NC govwatch

What local government has been doing

A place to start. Everything here is a link down: to the subject, to the government, and finally to the individual agenda items behind the number, which can be counted by hand. Covering 16 governments and 2,809 classified agenda items, 28 Aug 2025 to 28 Aug 2026.

What towns are being asked to approve

Rezoning cases 2016 to 2026, from each town's own file, so a year here is a whole year. How to read these.

Rezonings filed

Town of Cary
16 rezonings filed in 2024
2016–2026
Town of Apex
14 rezonings filed in 2024
2018–2026

Homes in the ones approved

Town of Cary
463 homes approved in 2024
2016–2026

Cary is the only government in the region that publishes unit counts on decided rezonings. The others record the case but not how many homes it carried.

How to read these

A hollow point is a filing year whose cases are not all decided yet. A rezoning filed this year may not be settled for another two, so its homes are not counted and the line falls whether or not anything changed. The headline number on each panel is the last settled year, not the last point.

The panels share one scale on purpose. On their own scales a town approving two hundred homes a year and one approving four thousand look alike, which is the opposite of the question.

This comes from the towns' own case records rather than from the agendas collected here, which is why it runs back to 2016. Only 3 governments publish a case file this site can read; the rest are not missing from the chart, they are not published.

What stands out

Each of these is a government doing measurably more of something than the region around it. A share of its own classified work, not a count, so a town and a county can be compared; adjusted for how much evidence stands behind it; and shown only where at least five items and one full agenda of classified work support it. Agenda items are not a random sample of anything, so read these as a place to look rather than as a result.

  1. Town of Chapel Hill spends 14% of its classified agenda on historic preservation — about 7 times the regional rate, across 33 items. 33 of 205 classified items · 12–22% · compare every government on this
  2. Town of Cary spends 10% of its classified agenda on stormwater and flooding — about 5 times the regional rate, across 31 items. 31 of 274 classified items · 8–16% · compare every government on this
  3. Town of Hillsborough spends 4% of its classified agenda on data centers and large loads — about 5 times the regional rate, across 8 items. 8 of 158 classified items · 3–10% · compare every government on this
  4. City of Durham spends 13% of its classified agenda on water and sewer — about 4.0 times the regional rate, across 10 items. 10 of 50 classified items · 11–33% · compare every government on this
  5. Town of Hillsborough spends 3% of its classified agenda on broadband and technology — about 3.9 times the regional rate, across 5 items. 5 of 158 classified items · 1–7% · compare every government on this
  6. Town of Chapel Hill spends 6% of its classified agenda on elections and districts — about 3.6 times the regional rate, across 14 items. 14 of 205 classified items · 4–11% · compare every government on this
  7. Town of Knightdale spends 7% of its classified agenda on bonds and debt — about 3.5 times the regional rate, across 9 items. 9 of 94 classified items · 5–17% · compare every government on this
  8. Town of Fuquay-Varina spends 4% of its classified agenda on fees and utility rates — about 3.5 times the regional rate, across 11 items. 11 of 250 classified items · 2–8% · compare every government on this
  9. Wake County spends 19% of its classified agenda on fire and EMS — about 3.4 times the regional rate, across 91 items. 91 of 442 classified items · 17–25% · compare every government on this
  10. Town of Cary spends 5% of its classified agenda on transit — about 3.3 times the regional rate, across 16 items. 16 of 274 classified items · 4–9% · compare every government on this

What the region works on

Every classified agenda item across all 16 governments, by subject. This is the one total on the site big enough to chart honestly — a single government's numbers are mostly single digits. Pick one to see the items.

Compare governments on any of these Search the items directly The written rollups Two governments side by side

Pick a place

How much of each government's agenda has been read so far, and the one subject it is most distinctive for. "Read" matters: where a portal publishes a structured item list that list is the whole agenda, ceremony included, and where it does not the summarization worker writes down only the substantive business — so coverage differs by platform, not by town.

Tracked governments, by how much of their agendas carry a subject
Government Classified items Agenda read What sets it apart
Wake County 442 50% most distinctive: Fire and EMS, 19% of its classified work
Chatham County 413 39% most distinctive: Tax rate and revaluation, 5% of its classified work
Town of Cary 274 39% most distinctive: Stormwater and flooding, 10% of its classified work
Town of Fuquay-Varina 250 46% most distinctive: Fees and utility rates, 4% of its classified work
Town of Apex 212 77% most distinctive: Annexation, 16% of its classified work
Town of Chapel Hill 205 17% most distinctive: Historic preservation, 14% of its classified work
Durham County 191 80% most distinctive: Health and human services, 18% of its classified work
Town of Garner 185 43% most distinctive: Litigation and settlements, 3% of its classified work
Town of Hillsborough 158 54% most distinctive: Data centers and large loads, 4% of its classified work
Town of Pittsboro 139 20% most distinctive: Zoning text amendment, 11% of its classified work
Town of Holly Springs 114 42% most distinctive: Environment and sustainability, 8% of its classified work
Town of Knightdale 94 52% most distinctive: Bonds and debt, 7% of its classified work
Town of Wake Forest 69 56% most distinctive: Roads and transportation, 14% of its classified work
City of Durham 50 80% most distinctive: Water and sewer, 13% of its classified work
Town of Morrisville 8 72% too little read yet to say what stands out
City of Sanford 5 2% too little read yet to say what stands out

What you could turn up to

The next two weeks. Everything above is a record of what already happened; this is the part you can still speak at.

The full calendar

What was actually approved

From 3 governments' own open data on development and rezoning cases — not read out of an agenda, but their own record of what was asked for and what was decided. Everything else on this page counts what came before a board; this counts what came out.

1,303
cases approved
116
denied
41
still under review
20,291
dwelling units in approved cases

These span every year the towns publish, not the window above. A rezoning approved in 2014 is still the reason a subdivision is there.

Where the land is

285 of the properties named in these agendas have been matched to a county parcel record — the owner, the acreage, the assessed value, and where it is. See them on one map, or filter by government, subject, or date.

What this cannot tell you

Only 2,809 of 7,151 agenda items carry a subject, because reading an agenda document takes a summarization pass and most have not had one. A government's numbers here describe the part of its agenda that has been read, which the "agenda read" column states outright. Nothing on this page is a trend over time: the busiest government-and-subject pair in the whole corpus averages four items a month, and month-to-month movement in a number that size is noise. How much has been read so far.