Sage Turner | Asheville City Council Candidate

Sage Turner first came to a seat on Asheville City Council through her fight for more affordable housing in the city. She has since become well-versed and conversant on a spectrum of issues that come before council, but she’s never dropped the torch to help develop more affordable living in Asheville.

Today is the last in a six-part series of conversations with every candidate for City Council. Turner is one of two incumbents on the ballot, and she speaks with a depth of insight that can only come from working in the trenches. We spend a lot of today diving into some of the factors that have ballooned the costs of Asheville’s housing market and some of the counter-mechanisms at our disposal. We also get into how she approaches public safety, transit, permanent supportive housing for the homeless, climate readiness and her own political future.

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Transcript

Matt Peiken: How has the city's approach to affordable housing evolved in your time both working on this issue before getting on council and to this date? What has evolved and how have you helped steer the conversation and policy directions?

Sage Turner: Big and little ways. So prior to council, when I was chairing the affordable housing board is when we did our first affordable housing bond, and so we had never done that before. So figuring out how to maneuver and how to enact those important funds was a big one. We're looking mostly at data and discovering the problem when I was on the committee.

When I got to council we started doing plans, like recently you probably heard us talking about a missing middle plan. Adopting or updating our affordable housing plan that hadn't been updated in many years. We did things like adjusting accessory dwelling unit, backyard sizes. We started doing incentive programs like the land use incentive grant and the housing trust fund.

We had some of these policies in place because we knew they were the right tools, but they weren't correctly tooled. So we had to update them and tweak them to make them usable by folks in the community. And I'd say really, You could probably track usability of these tools right to about 2020 2021 when I got [00:04:00] involved.

Matt Peiken: How much of this was derailed or affected by the pandemic? Did that make a big difference in terms of what you could do, what a city could do, and what developers were willing to do during the early part of the pandemic with regards to developing affordable housing? 

Sage Turner: It made it harder. Asheville saw a huge influx of folks and relocation in the last several years. It continues to trend that way. So that pushed demand up higher. That pushed land prices up higher. And then, of course, we saw interest rates climbing in the last couple years. All of that has put more pressure on our efforts and needed more incentives, more creativity, more partners, using all the policies and all the tools at once to get one project through. It just got more complicated, I would say.

Matt Peiken: Yeah, you mentioned these tools. Are you speaking of some of these things, these incentives? Talk about in specifics things that the city is doing now that even just four or five years ago wasn't [00:05:00] on the menu. 

Sage Turner: Sure, and maybe they were on the menu, but they weren't really working well.

Big one is the Land Use Incentive Grant. What that means, so in North Carolina, we have some restrictions around how we can incentivize future growth and development. Tax increment financing, it's really called. The LUIG Land Use Incentive Grant is a workaround to that, more of a synthetic TIF.

And this means that part of the problem in creating affordable housing is all of the land costs, all the financing, all the construction costs, all of the ongoing things to like maintenance and property taxes. So the land use incentive grant will rebate future property tax dollars to a development if they build it with affordability included, and there's a whole list of things, 20 percent of the units, what AMI they need to target, and for how long. 

And that program has really taken off. We've seen a number of large apartment complexes and developers use it, and so much so that we've actually paused it right now to say, hey, do we need to fine tune this a little because it's being used so much.

Matt Peiken: That's interesting to me because when I see some of these [00:06:00] apartments come up and one thing comes to mind, I can't remember the name of the development, it just got approved, 240 units, that 5 percent are designated for affordable housing. That to me seems like a pithy token. Is there any sort of minimum threshold of percentage for developers to be able to qualify for these land use development grants?

Sage Turner: There is, and when they go through a more of a buy right process where they don't have to come to council for all the permissions, it's very explicit and it's a 20 percent minimum. But, what you're seeing is the 159 Riverside project that this went through. And notably three large housing projects in the River Arts District including this recent one have had the same situation of only Doing five percent affordability. 

