Greensboro voters headed out to polling locations across the city on Tuesday to elect new local leaders.
The city is on the verge of a new chapter with several council seats in play. Greensboro will also soon have a new mayor for the first time in over a decade.
Nancy Howard, who’s retired, said she’s supporting Robbie Perkins in the mayoral race because of his real estate experience.
“With all the building going on, they need somebody that knows about it, not somebody that's read about it,” she said.
Growth was a motivating factor for several voters throughout Greensboro. Outside of Mount Zion Baptist Church, Cynthia Latham said inadequate housing in east Greensboro was an important issue for her.
“The time is critical that we have genuinely effective people around the table as they're making decisions for us in this community and in the world,” Latham said.
Reginald Chiles said he didn’t mind the possibility of seeing new faces lead Greensboro.
“I think new blood, new ideas. You know, if you keep doing the same thing, you keep getting the same result,” Chiles said.
While local issues were top of mind for voters, many were also thinking about concerns at the national level.
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University student Khayla Johnson-Alexander said national issues like the government shutdown and its effect on SNAP recipients motivated her to vote for candidates at a local level.
“At the end of the day, these people are going to be running for these bigger positions in the future, and I feel like it all starts right here, right now,” she said.
Outside of Mount Pisgah Church, college administrator Alex Meredith said the trade wars’ impact on the agriculture industry was a major concern for him.
“I think that it's a really big issue as far as helping minority farmers, small and large, survive, especially with everything that's going on with tariffs. It's pretty stringent right now,” he said.
He said that despite not seeing any local candidates touch on the issue, he still wanted to make sure his voice was heard.