(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . DKos Asheville Open Thread: Two missed opportunities for better government, More options for bears [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-06-10 Good day and welcome to DKos Asheville. This is the weekly DKos Asheville Open Thread for Saturday, June 10th, 2023. This space appears each weekend to give readers a variety of links to local and regional news of interest, and opens the floor for comment and discussion. Wishing all a good day from beautiful Western North Carolina. “Daily Kos fights for a progressive America by empowering its community and allies with information and tools to directly impact the political process.” Today’s diary, highlighting three stories from our local alternative newspaper, Mountain Express, provides a nice snapshot of three concerning issues facing the city. Dangerous bear encounters have been growing more common in WNC’s residential areas for years, but are statistically accelerating as the region grows. I live near a bear sanctuary, far from town on the edge of the wilderness, but I rarely see them. Ten miles over the mountain to the west, lies the little tourist town of Black Mountain. Bears are plentiful there, because like the Mayor told me a few weeks ago, his bears are smarter than mine. The story below features a residential bear specialist who tends to every encounter, including trauma follow up and care. The outage spanned 11 days, from Dec. 24, 2022 through Jan. 4, 2023, left tens of thousands of customers without water and shut down businesses during the crucial holiday season. This story follows up on a very poor response by everyone. Police and sheriffs team up to fight crime in downtown Asheville. But the partnership never happened, according to the report. Apparently it was everyone’s fault. Mountain Express, Storms Reback, 6/9/2023 When a small bear appeared on their porch April 3, Stacey Crowley and her wife, Babs Burlingame, were initially thrilled. After all, they’d moved from Chicago to a quiet neighborhood north of Weaverville in 2011 “specifically for more nature.” When the yearling cub made off with the 20-pound bag of birdseed they’d just purchased, Crowley and Burlingame’s enthusiasm waned, and after they spotted another cub eating from their birdfeeder, it vanished altogether. Crowley and Burlingame had always viewed bear sightings as moments to savor. Previously, they’d filmed bears eating from their bird feeder and playing with their hose. Being on the other side of a window from the bears made them feel at ease. But their house, and the sense of infallibility it provided, had a weak point — the dog door — and they watched in horror as their dog, Ruby Biscuits, ran through it. Crowley chased after Ruby out the front door, through the gate a fleeing cub had kicked open, and down the stairs. When she got to the bottom, she found the cub’s mother mauling her dog. Humans tend to fight, flee or freeze in such situations. Crowley fought…… Mountain Express, Asheville Watchdog, John Boyle and Andrew R. Jones, 6/10/2023 This is a developing story and will be updated. The City of Asheville has released its long-awaited Independent Review Committee report on the devastating holiday season water outage, and it highlights the city’s ineptness in what it called “murky” communications, providing accurate information and even identifying who was actually in charge. The report also said Mayor Esther Manheimer, according to city employees, exerted “significant,” “major” and “extreme” pressure on staff members regarding estimated timelines for restored water services. “These people told the report’s authors ‘that if a public message was not immediately developed giving an estimate, the strong insinuation from the Mayor was that the jobs of the people stating objections were on the line,’” the report states. “The authors asked Manheimer about this and she said she did put pressure on staff ‘to change their assessment and put out a public message giving an estimate on the restoration of service.’ “She told the authors ‘that the public demanded a timeframe,’” the report states. That “pushed” Water Resources Director David Melton to say water would be restored within 24-48 hours, according to the report. The outage spanned 11 days, from Dec. 24, 2022 through Jan. 4, 2023, left tens of thousands of customers without water and shut down businesses during the crucial holiday season. Mountain Express, John Boyle and Andrew R. Jones, Asheville Watchdog, 6/10/2023 The city of Asheville’s announcement in April that Buncombe County sheriff’s deputies would assist in patrolling downtown touted the 30-day initiative as a partnership and featured this statement by City Manager Debra Campbell: “This is a good example of a collaborative approach to a safe downtown.” The plan “called for a coordinated effort to present a highly visible and unified law enforcement presence” that included pairing officers from the Asheville Police Department with deputies in two-person teams downtown, according to a recently released summary of the initiative from the Sheriff’s Office. But the partnership never happened, according to the report, obtained by Asheville Watchdog through a public records request. “While the initiative could be deemed successful in its goal to identify the ‘root cause’ for the existence of crime and other problems or issues in the Downtown Central Business District, the collaboration and partnership between the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office and the Asheville Police Department unfortunately did not occur,” the report said. Thank you for reading and contributing, I hope you have a nice weekend. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/6/10/2174512/-DKos-Asheville-Open-Thread-Two-missed-opportunities-for-better-government-More-options-for-bears Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/