State of the City | Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer

Esther Manheimer is serving her third term as Asheville’s mayor. The challenges this city faces today—and the strategies deployed to tackle them—have evolved a lot during her time in office.

Today, we check in with Mayor Manheimer around a variety of issues—homelessness, affordable housing, enforcing the city’s policy on short-term rentals and property tax increases, along with boosting the salaries for police officers and firefighters. We also get her assessment of how this council has performed its duties, her thoughts on President Biden passing the baton to Kamala Harris and what she sees for her own political future.

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Transcript

Matt Peiken: Do we have a NIMBY issue in this city? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: You know what's funny, I would say we've moved past NIMBY because people will come and say, I am not a NIMBY, but, and then they will tell you why they oppose the project.

So it's like they're aware of the issue around the need for housing and that NIMBY might be a negative term. But obviously sometimes in the opposition of a project, it sounds a lot like NIMBY. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah, one of the things I wanted to broach with you is about how the city policies are around affordable housing and initiatives that have happened in your time on city council.

And how do you feel the city is keeping up or doing when it comes to opening up channels for more affordable housing and working with developers to create [00:02:00] more opportunities there. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: The city's developed quite a toolbox around affordable housing, so much so that we're actually an example to a lot of other cities that they want to copy some of our programs and policies around affordable housing. And we have also implemented some of the changes that a lot of progressive cities are trying to put in place around affordable housing. We have not, though, done some of the more extreme changes that you might see in some places like eliminate altogether single family housing zoning.

So we haven't gone that far. But we have tried to either create opportunities for developers to include affordable housing in their projects and have some sort of reward system for that. That's because the state of North Carolina doesn't let cities require it but we can incentivize it.

Matt Peiken: Yeah, from your vantage point, how successful have those incentives been, because we only have so much power here in the city and the county to do things. What are some of the newer things in our toolbox that you think are making a [00:03:00] difference that other cities are emulating? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: So it ranges. So some things might be a density bonus. You can do more density in your project without having to come to council for approval if you're in an urban corridor or or within a certain distance of an urban corridor.

That's a basic example of something. We also have something called the land use incentive grant, which is technically on hold right now while we revamp it yet again, which provides basically a tax rebate to developers that will include affordable housing in their development.

And there's a lot of debate there around tax policy. And I think is very fascinating. To look at what is the cost of a program like that to a city? Because, you have a developer that's going to take a piece of land that might've only paid 2, 000 in taxes a year, and now all of a sudden it's going to pay, I don't know, 40, 000 in taxes a year, but they're going to get a large portion of that rebated back to them because they're [00:04:00] providing affordable housing. And if you look at that on a per unit subsidy, what is the cost of that to a city? Could we have taken that money and done something else with it that would have gotten us farther in this affordable housing crisis or serve the community better in a different way, maybe not even through housing.

So that's the debate that you're going to have around these incentive programs, whether or not the cost is too great versus what you get from it. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. Where do you sit on that in terms of that debate? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: I Have over the years become somewhat more skeptical of those programs. I'm very resentful of the federal government not stepping up and providing more housing for people because they can do so much more. They already have a HUD voucher system in place. We estimate, I think we have about 5, 000 residents in Asheville that are living on federal housing vouchers, whether they're in public housing or in a privately owned multifamily housing apartment complex or whatever that takes federal vouchers.

The federal government just has the ability with the push of a button [00:05:00] to go so much farther than a city like ours struggling with a budget, the size of ours, a quarter million dollars a year and you look at the cost to us to the taxpayers on a per unit basis, you do have to ask yourself, does this make the most sense for a city for a county to facilitate this housing?

Or does it make more sense to go lobby the federal government, which I've done personally, just in the last few weeks, to try to increase that voucher program and provide more benefit. 

Matt Peiken: You just got to a question I was going to ask you, you have lobbied the federal government. Obviously I would imagine the Biden administration is at least to some degree sympathetic, you might have some kind of entree there. Tell me about what you're hearing when you talk about this in your lobbying efforts, what do you hear back? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: So I would say I hear three things. One, yes, the Biden administration is very supportive and has asked for an increase in the voucher program through the president's budget ask course, which is subject to Congress's approval.