What we're finding down there in the river arts is that there's such a significant increase in costs, Both in land, but also in improvements. We've got storm water issues. We've got flood plains [00:07:00] You have to build buildings taller and up out of the land there. It's more complicated. So We have taken a risk, I would say, myself included, I just voted to support that project, Trying to get new housing started and more economic development initiated in the River Arts District because there are not a lot of residences. So I would say that's the only area in town right now where we're letting these five percent Affordable units get through. All the others are more like 20.

Matt Peiken: That's interesting though because The River Arts District in some ways seems like an open canvas.

You can really set precedent by Setting a minimum threshold, knowing that developers want to be in the River Arts District, that no matter what the cost of development is right now, the economic upside for them is It's through the roof, right? I, whether it's residential development, commercial development, hotels, restaurants, you can just see what's going to happen.

It doesn't take much of a visionary to see what's happening in the RAD and what can happen. And you [00:08:00] can make the argument that, wow, if you let these developers in with just 5%, what is that going to do to the population of that neighborhood? 

Sage Turner: And particularly in our most vibrant artist area where affordability is that much more needed.

I would say, There is some precedent setting in this situation, but each of those projects came through what's called a conditional zoning process, which is completely up to council's purview. And they go through that process because they can't check all the boxes to get through the process without our permission.

Meaning they need to be taller, they need to be wider, they need some variances. While it might seem like it's precedent setting, each and every one of these projects that comes through, will have to be thoroughly reviewed by council and decided on independently. If we had a situation where by right developers were getting through with 5%, it would be hard to argue that the next one can't.

But this is different because it's conditional zoning and all of the differences and variances and changes and needs are on the table, so we can negotiate more. I don't think it will stay that way. For the [00:09:00] future. I think if we can get some of these projects out of the ground, we'll see more development and housing and we'll see bigger percentages.

And I will add too, the first one was RAD lofts. It took 10 years, 10 years to build that project, almost 11. And they came back to council, I think three different times to change the metrics of affordability and it's telling us that it's not quite possible in the River Arts District yet to achieve that much affordability and build these podiums in the floodplains and trying, we're trying to get them to activate commercial space, which layers a whole other financing mechanism into it. And we're essentially betting on this is where it needs to be right now. 

Matt Peiken: How much does zoning play into this in terms of the city using The Unified Development Ordinance. How much of that comes into play in terms of using and Revising the UDO to make space and make room for the kind of development we as a city want to see? 

Sage Turner: A lot. Actually, what I'm saying now is, as we are [00:10:00] trying to start this another round of bonds, it'll be on the ballot November 5th, that I want to see us use those funds differently. And I want us to try and target some of these larger projects that we're talking about, go through a different zoning process.

And that means updating our UDO, which we're starting to do now. It's going to be all next year. We'll go through it piece by piece. But what I want to see happen is something that happens often in other states, like South Carolina, for example. Their governments at a state level allow cities to enact requirements for affordable housing. And we're having to do all this subsidy and spend tens of millions of dollars trying to create and convince the private market to build them, as you said. 

Matt Peiken: But we can't do those certain things because the state legislature doesn't allow it, right? 

Sage Turner: Unless you get creative people at the helm like me. So we have some workarounds. So Similar to how we did the hotel moratorium and hotel overlay, there are ways within North Carolina that you can say, listen, we will give you a clear by-right process, evading the responsibility of [00:11:00] coming to council, if you meet these requirements. And then you give them a plethora of options to choose from.

So thereby they are Legally presenting what they're willing to do to avoid coming to see us at a council level. And that circumvents a lot of the state laws. Now, what we did with the hotels and what we would do with this kind of change is that we would say, Listen, if you're going to build 200 apartments and you're willing to make 40 of them affordable, We're willing to let you come go through a simpler process.

