Carrboro's town government, 1971–1992

On May 4, 1971 Carrboro voters elected Alderman Robert Wells, manager of a service station, mayor over Alderman Jim Cashwell, 476 to 211, to succeed Hughes Lloyd, and filled the board with four newcomers, Fred Chamblee, Mary Riggsbee, Boyd Ellington and Donald Penninger; Bill B. Britt was town manager. Britt resigned in July 1972 and was fired on August 14, and in September the aldermen voted 5 to 1 to make Frank H. Chamberlain, a 25-year-old UNC senior who had been administrative assistant to the mayor and board, town manager; Braxton Foushee voted no, citing his youth. That month the board put $500,000 in water bonds and $850,000 in sewer bonds on the November ballot to extend service across town and tie Carrboro's sewers into Chapel Hill's, after the state ordered it to stop a sewage system from polluting Morgan Creek, and in February 1973 it approved $300,000 in notes for sewer work in the Morgan Creek and Tom Creek areas. With tougher codes and zoning and a moratorium on sewer hookups, the town issued permits for only 47 housing units between April 1973 and the spring of 1976. In June 1973 the aldermen revoked the permit for the 208-unit Tar Heel Manor apartments on land rezoned that April for agricultural open space, and the developer sued. In July Police Chief Charles J. Wesson fired or suspended nine patrolmen who had presented grievances; they were reinstated early the next morning, Chamberlain asked for Wesson's resignation, and in September he named Capt. John W. Blackwood chief.

On December 12, 1974 Wells submitted his resignation, citing dissension on the board, and Chamberlain resigned to join the Region J Council of Governments; Wells withdrew his resignation on December 27, saying he would probably run again. On January 20, 1975, in executive session, the aldermen chose Jesse L. Greeson, for 11 years city clerk of Henderson, as town manager after their first choice declined; Alderman George Beswick said the meeting broke the charter's written-notice rule, and Foushee walked out, citing the Open Meetings Law. On February 23 nineteen residents, several of them UNC students, met to organize a political coalition, first called the Carrboro Task Force and led by Ernie Patterson. As the Carrboro Community Coalition, formed out of discontent with Wells's administration, it worked chiefly for a bus system in Carrboro, and in November it elected its candidates for mayor and two of three aldermen. Ruth West, who had once worked in the old mill and made saving it from demolition a main plank, beat Fred Chamblee for mayor, 777 to 549. At the new board's first meeting, on December 9, the aldermen fired Greeson, who had refused to resign, by 4 to 2, with Beswick, Foushee, Patterson and Robert Drakeford for it and John Boone and Lacy Farrell against, and named Finance Director Philip Whittaker interim manager. In January 1976 West replaced the Planning Board's chairman with former alderman Mack Poole, saying the chair should rotate; Drakeford said the timing was poor with the Carr Mill plan before the board. In 1976 Carrboro hired Richard Knight Jr. as its first Black town manager. In October 1978 construction began on the Tar Heel Manor apartments, 192 units in twelve two-story buildings at the junction of the N.C. 54 bypass and N.C. 54 Business West, with the first 16 units to open in December at $270 a month.

On April 8, 1980 Mayor Robert Drakeford read the aldermen Richard Knight's letter of resignation; Knight, town manager since July 1976, had accepted the post of deputy manager of operations for Gainesville, Florida. In the summer of 1981 a new political group, the Association for a Better Carrboro, organized to contest the town election against the governing Carrboro Community Coalition. It ran Roger Messer, who had left the Coalition in July, for mayor and Hilliard Caldwell and Joyce Garrett for aldermen on charges of high taxes, heavy legal costs and closed government, while Coalition candidates said its leaders had opposed the 1980 bus tax referendum. On November 3 voters re-elected Drakeford to a third term, 912 votes to 667 for Messer and 296 for Bill Pressley, but the association's candidates, Caldwell, Garrett and Jim White, unseated three Coalition aldermen, Doug Sharer, Braxton Foushee and Nancy White, on a 37 percent turnout.