What I hear [00:06:00] from the Republican controlled Congress is, we can't just give people things. We need to just create programs that Provide for tax credit lending, which these are also valid other ways that affordable housing is leveraged. But it's this philosophical policy difference around taxes and subsidies.

But the other thing, and the most concerning thing that I hear on this recent trip, I went with the U S conference of mayors with a small cohort of mayors from around the country is it's kind of the bureaucracy challenges, just trying to loosen up some of these programs to make them more available to communities and to individuals.

It gets bogged down in things like how does the treasury department define this word or how does, it's just it's things like that, that you think. Oh, Lord, is this ever really going to become something that's more viable, or will it just get bogged down? Some of the challenges, for example, when I was on this most recent trip, I think Everyone would agree that mental [00:07:00] health has become a bigger issue than it has historically for cities, all over the country, but yet, the secretary of health and human services reported to us that his department experienced the deepest cuts of any department federally. 

And so how is this possible that we're in agreement that mental health is a crisis in our cities and our states in our country, but yet we're not funding a department that could help with this. And I assume it's because of this difference of opinion that the Republican controlled Congress feels like this issue should be handled locally, should be funded locally, maybe on a state level, city, county what have you, and they're not willing to step up even though they have the biggest pocketbook.

Matt Peiken: Let me ask you, speaking of, you're saying Congress is in a position to maybe help and they're not, I know you have at least met a little bit with Chuck Edwards. You were on that crimes Summit that he threw and I was there. I recorded it. I was wondering if you've had any conversations with Congressman Edwards around this or any other issues to try to get some movement or when you talk about [00:08:00] these policy debates Are you just at a stalemate in terms of just how you come to these issues, it's just a completely fundamentally different, vantage point on looking at these?

Mayor Esther Manheimer: I unfortunately think that these issues have become so partisan and just transcends even me and Chuck having a conversation about it. But I think the way it's been framed from the right is this is just a matter of more policing and tougher DAs. That's obviously what the problem is and we just need to arrest more people, but I think what Chuck Edwards heard at that crime summit that he hosted from across the board, even from these leaders in other counties and red counties, folks that are in law enforcement is no, really, we need help with mental health services, with drug addiction services. We need to help these individuals so that they don't end up in a situation where they do need to be arrested. And that we can't arrest our way out of this crisis. 

But that doesn't feed the national narrative. That's not going to go on Fox news or NPR. And the fact that it's more complicated doesn't sell. So how do [00:09:00] you give your little one liner and your zinger and get reelected? I guess that's how. 

Matt Peiken: You're touching on something that I also want to talk about, the business improvement district that the new ambassador program That is part of this and I know approaching Street crime, drug use is a mandate of this BID.

Before we get to the effectiveness of it so far and from what you're able to see it's still so early on But it seemed like it passed city council very easily despite from what I could hear There was quite a bit of opposition to it or at least concern about it. I had a couple episodes of my show about that and I was just curious where you Came to on this.

I know you were among the supporters. Talk about your support for this. What was it about the criticisms that either didn't ring true or just were maybe elevated, exaggerated that propelled you to vote for this? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: Let me first say [00:10:00] personally, I have been on a journey this last several years to learn everything and anything I can about homelessness and all the issues related to, and what are the most effective ways to tackle this crisis.

So I've personally been serving in various roles, interviewing folks all across the nation about how they're addressing homelessness in their community. And I'm now serving on the continuum of care, our newly formed continuum of care here in Asheville, Buncombe County which is a direct result of the recommendations of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

And I'm committed to implementing all of their recommendations and carrying that out to a T. I was just meeting today with some folks that are interested in rebooting the Ramada as permanent supportive housing. I was meeting with Homeward Bound today where we, the county has just issued an RFP to look at opening a new low barrier shelter.

These are all efforts I'm behind and I do not want to do one thing to undermine that work and to support those who are experiencing homelessness and the [00:11:00] people who are serving them. So that we can reduce that crisis in our community and better address it. So let me just say that first. And if I thought for one second that a BID or an ambassador program would disrupt that work, I wouldn't have supported it.

I love to go to other cities and look and see how they're doing things and learn from them. I was just most recently in Burlington, Vermont. 

Matt Peiken: Isn't that the Asheville of the North, sort of? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: Sort of Is. Yeah. They do have the challenge of being a college town. College towns have their own Serious challenges because unfortunately very large colleges and their student populations can depreciate a city if you will.

