Hey, Carrboro voters …
When you’re at the polls in the next few weeks, after you excitedly mark your ballot with your pick for president, after you agonize over your pick for governor, after you wonder what the state auditor does, after you bubble your way through the sea of judges, and maybe even after you vote for the only candidate for Orange soil and water conservation district supervisor…
Don’t forget to turn your ballot over and vote in the most local race this cycle: the town council special election to fill Barbara Foushee’s former council seat, which she vacated after assuming the mayorship. The winner of this election will serve for only one year but, as an incumbent, would be in a prime position to pursue a full term in the 2025 election.
The candidates, Cristóbal Palmer and Isaac Woolsey, seem to have more policy overlap than disagreements. Both are hitting the proper Carrboro notes, touting their support for improving transit access, making housing more affordable, and doing something—anything—about the impending doom of the climate crisis.
Both also seek to bring their own lived experience to governance. Palmer, who is a white Latino, emphasizes antiracist training, while Woolsey, who is disabled and autistic, emphasizes prioritizing ADA requirements.
It’s not exactly a blockbuster election. The winner will have only one vote on a seven-member body that tends to value consensus-building and collaboration and works hard to avoid split votes. And the council doesn’t set, say, education or health care policy.
But the council does make the decisions that impact people in their daily lives: Should parking downtown remain free? How should the town grow over the next 10 years? What should the town do about the predatory towing at Carr Mill Mall? How can Carrboro procure more affordable housing?
The election is nonpartisan, so neither candidate’s party is listed on the ballot, but Palmer is a longtime Democratic volunteer running with the support of the local party. His candidacy is “a logical extension of the sort of advocacy work and the sort of showing up that I’ve done in the past,” he tells INDY.
“I have a history of showing up for volunteer work and different nonprofit boards, specifically the Triangle Linux Users Group and the Carrboro Bicycle Coalition,” Palmer says.
Woolsey recently changed his voter affiliation from Republican to No Labels. That hasn’t exactly endeared him to the voters of Carrboro, a town in which Joe Biden’s worst 2020 precinct result was about 90 percent of the vote.
“There’s a lot of bigotry because I don’t have ‘Democrat’ carved into my forehead,” Woolsey tells the INDY. “I only registered as a Republican for primary purposes to vote against Trump.”
Woolsey adds that, despite a recent dustup with local grassroots media outlet Triangle Blog Blog over his affiliation, he’s not “some far-right moron” and is “an independent at heart” because he has problems with both major parties.
On the issues, though, both candidates have ideas that fit in well with the perspectives of those already serving on the council.
Local governments don’t have a lot of power when it comes to state-owned routes, like NC Highway 54, but Palmer says that the council could work with regional and statewide bodies like the Department of Transportation to make all of Carrboro safer for pedestrians and bikers.
“We have a legacy of transportation policy—national, state, local level—that prioritizes cars, that essentially subsidizes being in a car,” Palmer says. “But it has come at the expense of the most vulnerable: kids, elders, renters, low-income folk.”
Woolsey was inspired to run because Chapel Hill Transit, which serves both Chapel Hill and Carrboro, cut hours during the pandemic and still hasn’t scaled back up. Because he can’t drive, he’s dependent on public transit to get him to work, doctor’s appointments, and other commitments, he says. On council, he would push to change the town’s bus driver training program, in hopes of better staffing Chapel Hill Transit.
Both also think the town could help address the affordable housing crisis.
“The tool that we have at our disposal is land use ordinance policy,” Palmer says. “Carrboro can’t change the federal funds rate [or] interest rates from home mortgage institutions, but what it can do is change its land use policy to incentivize the building and redevelopment of the kinds of housing that people want to actually rent and buy.”
Woolsey, through conversations with residents, has developed a plan to use council funds to help first-time home buyers with some of the fees involved. These owners would also not be allowed to turn their homes into short-term rentals (through Airbnb or Vrbo). He says he hopes that the council could also help “keep out predatory investors who are running people out of town.”
Election Day is November 5, and early voting begins on Thursday.
Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].