On June 16, 1982 the aldermen split 3 to 3, along the lines of the last town election, on charges brought by a group of residents that Town Manager Richard Hunter, who was Black, had misused town cars, profited from his moving expenses and did not really live or pay taxes in Carrboro, and Drakeford broke the tie to clear him. Drakeford said the charges had racial overtones; a spokesman for the group denied any racial motive, and the South Orange Black Caucus said some people wanted a white town manager. On November 8, 1983, after Drakeford declined to seek a fourth term, independent Jim Porto, chairman of the town Appearance Commission, beat Alderman Jim White, the candidate of the conservative Association for a Better Carrboro, for mayor, 733 votes to 660. All three ABC-endorsed candidates, incumbent John Boone, Doug Anderson and Zona Norwood, won the aldermen's seats, so that the board would be made up entirely of ABC members; turnout was 25.5 percent. Several of the newly elected aldermen had criticized Hunter, and on December 8 he announced that he would resign effective December 30; he said he had promised to stay three years, and Mayor-elect Porto said the board had lost confidence in him.

On January 10, 1984 the aldermen unanimously let the Planning Board, Board of Adjustment and Appearance Commission elect their own chairmen instead of having the mayor appoint them; White denied a political motive, and at Boone's motion the board dropped White's requirement that chairmen live inside the town limits after residents objected. In February interim manager Don Casper warned of projected deficits in the coming three years, and on March 13 the board set up a task force of residents and town officials to study the town's long-range financial needs and possible capital projects, with White and Caldwell as liaisons. On April 10, to cut $48,716 from the next budget, the aldermen voted 4 to 2 to abolish the posts of personnel director and administrative assistant, both held by women. The personnel director was the only Black head of a major town department, and Caldwell, who voted no with Anderson, said he would appeal to the federal government on the ground that the action was discriminatory; former mayor Drakeford, Verla Insko of the Orange County Commission for Women and others had asked the board to wait for a new town manager. On April 24, after a 45-minute closed session, the board hired Robert W. Morgan, town administrator of Farmville, from 143 applicants, to begin work on May 29, and it agreed unanimously to put on the 1985 ballot the question of letting the mayor, who then voted only to break ties among the six aldermen, vote on every issue before the board.

By the November 1985 town election a Board of Elections plan had redrawn Carrboro's voting precincts into four, North Carrboro, Town Hall, Lions Club and Orange Water and Sewer Authority, eliminating the University and Plantation Acres precincts; Mayor Jim Porto said the change came mainly from long lines at North Carrboro, the largest precinct in Orange County. On November 5 Porto ran unopposed, and Alderman Hilliard Caldwell won a second term with 20 percent of the 3,189 votes cast; UNC law professor Judith Wegner took 19 percent and Tom Gurganus 16 percent, while incumbent Jim White lost with 11 percent. About 20 percent of registered voters turned out. On November 3, 1987 Eleanor Kinnaird beat Porto, who sought a third term, 793 votes to 646, in a race the Daily Tar Heel said turned on the Amberly subdivision in the University Lake watershed, which she opposed and he supported. For three aldermen's seats Jay Bryan led with 1,003 votes, Frances Shetley had 804 and appointed incumbent Randy Marshall 748; Carol Drinkard and Steve Oglesbee lost. Kinnaird took the oath of office on December 1, when Porto and the departing aldermen Zona Norwood and John Boone made their parting remarks.