And that doesn't include subsidy It doesn't include some of these low interest loans that we've been doing to crank them out. It means that these developers would get a prescribed process right when they came down to the city and said we want to build some apartments, What's it look like? We'd give them a prescription. These are the outcomes we want. We want affordable housing. We want green incentives. We want beautiful buildings, well designed. We want them to not consume all of the open space. We want them to have public amenities. We want them to activate the ground floors. And if you can do all that, then we'll approve you much faster and much simpler and without all the [00:12:00] existential crisis and costs that come with going to council.

Matt Peiken: Yeah. Has this sort of fast tracking Already been implemented? Is that it hasn't . What are the hang ups for that? 

Sage Turner: We're just working on it now.

Matt Peiken: Okay, 

Sage Turner: and what you've probably heard, if you've heard council talking about a multi family overlay or how do we get to a better process, this is what i'm referring to. And it's interesting because it just played out in this Riverside Drive project. So We did an update to the zoning in the River Arts District five years ago, six years ago, form based code, and it says you can go up to five stories when you build here, but if you want to be taller to make your project more economical and go to seven stories, we'll let you if and only if you include 20 percent of the units to be affordable. 

So that's an example of how we can get there, height bonuses, density bonuses, et cetera. And if more developers take advantage of those tools and don't need our subsidy, then we can do more creative things with our funding, like down payment assistance, home ownership programs, [00:13:00] home repair, protection and preserving affordable units in our community, instead of what I would say feels like subsidizing large corporate developments. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. And also, is there a timeline that we impose on developers? Meaning, you have to keep these affordable for X number of years or in perpetuity?

Sage Turner: There's a variant. It varies. So, usually we see 20 years as a minimum. Some are doing 30. Some are targeting lower rates for 20 years. Some are targeting higher rates for 30 years. And then some we've partnered and done cheaper land sales and low interest loans to get to 50 years. At this point, the only ones doing permanent in perpetuity affordable housing are The affordable housing tax credit projects like MHO does or HACA, the housing authority projects like when we rebuilt Maplecrest and now we'll do Deaverview, those will be in perpetuity.

But 30 to 50 years seems to be the range we can get consistently. 

Matt Peiken: Okay. That's a couple of [00:14:00] generations. We could talk about affordable housing for this entire conversation, but your role as a city council person is multifaceted and you have to look at a myriad issues, some overlapping issues.

How does our policies and our approach to the unhoused, how does that overlap with what we want to see with affordable housing? Is there any overlap in terms of Our approaches to those. 

Sage Turner: There are, there's definitely overlap. And I commonly say the solution to homelessness is housing. We don't have enough housing units at all the various price points and all the various needs to meet the population demand, right?

So it's not just the unhoused crisis in Asheville, it's all across the state and the nation we're seeing this uptick. We're going to have to change, procedurally and policy and with ordinance to, to handle the change. So right now we're seeing what we call wraparound services and permanent supportive housing. So what we saw with the Homeward [00:15:00] Bound and buying the Days Inn and all the local governments and Dogwood Health Trust all chipped in to get that bought and to get that debt paid so that they could just operate.

We're seeing a similar thing happen with the former Ramada. In fact, just last night, there was news made that the Ramada is going to change in its makeup to 50 permanent supportive units for veterans. 

Before it was 50 for veterans and 50 for currently unhoused and 13 for a blend. Now it's going to switch to, the proposal is officially 50 for beds for veterans, but the other 50 to 63 will just be affordable housing voucher accepting units, no longer formerly unhoused. 

Matt Peiken: Okay. What was the impetus for that shift? 

Sage Turner: City council for a long time played the lead role in homelessness in our community, when it was smaller, when it was less of a dire issue. [00:16:00] Now, in the last 18 months, we have formed a bigger commission. We call it the COC continuum of care. And we've said to ourselves, look, we are not experts in this. The problem has grown beyond our ability to maintain or handle it, or even figure out how to move forward with it.

