Graham’s mayor was called on the carpet during Tuesday night’s meeting when she attempted to use part of her time during “council comments” at the end of the open portion of the city council meeting to introduce a mayoral proclamation requested by a local gay rights organization.
Other council members – most notably Bonnie Whitaker and Bobby Chin – insisted that mayor Chelsea Dickey could not just unilaterally slip in what should have been considered an agenda item via her council comments at the end of the meeting.
For her part, Dickey said she did not understand how resolutions from some local non-profit groups seemed to automatically get included on the council’s agenda, while other ones did not.
Dickey emphasized that inasmuch as the requested proclamation had not been added to the city council agenda – as she thought it should have been – she was exercising her own authority to issue the proclamation in her own name, without seeking a council vote on the proclamation itself.
Whitaker pointed out that Dickey could have sought to amend the agenda at the outset of the meeting to include a proclamation but had not sought to do so.
“You’re overstepping,” Whitaker said, often talking over Dickey, as she attempted to read her mayoral proclamation. speaking loudly over Dickey’s attempts to proceed with reading her proclamation.
Whitaker ultimately made a motion to require Dickey to follow the council’s procedural rules and not attempt to read the proclamation.
While the motion was seconded by both councilman Chin and mayor pro tem Ricky Hall, Dickey did not call the question for another 10 to 15 minutes, while councilmen argued, and one of the city’s attorneys and the assistant city manager searched state statutes and the city’s ordinances, in an effort to determine what, if any, authority Dickey had to make a proclamation on her own.
Councilman Jim Young told Dickey, “You have no more authority than other members of the council,” in agreeing with Whitaker that Dickey could not just unilaterally make a proclamation.
At the heart of the debate was this provision from N.C.G.S. 160A-67, which outlines the general powers of mayors and councils across the state.
That statute reads, “Except as otherwise provided by law, the government and general management of the city shall be vested in the council. 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.”
Dickey kept emphasizing the third sentence – that she is the official head of the city “for the purpose of service of civil process, and for all ceremonial purposes.”
But Whitaker and city manager Megan Garner also pointed to the first two sentences, and specifically that the mayor’s powers are such as are “conferred. . . by law, together with such other powers and duties as may be conferred by the council pursuant to law.”
Only after 10 minutes or so into the brouhaha did Dickey acknowledge that the resolution she sought to read had been requested by Alamance Pride, a local gay rights organization. She subsequently provided a copy to the newspaper. The request from Ken Smith of the organization was to celebrate June as “Pride Month.”
It proposed to have Dickey proclaim, “Now, therefore, I, Chelsea Dickey, Mayor of the City of Graham, do hereby proclaim the month of June, 2026 as ’Pride Month’ and encourage citizens to take action and engage in dialogue to strengthen alliances, build acceptance and advance equal rights.”
Brian Coleman, the only city attorney present Tuesday night (the more senior attorney, former Burlington city attorney and current Burlington councilman Bob Ward, was not present), told the council that he simply “had not [had] enough time to research” whether Dickey had authority to issue a proclamation in her own name, without having been authorized to do so by the council.
Whitaker continued to press for a vote on her motion to prevent Dickey’s proclamation as a violation of the council’s rules of procedure.
When Dickey finally relented and called for the vote, the result was 4-1 for Whitaker’s motion, with only Dickey opposed.
After the meeting, the newspaper’s reporter asked Whitaker about the seeming irony that she, as an openly-gay elected official, had opposed the resolution for Pride Month.
“My lifestyle doesn’t affect how I feel” about proper procedure, Whitaker said.
“It doesn’t matter whether I agree or disagree [with a particular proclamation]. I was not aware of what [her proclamation] was about,” but, Whitaker emphasized, Dickey had not followed the council’s rules of procedure and it would not have mattered what the subject matter was. Dickey was trying to operate beyond the council’s adopted rules of procedure, Whitaker said.
For her part, in an interview with the newspaper, Dickey insisted that other local jurisdictions – she gave as examples Burlington and Elon – had adopted gay Pride Month resolutions in the past, and she did not consider it to be beyond her authority to issue one in Graham. As best the newspaper could confirm, among towns and cities in Alamance County, only Elon mayor Emily Sharpe has issued such a Pride Month proclamation.