But in Burlington they had what appeared to be an ambassador program downtown, but they ran it through their parks and rec department. That's an interesting approach. Yeah, no. And I think it's another way to do it. I then was in Boston. And they have an ambassador program that looks a lot more like volunteers who are sort of helping guide tourists [00:12:00] and provide information.

Both of these cities are experiencing incredible homelessness crises. That is very apparent. I think it's going to be important for us to make sure our ambassadors receive enough training to be able to help direct services to those who are experiencing homelessness, whether they're doing it themselves or their Understanding who to contact, whether it's our community paramedics, our firefighter paramedics who are serving as well in that capacity to be able to help bring resources to folks and help address crises as they develop.

They're, of course not armed. They're not going to be themselves folks that are going to be expected to resolve these issues, but more be in eyes and ears and, and be able to connect people to services. I think there is some discussion about whether or not you would have some trained outreach, like a social worker types of folks who might also be included in a program like that. And I'll be interested to see what the community provides us feedback. Right now, we're developing the RFP to bid this out [00:13:00] for the BID. So we'll see what we get there, but I think it will be a smooth transition, and I think people will appreciate the end result.

Matt Peiken: I think one of the criticisms, which I can understand, is there's a vague language around the subjectivity of ambassadors deciding what behavior is unacceptable. I can't remember the exact wording in the BID, but it was like if an ambassador finds a certain behavior unacceptable or, or disturbing of downtown, then they would call police or whoever they would bring in.

And it seemed to bestow quite a bit of power in that person, even though they don't have, 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: they won't have any right power in that regard. Again, I hear the concern around this. I think it can be addressed through this through the RFP process and aligning up our partner, who's going to carry out this work.

That's just not the observations I've seen of how BIDs work in other cities. It's much more benign than that. It's more of folks that are eyes and ears and able to call for [00:14:00] help if help is needed. And we have an opportunity to reevaluate. The city has quite a lot of leverage in this because we're awarding the contract.

The council's awarding the contract. The public can come and review it and make comments about it and let us know how they feel about it or how it should be implemented.

Matt Peiken: So I suppose you'll have to have a long lease on Harrah's Cherokee center for the crowds that would come out for these. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: Possibly. It's funny how things ebb and flow. You get a big turnout for an issue, but then it dies down and another issue will become the issue of the day. And a lot of people come out. So I will be interested to see how that develops, but I want to make sure that everybody feels comfortable with the end result and they don't think that we're changing the nature of our city, our funkiness, our uniqueness. That is not the goal at all. 

Matt Peiken: I want to tie back to something we talked about just a little bit ago around affordable housing and the short term rental policies of the city and enforcement of the city.

It seems like that's become more and more with 17 market street and there's some other developments that people are saying, Hey, these are illegal [00:15:00] STRs. Where is the city at in it's both setting policy around this? Has it changed, evolved in and more important enforcement of this?

Mayor Esther Manheimer: So the city hasn't changed its policy. What has changed is that the North Carolina Court of Appeals weighed in on this. There was a case that made its way through the system that came out of Wilmington. And the end result of that case is that cities can no longer require an annual permit. So we can't require folks to come and re up their annual permit so we can track Who's operating a legal SDR.

So there were a bunch that were grandfathered in the downtown and a bunch in the river arts district. And then we also allow homestays in neighborhoods. So before you had to come and get your permit, we could keep track of who was doing this. And then the court said you can't require a permit, but you can regulate the short term rentals through zoning. That just [00:16:00] means that we can create zoning, which we have in place that says, in this zoning classification, say a residential, short term rentals are not allowed. It's not an allowed use. That's the same as an asphalt plant is not allowed or a dental office is not allowed.

You can't require that person to come in every year and say, I'd like to report that I'm in compliance with your zoning ordinance. It's up to us to try to figure out who is violating the zoning ordinance and enforce against them. That depends heavily on. On people reporting folks, and you can do that through the Asheville app so that we can then investigate any alleged violation.

That's really frustrating. One other component to add, not only can we no longer require an annual permit, but none of the platforms will share their data with us. So Airbnb won't give us a list of all their properties in Asheville, they won't do that.

Matt Peiken: You can't subpoena it?

You can't. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: We cannot. No.

Matt Peiken: Is that because it's a north [00:17:00] carolina law that we can't do that or is that just nationally, no Municipality has the ability to do that?

