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CANTON – The patriotic red, white and blue bunting is already draped along Bridge Street for Labor Day and Canton’s 109th annual parade, the mountains’ longest-running celebration of blue-collar workers.
“People used to come from all over,” recalled longtime resident Kathy Johnson, a teller at First Citizens on Main Street. She remembers riding on the Canton Savings and Loan’s float in 1974 through the downtown maze of one-way streets. “I was up front in this twirly thing, waving at everybody, and we would go across the bridge.”
In a service and consumer society, Labor Day has become a long weekend, a last hurrah for summer picnics or beach outings, as labor unions have lost much of their power nationwide and many towns lost their manufacturing base.
Canton saw its Evergreen Packaging paper mill survive but watched its downtown decay and the annual parade dwindle in attendance.
Now town officials are betting that a revamped Labor Day weekend could help boost the economy of the Haywood County burg less than 10 miles from Asheville’s city limits.
Rebranding itself as “WNC’s hometown,” Canton could become the mountains’ next boom town with affordable housing and commercial rents.
“We haven’t been very good about telling our story,” conceded Seth Hendler-Voss, the town manager.
After last year’s decreased turnout at the parade and festival, the Canton Board of Aldermen asked Hendler-Voss and town staff to come up with ideas to increase attendance. The new town manager saw the holiday as a possible key to a decadeslong puzzle of economic revitalization for the town of 4,400.
First of all they had to move the festival back into the center from downtown instead of the recreation park about a quarter mile away.
Canton has pumped up the free festival’s bill with 20 different bands, including funk and rock to draw a more diverse crowd at Sorrell Park just down from the town hall. There will be seven food trucks on hand, thanks to the town’s new ordinance.
The three days are free to the public, with a $65,000 budget. The town has contributed $10,000, but Champion Credit Union has picked up much of the bill as the chief sponsor.
Labor Day itself will feature the traditional parade through town, bluegrass and clogging, a 200-vehicle classic car show, and free swimming at the town pool.
“We want to show that Canton knows how to throw a party,” Hendler-Voss said.
Mountains’ first mill town
But coming into downtown, there’s no hiding Canton’s unglamorous hard-working history.
Driving in from the Canton exit off Interstate 40, visitors first see Evergreen Packaging’s massive smokestacks billowing out white plumes of vapor that join the clouds in a late summer sky.
Ohio printer Peter Thomson founded the Champion Paper Co. His son-in-law Reuben B. Robertson founded the Champion Fibre Co. in 1906, to provide wood pulp for the Ohio paper mill.
The Canton pulp mill was the region’s first massive industrial operation, paving the way for manufacturing to boom in the early 20th century across the mountains.
Champion sponsored the first Labor Day parade in 1906 to salute its workers, and the tradition stuck in Canton.
The plant is now a subsidiary of Evergreen Packaging, now owned by a New Zealand holding company. From cardboard and milk-cartons, Evergreen has followed market demands, becoming the leading manufacturer of paper products like the grande cup of latte you order at a Starbucks anywhere on the East Coast.
Organized labor remains strong at the Canton mill with 600 union jobs out of a workforce of 1,200 with an average annual salary of $78,000.
Canton natives like Chris May concede their town has had a bad reputation for industrial pollution that once fouled the Pigeon River flowing into Tennessee. The Champion smokestacks once belched a stench that could be smelled as far away as Asheville depending on which way the winds were blowing.
The company has spent millions in past decades to improve the Pigeon River and the air quality, but still remains a leading polluter in the region while meeting U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards. Evergreen will spend $50 million over the next five years to replace coal-fired boilers with natural gas boilers.
Likewise, the town has spent much of the past decade rebuilding infrastructure damaged in the flooding of 2004 when remnants of two hurricanes swelled the Pigeon River and swamped the downtown.
Recruiting businesses
The town is considering extending water and sewer down U.S. 19 toward Candler, perhaps coaxing more businesses and mixed-use development. “That corridor is going to be the future of Canton,” said Hendler-Voss.
The town board recently passed an ordinance for commercial property maintenance, set to go in effect late this month. Property owners in the historic downtown who let broken windows, rotting wood or unstable foundations go unrepaired could face fines of $50 to $500.
Cleaning up eyesores downtown could persuade new investors to make a bet in Canton’s future, officials believe.
Canton wasn’t the first place Steve Kaufman considered when looking to expand space for RNM Engineering, a 50-year-old Waynesville firm specializing in mechanical engineering.
Kaufman looked in Asheville where most of the firm’s clients are located, but commercial space was prohibitively priced. It was even hard to find a place in Waynesville.
Kaufman and the engineering firm were able to buy the 1919 Brannon Building in downtown Canton and renovate the wood floors, keeping much of the distinctive stamped tin ceilings and original bead-board on the second and third floors. “It’s got great bones.”
The town of Canton sweetened the pot with $10,000 in grants for restoring the facade and part of the interior.
“Now instead of a 40-minute drive from Waynesville, we have a 20-minute drive from Canton into Asheville,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman was surprised at the reception his business has received coming to town. “I wasn’t expecting this local support.”
Meanwhile, Canton native May has been putting his money into older buildings in the downtown, renovating and leasing them to new businesses.
This week, he was putting the final touches on Kobe Express, a Japanese restaurant opening up a new location. It’s the fourth for Kobe, which has restaurants in Waynesville, Sylva and Cherokee. The sushi eatery will be only the third new restaurant opened in downtown Canton.
With breweries popping up everywhere around Asheville and beyond, May and others believe it’s only a matter of time before craft beer is manufactured in Canton.
