Graham city council member Bonnie Whitaker floated the idea this week of stripping the city’s mayor – currently Chelsea Dickey, who was elected to a two-year term in November 2025 – of the right to vote on matters which come before the council, except when needed to break a tie.
Whitaker claimed this week that the city’s charter is incorrect and that state law only gives the mayor the right to vote “when there are equal numbers in the affirmative and the negative.”
“I noticed that our charter is incorrect. I did check into other municipalities to find out what they were doing” and found that “20 of the 25” she researched, including Elon, Gibsonville, Mebane, and Charlotte, only empower the mayor to vote when necessary to break a tie. . . “I just think this is the way we should be doing things.”
– Graham council member Bonnie Whitaker
Whitaker pointed to a law passed by the General Assembly in 1971 – and amended in 1979 – which which stated: “The powers and duties of the mayor shall be such as are conferred upon him by law, together with such other powers and duties as may be conferred upon him by the council pursuant to law. The mayor shall be recognized as the official head of the city for the purpose of service of civil process, and for all ceremonial purposes.”
Whitaker said she’d researched the General Assembly’s website – after the mayor had apparently asked the council to look into what the mayor’s powers were.
“I noticed that our charter is incorrect,” Whitaker opined. “I did check into other municipalities to find out what they were doing” and found that “20 of the 25” she researched, including Elon, Gibsonville, Mebane, and Charlotte, only empower the mayor to vote when necessary to break a tie.
In each of the specific local towns and cities Whitaker cited, however, the council (or in Gibsonville’s case, the board of aldermen) is comprised of five members with a separately elected mayor who votes only in the case of ties.
In other local jurisdictions – Graham, Burlington, and Haw River – the council is comprised of five members, including the mayor (each mayor is elected separately from the council) – and all five members can and do vote on all items.
There are two separate provisions in North Carolina’s general statutes that delineate the mayor’s right to vote on matters coming before the council.
If a mayor is elected by the council from among its own members, state law only authorizes the mayor to vote if necessary to break a tie. However, that statutory provision does not allow a mayor to vote to break a tie on a matter on which he has already voted.
If – as is the case in Graham – the mayor is elected separately from the council, state law authorizes the mayor to vote on matters coming before the council.
A separate law passed by the General Assembly on April 11, 1979 [S.L. 1979-339] repealed an earlier iteration of Graham’s city charter, and the city council incorporated the 1979 charter into Graham’s code of ordinances.
Graham’s city council also subsequently adopted a resolution, on July 13, 2004, that designated the mayor as the official head of city government and conferred “the right to vote on all matters before the council” except when necessary to break a tie, as outlined in Section 2.3 of Graham’s code of ordinances.
The council amended three other sections in its code of ordinances in 2004 to specify that: the mayor would be elected separately, rather than from the members of the council; the mayor would serve a term of two years; and council members would serve four-year terms. [A fourth section of the city’s ordinances amended in 2004 restated that the mayor would be elected separately and serve a two-year term.]
Whitaker asked her fellow council members Tuesday night for a consensus to “direct staff to confer with the city’s attorneys to get the city’s charter changed” to reflect general statutory provisions that delineate voting rights for mayors.
“I just think this is the way we should be doing things,” Whitaker said.
“I think this is a bigger conversation, as I do with a lot of things. A lot of the towns you mentioned [dickey said, addressing whitaker] have a mayoral term of four years, instead of two years. There’s a lot more at play.”
– Graham mayor chelsea Dickey
“I think this is a bigger conversation, as I do with a lot of things,” Dickey responded. “A lot of the towns you mentioned have a mayoral term of four years, instead of two years. There’s a lot more at play.”
While Whitaker’s suggestion appeared to receive no public expression of support from her fellow council members Tuesday night, one of the city’s attorneys, Brian Coleman, said it would take a while for him to look into how to amend the city’s charter.
It’s unclear whether North Carolina court precedents have addressed the legality of amending a city charter to strip a mayor of voting rights while that mayor is in the middle of serving his or her term.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Lucama in Wilson County sued the council (called the board of commissioners in that town) in 2024 over a vote adopting a resolution that divested him of his powers as mayor, as part of an alleged “concerted effort to strip the responsibilities, duties, and powers of the mayoral office and shift them to the board, in violation of the law,” according to analysis of his lawsuit by the School of Government at UNC.
In August 2025, a superior court judge restored the mayor’s powers, granting a summary judgment and declaring the resolution “null, void, and without legal effect.”
In her analysis for the School of Government, Rebecca Fisher-Gabbard, an expert in municipal and county government law, writes: “No North Carolina appellate court has directly addressed the question of whether a local government could repeal or amend an ordinance by some other type of board action, like a resolution.”
