Photo courtesy of Cindy Perry
Cindy Perry, former real estate attorney and a ferocious recycler, was elected to a second term as Pittsboro’s mayor Nov. 7. As a former “city girl” from California, Perry moved to North Carolina to attend Guilford College. She married into a family from Pittsboro, thus beginning her life in rural North Carolina.
“My father-in-law was one of the sweetest and smartest farmers I’ve ever known,” Perry said. “He taught me, being a city girl, so much about being a kind and caring member of the community. If there was anyone sick in the community, he and my mother-in-law were always out taking food, taking care of animals or feeding cows if somebody was down and had a broken leg or something.”
Perry retired in 2014 after working as a real estate attorney for Chatham County for 25 years. She later ran for mayor because she “wanted to keep giving back to the community.”
“I’ve always had an interest in local politics,” Perry said. “I’ve helped other people in their campaign and never thought that I would run myself. When I retired from practicing law, I didn’t miss the work, but I missed the people. I really got to know a lot of people; I really enjoyed what I call ‘the happy side of practicing law.’ I missed those people, and I wanted to keep giving back to the community by running for mayor.”
From her time on the West Coast, Perry developed strong feelings about the environment, including how Pittsboro could take its first steps toward being a more sustainable community.
“I went to Food Lion the other day and tried to talk them into leading the way to do away with plastic bags and to not wrap all the produce,” Perry said. “If I want six apples, I can pick them out myself. I don’t need for them to be packaged in a tray that can’t be recycled and wrapped in plastic. If you go to the West Coast, where I was raised, in California and Washington, they don’t have grocery stores that have everything wrapped in plastic. It’s a big, big waste.”
Eliminating chemicals in Pittsboro’s water has also become a priority for Perry.
“We have a chemical (1,4-dioxane) in our water that is coming from upstream in Burlington or Greensboro,” Perry said. “That chemical is not proven to be a carcinogen, but it is suspected. I’m very concerned about that, and we’ve been working with the state of North Carolina Environmental Management Group to get them to monitor the [Haw] River and monitor where that chemical is coming from. It may be coming from wastewater treatment plants or industrial wastes. That’s been something that’s really important for me to work on.”
In order to resolve issues like this, Perry attends meetings with other mayors in the state.
“[Pittsboro] is the first municipality to drink out of the Haw River, and Fayetteville is the second,” Perry said. “We sat there and had lunch together and said, ‘Okay, how can we solve this? We’ll have a conference call with the State of North Carolina Water Quality Division. We’ll tell our local legislative organization.’ We got all that just sitting together at a lunch meeting.”
Being mayor isn’t a solo gig. Perry works with the Board of Commissioners and attends their bi-monthly meetings to hear the public’s voice and make decisions for the town.
“I’d like to think that my personal style as well as my personal philosophy is to bring people together to make good decisions, good researched decisions,” Perry said. “We have some excellent town commissioners who study their [planning] packet, and most of the board will have questions written out about things they’re concerned about and things that reach the depth of issues. We have a public expression period in our meetings where people come to speak about traffic issues, a hole in the pavement or water pressure or they don’t like a zoning proposal.”
Sometimes, specific issues regarding Pittsboro can be completely out of the local government’s hands.
“Our biggest divider has been the issue of the confederate soldier monument,” Perry said. “We really haven’t pursued that, partly because we just don’t have the right to. The legislature passed a law about a year or two ago that said municipalities don’t have the right to take down statues or confederate memorials. It was almost like they were anticipating it, that we were going to have this division. Sure enough, we have.”
Former North Carolina governor Pat McCrory signed the law in 2015 following the call to remove Confederate statues after the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. The law prevents removing, relocating or altering monuments, memorials, plaques and other markers that are on public property without permission from the N.C. Historical Commission.
“One of the things I want to do is to maybe have a listening session and ask people to come and give us their ideas about Pittsboro in general and the statue and the racial divide that we’ve had through the years,” Perry said. “When I first came to Pittsboro, blacks were not able to be served in restaurants. There used to be a restaurant that served white people in the front and blacks had to come through the back door and take their food and take it home. That’s just heartbreaking.”
Other tough issues to tackle include the cultural impact of Chatham Park on Pittsboro. While Perry is a non-voting mayor, she attends meetings with Chatham Park to acquire information and explore ways to make the development better.
“When Chatham Park starts building things, there’s probably going to be Targets and hopefully not too many big box stores,” Perry said. “Chatham Park is going to make some big changes, but they came here for a reason. They came here because we’re a fun, welcoming and warm community, and I don’t think they’re going to destroy that. I think they would be foolish to destroy the very thing that brought them here.”
Aside from law making and representing the town, Perry is often invited to attend events such as birthday parties or family reunions.
“This family had a great big happy birthday party and they asked for me to come and speak,” Perry said. “It was so much fun to celebrate the long lives of accomplishments. The man that was turning 90 years old has these wonderful memories of Pittsboro in the old days. He has the greatest insights on how incredible this community really is.”
At the end of the day, Perry believes that Pittsboro is truly a “unique” town due to the welcoming attitude of its inhabitants.
“We don’t carry grudges here,” Perry said. “People have come before the Board and they might be pretty angry about something that happened in the community, but then they’ll come back and smile and shake your hand and say, ‘Thank you for helping that get resolved.’ Look at the signs that say ‘Love and Tolerance.’ This is a really unique community from the standpoint of really caring about each other.”
– By Madison Clark
