Holly Springs Mayoral and Town Council Candidate Questionnaire Finalized and Sent to Candidates, Shared With Residents
Holly Springs Update and What’s Happening Holly Springs finalize 11 key questions for mayor and town council candidates, focused on growth, traffic, schools, water, housing, and local business.
Holly Springs, NC, Sep. 9, 2025 — Holly Springs Update, in partnership with What’s Happening Holly Springs, has finalized the 2025 municipal election candidate questionnaire and distributed it to all candidates running for mayor and town council. We apologize for the one-day delay in publishing the questionnaire. Our goal was to ensure the process was as thorough, transparent, and representative as possible of the issues that residents care about most, and extra time was needed to achieve this.
Earlier HSU coverage:
Deadline Approaches for Holly Springs Residents to Submit Questions for Mayoral and Town Council Candidates (September 1, 2025)
Holly Springs Update and What's Happening Holly Springs Partner to Deliver Candidate Questionnaire Ahead of Municipal Elections (August 26, 2025)
The questionnaire is the product of an extensive process that began with an unedited master list of 44 questions. These came from three sources: a draft set of questions prepared earlier this year, submissions from residents collected through a community questionnaire, and additional suggestions raised by residents in recent weeks.
From there, questions were consolidated into 11 themes, growth, transportation, public safety, schools, financial stewardship, housing, parks and environment, regional planning, arts and culture, small business, and industrial strategy. Within each theme, similar questions were combined to eliminate duplication. For example, several questions about growth outpacing infrastructure were merged into a single, more encompassing inquiry.
The streamlined list was then further refined to highlight distinct, non-overlapping questions, reducing the total to around 30. Finally, community experience and knowledge of principals from Holly Springs Update and What’s Happening Holly Springs was factored in, resulting in one top-priority question for each theme. The result is 11 questions that reflect the most pressing concerns in our community, from NC 55 traffic congestion and water quality to school overcrowding, housing affordability, small business vitality, and the proposed AI data center near Shearon Harris Lake.
Earlier today, each candidate received the finalized questionnaire. Their responses will be published in full on Holly Springs Update and What’s Happening Holly Springs in the coming weeks to help residents make informed decisions ahead of the election.
Documents related to the questionnaire process, including the unedited master list of questions, are available at the links below for readers who want to review the whole journey from draft to final version.
Step 4 - Final Candidate Questions
Step 2 - Streamlined Candidate Questions
Step 1 - Unedited Master List of Candidate questions (Note: An earlier version of this story post linked to the wrong file. It is now correct. Thanks to an astute reader for pointing out the error. (Revised 9/9/25 3:35 PM))
For more information about the questionnaire and its associated timelines, please visit the below story:
Holly Springs Update and What's Happening Holly Springs Partner to Deliver Candidate Questionnaire Ahead of Municipal Elections (August 26, 2025)