Full name: Harrison Kesling

Party affiliation: Democrat

Campaign website: https://www.harrison4morrisville.com/

1) In 300 words or less, please give our readers your elevator pitch: Why are you running? Why should voters entrust you with this position? What prior experience will make you an effective member of Morrisville’s town council?

Imagine walking down a calm tree-lined street, to your local park or cafe, greeting your neighbors along the way. This is the vision we have for Morrisville, but it can only be reached if we come together to achieve it. The overdevelopment of car-centric higher density housing has cut down trees, worsened traffic, and strained schools, infrastructure, and services. Crucially, if we want to reduce our traffic congestion, reduce our carbon emissions, and strengthen our community, we must prioritize pedestrian-oriented development to reduce our reliance on personal vehicles. Not only will this make our streets safer for our children, it will also improve our health, lower our stress, enhance our social interactions, and reduce our risk of diseases. I understand the challenges. I ride the bus to work into Raleigh as often as I can and I use the Smart Shuttle. I bike on busy roads and walk on non-existent sidewalks. I get stuck in traffic and dream of a future where everyone can safely walk, bike, roll, or ride transit to get to their favorite destinations. 

As a professionally licensed mechanical design engineer, I work collaboratively with colleagues to solve complex problems every day. As the past president of a local engineering organization that achieved numerous accolades during my time on the board, I have the leadership it takes to bring solutions to the table and advocate for the change we all want to see in Morrisville. Most importantly, as your neighbor, I will be your voice and together, we will create a more perfect Morrisville.

2) What would your priorities be as a member of the town council? Please identify three of the most pressing issues Morrisville currently faces and how you believe the town should address them. 

The three biggest issues that Morrisville faces are traffic congestion, affordability, and maintaining quality of life. These are all related to the rapid growth and overdevelopment that Morrisville has experienced. Our infrastructure has not been able to keep up, road projects get delayed, and safety is put at risk. Additionally, there is not much land left to develop and property values and rents will only continue to be driven up by demand. Morrisville is attractive, but if it succumbs to market pressures, our quality of life will only deteriorate. 

To address these issues, my priority is to make Morrisville more walkable. A large part of our traffic congestion comes from the fact that the town has developed in a way that prioritizes cars over pedestrians. This discussion goes deeper than transportation ,though, as it is ultimately driven by land use. Land that is devoted to vehicle infrastructure, such as roads and parking lots, is land that cannot be devoted to affordable housing and greenspace. It also forces us into our cars for most trips which can be stressful and harmful to our health, not to mention the pollution and decreased safety that it causes. If we want to reduce this traffic congestion, reduce our transportation costs, reduce the need to widen roads that cut down trees, reduce our carbon emissions, create more affordable housing, improve our quality of life, and bring our communities together, we must prioritize development that is pedestrian-oriented and mixed-use to enable our neighbors to meet at their local park or cafe instead of on the highway.

3) What’s the best or most important thing the Morrisville town council has done in the past year? Additionally, name a decision you believe the town should have handled differently. Please explain your answers.

On September 10, 2024 the Town of Morrisville voted to approve the development agreement between the Town and Singh Development to construct Morrisville’s new Town Center. This has been in the works for over 20 years and finally broke ground on September 24, 2025. This is exactly the kind of pedestrian-oriented and mixed-use development that Morrisville needs to address the issues I mentioned in the last question. 

A decision that is consistently handled poorly is approving developments that increase traffic while major transportation projects face delays. While there is a short-term revenue boost, the overall effect is that the standard of living and mobility for the existing community are put at risk. This, coupled with the lack of investment in transit, is something that I think could be handled differently. I would handle these decisions by taking a serious look at the transportation impacts and push for pedestrian and public infrastructure to ensure that everyone benefits from new development.

4) President Trump is working to ramp up deportations and curtail visas. At the same time, the state legislature has passed laws requiring agencies to cooperate with ICE. What do you think the town council can or should do to ensure safe, welcoming communities for immigrants in light of these policies?

The town council should affirm Morrisville as a welcoming and inclusive town, regardless of immigration status. Resolutions and public communications can reassure families that they are valued. Police should focus on community trust, not immigration enforcement, and receive training in cultural competency, bias-free policing, and language access.

Additionally, by prioritizing personal vehicle travel, we end up isolating ourselves from each other which can foster animosity among neighbors. By investing in development and infrastructure that brings people together, rather than keeping them separated, we can strengthen the kinds of social bonds that enable people to look out for each other

5) As climate change leads to more intense rainfall, communities are at greater risk of inland flooding, such as the historic floods in parts of the Triangle this summer. How would you like the town council to address climate resilience, particularly flooding? 

Remove parking minimum requirements. Impervious parking lots prevent groundwater infiltration and increase storm water runoff. Such run-off can increase downstream erosion and flooding as well as pollute rivers and lakes which imposes significant costs on stormwater systems and increases greenhouse gas emissions related to treatment. Additionally, requiring a certain number of parking spaces at a minimum ends up spreading out development over a larger area, thereby hindering the use of less carbon-intensive modes of transportation, such as walking, biking, or public transit and increases the use of personal vehicles which leads to traffic congestion, air pollution, and poor public health. Traffic congestion, in turn, results in the need for wider streets, bigger intersections, and even higher parking requirements. Lastly, large parking lots with their expansive pavement can exacerbate the urban heat island effect, making local communities hotter and increasing energy consumption to keep communities cool. Parking minimums may seem harmless, but they result in traffic congestion, air pollution, wasted energy, car-centric sprawl, and even global climate change. Although not their sole cause, minimum parking requirements magnify all these problems.

