Carolina Public Press–Louisburg Mayor Christopher Neal thinks there’s about a 95% chance this week’s mayoral election will go to a runoff. If so, the 3,400 some odd-taxpayers in Louisburg, situated in the center of northeastern Franklin County, will be on the hook for up to $10,000 in estimated additional costs as a result of the municipal elections.
Until recently, runoffs were out of the question. Whoever got the most votes won. End of story. But that changed when state lawmakers quietly inserted a provision into House Bill 183 this summer to move Louisburg from a plurality system to a majority rule system for mayor contests in the town’s municipal elections. To win, candidates now need more than 50% of the vote, even in races with more than two candidates. Otherwise, the top two vote-getters will face off again in November.
None of the local leaders knew about the proposed change before it became law. The Louisburg provision wasn’t even included in the bill until the legislation had already sailed through the committee phase, where public input is allowed. In a unanimous vote, Louisburg’s City Council passed a resolution expressing their disapproval of the top-down change.
Nobody is exactly sure who to blame.
Across the state, 18 counties held nonpartisan municipal elections on Tuesday, Oct. 7. Some were primaries for November elections. Others were general elections that could end in a runoff. Carolina Public Press talked to candidates running in three of those municipal elections.
While some North Carolina towns with upcoming elections may not be as large as Charlotte or Raleigh, they often have just as much drama.
Louisburg: A municipal elections legislative mystery
In 2021, Boyd Sturges lost his bid for Louisburg mayor by nine votes to Neal. With six candidates in the race, neither got a majority. In the plurality system, Neal won.
Now, four years later, Neal feels targeted. As Franklin County’s sole Black mayor, he feels that whoever was responsible for House Bill 183 was attempting to suppress the vote.
Generally, already paltry municipal elections turnout decreases further when there is a runoff or second election.
“That has an overwhelming effect on minority voters, seniors, single parent households, working families,” Neal said. “It’s difficult to get out and vote a second time.”
Neal pointed out that there was no law change in Franklinton, another Franklin County municipality, where Art Wright won the mayoral race against John Allers by one vote in 2023 municipal elections. While there was a write-in option in the contest, nobody used it.
Everyone has suspicions about who led the effort to change the law, but nobody in the General Assembly has been willing to own up to it so far.
Sturges said he can only guess at the motivation. William Goedert, who is running against Sturges and Neal in the three-way mayoral race this cycle, said he knows who did it but isn’t sharing.
“It didn’t just pop out of thin air, and the person that ran this through should be man enough to say where it came from, but I already know, and I’m not going to say,” Goedert said.
None of the six members of the conference committee who made the final amendments to the bill represent Franklin County, and the only one who responded to a request for comment suggested asking Rep. Matthew Winslow, R-Franklin, for answers. Winslow did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
He did talk to Neal, though. At Louisburg’s July City Council meeting, Neal told council members that Winslow said the local Republican Party was responsible.
In a phone call, Franklin County Republican Party chairman Ed Strickland denied bringing the idea to Winslow and then hung up.
Sturges is more concerned with other issues ahead of this year’s municipal elections, anyways. At a recent mayoral forum, he mentioned the town’s lack of timely audits as part of his response to nearly every question.
Louisburg has missed several audit deadlines recently, and cannot make big expenditures until it’s back on track, Neal said. He attributed the issue to a six-month delay in hiring a new auditor after the previous one left the job. During the hiring search, work piled up, and now the city is working through the backlog, he said.
Sturges thinks Neal is “making light of it” and trying to “downplay it.” The town can’t move forward until the issue is resolved, and residents know exactly where their money has been spent, he said.
“We’re not growing,” Sturges said. “We’re getting beat by every other little town around us. We’re at best treading water, and if you tread water in this world, in this economy, you’re actually losing ground.”
Neal is anxious to move past it as well. If re-elected, he plans to guide the town through big projects like building affordable housing in the historically neglected south side of town, and constructing a multi-million dollar judicial complex downtown.
Rocky Mount: Behind budget
Louisburg isn’t the only place with financial issues going into this year’s municipal elections.
Rocky Mount is $30 million in the hole. That’s according to a recent review of the town’s finances that uncovered significant overspending beginning in 2023.
