A $3.4M communications contract won’t bring what Charlotte’s light rail really needs | Editorial

City Council members who talked Monday night about Charlotte’s second light rail stabbing in four months sounded a little closer to many of their constituents. They were concerned about another incident, wanting more answers, frustrated that those answers weren’t coming as fully or as quickly as expected. As a whole, the uptick in impatience was what Charlotte needed to hear in the moment.

But then there was the contract.

Also at Monday’s meeting, the council voted to approve a $3.4 million contract with communications firm Sherry Matthews Group to help CATS staff with “enhancing the public’s perception and use of public transit,” according to the City Council meeting agenda. Sherry Matthews Group will assist with advertising, branding, community engagement and crisis communications, among other tasks.

This is, CATS says, bad timing. A previous communications contract was expiring, CATS spokesperson Brett Baldeck told the Observer’s Nick Sullivan, and the new one needed approving. But CATS didn’t provide a copy of that previous contract, and the Observer so far has been unable to locate one. That’s one of a lot of questions the Observer and others have asked CATS, without answers, about the stabbing and staffing at the time. That will only intensify the grumblings that the City Council and CATS think this problem can be fixed via “enhancing the public’s perception.”

We hope not. Because that’s not something a $3.4M contract will solve, unless the money results in some very basic advice: Be honest with your constituents, and yourselves.

People are nervous about rail in Charlotte, same as they have been nervous about safety in Uptown. A lot of Charlotteans, regardless of their politics, wouldn’t tell their parents to take the train right now. They probably would tell visiting friends to stick to Uber. Even some semi-regular riders are now recalculating what time of day and location they would and wouldn’t get on. If our leaders are honest with themselves, they know they’d make all those the same calculations.

Light rail is, in many ways, suffering the same kind of perception problem that happens regularly with downtowns in cities, including Charlotte. The path toward fixing this perception isn’t telling people that things aren’t really that bad, or pointing to our crime rates versus other places and other transit systems. We’re not in those other places.

Fixing the perception means fixing the problem. And it means telling residents what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, in detail. It also means providing the same detail when things go wrong, because they will. People tolerate setbacks — mostly, at least — but not so much when you don’t own up to them. They especially get suspicious when they have to find out what really happened via social media reports instead of from official sources.

That’s what’s happening right now, once again, with CATS. We suspect Charlotte’s leaders know this. Perhaps they’re hoping the $3.4M will pay for professionals who understand that crisis management doesn’t mean crisis avoidance. But CATS doesn’t just need PR pros to advise them that. The message needs to come firmly from our leaders, and it needs to start now.

This story was originally published December 10, 2025 at 8:55 AM.