So we need to gain a better crew of folks that understand this problem. So we've got the COC now and they're meeting and they're taking on all of the homelessness issues. And they're from the County, the city, Dogwood, all the providers, partners, truly the team that's working on this, not the politicians, right?

We're just at the table now. So the COC reviewed the Ramada application and assigned a task force of financial viability. That task force came back with a unanimous no, that these finances don't pencil. The math doesn't work. And then they sent that recommendation to the COC board. And that COC board was split.

The vote to support the Ramada proposal was a 7 [00:17:00] 6 vote by the COC. So the way I'm looking at it, Only one third of the whole group believed it was a valid project. So I took those concerns to the applicant and we asked 150 more questions. How does this work? How are we going to make it work? Why doesn't the math add up?

What will you do? And their response was to say, we are affordable housing providers. If you don't think our methods are going to match the need in your community, then let's transition this to more affordable housing, which is actually our specialty. 

Matt Peiken: So what does that do for our unhoused, which is a continued issue in this community?

Sage Turner: So when the COC met last night, and I wasn't at the meeting, but what I understand is they will now move into a broader process of figuring out where we're going to do this permanent supportive housing and how. 

And I think some questions on the table are, what are we learning from the Days Inn? They have 85 residents. The Ramada was going to be 113. Is that too many? I've been asking this question from the very [00:18:00] beginning of permanent supportive housing and unhoused shelters and low barrier shelters. How many people in one place is too many to care for? Is there a model? Does it get to be too large? And we're finding out maybe, maybe. 

Matt Peiken: Really? Because 85 from 113 doesn't seem functionally different. 

Sage Turner: Unless you're having problems managing the 85 already. 

Matt Peiken: So it's understaffing or not having the ability to staff enough? 

Sage Turner: I don't know that it's staffing related or management related. There's just a big learning curve. Days Inn is approaching its first year anniversary right now.

Matt Peiken: What are the reports that you're hearing about in terms of its success and thrive ability, if that's a word, of that community? 

Sage Turner: What I understand is the majority of the folks that moved in there right away were our currently unhoused, and that's a huge success period. Of course they're going to have problems.

Homeward Bound has struggled with executive director changes. Multiple times. I believe they've hired a new person and they're currently relocating and that announcement is pending, but they have come to us. And even in the public meetings around the Ramada, where they would [00:19:00] have been the supportive services, they've explained that they didn't want to manage the property at Ramada because of their learned experience of managing the tunnel road property.

They're having increased security needs. They're expressing that vulnerable populations are being taken advantage of by outside people coming onto the property and how to handle that. How do you flush that out with security or programming? And I think it was, it's a concern. It's a concern.

Matt Peiken: Because we've been hearing people with the city like Debbie Alford and other city staff who are steeped in this issue. By far and away, the number one contributor to the unhoused is the lack of affordable housing. Here we have two former hotels. How many former hotels are in a possible position to be converted?

So you think this is a golden opportunity to really cut into a big significant chunk of our city's unhoused could potentially be moved, relocated into this housing and yet even with that's not a [00:20:00] panacea. 

Sage Turner: It's not worth doing if you can't do it well. If you can't keep everyone safe and you can't truly provide the services they need to recover and maintain housing, then it's not the best decision. 

Matt Peiken: But then the other option is okay, we're back to ground zero. 

Sage Turner: Not really, because it still has 50 units for permanent supportive housing. It will still house 63 people who are desperate for housing. Maybe some of them will be in unhoused or maybe in shelters. 

Matt Peiken: You're talking about the veterans. 

Sage Turner: The veterans will be 50 currently unhoused. Veterans that are predominantly elderly and very sick. 

Matt Peiken: You came in really focused on affordable housing. What are some things that have become part of your priority chain that weren't really top of mind for you before you became a council member? 

Sage Turner: This is a great question because when I joined, the desperation to get units in production was so dire that it was anything we could do to get incentives subsidies tools on the table and work with as many partners as we can. I remember saying we have one affordable housing developer in the community and we [00:21:00] have to fix that, and we have. 

