The City of Asheville is committed to providing quality core services that support a vibrant and welcoming community for residents, businesses, and visitors. After a 60-day safety and cleanliness initiative in the spring of 2023, City departments continued focused efforts to support a safe and welcoming downtown and are collaborating on new ways to deliver and track services with maximum impact.
On-going and expanded initiatives include:
- Prioritized coverage by APD in the downtown area, utilizing bike and foot patrols when possible. The department is regularly supplementing downtown patrols and prioritizing coverage based on crime data.
- Improved systems of reporting and tracking repair needs for downtown street lighting.
- Continuation of the Community Responder Program pilot (and transition to a long-term program) as an additional public safety presence and community resource. Teams of 2-3 firefighters are engaging proactively with people visibly in crisis or experiencing homelessness 7 days a week from 9am to 9pm.
The Office of Data and Performance is continuing to work with staff across departments to improve the way services and data are tracked. These metrics are critical to informing decision-making and resource needs.
Check out some of the tools currently being utilized to track services and impacts:
Dashboards and sources of data
- Community Responder Dashboard – Downtown area
- Streetlights Downtown Safety Initiative Dashboard – Downtown area
- Public Noise Complaint Dashboard – Citywide
- Simplicity – searchable by address – Citywide
- Homelessness Data – Citywide
- Point-in-Time Counts
- Homeless System Performance Measures
- Crime Statistics and Crime Mapping Apps – Citywide
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