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Asheville City Council Candidate Q&A: Grant Millin

A graphic with BPR's logo and the text "Asheville City Council Candidate Q&A" and a portrait Grant Millin wearing a blue button down shirt and black jacket pictured outside with City Hall in the left background.

Editor's note: BPR's candidate questionnaire was created after asking community members to share their questions and what issues matter most to them and their communities. The candidates' responses have not been edited or fact checked by BPR. Share your questions and ideas for future elections coverage by emailing us at voices@bpr.org or record a voice mail at 828-253-6700.

Grant Millin Bio:

I am a Strategy Innovator and Management Consulting for Public Good business owner. I have lived in Asheville over 20 years. My parents owned the oldest continuously operating retail store in Asheville. My Dad has a long history of civics as I do. He was a founder of the Asheville Downtown Association. I am a progressive Democrat.

I am an honorably discharged veteran and am highly educated. I studied and worked in commercial photography and motion picture production for 20 years. Much of what I know about strategy and the type of innovation I focus on comes from observing City of Asheville (COA) activities. I have participated in hundreds of COA council meetings and other activities like Public Safety Committee meetings. I am part of the COA Boards and Commissions Restructure workgroup. I have had 100+ of my commentaries and LTTEs published on various issues.

I look forward to sharing more about the COA Restructure and Center of Progress components of my council platform and business. I am also developing a national impact 501c3 nonprofit. I will be officially launching my campaign with more platform details and doing more outreach in the near future. My campaign will be an example of sharing more content and ideas than other candidates who are really not doing anything especially imaginative or useful in many cases.

COA Restructure is mainly about identifying what the Top 25 high performance municipalities across the nation and free world are doing right and then seeing where COA and Asheville citywide stands in contrast.

Contact and campaign info:

http://www.grantmillin.com
grantmillin@gmail.com

1. If elected, what is your top priority as an Asheville City Council member and what steps would you take to achieve that goal?

The priority for me and I hope whoever fills the other two open seats is to demonstrate a new standard of City of Asheville (COA) leadership. The issues of trash, syringes, homelessness, Illegally Manufactured Fentanyl and Substance Use Disorder (SUD), and mental illness as to the public safety conversation—and then what COA could have done differently to save more people from COVID 19—are serious matters needing serious people who are committed to the ‘truth and make right’ motive with the North Carolina oath of office.

There’s a public health dimension and what I call Human Security Strategy. The HCA takeover of Mission Health appears to place doubt around Asheville’s public health capabilities too.

The Anthropogenic Climate to Climate Protection Transition will be listed on GrantMillin.com as one of my Top Ten issues. That’s about public safety and public health as the total Human Security arena starts getting unsustainable with more and more climate instability.

It’s all about leadership and the performance of COA; where and when COA can make a difference. That strategy and innovation arena of the COA portfolio can be everything… but when COA is on the job we should expect great results in most cases.

As I point out above understanding the performance qualities of COA as to operations across the board, as to APD operational effectiveness in contrast to actual crime victimization, and then other important areas like moving away from the Buncombe Tourism Development Authority dominance in local economic development strategy to what I call Community Economic Development 3.0 all relates to what high performance means for COA and the entire city experience.

Are we doing things in ways we might not if we knew better? That’s a key approach to strategy and innovation. Looking at what happened during the March 17 and 18 strategic retreat (aka Vision 2036 Strategic Operating Plan) is one step… but I’ve got a whole lot more to offer than just recommending that COA hire yet another external consultant to help us all work with municipal strategy and innovation in more skilled, high-performance ways.

I also lay out that a recent survey of the International City / County Management Association states municipal executives like our city manager only get an average six years of tenure; not the 15-20 years we’ve seen locally. There wasn’t a big payoff for the people of Buncombe and Asheville in Wanda Greene being county manager for 20 years.

We can thoughtfully start planning for Debra Campbell’s successor. That should all be done in an appreciative, cooperative, and honorable manner."

2. The 2036 strategic plan calls for Asheville to be “a city with abundant housing choices for people at all economic levels and stages of life. Chronic homelessness is a thing of the past and rapid rehousing strategies abound thanks to an effective network of service providers.” What action is needed today to reach these outcomes?

