The Chapel Hill Town Council held its first official business meeting of the month on Wednesday, Apr. 15 to cover a full agenda — which included discussing affordable housing funding, ongoing climate action efforts, parking incentives for an economic development project and the future construction of the elected body.
Here are the highlights, with the full meeting available on the Town of Chapel Hill’s Granicus page.
Could the Town Council Down-size?
An effort last seriously weighed by the town council before the COVID-19 pandemic resurfaced on its agenda: a discussion around decreasing the size of the Chapel Hill Town Council and extending the length of mayors’ terms to four years from two years. Listed as a resolution of intent — which means a formal request to prepare the public for a future hearing, broader discussion and vote — the topic was pulled from the consent agenda and briefly discussed by all nine council members.
Much of the conversation was focused on the council size more so than the length of mayoral terms, with the resolution ultimately passing 8-1 to schedule for a public hearing. The lone dissenter in the vote was Council Member Paris Miller-Foushee, who said she has “firm opposition” against the idea on the grounds of equity and representation. Sharing concerns later echoed by other council members, she said she believes shrinking the council at a time when diversity is under attack by the federal and state levels of government would not reflect Chapel Hill’s progressive values.
“Our eight-member council size today has allowed us to seat three African American members simultaneously, likely the most in Chapel Hill’s history,” Miller-Foushee said. “And on my first term, I saw the most diverse council ever. We had two Black women, the first Vietnamese American elected to office in the state of North Carolina, and openly LGBTQ representation. And that is not by accident. Large bodies permit broader representation.”
The other council members framed their support of the resolution as an opportunity to hear from the public about whether such changes would be necessary. Mayor Jess Anderson weighed in on decreasing the council size by saying she has long thought that a smaller council would make governing less “unwieldy” in the town. She added that she’s held these sentiments dating back to when she served as a council member herself.
“Now that I sit as mayor, it is harder to have a larger board — and I’ve talked to other mayors who actually have larger boards and they do not love it,” said Anderson. “But it is a lot more work to manage a larger than average council and I believe that there is potentially evidence out there that it would not impact our ability to have diversity.”
The mayor shared election results compiled since 2009, saying the top vote-earners in all nine municipal election cycles have been women candidates, people of color or both while the fourth vote-earner has consistently been people who are “not in a protected class.”
Concept art of the hotel project approved for parcels of land around 100 West Rosemary Street as of Apr. 2026. (Photo via MHAworks, PA and CJT, PA.)
Parking Incentives to Help Hotel Project Earn Unanimous Support
Similar to the discussion around town council’s size, an economic development project resurfaced for the town council several years after its last mention: a hotel on the corner of West Rosemary Street and Columbia Street. Economic Development Director David Putnam presented to the council and brought a resolution to approve incentives for the management company behind the project that’s had a level of approval since 2021. Back then, the council approved the rezoning for parcels around 100 West Rosemary Street and agreed to a land swap in 2023 with the developers to create more space for the four-to-five story building.
The hotel — whose brand was not named in Wednesday’s meeting, but is reflected in renderings as a Marriot-run Element — sought parking credits at the nearby town-owned 125 East Rosemary Street Parking Deck in exchange for meeting its development and hiring goals. The hotel and its ownership will receive up to $280,000 in parking credits across five years, covering 90 spaces in the deck, which is roughly 1% of the anticipated $28 million capital investment for the project. With that deal factored in, Putnam estimated the project could earn Chapel Hill a net positive of roughly $2.6 million across the next decade and help further increase usage of the parking deck — which the town government wants to see more profitability from.
“Obviously,” Putnam said, “the [hotel] project has struggled to, you know, put shovels in the dirt leading up to this point. And we feel like this can be an excellent motivator for the project to actually put the next steps into action.”
In addition to the financial benefits and broadening the town’s tax base, Putnam said the project aims to help activate a dormant plot of land. Part of the agreement in 2021 for rezoning is the creation of a pocket park next to the historic town hall building directly on the corner, which the economic development director added is still part of the plans. After little discussion and no public comment, the town council unanimously approved the resolution for the parking incentives.
Chapel Hill Ahead on Climate Action Goals, But Want to Keep Going
Chapel Hill Community Sustainability Manager John Richardson presented his annual report to the town council on the local government’s Climate Action Plan to help the community be more sustainable and resilient amid more extreme weather from climate change.
Richardson began by saying the town is ahead of its initial goals set out five years ago when the council first approved the plan. The initial target for 2025 emission levels was decreasing by 28% the levels emitted back in 2005 — but since 2023, the community has been steadily hitting 32% below those levels. Some of that has come from, Richardson said, UNC slowly moving coal out of its fuel mix for the cogeneration plant on West Cameron Avenue and Duke Energy taking incremental steps to make its power grid greener.
But the town has played its part, he added. With 97% of the emissions generated from the Town of Chapel Hill coming from either the energy to power its buildings or the energy used to power its vehicles, Richardson said the town’s focus has largely been in those two areas. Investments in solar panels, replacement of lots of old lighting with more efficient bulbs, installation of dozens of electric vehicle chargers around town, and purchasing EVs for the local government, police station, and Chapel Hill Transit’s vehicle fleets have all helped address those. Now, Richardson said his office is completing a Sustainable Buildings Study – which examines opportunity for more ambitious upgrades to its 11 largest facilities to try and maximize cutting emissions to reach a new goal of more than 59% below 2005 levels.
With that goal, Richardson’s office wants to update the Climate Action Plan soon. When passed in 2021, the town made a pledge to make updates every five years to adjust for the introduction of new research, technology, funding sources and federal policies.
“This is an update, it will not be a rewrite. That’s not the intention here. Instead, what we want to do is share about the progress we’ve made over the last five years. We want to assess where we are relative to our targets… And then we want to sort of explore internally and with the community what changes, if any, should we be making for the next 5 years to make sure we’re still on track.”
Starting in April and throughout the summer, Richardson said the town will ramp up its public education and engagement efforts on Chapel Hill’s climate action initiatives. He said that time will be spent asking community members which of the projects are they utilizing or feel like are working, as well as how climate change may be impacting their lives. After that, Richardson and town staff will take the data to craft an update to the Climate Action Plan before bringing a draft to town council in November.
Other Notes
Anderson opened Wednesday’s meeting with a recognition of longtime local volunteer Mae McClendon, who died in March at 76 years old. McClendon was a prolific community volunteer between her work on local government advisory boards, the local Democratic Party, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Public School Foundation, the Inter-Faith Council for Social Services, the local chapter of the NAACP and more. Miller-Foushee read the resolution and shared her own time overlapping with McClendon on the advisory board of the Marian Cheek Jackson Center, calling her “a pillar of that organization and in many organizations throughout our community.” Also in the early stages of the meeting, the town council recognized April as National Poetry Month, and heard the town Poet Laureate Donovan Livingston perform a reading. The council unanimously voted to raise the cap on how much affordable housing allocations the town manager could approve without council review, changing it from $100,000 to $250,000. The change comes as the local government wants to be more nimble in awarding money — which comes from Chapel Hill’s local Affordable Housing Funding Program — to renovation or rehabilitation, early stages of projects’ development and relocation efforts in emergencies.
Photo via the Town of Chapel Hill.
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