Asheville, Buncombe reparations effort has two months to wrap up recommendations

The historic, first-of-its-kind Community Reparations Commission is barreling toward a deadline for making recommendations to repair damage caused by public and private systemic racism. At last night’s meeting, the 25-member commission was split on the best way to move forward – and whether or not the looming June deadline was realistic for its scope of work. A little over two years ago, Asheville and Buncombe County formed the commission with an original deadline for recommendations of this month. Last December, the commission asked for an eight-month extension, but the city and county only agreed to extend it through June. Several commission members, including Vice Chair Dewana Little, said the timeline is unreasonable. “It’s not realistic,” Little said. “It’s a part of the systemic oppression, this scarcity mindset and this crunch for time to rectify situations that took years to create, to fix problems and make recommendations about something that took hundreds of years to create… it’s not fair to the process.” Little said the majority of the commission’s recommendations had not yet been vetted by the city and county’s legal team. “That’s a process in itself,” she said. “We need more time. We need to see what that looks like....