Reflection and reelection: Insight from Fayetteville's freshman City Council members
Fayetteville residents elected four newcomers to the City Council in July, and with the freshman council members wrapping up their seventh month in office, patience, cooperation and education have all become important themes for the city's newest elected officials.
In separate interviews in March and April, council members Mario Benavente, Brenda McNair, Deno Hondros and Derrick Thompson spoke of their plans for their next campaigns, their proudest accomplishments since joining the City Council and their biggest frustrations.
How they got here
Running for City Council represented a significant change of pace for Fayetteville's freshman four.
McNair, Hondros and Thompson enjoyed lengthy careers in Fayetteville before they ran for office, while Benavente was inspired to try his hand at local politics after experiencing community activism firsthand.
McNair owned a beauty salon and several other small businesses, all begun with the same motivation to help others develop themselves, she said. She was peripherally involved in local politics, assisting former Cumberland County Commissioner Charles Evans with his campaign and befriending former Councilman Larry Wright. McNair said she told Wright she wanted to run for City Council one day, but delayed pursuing that dream for years, apprehensive about the nastiness that can surround politics.
McNair finally registered as a candidate on the last day to sign up, she said, inspired by three fellow candidates she met in downtown Fayetteville who told her to go for it and even drove her to the Board of Elections office on Fountainhead Lane.
Thompson also had a councilman involved in his journey to City Council, with former Councilman Chris Davis encouraging him to run, he said.
“He knew I was definitely involved in my community,” Thompson said. “After some discussion with my Lord and savior and some discussions with my wife, I felt as though what I can do for my community, I can do for the entire district and for the city.”
For Benavente, the idea of serving as a council member stemmed from a mixture of his experience working downtown and his involvement in activism, he said. During his time as an employee at a coworking space, Benavente attended City Council meetings to discourage paid parking, and as a student at UNC-Chapel Hill, he participated in the campaign against the Silent Sam monument, a statue of a Confederate soldier that was ultimately toppled after protests in August 2018.
More: Here's who the Fayetteville City Council appointed to boards and commissions
That activism would continue in Fayetteville, where he was a part of local protests and meetings in the wake of Fayetteville native George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis, Minnesota, police in 2020, Benavente said.
“It was just a great opportunity to meet people who are interested in organizing, interested in police reform, and a lot of those same people that we were demonstrating with ended up helping to support me on the campaign run,” he said.
Benavente said that those experiences showed him those in power in Fayetteville were not willing to become “the tip of the spear” on critical issues.
“That’s when I decided that I wanted to be that tip of the spear and be the one to push the envelope,” he said.
Hondros, a Fayetteville native, said his desire to run for office stemmed from an interest in civic engagement that came organically from his participation in advisory boards like the Stormwater Advisory Board. He said that experience fed a curiosity that led him to run for office after more than two decades in real estate.
"If somebody had told me two years ago, 'You're going to run for office,' I would've been like, 'You're crazy,'" he said, laughing. "But never say never."
Lessons learned
Their first seven months in office taught Benavente, Hondros and Thompson the importance of patience, they said.
For Benavente and Hondros, that patience was tied to the speed of city government.
“We’re there for two years. The city staff is there for a career’s length of time,” Benavente said. “The tension or the push and pull between those two timelines really affects how quickly we expect to move as council members versus how the bureaucracy can only move at a certain pace.”
Actions taken by previous city councils become backlogged in the system, Benavente said, sometimes clashing with initiatives proposed by newer council members.
“When I bring in a new idea, if it isn’t sort of perfectly in line with some direction that we’re already going, then it sort of gets put into the pile,” he said.
Hondros said the "glacial" pace of bureaucracy competes with a lack of cooperation and collaboration with different bodies, like Cumberland County and the Fayetteville Public Works Commission, for the title of his biggest frustration.
Thompson, on the other hand, learned about the patience working with different backgrounds requires, he said.
“We all have to come to a decision about something, but people’s values are different, not just based on what district you’re in, but sometimes based on your age, sometimes based on your ethnicity,” Thompson said. “The values of a 30-year-old are different than the values of a 60-year-old.”
McNair said her time on City Council has taught her the importance of teaching to others — specifically, educating residents on how their city government operates.
“I realized that the citizens are not informed about the city and the City Council,” she said. “They have no clue. They’re not educated on anything that the city does. Even the voters, they don’t know why they vote. They’re just happy to vote.”
Looking forward
McNair, Thompson and Benavente said they plan to run for reelection this year, while Hondros said he couldn't give a definite answer but likely would. The council members' answers on what they hope to tackle in potential second terms were equally similar, with each member mentioning development as a key issue.
Benavente emphasized wages and job opportunities in Fayetteville as specific problems. There is a gap between residents who are in the military or professions like medicine and law, and residents who work in the service industry, he said.
“We don’t have a lot of economic mobility here in this community,” Benavente said. “There’s nothing to connect those two worlds. With other communities that are so ready and prepared to receive graduates from college, I don’t think there’s any real industry here to receive our FSU and our Methodist and everybody coming out of FTCC.”
For Thompson, the economy is also involved in his controversial proposal to increase council members’ current two-year terms, to staggered four-year terms, he said.
“The election cycle costs the city probably between $160,000 to $180,000,” he said. “We could’ve used that money for a lot of other programs to keep our community safe, for economic development and a whole bunch of other things. That’s the purpose of that proposal.”
Hondros said he would like to focus on developing more affordable housing. He believes it would be easier to do so if there were less regulations for developers to tackle in the face of national housing shortages, he said.
"The supply is so far behind right now; there's no way to build our way out of it," he said. "So, how can we streamline the process?"
For McNair, economic development is just one of a whole host of issues she aims to address, including affordable housing, homelessness and police reform. But regardless of what problems she is working to solve, she said, one thing remains constant — her determination to serve her district, a sentiment that all four council members echoed.
“I am here to do the will of the people,” McNair said. “I want to hear from my constituents.”
Public safety reporter Lexi Solomon can be reached at ABSolomon@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Fayetteville's newest council members reflect on 7 months in office
