‘A difficult work environment’: Mayor Pro Tem’s parting thoughts

Officially, the Mayor Pro Tem’s job is to fill in for the mayor. But a big part of Eiselt’s role has been to build consensus, something that’s become increasingly challenging as there’s less face-to-face interaction between council members.

• “It’s a difficult work environment right now,” she told me in a recent interview.
• Part of that is due to COVID-19, she said, but also because the current council is younger and is busy with work and life.

What’s happening: Eiselt announced in November that she was not running for reelection. But because of multiple delays in the election date, she’ll wind up serving longer than expected.

Why it matters: Eiselt, 60, was elected in 2015, and is one of the longest-serving members of council. Eiselt worked under two very different mayors, and seen the council shift from an average age of 61 to what was once heralded as the “first majority-millennial city council” in a major city nationwide.

• In that time, Charlotte has seen tremendous growth, but also the police killing of Keith Lamont Scott, a worsening affordable housing shortage, displacement and a pandemic that disproportionately harmed residents of color.
• Council has made reforms to try to chip away at many of those issues. But the last few years have been mired by in-fighting, which came to a head with the changes to single-family zoning in the 2040 plan.

That’s why I sat down with Eiselt earlier this month to get her take on how council dynamics have changed, her achievements and where the city is headed.

Her journey: Eiselt is a Milwaukee native whose career in banking and manufacturing led her to live in cities like London, Miami and Dallas. She settled down in Charlotte with her husband Tom and three children in in 1998.

Her background in infrastructure has made her one of the biggest champions locally for transportation improvements.

Eiselt said she’s proud of: 

• Planning efforts like the 2040 plan and subsequent overhaul of development rules, which is set for a vote in July.
• Police reform. There’s a perception that Democrat-run cities don’t get along with their police departments, she said, but Charlotte’s City Council works directly with the police department while still holding them accountable. She noted that Charlotte, unlike many other cities, last year saw a decline in homicides.
• The changes to local arts and culture funding model.
• The successful push to increase the affordable housing bond.

The public safety issue is personal for her. In 2007, a man tried to abduct her at gunpoint, leading her to create the group Neighbors for a Safer Charlotte. That advocacy work inspired her to run for public office.

Still, she says the deterioration of the relationships between council members factored into her decision not to run again.

• “Generally, when you’re sitting at a table with someone, or you’re face-to-face, you’re gonna try negotiating or understanding each other before communications break down,” she said.
• “And being remote, and just, you know, the way this has evolved, we don’t know each other as well.”

There’s a bigger problem at play, she says: council members are still part-time, which makes it hard to put in the time needed to address the issues in a city as large as Charlotte.

• Though she hopes council doesn’t have to switch to full-time, she said that current structure is outdated given how much the city has grown.
• “We’re at a point in our city where a council member can’t just be a side gig,” she said.

On transit: Eiselt said she’s fed up with the lack of progress on making buses more frequent and reliable.

• The average bus travel time is 90 minutes, CATS has said. For all of the plans to build flashy new rail lines, Eiselt can’t understand why the city won’t fix what we already have.
• Until Charlotte invests in transit, she said Charlotte is unlikely to make much progress on its dead-last ranking on economic mobility.

By the numbers: Charlotte residents spend 22% of their income on transit, according to the nonprofit Center for Neighborhood Technology. That’s the second largest expense after housing, as Axios’ Katie Peralta Soloff reported.

Eiselt wishes she had fought harder against the city lowering its property tax rate after the last revaluation.

• She said an extra two pennies in the tax rate could have covered operating income for CATS, the local transit agency. Buying the buses would cost another $100 million-plus. But that’s much lower than the billions required for light rail.
• “People will isolate that comment and say I want to increase taxes, right?” she said. “But nobody’s willing to have the bigger conversation of the fact that there is a dollar amount assigned to you because you sit in traffic every day.”

What’s next: Eiselt said it’s dangerous to have elected officials in office for too long. She believes it’s time to move on, and make space for others.

• She didn’t rule out the possibility of returning to politics, though, if the right opportunity comes up.
• For now, she plans to stay involved with public policy, specifically around transportation.