“Dancing Queens: A Case Study,” a video the town of Cary commissioned at a cost of $34,975, tells the story of a handful of town staffers who spent months planning a surprise dance performance for their colleagues and bosses.
It plays a bit like a workplace mockumentary, where the actors deliver their lines in earnest and only the audience can see the humor in what’s unfolding.
Scene 1: The camera pans across an industrial-chic event space filled with cheerful-looking professionals in business casual attire. It’s the first night of a two-day staff retreat in Wilmington. Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” plays softly in the background as they mingle and chitchat. Their champagne flutes are embossed with the town of Cary logo.
Cut to a microphone stationed at the front of the room. “We have one more special touch for tonight,” announces Chief Strategy Officer Susan Moran. Standing beside her is then-Town Manager Sean Stegall. Moran starts to tell a story about how, years ago, Stegall had the idea to end the annual retreat with a performance by staff.
Cut to Stegall, nodding and grinning bemusedly.
“Those of you who have been on the council,” Moran says, “know that we’ve never done that. Until tonight.”
The lights dim. The opening glissando of ABBA’s disco anthem “Dancing Queen” plays. The crowd erupts into applause. Fade to black.
Scene 2: We’ve moved locations to a sun-washed room. It’s nine months later, per a banner at the bottom of the screen. Four women in blazers and slacks are sitting in director’s chairs. On the tables between them are four town of Cary mugs, logos angled carefully toward the camera.
Moran asks her collaborators: “How does the Dancing Queens experience exemplify our culture and what we are trying to do at all levels in the organization?”
“I think … taking a risk, number one,” says Planning Director Heather Welehan. “Putting yourself out there, being vulnerable.”
Moran rests her chin on her hand and nods thoughtfully. Cut to a close-up on Welehan, who continues: “It started as ‘This is a present for Sean, and council, and it’s for the retreat’ … and it became a commitment to our colleagues and the relationships we’re forming along the way.”
Made in 2024, “Dancing Queens” includes studio interviews with a dozen town staffers, b-roll from rehearsals, and several clips from Mamma Mia! the movie to break up its six “chapters.” The film builds and builds to the final performance, a four-minute, professionally choreographed dance break by staff members decked out in go-go boots and shiny disco pants. (The town did not pay for the choreographer or the costumes, Moran told the INDY.)
Between 2021 and 2025, the town of Cary spent more than $330,000 to produce 12 documentary-style videos about town projects and culture, including “Dancing Queens,” all at Stegall’s direction. The videos range in length from under five minutes to nearly 30 minutes. They were made for internal use only and were not intended for broad public viewing. The INDY obtained them, along with associated invoices and emails, through a public records request. Stegall, who resigned in December 2025, did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
As the title suggests,“Dancing Queens” aims to be a “case study,” an illustration of Cary town staff’s exceptional teamwork and creativity. Stegall commissioned the documentary after the performance because he thought it exemplified camaraderie and risk in government work, Moran said. Some of the other videos are about Cary’s history, its environmental programs, and its housing plan. For a series of five 10-minute videos from 2023, various council and staff members dissected the town’s motto, “Live Inspired”—what it means, how to do it, and where they get their inspiration. The sixth video in that series is a blooper reel.
“Sean Stegall was an enthusiastic advocate for video,” Moran told the INDY. “He felt like video could convey thoughts and emotions and move people in ways that the written word or in-person simply couldn’t. It was under Sean’s direction that we started producing these videos.”
Together, the videos offer a glimpse into Cary’s government under Stegall, who helmed the organization for almost a decade. On their face, he comes off as an adept leader who spearheaded big projects, motivated the people around him to be better public servants, and cultivated a fun, inclusive culture in Town Hall.
After Stegall resigned, the town revealed he had engaged in “over-the-top spending and inadequate financial reporting” and created an “unhealthy work environment” for staff. Whistleblowers reported Stegall to Mayor Harold Weinbrecht, who told the INDY in January he learned the former manager’s behavior had been “unpredictable” and “inappropriate.” Four separate investigations into Stegall’s conduct—by the Wake County District Attorney’s Office, the state auditor, the State Bureau of Investigation, and a law firm hired by the town—are ongoing. Given Stegall’s resignation and the ensuing investigations, the self-congratulatory, sentimental tone of the videos—and their price tag—now feels misguided.
