Summary: Buncombe County is doing ongoing recovery-related community engagement, but they haven’t yet shared racial data on the responses they’ve received.

The Facts: At the Buncombe County Commission Briefing to be held on Tuesday, May 6, there will be a report on recovery-related community engagement. You can view the report here.

Our Assessment: There are some positive things we see here:

• The County isn’t just holding centralized community engagement events, but is actively trying to go into communities and attend existing meetings;
• They are also collecting racial demographic information on those folks filling out their survey.

However, we have a concern: in the report, they summarize the responses they’ve received so far, but don’t offer any breakdown of the racial demographics of respondents, or offer any analysis on differences that might exist between different racial groups in how they respond to the survey questions.

The GAP Strategy Team is meeting with Chief Equity and Human Rights Officer Dr. Noreal Armstrong later this week, where we hope to discuss this concern, along with several others. We will provide an update in our next report.

Things to do: We encourage you to fill out the Buncombe County survey, and pass it along to other local residents.

Report Back

Coming Soon!