“We’re not here to make Canton the next Asheville,” May said. “But compare the cost of living here versus Buncombe County with its shortage of affordable housing and its traffic congestion, and I believe that goods and services and people will want to come here.”
Working families could get better prices and more for their money in Canton’s close-knit neighborhoods or out in the surrounding countryside in the Bethel area. “What would cost you $300,000 in Buncombe, you could get for $200,000 or $180,000 here,” May said.
“And Canton is only 9.8 miles from the Asheville city limits,” May said.
Canton is no longer afraid to bill itself as a bedroom community, reliant on its neighbors. While Evergreen has good, high-paying jobs that serve many in Haywood, Canton is home to many commuters.
“We see a line of headlights headed out of Canton each morning around 6:30 a.m.,” said Jason Burrell, the assistant town manager and clerk who heads economic development.
“When they come back from working in Asheville, we don’t want them to have to change clothes and turn around to go back to Asheville to eat or for a date night,” Burrell said. “We want them to be able to come downtown and eat or have a beer, or play with the kids in the park.”
Hendler-Voss, 37, has been on the job only a little more than a year. With a background as a landscape architect, Hendler-Voss had worked previously in the City of Asheville parks department for nine years. He wanted to take his talents in “place-making” to manage a small town like Canton.
Canton is a close-knit community where the police chief Bryan Whitener, on the force for 18 years, walks the sidewalk up and down and greets neighbors. But the small town feel aside, Canton has never been known as a scenic destination.
On some tourism maps, Canton has simply disappeared between Asheville and Waynesville, Hendler-Voss laments.
But visitors are flocking to the former industrial section of Asheville’s River Arts District where abandoned warehouses have been readapted.
“We have a town where we are still making things,” Hendler-Voss said. That working class vibe could work to Canton’s advantage.
He’s been getting encouragement from many of the town’s older residents.
Out walking Main Street, he runs into Chief Whitener who’s out patrolling his jurisdiction and talking to friends.
Edie Burnette stopped her car and rolled down her window to chat with her town manager and her police chief. Like many residents, she’s looking forward to celebrating Labor Day with her neighbors and what could come to Canton in the near future.
“There’s an energy in town,” Burnette said. “I think this is a new beginning.”
CITIZEN TIMES
McCrory signs bill green-lighting $12 M to Canton mill
IF YOU GO
Canton will hold its 109th annual Labor Day Festival sponsored by Champion Credit Union Saturday through Monday. All events are free to the public.
The WNC Country Roots and Rock Experience will be held 3-10 p.m. Saturday in Sorrells Street Park.
Bands include Porch 40, Joe Lasher Jr., Soldier’s Heart, Aaron Burdet and Josh Noren
Sunday 1-10 p.m. Papertown Bluegrass Jam in Sorrells Street Park will feature Balsam Range, the Snyder family, Mangas, Colorado, Locust Honey String Band, Danielle Bishop and Stuart Brothers.
Monday, the 109th Labor Day parade will be held 10 a.m.-noon downtown.
The Canton Heritage Homecoming with bluegrass and clogging will be held 12-10 p.m. at Rec Park.
The vintage car show will be held 12-4 p.m. at Canton Middle School.
Labor Day weekend marks the traditional end of America’s summer, a season when Floridians for decades have sought respite from our hot, soggy weather in the high country of western North Carolina.
As I write this, I’m returning from such an escape myself.
While others dream of palm trees, beaches and Mickey, some Floridians long for cool nights and mountain vistas. It’s been that way for a long time.
Around Labor Day in the Roaring Twenties, for example, the social pages of Orlando newspapers brimmed with reports of residents returning from the North Carolina mountains.
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“Fletcher Proctor returned Sunday from a three months’ stay in North Carolina,” the paper noted on Sept. 8, 1925. “Miss Mary Spear has returned from Montreat, N.C., where she spent several weeks,” according to a Sept. 10 item; other returnees included “Mrs. Phil Slemons and daughters” and “Miss Elizabeth Harris,” who stopped over in Atlanta for several days after a month in Hendersonville.
Ties to ‘Land of the Sky’
The ties that bind Central Florida and western North Carolina are more complex, and longer, than the bonds created by the many area folks who have second homes there.
The economies of both regions have long depended heavily on tourism. In his 2005 book, “Creating the Land of the Sky,” historian Richard Starnes notes that Southerners began seasonal escapes to the Carolina mountains well before the Civil War, when low-country planter families sought respite from the heat and also from the mosquitoes that could make summer a deadly “fever season.”
But it was after the Civil War and the coming of the railroads that tourism emerged “as an important part of the social and economic reality of the New South” in areas including Florida and the Carolina mountains, Starnes writes.
Tourism boosters noted the similarity between the appeal of both Florida and the mountains — depending, of course, on the season. Writing in 1883, one North Carolina newspaper editor suggested that folks split their time between the two states, an arrangement that offered “a life of perpetual spring time and flowers.”
Going home to Asheville
In western North Carolina, most permanent residents lived lives completely separate from those they came to call “the summer people.”
But for many in North Carolina, as in Florida, the seasonal visitors offered income that was otherwise hard to come by.
I’m reminded of this when I visit one of my favorite spots in Asheville, N.C.: the boyhood home of the novelist Thomas Wolfe in the sprawling former boarding house his mother, Julia, ran for visitors to the area (see wolfememorial.com).
This is not the author Tom Wolfe, known for his white suits and books including “Bonfire of the Vanities.” The earlier Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), perhaps North Carolina’s best-known literary son, gained fame through his 1929 novel “Look Homeward, Angel,” in which the fictional Gant family mirrored Wolfe’s own upbringing in Asheville.
