Zebulon Vance, the North Carolina legislator, governor, and Confederate officer for whom Wake County’s easternmost town is named, was not, according to U.S. Civil War historian John G. Barrett, a details guy.
Though Vance practiced law for a few years in antebellum North Carolina, his “success in the courtroom was usually the result of wit, humor, boisterous eloquence, and clever retorts, not knowledge of the law,” Barrett wrote.
Something of that style-over-substance characterization feels applicable to modern elected leaders in Vance’s namesake town. But unlike Vance, who was reportedly “beloved” by his constituents, the Zebulon Board of Commissioners has faced accusations of incompetence and untrustworthiness for the last two years. Since 2024, board members have been dogged by sudden resignations among their top staff, questionable hires, a lawsuit, calls for their resignation en masse, and now an unflattering report from the State Auditor’s Office pointing to inadequate financial controls.
Part 1 of this timeline covered June 2024 through July 2025, including dramatic resignations and a petition calling for the board’s complete overhaul. Part 2 picks up where we left off last summer: The board had just appointed Taiwo Jaiyeoba as interim town manager for the second time after losing two town managers in one year, and the five-way mayoral race and six-way Board of Commissioners race were picking up steam. Read about the election, a settlement in the lawsuit over Zebulon South, and the findings in a new report from the State Auditor’s Office below.
Zebulon agrees to settle with Deacon Development Group, which sued the town over its rejection of a rezoning proposal in 2024. The settlement allows Deacon Development’s Zebulon South project to move forward following a year of legal ping-pong.
According to the August 4 board meeting minutes (stored on the town’s website as part of the October 6 agenda packet, naturally), Deacon made some tweaks to its development plans as part of the settlement, adding a 15% cap on rentals and eight more affordable units. The town attorney said the North Carolina League of Municipalities covered Zebulon’s legal fees.
The Wake County Board Of Elections unanimously rejects Carpenter’s challenge.
At a hearing in Raleigh, Miles testified that he lived at a Zebulon address, providing as evidence copies of his lease agreement, driver’s license, vehicle registration, renters insurance, and utility bills all listing that address. The elections board unanimously sided with him, dismissing Carpenter’s complaint.
In his closing statement, Miles called Carpenter’s use of his platforms to speculate about Miles’ residency and destabilize his candidacy “cyberbullying.” He said he believed Carpenter didn’t care about the outcome of the hearing and had only lodged his complaint as an excuse to share the trespass warning. Later that day, Carpenter posted on Facebook that his “concerns [had] been appeased” by the hearing and he “had no ill will toward” Miles.
Zebulon’s board appoints Trenton Schmit to serve out the rest of Beverly Clark’s term. Clark had resigned in June.
According to meeting minutes, Miles nominated Schmit, a local realtor, and the board approved his appointment unanimously. He would serve only until a full-time replacement could be elected and sworn in.
Jessica Harrison wins the mayoral election.
Harrison received 34.3% of the vote, or 639 votes, enough to win under Zebulon’s plurality system. Former Town Manager Gilbert Todd placed second with 601 votes. Former Commissioner Larry Loucks came in third with 520. Incumbent Mayor Glenn York and Commissioner Shannon Baxter received a mere 57 and 46 votes, respectively.
In total, 1,863 people voted in 2025, compared to 547 in the previous mayoral election—a 240% turnout increase.
Harrison’s campaign probably got a boost from the Wake County Democratic Party, which endorsed her over the other Democrats in the race last summer, conferring visibility and a powerful get-out-the-vote apparatus.
Miles and George Roa are elected to the town Board of Commissioners from a field of six candidates.
Miles received 968 votes, retaining his seat for a second term. Roa, a first-time candidate, received 733 and replaced Schmit.
Roa was the only Republican to win a municipal election in all of Wake County in November 2025. He is a realtor, an alum of the town planning board, and the creator of Zebulon en Español, a service that translates important town documents and announcements into Spanish.
Zebulon names a new town manager, Katy Crosby.
