How do you think your tax dollars should be spent? In response to the fact that Asheville Police Department gets $26,880,621 (with seemingly less than $7,000,000 going towards salaries), local organizers named some other areas that need financial attention:
- Fund mental health programs
- Fund cooperative economic initiatives
- Fund truth and reconciliation and transformative justice
- Pay Reparations
- Fund treatment for addiction
- Fund black futures, immigrant futures, and queer futures
- Fund housing as a human right
- Invest in alternatives to policing
- Fund better transit
- Fund community childcare
- Fund community based mediation and reconciliation
- Fund community agriculture
- Fund after school and mentorship programs
~ Mic Collins, Amy Cantrell, Vicki Meath
The 2017-2018 City of Asheville budget includes a total General Fund budget of $121 million, and a total operating budget of $176 million.