How to get stuff done

With early voting starting this Thursday, many residents are just beginning to research the candidates whose yard signs they’ve seen all over town. I'm the candidate whose experience and proven dedication will move us beyond values and vision statements to actually making Chapel Hill a better place to live. This post provides a summation of my campaign.

If you live in Chapel Hill and want to know how you can help, the absolute best way – which also happens to be the easiest – is to please forward this post to lots of people you know.

I’m not the loudest candidate for Town Council, and I’ve chosen to run on substance rather than gimmicks and bromides. A local high school teacher reached out recently to say, “I stumbled onto your campaign blog the other day and was incredibly impressed by your thoughtfulness, candor, and embrace of nuance and complexity.” That to me is the highest compliment. Those characteristics can only prevail in this election – in any election – if informed citizens like you take a few minutes to spread the word within your networks. Thanks in advance.

Who am I?

I’m a bank regulatory lawyer who used to write regulations for the U.S. Treasury Department and now does freelance work advising banks on how to comply with them. This has enabled me to also be a part-time stay-at-home dad to two kids in CHCCS (kindergarten, second grade) and to serve on the Planning Commission for the past two-and-a-half years (most of this time as chair). I’ve lived off North Estes Drive (in the construction zone!) for eight years. I ride my e-bike everywhere, sometimes with kids in tow.

What is my platform?

Over the years, the Town has made a bunch of development mistakes. It’s unfortunate. Luckily, the Town Council just enacted the biggest change to its top-level development framework in a generation. You haven’t seen the results yet because it just happened, but it’s a big deal. During my term as chair of the Planning Commission, I advocated strongly for this change and was closely involved. Now I’m determined to see it through.

The new framework, called “Complete Community,” calls for new development to take the form of walkable neighborhoods, with a mix of housing options, connected by greenways (and of course transit, including fancy “bus rapid transit”). To be walkable, a neighborhood needs places to walk to, like cafes and outdoor public gathering spaces. In our climate, walkable neighborhoods also need tree canopy (often neglected by planners). Building in this way yields more attractive and coherent neighborhoods and creates less traffic.

In contrast, this is how land use expert Rod Stevens, in a report dated October 2022 (and to my knowledge never published on the Town's website), described Chapel Hill's prior development approach:

“For the last ten years the Town's approach to development has been ‘focus areas’ that are away from existing neighborhoods. These are essentially throw-away districts on commute routes without comprehensive planning for parks or public amenities. They envision ‘urban’ development at higher densities without the features that make such development livable.”

Sound familiar? Yep, our growth ambitions outstripped our planning capacity. Residents are rightfully displeased with the results. It's time to turn the page.

I’m running to implement the new, better framework swiftly, thoughtfully, and collaboratively. And I say this with full awareness of how hard this is to pull off. We have a lot of very technical and boring work to do. This work is nothing at all like campaigning, which I’m not especially good at. I am good at closely comparing things we say to things we do, and aligning the two.

Are others running on this same platform?

Since the day I filed my campaign paperwork, I’ve been explaining the Complete Community framework to Chapel Hill residents, and to other candidates. It took a while, but now pretty much every candidate is mentioning it by name in speeches, which is great.

Nevertheless, there’s a critical difference between my platform and most others, which is that I'm focused on execution. Without this, the Complete Community framework is just a piece of paper.

Consider the following admonition from the same October 2022 report I mentioned above:

“The Town cannot simply assume it can ‘zone it and they will come.’ The Town government will need to be an active partner in this development, providing master planning and financing mechanisms for infrastructure, public amenities, and the conservation of open space…. Executing any growth strategy will require time and money. The Town government will need a very deliberate strategy for where and how it grows and a prioritized plan for executing that strategy.”

Do we currently have the planning or financial capacity to do these things? Nope. That’s been my concern about the Complete Community framework from the beginning. It sounds great, but we’ve never demonstrated the capacity to implement it. I want to fix that.

Incidentally, I'm one of only three Council candidates who, at the time of filing, had been involved in general Town planning work for more than five months. That's why my platform focuses on execution and sounds more specific and actionable. Abstract values, even good ones, don't build walkable neighborhoods, and they don't preserve a sense of place.

