From Staff Reports 

City Council voted 6-0 April 26 to enact a general ban of horse-drawn carriages on Asheville streets, effective May 30, except for one exception — Asheville’s lone horse-drawn carriage operator. 

The vote banning horse-drawn carriages repealed a 1990 ordinance allowing them on city streets.

Council later voted unanmously to offer a franchise extension to Asheville Horse and Carriage Tours, LLC,  starting on May 30, to allow its owner, Catherine Hunter, adequate time to transition into a new livelihood.  The firm had an open-ended franchise agreement with the city.

However, the vote to extend the franchise for two years, rather than the one-year extension proposed by Councilman Brian Haynes, passed by a narrower margin, 4-2. Councilman Cecil Bothwell joined Haynes in voting against the longer extension. Councilwoman Julie Mayfield, who was attending an energy use conference, was absent on the votes. 

After the ban was enacted, animal rights activists told the local news media that they are happy with council’s vote to end permitting and regulating horse-drawn carriages. They said the operation posed a threat to horses and people — and was cruel to the animals.

“The whole point of ending the horse carriage in Asheville was to protect the horses, protect the safety of the general public — and that’s been accomplished here tonight,” Lafayette Prescott, American Voice for Animals, said at the April 26 meeting. “No horse carriage owner ever started out with the intention of causing any harm.”  Prescott, a founder of Asheville Voice for Animals and self-described former cowboy, said economic pressure often leads to animal neglect.

Hunter told council that she rescues horses from bad situations and that some of them become carriage horses, which pays for their upkeep. Hunter said she wants to transition out of the business through the sale of a book about working with horses in nonabusive ways — and through teaching and lecturing.

“I think it’s very sad that how they can take away somebody’s hard work and somebody’s viable business,” Hunter said. “It is my only income. And it is the only way I can support the carriage horses and the horses that I care for and train.”She started the business in 2013.

Meanwhile, Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer told Asheville’s WLOS-TV (News 13) that the agreement would start when the horse-drawn carriage ordinance is repealed on May 30 and would continue until May 30, 2018.