Politics

NC budget grants money for downtown, AVL, Muddy Sneakers

The 2017-18 state budget includes a $100,000 grant for downtown Hendersonville.

By Bill Moss, Published: June 21, 2017

The new state budget contains $100,000 for public improvements to downtown Hendersonville, $200,000 to fight the woolly adelgid scourge that is killing hemlocks, $4 million for capital improvements at Asheville Regional Airport, $100,000 to expand a legal program for veterans and $500,000 for the Muddy Sneakers program among other benefits for the Henderson County area, state Rep. Chuck McGrady announced.

The appropriations bill also contains a study on water rates that could lead to state control or a forced merger of the Asheville and Hendersonville water systems, though the study bill is a significant retreat from the bill McGrady initially filed. He describes the study as leverage to force Hendersonville, Henderson County, Asheville and Buncombe County to resolve their difference over water rates and governance.

In a newsletter he released Wednesday afternoon, McGrady laid out details of the appropriations that benefit the area. They included:

• Western School of Medicine (Asheville). The budget allocates $8 million this year and $7.6 million next year for a medical school which will teach some students who have completed their first two years at UNC-Chapel Hill. Experience has shown that where one receives one’s medical education can influence where one chooses to practice medicine. The budget puts money towards medical schools in both eastern and western North Carolina hoping doctors will choose to locate in rural counties in both parts of the state.
• Hemlock Restoration. $200,000 will go fight the hemlock w, mostly in western North Carolina. Some of the work will be done on public lands such as DuPont State Recreational Forest.
• Inpatient Behavior Health Beds. Mission Hospital got a $4 million grant for additional beds for mental health patients.
• Asheville Regional Airport. The airport will receive more than $4 million over two years for capital improvements or debt retirement.
• Hendersonville Downtown Revitalization Grant. Hendersonville was awarded $100,000 to continue work on improving public facilities in the downtown area.
• Pisgah Legal Services. Sen. Chuck Edwards (R-Henderson) and I secured $100,000 in funding for Pisgah Legal Services to expand their program providing legal aid to veterans.
• Assistant District Attorney. The judicial district that includes Henderson County was allocated one additional assistant district attorney who will join District Attorney Greg Newman’s office.
• Additional Deputy Clerks. Similarly, there were 67 new deputy clerks added to the Clerk of Courts offices across the State. The positions are not specifically allocated by county, but it is likely that a position will end up with Henderson County Clerk of Court Kim Gasperson-Justice.
• DuPont Forest Training Center. Rep. Cody Henson (R-Transylvania) secured $100,000 for the NC National Guard for the Joint Use Training Center at DuPont State Recreation Forest, a joint headquarters with the NC Forest Service.
• Muddy Sneakers. This is an educational program operating in Henderson County, and the nonprofit received a $500,000 grant to support its program utilizing outdoor classroom experiences to teach science and math courses to 5th graders in other areas across the state.
• Hickory Nut Gorge Trail. The partially constructed trail in Henderson, Rutherford and Buncombe counties was added to the States Parks System as a state trail. There is no direct funding related to this designation but the Park Service at Chimney Rock State Park can now provide some services in completing construction of the trail and non-profit partners, like the Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy, can better seek private funding for trail construction.
• WCU Energy Plant. Signaling a much larger, upcoming project, $750,000 was allocated to start planning for a new energy plant at Western Carolina University.

McGrady, who tends to be more open about the sausage-making process than most legislative leaders, told voters about some of the battles he waged for local appopriations.

"As the senior budget chair from western North Carolina, I know each of these appropriations has its own story," he said. "The Western School of Medicine funding was probably the hardest to secure, not simply because of the amount, but because of its funding history. Last year, it received all of its funding from monies allocated by the Senate. This year, it was seeking funding as part of the UNC appropriation, and had a difficult time competing given that legislators really wanted to fund K-12 education. Because of its funding history, House members were not familiar with the project and viewed it as a low priority. I spent many hours building support for funding the medical school."

"My colleagues know of my interest in Muddy Sneakers, and sometimes that isn’t a good thing. As a House Appropriations chair, the easiest way for senators to hassle me is to target something of importance to me, and Muddy Sneakers is an easy target. While it made it into the House budget, I couldn’t get the Senate to agree to fund it. Ultimately, I had to go to Speaker Tim Moore (R-Cleveland) to put money towards the funding of Muddy Sneakers."

"The latest developing provision in the budget was the designation of the Hickory Nut Gorge Trail as a state trail. That actually was brought forward by Peter Barr at the Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy, shortly before the House took up its budget. I wasn’t sure I could get it in the budget because typically state trail designations are done in a bill. However, the time for introducing such legislation had passed, and if anything was going to happen this year, the only realistic option was adding it into the budget. I asked Rep. David Rogers (R-Rutherford) to run an amendment to the House budget to add a provision designating the state trail. Since it was his amendment, I hoped to avoid it becoming some sort of political football like the funding for Muddy Sneakers.

"Typically, my mantra is 'don’t put policy in the budget,' but I’m almost embarrassed when I look at the number of my bills that ended up in the budget," he said.

He was the lead sponsor on what has been touted as one of the major achievements of the 2017 legislative session — ending North Carolina’s practice of treating 16 and 17 year olds as adults in the criminal justice system.

"The Raise-the-Age policy change is in the budget bill, and there is money for the construction of a new juvenile facility to house additional 16 and 17 year olds who will now be confined in a juvenile facility versus an adult one," he said.