Crosby came to Zebulon from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an advocacy organization that works on racial and wealth inequality. Before that, she served as town manager in nearby Apex for two years. She resigned that post in 2023; neither she nor the town of Apex offered an explanation for her departure at the time. Crosby previously worked as the chief of staff for the city of Toledo, Ohio, and as a municipal department director in Dayton, Ohio.
The board appoints Kyle Adams to fill Harrison’s vacant commissioner seat.
Two days after the new board was sworn in, they met to fill Mayor Harrison’s vacant commissioner seat. The board didn’t solicit applications for the role or even discuss their nominees before voting. The entire process took about five minutes.
Baxter nominated Schmit. Commissioner Amber Davis nominated Adams, a member of the planning board. Roa nominated Jesse Brown, a former police officer who had placed third in the commissioners’ race.
Harrison then asked the town clerk to distribute paper ballots to the commissioners so they could vote. Harrison joked to the clerk: “You have to give us very clear directions. We chop this up every time.”
Adams received two votes to Schmit and Brown’s one apiece. By plurality, that made him the winner. (As mayor, Harrison is not allowed to vote except to break ties.)
After the vote, Harrison asked her colleagues: “Is there any discussion regarding board vacancy?”
Roa replied that having a discussion after the vote “doesn’t make any sense because it’s for nothing.”
State law entitled the board to fill the vacancy however they saw fit. Their approach wasn’t wrong, but it was quicker and less rigorous than what other municipalities opted to do.
That winter, neighboring Fuquay-Varina and Wake Forest also found themselves in the position of having elected sitting commissioners to be their mayors. Those towns solicited applications to fill their vacancies and interviewed the finalists before making their appointments. It took them weeks, not minutes, and they justified their processes to the public.
The board adopts a $30.5 million budget over resident opposition.
The budget for the 2026–27 fiscal year passed 4-1, with Roa voting against. It keeps the tax rate unchanged and defers about $2.2 million worth of capital projects in order to shore up the town’s diminished fund balance, or savings account.
In her budget message to the board, Crosby wrote that the document prioritizes financial stability after “staff identified a structural imbalance between recurring operating revenues and recurring operating expenditures driven by rising personnel costs, healthcare expenses, operational demands, infrastructure obligations, and growth-related service demands.”
Residents who packed into the boardroom for a public hearing ahead of the budget vote were almost universally opposed to it. They took issue with the commissioners giving themselves a raise even as the town cut back in other areas: WRAL reported that the mayor’s salary increased from $15,000 to $20,000 and the commissioners’ salaries rose from $8,000 to $16,000. Some residents seemed to believe the budget contained a deficit, which it does not (North Carolina municipalities are obligated to pass balanced budgets). Many residents publicly questioned Crosby’s and the board’s competence. Some wondered aloud how Zebulon, one of the fastest-growing towns in the state, will be able to accommodate growth if it’s deferring capital expenditures. For nearly two hours, residents and board members talked past each other, with the board mostly ignoring residents’ complaints.
State auditor’s review points to flawed financial management.
State Auditor Dave Boliek’s office published a “rapid response special report” analyzing Zebulon’s financial management between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2025. It noted the recent leadership turnover and found multiple examples of “significant weaknesses in internal controls” related to contracts, budget development and tracking, and the fund balance.
Among the findings: The town collected millions more in revenue and spent millions less than it budgeted for all three years. The report notes that “while spending below budget is preferable to overspending, a materially overstated budget” could point to poor financial forecasting or noncompletion of big projects.
Also: Zebulon’s fund balance dropped below the minimum threshold in fiscal year 2025. Boliek’s office found payments, and reimbursements to staff and contractors, that weren’t properly documented. And in 2024, the town reimbursed Jaiyeoba $6,945.12 for a monthlong stay in a four-bedroom Airbnb while he was serving as interim town manager. The board knew about the reimbursement and approved it.
Zebulon launches a Progress Dashboard in response to the auditor’s report.
The dashboard tracks the town’s work on the auditor’s 10 recommendations. According to the dashboard, the town has already standardized its contract approval process and implemented another layer of oversight for outgoing payments.
Comment on this story at [email protected].