Like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Florida’s own Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Wolfe was edited by the legendary Maxwell Perkins of Charles Scribner’s Sons. (An upcoming movie, “Genius,” stars Jude Law as Wolfe and Colin Firth as Perkins.) When Wolfe died at 38, his Time magazine obituary noted that, of his peers, he was perhaps the writer of whom the most had been expected.
Although his expansive, poetic novels are not read as much as they once were, he remains a fascinating, influential Southern writer. It was Wolfe who made the phrase “you can’t go home again” part of the American vocabulary.
Wolfe’s mother, an astute businesswoman, not only ran her Asheville boarding house but also became a devoted land speculator, buying parcels in – where else – Florida.
“Perhaps,” Wolfe once wrote, “this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America – that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement.”
Many of us will be in movement on this holiday weekend. Be cool and be safe, wherever you are.
Joy Wallace Dickinson can be reached at jwdickinson@earthlink.net, FindingJoyinFlorida.com, or by good old-fashioned letter at the Sentinel, 633 N. Orange Ave., Orlando, FL 32801.
This report is one in an occasional series on Asheville’s shortage of affordable housing.
ASHEVILLE – Gordon Smith admits to having seen eyes roll when he talks about cross-sector collaboration yielding concrete solutions to the region’s affordable-housing crisis.
Put another way, that’s getting builders, businesses and bureaucrats working together.
But a meeting of the area’s captains of industry last week could give the cause a boost, he said.
About 60 people attended the Aug. 27 meeting at Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity’s office, including members of Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce boards, the Economic Development Coalition of Asheville-Buncombe County, the Tourism Development Authority, people involved with the chamber’s five-year plan for job creation and local developers, said chamber board chairwoman Suzanne DeFerie. She also is president and CEO of Asheville Savings Bank.
Chamber President and CEO Kit Cramer organized the meeting to ensure affordable housing would be examined within the context of the region’s many industries. Some Asheville city and Buncombe County government officials also attended the meeting.
The next meeting will occur this fall, but a date has not yet been set, DeFerie said.
“The ultimate goal really is to bring together the public sector, the nonprofits and the private sector – not just the development community, but also hoteliers, manufacturers and restaurateurs,” said Jack Cecil, president of Biltmore Farms.
Ideas discussed at the meeting – which some called a first for the region – included encouraging large employers to help employees with housing costs and making grants available for homebuyers.
“I cannot remember a time when the private sector, through the chamber’s leadership, has been as involved with the housing affordability discussion,” said Cynthia Barcklow, a Buncombe County planner who also attended the gathering.
That fact is important if Western North Carolina is to see progress in tackling the region’s affordable-housing predicament, experts say.
How the region became mired in a shortage of affordable housing for everyday workers is complicated. But it could start with Asheville’s ever-more-visible national profile, which has increased the numbers of visitors and residents. The city’s popularity combined with the post-recession reluctance of developers to build has left the region short in the supply of places to live — while demand keeps rising.
That dynamic has pushed up home prices and rents.
The Problem
A report released in December found a less than 1 percent apartment vacancy rate in Buncombe, Henderson, Madison and Transylvania counties.
That study, conducted by Ohio-based Bowen National Research, a real estate market consulting firm, found median rents for market-rate apartments ranged from $832 to $3,300 and $583 to $1,187 for tax-credit units.
And while more jobs exist than in years, many are in low-wage industries such as retail and tourism.
July marked the 10th consecutive month with the highest level of nonfarm payroll employment ever for that month in the Asheville metro area, which comprises Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson and Madison Counties, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
About 19,000 retail jobs and 17,000 tourism jobs existed in Buncombe County alone during 2014, according to a study released in August by the Pennsylvania-based consulting firm, Tourism Economics. Only the healthcare sector employed more people, with 25,000 employed, that research showed.
Possible remedies
The cost of housing “has now become an issue that our economic development prospects are asking about when they talk with us,” DeFerie said during her opening remarks at last month’s meeting.
One way to confront that concern is for the private, public and nonprofit sectors to band together and seek federal dollars designated for affordable housing, Cecil said.
Priorities for those dollars would be building, repairing and renovating housing for the area’s workforce, he said.
Options someday could include local companies providing their employees with housing, Cecil said.
“That’s a good question to ask in the future,” he said.
Arthur Fleming, a bank senior vice president and director of community investment services, told the meeting attendees that obtaining equity would be key to solving the affordable-housing conundrum.
The bank would provide $1 million to the Asheville and Buncombe County community through its 13 member banks that exist in the area, Fleming said.
But that $1 million would be contingent on the community raising $2 million over a fixed time period of nine months or a year, he said.
In one scenario, that money could be available as grants for homebuyers through the local member banks.
If the buyer, for example, qualified for a mortgage that was less than the house cost, the grant money could help make up the difference.
“It reduces the money that people need to buy the home,” Fleming said. “It’s not about buying a cheaper house. That’s not a solution.”
Fleming and his Atlanta colleagues have used that model for projects in Atlanta; Palm Beach County, Florida; and Savannah, Georgia.
The bank also helps renters by providing funding to developers of multi-family apartment complexes.
Mountain Housing Opportunities Inc., an Asheville nonprofit community-development corporation that builds and improves homes, received $500,000 to build the Villas at Fallen Spruce, a 55-unit senior-housing complex in Leicester.
And the bank offers credit enhancement that developers could use when borrowing money to build a housing project. Financing would be provided to the developers, for example, with a bond that has a lower interest rate than conventional financing. The savings then could be passed on to the renter or homebuyer, Fleming said.
