After a career in municipal politics that has spanned the better part of two decades, Burlington’s mayor Jim Butler has decided to step down from the dais when his current term in office runs out later this year.
Butler has told The Alamance News that his decision to retire is the result of much soul-searching and a careful reappraisal of his priorities that he and his wife Kim began several months ago.
“Every year that there has been an election, we’ve sat down at the beginning of the year and looked at our life,” he recalled in an interview on Tuesday. “We look at it as parts of a puzzle, and this year, when we sat down in January, we struggled to get the pieces in place.”
“My fear is that I don’t have the time to prepare the way I want to prepare. I’m not burned out; I’m not jaded. I’m not aggravated or frustrated. I just don’t believe that I have the time to do the job at the level I hold myself to. I will not do it if I can’t do it right.”
– Burlington mayor Jim Butler
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Alongside his position as Burlington’s top-ranking elected official, Butler also holds a managerial post with Winston-Salem-based Modern Automotive, which owns a fleet of car dealerships across North Carolina. Butler concedes that he recently upshifted his role at Modern in order to prepare his junior associates to assume a greater stake in the management of the company’s Burlington dealerships.
In the meantime, Butler pointed to some recent developments in his personal life which have renewed his appreciation for things that might’ve once taken a backseat to his role with the city.
“I’ll be 60 in August,” he confessed. “I’ve lost some friends who I’ve never thought wouldn’t be there…I lost my dad in May, and that shifted my perspective even more.”
Butler acknowledged that, as he closes in on his sixth decade, he is more appreciative than ever of the time he is able to spend with his wife and three adult children. He added, however, that it isn’t always easy to coordinate schedules with sons Nathan and Grayson, who both live in Raleigh, or with his daughter Megan, who recently married and currently works for St. Mark’s Church in Burlington.
Butler said that, in the final analysis, he realized he just couldn’t give his all to the city’s municipal government without detracting from the other things on his increasingly crowded calendar.
“This is not something I decided in the last week,” he added. “We’ve prayed about it because I wanted to make sure that whatever we did had God’s hand on it…and while I’m not comfortable with the decision, I am at peace with it.”
Butler’s decision to step back from city government follows a long, storied career as one of Burlington’s citizen leaders.
Butler received his initiation into municipal affairs about a quarter century ago with an appointment to the city’s traffic commission, which advises the city council on matters like road signs and traffic safety. In 2007, Butler made a bid for council itself and ultimately placed first in a competitive, four-way race that coincided with the elevation of his longtime friend Ronnie Wall to the position of mayor.
Butler continued to serve as a rank-and-file member of the council for the next 14 years – with a brief interlude in the political wilderness when an electoral defeat in one election was followed by a return to the dais two years later.
During this phase of his municipal career, Butler and his colleagues on the council steered the city through a whole host of thorny and highly technical challenges. Along the way, they oversaw the launch of a municipal bus system, the modernization of the city’s development rules, and the implementation of costly sewer upgrades in response to a state-mandated plan to clean up Chatham County’s Jordan Lake. Through it all, Butler insists that he has always strived to be intimately acquainted with the complexities of the issues on the council’s agenda.
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“I’ve always given 100 percent of my time and attention to elected office,” he added. “No matter who you ask, I believe in my heart of hearts that they’ll say he reads everything that he gets.”
In 2015, Butler seemed to have a straight shot to the city’s top office when Wall decided to forgo reelection after his own inner struggle between his professional, municipal, and family commitments. Fate nevertheless dealt Butler a figurative brick when he lost the mayor’s race to an upstart bid from the 30-year-old entrepreneur Ian Baltutis.
The tide turned six years later as dissatisfaction among city staff members coincided with a public backlash against Baltutis’ departures into state and national controversies. Butler responded to this fraught state of affairs with a call to “get real” – a campaign slogan that catapulted him to the mayor’s seat when the city’s voters went to the polls in 2021.
Since Butler’s ascent to the helm, Burlington’s city council has largely been free of the bickering and partisan theatrics that bedevil some jurisdictions. A Republican in his own affiliation, Butler has nevertheless held together a council that currently comprises two Democrats and two independents.
Under his tutelage, this officially nonpartisan group has managed to overcome a turnover crisis within the city’s police department while addressing discontent in other areas of municipal government. Butler was also instrumental in persuading the U.S. Army to clean up the contamination that has hindered the redevelopment of Burlington’s former Western Electric plant and he has presided over several big-ticket facilities projects – including the first batch of endeavors that the city’s voters have agreed to fund through a pair of multimillion-dollar bond packages.
Yet, for all these achievements, Butler admits that his role as Burlington’s mayor has exacted a steep price in both time and attention.
Butler said that his schedule last Tuesday was a hectic but not unrepresentative example of what his workdays have become as he juggles his mayoral commitments with his professional duties. He recalled that this particular day began with a meeting at 8:00 a.m., followed by another at 9:30. He then had to dash off to a local radio station for a prescheduled broadcast at 10:30. At noon, he joined the mayors of Winston-Salem and Greensboro for a panel discussion, which he had to wrap up in time to attend yet another meeting at 3:30 p.m.
Butler added that, after a succession of these whirlwind weekdays, he has come to realize that there’s simply no way he can continue to balance work, home, and city hall.
“My fear is that I don’t have the time to prepare the way I want to prepare,” he acknowledged. “I’m not burned out; I’m not jaded. I’m not aggravated or frustrated. I just don’t believe that I have the time to do the job at the level I hold myself to. I will not do it if I can’t do it right.”
Butler conceded that his retirement as mayor will also end his tenures on the sundry boards and committees that he serves on as a representative of Burlington’s municipal government. He nevertheless noted that he intends to continue, and even amplify, his role as a trustee for Alamance Community College – an appointed post that’s unrelated to his position as mayor.
“I’m very proud that I did what I said I would do. In eighteen years, we’ve raised taxes one time and we’ve lowered taxes one time. We’ve been able to sustain our economic development without increasing the burden on taxpayers, and we’ve maintained the level of service that our residents have come to expect.” – Burlington mayor Jim Butler
Butler is emphatic that he will continue to exert himself in the city’s interests until his term as mayor runs its course in early December. He also insists that he doesn’t have any regrets about the time he has devoted to Burlington’s municipal government.
“I’m very proud that I did what I said I would do,” he said. “In eighteen years, we’ve raised taxes one time and we’ve lowered taxes one time. We’ve been able to sustain our economic development without increasing the burden on taxpayers, and we’ve maintained the level of service that our residents have come to expect.”
On that point, the outgoing mayor gets no argument from his steadfast partner and helpmeet.
“I would say it has been miraculous to see him balance it at 100 percent,” Kim Butler said of her husband’s career with the city, “and I’m proud that he has kept Burlington nonpartisan and stayed focused on the functions of elected government…But it has gotten harder.”
