Title: City Council member · music teacher & piano technician · kimroney4asheville.com · official page In this role since: Dec 2020 (elected Nov 2020; re-elected Nov 2024) Current term ends: Dec 2028 Next voter decision: Nov 3, 2026: running for Mayor against Esther Manheimer, having advanced from the March 3 primary with 33.43% (BPR); her council seat is not on the 2026 ballot · Election 2026
Surveillance record
The only member of council to vote against the surveillance buildout, every time, usually alone:
- Jan 24, 2023: sole no on the interlocal agreement joining the Buncombe Sheriff’s Fusus network (passed 4–1). (WLOS)
- Mar 25, 2025: pulled the first RTIC grant off the consent agenda, submitted 29 written questions to APD on data control and constitutional implications (never publicly answered), voted no (passed 6–1). (BPR)
- May 12, 2026: sole no on the $1.14M grant and 7.5-year Axon contract; presented ACLU-NC and EFF concerns; afterward: “21 people were sent home without the opportunity to speak.” (BPR)
In her words
- On process (2025): “We’re really missing those levels of public transparency and accountability… skipping all of those steps and burying it into the consent agenda.”
- At the first 2026 mayoral debate: concerns about “a billionaire-owned, AI-fueled, for-profit tech company… working with ICE and Homeland Security and also the police department to surveil people without a warrant.” And: “For me, it’s important to do the people’s work in public.” (BPR)
- On the check-in system, same debate: “a series of three-by-threes and sometimes one-on-one meetings where staff might spend anywhere from, like, eight to 10 hours with agendas and presentations, counting votes throughout the day… none of those meetings are public. And there’s no minutes.” Per Manheimer’s own account, Roney is the only member who opposes the practice.
On the Flock termination, Aug 20, 2026: “This is the wrong tool to solve the problem.” And the frame she keeps returning to: “The police department needs to have tools to solve crimes. We want to have justice realized in our communities,” but “the kinds of tools that we use, it’s so important to have public engagement and trust around” (WLOS).
Beyond the dais
Consulted ACLU-NC and EFF during the RTIC fight; appeared on the RE:FUSUS panel (May 25, 2026, DayTrip) alongside Benn Jordan and Patrick Conant. Faces Esther Manheimer in November, the only race where the RTIC is squarely on the ballot. See Election 2026.
One more entry for the record: on August 19, 2026, Manheimer called for terminating the Flock contract and removing the cameras (WLOS). Roney has been the sole no on every surveillance vote since January 2023, and said the Flock half plainly at the May 7 briefing, three months before the mayor arrived there: “I think even having one of them isn’t good for our community.”
At the August 20 briefing she did the follow-through work on the mayor’s proposal: read the staff memo revealing the Axon plate reader expansion into the record and asked for it published, warned that exiting cities have had to cover cameras Flock wouldn’t remove, called for the ACEIP documents to go on the city’s dashboard, flagged the ACLU’s guidance against real-time intelligence centers (“we still have some work to do there”), and asked for multiple overflow rooms so Tuesday’s crowd isn’t left outside without a bathroom again. Her framing of the remaining problem: “if we cancel the Flock contract and replace [it] with Axon’s same functioning equipment, then we still have a violation of our constitutional rights problem.”
Region: Asheville · Last updated: Aug 22, 2026