Mooresville mayor to retire Sept. 30
Carney previously censured by town board over town hall incident
Mooresville Mayor Chris Carney speaks at an event in Mooresville in 2024.
Mooresville Mayor Chris Carney said Tuesday night he will retire effective Sept. 30 and hand his office to town commissioner and mayor pro tem Eddie Dingler.
"And with any sense, you'll make him your mayor," Carney told other members of the Mooresville Board of Commissioners at a Tuesday meeting.
Carney said he'd fulfilled all the goals he announced when he sought the office, including curbing apartment complexes that emerged along N.C. Highway 150 and other main arteries without retail and commercial components under past town boards.
"We had a list, and that's what we worked on," Carney told the audience about his goals before the board went into private executive session on other matters.
He also cited what he called the town's strong economic development initiatives that have left it on solid financial footing.
He said he looks forward to travel with his wife and said "there's no chance in the world I'm going to seek another office. I've already done that and got the trophy for it."
"This is not happenstance," Carney said of his announcement. "This has been a longtime plan."
He said he and his wife intend to stay in the community they love, helping at Mooresville Christian Mission and other charities.
He said his retirement has nothing to do with "the silliness" made over the night he fell ill in town hall.
Carney was censured by the Mooresville Board of Commissioners after revelations that a town hall video reportedly shows him without pants on and a woman present on a late night in October 2024.
In April, Mooresville appealed a judge's order to release the surveillance videos. The videos are neither criminal investigative materials nor sensitive public security information, as the town contends they are, according to the April 15 ruling by visiting judge Richard Gottlieb in Iredell County Civil Superior Court.
The case awaits a hearing by the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
Mayor says he went to town hall to sober up
Carney and the woman "twice triggered motion detectors at town hall, alerting the Mooresville Police Department," according to the WBTV lawsuit. He didn't have pants on "for an extended period," according to the WBTV complaint in court. Carney has said in media interviews that he fell ill after medications he was on mixed with alcohol after a gathering at a bar near the town hall.
The woman who accompanied him to Town Hall is a longtime family friend who sent a photo of the ill Carney at the town hall to his wife that night, so she'd know the condition he was in, he previously said in an interview with the Charlotte Observer.
"I never thought, to be fair, that vomiting and making a mess would become a national story," the mayor said. "I really couldn't have imagined that.
"And I would tell the public, I am so sorry," he said. "I truly didn't think anything other than I needed my phone and then, when I felt bad, this is a safe space ... a place where, when I felt better, I would go home."
Mooresville has paid a Charlotte law firm nearly $83,500 to prevent the release of a town hall video that reportedly shows its mayor without pants on and a woman present on a late night in October 2024.
The town released invoices in the case in late August to The Charlotte Observer, which asked for the records in a July 8 public records request.
