Now that we’re several weeks into election season, we’re getting a clearer picture of the priorities of each of the Carrboro Town Council candidates.
What’s also clear is that while there are five candidates running, there are functionally two groups of candidates aligned around two different sets of priorities.
The first group includes incumbent Town Councilor Elizar Posada, former Planning Board chair Catherine Fray, and the former owner of Back Alley Bikes, Jason Merrill. Merrill also previously served on the Transportation Board when he lived in Chapel Hill. They have named their slate “Carrboro Better Together.”
The second group includes legal firm Client Relationship Executive and Triangle Red Cross Board Member April Mills and former UNC-Chapel Hill Systems Analyst and Meals on Wheels volunteer Stephanie Wade. While they have not named their slate (to my knowledge) they are campaigning together with joint advertising and canvassing. For this article, I will refer to them as “The Newcomers” since this appears to be their first time running or seeking to join a Town Board.
All of the candidates running are personally and professionally accomplished, and demonstrate a high level of engagement in the campaign.
How to Evaluate Candidates In a Campaign
The longer I follow politics at any level, the less interested I am in someone’s experience, and the more interested I am in how a candidate defines and understands various issues and ultimately, how they will vote on key issues before the community.
Fortunately, all the campaigns have provided a lot of information in this regard through published platforms, social media, and questions answered in public forums. We’ll get to that shortly. But first, what are the priorities of Carrboro residents?
The 2021 Carrboro Community Survey: What People All Over Town Want
Carrboro surveys its residents every few years using a telephone and mail survey, with scientific demographic sampling and follow-up designed to ensure that those responding to the survey are representative of the town, which is:
- 58% renters
- 38% non-white
- Mostly earning less than $75,000 per year
The 2021 Survey can be found here. Highlights that are direct quotes from the Executive Summary can be found below.
On transportation:
“Based on the sum of their top two choices, the transportation services that residents thought were most important were: 1) ease of walking in Carrboro, 2) availability of greenways/multi-use paths, and 3) ease of driving in Carrboro.”
and, in the supplement surveying Census tracts with more low-income and minority residents:
On housing:
“The most important aspect of housing to Carrboro residents was the availability of housing options by price.”
and, in the body of the full report:
“Today, community leaders have limited resources which need to be targeted to activities that are of the most benefit to their citizens. Two of the most important criteria for decision making are (1) to target resources toward services of the highest importance to citizens; and (2) to target resources toward those services where citizens are the least satisfied.”
Only 26% of Carrboro residents are satisfied with the price points of housing in Town. The survey recommends this be the #1 issue that the Town seeks to address.
The Candidates On Two Timely Topics In Town: Affordable Housing and the Bolin Creek Greenway
We’re in the middle of deep affordability crisis in Carrboro. As documented by Carolina Demography at the recent State of the Community briefing offered by the Carolina Chamber, the median home price in Carrboro has risen by over $200,000 in the last three years.
The Candidates ON HOUSING
On housing, as on many issues, Catherine Fray brings their planning board experience to offer precise policy actions they would support: (from frayforcarrboro.com/platform/)
And at the NEXT/IFC/CEF/EMPOWERment candidate forum, a question was asked if candidates would support the 34 affordable housing units proposed for town-owned land on Pathway Drive. The forum was recorded (links go to YouTube comments of the candidates) and here is the summary portion of Fray’s detailed answer:
“Carrboro needs to be building as many units as the review of the site [at Pathway Drive] will support.” – Catherine Fray
On the same question, Eliazar Posada responded: “First, we need to build more, period…one of the key issues is that we just don’t have enough places for folks to live…As for Pathway Drive, I want to build as much as we can wherever we can….on any town-owned land where it makes sense for us to build affordable housing, we need to build it.” – Eliazar Posada
Jason Merrill has spoken multiple times in the campaign about how he trusts Catherine’s instincts an analysis for policy direction, and did so here as well: “On this subject…I agree with Catherine completely…Please vote for Catherine, and then also vote for me and I’ll be a plus-one…the logistics are there for Pathway-can we only build 34? Can we build more than 34 on Pathway. I’m agreement with as much affordable housing as we can build.” – Jason Merrill
Let’s unpack this a bit. To recap, Fray, Posada, and Merrill support building affordable housing on the Pathway Site. All three of them are focused on the broad affordability challenge in the community, and how it makes it hard for people across the income spectrum to remain in Carrboro.
