Update 3: Late last night, we were sent a statement from current Mayor, Jess Anderson. We have reprinted it in full at the bottom of this piece.
Update 2: The town is reversing course. An email from Interim Manager Mary Jane Nirdlinger to Town Council has been added to the end of the post.
Update: We updated the piece to include a statement from former mayor Mark Kleinschmidt.
The Town of Chapel Hill has scrubbed a number of pages from the town website, including pages related to LGBTQ+ history, racial equity, loans and grants for lower income and minority business owners and DEI.
The changes, made at some point in the past month, were brought to the attention of Triangle Blog Blog by multiple readers. For example, Joe Herzenberg, elected to the Chapel Hill Town Council in 1987, was the first openly gay elected official in the American South. The page noting his contributions and that of other members of the Chapel Hill LGBTQ+ community now returns a 404; it is available in the Internet Archive.
Other pages that now return a 404 include:
DEI Resolutions and Ordinances (Internet Archive)
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (Internet Archive)
Altogether, 17 pages were removed from the town website. In an email acquired by TBB, which was sent to town council members earlier this week, Interim Town Manager Mary Jane Nirdlinger says the website deletions are part of a larger content audit to “realize a new, improved, user-friendly Town website.”
Not all of the 17 pages scrubbed were related to LGBT history or racial equity; the pages for the Historic Town Hall Committee and LED street lights were also removed due to “low page views.” But a number of the pages removed relate to topics that the Trump administration recently banned from federal websites. Thousands of websites have been removed in recent weeks across the federal government.
Nirdlinger’s email suggests that changes made to the Town of Chapel Hill’s website were made for other reasons, namely related to page views. She wrote “The pages listed below all have less than 500 page views over a 12 month period, which is well below the “keep/migrate to new site” threshold. We have currently turned these pages “off” on our site as we continue to work through the audit – and develop an overall content strategy for the future. That strategy will include more effective and engaging ways to present all of our content, including important topics such as sustainability and equity, which are on the list of low page views below.”
A reader who contacted Triangle Blog Blog about the disappearance of pages related to LGBT history and equity noted that traffic should not have been deciding factor in deciding to keep pages related to equity. “What are they afraid of?” he wrote. “This is Chapel Hill.”
Mark Kleinschmidt, Chapel Hill’s first openly gay mayor who served from 2009-2015, sent us a statement which is reprinted below:
Kleinschmidt: “Sadly, I never thought I could be as hurt, ashamed, and disappointed in the town than I am today.When I was a high school student in Eastern North Carolina, Chapel Hill called me to her. The election of Joe Herzenberg to the Town Council was a clarion call to LGBTQ people across the South signaling that this community was committing itself to advancing equality for all. This is why I made Chapel Hill my home, my chosen hometown.
Once upon a time, and for several years, the town’s website hosted a page that outlined a brief history of the LGBT community in Chapel Hill … that time was as recently as February 2025. Today, that page and all references to Chapel Hill’s LGBTQ history, it’s employee resource group, racial equality and links to resolutions proclaiming the town’s values and commitment to inclusion, diversity and equality for all have been scrubbed from the town website.
The town is defending its actions through a specious argument about how turning off a very specific set of 17 webpages will enhance the user-friendliness of the Town website and make the migration to a new website more efficient. But we know what this is about, it’s a short-sighted, prophylactic attempt to distance Chapel Hill from its reputation for being a welcoming, inclusive, equality-minded community. I have news for you Chapel Hill, the MAGA movement isn’t going to be fooled into believing you share their values just because you turn-off a few pages on your website – the reputation built by 30+ years of queer leaders in our community can’t be “straightened out” that easily. The true reputational impact of this is that this action feeds the growing narrative that Chapel Hill doesn’t really stand for anything anymore. And that’s deeply saddening.
After hearing about this a friend shared with me that premature capitulation to bigoted policy isn’t how we should respond to the challenges of our time. Erasing LGBTQ people from the town’s website doesn’t help the town get grants, rather it helps the people who want to erase us from public life do it more easily.
I’ve called the mayor and a couple council members and expressed my views on this. I’m grateful that they each respected and shared my concerns. Perhaps you would like to share your views with them too. [email protected].”
Update 1:30PM from Mark Kleinschmidt on socials
We will update this story as we learn more.
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The following email was shared with TBB this afternoon by multiple Council members:
Mayor and Council,
Based on my conversations with you and Town staff, here are next steps regarding our website content audit:
We will turn back “on” the pages that we recently turned “off.” While we turned these off because of the results of our content audit, we realize from recent feedback that some of these pages speak to our values and are important to have on our website regardless of their page views.
We will stop turning off any other pages until our new website is ready to launch. Our intent was to improve our current site while building our new site.
We also recognize that context matters and, in this moment fraught with political uncertainty, our actions carry extra weight. We remain committed to serving everyone in our community and we would welcome a Council discussion to provide policy guidance around the intersection between our values, our communications, and our service to the community.
Lastly, I want to say that I am grateful for the conversations we have and will continue to have around these topics.
Mary Jane
Statement from Mayor Jess Anderson
Chapel Hill Community,
Late yesterday, members of Town Council and I learned that, in the course of building a new website, webpages relating to our work on LGBTQIA and other issues were archived. This included resources and information about the history of our LGBTQ community. At a time when members of that community – our community – are under attack, removing information that celebrates their accomplishments sends the wrong signal to them as well as to other marginalized communities. This is something I want to quickly address.
The Town of Chapel Hill is committed to being a safe, welcoming, and supportive community for all. This includes protecting and celebrating communities whose very existence others call into question.
On receiving this news, I and others on Town Council requested that this information be restored to the website. We are pleased that the webpages have been put back up and have assurances that they will remain in place as the new website is developed. In the meantime, I fully expect that Town Council and our staff will engage in more conversations about how we navigate these challenging times, including how we ensure that our support and commitment to our values is always clear.
We are grateful to the many members of our community who quickly spoke up in support of the values we all stand for. We apologize to anyone for whom this has caused confusion or concern. Please continue to reach out. We want to hear from you.
Sincerely,
Mayor Jess