Mayor Esther Manheimer: So my understanding is there are a couple locations, a couple places like in california or maybe new orleans, Where either a law has been passed that requires These platforms to provide that data and that's how they're able to get it or some other means, but as far as I understand, there's not a law in North Carolina that allows us to require that data to be provided.

Now it is in the aggregate because the TDA collects a room tax on short term rentals. And so they have a lump sum number we can see, okay, there's this many, and this is how much money you're collecting through short term Rentals, but we cannot require Airbnb to give us a list of all their addresses.

We know, I believe this last year that the tourism development authority reported that county wide, something like 37 percent of their overall revenues came from [00:18:00] short term rentals. 

Matt Peiken: 37 percent of county revenues? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: It's 37 percent of the room tax. Oh, room tax. Collected. Just to put that in perspective, I think when I first, Was an office I think I recall the tourism development authority might've collected 6 million plus annually across the entire County in room tax. And that would be, 

Matt Peiken: God, that's a long time ago. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: That would be like hotels or bed and breakfast. And with the rise of short term rentals that's been added and revenues have grown and grown and it was around 40 million dollars collected last year and 37 percent of that was short term rental, so it's interesting the conversation we have in our community around tourism And a lot of focus on hotels, but as you can see Certainly a lot of the activity is actually coming from short term rentals. 

Matt Peiken: Now because you can't Get lists from Airbnb or VRBO or any other platform, you're entirely dependent on people [00:19:00] reporting this. What happens when people report this? Does the city have a dedicated staff for this? And if so, is it just like one person or two people? What happens? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: So it's generally handled through zoning enforcement. So it'd be the same person who gets reports about zoning violations generally and we, and I can't tell you exactly how many staff are dedicated to working on zoning enforcement, but there are folks that do it. I remember years ago when this started, San Francisco said they were hiring a department of 20 people to work on their short term rental enforcement and regulation. We don't have anything like that, but we reportedly do have One of the or the highest per capita short term rental activity in the nation.

It would be incredibly helpful if we were able to leverage some of the room tax or some other revenues from this activity to be able to work on enforcement, but that's not how it works. We're not allowed to charge a permitting fee, which is how we were funding. We were paying for [00:20:00] enforcement and we're not allowed to leverage any of the room tax that's derived from it.

So you're basically, you have an unfunded enforcement system. 

Matt Peiken: Cause that's different than let's say parking tickets. You can have people enforce your parking tickets. That revenue does come back to the city. So what is the penalty? Let's say somebody is found to be operating a short term rental, not according to the proper zoning, do they pay a fee? And if so, where does that go? And what is the penalty? How challenging is it to enforce any penalty? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: It's very challenging. And I'm not the best person to ask about the details on zoning enforcement, but there is a procedure that you've got to go through to do zoning enforcement.

We're trying and obviously it's meeting Resistance and it's very difficult to do. Early on when we had the permitting process, we did take a few people to court and we were able to implement a fine of, I think we had to make it 500 a day because otherwise people would just say, I don't [00:21:00] care if it's a hundred dollars a day. I'll just make it up in the room. I'll make that up in my rental fee. So we had to make it high enough that people would pay attention to it, but we're no longer allowed to use that system. 

Matt Peiken: Is that because of the North Carolina Court of Appeals? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: Yes. 

Matt Peiken: What was their rationale? Can you even say what was their rationale for not allowing this?

Mayor Esther Manheimer: I'm probably not doing it justice, but the opinion basically hangs its hat on a statute that talks about cities and ability to regulate rentals. And that statute I will say was drafted long time ago before short term rentals were ever envisioned and it was more of a landlord rights type of statute that the legislature put in place, which again is the way North Carolina has balanced landlord versus tenant rights, which I'm sure a lot of your listeners are not surprised to hear and so my understanding is they took that statute and said we're going to take this to mean that it includes also short term rental regulations. And so you can't require any kind of permitting. 

Matt Peiken: Touching on the subject of how cities can bring in money, you don't have [00:22:00] money that you can bring in from enforcement of this. I wanted to talk about property tax increases, and we are seeing property tax increases.

Talk about how fraught that is here and the discussions that you had internally with your council peers and colleagues about how to go about framing property tax increases that are happening. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: So you've hit on one of my favorite topics, which is tax policy and I'm not kidding. 