6) Federal funding cuts this year have hit the Triangle particularly hard, from cancelled grants to layoffs, and local government officials are having to make difficult decisions about what to fund and how. What are your ideas for how the town council can prioritize competing funding needs, close funding gaps, and support impacted residents?

High dependency on outside funding makes us vulnerable to political or economic shifts beyond our control. What is needed is for us to strengthen our local revenue base. With limited land and significant strains on our infrastructure, any new development will have to work towards solving the issues we’ve found ourselves in, most notably, our traffic congestion, affordability, and quality of life.

One practical tool is examining value per acre for different property types. For example, Grace Park, which is about half the acreage of the Morrisville Market shopping center to the south, generates more than three times the tax revenue. Its high value comes from putting land to productive, mixed-use purposes rather than dedicating acres to parking lots or streets. Using metrics like this, we can prioritize developments that make efficient use of land, expand the tax base, and support sustainable growth. The new Town Center is another example of high value redevelopment that benefits both the town’s finances and the community. It would also be good to have a trend analysis of previous years’ comprehensive annual financial reports to determine the sustainability, flexibility, and vulnerability of the town’s finances. For example, do we have enough liquid financial resources to cover what we owe? Are we trending in a positive or negative direction year over year? 

Crucially, we need to ensure that the economic value coming in translates into social value in the form of affordable housing, local businesses, community spaces, and accessible transit on top of essential services such as public safety and infrastructure maintenance.

7) Describe what sustainable growth and development mean to you in the context of Morrisville’s population growth and the plans for a new town center. Additionally, what is another municipality you believe has made smart decisions related to growth and development that could be similarly implemented in Morrisville?

Sustainable growth in Morrisville means managing our rapid population expansion while protecting livability, mobility, and infrastructure efficiency. With over 30,000 residents and limited available land, new development must come from thoughtful infill and redevelopment, minimizing traffic congestion and strain on public services.

The new Town Center exemplifies this approach. By transforming the historic core into a mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly district, we can provide a focal point for the community that balances residential, commercial, civic, and park spaces. This type of compact, mixed-use development encourages walking, biking, and future transit opportunities, while creating vibrant public spaces.

I believe Apex offers a strong model for smart growth. Their long-term plan through 2045 integrates land use and transportation, guiding growth while preserving the town’s character. Their emphasis on compact, mixed-use districts with affordable housing and open space shows how development can be both efficient and equitable. Morrisville can implement similar strategies, ensuring growth strengthens our tax base, reduces our traffic congestion, and improves our quality of life all at the same time. 

8) As with most places in the Triangle, Morrisville is grappling with issues related to affordable housing. How would you like to see the town approach affordability issues over the next few years? 

With limited land available, we will not be able to do what Apex has done with affordable housing, but there are tools that have been outlined in Morrisville’s affordable housing plan. These include density bonuses, master leases, land purchases, rental assistance, shared equity, and down payment assistance. A crucial piece missing in the affordable housing conversation is affordable transportation. The further you have to live from where you work, the more expensive transportation becomes in the form of vehicle registrations, car payments, insurance, and particularly fuel. By prioritizing affordable housing in transit-oriented, walkable, and mixed-use neighborhoods we can drastically reduce the cost of living for many of our neighbors as they will not have to rely on owning a vehicle for their transportation needs.

9) With its proximity to Durham, Cary, Raleigh, RTP, and RDU, connectivity and transportation are big issues in Morrisville. What should the town be doing to improve transportation and transit infrastructure, from getting road projects funded to investing in public transit projects?

Given Morrisville’s central location, we should lobby regional and state bodies for transit project funding, including bus route expansion and potential rail connections. We should expand local options including sidewalks, bike paths, greenways, and transit so people can access destinations without driving. We should also involve our regional neighbors in the planning process for seamless regional connectivity.

We should also be having conversations about how land use impacts transportation as well. Walkable, mixed-use developments that benefit the public should be prioritized to limit the need for massive road projects while at the same time providing serious justification for transit funding.

10) What kinds of amenities would you like to see in Morrisville’s upcoming 25-acre town center project?

I would want to see amenities that make it an enjoyable and useful destination for people to come and visit. I want to see a bakery, a cafe, a barbershop, a nail salon, a bike shop, a co-op, a pizza joint, an ice cream parlor, and other small local businesses. It should be a place where a young professional can bike in and get a haircut, where a family can have a picnic, and where a senior can sit and watch the kids play while knitting a scarf. I want this to be a pedestrian-first place, where neighbors can come together and enjoy each other’s company without having to worry about their safety.

11) If there are other issues you want to discuss, please do so here.

Ultimately, we need to think deeply about how we organize our communities to ensure that positive outcomes are achieved for all people, not just those that can afford it. A significant issue underlying this is if we have the will to make this vision a reality. It is incredibly difficult to seek change, but what is needed is for us to take that next smallest step. Are you willing to take that next smallest step with me towards a more perfect Morrisville?

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