Jump forward to now though where we have, you know fully spent the first bond of 25 million on housing. We've been contributing annual money to housing funds. We've depleted everything and What we've gotten is a great success. We just learned that 2025 rents will be down 10%. That's the first reduction in rents we've seen in six years. But to answer your question, I don't just want our taxpayers and our efforts to go to subsidizing apartments. What I think Asheville wants is home ownership opportunities.

People want to own their own home. They want to live in their city and feel like they can afford to, and that they can build equity and grow their family and build generational wealth. And that has not reduced, that has only gained pressure. So Linking what I said earlier around these zoning changes and prescription process for large developments, if we can get these large apartment complexes producing affordable units like they have been, then we can [00:22:00] really focus on home ownership. 

I would like to see as much as 10 million of our affordable housing bond this cycle go into home ownership. Whether that's preserving it, by repairing an old roof to keep the family in it instead of selling it because the roof is leaking. Whether that is protecting in certain areas that are very vulnerable to extreme gentrification and giving them the tools to fend that off, or if it's just immense down payment assistance. 

We tried to do a down payment assistance for city staff in 2017, I believe, we even got a match for it in Georgia, but we couldn't administer it because the programming was too complicated. We couldn't find a bank to do it. We've since ratified that. I want to see us do that again. I want to see us put down a million dollars of the bond for down payment assistance for our first responders. 

Matt Peiken: You're answering that the question I had in mind partially, but who would be eligible for this kind of assistance? There are lots of people in this town who would raise their hand that we need this kind of help. 

Sage Turner: Sure. It's still affordability based. We talk about AMI a lot AMI, and people are always like, what's AMI? [00:23:00] And it really means area median income. And what that means is that there's a middle point in the community where half the people in the community make more and half the people make less than that number.

That's what AMI is. So we're trying to target everybody that's slightly below 100 AMI, 50, 60, 80 percent. Those are the folks that would qualify. And we're talking about $40,000 or $50,000 for down payment assistance. Some might only need 20, 000. So the program could be stretched. But, as housing prices have risen, as rates have gone up, it is harder and harder to become a homeowner and afford it. So we need to start doing something about it. 

Matt Peiken: One of the things I'm sure you face, or at least questions in the community on a regular basis around public safety. And, we have a police chief now who's been on the force for a long time. People from what I'm hearing are universally very happy with Chief Lamb.

How much of a difference does it make having just a change at the top and To have a resonant deeper effect of the [00:24:00] perception of public safety. I know perception is as much an important element as reality, what statistics say. What are you hearing on both ends in terms of people's perceptions of downtown's public safety and not to limit this conversation to downtown But because that's where our tourism is focused, that seems to get a lot of the attention. So what are you hearing in terms of shaping perception. What are you hearing from Chief Lamb and others in terms of what's actually happening on the ground?

Sage Turner: First, I'm really thankful that Chief Lamb took the job. I think it was immeasurably helpful to have someone who's been locally from the area and trusted for so long on the force to take that leadership helm. We had been importing chiefs for a while, and I think that takes a while to build trust.

So we've had crises within the police department for a number of years now. We are slowly building back our staffing, slowly building back more tools, but there's certainly a perception and a reality that crime is increasing, [00:25:00] that safety is a concern. On the campaign trail, it is probably affordable housing and safety that I hear the most about. And actually those are two of my top three priorities for that reason. 

But I think folks are worried. If you've lived here a long time, like I have, things have changed. I live off Haywood road, a very busy corridor, things have changed. And I talk with those businesses often about it. We're making some strides it's sometimes it's just a matter of numbers the police force is down 27% Now. It had been down as much as 40.

Matt Peiken: Right 45. All right Yeah, I remember Chief Lamb telling me I think when I interviewed him it was about 25 it's still a big improvement from what it was, but Not what we're budgeted to have.

