[jyl]

As I understand it, Asheville was largely a tourist, retirement, and college town, and pretty small at 100K pop. Before Helene, the town was growing fast, unemployment low (3-4%), on many “best places” lists - so seems hard to (rationally) claim local govt was running it into the ground.

What’s the future hold? Having the colleges there is very helpful, but the tourism/retirement industry . . . Not sure when that comes back.

As for roads and bridges, considering Helene was all of three months ago, I’d think are still in the cleanup/debris clearance phase. There is a ton of Fed infrastructure funding available but it takes years not weeks or months.