In response to word that Rep. Tim Moffitt‘s proposed legislation to seize the city’s water system will goes to committee tomorrow, May 26, Asheville City Council member Gordon Smith and the Chair of the Buncombe Democratic party are trying to rally opposition to the bill’s progress.
In this week’s Elitist Bastards Go To The Movies podcast, Mountain Xpress film critics Ken Hanke and Justin Souther discuss current releases Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, The Double Hour and 13 Assassins.
Flat Rock Playhouse’s current offering, a revival of the original (1975) Chicago: A Musical Vaudeville, embraces this “it’s-all-fun-and-games” ethos magnificently. In keeping with the current trend at the Playhouse, under (still relatively new) Producing Artistic Director Vincent Marini, the show is a lavish spectacle, with production values comparable to those of Broadway.
Building Healthy and Sustainable Communities, a conference sponsored jointly by the Mountain Area Health Education Center and the Environmental Leadership Center at Warren Wilson College, has been cancelled owing to inadequate advance registration. The conference was scheduled to take place June 2 and 3, and was previewed in the Wednesday, May 25 edition of Xpress.
At its meeting on May 24, Asheville City Council passed $132.5 million dollar budget for fiscal year 2012 in a 6-1 vote. Mayor Terry Bellamy voted against the proposed budget citing concerns over the water-rate increase on commercial and industrial customers, the increase in the household recycling fee, the lack of a cost-of-living increase for city employees, and the city’s inability to meet their stated goal of keeping the reserve fund balance at 15 percent of the total budget. The budget contains no property or sales tax increases.
