'We're not out of touch,' say Greenville council members

Andi Creech, Mallory Sheldon, Natalie Davis, Logan Harlow | GNP contributors

Whether politicians are in touch with their constituents is a question without a simple answer.

First, there’s the question of what “in touch” means. Dictionaries define it as communicating with people or keeping up to date on friends, issues, trends, styles and anything else.

The Greenville News Project spent the past few months looking into how members of the Greenville City Council define being “in touch” with their constituents. The reporting spanned the November city council elections.

GNP found that council members have their own ways of staying engaged with their constituents. And they do not see themselves as the sort of politicians who are out of touch.

“I would really say that our council … we do an excellent job of being in touch with voters and with our community,” now-former council member Marion Blackburn said. She lost her re-election bid to newcomer and ECU student Seth Hardee. He represents the city's District 3.

‘They don’t care’

Eighty-five percent of Americans in a 2023 Pew Research Center poll said they believe politicians don’t care what people like them think. That high percentage held up across political affiliation, income, race, ethnicity, gender, age, education and level of political engagement.

The American Economic Association says politicians vote with their interest groups 80% of the time. Those groups are donors or organizations represented by lobbyists. In the days following a natural disaster, that number goes to 86%.

Current and former Greenville City Council members say that’s about right: politicians are generally out of touch.

“You've got these people [who] may have started out, you know, wanting to do some good, and then, now they're just career politicians [who] make money by being in their positions, and exploiting their position,” said Hardee, the city council’s new District 3 representative. “Career politicians don’t listen to the real needs of the people they’re representing.”

Blackburn sees out-of-touchness by demographics. “Look at the bodies that are currently governing us, look at Congress, look at our state legislature. This is not a party issue. Republican or Democrat. Old white males. Does America look like that? Absolutely not.”

According to the 2024 Census, 54.5% of Greenville citizens are female; 49.3% are white; 40.4% are Black, and the majority are age 18 to 65.

The current city council consists of four white men and three Black women. All council members are within the majority age range except Les Robinson. He’s older than 65.

Will Bell, who lost his race for the at-large seat, defined in-touch by taxes. “Deciding to raise taxes at a time when people are struggling to me seems out of touch,” he said of the pre-election council.

However, Greenville’s property tax rate has gone down since 2022. Then, it was set at 49 cents on $100 of appraised property. Today it’s 39.5 cents.

Property values may go up across the county due to reappraisals that state law requires Pitt County’s tax assessor office to make every eight years.

‘We care’

People generally vote for the person they feel best represents their interests at the federal, state and local levels. Theoretically, that would mean any politician elected by the people has the stamp of “in-touchness” in some regard.

That’s how College of Charleston professor Jordan Ragusa sees it. He has studied the issue and says that if politicians are in touch, it will show in their voting record. But if it is clear they are voting in their own self-interest, then that is not an act of in-touchness, he added.

“Re-election is the device that keeps them accountable, even if they're doing it for no reason other than to ensure their own re-election that's still being a faithful steward of the people,” Ragusa said. This is not an inherently bad thing, he added.

Greenville City Council members say they stay in touch with their constituents in a number of ways.

Blackburn said she regularly reached out to ECU Greek Life and held town halls on campus to open conversations with students about issues of concern to them.

Council member Matthew Scully, who represents the city's District 4, said he regularly hears concerns directly from residents, business owners, and city employees through daily conversations rather than formal meetings.

Former council member Monica Daniels said she prioritized regularly checking her email and phone messages throughout the day. She also said she encouraged feedback from her constituents through two of her public Facebook accounts.

Portia Willis, who represents the entire city as the council's at-large member, said she uses her networks to check the pulse of constituents. She said it is important for elected officials to go into the community and talk to people because not everyone can make it to city council meetings to comment.

She gave an example from a few years ago. It involved noise and location complaints aimed at Sawyer’s Fun Park on Cory Road.

Willis said she walked the nearby neighborhood and talked to people who might be affected by the issues. “I just, I can't see myself voting for something in someone's backyard that I wouldn't want in my own backyard,” she said.

One of the duties of a mayor or city council member is lobbying the state legislature for the interests of their municipality.

That’s what former council member Mildred Council did during one of her previous terms. She recalled a time when she lobbied the North Carolina General Assembly for federal Community Development Block Grants to revitalize parts of West Greenville. The money was used in part to fix up homes for people who couldn’t afford to do it themselves.

Council emphasized the importance of speaking out for her community. She recalled a time she did by publicly confronting U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy on his stand against expanding Medicaid in North Carolina.

In a smaller city, it is hard to obtain statistics on what kinds of issues people care about, but in Greenville, there is the annual Citizens Survey. In 2024, few citizens took it.

Those who did were satisfied with crime prevention, efforts to keep citizens informed of local issues, and public transportation. They were dissatisfied with street and sidewalk maintenance and a low availability of public housing.

Still, the city council has been involved with several ongoing housing and infrastructure efforts. The 50-in-10 Affordable Housing Initiative is a commitment to create 50 affordable homes in Greenville in 10 years.

The BUILD Project is an ongoing effort to improve greenways, sidewalks, and streetscapes in Greenville. It includes four greenway/sidewalk projects and three streetscape projects.

Other ongoing infrastructure efforts include Elm Street storm drain improvements and the city’s street pavement management plan.

Mayor P.J. Connelly, council members Tonya Foreman, Arjenae Jones and Les Robinson, and candidates Mike Tann, Tim Langley, Kristine Sullivan and Deborah Sheppard either did not respond to GNP’s requests for comment or did but declined to be interviewed.

Creech, Sheldon, Davis and Harlow produced this story for the Fall 2025 course, In-Depth Reporting.