Daniel Ferrell

Housing Require every new residential development to have at least 15% of units priced affordably for first-year teachers or firefighters in Asheville, similar to the policy in Davidson, NC. Infrastructure / Transportation Create more parks where children with disabilities can truly play alongside their non-disabled peers. Wages / Job Benefits Regain a living wage for our first responders. The fact that our civil servants can’t live in the same place as the people they work for is unacceptable. We need to leverage our resources to make sure that people working in our city can also live here. Housing I'll work to create a framework for handling these cases that don’t let landlords off the hook and give code enforcement officials more power to impose significant fines on repeat offenders for residential units. Healthcare Work to improve not-for-profit community health resources in Asheville like Minnie Jones, add more community health centers, add outreach for preventative medicine, and leverage every available tool to make health care accessible in Asheville. Immigration Re-affirm our commitment to Asheville being a sanctuary. We will work tirelessly to delay, hinder, and push back against the federal government kidnapping our neighbors and members of our community. Criminal Justice / Public Safety Bringing a HEART (Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Teams) program to Asheville. I support finding ways to let the already-strained police department have a little breathing room by utilizing alternative intervention teams for some types of emergency and non-emergency response. Healthcare In the long term, create a community-owned and funded acute care center to help reduce HCA’s ability to dictate how much we should be paying for their profits in order to receive necessary acute health care. Housing Fully fund programs in the city that educate our neighbors about eviction and foreclosure assistance. Legislation We can prioritize food that’s grown locally, taken care of locally, because we have brilliant farmers who deserve fairness in an economy that has left them behind too. If you want to help your neighbor get groceries, what if it was as easy as 1, 2, 3. Just add a few dollars to your grocery order and we can directly spend that money on providing food for our neighbors with little overhead, which can then be used to provide a SNAP-like benefit when things are the hardest. Legislation I’m proposing that we build a public-good grocery center that makes high quality food accessible to everyone. It would host diapers and formula at just above cost, as well as produce from local farmers who are paid fairly for their time, effort, and expertise. This is something we could be proud to see our tax dollars support. Immigration Push for an ordinance requiring the Asheville Police Department to not coordinate with ICE, CBP, DHS, or other federal agencies that have committed clear violations of the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments via 287(g) agreements. Those agencies would then not be allowed on or in city property. Legislation Universal childcare for families then becomes one of the easiest and fastest ways to reduce the cost of living for parents in Asheville, period. Legislation We must build a more resilient way to provide food to our community. We need food distribution centered on access, not on profits. And we need it to support the livelihoods of our area farmers. Wages / Job Benefits Fair and predictable scheduling laws to help employees maintain a work/life balance and navigate the complicated web of trying to make things work with shift schedules that change at short notice. Wages / Job Benefits A requirement that businesses give paid time off for sick leave. The people who make Asheville work deserve time off when they’re sick. It keeps them healthy and it keeps their coworkers healthy. It helps small businesses compete with big businesses. It helps families pay their bills if a child gets sick. It’s a good business move for everyone. Environment / Energy We can be part of the greater movement to divest and move away from fossil fuels contributing to global warming by becoming an aggressive partner in deploying microgrids across Asheville, with the intent of eventually leaving the monopolistic Duke Energy for a stable grid with renewable energy through virtual power plants. Infrastructure / Transportation Prioritize our parks, pools, and recreation areas. These are services that make our city a place for everyone. I support using more city resources to get people outside, active, and in community with each other. Housing For the chronic and egregious violators who refuse to comply with code, I'll introduce ordinances to use the court system to seize the property and leverage community land trusts and non-profit housing models in order keep people in their homes and chronic and egregiously bad landlords from profiting at the expense of renters. Government Reform Aggressively hold HCA accountable for the damage they do in our community. While there is already a lawsuit for monopolistic practices, we know that will not be the last time they try to squeeze money out of our community to line the pockets of billionaires. Social Services Leverage the Strategic Partnership Fund to fund youth outreach. This helps give kids community and builds bonds and partnerships between generations so that we can work together to build a better city. Housing We must prioritize projects that meet the threshold of 50% of their units being affordable. These projects should go on every regulatory body’s priority list: permitting, inspection, paperwork, etc. If a developer is actually building housing that first year teachers and firefighters can afford, I’ll work to prioritize those projects over anything else in town. Government Reform The city would be a founding investor in the COCU and lend money to the credit union so that it could provide services to our neighbors.