By October 14, 1988 the aldermen had set up a 14-member citizens' Capital Improvements Task Force, with two members named by the mayor and by each alderman, to rank the town's expected needs for the next ten years and suggest projects and ways to pay for them; Kinnaird named sidewalks, bicycle lanes and a Carrboro branch of the county library among possible subjects. On February 14, 1989 the task force reported its priorities for the next five years: a study of town hall space; street, sidewalk, bikeway and athletic field work paid from a contingency fund; private and state money for a town commons, bus shelters and parking; and a committee in three years to weigh a bond for a community center. It dropped the previous year's Tom's Creek flood control plan as too costly, and the aldermen sent the report to the town staff to draft a five-year capital plan. On November 7 Kinnaird won her first re-election race over Porto, 670 votes to 366. Newcomer Jacquelyn Gist led the aldermen's race with 714 votes, and incumbents Caldwell and Gurganus were returned, Gurganus passing Michael Nelson 636 to 528 when the last two precincts reported. On December 5 town clerk Sarah C. Williamson gave the oath to Kinnaird, Caldwell and Gurganus, and Gist was sworn in at the same meeting.

On January 23, 1990 the aldermen voted down a counteroffer to the U.S. Postal Service for two acres of Westwood Cemetery that the town had offered as a post office site, holding to their price of $5.51 a square foot, and the deal died; three days later the Postal Service said it would temporarily move ten Carrboro carriers to its Timberlyne station in Chapel Hill. On February 6 the board adopted a budget format that kept the continuation budget apart from the manager's proposed changes, so that it could weigh programs one by one; early figures pointed to a five-cent tax rise. By April 16 it had made the federally aided transportation planner, a post vacant for eight months, a permanent full-time job. By October 25, 1991 Police Chief Arvid Sidney Herje, chief since 1979, said he would retire after his 65th birthday on March 25, 1992, closing a career in law enforcement that began in 1951 with 20 years in the New York City Police Department. On November 5 voters returned all three incumbent aldermen, Jay Bryan with 1,065 votes, Frances Shetley with 1,011 and Randy Marshall with 815, over challengers Charles Riggsbee and Robert Proctor, and gave Kinnaird, who had no opponent, 1,088 votes. The race turned partly on former mayor Jim Porto's proposal that summer to merge Carrboro with Chapel Hill, which the three incumbents and Riggsbee opposed and Proctor favored.

At their annual planning retreat in mid-January 1992 the aldermen faced a $150,000 revenue shortfall from state cuts; Kinnaird warned of cuts to social programs, Marshall called for an elected OWASA board, and Shetley said federal money would pay for a town transportation plan with more buses and bike lanes. On February 4 the board rejected, on a 3 to 3 tie, a plan to annex five unincorporated parcels left inside the town limits by earlier annexations, after owners objected to town taxes on undeveloped land; Kinnaird, Tom Gurganus and Marshall voted for it, and Bryan, Jacquelyn Gist and Hilliard Caldwell against. Facing a revenue shortfall of more than $250,000, the board voted 6 to 1 on February 11, with Shetley voting no, to consider funding community service groups such as the ArtsCenter and the Orange County Housing Corporation in the 1992-93 budget. On February 18 the aldermen and Town Manager Robert Morgan set up a committee of one employee from each of the six town departments, police, fire, public works, administration, planning and recreation, to suggest low-cost changes such as flexible schedules; Caldwell said the town should have had one long ago. On March 24, on second reading, the board defeated 4 to 3 an ordinance sought by Capt. Ben Callahan to outlaw panhandling on public property, even with Shetley's amendment limiting it to aggressive panhandling. Caldwell, who had voted for the ban a week earlier, joined Kinnaird, Gist and Bryan against it, and Shetley, Marshall and Gurganus voted for it. On April 1 Herje retired and Callahan, the patrol commander, took over as interim chief. A majority of the town's officers had written Morgan on March 16 asking that Callahan be named chief permanently, but Morgan said he would reopen the search after talks with his chosen candidate failed. On October 13 congressional officials announced that money for a new Carrboro post office had been approved despite a postal spending freeze, after the town asked U.S. Rep. David Price to seek emergency funds from the postmaster general; the 14,400-square-foot building, planned for more than ten years, was to stand at James and West Main streets. On October 21 Callahan, interim chief for six months, was named permanent chief; he had served with the department since 1984 after working for University Police and the Chapel Hill Police Department.