jerk liberal/nanny state that it will regulate against everything we personally love, like unsterilized show dogs, marksman sports, horse-zoning etc.? Could it incubate horrendously destructive policies like pro-illegal immigration? (I live with them in L.A.- illegals make the homeless seem like etiquette instructors for the Court of St. James in comparison.) Will the renting population make punitive taxation for homeowners to further their own agendas?

Not so much the county, but Asheville yes. 10 year plan to completely eliminate homelessness by giving people a place to live on the backs of the only true tax payers, property owners.
Unsterilized dogs, done, it is on the books
Not sure on marksman sports if they are actively trying to ban them outright. They are trying to eliminate guns though, and just had a no questions asked gun buy back.
Pro illegal immigration, you bet, when brought before council to ask the police to check that status of immigrants arrested for other crimes, it was meant with a huge amount of resistance and calling the council member that brought it up a raciest.

[Fitz]

Originally Posted by Asheville Native

Not so much the county, but Asheville yes. 10 year plan to completely eliminate homelessness by giving people a place to live on the backs of the only true tax payers, property owners.

As if there weren't an endless supply of homeless people in America to make such a plan totally absurd. A better plan to combat homelessness would start with trying to attract better jobs to the region.

Recently the developers of the monstrous and ugly Ellington Hotel were able to get the approval of the city by including "affordable housing" in their plans for development. The hotel and condos will cater to the wealthy and the affordable housing will give the working poor who clean the wealthy's rooms and make their beds a place to live.

[Asheville Native]

Originally Posted by Fitz

As if there weren't an endless supply of homeless people in America to make such a plan totally absurd. A better plan to combat homelessness would start with trying to attract better jobs to the region.

Follows the rule "build it and they will come" It takes a fool to not understand that the segment of our society that 'chooses' to remain homeless have a communication network to learn where the free rides are easily obtained, and Asheville is it.

Originally Posted by Fitz

Recently the developers of the monstrous and ugly Ellington Hotel were able to get the approval of the city by including "affordable housing" in their plans for development. The hotel and condos will cater to the wealthy and the affordable housing will give the working poor who clean the wealthy's rooms and make their beds a place to live.

Want to build anything big in Asheville, you are going to have to play by the socialists rule of council. The 'cost' of the 'affordable housing' will only be shifted to the cost of the majority of the unit. And in a few years after completion would anyone care to guess if any of the units are 'affordable', or have been upgraded to cater to the more affluent.

[andybuildz]

Did anyone ever think that maybe Gated Communities can be a really good thing?

So many of us have such vast differances and opinions about everything.
All too often I hear such vengence in our tones towards others that don't think exactly the same way we do.

Just think about it...you could live in a gated community where none of the people you think are undesirable would come in. Its not like you have to lock them out but they/you'd know which community is one you'd rather avoid.
You'd know right up front what they were thinking pretty much.

We could even have our own shopping centers in our little GC's. Health food stores in some...gourmet in others...meat and potatoes in others...

Imagine how life could be if we "knew" what we were walking into.
We could live our own lives with less stress. Less gossip and we could be less opinionated...imagine that.

We could even have our own little gov'ts ...imagine that too.

I mean isn't this what it's all becoming anyway?
At least this way we'd sorta know where people were coming from.

But then maybe...the little communities we were in would have it's own little squabbles and then we could divide those up....

and before you know it...lol.
Just kidding
No man is an island????

[Asheville Native]

And you could build your little gated commune of anti social elitists somewhere besides here.

Just kidding

[andybuildz]

Originally Posted by Asheville Native

And you could build your little gated commune of anti social elitists somewhere besides here.

Just kidding

Sure you are.
Kidding

[NCBND]

I just bought 10,000 acres up in Madison County and am going to develop a gated enclave called "The Village" with no modern conveniences. What do ya'll think? The perimeter will be well monitored.

[andybuildz]

Originally Posted by NCBND

I just bought 10,000 acres up in Madison County and am going to develop a gated enclave called "The Village" with no modern conveniences. What do ya'll think? The perimeter will be well monitored.

I love it cept' I'm wondering...will it be monitored looking in or looking out?

[Lynne Vogel]

During a March 21, 2006 Buncombe County formal session, Buncombe County commissioners discussed safety regulations for expansive slope side developments. During the public hearing Gary Higgins, Director of the Soil and Water Conservation District, told the group "We are not opposed to development in Buncombe County, but what we are concerned about is that as you move up steeper slopes you cannot apply the same rules of construction that you do lower down. They are more likely to erode and cause downstream problems." Building homes and roads on steep slopes results in extreme rates of erosion Higgins said, and erosion-control measures are not as effective on these settings. In addition, it's "very difficult to establish ground cover on such areas because excavation goes down into subsoil and such soils are shallow and poor, often with a high mica content." Higgins also said that excavation cuts going down to bedrock create slowly permeable surfaces where runoff is greatly increased.

Higgins displayed a group of slides illustrating these problems in an "unnamed development." Higgins said these photos show that "there is tremendous sloughing and slipping of impacted slopes." The slides also included pictures of early construction sites on Reynolds Mountain. Higgins predicted that "the likely effect of such high-density development is to cause landslides."

For more information about the Commission hearing, please see Cecil Bothwell's article "Steep canyon rearrangers" in the March 29, 2006 issue of Mountain Xpress. For photos of landslide property damage in Western North Carolina please visit the North Carolina Geological Survey website.