Tourism leaders are not manning the barricades before next Wednesday’s meeting.

The tourism development folks have responded to my article about them. Their only quibble was with the picture of their members from two years ago in a slide by the organizers at Buncombe Decides, who is the one pushing for them to put 16.55 of their $40 m this year for affordable housing for their employees. They have since added a Black person. The fact that their pr flack could find no other fault in the story makes me feel we are on sound footing; they are not fighting back against the funding of affordable housing nor are they quibbling about getting a service worker on their allocation committee of the carve out fund. Who is in the room when the decisions are made, and including a group that is usually acted upon instead of one of the actors effecting things makes a big difference.That in itself is very significant. The pr woman I sent it to clearly took it up stairs and their only response is to say hey, we have partially cleaned up our act. That is not the stance of a group that is hunkering down to fend off the people at the gates asking to be part of the decision making and that their tax helps the people who make the tourism industry’s millions.