Summary: Asheville’s proposed FY2027 budget continues expanding policing and surveillance infrastructure while considering reductions to community resources like recreation center hours, despite growing evidence that prevention-oriented strategies may reduce violence more effectively and at a significantly lower cost.

The Facts: The City of Asheville is currently considering a FY2027 budget that includes continued allocation of resources toward policing technology, surveillance infrastructure, and staffing growth tied to the City’s developing Real-Time Intelligence Center (RTIC). At the same time, the City is considering reductions to community center operating hours amid broader budget pressures.

You can read the latest City budget draft here.

Our Assessment: The current budget approach places greater emphasis on reactive systems — surveillance, technology expansion, and long-term policing obligations — than on the community conditions that may help prevent violence in the first place.

The proposed reduction in community center hours is especially concerning because these facilities provide more than recreation. They create safe gathering spaces, youth engagement opportunities, and neighborhood stability. Research demonstrates that these are conditions that actually contribute to public safety. Meanwhile, evidence that surveillance expansion and increased police staffing substantially reduce violence remains mixed at best. If our budget resources are truly limited, we literally can’t afford to keep pouring money into an approach that won’t be certain to substantially improve public safety, while ignoring an approach to public safety that could prevent more harm and crime at a fraction of the cost.

You can learn more about the evidence supporting community violence prevention and our policy arguments in our special report: Preventing Violence Before it Happens: Why Asheville Should Rebalance Public Safety Priorities in FY2027.

Our Proposal: Asheville should use the final weeks of the budget process to rebalance public safety priorities toward prevention and community stability.

• The City should slow further surveillance expansion, which means pausing or limiting additional investment in new camera systems, license plate readers, software integrations, and long-term surveillance contracts until the City can demonstrate clear evidence that these systems meaningfully improve public safety relative to their long-term cost.
• The City should also carefully manage future policing growth through attrition. This doesn’t mean eliminating Asheville’s existing public safety capacity. Instead, it suggests that we stop adding new sworn officers – the current budget draft calls for 24 additions – so that the City can balance enforcement needs with greater investment in prevention-oriented public safety approaches.
• With the resources liberated by this approach, the City can preserve community center operations, and create a modest Community Violence Intervention pilot focused on youth outreach, mentorship, conflict mediation, and trauma-informed support. This could strengthen communities and reduce the strain on our existing public safety systems (that may be leading the City to believe we need more restrictive and reactive strategies).
  

For readers who want more detail, our full recommendations are outlined in the “Proposed FY2027 Budget Adjustments” section of our special report here. 

Things to do: We invite you to use our email template to contact Asheville City Council and urge the City to prioritize prevention-oriented public safety investments and preservation of community infrastructure.

Email Template: You can send an email to the Asheville City Council by filling out the form below. Our email tool will send an individually addressed email to the recipients, and enable us to track how many emails were sent overall in the campaign. If you prefer to write your own email, you can copy and paste (and adapt) our template text – please cc: or bcc: info@gapavl.org on your individualized email, so we can better track how many emails were sent.

To: AshevilleNCCouncil@ashevillenc.gov

CC: or BCC: info@gapavl.org

Subject: Please prioritize prevention and community stability in Asheville’s budget

Dear Mayor and City Council Members,

I am writing because I am deeply concerned about the direction of Asheville’s FY2027 public safety budget.

The current draft budget reflects a simultaneous reduction of community center hours alongside expansion of expensive policing technology, surveillance infrastructure, and staffing. I believe this reflects the wrong set of priorities.

Research increasingly shows that violence is often driven by instability, trauma, chronic stress, isolation, and conflict escalation — conditions that cannot be solved through surveillance cameras or reactive enforcement alone. Prevention-oriented strategies like youth outreach, mentorship, conflict mediation, trauma-informed services, and Community Violence Intervention (CVI) programs are often more effective at reducing violence before it happens, while also costing far less over time. 

Community centers and neighborhood programs are not separate from public safety. They are part of what creates public safety. They provide young people with safe spaces, trusted relationships, recreation opportunities, mentorship, and community connection. Cutting resources from these systems while expanding long-term surveillance infrastructure could weaken some of the very conditions that help prevent violence in the first place.

I urge the City to:

• Reconsider further surveillance expansion and long-term technology commitments
• Pause hiring of sworn officers in the Asheville Police Department, or hire fewer than the 24 additional officers proposed in the budget
• Use the considerable funding this will free up to preserve community center hours as a resource for prevention-oriented public safety approaches, including a modest Community Violence Intervention pilot program

Asheville has an opportunity to pursue a public safety strategy rooted not only in responding after harm occurs, but in preventing violence before lives are permanently altered.

Thank you for your consideration.

Report Back

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