Private-sector participation
That tool could be particularly useful in today’s economic environment, which Jonathan Miller described as one with persistent tight credit.
The high credit standards that have existed since the Great Recession also is a reason local governments in places like Asheville, New York and “anywhere else in the country are connecting with the private sector,” said Miller, the New York-based co-founder of Miller Samuel, a residential real estate appraisal company, and the commercial valuation firm Miller Cicero.
“There’s no money in the coffers,” Miller said. “The public sector can’t build affordable-housing units or supplement rent. It doesn’t have the money for it.”
Compounding the tight-credit situation is wage stagnation while rents and home prices keep rising.
“That dramatically exacerbates the problem,” Miller said.
And in places like Asheville, where the economy is improving, “there is no housing for the jobs being created. That’s the challenge.”
Which is also why the private sector must be part of the solution, Miller said.
“It benefits the business community for its employees to have access to housing, so business can grow in your town,” he said.
Private-sector organizations throughout the country assisting their employees with housing include Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, said Maya Brennan, housing vice president at the Urban Land Institute Terwilliger Center for Housing in Washington, D.C.
“More local employers see this is as a challenge that’s affecting retention and recruitment,” Brennan said. “It makes financial sense to make obtaining housing more feasible.”
Biltmore Estate and Mission Health in Asheville also have programs that help employees become homeowners. Both companies provide up to $2,500 in matching funds per employee for a down payment on a first home.
Lew Kraus, Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity’s executive director, agreed that wages were integral to solving the affordable-housing equation.
“I always say that the main thing that prevents us from helping more people is the lack of capital,” Kraus said. “That doesn’t mean just writing checks to Habitat. Capital also comes in the form of paying wages that allows employees to afford housing in the area.”
Kraus said he is encouraged that members of the local private sector are talking about helping alleviate the affordable-housing strain.
“It’s to everyone’s advantage to come together and find a workable solution,” Kraus said.
Throughout the years, conversations among many representing different sectors of the Asheville-Buncombe community have occurred with affordable housing at their center, Kraus said.
“I trust that all of us will continue to get together and come up with some tangible concrete steps,” he said.
One thing gives him hope about the current process: Business people say they are also considering collectively applying for grants from large organizations such as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago.
“That’d be wonderful, I’d love to see that happen,” Kraus said. “I’ve never seen that done here.”
But the challenge remains immense, Scott Dedman, Mountain Housing Opportunities executive director, reminded the meeting audience during his remarks.
He suggested a goal of building 200 new units of affordable housing a year – an endeavor that would cost “upwards of $5 million annually in new commitments,” Dedman said.
Councilman Smith emphasized that it’s already common knowledge that the public and nonprofit sectors can’t solve the affordable-housing problem on their own.
Even if city officials maximized the tools available to them to address shortage, Asheville leaders would be able to meet only half the area’s current need within seven years, Smith said in April.
In the most generous forecast, a total of 2,800 rental units could be created by 2022 – half of the 5,600 that a report released in January concluded the region lacked.
Smith found an idea put forth by Biltmore Farms’ Cecil to create a joint city-county affordable-housing commission that would include private-sector members particularly intriguing.
“That’s building a table for everyone to sit at,” Smith said. “The private sector is owning the problem.”
Dedman concurred.
“Any significant portion that the private sector could provide would be helpful.”
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The agency that promotes tourism in Asheville has a $9 million budget of public money, but doesn’t have to reveal how it spends a lot of that money.
Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Stephanie Brown told the Asheville Citizen-Times reports (http://avlne.ws/1O5it80 ) that the salaries and bonuses of agency employees are not public record.
Brown says the bureau employees are workers on contract from the private nonprofit Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, so even though they handle public money, they aren’t considered public employees like the city manager, police officers or firefighters.
North Carolina Press Association attorney Amanda Martin says it is appalling that so much money can be spent without reporting, itemizing or accountability.
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — The agency that promotes tourism in Asheville has a $9 million budget of public money, but doesn’t have to reveal how it spends a lot of that money.
Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Stephanie Brown told the Asheville Citizen-Times reports (http://avlne.ws/1O5it80 ) that the salaries and bonuses of agency employees are not public record.
Brown says the bureau employees are workers on contract from the private nonprofit Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, so even though they handle public money, they aren’t considered public employees like the city manager, police officers or firefighters.
North Carolina Press Association attorney Amanda Martin says it is appalling that so much money can be spent without reporting, itemizing or accountability.
“Motor traffic is the biggest generator of tourism in our county,” said Mark Jackson, director of Visit Central Florida, Polk’s tourism promotion agency. “More than 50 percent of the tourists who come to Polk Country drive here.”
That’s because the lion’s share of tourists who sojourn in Polk come from Florida and neighboring Southeast U.S. states, primarily Georgia, Alabama and North and South Carolina, he said.
Polk attractions, especially Legoland, also benefit from tourists staying in the Orlando area, who are more likely to make the impulsive decision to drive to Winter Haven if it doesn’t gouge their wallets, Jackson said.
“The biggest impact on trip planning is bringing gas prices below the $3 per gallon barrier,” he said. “It’s a psychological barrier.”
The Auto Club Group in Tampa, the AAA affiliate in Florida and 10 other states, projects low gas prices will produce the highest number of tourists driving to their destinations during the Labor Day holiday since 2008.
Auto Club projects 35.5 million Americans will drive at least 50 miles from Thursday to Monday, according to a press statement. That represents a 1 percent increase over the 35 million motorists who hit the road last Labor Day and the fourth consecutive holiday to see higher traffic.