Between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 fiscal years, Rocky Mount spent $63 million more it didn’t have for fire trucks, land for development and $15 million in increased staffing.
As a result, the city’s cash, investment and reserve accounts have depleted. Rocky Mount has about $20 million on hand, compared to about $113 million around this time in 2019.
Now, Rocky Mount is the subject of a state audit. City leaders must make harsh cuts. So far, they’ve announced plans to halve the city’s part-time workforce, in addition to a 10% cut to the full-time workforce. Utility rates are expected to rise.
All this is looming large over the upcoming municipal elections. Four City Council seats are up for re-election. In Ward 3, the incumbent isn’t running, leaving the door wide open for the seven candidates who joined the race – Carl Revis, Charles (Verb) Roberson, Bronson Williams, Tim Barnes, Xavian Jones, Neliene Richardson and Crystal Wimes-Anderson.
“It’s getting ugly,” Roberson said.
“It doesn’t look like there’s any wrongdoing so far, but it’s early in the stages. It just looks like we didn’t have a balance sheet, and we didn’t account for the money that we were spending.”
Williams would have expected the audit drama to bring more people out to the polls. But he’s seen the opposite effect. When people lose trust in leaders or their belief in things getting better, they often feel like no candidate they could choose would actually make a difference, he said.
If elected, Williams said he would work to establish an independent commission to oversee the city’s financial health.
“Either the financial policies that exist aren’t working, or they’ve not been updated to meet today’s marketplace, so you’re going to have to update your financial policies,” he said.
Roberson is pitching himself as someone who can bring money and investment into Rocky Mount. He wants to spur tourism by transforming part of the town into an arts district.
Ward 3 has dilapidated houses, few businesses and a lack of nutritious food options, he said. It needs a leader that can move Rocky Mount out of the bottom of the rankings and attract businesses.
“The next person that they elect as a city council person is going to determine where we go in the next four years,” Roberson said. “If it’s somebody with visionary ideas to grow our city, or if somebody is going to make promises, but doesn’t have any experience to fulfill those promises.”
Williams also wants to brighten up the community. His idea is to repurpose the ward’s judicial center into a community resource center where youth and seniors can access what they need to succeed.
Jabaris Walker, who currently represents Ward 7, said Rocky Mount would be back on top in two to three years.
“Just trust the process and we’ll get through it,” he said.
New Bern: Looking forward
Tuesday, municipal elections voters in New Bern will decide whether the coastal North Carolina city will borrow $24 million to pay for long-term projects revitalizing streets and sidewalks, parks and recreation facilities and stormwater infrastructure.
The three bond referendums would raise property taxes by about $27.50 for a $100,000 property, according to the city. But when most people show up to the polls, they don’t seem to know about it, said Mayor Jeffrey Odham, who is running for reelection.
“We were trying to put the bond referendum on there to hopefully drive some engagement, and get some voters that typically may not have voted in a municipal election involved and engaged, but it doesn’t really appear to have that big of an impact,” he said.
Most candidates support the referendums, and voters appear to approve once they learn more, candidates said.
New Bern is an older town, and the longer they wait to fix infrastructure issues, the more problems they’ll have, Ward 1 candidate Alana Huber said.
“It’s going to be a good way to get things done expeditiously and not have to pay as you go,” she said.
Huber is also focused on helping people navigate historical association regulations to fix up their homes and protecting residents from potential hazardous spills from trains that run through town.
However, Huber is disappointed in the low younger voter turnout in municipal elections.
“Young folks are going to be living here for a long time, and they get a chance to pick who they want to represent them, and I hope they can get out and vote,” she said.
Trey Ferguson, who is also running for the Ward 1 seat in New Bern, agreed with Huber’s assessment. At 33, he is one of a few younger candidates, but doesn’t see the same energy from younger voters.
It’s a “turning point election” for New Bern, he said. The interconnectivity of the eastern part of the state is growing, and New Bern is at the crossroads.
“We could have a slate of candidates get in there and focus on moving New Bern forward — having sustainable growth, harnessing that growth — especially with so many people who are going to be projected to come into this region because of all of the increased highway expansion projects,” he said.