Matt Peiken: That's one of your favorite topics? It has to be somebody's favorite topic. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: Well, and I bring it up as much as I possibly can, including to the speaker of the North Carolina House, because I think it's such a big issue for cities. Cities in North Carolina have such limited resources. We can only depend on property taxes. We get some sales tax revenue, very small slice of sales tax revenue.

Most of that goes to the state to balance the state budget. We get fees, but our fees cannot exceed the cost to provide the service. So for example if you're applying to build a home, There's a fee for [00:23:00] your application, But it can only cover the cost of the administration to review the application and basically enforce regulations around construction. It can't be a cash cow. You can't make sense.

That makes sense. Perfectly rational, right? And you can't use, for example, your water funds to subsidize your general fund. So there's all kinds of limitations. Some of them are very sound, such as not using utility funds to subsidize your general fund, but we can't make a decision unilaterally, for example, to impose a new tax like a food and beverage tax or an additional sales tax.

If you look at home rural states like Boulder, Colorado, they can leverage marijuana sales tax. Absolutely not. We don't have anything like that in North Carolina for cities. And the way our state is growing and the way cities are developing, there's basically one well to go back to. And that is, Property taxes.

And again, I can't emphasize this enough. If you talk to other cities and other states and you look at the revenue mix of their fund balance or whatever they're using to fund their cities, it's much more diverse. They [00:24:00] have the opportunity to leverage so many different resources.

Another example in North Carolina, they got rid of what's basically a big box retail tax that brought in a couple million dollars a year for the city. And that's and so we're left arguing with ourselves about where to get more resources and how to do that. And the one lever that we can control is property taxes.

We can raise fees for garbage and water and things like that. But again, that's very limited and you don't want to overburden folks with those kinds of fees because that really raises the cost of running a household. 

Matt Peiken: Are wee long overdue for a property tax increase? Has it been a while since we've had it or are we barely keeping up with this property tax increase with our ability to Cover city services and raise the pay of police officers and fire department workers.

And where this property tax increase, are we going to have to come back for another one in two years? How much is this covering? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: [00:25:00] So the property tax increase that the city landed on this year was very small. We ended up with, I believe 0. 63 pennies. So not even a penny. The County did more. I think they're, they landed around two cents or two and a half cents, something like that. So I think where people are going to feel more of an effect than the actual property tax rate increase is their property value increase. So right, we're in a revaluation year that'll go into effect for next year. So the County of course conducts all the appraisals and notifies everyone of their new value.

And I'm expecting given the increased cost of housing for the entire United States, not just Asheville, North Carolina, but for everywhere, including our state and our city, I'm anticipating that people are going to see a much larger number. So on the one hand, they're owning a piece of property that's more valuable.

Great. That's great. Probably eventually, but for now, [00:26:00] what that means is the property taxes will be increasing. So that's another reason why we have implemented a program with the county to help offset that for people who are income qualified to be able to try to get some relief on their property taxes.

And the county has put that information out there so folks can take advantage of it. And there's also, the state has the homestead exemption, but that's for seniors who are income qualified, like my mom who qualify for a reduction in their property taxes. 

Matt Peiken: I've heard conflicting information that there are some cities in this state That are treated differently than other cities when it comes to tax policy, that being able to Get creative around Taxing like I said, oh like i've heard that raleigh can do certain things or charlotte can do certain things that we can't do Is that not true?

Mayor Esther Manheimer: So there's local legislation that affects different municipalities and counties differently. So it's an example in charlotte they get revenue From rental cars, I believe it is. I don't know how they did that. [00:27:00] That's some kind of local legislation they got. And we don't have access to that.

So there's, there are some examples like that. There are some places that have a food and beverage tax. When I'm talking about these one offs, these were all enabled legislatively. These cannot be done solely on the part of the local government. The legislature allowed for these opportunities to happen. So there are some places that have a food and beverage tax and we don't. 

Matt Peiken: So this legislature at least in some of these instances has played favorites in a sense or singled out Oh, you can do this, but in wake county for instance, you can do this, but in buncombe county, you can't do this? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: That's right. Or another example would be in Wake County, Orange County, Durham County, they have held a vote on a quarter cent sales tax for transit.

