‘Voice for the underdog.’ Former Charlotte City Council member Claire Fallon dies.
Former Charlotte City Council member Claire Green Fallon, who as a community advocate worked for years to support the city’s northeast neighborhoods, died Sunday morning, her family said.
“This is with heavy heart that we write this. Claire (our mom and grandma) passed away,” according to a post on her Facebook page. “The world has lost a very spirited and loved woman.”
Fallon, 87, was an at-large Democratic council member first elected in 2011 until 2017, and previously was a member of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission and former president of the NorthEast Coalition of Neighborhoods.
A cause of death was not released immediately.
A funeral and graveside service will be held at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at Gethsemane Cemetery and Memorial Gardens, 1504 W. Sugar Creek Road in Charlotte, the family posted on Monday.
In 2009 Fallon won a seat on the planning commission, according to Observer archives. Among her key issues was pushing for better construction quality, first in her University-area neighborhood, then area-wide. She also advocated for spreading out affordable housing across the city.
Most recently, she was appointed to Gaston County’s Planning Board from February 2019 to fulfill a partial term, according to a county spokesman. She had been re-appointed to a full four-year term in January.
News of Fallon’s death caused an immediate outpouring of condolences and praise for Fallon’s work as an elected official and community volunteer, including from Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles.
“I was fortunate to work with her for many years and have always admired her commitment to public service,” Lyles wrote on Twitter. “Claire served the people of Charlotte and made a real difference.”
Kenny Smith, a Republican former Charlotte City Council member, said Fallon called him shortly before he took office, offering to show him around the government center. He called the gesture “a genuine, heartfelt bipartisan effort” extended to a colleague of the other party.
That blossomed into a fruitful working relationship, he said, especially around complicated zoning decisions.
“She would always want to make sure that the city could grow — but not necessarily at the expense of the neighbors —to try to find the balance,” he said.
Fallon had “a lot of moxie and always fought for what she believed in,” Smith said.
Corine Mack, president of the NAACP Charlotte-Mecklenburg Branch, said she lost a friend and the city lost “a champion.”
“She was a smart cookie! I loved her,” Mack wrote on Facebook. “You did the work and did it well.”
During a City Council meeting Monday night, members held a moment of silence for Fallon. Mayor Vi Lyles, along with council members Greg Phipps and Ed Driggs, remembered her legacy.
Driggs said he will remember her as “colorful, noisy, outspoken, fiercely independent.”
“I miss her voice here,” Phipps said. “I was inspired by her.”
Though she ran as an at-large Democrat, Fallon previously said she also had been non-affiliated and a registered Republican in years before, telling the Observer she was “a Democrat 95 percent of my life” and a fiscal conservative.
She joined Republican colleagues in voting down the city manager’s budget in 2012 over proposed property tax increases. It resulted in the city scrapping a $926 million capital plan and putting on hold projects for roads, affordable housing, the airport and a streetcar.
She was also a vocal critic of former Fire Chief Jon Hannan and the city’s handling of a retaliation suit after a whistleblower complaint by one of the department’s investigators.
“I am (an) independent council member. I am not a rubber stamp. I do not go along to get along,” she said in 2017. After her primary defeat that year, Fallon said she was leaving the Democratic Party and would return to being politically unaffiliated.
She was born in Spring Valley, New York and moved to Charlotte in 2001, according to an Observer candidate profile when she first ran for council. She graduated from the New York School of Interior Design and also attended New York University and Queens College, according to the profile.
Her husband, Tim Fallon, died in 2010, which in part sparked her decision to run for city council, she told the paper. A candidate profile in 2015, when she won re-election, said she had three children and four grandchildren.
Former council member James “Smuggie” Mitchell recalled Fallon as a dedicated public servant who joined the council already knowledgeable about city issues, thanks to her tenure with the planning commission and neighborhood groups. She was adamant about the public’s involvement, he said.
“Every time there was a decision, Claire always felt like ‘How would the average citizens feel? Have we gotten their input?’” Mitchell recalled. “I always appreciated her being the voice for the underdog.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2022 at 6:37 AM.
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