What does implementation take?

Most of the work needed to transition the Town from reactive, project-by-project planning to proactive, holistic planning is quiet, thankless, sometimes unpleasant work behind the scenes, punctuated by occasional speeches and voting in public meetings. The speeches and voting are not where the work happens. Again, it’s not like campaigning. The public may never know who on the Council is actually driving things forward.

But behind the scenes, somebody needs to figure out the financing mechanisms, the legal parameters of what we can and can’t demand in development negotiations, the specific stands of trees that should be protected, and so on. Figuring this stuff out is my specialty.

I don’t just show up in meetings and talk. I get stuff done. I invented the Complete Community Matrix that the Planning Commission now uses to evaluate rezoning applications. I led the Planning Commission’s recent effort to produce a comprehensive set of policy recommendations for residential parking, which is now under Council review. I have personally negotiated with developers for preservation of specific stands of trees – including by recommending changes to things like the location of underground stormwater retention facilities – and prevailed. This was not glorious work in the limelight. But we have intact trees to show for it.

Check out the wording of my endorsements, below. Also check out my 10,000-plus words of long-form campaign blog posts. I know our current development policies, and the Complete Community framework, inside and out. Nobody else has, or will, put more energy into figuring out how to build walkable neighborhoods connected by greenways. Nobody.

I'm the one with the khaki-colored hat ripping out a thicket of invasive privet by the Booker Creek Trail, near Elizabeth St. (with Amy Ryan). The best style of campaigning is doing something useful.

What have local outlets and endorsers said about me?

Don't just take my word for it. Here's what others are saying about me:

“Jon Mitchell understands the role growth and development will play in this election and the town’s future. We’d urge readers to give the avid e-biker, regulatory lawyer, and part-time stay-at-home dad a hard look; he’d likely bring a thoughtful, actionable approach to governing to the town council.” -INDY Week

“Mitchell has gone above and beyond the work of planning commission chair… We believe he will be a strong voice for good planning decisions as we embark on the first full revision of our zoning codes since 2003.” -Triangle Blog Blog (TBB)

“Of all the candidates running for town council in Chapel Hill … Jon Mitchell … [is] probably the most committed to focusing on town planning. While all town council members weigh in on development, having someone who is primarily interested in planning will really benefit our communities as they grow.” -Martin Johnson, TBB contributor

“Having served as vice chair of the Planning Commission with Jon as chair, I experienced first hand what a hard-working, wise, and empathetic leader he is. He was always the most prepared and most ambitious in what we could accomplish, but would happily listen to and incorporate the ideas and concerns of others.” -Elizabeth Losos, current Planning Commission chair

“On the Planning Commission, Jon Mitchell has shown himself to be very intentional, transparent, focused, and fact-driven member. He delves deep into the specific technical details that underpin our regulations and decision-making, while also maintaining a big-picture vision of how to balance the interests, needs, and expectations of the Town and its stakeholders.” -Michael Everhart, Planning Commission chair (2020-2022)

"Jon is organized, intelligent, and detail oriented. He does the hard and tedious work of preparation to understand the complex issues facing Chapel Hill. However, what impresses me most about Jon is his quiet, yet persistent, commitment to a progressive future for Chapel Hill. We all want a better tomorrow; Jon is one of the few people I know that has a clear roadmap for how to get there." -Louie Rivers, longest serving current member (and past vice-chair) of the Planning Commission

“Jon is the [most recent] chair of the Planning Commission and if there is a more up to date, informed, and prepared candidate then I will eat my hat. Jon is ready to hit the ground running and possesses a keen analytical mind and a genuine heart for making the community better. Plus, he gets that effective planning is way more important than sound bite politics. I appreciate that.” -Jeff Hall, past CHCCS PTA president and past chair of school improvement teams for East Chapel Hill High, Ephesus Elementary, and Phillips Middle School

Please share this widely

Please share this post with as many of your Chapel Hill contacts as possible, and encourage them to vote. Early voting starts October 26. Election Day is November 7.