In Florida, the gas price in late August averaged $2.35 per gallon, or $1.02 per gallon lower than a year earlier. The national average stood at $2.56 per gallon, 88 cents cheaper than the price during last year’s Labor Day weekend.
“The summer travel season is almost over, and many kids are back in school, but an extended weekend and positive economic fundamentals should be enough to convince millions of Americans to take one more trip during Labor Day weekend,” said Brent Stahlheber, Auto Club’s senior vice president, in the press statement. “Historically, more Americans have shown a higher tendency to travel when Labor Day weekend begins in August. Although this year’s holiday begins in September, AAA still expects more Labor Day travelers than last year, primarily due to low gas prices, solid income gains, rising household net worth and an improving housing market.”
Federal government data shows disposable income is projected to increase 3.5 percent compared to last year, the AAA group said. In addition to spending less on gas, consumers will have more to spend because of lower unemployment, rising wages and an improved housing market that is increasing the value of U.S. homes.
Jackson agreed rising income and housing values create a wealth effect that benefits tourism. The biggest impact is probably on drivers as opposed to other forms of travel since that’s often a last-minute decision, Jackson said.
“People are feeling wealthier and realizing they have more money, and that means they can spend more money on that last-minute trip,” he said. “Another positive travel factor for Polk County this Labor Day weekend is the current lack of a hurricane threat for the weekend. Erika kept people close to home last weekend, which should bolster last-minute travel jaunts for in-state travelers to Polk County.”
Labor Day tourism in Polk will contribute to a banner year already for local tourism, as measured by the revenue generated by the local tourism tax, Jackson said.
Visit Central Florida and other public tourism agencies are funded by the “bed tax” on revenues at hotels, motels, home rentals and other accommodations of six months or less.
Revenue from the 5 percent tax on Polk accommodations rose 16 percent to $7.3 million through July 31 for the 10 months of the agency’s current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, according to data provided by Jackson. That’s $1 million more in revenue compared to $6.3 million collected over the same period last year, the previous record for tourist tax collections.
Occupancy rates at all Polk accommodations have increased 5.4 percent through that period compared to a year ago, Jackson said.
Kevin Bouffard can be reached at kevin.bouffard@theledger.com or at 863-401-6980.
ASHEVILLE – The area’s most important tourism promoter, the Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau, is run on public money. But details on how the bureau spends a large part of that cash is kept private.
The bureau has an almost $9 million budget funded by a local lodging tax.
Twenty full-time and three part-time workers, including the executive director, draw their pay from that pot of money. That’s a total of $1.7 million in salaries, benefits and bonuses.
But unlike workers for the city or Buncombe County who are also paid with public tax money, the public isn’t allowed to see how much individual tourism employees make. Also kept from public view is how much of the tax money goes to bonuses, which one estimate puts at nearly $200,000 this year.
While bureau employees handle public money and carry out the will of a government entity, the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority, they are actually contracted workers from the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, a private nonprofit organization.
When asked this month for information on individual pay or a total number for all employee bonuses, Stephanie Brown, bureau executive director, said she wasn’t allowed to say.
“(Our) counsel advises that chamber employee compensation is not public record. I am not at liberty to disclose information that is not public record,” Brown said. “All staff of the convention and visitors bureau are chamber employees, including me as the executive director of the Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau, a department of the chamber.”
Workers paid with tax money, such as city firefighters or sheriff’s deputies, have salary records that are easily available. That is because of state open records law mandating public access.
The arrangement of having private contractors carry out public business is not unusual. Proponents say it can be efficient and save tax money.
But open government advocates, such as Amanda Martin, attorney for the N.C. Press Association, say the arrangement can be problematic when the public can’t see exactly how money is being spent.
“I think it would be appalling if they are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars with no reporting, no itemization and no accountability,” Martin said.
Questions about the lodging tax and bureau pay started with a local man some call an open data activist.
Patrick Conant, owner of Asheville software development company PRC Applications LLC and former web manager at the local publication Mountain Xpress, claims a special interest in government transparency. He said he noticed a growing public conversation about how the lodging tax is used.
“I saw an opportunity to engage the community and demonstrate how public records can allow ordinary citizens to help build a more transparent, efficient government,” he said.
Conant made a public records request to the tourism development authority. He asked for emails from members of the appointed body that had to do with issues such as a recent deal to raise the room tax.
He got back hundreds of pages of digital documents and combed through them, inviting the public to help. Among the pages, he found a few that referred to bonuses and profit sharing.
In one email dated June 23, Brown said the bureau was in the process of completing employee evaluations. Because of high hotel sales and a large amount of tax revenue, employees would qualify for bureauwide profit sharing as well as individual performance bonuses.
The performance bonuses were already budgeted, the director said. But money would have to be moved for the profit sharing for the fiscal year that was about to end June 30.
“The profit share is paid out of surplus revenue, when the criteria are achieved. We have exceeded the criteria and will pay the profit share out of this year’s budget,” she said. “Funds are available in the ‘contingency’ line of the budget to cover this expense, but $50,000 will need to be moved to the ‘professional services.’”
Authority policy allows up to 10 percent performance bonuses for employees who meet individual goals and up to 5 percent profit sharing when the bureau collectively meets criteria such as high hotel sales.
While Brown declined to give the amount of the bonuses, a spreadsheet obtained by the Citizen-Times from the bureau gave enough information to calculate what they should be.
Last fiscal year, ending June 30, salaries and benefits were $1.5 million, with salaries alone at $1.3 million. Fifteen percent of that — the maximum amount workers could get in performance bonuses and profit sharing — would have been $167,000.
