What if Chapel Hill candidates had $1 million? Here’s how they would spend it.
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Candidates prioritize stormwater and green infrastructure investments to cut flood risk.
- Multiple candidates propose greenway connections to improve transit options and health.
- Candidates favor targeted pilot programs and equipment upgrades within tight town budgets.
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Voter Guide: Chapel Hill, Carrboro & Hillsborough elections
On Nov. 4, 2025, Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough voters will elect mayors and town board members, and Chapel Hill and Carrboro voters will also elect Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board members. Here is information about voting and the candidates.
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A million dollars is a drop in the bucket for most governments, but five candidates running for Chapel Hill’s Town Council agreed those extra dollars could make life a little better for residents.
Chapel Hill voters will elect four of the five candidates to the nonpartisan board on Nov. 4.
The slate of five candidates includes two incumbents — Camille Berry and Paris Miller-Foushee — and three challengers: Wes McMahon, Louie Rivers III and Erik Valera. Mayor Jess Anderson, who is also on the ballot, is running unopposed.
Early voting began Oct. 16 in Hillsborough and starts Oct. 23 in Carrboro and Chapel Hill.
Here’s what the candidates told The News & Observer when asked what they would do with a $1 million grant that could be used for anything and why:
Camille Berry: To be impactful, I would look at investing in our stormwater system … and also in taking a hard look at all of the equipment that the town uses, our staff uses. That is one area where I’ve been concerned that we push it beyond the due date. I’m talking about radios. I’m talking about [things] that they need in the library, safety vests for our officers, and also safety equipment for our firefighters … because we need them to serve this community. It may be protective equipment. It may be to provide services for the public. And that’s what I would want to look at first. If it were a million dollars granted for anything, I would look there first. Affordable housing is really dear to my heart, but we can’t have a home without the services that support it.
Wes McMahon: It could be applied to making fixes [to] our current greenways because of Chantal, and it could be prioritizing missing links. One of the things is we have the Bolin Creek Trail and we have the Booker Creek Trail, and we have Blue Hill right in between there. How can we take that million dollars and make a clear connected pathway to make those two trails connected as one? The greenways are not only for our health, but they also are a way to get around town without using the car. … There’s so many benefits to making sure that we get the greenways built out here.
The big thing I want to bring to the Town Council is a focus on effectiveness, and that really is making sure that what we spend money on gets the results you want to see … and making sure that when we spend the money actually gets some benefit in the end, making sure that we evaluate for that.
Paris Miller-Foushee: A million dollars sounds like a lot of money, but having been in this position for four years, I have a real understanding of our needs as a town, and we have a very finite amount of resources to go around to meet our needs. But coming out of the devastating impacts of Tropical Storm Chantal, I would like to work closely with town staff to be able to identify how that million-dollar grant can help our immediate needs following the storm. I would be really interested in exploring putting together a pilot program, very similar to what Carrboro did, for green infrastructure opportunities, for our neighbors who have been most impacted by flooding. … We know that in order to really address our flooding and stormwater needs, it’s going to take about $25 million to $30 million … I think a million dollar grant pilot program that focuses and works in conjunction with green infrastructure within our neighborhoods would be a good usage of that money.
Louie Rivers III: I would probably use it to fund a green infrastructure initiative across our neighborhoods, because I think a lot of people are interested in rain gardens and bioswales and these other kind of very localized, green ways of dealing with severe weather, especially a lot of rainfall in a short amount of time.
I think there’s value in having these green infrastructure projects. They would help, and it would be good for communities. … So I would probably use a million dollars to create a green infrastructure fund for the town, where we would be able to subsidize green infrastructure on private property across town, and if we had that much money, we could do it not just in one neighborhood. We could subsidize and we could target the most vulnerable neighborhoods. … Or we just focus on a green infrastructure project and a couple of very vulnerable apartment complexes.
Erik Valera: I would look at our community amenities. We are on track to be able to build more housing, and our Complete Communities framework will allow us to live closer to where we work, ideally, closer to each other, and have greenways near transit … so that we’re able to get around them. We can also benefit from having better amenities, places where we come together as a community, places where we can live, work and play. I would like to see it go towards improving our greenway system, including our recreation and activity, and just making this a healthier community.
This story was originally published October 19, 2025 at 8:00 AM.