That is a statute that exists that governments can take advantage of and put it on the ballot as a referendum for voters to vote for. There are some opportunities like that. We've had a conversation about doing exactly that here in Asheville, [00:28:00] Buncombe County. Hasn't happened yet but there are some opportunities.

Now it has to be used for transit. In their case, they voted for it because they thought they were going to get light rail and the legislature put the kibosh on that. So they're using it for rapid transit and other transit related expenses. 

Matt Peiken: We have raised the pay of police officers. Finally, after a long call for it, fire department workers got quite a bit of a raise. Are you satisfied that this is going to be fine now for several years?

Mayor Esther Manheimer: No, no, we raised aPD, the police departments pay 6 percent last year and another 6 percent this year, which got them over the very important 50, 000 mark for starting pay. 

Matt Peiken: That's crazy it was that low that it's taking a 12 percent raise to get over the 50 percent threshold, 50, 000 threshold. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: Wow. Do you think that's crazy, you should look at teacher pay. 

Matt Peiken: Oh, I know. I've had episodes about that. That's criminal how low teachers are paid. In Asheville city schools, they go through city budget [00:29:00] and county budget. How much freedom do we have to boost teacher pay within the actual city budget?

Mayor Esther Manheimer: No, not at all. We, it's all through the county and it's a local supplement. And so the county has to make that determination to fund the local supplement. Kind of an odd thing since we have a separate city and county school system, one of very few, maybe two left in the state, but it goes through the county.

That's how it's structured. But I think the cost of hiring and paying employees has skyrocketed and rightly so because these employees have got to buy groceries and pay the rent or mortgage or whatever. And all of these costs are increasing. So on the one hand, we're seeing greater and greater pay for employees. 

We want to have talented, great Employees here at the city. So we need to think about the competition and be able to pay our employees competitively. And we now are matching. We're close to what Greenville, South Carolina, for example, is paying a starting officer. [00:30:00] That's what we're trying to look at in terms of the metrics to try to boost that pay, but also the cost of living in Asheville is higher.

So if we even want to hope that any of our officers or firefighters or other employees are able to live in the city, they're going to need to be paid more. So to your point, I think next year we got a couple of things going on. One, we dipped into fund balance. We dipped into our savings to balance this budget.

And you can't sustain that on a recurring basis. So we do anticipate we're going to have to raise taxes next year just to shore up the budget. But also we're hopeful that our bond package will pass. The voters will support the bond package this fall. And that's 80 million. 

Matt Peiken: Talk about what's in this bond package. What are you asking for? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: So there's four pieces of the bond package. 20 million is for affordable housing. 20 million is for parks and rec. 20 million is for transportation, which could be streets, sidewalks, greenways. And then 20 million is for public safety infrastructure. We have old fire houses. We have [00:31:00] old infrastructure that needs to be updated so that our employees are working and living in an environment that's good for them, that's comfortable for them to operate out of. 

Matt Peiken: What would the bond be asking of our citizens individually? We talked a little bit about what the property tax increase was going to cost homeowners, what would it cost people, residents of this city for this bond referendum. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: So we're gonna have that tonight. We're gonna be voting on the bond package tonight, but we have it based on the average value of a home. Which I think is based on a home of 400, 000 or 425, 000 and what the cost to individuals will be.

The current average residential property value is around 350, 000, but it is forecasted that after the revaluation, the average home value will be more like 420, 000. Oh my 

Matt Peiken: God. That's a huge, huge increase in valuation. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: So 80 million in general obligation bonds is the equivalent of about 2.6 cents in our budget, which is about 110 a year [00:32:00] for someone with a home value of 420, 000 according to this. 

Matt Peiken: One thing I wanted to ask you about it's the events happening in larger democratic circles these days, Biden's exit from the race. Were you happy with him leaving or did you think that had to happen? And if so, What do you think should happen going forward? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: i'm very glad that he decided to step down and I'm sure that was a very difficult decision for him.

And so I'm thankful that he was able to do that. And I'm super excited. I am very excited. I think it's very, Interesting to see everyone get really energized and coalesce around Kamala Harris, and I think that'll be a successful winning campaign.

I'm so curious to see who she chooses as a running mate. Obviously, our own governor is being considered. 

