Chapel Hill candidates share plans for tackling rising town costs, budget cuts
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Five council candidates propose tax shifts, development and LUMO rewrites.
- Candidates prioritize infrastructure, housing and diversifying revenue sources.
- Council faces limited options as salaries, taxes and budget cuts drive choices.
Local government spending can affect a person’s ability to remain financially stable in their community, especially if they already struggle to pay a mortgage or rent.
Five candidates are running for four open seats on the Chapel Hill Town Council in November: incumbents Camille Berry and Paris Miller-Foushee, and challengers Wes McMahon, Louie Rivers III and Erik Valera. Mayor Jess Anderson, who is also on the ballot, is unopposed.
Early voting in the nonpartisan race begins Oct. 16 in Hillsborough and Oct. 23 in Carrboro and Chapel Hill. The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 4.
The next council will make key decisions. But for decisions that require money, it may not have many options.
Property taxes pay roughly half of the town of Chapel Hill’s bills, and homeowners already shoulder about 72% of that burden. Many have seen hefty increases in property values and tax bills in recent years.
Renters also have seen sharp rent increases, which help commercial landlords pay their property tax bills.
Chapel Hill’s operating budget — or general fund — has grown by $34.3 million in the last 10 years. About a third of that increase reflects inflation, and tariffs have posed another challenge this year, especially as the town implements a five-year plan to address a backlog of maintenance and vehicle replacement needs.
Council members say that leaves very little to cut without affecting services or laying off personnel, whose salaries and benefits comprise roughly 70% of the town’s $94.9 million operating budget. The Chapel Hill council voted this year to raise the tax rate and make cuts, including to the popular curbside leaf collection program.
The News & Observer asked what three steps each council candidate would take to put the town on a firmer financial footing.
Camille Berry: It’s going to require investments. Three things that we need to do. One, continue to look at our infrastructure. There are repairs that need to be made, there are replacements that need to be made, and we need to make sure that the aging infrastructure is up to date. The second thing is, as we grow, as we continue to develop — and that is something that I support — that we look at are roads connected? How can we make them more connected? And then the third thing is that we continue to engage with the public so that they understand where we are presently, where we’re trying to go, and what steps are going to take place in between now and then.
Wes McMahon: Number one is we have to spend wisely. We need to look at our budget. We’ve got to prioritize our top items that we want to fund and really consider some of the things that we can’t fund. Right now, we’re seeing massive reductions in our federal and state funding. We only have one real source of funding right now, which is residential property taxes. So we need to find a way to cut our spending in a way that honors our values, but also make sure that it’s not in the backs of all of the homeowners in town.
Second, tied with that, is we’ve got to diversify our funding. So if it is 60% to 70% residential property taxes, we’ve got to figure out how to increase commercial taxes in this town. We’ve got to find a way to diversify what pots of money we have. Private, public partnerships are another way we could look at working with corporations and other interested individuals and groups that want to help fund some of the services that we value in town.
Paris Miller-Foushee: Our role as a council is about creating an economic environment that allows local businesses to thrive, for example, the parking deck that we invested in as a town.
A second thing that I think is really important is how we explore opportunities to invest in green spaces and in parks and other things that bring people to our local downtown area, for example. Housing plays a pivotal role in building a strong economy. One of the things that we hear constantly from businesses is that their employees can’t afford to live in the community in which they serve. Finally, I believe that our Land Use Management Ordinance is an opportunity for us to meet the commercial and economic needs, so we need to be zoning in a way that invites the kind of commercial business that we need in our downtown [and] across our community.
Louie Rivers III: Our tax base is largely single-family residential, and we need to do things to expand that tax base. That means taking steps to invest in development and to invest in making it easier to bring business to Chapel Hill. One of the immediate steps is a full rewrite of our land-use management ordinance (and then) revisit the LUMO every two to three years. ... I think that I would [also] really focus on our infrastructure, specifically our stormwater infrastructure.
The third thing is, we saw the property revaluation coming in this year, and a lot of people’s properties went up. … When we are developing our next budget, what are we going to do to make sure that we don’t have to continue a similar tax rate [increase] as we had this year? And that means having tough conversations. Engaging the community and thinking about what are trade-offs that we want to make at the end of the day.
Erik Valera: We need to rewrite our Land Use Management Ordinance. Part of the reason why that would help us be on better financial footing is that it would help with affordability. It would help us be able to create more housing in our community and more housing for people who are contributing and currently working in our community. They would be living here and spending money here, so also it will allow us to create more businesses here in our community as well. We are in a situation right now where you may not be able to depend on the federal government for the money and grants that we have gotten in the past.
Most importantly, I think we need to be able to include our community more in the budgeting process. We need to be able to make that more transparent, more accessible, so that people from within our community are able to better understand how our budgeting works, how our taxes work, how our valuation works.
This story was originally published October 15, 2025 at 10:49 AM.
