Carrboro Mayor Damon Seils spoke with 97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey on Friday, May 27th. This is a transcript of the interview where he discussed his reactions to the Texas shooting as well as the town budget and elections. Listen to the full interview here.
Andrew Stuckey: It’s time for Conversations with the Mayors, and today’s guest is Carrboro mayor Damon Seils. Damon, how are you doing?
Damon Seils: I’m doing well, Andrew. It’s good to hear your voice.
Stuckey: So, unfortunately, we’ve got to start with something that’s pretty uncomfortable. We haven’t had a chance to visit since the mass shooting in Texas on Tuesday, and I was just wondering if you’d be willing to share your thoughts with the audience about that.
Seils: Sure. I can’t say that I have any original thoughts. I think all of us are feeling sad and angry, frankly that we are in this position again just a week or two after the racial terror incident that we all saw happen in Buffalo, New York. And now this massacre is on top of everything. It’s frustrating to have to talk to folks in our community and share how little we have available to us as tools to address these kinds of incidents. What we really need to be doing is making change at the state and national level and encouraging our senators and representatives to pass meaningful gun control legislation, which seems to get stuck every time something like this happens. And of course, it’s even more frustrating when the attention of our own North Carolina General Assembly leadership is focused on things like a “don’t say gay” bill when they could be doing things to actually keep people safe in our communities. So all around it’s heartbreaking and makes me angry, frankly.
Stuckey: It’s a frustrating situation for everyone, but I’m sure when you’re in a position of power but don’t actually have any power over these policies must be even more frustrating.
Seils: Right? Our leader, our leaders in Raleigh and our leaders in Washington need to step up. It’s hard to see previous examples and know that this one doesn’t offer much hope that change is coming, but we have to pressure our senators to do their jobs.
Stuckey: Speaking of our leaders, we haven’t had a chance to catch up since the primary a couple of weeks ago. Do you have any takeaways from election night?
Seils: Well, I’m glad Election Day has come and gone. It’s a busy period for a lot of people and congratulations to all the folks who came through the campaign successfully. I was particularly interested in seeing the outcome of the Carrboro Town Council special election and congratulated Eliazar Posada for becoming our council member-elect. We’ll administer the oaths of office to Eliazar on June 7th, assuming all goes well with the final canvas by the Board of Elections. I’m pleased with Eliazar’s success in the election, primarily because it in my thinking affirms and reaffirms some of the priorities that we as a council have been focused on for the last several months and things that have been important to me in particular. Things like long-term planning and transit and other issues like that. Eliazar has the experience to bring to the table on those issues and he’ll be able to hit the ground running.
Stuckey: Excellent. Let’s talk a little bit about the town budget since that’s what that keeps coming up in town government right now. What’s the latest on the budget situation for Carrboro?
Seils: Yeah, it is budget season, of course. This week the Town Council received the Town Manager’s recommended budget, presented during the Town Council meeting. I think for me, some of the big takeaways are the Town Manager’s recommendation to do an across-the-board increase in base salary for town employees which I think is really important. Our town employees work really hard, but we as a council over the past several months have been coming up with some decisions about our comprehensive plan and other issues. We’re setting the higher bar and we are going to be expecting a lot of work to be done. All that work is really things done by town employees, so we want to make sure they have the staff and resources to complete what we put on their plate.
Stuckey: Excellent. And is there an estimated date when that would be approved?
Seils: We, by statute, have to approve the budget by the end of June, but we usually get it done a week or two before that. We’re looking at the third or fourth week of June for when we’ll adopt the budget.
Stuckey: And you feel pretty confident that the outstanding issues will be easy to iron out before then?
Seils: I think so. The manager has done a nice job of working with the department heads over the last few months to make sure he understands what their needs are at the department level. And he’s been talking one on one and in groups with council members to hear what our priorities are and to show us what his point of reason was. I think there weren’t a whole lot of surprises in the budget presentation he made on Tuesday night, and we’ll have time between now and when the budget’s adopted to iron out any wrinkles. I know that we’ve heard from a few community members already about some things they’d like to see in the budget. There will be a public hearing on the budget actually at the council meeting on June 7th, so there are more opportunities for folks to weigh in on the budget presentation that the manager made this week.
Stuckey: Excellent. Well, enjoy the rest of your time away and we will visit with you again next week.
Seils: All right. Thanks Andrew, have a good weekend.
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