Sage Turner: It's not and what we used to see and probably what the neighborhoods don't understand about the process, but would most likely see to see return is districts.

So when the pandemic hit and staffing shrunk, we had to go back to one big city district. And that means when you call for help, an officer from East Asheville [00:26:00] might drive to South Asheville to respond. It's like They're sent all over. Previous to that, we had five districts. And so you had response within those districts.

Each of the districts was staffed for that district. So if there was a problem in that district, those nearby officers went. We're now to three districts and with increased staffing, we'll get to four. We'll get to five again, but we have more to do. I will say that we have the largest incoming cadet group ever. Not ever in recent years, I should say. So I'm seeing hope. 

I really focused on what other cities were doing to grow their officers in the midst of the chaos through retention bonuses, sign on bonuses, transfers, etc. And I really had some analysis pulled to say, are we even in line with this? And we realized we weren't. 

And now we've had Eight new lateral hires, and that means fully trained people from other cities that don't need to go through all the ring and the roll to get on the force and get out in the city helping. That's a big win. It's helping rebuild our staff.

Matt Peiken: That's really heartening to hear because there was publicity around [00:27:00] other cities poaching Asheville's police department, and you're saying we're getting now people who feel at least it's beneficial to their careers and lives to be in Asheville rather than some of these other cities. How important do you think this Business Improvement District and the Ambassador Program is going to do to help, make the perception and the reality of public safety more of a priority or at least be seen as making a difference in downtown?

Sage Turner: I am a big proponent of the BID and wanted one for over a decade before it came to us. That said, I had to work really hard to get the details that I wanted in place, like half renters, half owners on the board, and various things like the TDA not being on the board. For example, I wanted homelessness providers on the board instead, city to have a seat.

I think the BID is really going to help, but we do not have ambassadors or security built in. That language was Media driven. It's not what is happening. In fact, the RFP is [00:28:00] being formulated right now and I just reviewed it. Community stewards is the word. They will not be weaponized.

They will not have authority to arrest people. They will nothing. They have particular training and they will be seen as folks on the street that can connect with services. Like when you have an issue and there isn't a police officer in the downtown district because we don't have a downtown district, you can call this person or perhaps they're already there because they've been walking by and you can get them to relay to The community paramedics if there's help, get them two days in if they've lost their footing or confused.

Matt Peiken: One of the criticisms I heard which I thought was valid when I looked at the language of the BID Was that these community stewards would have the authority to make subjective decisions about whether somebody on the street is that they're behaving in a way that is not Appropriate or beneficial. I don't remember the exact word that it was used, but they had the discretion to call [00:29:00] police to come help with people who they deem as being Disruptive to downtown, and I think some people who work with the unhoused were thinking that's just an open door policy for these ambassadors to Clean the streets quote unquote of the unhoused .

Sage Turner: I don't think that's what's going to be happening. If there are troubled folks in downtown in need of services, They will help them, but the only cleaning of the streets they'll be doing is actual litter 

Matt Peiken: Because if there was any judgment on people who are behaving in a way, I'd like to clear out all the bachelorette parties that are happening in downtown. 

Sage Turner: Hey, they bring big business to downtown. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. We are facing Increased property taxes for homeowners here, property owners, and we have this bond referendum. We don't have too many vehicles in place as a city to raise Funds because we can't add taxes to tourism or anything like that. How far can we reach into this well of property taxes and raising [00:30:00] property taxes and going to the public with referendums, bond referendums. Is there a limit to what we can do here?

Sage Turner: I wouldn't say there's a limit, but there's a cycle. And the cycle is incredibly important. Asheville does not have a history of taking on debt like this. But debt, in the form of bonds, is a very common practice in city development. It's almost a standard. But Asheville's history, through the Great Depression until now, and I won't belabor that whole story, was that we didn't have a bond climate. We didn't support this stuff. 

