🌱 Asheville Sued By Residents Banned From Parks + Improvement Plan

Hi all. I'm back with your fresh edition of the Asheville Patch newsletter. Here are all the most important things to know about what's happening in the community today.

But first, your local weather:

• Friday: Partly sunny and beautiful. High: 77 Low: 56.
• Saturday: Heavy rain and a thunderstorm. High: 63 Low: 38.

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Here are the top four stories today in Asheville:

1. The 14 residents who were banned from Asheville’s public parks after a December 2021 demonstration at Aston Park have sued the city. The North Carolina ACLU said the banned residents have been denied their constitutional protections. The banned residents said they were distributing food, tents, and other items to a homeless encampment in the park. Law enforcement said Asheville Police "cleared the park" because the gathering was not lawful. Police also said the three-year ban and felony littering charge resulted from "excessive littering." (WLOS)
2. On Apr. 19, the City of Asheville shared the After-Action Report and Improvement Plan to prevent a future severe water outage due to extreme cold weather temperatures in Asheville. The City of Asheville has been working on the improvement plan for the last few months since studying the December 2022 outage. The report focuses on five main objectives including discovering the root causes for the previous outage, setting goals to increase water treatment facility resilience to cold weather, and more. (WLOS)
3. Asheville Parks & Recreation's annual Tiny Tykes Day will take place on May 7 at Martin Luther King Jr. Park! The free festival will feature tumble and bounce houses, face painting, twisty balloons, craft making, biking, obstacle courses, special guests, train rides, sing-alongs, and more. The event is tailored for children 5 years old and younger and will start at 2 p.m. (Mountain Xpress)

Today and tomorrow in Asheville:

Friday, April 21

• Downtown After 5 At 93 N. Lexington Ave. (5:00 PM)
• Comedy At Catawba: Steve Gillespie At Catawba Brewing Company South Slope (9:30 PM)

Saturday, April 22

• Friends Of The East Asheville Library Bag O' Books Sale At East Asheville Library (10:00 AM)

From my notebook:

• The City of Asheville is seeking to pay community engagement ground teams to administer and collect a plastic reduction survey. The city is looking for community feedback on a policy/program that would require the reduced consumption of single-use plastic bags and expanded polystyrene (Styrofoam) takeout foodware containers. (Asheville NC)
• The annual Asheville Spring Herb Festival will return for its 33rd year on Friday, May
  5, through Sunday, May 7, at the WNC Agricultural Center in Fletcher! The festival celebrates the arrival of planting season with workshops, presentations, and more. (McDowell News)
• The American Lung Association recently released its 24th annual "State of the Air" report. According to the report, Asheville is among the top seven cities in the nation ranking among the cleanest for all three pollutant measures. (WLOS)
• The Asheville Museum of History will open this fall in the Smith-McDowell House at 283 Victoria Road! The museum will tell "stories of the mountains, a region with a rich and diverse – and sometimes misunderstood – past." (Mountain Xpress)

Thanks for following along and staying informed! See you soon for another update.

— Rose Mendez

About me: Rose Mendez is a freelance writer. She is studying English Literature at Hunter College. She loves reading, walking around the city, and coffee!