In the 2023 local election cycle, Jess Anderson of Chapel Hill, Barbara Foushee of Carrboro and Mark Bell of Hillsborough each made the jump to becoming mayors after years in public office. The triple change for their respective towns represented a significant overhaul, with it being years since all three of Orange County’s towns saw mayoral changes at the same time. Their first two-year terms featured learning curves to the role — as well as a dramatic shift in federal government leadership, budget constraints, and extreme weather that damaged parts of the community.
After Tuesday night, though, each are poised to serve another two years with that experience in hand and their visions of leading the towns forward to address both short- and long-term needs.
Foushee faced a challenger in her election — Joe Lloyd Jr., who informed Chapelboro early in the fall he would not be actively campaigning — and handily won the early vote (95.6%), while Anderson and Bell filed unopposed in the summer. After celebrating her win with supporters at The Belltree in Carrboro, Foushee told 97.9 The Hill she is excited voters felt fit for her to continue serving the town especially as it tackles a variety of ongoing major projects.
“What I’ve learned from the voters is that they’re listening and they’re engaged,” she said. “A lot of the conversation I heard was about our downtown area plan. Some community members felt like there hadn’t been adequate engagement to reach everybody within the community. I heard more about affordable housing, I heard about Carrboro Connects — our visioning document, and just what all that means for the future of Carrboro. It was a variety of things I heard [on the campaign trail].”
Foushee’s win sets her up to serve at least ten years in public office, having first been elected to the Carrboro Town Council in 2017 before running unopposed in 2023 and becoming Carrboro’s first Black woman mayor. Her campaign platform largely promoted inclusive engagement efforts to help connect residents with town staff and better provide feedback on major projects. The clinical laboratory professional also committed to continuing the council and staff’s priorities of addressing the town’s housing shortage, racial inequities among community members, and resiliency to extreme weather like Tropical Depression Chantal.
“Chantal continues to be a top priority, particularly for the town as we’re without a home for our Public Works Department,” Foushee said. “I’m concerned about that an the possible budgetary impact because it’s not sustainable the way that it’s set up right now. Tropical Storm Chantal kind of sits in the middle of everything — it happened after we approved the budget, but I expect some budget amendments shortly so we can maintain our Public Works Department.”
Anderson, who professionally works as a public policy professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, has served in elected office for Chapel Hill since 2015 — winning two terms as a town council member before succeeding Mayor Pam Hemminger in 2023 by beating Adam Searing with more than 58% of the vote. Like many of the candidates for Chapel Hill Town Council, the mayor said better addressing affordability is top of mind. For her, that comes from “being smart” about the town’s budget and balancing its local taxes against the rising costs of living in Orange County and financial strains nationally.
“I think focusing on what truly matters while keeping property taxes in check is incredibly important, partially because I think our affordability goals for the community get undone when taxes become unsustainable for people,” Anderson told 97.9 The Hill on Election Night. “Sometimes folks think we’re this really wealthy community where we can handle anything, and that’s just not the case: there are people who are making huge compromises to be here, and I’m hearing from a lot of people that that is becoming very difficult. And now people are losing federal benefits or their being delayed…we’re in really challenging times for people who do not have an abundance of resources.
“I think that’s incredibly important for us to be very thoughtful, very creative and just think about new ways to do things that we care about,” she added, “and also keep our focus really tight these next few years.”
But Anderson said she believes those changes should not come at the expense of continuing Chapel Hill’s efforts to address affordability and growth through long-term planning. She used her campaign to promote the town’s efforts to reshape its land use approach, including the ongoing effort to update Chapel Hill’s Land Use Management Ordinance and continuing to plan development using the Complete Communities framework passed just before Anderson became mayor.
“[I hope the town council will be] staying true to our Complete Community vision; really thinking about a connected community, a community that has the housing for people who are currently priced out of this place and there is not room for; using data to guide our decisions and be thoughtful,” she said.
Bell similarly used his unopposed campaign to champion Hillsborough’s efforts in addressing the need for housing amid strong demand, while preparing the town’s infrastructure for growth and building upon its high satisfaction rate for services. Like its Orange County counterparts, Hillsborough faced some financial constraints in its latest budget from balancing its property taxes with Orange County’s high revaluation to addressing capital needs in the wake of losing federal funding. In an interview with 97.9 The Hill on Tuesday, Bell said navigating the budget process in his two years as mayor to address needs while adjusting to changes has been a highlight.
“I think what we’re most proud of is the budget that we passed this past year and the dedication that we showed in that budget to affordable housing,” he said. “The big item, of course, was Auman Village with Habitat for Humanity of Orange County. That was just a milestone in terms of the town putting skin in the game to increase the amount of new affordable housing in Hillsborough.”
Over the course of his next two years as Hillsborough Mayor, Bell said one of his goal is to be even more attentive and responsive to what residents are needing and wanting — especially with a murky outlook at the federal level under President Donald Trump’s administration.
“I will have completed ten years of elected service as of December this year, so I’ve seen a lot of different things, I’ve encountered a lot of needs from the community, [as well as] concerns and opportunities to make things better,” the mayor and healthcare management consultant said. “I guess the big lesson is: keep doing what we are doing as a town. Taking care of what we have, being responsive, and providing excellence customer service to residents and our utility customers…keep doing that.
“But also going forward,” Bell added, “with the revaluation we had this year…and the state of the economy, the uncertainty at the national level… we need to be more prepared for the negative consequences of an economic downturn. That is on our mind, but I think it will be even more so on our mind in the upcoming budget cycles: being prepared, so Hillsborough is in the right place to keep doing what we’re doing.”
Alongside their town council and commissioner colleagues, Bell, Anderson and Foushee will be sworn into their news terms in December.
Local election results from 2025 races in Orange County and Pittsboro can be found here.
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