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Asheville council drafts 'Rooted in resilience' recovery vision and six guiding principles
Summary
At a two-day retreat, council members and facilitators drafted a short recovery vision—'Rooted in resilience, rising in unity, ready for tomorrow'—and agreed guiding principles (resilience/sustainability, accountability/transparency, community-centered equity, collaboration/leverage, uniqueness/culture, innovation) to filter recovery decisions.
Council members spent a large portion of the retreat crafting a short, memorable recovery vision and a compact set of guiding principles to steer recovery action.
After small-group breakouts, participants reported back and converged around a three-part tag line that many repeated: "Rooted in resilience, rising in unity, ready for tomorrow." Multiple groups also urged the assembly to explicitly retain a people-centered repair idea—often phrased as "repairing/repair with care"—so the vision would reflect both infrastructure work and human recovery.
Facilitators said the city will use the vision as a public-facing banner and the guiding principles as decision filters when council and staff evaluate projects and funding. Council members recommended that equity and community-centered engagement be explicit across principles; one council member urged that the plan remain short and actionable so community members can remember it and staff can apply it consistently.
The retreat then converted the principles into a working toolkit. Participants settled on six high-level guiding principles to inform the recovery priorities that will be developed tomorrow: resilience and sustainability; accountability and transparency; community-centered and equitable engagement; collaboration and leveraging partners; preserving Asheville’s uniqueness (culture and local economy); and innovation, efficiency and capacity-building.
Facilitators said that tomorrow’s breakout sessions will test how each priority action—people, economy, infrastructure and housing—can pass through those principles and produce measurable, time-bound steps.