This current fiscal year, salaries and bonuses are $1.7 million with salaries at $1.5 million. That would put bonuses and profit sharing up to $191,000.
Bonuses not unusual
While bonuses and profit sharing may not be common in the realm of government, they’re not that unusual in the quasi-governmental tourism field, according to a trade group.
The Destination Marketing Association of North Carolina looked at profit sharing for groups such as the bureau in 2013. A survey said among groups with budgets of $3 million or more, six of seven used “variable cash compensation” such as bonuses.
“It’s really not that unusual of a thing,” Brown said, noting it was an effective way to reward and motivate employees.
“And I think it’s undeniable that the performance of the convention and visitors bureau has been outstanding.”
‘Discrete’
In a few pages of emails, Brown corresponds with authority finance chairman John Ellis about profit sharing and employee bonuses.
The two talk about the best way to transfer the money for the profit sharing and how to make an official motion during the authority meeting.
At one point, Ellis says, “I know we’re trying to be discrete but (I) assume the purpose of this motion will be explained prior to my making it.”
A following email from Brown says, “When Jennifer makes the financial report, I will say that, as we wrap up the year-end budget we are slightly over budget in the professional services line item, and you can jump in with the motion. How’s that sound?”
Ellis then says, “I can simply state that it’s come to the Finance Committee’s attention that there (is) a bit of business that needs to be done before the year is over and then make the motion. Either way.”
The exchange includes a few more emails in which the two craft the best way to make the transfer. None of the proposed motions explicitly state that the money will go to bonuses.
Asked about the emails, Brown said they amounted to “some coordination in advance of the meeting.”
“There’s really nothing secretive about it. It’s completely appropriate and expected that employees are compensated with occupancy tax dollars,” the director said.
Ellis, when asked about his use of the word “discrete,” said it was a “poor choice of words by a volunteer board member.”
He pointed out that the meaning of the word is different than “discreet,” which means being careful in speech about something delicate. “Discrete” means “apart” or “separate.”
“What I meant to say is we didn’t need to spend much time on this. It was more of a formality,” he said.
56TH ANNUAL “ART ON MAIN” FESTIVAL SET FOR OCTOBER 3 AND 4
The Arts Council of Henderson County is proud to present the 56th annual Art on Main fine art/fine craft festival along Hendersonville’s historic Main Street, October 3 4, 2015. Festival hours will be 10am–5pm both days.
One of the region’s most popular outdoor arts festivals, Art on Main will feature fine arts and fine crafts from local and regional artists, as well as many artists from states beyond the southeast region. More than 75 artists will participate in this juried and judged festival.
Among the new artists for this year is ceramic artist Bridget Fox. Bridget is a Southern Highland Craft Guild member from Micaville, NC. Bridget’s “biomorphic” designs invoke sea creatures of fantasy. She uses this imagery to make rattles, bowls and other vessels. Also new to Art on Main, local artist Kim McCrum makes silver jewelry with a contemporary edge and a touch of the southwest. Her perforated layers have depth and pattern. Kristen Eisenbraun comes to Art on Main from Greenville, SC and the farms and ranches where she grew up. She is a painter of gentle realism often incorporating the human body. Although not completely new to Art on Main, Harry Jarman returns after a few years absence from the show. Harry’s paintings include still life and landscapes with fine detail. “Harry was an annual fixture at Art on Main for many years,” says Kim Adams, Event Coordinator, “and we are thrilled to see him return.”
Hendersonville artist Amy Perrier, who was new to Art on Main last year, has had one of her paintings, “Reds in the Morning,” chosen as Art on Main’s marketing image for 2015. Her acrylic finger painting will be seen on postcards, posters and T-shirts promoting this year’s show.
An awards reception is being planned to honor all artist vendors who are participating in Art on Main on Saturday evening after the show closes for the day. $3,000 in prize money will be awarded. In addition to the $1,000 Best of Show Award, first place ($500), and second place ($300) prizes will be awarded in both categories of fine art and fine craft. Four Honorable Mentions of $100 each will also be awarded.
The Art on Main committee is pleased to have three distinguished judges for the 56th Art on Main. Tom Madison is currently the executive director of the Upstairs Artspace, a non-profit gallery of contemporary art in Tryon, North Carolina. He studied painting and art history at Virginia Commonwealth University where he later served on the faculty as administrative manager of the university’s Anderson Gallery. Subsequently he served as director and curator of Gallery 5800, a contemporary art gallery in Richmond, Virginia. He has been a freelance writer of artist profiles for “WNC” magazine and has continued his education by studying sculpture at UNC Asheville.
Jodi John Pippin has been painting professionally since May 2001 in her home studio. She taught for six years in the Art Department at Mitchell College in Statesville and has been working in arts administration since 2010 with the Iredell Arts Council, the Haywood County Arts Council and the Asheville Area Arts Council. Jodi is also the President of the Western Arts Agencies of NC, which is a group of leaders committed to making connections across WNC through arts organizations. Jodi received her BS in Cultural Anthropology from Appalachian State University with a Minor in Folklore, and she completed the first half of her Master’s of Architecture at UNC-Charlotte before becoming a mother.
Gary Lee Huntoon is a lifelong craftsman who has focused on ceramics. After studying at the prestigious Pond Farm with Marguerite Wildenhain, Gary decided that clay was his media. He has taught ceramics for high school and college students as well as workshops around the country.