Matt Peiken: I was just going to ask you about that. How seriously do you think he should be considered? He's among four governors that I've seen who are in that A list, being considered the governor of Pennsylvania, being among them and others.[00:33:00] 

Give me a sense of Roy Cooper and where you think he would be as a vice president. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: I first met Roy Cooper when I worked in the legislature in 1998 as a new attorney working in the legislature and he was a state senator. And he's an amazing guy. He's incredibly smart. He is everything he holds himself out to be. Honest, he's transparent. He just is who he is. And I have to say not every politician, of course, is like that. So I just think he's a good guy.

I think the decision of who to pick, obviously you've got this political equation. And I think one of the things that he brings to the table that might not be as well known about him is that he does have a lot of support in the black community. And I think that's pretty critical. Obviously North Carolina is a critical state. We're a swing state. You can lose North Carolina and still win as a Democrat the presidency. So, Not critical in that sense. 

Matt Peiken: It's not Pennsylvania. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: It's not Pennsylvania. It's not Arizona. I know Mark Kelly's being considered. [00:34:00] So I think that there's a lot of pros and cons about Who you pick and how difficult that is. I assume it's going to need to be a white guy.

Yeah, I think so too. Just to balance the ticket out. Yeah. So just please note that the ticket never needed balancing before when it was two white guys, but still, I recognize that today, apparently that is

Matt Peiken: just because you come from that state doesn't mean you're going to carry that state. I remember when Al Gore was the vice president with Bill Clinton, they didn't carry Tennessee, 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: right? 

Matt Peiken: So that's not a a shoe in necessarily. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: Some people have said that, Roy Cooper had a real tough battle on his hands when he beat McCrory by around 10, 000 votes. But here's a guy who's been able to win as governor and then reelected as governor, even when Donald Trump won the state during both of those elections.

So clearly people filled out that ballot and zigzag their way all the way down and included Roy Cooper. So I think that's a powerful thing to consider. 

Matt Peiken: Last thing I wanted to ask you about is just your assessment of how effective this council has been. We're [00:35:00] coming into another election.

Two of your council colleagues are running again for reelection and we're going to at least see at least one newcomer, maybe more. Give me your assessment of this last term, these two years with this council and how successful it's been on moving the city forward on the important issues that we're facing. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: I think we get the job done. I don't think there's any question about that. At the end of the day, when I look at the bottom line the work is getting done and I think this council is very thoughtful and does their homework and thinks about every decision that they make. I think being on the council of any city, especially a progressive city that's got a lot going on and it can be loud.

And it can sometimes be hard to think clearly get your way through each issue and feel like you're making your best informed decision. That's just a constant challenge and there's a lot of negativity. Literally we've had council members whose homes have been, you know, people have showed up [00:36:00] there and 

Matt Peiken: just recently with the BID 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: smashed out windows. And politics is rough and being on a city council is rough. And I signed up for the job. I enjoy the job for the most part. But I think that when you're you're being scrutinized and there's a lot of noise. It can make it hard for a group to work together all the time in a way that facilitates the best decision making.

And so we try despite that to accomplish that task. But I don't know What would make it better exactly but I know it can be real challenging. 

Matt Peiken: You are in your third term as mayor and You said you enjoy it for the most part. I'm wondering what your thoughts are when your term expires Do you think you are going to run again? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: So I am in the middle of my third term. It does end in December of 2026, so I got a little ways before it's over. When I'm at the end of this term, I will have served in office for 17 years. So [00:37:00] that's a long time. 

Matt Peiken: It is. And you still have your own private practice. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: Yes. I, yeah. Well, You know, we Don't hire full time mayor, so I got to have a job. And that's unfortunate, but it is what it is. Yeah. So I don't know. I'm turning 53 tomorrow. Happy birthday.

Thank you. Wow. Yeah. I guess now I could just run for president, right? 

Matt Peiken: We're in such a topsy turvy political environment. Have you ever had ambitions for higher office, even running for state senate or anything like that? 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: I've thought about it. I've certainly been approached when those vacancies have occurred. And as I mentioned, I worked in the state legislature for four years, and I think that work is so interesting, and it would be such an honor to serve the community in that way. I don't know if that's in my future. It's not really possible to do that job and My other job as a lawyer it would be rather impossible to do both at the same time right now.

Matt Peiken: Thanks Esther. I really appreciate it. That was great. Yeah. 

Mayor Esther Manheimer: This was fun.