ASHEVILLE - After months of closed meetings and intense public pressure, the City Council is set to act against a Republican-imposed overhaul of the city's election system, two council members have said.

The news this month from council members Julie Mayfield and Keith Young answers the yearlong question of whether the council will try to stop the effects of Senate Bill 813.

The countdown for action, meanwhile, starts soon, according to timelines provided Aug. 5 by City Attorney Brad Branham. If the council wants to amend its charter — the likely path Young and Mayfield said it will take — the official process could start in the next few months.

Council hasn't voted yet but could do so as soon as Aug. 27. Mayfield said at least four of the seven members are ready to act, a move that would put them at odds with the state's GOP-controlled legislature.

"We know that people are anxious for us to do something. And even though we don’t know what that is yet, we wanted people to know we agree and the majority of us are committed to doing something," Mayfield, a 2020 Democratic North Carolina Senate candidate, said Aug. 2.

On Aug. 5 Young said he also thought a charter amendment would be the best approach, but he was still exploring the other option: taking the state to court. The councilman said the potential expense of suing — up to $2 million — along with a court win not having the benefit of eliminating districts but only allowing their redrawing, makes that less attractive.

"We've talked to a lot of knowledgeable people," he said. "What people actually want is to go back to what we had."

The downside of a charter amendment is that it can be undone by the General Assembly, according to Branham and Mayor Esther Manheimer.

Up until 2018 the council's seven members, including the mayor, were elected at-large, with all Asheville voters picking all council members.

But Republican senators said the council should be split into districts, as most other large cities are. That would help elect more council members from South Asheville, they said, the city's most conservative area.

The council, which is dominated by progressives, opposed the change. City officials took the question to residents, who in a referendum voted 75% against the districts idea proposed by Sen. Chuck Edwards, R-Hendersonville.

Despite that result, the General Assembly in June 2018 passed SB813. The Edwards-backed bill had some changes. Instead of seven, the new law put five council members in districts, with one council member and the mayor still elected at-large. It also eliminated primaries and switched election years from odd- to even-numbered, a change made at the request of Manheimer.

While the council came out unanimously against the original districts plan, it wasn't clear if it would act against the freshly-minted law. As months passed, members of the public urged and harangued the body to fight back. Council members held closed sessions with legal council and were largely silent until June 6, when the mayor talked with the Citizen Times about research she'd done on pros and cons of the two approaches to thwarting the law.

Then on June 10, Councilman Vijay Kapoor changed his stance, saying he supported districts because they would better represent neighborhoods. Kapoor later proposed the council be expanded to nine members, with five elected from districts and four, including the mayor, elected at-large.

At a special July 2 presentation, Branham, the newly-hired city attorney, gave the public his detailed legal analysis, which largely mirrored the mayor's June 6 findings. Branham added legal costs, estimated up to $2 million, and a timeline that he later refined and shared this month with the Citizen Times.

A majority had still not appeared over what action to take until this month.

A charter amendment gives the city the most control and can be done unilaterally. But altering Asheville's most fundamental document does not allow the city to change elections back to odd years, the city attorney said. Adding back a primary may also not be possible without special action from the General Assembly, Branham said.

Without a primary, the council could start the formal amendment process as late as June 9. But if the council wants a March primary and is able to get state legislators to pass a special local act, the process would have to start by Oct. 22.

Any and all such changes could be reversed by the state legislature.