Art on Main is presented by the Arts Council of Henderson County with major support provided by Morris Broadband. In addition, the festival is supported by the Henderson County Tourism Development Authority (www.historichendersonville.org), the Dr. Minor F. Watts Fund at the Community Foundation of Henderson County, the City of Hendersonville, and Mast General Store.
For more information please contact the Arts Council at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 828-693-8504. The web address is www.acofhc.org.
The Arts Council of Henderson County is a community organization that promotes, advocates for and nurtures the arts in Henderson County and western North Carolina. Its office is located at 401 North Main St., Ste. 302, Hendersonville, NC 28792. (Entrance on Fourth Avenue West.)
The Arts Council is supported in part by the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources, funds administered by the Community Foundation of Henderson County, Henderson County, and Henderson County Travel and
ASHEVILLE – In the late 1990s, careful planning for a run or hike on a hot summer day called for a look at the weather forecast and, more importantly, a check on predictions for the day’s air quality.
Skipping that last step could have set up a lung-searing slog through a hazy day.
North Carolina health officials in 1999 alone issued 111 orange or red warnings for “bad air days” — days on which sensitive groups or everyone was warned against exercising outside.
None were made last year, reflecting cleaner air in the state and mountains that likely helped cut death rates for asthma, pneumonia and emphysema.
In Western North Carolina, peak levels of ground-level ozone, which irritates lungs and is most prevalent during warm weather, topped daily standards on the high ridge just west of Mount Pisgah for 21 days in 1998 and 24 days in 1999.
Down the mountain in Bent Creek, a more long-term measure of ozone levels exceeded federal limits for years at a time in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
These days, when visitors take in long-range views in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, “The mountains are green and the skies are blue more often than not,” said Jim Renfro, air quality specialist for the park. “Fifteen years ago that was the exception. Now the exception is the hazy days.”
When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in July said the Charlotte area was reaching EPA standards for ozone, it meant the state was in compliance with federal measures of air quality “for all pollutants in all areas across the state” for the first time since 1997, when much less stringent standards were in effect, the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources said.
DENR called that step “a milestone capping years of improvements in air quality.”
Experts attribute the shift to tougher federal and state regulations, notably North Carolina’s 2002 Clean Smokestacks Act. Air pollution remains a health concern and still can cloud mountain views, but many experts and activists have shifted their focus on air quality issues to reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to slow global warming.
Scared of the air
Before and at the turn of the century, air pollution in Western North Carolina had become a public health crisis and threat to the region’s tourism industry.
There were reports of increased respiratory problems and people complained that haze too often hid the mountains from residents and tourists alike.
“The problem of air pollution scares me,” Buncombe County Health Department physician Dr. Lindsay Bridges wrote in the Citizen-Times in 2000. “I now read the newspaper to know whether or not it is safe to exercise outside. I’m starting to hear patients tell me how hard it is to breathe some days, and a few weeks ago my daughter had her first asthma-like attack.”
Stuart Thorp, then president of Boy Scouts of America’s local Daniel Boone Council, said in 1999 that visibility problems were obvious when scouts climbed mountain peaks on hikes.
“On a clear day you’ve been able to see for miles and miles and miles, and in the hazy summer you go to the same location and you can’t see the next ridge. It is disappointing,” he said.
There were many days when it was unwise to make the trip anyway.
Ozone levels set records in the Smokies in 1998, and the park had 25 days with unhealthy levels of the pollutant as of late August that year.
“It’s definitely unhealthy to go out now and hike, even for an hour. We’re blowing it big,” Renfro said at the time.
Gov. Jim Hunt discussed solutions with his counterparts from Tennessee and Georgia at the Grove Park Inn in 1999, and such talks among governors became an annual event for a while.
The state passed the Clean Smokestacks Act in 2002, requiring the state’s electric utilities to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide by more than 70 percent over the following 11 years.
The law was intended to give North Carolina standing to bring lawsuits to force other states to reduce emissions affecting North Carolina. The state sued Tennessee Valley Authority in 2006, and a 2011 settlement forced the utility to clean up its coal-fired power plants and pay North Carolina $11.2 million for energy efficiency programs.
North Carolina utilities have also been required to get a certain percentage of their electricity from renewable sources like solar panels.
At the same time, the federal government tightened rules on power plants, increased fuel efficiency and emissions standards for cars and cracked down on diesel engine emissions, a major source of fine particles linked to respiratory problems. That had a major impact on pollution reaching the state from elsewhere.
Cleaner and clearer
By virtually all accounts, the efforts worked. In WNC, the concentration of fine particles in the air, like dust, smoke and soot, dropped by 41 percent in Buncombe County from 2000-02 to 2011-13 and by 38 percent over the same period in Haywood County.
Ozone levels fell 26 percent from their 1998-2000 peak in Buncombe County to 2012-14 and 28 percent in Haywood.
Visibility in the mountains on the haziest days improved from nine miles in 1998 to 32 miles in 2013, DENR says. On clear days, it increased from 51 miles in 1997 to 91 miles in 2013.
“Ten years ago, people used to comment when the air was clear, when they could see the mountains” because that was relatively unusual, said Keith Bamberger, a state air quality official based in Buncombe County. “Now people comment when you can’t.”
Falling death rates for three key respiratory illnesses have accompanied the decline in air pollution, researchers at Duke University found. The rate for deaths from emphysema fell about 27 percent from 2000 to the end of the decade, roughly 22 percent for asthma, and 17 percent for pneumonia.
The researchers wrote last year that their findings “support the hypothesis that improvement in air quality … contributed to the improved respiratory health of the North Carolina population” though they said they cannot be certain that cleaner air caused the change.
Still to come
Some see the improvements as an example of government regulation that performed as intended, even though they say air quality can get better still.