Stegall’s legacy in Cary is complicated. He oversaw a period of hugely successful growth and development for the town. He envisioned Downtown Cary Park as a marquee destination and helped make it happen. He established the 311 service for Cary residents. He also depleted the town’s savings. He “dismantled” Cary’s budget office and communications office, Moran told the INDY. The videos show the good he did and also illustrate some of the bad.
“Sean was a change agent,” Moran said. “He also, as we can all see now, lacked good judgment when it came to spending.”
“Just like so many other things, he just took it too far,” Cary Assistant Director for Citizen Information and Outreach Carolyn Roman told the INDY.
“A step too far,” Moran agreed.
“The Brightest Star”
Many of the videos celebrate the hard work and creativity of the staff at Cary Town Hall.
“To have somebody want to invest resources to document the magnificent work of what staff was doing … felt really good,” Roman said.
But at times, the videos devolve into platitudes and boosterism.
“Be your best self. Be the best place to live. Be the best place to work. Be the best. To me, that’s what ‘Live Inspired’ means,” then-Town Councilmember Don Frantz reflects in one of the videos from the 2023 retreat series, titled “Inspiring Better Versions of Ourselves.”
In the same video, then-Assistant Town Manager Dan Ault monologues on how the town of Cary is able to “do meaningful things.”
“It’s incredibly hard,” Ault says in the video, “and it takes you across the landscape to a variety of different, I’m going to use the term geographies. I’m thinking of it in terms of different concepts, of different things you have to encounter when you’re trying to do something special. It’s beyond what you can imagine.” (Ault resigned about a month after Stegall.)
In “Legacy of Leadership,” a video about Cary’s history made in 2024, the narrator—PBS Frontline’s Will Lyman, whom the town paid $10,000, Moran said—describes the town’s “national and international reputation as the place to relocate to.”
At the end of the video, Lyman name-checks Stegall’s book, The Top of the Arc.
“New leaders in government, business, and community are bringing fresh energy into Cary to meet the opportunities we have today, whether by establishing a dynamic collection of breweries or by creating a park to fulfill a commitment to keep Cary at the top of the arc,” Lyman pronounces.
“We have built on the legacy of leadership that Cary is known for.” The music swells. “Leadership not formed from a training manual or prescribed by ideology, but leadership born from a personal promise to ourselves and to each other to always put Cary first. To collaborate and cross the myriad of aisles and boundaries that both separate and define us as individuals, but collectively contribute to the diverse fabric that makes Cary the best place, the brightest star, the beacon for hope and opportunity for those who choose to call her home.”
Coldplay, Drones, and a Celebrity Voiceover
The least expensive video in the set the INDY obtained, “Environmental Excellence,” is eight minutes long and cost $20,510 to make. The most expensive, “Inspiration Lives Here – The Story of Downtown Cary Park,” is 22 minutes and cost $70,000. The series of six short videos on the town’s “Live Inspired” motto cost $61,140 total.
“Legacy of Leadership,” which is 10 minutes long, cost $62,828, including Lyman’s $10,000 voice-over fee and a $5,000 fee to license the background song, “A Sky Full of Stars,” from Coldplay and The Piano Guys.
The most expensive videos in the set included sweeping drone shots filmed around Cary, a large number of studio interviews, and/or a large quantity of b-roll footage.
All of the videos were made by Digital P, a local production studio run by former town of Cary employee Peyote Perryman. Digital P also produces the town’s educational Cary Matters video series, makes commercials for the town, and films the council meetings. The town began using Digital P a few years after Stegall arrived in 2016, Moran said, in part because of Stegall’s decision to “dismantle” the communications department, which had been responsible for video production.
According to Moran, Stegall wanted the videos to be “high-end.” He came up with the general concepts and sometimes made specific requests, like the Lyman voice-over. Then he tasked Moran, whose job encompasses strategic communications and special projects and who reported directly to him, with figuring out the details with Perryman.
“This song has a special meaning to me and I hadn’t thought about it for a while and then I heard a slow version of it just now on television for a Make-A-Wish commercial,” Moran wrote in a December 2023 email to Perryman with a link to “A Sky Full of Stars.” “Let’s do some thinking together about this in the new year.”
When Moran brought Stegall a cost estimate for a video, she recalled that he would invariably approve it, telling her, “Whatever it takes, spend the money.”
“How things looked was very important to Sean,” Moran said. “Sean would say, ‘It’s not form or function, it’s both form and function.’”
