Scott Burroughs

In one word, what is the top issue that is motivating you to run for Asheville City Council?

Rebuilding

The region is still recovering from Hurricane Helene — and likely will be for a long time. Considering that resources will be limited, where do you prioritize putting the redevelopment funds?

We need to empower the individuals, neighborhoods, and small businesses that make this city home. I've seen first hand from my time studying and living in Post Katrina New Orleans that grand plans fail unless there is mutual support between the community and government. We need to start with getting people back in their homes and then prioritize economic rebuilding with investments in diversifying our economy beyond tourism. Infrastructural rebuilding needs to be done through the lens of redundancy, resilience, sustainability and conserving our natural and cultural resources.

One of the biggest issues facing Asheville is lack of affordable housing. What is your top policy change that you think would help address the situation?

Zoning updates are the single most powerful tool that the city has to tackle our limited housing stock. Missing middle reforms which provide flexibility for homeowners to offer additional housing within our existing neighborhoods have been held up in the current council because of personalities and political agendas. We need cooperative, pragmatic, and proactive leadership that can carry out reforms to benefit the city as a whole. We also need to simplify our zoning regime, switch our current envelope restrictions to Floor to Area Ratio limits and offer bonuses and incentives for developers willing to deliver the kinds of developments that our city needs to grow and thrive. Affordable housing is not a switch that someone refuses to turn on. It takes experience, knowledge, and flexibility to find creative solutions that benefit all of us and address our housing crisis.

The city is facing a budget deficit of at least $30 million. How would you prioritize allocating what funds the city does have? Is there a section of the budget where you would make budgetary cuts, or would you choose to raise property taxes? 

The city needs to look towards more efficiently utilizing it's current resources. This means trimming the fat. Better vacancy management, stronger overtime caps, civilianization of certain roles, and cross-training could reduce recurring personnel overruns while sunset reviews of operating costs and consolidation of management and support services, software rationalization, and reduced reliance on consultants could produce modest but recurring savings without affecting frontline services levels. Hopefully our new city manager can use her deep experience with Buncombe County to suggest other creative cost sharing ideas through city and county partnerships.

The city also has to look into turning it's wealth of properties into assets - putting underutilized buildings back into productive use by leasing them out to organizations and companies beneficial to Ashevillians. For instance, the city could address the shortage or Pre-K institutions by leasing out buildings such as the historic fire station on Merrimon Avenue which sits vacant. These would be win win solutions turning these buildings into community assets while generating revenue and getting their maintenance costs off the books. The city has underutilized spaces like this throughout the city and even throughout the county.

The City of Asheville and Buncombe County spent years working on a reparations plan for Black residents. Now the federal government is withholding funds from any entity that refers to DEI or that singles out a specific race for any special consideration and is actively discouraging DEI initiatives in local government. What is your feeling about the work the Community Reparations Commission produced?  Would you implement its recommendations considering the federal restrictions? How?

The City of Asheville's efforts around reparations like many other recent efforts have been all hat and no cattle. I'm a middle aged white guy, so it's not my place to say what would constitute adequate reparations for all the inequities and injustices people of color have faced going back to the founding of our country. Those systemic issues are much bigger than one person or one city can rectify. While I admire the intent of the reparations effort, years in, I lament the time, energy and resources wasted by the execution. We've seen our city give $175,000 to an out of state consultant for subpar work, be sued more than once for discrimination in it's DEI efforts and appropriating over $2 million to a fund with no clear legal plan on how to spend it. The city needs to take ownership of fixing planning efforts that failed such as urban renewal, but we cannot do that through discriminatory actions that preference one group or ethnicity. Two wrongs do not make a right.

Do you think the current City Council has prioritized the right issues?  If yes, why are those the right issues?  If not, where would you re-direct the focus?

We have wasted too much of our city's time and resources joisting after windmills. Its the taxpayer that's left footing the bill as maintenance gets deferred and services deteriorate. Council needs to refocus on rebuilding our communities, infrastructure and economy. The damage Helene did to our homes, our businesses, and our spirits needs to be front of mind throughout all of the City of Asheville's business. We need pragmatic, creative, and proactive solutions to the multitude of challenges we face together. We ignore our recovery at our own peril. As a city, the choice is clear get busy living or get busy dying. Let's chose living. All together now!

What do you love about Asheville that you want to see more of?

Trees and community. I want to see our city invest deeply into our green infrastructure like parks, greenways, trails and urban forests. We've seen how our neighbors such as Greenville and Cary have used outdoor space to spur revitalization, culture, and growth. These spaces are the equitable, inclusive glue that bring our diverse mountain communities together. These spaces improve our health and nurture the next generation.