So in the 80s, there was a small bond. It was approved. And then, the 2016 bond was really the first time. So the thing about bonds is we raise taxes to pay the debt, but just like a mortgage, the debt gets paid off, but the taxes are still being paid. So if you can get into a bond cycle where by the time the first bond is retired and paid off, another one's ready to go, then you can keep the momentum without raising the taxes.

So now what we're trying to do is target a bond every four years, [00:31:00] At the county, then at the city, then at the county, then at the city, so that we're in this cycle. So every four years, there should be new bonds, either on a county ballot or a city ballot, but not in between. And then we will work together until we're on a complete bond cycle.

Matt Peiken: Have we hit that? Have, are, we're not in that stride yet? 

Sage Turner: No, because 2016 was the first one. And then, of course, count the county just did a 40 million one. We have them on referendum this November. And I'd say we have another Four more cycles. 

Matt Peiken: How important is it from your vantage point that this bond referendum passes?

Sage Turner: I think it's critical because One of the biggest frustrations I hear beyond affordable housing and safety. The third one is just simply maintaining the city, quality water systems, quality sidewalks, potholes on roads, trash and cleanup, these basic things. We're behind, and it's because our facilities are behind.

Take our transit bond, for example. Transportation bond is on the ballot. We have a fleet [00:32:00] of buses. Over half of them, I believe over 60 percent of them, are beyond their useful life. And they break down. So instead of growing our transit program, we spend money on repairs. And that's because we are so heavily undercapitalized.

We should be replacing buses two or three a year, and we cannot. 

Matt Peiken: You touched on something that I've heard as a criticism from candidates for city council who are not yet on council, is that we are not doing enough to maintain our city properties and our transit system. You agree with that?

Sage Turner: I do. And I did a series of tours probably four or five months ago. I was touring the various shelter systems and affordable housing projects and like ABCCM and stuff and then the next week I did a tour of our public safety facilities. I was astounded. We've got our public safety folks living in situations that are so in disrepair that they actually felt like some of the new projects that we were putting our unhoused in were nicer.

It blew my [00:33:00] mind. We've got our first responders out there, spending their lives when they're not working, sleeping in these facilities with gear 40 feet away that had been exposed to harsh chemicals and fires. Not even a wall between them. So we've got some aged facilities. Even our city hall is aged.

Matt Peiken: Yeah, it's funny because you know the new fire department precinct in Montford, you look at that I think oh my god, that's what's possible. I can imagine all the people within the fire department who aren't working out of that are jealous. But you mentioned aging buses, which talks to transit, and nobody seems to be happy with our transit system.

Sage Turner: Exactly. That's exactly what I say. No one is happy with our transit system. 

Matt Peiken: So what can we do? We only have, we have finite funds. You're. People want to see things maintained. Where do you shift money away from to pay for maintenance? Money has to come from somewhere.

Sage Turner: It does so there have been some initiatives and I wish buncombe county had taken this one up. In north carolina a county can assign a dedicated transit tax. [00:34:00] Several counties have it, wake I think greensboro charlotte mecklenburg a lot of those counties do this and a Twenty five percent sales tax is, I'm sorry, a twenty five cent sales tax.

Matt Peiken: Twenty five percent sales tax, whoa. 

Sage Turner: That'd be funny. Twenty five cent sales tax increase that would be dedicated transit funding. The county didn't feel like it would pass, so they did not do it. And then our resident senator, Julie Mayfield, put forth a bill that would allow cities to do it, because right now only counties can, and that bill didn't pass.

Matt Peiken: Of course. Because the legislature will not allow cities to do that. 

Sage Turner: I would love for that to happen. But in lieu of that happening, we're going to have to be a lot more creative. So I haven't historically been deeply involved in transit. But in the last year, I've decided that I must be because it's so heavily intersected with affordable housing.

