One of the most consequential decisions that local elected officials make each year is approving the annual budget. It’s Asheville City Council members who have the final say on where to direct roughly $275 million in public funds – as well as how to generate revenue to pay for the cost of running the city.
Lately, the trend has been to raise property taxes. For three consecutive years, both Asheville City Council and the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners have voted to increase property tax rates. Altogether, the city and county property tax rates have increased by 23.22 cents per $100 of assessed value since 2023. For a home assessed at $350,000, that's roughly $813 in additional property taxes each year, according to a BPR data analysis.
And, at least in Asheville, this year’s budget is projected to present an “even more challenging” set of choices, due to inflation and slowed revenue growth, according to an Oct. 13 memo from City Manager D.K. Wesley.
“We anticipate the need to ask all departments for budget reductions, likely including service reductions,” she wrote. “This could impact our ability to run existing programs and make service improvements.”
That means, unless there's an economic windfall, Asheville's next batch of elected officials will again face difficult choices: reduce spending, find new sources of revenue, raise property taxes again – or some combination of the three.
Further thickening the plot, there is a proposed state amendment on this year’s ballot that would require lawmakers to limit property tax increases. BPR previously reported that it’s unclear exactly how much this law would limit increases; nonetheless, local governments, including Buncombe County, have been outspoken about how the measure would make it harder to balance the budget, provide basic services and respond to emergencies.
In the Asheville City Council race, there are six candidates vying for three seats. They have proposed a range of solutions, from a more austere spending plan to new forms of taxes. On the campaign trail they’ve talked about their ideas and, in the case of incumbents, there’s a voting record that provides a glimpse of what they may do next budget season.
Incumbents have a mixed voting record
Vice Mayor Antanette Mosley is the only incumbent in this year’s Council race who voted against the most recent budget, which included a property tax increase of 6.5 cents above the revenue-neutral rate, bringing the total rate to 50.78 cents.
But Mosley has not consistently opposed tax increases. She voted in favor of the fiscal 2026 budget, which raised the city's property tax rate by 3.26 cents. However, at a Sept. 28 candidate forum, Mosley specifically cited the latest tax increase as why she voted against the fiscal 2027 budget.
“I did not support this year's budget because I wasn't comfortable asking residents to absorb a tax increase without doing everything possible to control costs first,” she said, adding that Council has “an obligation” to look more carefully at expenses.
Mosley suggested the city examine administrative efficiencies, non-essential vacant positions, duplicated programs, contracts with consulting firms, and “programs that aren't producing measurable results.”
The budget Mosley voted against barely earned approval from Council, squeaking by in a 4-3 decision, with mayoral candidate Kim Roney and council member Sage Turner also voting against it.
In that budget, the city made some of the cuts Mosley alluded to, eliminating 16.5 net vacant positions; reducing some operational expenses; and pausing its annual contribution to the Housing Trust Fund.
However, the city also took on additional costs, mainly for employee benefits, which included higher healthcare and retirement rates, a 1% 401K match and a 2.8% raise for all permanent employees. The city also spent money for debt service on the $80 million in bonds Asheville voters approved in 2024.
This scenario encapsulates a classic Catch-22 for officials: balancing the pressure to reduce costs while continuing to deliver on infrastructure needs and other core municipal services. There’s also the challenge of maintaining benefits and living wages for the city’s roughly 1,400 employees at a time of rising inflation.
Maggie Ullman, another incumbent in this year’s Council race, voted for the most recent budget, despite previously sharing concerns about the affordability issues facing Asheville residents.
She explained her thought process at the Sept. 28 candidate forum.
“A budget cut can look good on paper, but it could cost us more in real life,” she said.
Ullman cautioned that cuts could lead to greater expenses down the road, including broken infrastructure and slower emergency response times.
She suggested scrutinizing contracts, phasing projects over multiple budget years and finding long-term efficiencies. As Asheville's former sustainability director, Ullman said she helped save $1 million annually by converting city lighting to LEDs.
Sheneika Smith is the third incumbent seeking reelection. She has supported the last two budgets.
In a Mountain Xpress voter guide, she suggested that the city reconsider any recurring expenses and manage overtime pay, which has soared in recent years at the Asheville Police Department.
“At the same time, fair wages matter,” she wrote. “Addressing compensation and pay compression is necessary to retain the experienced workforce that delivers city services.”
Smith has also suggested sharing costs with Buncombe County, particularly for transportation services.
Solutions – beyond making cuts?
On the campaign trail, the three non-incumbents in the Council race – Keith Young, Drew Ball and Jeffrey Burroughs – have discussed other ways to address the city’s budgetary challenges.
On multiple occasions, candidate Jeffrey Burroughs, a jeweler and small business owner in the River Arts District, pitched the idea of a “centralized grant department for the city.”
The idea is that a dedicated group of city employees could pursue grant opportunities to make the process more streamlined and effective, rather than each department going for grants on its own, they explained at a Sept. 28 forum.
“This is an area where we’re literally leaving money on the table,” Burroughs said.
They also recommended bringing in local experts, rather than paying an outside consultant, for some city projects.
Drew Ball, who currently serves as a Buncombe County Commissioner, supported two county budgets that included property tax increases. But for Asheville, he recommends seeking more outside funding as well as partnering with nonprofits and private organizations to help pay for infrastructure.
Ball also sees additional housing development within Asheville as a way to expand the city's tax base. At an Oct. 15 “Asheville on Bikes” forum, he pitched two other ideas specifically related to funding the city’s bus system.
“I think we need to find creative ways to bring more funding to the table. Maybe that's advertisements on buses,” he said. “Maybe that's going to Raleigh and DC and fighting for the funding that we need.”
Other streams of revenue?
Keith Young, who previously served on Asheville City Council from 2015 to 2020, acknowledged the difficulty of the budget.
“There are very few things that the city can do to raise new revenues and when you do raise those new revenues, they usually come in the form of fees and taxes,” he said at the Sept. 28 forum. But he told the Asheville Citizen Times that he’s concerned that property taxes have become the “release valve” whenever the expenses and revenues don’t match.
During his previous council tenure, Young never voted to raise the property tax rate. However, unlike the current budget environment, the matter was only put to a vote once during his term in 2017. Young did, however, vote in support of two other revenue-raising moves. In 2016, he voted in favor of a budget that increased vehicle registration fees. And in 2019, he seconded a motion that sold the naming rights for the city's civic center, a deal worth roughly $5.75 million over ten years.
Like Young, incumbents Smith and Ullman say there are still a few ways Asheville could bring in more revenue without resorting to a citywide increase in property taxes.
One recent example is the newly created Business Improvement District, which all three incumbents voted for in 2024. The district levies an additional property tax in downtown Asheville for the purpose of enhanced cleaning, safety, hospitality services and beautification efforts. In the most recent budget, council voted to use some of that money to cover Asheville Police Department personnel costs.
On the campaign trail this year, Ullman has repeatedly proposed a countywide quarter-cent sales tax dedicated to transit. “If we did that, we would take our current $13 million dollar transit program and add $20 million to it,” she said at the “Asheville on Bikes” forum.
Smith, meanwhile, told the Asheville Citizen Times that the city should "aggressively pursue” a tax on food and beverage.
However, the city cannot impose either of these taxes on its own. The transit tax would require cooperation from Buncombe County, the state government, as well as approval from voters. The city previously asked the North Carolina General Assembly to back the transit tax in 2021, but it was unsuccessful. In 2018, Council also made an unsuccessful attempt at levying a new food and beverage tax.
