Czajkowski aims to ease town tax burden

Two years ago, Matt Czajkowski’s supporters criticized the Chapel Hill Town Council for voting 9-0 on several key issues.

“Where’s the dissent, you know?” Czajkowski said. “If there’s not votes against it, does that mean what they’re approving is perfect?”

Two years later, the votes are no longer unanimous.

Czajkowski, one of four candidates running for mayor of Chapel Hill, has a reputation for being the “lone dissenter” on many Town Council decisions, but he said that status should help him, not hurt him, in the upcoming election.

Czajkowski is running against Augustus Cho, fellow Town Council member Mark Kleinschmidt and Kevin Wolff.

Czajkowski cited a 2008 vote in which the board nearly approved a proposal that would have given council members lifetime health care benefits.

As the only opposing vote, he sparked the dialogue that eventually persuaded the other members to change their votes, Czajkowski said.

Gregg Gerdau, a friend of Czajkowski and a member of the Friends of the Downtown board of directors, said that night Czajkowski saved Chapel Hill residents millions of dollars by pulling the proposal off the consent agenda.

“I was very happy to see someone stood up for the taxpayers and pulled it,” Gerdau said.

Czajkowski, a retired investment banker, moved to Chapel Hill 11 years ago from New York.

He said he decided to run for public office in 2007 after learning that his neighbors could no longer afford to live in Chapel Hill due to high property taxes, which he said have almost tripled since 2000.

Czajkowski said he hopes to freeze any increases in town property taxes for two years.

As mayor, Czajkowski said he would work to make Chapel Hill an arts hub by inviting artists to open galleries and encouraging frequent Franklin Street performances.

The registered Independent said if forced to choose a party, he would go Democrat. But he has never been able to bring himself to register that way.

“I just don’t believe either party has a monopoly on good ideas,” he said.

With two Republicans running for mayor and multiple businessmen running for Town Council, he said his election might have caused a change in the dynamics of town government.

“I think people have actually seen that I didn’t turn out to be the Neanderthal some people tried to paint me as,” he said.



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