Mills would not commit to nor outright oppose affordable housing on the site, and says that the [storm]”water and how it impacts others is just as important.” There is no development plan for the Pathway Site yet; it is early in a screening process to see what the site can accommodate in terms of housing while also meeting environmental rules. It’s entirely possible that a site plan can be created that adds no net new stormwater to the neighborhoods beyond the site. Building taller and more densely on some of the land may leave more of the land available for drainage. But Mills also raises the prospect of aesthetic criteria, putting a taller building on less land strategy that could help on stormwater in conflict with her “match the neighborhood” criterion. While not saying an outright “no,” Mills is making it clear that her priority is the perceived concerns of the neighbors (stormwater, aesthetics) and that housing for low-income residents is important, but perhaps a lower priority. (as another indicator, see Mills’ door hanger below, which mentions stormwater but not affordability)
Stephanie Wade did not attend the forum above, but has made it clear through instagram that she opposes affordable housing on Pathway Drive, and perhaps any housing anywhere else in town.
There are several policy implications of this post. Wade stated:
“One of the things I am very passionate about is tackling the affordable housing problems in Carrboro that come from being an area that has high demand.”
Then:
“Adding homes, apartments and other dwellings isn’t the answer.”
Interestingly, Wade later edited the post and the italicized sentence was removed. Here’s the current post:
Even if one ignores the deleted “no adding homes” comment, Wade’s remaining prescriptions face potentially insurmountable challenges for legal, functional and financial reasons. Those reasons are:
- Rent control is illegal in NC, and there is no legislative lever that the Town Council can pull on existing housing to prevent any landlord, corporate or local, from raising the rent by a certain amount.
- Apartment construction is THE primary method that created MOST of the affordable housing built in the area, particularly in the last ten years. That includes non-profit development projects like Greenfield Commons in Chapel Hill and Perry Place on the Chapel Hill/Carrboro town line. It also includes Shelton Station, built by for-profit developer Belmont Sayre, which includes 20 affordable and 74 market rate apartments. Another for-profit developer built The Landing at Winmore, where Wade had just visited prior to posting. It’s going to be hard to build affordable housing for individuals below the Area Median Income (AMI) without building apartments.
3. Our Transit funds are fully committed for some time. Chapel Hill Transit, GoTriangle and Orange Public Transportation have all made investments in recent years. The planned Hillsborough Train Station has funding reserved in our county transit plan. Between these investments and construction funds reserved for the crucial North-South Bus Rapid Transit project in Chapel Hill, nearly every transit dollar in the county is already committed for the next several years, perhaps as far out as 2030. When Wade says that we must add more transit before adding any more housing, she is inherently implying either:
a)the Town should support a multi-year-long development moratorium on all housing until new bus service arrives, which could be as late as 2030
b)the Town should raise taxes to pay for more public transportation
As a final piece of information to assess how Mills and Wade prioritize affordable housing, I’ve taken a picture of their door hanger literature below. Neither mentions affordable housing in their priorities, despite it being the #1 issue in the Town Survey. Public transportation is also not mentioned on either door hanger.
The Candidates ON TRANSPORTATION & THE BOLIN CREEK GREENWAY
The NEXT/IFC/CEF/EMPOWERment Forum asked if the Town Council should complete the Bolin Creek greenway sections 3 and 4. Here are key excerpts of the answers of the candidates who attended. We’ll start with The Newcomers this time.
While Stephanie Wade did not attend this forum, she recently made the statement below on social media that mirrors Mills’ statement about greenways not being allowed in already-cleared-of-trees OWASA easements.