The term “chronically homeless” is Federal bureaucracy speak for Citizens with Disabilities (CwDs). 30 percent of the Asheville-Buncombe Point in Time Count population are CwDs. The new permanent supportive housing project at the East Asheville Ramada is meant to serve CwDs… or at least the Federal definition of permanent supportive housing is about CwDs.

COA has a lot of difficulty discussing where Asheville CwDs fit. My first academic paper was on homelessness. Following the Reagan Administration there was little doubt the massive increase in homelessness included reducing healthcare services and long-term residential care for CwDs.

I will insist COA is accurate and precise at to extending equity strategy to Asheville’s CwDs.

3. As a City Council member, what is your role in building an equitable and diverse community in Asheville?

I have a strong background advocating for Citizens with Disabilities, especially where COA is concerned. As I say next concerning the reparations process, I certainly don’t want the Asheville African-American experience to go in reverse.

4. How should the City fund reparations efforts?

There’s no information on funding. The Community Reparations Commission is just beginning to launch. Now the city manager is emphasizing core services.

I certainly don’t want the Asheville African-American experience to go in reverse. We can say there has been some funding for reparations issues to date.

5. What role should the City play in helping residents respond to extreme weather and climate change?

This is an area I have spent a lot of effort and thought on. There’s a 2002 council candidate one individual claimed was the only candidate with climate and environmental credentials. That’s sort of moot. For example, if a person has a PhD is sustainability but Asheville is failing at the Anthropogenic Climate to Climate Protection Transition, then whatever one individual seen as being the best at sustainability might be doing really doesn’t matter that much in the big picture.

I started to give a presentation on my ideas for reframing all this as the Anthropogenic Climate to Climate Protection Transition a couple of years ago and it was not a good feeling laying out the true nature of the challenge. Since I am one of the only people in Asheville to have completed a physical geography course and completed my UNCA BA in Sustainability and Security Studies (Interdisciplinary Studies, Intendent Degree), and I am expecting to be a new council member, I will help resurrect proper focus on these issues.

During this campaign I was asked about the recent COA resiliency study and the climate equity initiative. While the same council candidate I refer to above was involved in the COA 2009 Sustainability Management Plan, a completely new COA Sustainability Strategic Innovation Plan is needed. The focus on strategic innovation is about avoiding the way plans collect dust; and now how sustainability needs to be part of our new Community Economic Development 3.0 platform.

Otherwise, one of the things to prepare for is that while exponentially more and more extreme weather due to Anthropogenic Climate may not hit WNC as hard and fast as the rest of the globe; being seen as a place for climate migration does not necessarily bode well for the current Asheville civilization and our people.

I ended up with several FEMA Continuity of Operations certificates. I take emergency response and ideas like resiliency very seriously as well.

6. What development priorities would best serve Asheville moving forward?

I can say I am seeing some ‘different’ ideas as to some sort of magical ‘growth math’ I guess involving Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand sweeping over Asheville and making everything wonderful. This includes slashing the development process and fees according the Ultra Conservative slate on the COA ballot section this year.

I looked into the Open Space Amendment and that has been a strong example of what’s wrong. Sadly, there was a recent COA presentation where the notion of a pro-growth approach to open space and viewshed was an answer to the racial wealth gap.

I don’t think Business as Usual real estate development is going to pan out that great. There are predictions we are in another housing bubble. But this is part of where the Asheville-Buncombe Digital Twin comes in: when I refer to a more valuable future and being future ready, a digital, transparent system for looking at development and other strategic scenarios is ideally a game change innovation we most likely need to take advantage of immediately.

7. How do you respond to voters who feel the City is prioritizing tourism over investments in public services?

I look forward to covering the Community Economic Development 3.0 component of the COA Restructure and Center of Progress platform my campaign in part represents. We can scale down the Buncombe Tourism Development Authority over five years and launch a new community oriented economic development platform while maintaining similar occupancy tax funding.

The exciting part is designing this new strategy and rebranding Asheville in the form of a civilization young and old will love and appreciate well into the future!

