It’s been two decades since I sat in a high school civics class (dear God), but I don’t remember cramming for any tests on local government procedure. Most kids learn about George Washington’s cherry tree before they learn the name of their city’s municipal leader.
In Durham, residents must parse through an added layer of confusion to understand local politics; it’s not always clear what falls in the jurisdiction of the City of Durham, or its close collaborator, Durham County.
Today, residents will narrow the field of candidates hoping to represent Durham on the dais at City Hall. And in just nine days, voters will be back at the polls for the start of general election early voting to decide the final winners for mayor and three city council seats.
While you contemplate who you’re voting for, or perhaps you might be crazy enough to consider local leadership yourself one day, here’s a primer on city council, what power the council has, and places where council power is limited.
The Basics
City council members are elected on staggered four-year terms: three at-large seats and three ward seats. Candidates must reside in the ward for which they are seeking office, but voters can select candidates in all three ward races.
The mayor, however, is elected every two years. Durham has a weak-mayor system, meaning the mayor has almost no more official power compared to the rest of the city council; their vote counts equally. The mayor does preside over council meetings, and gets asked to participate in more photo-ops than their colleagues, so there’s that.
The City of Durham, along with more than 50 percent of cities nationwide, uses a council-manager system, which civics experts liken to a typical corporate structure: voters (stockholders) elect members of the city council (board of directors), and the mayor (chairman of the board), who hire the city manager (chief administrative officer).
Main Functions
The city council sets policies and enacts resolutions, appoints members to volunteer boards and approves government contracts as well as the annual budget each year. But city staff, with the city manager at the helm, are in charge of most day-to-day government functions, including services like public safety, transportation, and parks and recreation. Council may be the final arbiter, but city staff are the taskmasters, developing budgets and ordinances for city council approval.
If you’ve slogged through as many city council meetings as I have, you know that one of the main issues that council deliberates on is whether to annex land, either from the county or a neighboring municipality like Chapel Hill, into the corporate city limits, which entitles property owners to services like water and sewer, and potentially expands the city’s public transportation network.
In addition to annexing land, the city council can approve or deny rezoning requests that allow for different uses of existing property. If someone wants to repurpose a former industrial warehouse into hipster apartments, they need city council approval to change the zoning designation from industrial to residential. The rezoning process is often when local residents have the most power to voice their opinions about a project.
The city council can put bonds on the ballot, like it did in 2019, to help raise money that the city reinvests in the construction of affordable housing projects. Local officials can also make publicly-owned land available for projects, giving the city more capacity to get affordable units built.
Taxation
The city council levies taxes to pay for city services. Every property owner is subject to property taxes, while commercial businesses incur sales tax, and for hospitality businesses like hotels, an additional occupancy tax. Durham County also administers its own taxes, and is responsible for setting the tax base through the property assessment and valuation process.
“There are a wide variety, many dozens of different full exemptions and partial exemptions,” says Christopher McLaughlin, professor of public law and government at UNC. “All of those decisions are made at the county level by a tax assessor, so the city has no say in the size of its own tax base, other than expanding their boundaries through annexation.”
The county decides how much your property is worth. The city and county then decide the rate of taxation on that property. If your tax bill goes up, you should send your complaints to the county tax assessment office before showing up to city hall.
Limitations
At city hall, you might hear councilors ask about affordable housing “proffers” during a typical rezoning case, and in response, a representative might say, “we’ve set aside 10 units for affordable housing at 60 percent AMI for 20 years.” How they arrive at those exact figures is a question for an engineer or land use lawyer, but requiring affordable housing as part of a development (a practice known as inclusionary zoning) is a legal gray area in North Carolina, hence the proffers.
State law doesn’t explicitly prohibit the city council from using inclusionary zoning, but it doesn’t explicitly allow it either. Chapel Hill has pushed the boundaries, to varied outcomes but so far its inclusionary zoning policies have not been invalidated.
The state constitution also calls for any tax exemptions, like those for nonprofits and some educational institutions, to be uniformly applied statewide. Durham cannot change or opt out of any tax exemptions, such as the one Duke University enjoys on its academic building properties.
Since last year, a grassroots campaign called Duke Respect Durham–now seemingly subsumed by Durham Rising–has been putting pressure on Duke leadership and local officials to create a PILOT agreement, or payment in lieu of taxes, a voluntary contribution from Duke each year that would support city and county programs like affordable housing and public schools. The law means local officials have little leverage to force Duke into an agreement, much to the dismay of PILOT advocates.
“The power they may have is the bully pulpit, but no legal authority to do so,” McLaughlin says.
Similarly, the North Carolina state constitution restricts how flexible a local jurisdiction can be with taxation. Local governments are prohibited from creating a tiered, or progressive tax, system. Whether you’re rich or poor, Black or white, married or single, you pay the same property tax rate. The city and county provide a handful of tax assistance programs aimed at low-income families, veterans and the elderly, but these programs are by design targeted and don’t reach everyone who could benefit.
Where does the city end and the county begin?
The city council has become increasingly more intertwined with its counterparts, the Board of County Commissioners. Almost 50,000 people separate the city and county population; for comparison, over 500,000 separate Raleigh and Wake County. With the city of Durham as the only major municipality in Durham County, no one should be faulted for confusion over who does what, when, where and how they do it.
The city provides basic services like police, water, maintenance of city streets, and trash pickup, among others. The county is responsible for social services, like public health, helps pay for public schools, and runs libraries, and oversees the jail.
But the two government bodies collaborate on a number of programs–emergency services, planning and development, and transportation, among others–with shared staff and infrastructure. They go to many of the same meetings and contribute funding to the same projects.
Throughout much of Durham’s history, local officials, policy wonks and concerned citizens have advocated for the merger of the two governing bodies, given the increasing partnership. The most recent attempt was in 2000. Logistical hurdles have been enough to stave off recent attempts, but as services overlap and the city annexes more county land into the city limits to accommodate Durham’s rapid growth, there could be little distinction left.
Correction: A previous version of this story said Chapel Hill’s inclusionary zoning policy was upheld by a Court of Appeals judge in 2024. While the judge who dismissed the case called it a “collateral attack” on the legality of the ordinance, the ruling concerned the statute of limitations on the filer’s claim, not the legality of the ordinance.
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