And then we have situations like this exact budget cycle that we just approved. We wanted, there was a really big need to pay workers more, mostly because of housing costs, right? But we're behind in our wages. And we [00:35:00] can only pay our employees from our general fund. Our general fund needed an extra 2 million as a surprise this year to help transit keep operating at its normal rate.

So when the fire department and the police department said, we need raises, we need to build our staff. We had to say, wow. I, we have to spend that on transit or we have to shut down part of transit. So now we're looking at having to raise taxes to get the wages right because transit is taking the money.

So we've got a fiscal issue with transit right now. We know transit. is never a flush account for a city. It is always going to be an expense. It never perpetuates itself, but we've got to get it under control. We've got to figure out what is wrong that it can't afford itself in such a way.

And we've done that by enacting this new study that is kind of expertise on how your system runs, what are the fees, why isn't it pencilling, what could you do to improve it, etc. And that we'll get in the spring. Now, I'll back up one second to say I studied City Planning in Grad School [00:36:00] and I studied Transportation Planning.

And what I learned through that is there's a lot of money out there for transit. Tons. Federal money all over the place, but it is tied to increases in ridership. So if we can't get out of our own way and figure out how to increase our ridership, then we are going to suffer having to try and raise local money.

Matt Peiken: And increasing ridership may only happen when you make the transit system more attractive to ride. 

Sage Turner: Absolutely. And to me, I am presuming, we'll see with the studies, that greater frequency and greater timeliness on key routes will produce more riders. 

Matt Peiken: Is there anything we haven't talked about that is not talked about enough that you think should get more attention as you're talking with people for your second term on council, issues or approaches that Just are flying under the radar?

Sage Turner: I think we could be doing more Around climate readiness and preparedness. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah, that's something I hear people talk about That you think about that on a macro level a lot of time. You don't think on a granular level What can [00:37:00] cities do? What are some things that are on your mind regarding climate awareness?

Sage Turner: I mean there's big things the biggest thing we could do Around protecting our local environment and protecting the trees and our waterways is to get ourselves right in storm water and get ourselves right in zoning, because where we put people, where they live, where they work, how they get to and fro, that is our most critical impact on our environment locally.

So we have to get that right. But then there's little things that people forget about like composting programs. Or riding the bus or electric vehicles to reduce emissions or pedestrian and bike lanes so that you can actually not use a car. There are things that we are doing, but I feel like climate change is such a huge endeavor.

You feel a little bit like, will we ever be able to do enough? 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. And I guess there are things that can happen locally, but you almost feel like in some ways, that has to trickle down from the [00:38:00] global level to the national level to the state level to the municipal level. Am I wrong in looking at it that way?

Sage Turner: No, you're right. And it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be acting locally though. If you zoom out on a map, an aerial map, of Asheville. And we know we lost some tree canopy in recent years, not entirely because of development, mostly age and disease and vines on these trees. But if you zoom out, we are an enormous green area.

We are heavily wooded. We are heavily filled with national parks. But if we can't get our growth and population to stay centralized, then we will see loss of trees, loss of woods, loss of mountains. 

Matt Peiken: Loss of mountains. I can't even fathom that. 

Sage Turner: Loss of mountaintops, I'll say. 

Matt Peiken: Um, Lastly, you're running for your second term. You've studied public policy. You obviously have a very deep and detailed grasp on a lot of issues. And I'm curious about politics for you in general. Is [00:39:00] this something that you see as Your career going forward, like whether you are a 10 term city council person or running for higher like federal or state office at some point, have you given thought to any of that?

Sage Turner: I haven't given much thought to larger office. I love this work. Even if I'm not in this role, I'd be doing this work. It's quite an honor and advantage to be able to do this, so I'm thankful that voters see the promise in me and have put me in this role. I don't know how long I'll do it. I'm a bit of an environmentalist myself, and I may, I don't know, I don't know how long I'll do it. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. When I said 10 terms, your brow furrowed. 

Sage Turner: That's a long time. That's 40 years. I would be, very old at that point.