The videos—which were shown to new council members and staff, at professional conferences, and by the Cary Chamber of Commerce—were not screened to the broader public or made available online, according to emails the INDY obtained. “Dancing Queens” was screened at a department directors’ meeting, Moran said. As she understood it, Stegall believed the videos could help impress upon viewers “the weight of the responsibility for the legacy of this place, that he purported to love.”
Since Stegall resigned, there have been several other reports of questionable or excessive town spending during his tenure.
The town disclosed last December that in 2024, Stegall authorized two land purchases worth $1 million total without the council’s knowledge.
The News & Observer reported in January that the town of Cary paid about $37,000 toward Councilmember Lori Bush’s public policy master’s degree at Northwestern University in 2024 without the full Town Council’s knowledge. (Bush repaid the town after learning some of her council colleagues weren’t aware of the payment.) The N&O also reported that the town of Cary paid $3,400 for Stegall to stay in a hotel for four nights during a work trip.
Also in January, the INDY obtained public records showing the town paid upward of $100,000 to ghostwrite, publish, and market The Top of the Arc, which came out last August. The book is about Stegall’s approach to municipal government leadership. The title refers to his vision for keeping Cary from slipping down the metaphorical “arc” from its current, optimal position.
The total cost of the videos across the five years they were produced comes out to less than one-hundredth of 1% of Cary’s current $511 million budget. Cary is widely considered to be financially strong and has long maintained the highest-possible credit and bond ratings. At a recent budget meeting, staff shared that the town’s current fund balance (or savings) is about $125 million, well above the $96 million minimum policy requirement.
“Dancing Queens” was the last video produced under Stegall. It was made after the property tax revaluation of 2024, when the total assessed value of residential property in Cary jumped 50% and homeowners saw their tax bills skyrocket. That year, Cary also raised taxes by 1.5 cents and put two bond referenda worth $560 million—more than the town’s budget that year—on the November ballot, which voters rejected.
“Producing the ‘Dancing Queens’ documentary the same year you institute the largest tax increase in Cary’s history is tone-deaf,” Moran said. “[Stegall] should have seen it, and we should have helped him see it.”
After Stegall
In The Top of the Arc, Stegall recounts a conversation he had with a consultant friend, who apparently told him, according to the book, “There’s a very slight difference between a cult and a culture. A cult requires its charismatic leader to be there. And when the charismatic leader isn’t there, it doesn’t work. It falls apart or fades. A culture lasts no matter who is in the room.”
Two weeks after Stegall’s resignation, on December 27, Moran emailed the Town Council members, Digital P’s Perryman, and Cary’s newly sworn-in interim town manager, Russ Overton. It was time to start planning the video for the 2026 council-staff retreat.
“This year’s video is intended to get you, along with staff at the retreat, to think about what Cary’s vision is moving forward. What’s precious and must be kept? What’s new that needs to be added?” Moran wrote.
She said the production would be pared down from previous iterations. “This is a simple, no-frills video designed to inform, not to dazzle as some have been in the past.”
Bush, the mayor pro tem, responded that she didn’t want to participate.
“After reviewing the concept and the estimated $30,000 cost, I continue to have reservations about this expenditure, especially as we all have recently learned of the high costs and number of folks that were engaged and working on the publication of our former Town Manager’s book,” Bush wrote.
“I fully appreciate the intent behind these efforts,” Bush continued, “yet, I also believe there are alternative and more cost-effective ways to achieve these same goals.”
Cary did make a 10-minute video for the 2026 retreat, featuring four of the seven council members and a handful of high-ranking town staff. Money for it had been set aside long before Stegall’s departure. It ended up costing $34,830, Moran said.
Next year may look different. The INDY asked every Town Council member if they believe Cary should continue producing this genre of documentary-style videos. The four council members who were in office when the videos were filmed—Bush, Sarika Bansal, Carissa Kohn-Johnson, and Michelle Craig—said they did not know how much they cost. (Weinbrecht didn’t respond to the INDY’s questions.)
Bansal and Kohn-Johnson said the expense should be eliminated, while Craig and Councilmembers Bella Huang and Brittany Richards (who were elected last year) said they support reexamining how the town spends its money.
“There is a lot we can and should learn from this,” Bush told the INDY in an email. “For me, the question is why the council did not have clear visibility into these costs as they were being incurred. Going forward, I want us to be much more disciplined about asking: what problem are we solving, and is this the most responsible way to do it, especially when activities such as this are not directly tied to the needs of the community?”
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