As the City of Hendersonville’s mayor, Barbara Volk has three primary duties — preside at meetings, sign official documents, and declare states of emergency, but the reach actually goes much further than that.

The mayor works with state representatives and will contact them if City leadership has strong feelings about what is happening at a state level. Conversely, the State has an impact on some functions of the City through various local bills affecting municipalities.

The City also works with Henderson County to provide school resource officers to schools within city limits, work with land development and erosion control, conduct construction inspections, and more.

Other municipalities within the county also work with the City of Hendersonville through a quarterly meeting called Local Government Committee for Cooperative Action. During these meetings, the municipalities discuss issues and concerns as well as share ideas and updates with each other. The City is also an active member of the Land of Sky Regional Council and has contact with other municipalities within the four-county area covered by Land of Sky.

While the mayor acts as the spokesperson for the City, the City Council and the mayor work together as one body for the City. The mayor has no veto power and no influence on Council decisions. Each Council member reaches out to the community for input on various community issues, which Volk said she takes very seriously. Once decisions are made, the Council turns information over to the City’s staff to implement actions.

With more than 200 employees, City of Hendersonville staff work within a variety of departments. There are internal staff including those in administration and human resources. The public safety department includes police and firefighters, the public works department includes street cleaning and trash pickup staff, the legal department includes the city manager, city attorneys, and a public relations group, and the development department includes planning, zoning, and downtown development staff.

During the past four years, the City has hosted Community Conversations — a time where each City Council member goes out to a different part of town to host a casual discussion in which the public is invited to share their feelings and concerns, as well as their hopes for the future of the City.

“Each conversation has a slightly different topic,” Volk said. “Each of the Council members has a different sphere, creating a good variety of people as far as areas of the city that people live in, what groups they belong to, and where they are active. This helps us to stay abreast of the concerns throughout the community.”

Primary community concerns include traffic, growth, and housing costs. In August, the City of Hendersonville began implementing a new Comprehensive Plan which will address these concerns by looking at what the community wants the City to look like 20 years from now, deciding how and where to grow, and figuring out how to deal with that growth. The County also has their own Comprehensive Plan, and the City must work with the County to ensure the plans are complementary.

“We are in the very early stages of this Plan,” Volk said. “The City looks at the downtown master plan, looks at parks and green space, and determines where to purchase property to grow that. We look at where the community wants higher-density development, how that fits into traffic patterns, and what ordinances and zoning surround those areas in order to achieve the overall vision for the City.”

The Downtown and 7th Avenue districts are primary areas of focus for the City because they are economic engines for Hendersonville. The City spends a lot of time helping businesses and keeping the areas vibrant by providing enhanced services including plantings, hanging baskets, street cleaning, extra police services, and implementing sidewalk improvements. These services are paid for by the taxes in place for those districts, which are set by the City.

While the City is not directly responsible for business recruitment, it is a member of the Chamber of Commerce and works with Henderson County Partnership for Economic Development to discuss what can be implemented to make it easier for businesses coming to the area to operate. There is work done with the Partnership to provide incentives to industry, usually centering around infrastructure including water, sewer, and road construction or maintenance.

There is also a large number of nonprofits in Hendersonville, according to Volk. There are issues the City cannot address, and many nonprofits exist to fill in these gaps with support from the City. Giving to nonprofits is part of the City’s annual budget, though by state law grants can only be given to causes that perform work the City would be allowed to do but doesn’t have the resources to provide, such as substance abuse counseling or helping to serve the homeless population.

“The City tries to focus on core services that others can’t provide, such as taking care of the streets and performing fire inspections,” Volk said. “We also work hard to support those that can provide these other services better than we could. Henderson County is a very supportive, giving community, and we are blessed with folks here looking out for their neighbors. This is why people like living here — they know we have folks who care.”