“I always say the (federal) Clean Air Act is a success. It’s one of the best programs we have. It’s working,” Renfro said.
Tom Mather, spokesman for DENR’s Division of Air Quality, said much of the change would have happened under federal regulation alone, but the state Clean Smokestacks Act accelerated the process in North Carolina. Electric utilities actually have exceeded pollution reduction goals called for in the law, he said.
The law “has turned out to be one of North Carolina’s proudest success stories,” said Molly Diggins, state director of the Sierra Club.
June Blotnick, executive director of environmental group Clean Air Carolina, said the success discredits claims that rules strangle business.
“We’ve had 40 years of evidence of how clean air regulations don’t hurt the economy,” she said.
That idea is disputed however. “A claim like that is kind of dicey because it’s virtually impossible to either prove or disprove,” said Brian Balfour of Civitas Institute, a conservative think tank in Raleigh. The economy might have performed even better without the rules, he said.
More improvement in air quality is probably ahead, although how much is uncertain, and people in the field say the state still has work to do. Renfro said that as older, dirtier cars are towed to the junkyard and replaced by cleaner, newer ones, a process that has already been occurring for years, vehicle emissions will continue to drop.
Utilities and other users of coal will continue to switch to cleaner sources. Plans to stop burning coal and switch to natural gas at Duke Energy’s plant in Skyland and a coal-to-gas conversion at Evergreen Packaging’s Canton paper mill will make a “major difference” in local pollution levels, said David Brigman, director of WNC Air Quality, a Buncombe County agency that regulates air quality.
The EPA’s Clean Power Plan put in place earlier this year is designed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, not pollutants that presented the greatest local concern in the late 1990s, but its implementation is expected to also decrease emissions that harm health and reduce visibility.
There are still scattered warnings for people particularly sensitive to pollution, a category Bamberger says takes in about 40 percent of the population, to avoid strenuous outdoor activity.
It’s not unusual for DENR to list air quality as “moderate” in Buncombe County and the state’s more populated areas. The Smokies got their name from the mist that often shrouds both peaks and valleys, but visibility there and elsewhere in WNC still falls short of what it would be absent man-made pollutants.
Chemical changes in soil and streams in the park from acid rain will take years to undo, Renfro said. Twelve streams on the Tennessee side of the park are listed as not meeting federal water quality standards because of that problem, he said.
Ozone still damages plants Renfro monitors at Clingmans Dome, the park’s highest point, he said,
Advocates say even lower levels of pollution still have adverse health effects on people, and population growth could degrade air quality in the future.
Improved air quality is not the same as perfectly clean air, said Laura Wenzel of Chapel Hill-based Medical Advocates for Healthy Air.
“There’s no … safe level of ozone nor is there for particulate,” she said.
“What we thought has healthy before or clean may not be,” Blotnick said.
General Assembly considers easing up
State legislators are considering several steps this year to alter air quality protections in North Carolina.
Proponents say the changes would remove unneeded and expensive red tape without causing environmental problems. Critics say the moves could roll back progress the state has made in recent years.
“There is a lot of good news on the air quality front, but if you get rid of the very programs that got you here, what assurance do you have that you won’t return to the problems you had before?” said Molly Diggins, state director of the Sierra Club.
Many of the changes are contained in a regulatory reform bill that passed the Senate but not the House. Its leading supporter, Sen. Trudy Wade, R-Guilford, could not be reached for comment last week.
She said on the Senate floor July 1 the measure “will increase government efficiency, reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens on citizens and the business community and protect private property rights.”
Among the possible changes are:
Regulatory reform. The bill pushed by Wade would change several types of state environmental rules and procedures, including a number affecting air quality. The House voted not to agree and conferees have yet to offer a compromise version of the bill. It would provide that:
• Companies that reported environmental violations to the state could escape penalties and fines.
• State rules on idling diesel engines, a major source of fine particulate pollution, would be repealed.
• The number of air quality monitors in the state would be reduced by about half.
• A three-fifths majority vote of a state board would be required before the state would enforce new federal air quality rules. The federal government would have the authority to administer rules the board did not approve.
• The ability of outside parties to slow the issuance of permits for airborne emissions would be limited.
• If someone challenged certain state actions, like issuance of environmental permits, in court and lost, a judge would be required to make them pay the state’s attorney fees.
Sponsors of the steps say they want to repeal unnecessary rules that are not needed and prevent measures that would hamstring business without a substantial environmental benefit. Critics say the moves would erode some of the programs responsible for the dramatic decline in air pollution that has occurred in the state.
Tailpipe inspections. The House has passed a separate bill to end the requirement that cars in several suburban counties pass a test of their exhaust emissions during their annual inspection. It has yet to clear the Senate.
Backers say the inspections are no longer needed because cars run much cleaner now and air quality has improved. Opponents say dropping inspections would allow too many polluting vehicles.
Renewable energy. Efforts to repeal a requirement that providers of electricity in the state get more of their power from renewable sources in the future and to end state tax credits for renewable projects like tax credits are tied up in state budget talks.
Supporters of the changes say the state should not aid one form of energy generation over another. Backers of provisions favoring renewables say they reduce pollution and production of greenhouse gases and the state laws have boosted employment in the solar industry.
CITIZEN TIMES
Vehicle emission tests may end in Haywood, Henderson
CITIZEN TIMES
Duke air quality meeting draws huge crowd
CITIZEN TIMES
Tighter standards lead to cleaner air, better views
Counting down
Concentrations of fine particles in Buncombe County, in micrograms per cubic meter, by three-year average:
