With seats on local governing boards up for election this fall, the candidate filing period began at noon on Friday.

Voters will cast ballots for three spaces on the Chapel Hill – Carrboro City Schools Board of Education, four members of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen and Chapel Hill Town Council and two seats on the Hillsborough Board of Commissioners. Mayors from the three municipalities will also be voted on in November.

Residents who live in the incorporated portion of Mebane in Orange County may run for one of the three seats available on the City Council by filing through the Orange County Board of Elections as well.

Carrboro typically has three board seats elected every two years, but the town has an extra vacancy this cycle after Michelle Johnson resigned from the board when she relocated to Portland. The candidates who receive the three highest vote totals in Carrboro this fall will fill the four-year terms, while the candidate who comes in fourth will fill out the remaining two years of Johnson’s term.

Incumbent mayors from Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough are all running for re-election. No challengers made their candidacy known publicly before the filing period.

Barbara Foushee announced she was running for a slot on the Board of Aldermen after Johnson announced her resignation. And two political newcomers announced their intention to run for the Chapel Hill Town Council – Allen Buansi and Rachel Schaevitz. Both Buansi and Schaevitz recently spoke with WCHL about why they decided to run for council.

You can hear each of those segments below:

Buansi is a native of Chapel Hill who is an attorney at the UNC Center for Civil Rights –

 

Schaevitz spoke about how her service on the American Legion Task Force helped her gain a better understanding of Chapel Hill –