It’s possible that Mills and Wade have been given misinformation here, as MOST of the greenways in both Chapel Hill and Carrboro have been built in OWASA easements, which Ryan Byars has documented (with photos!) here.
Here’s what the Carrboro Better Together slate had to say on the issue.
The Crystallization of the Election in One Comment
While Merrill was only speaking about the greenway in the comment above, he touched upon the primary axis around which every other issue in the campaign revolves – should public policy decisions should be viewed primarily through the eyes of wealthy homeowners who live near proposed public investments, or should we take a broader view while also parsing those concerns?
Here’s a map showing the median income of the town, the proposed Bolin Creek Greenway Phases 3 and 4, and the proposed Pathway Drive affordable housing site. It’s impossible to miss how the greenway would connect lower-income parts of the community to the south to Chapel Hill High School, Smith Middle School, and Seawell Elementary at the north end of the greenway alignment.
On these two key issues, the Carrboro Better Together slate and the Newcomers slate have clearly different priorities.
- The Carrboro Better Together candidates will support the completion of public investments in the Bolin Creek Greenway along the creekside alignment and affordable housing on town-owned land on Pathway Drive. Both will connect residents across the income spectrum to schools, parks, and each other.
- The Newcomer candidates, while being less definitive on both projects, are more likely to oppose both the construction of affordable housing on Pathway Drive, and to oppose the creekside alignment while supporting other alignment plans that are promoted by anti-greenway groups such as the Friends of Bolin Creek. The Newcomers’ objection to both is couched in terms of stormwater and environmental management, even though there are plenty of local examples of technical best practies on both of these fronts. (Shelton Station apartments detains stormwater underground to prevent flooding; the Bolin Creek Greenway in Chapel Hill used multiple techniques that have stabilized the creekbed and prevented erosion.)
Does Where We Stand Ultimately Depend Upon Where We Sit?
As we consider these five candidates, it is also worth knowing that the Newcomer candidates both live in census tracts on the north side of town that both have median incomes over $100,000 per year, while the Carrboro Better Together candidates all live in the Census Tract that had a median income of $36,059 in the map above.
So it’s not surprising that the Carrboro Better Together candidates might hear more about housing cost challenges from their neighbors, and that the Newcomers might hear more from their neighbors about stormwater, since their financial basic needs are more likely to be met.
When any of these five candidates say “this is what I’m hearing,” we should taken them at their word.
What is most interesting about these two sets of platforms is that while it’s clear that the Newcomers’ platform is likely to block substantial priorities of the Carrboro Better Together slate, the reverse is not necessarily true. While the Newcomers are talking about stormwater as a problem, Catherine Fray from the Carrboro Better Together slate is as well, and has been identifying actionable strategies the Town can take to work on the stormwater issue, including using the stormwater utility that the Town established in 2017. Watch them break the issue down here in their closing statement from the forum:
The Town Survey, The Comprehensive Plan, The Candidates and The Future
In 2023, we have a very good idea of what is important to Carrboro residents at a large scale thanks to the 2021 Town Survey, and also the Carrboro Connects Comprehensive Plan process, which involved over 1,600 residents in Town and won an award for inclusive engagement.
The Carrboro Connects plan declares its two foundational pillars to be Racial Equity and Climate Action. Addressing these issues in 2023 largely requires TAKING actions and building things to change the course of an inequitable and climate-change-accelerating status quo.
The Carrboro Better Together slate largely supports the direction set by Carrboro Connects plan, and would TAKE action to build low-to-zero-carbon transportation choices like the Bolin Creek Greenway, and TAKE racial equity steps forward like developing affordable housing on Town-owned land, including Pathway Drive.
The Newcomers are less precise in their policy preferences, and express skepticism or outright opposition to the completing the Bolin Creek Greenway or building affordable housing on Pathway Drive. On these issues, the primary policy approach of the Newcomers would be the PREVENTION of actions, particularly construction (of greenways or homes) in the wealthiest part of Carrboro, and perhaps other parts of town as well.
Carrboro’s future will hinge on which of these two directions the electorate chooses in November.