8. How will you approach policing and public safety in Asheville?

I take policing and public safety very seriously. There will be more content from me on this subject when I officially launch my campaign soon. Right now the COA Reinventing Public Safety webpage hasn’t been updated recently so issues like getting APD up to operational effectiveness and wrapping the Human Security Strategy my campaign platform speaks to needs renewed focus.

https://www.ashevillenc.gov/projects/reimagining-public-safety/

I participated in the March 30 Public Safety Committee meeting. Another citizen was making statements about people being killed by police during traffic stops. I had no problem pointing out that despite the conditions faced by APD staff, there are no lethal force cases. I submitted two emails for public comment for that meeting. The second email was withheld from the public which called for APD calls for service and crime state going back 20 years instead of just five.

9. What is your position on the proposal to restructure City boards and commissions?

The COA Restructure component of my platform may be in agreement with some of the COA Boards and Commissions Restructure workgroup findings, and I am part of that workgroup. Basically, COA Restructure starts placing performance responsibility with the mayor, council, and the city manager. Picking great consultants with specialized skills can make sense. But where it’s farming out COA problems to consultants or a maneuver like the COA Boards and Commissions Restructure there’s always the ‘Buck Stops Here’ concept of President Truman we all need to just go ahead and own.

Taking responsibility for Asheville as to what COA council members can do and probably need to do more, better, and faster these days is a privilege and an honor. It will be an honor to be of service to our local part of the US Government in the same way it was for me as a member of the US Armed Forces.

10. How do you plan to engage community members in the Council's decision-making process?

I just asked Mayor Manheimer last week to turn the Public Input call-in capability during council meetings back on. We need to reelect Mayor Manheimer because there is no successor who can do the job at least as well as she can on the 2022 ballot. But that’s a thing as to civic engagement and reducing the number of public records requests because information flows more freely day to day.

I look forward to covering my pending records requests on the Citizen-Times APD surveillance footage lawsuit (declined at present) and for the responses to last year’s COA Emergency Shelter Operations RFP. The purpose of seeing the APD surveillance footage is not to bash APD unnecessarily as they overhauled how video capture is done, mainly with body worn cameras (BWCs). As a cinema person I can attest that is historical material. I requested the footage be uploaded to an Apple or Google cloud account for anyone to access.

By the way, when APD was about to purchase its first shipment of BWCs I was the person or one of the few folks who almost as soon as that agenda item was published was asking for the corresponding BWC policy. At that point there was no plan to roll out the BWC policy along with the BWC procurement. Council stopped and the BWC policy NCGA gave us is pretty much what citizens and municipalities are currently working with. I am completely open to going back and letting the public understand what the current best practices on BWC use and footage is across the nation and free world. That’s what I was asking at the time in 2015.

BWC policy and how engaged Asheville citizens were in related questions and options is an example of where civic engagement matters, but it gets difficult to get the maximum number of citizens providing lots of input on hundreds of options every year. Doing all that in a new way is important and interests me. These are issues that in part are what my business is about.

Also, the Mayor’s Committee for Citizens with Disabilities (MCCD) needs to be resurrected. Once sworn in I will immediately at as the mayor’s proxy on the MCCD.

https://www.ashevillenc.gov/government/mayors-committees/

The Asheville-Buncombe 2021 Point in Time Count refers to 30 percent of that population being ‘chronically homeless’. That’s a Federal bureaucracy speak term for Citizens with Disabilities (CwDs). CwDs are both crime victims and can end up being on the wrong side of law enforcement as perpetrators.

It’s time to stop hiding the largest and most vulnerable minority in Asheville. There isn’t a competition between Asheville’s African-Americans and CwDs because a tragic aspect of structural racism is that people of color end up with a lot of disability in contrast to the rest of us.

Otherwise as a Leadership Asheville graduate and a participant in the COA Citizen’s Academy and more recently as the only white person to complete the COA Community Engagement Academy process I look forward to sharing another one of my Top Ten Issues solutions: the Asheville-Buncombe Citizen’s Engagement Academy and works in tandem with the Asheville-Buncombe Digital Twin. And yes, the Asheville-Buncombe Digital Twin is another one of my Top Ten Issues.

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