MOORESVILLE — Mayor Chris Carney said he will leave office Sept. 30, ending a second term early while the Town of Mooresville is still fighting a court order to release after-hours Town Hall surveillance video that put him at the center of months of controversy.
Carney announced the departure at the end of the Board of Commissioners meeting Tuesday, Sept. 8. He called it a retirement, not a resignation. He said the job takes a lot of time and energy, that he and his wife had planned only to finish a list of goals in the second term, and that he would not seek another office. Mayor Pro Tem Eddie Dingler is expected to step in as acting mayor Oct. 1. The board still has to decide how to fill the rest of Carney’s term and Dingler’s seat.
Mooresville is in Iredell County, on Lake Norman. It is not inside Catawba County. The story landed in the Catawba Valley news cycle because the fight over the mayor, the video, and the legal bills has run for months across Charlotte and Lake Norman coverage.
The video the town will not turn over
On the night of Oct. 10, 2024, Carney went to Town Hall after midnight with a woman who had been paid by the town as a communications consultant. Motion detectors went off twice. Police were alerted. WBTV later reported, and alleged in a lawsuit, that Carney was without pants for an extended period. Carney has acknowledged the incident, attributed it to alcohol, and apologized. He previously said he would not step down.
WBTV asked for the CCTV footage. The town refused, arguing the recordings were sensitive security information. The station sued in June 2025. On April 15, 2026, visiting Judge Richard Gottlieb ruled in Iredell County Civil Superior Court that the videos are public and ordered them released. The town appealed. Commissioners said the appeal was about the breadth of the order and the security of public buildings statewide, not about shielding Carney. They said they did not condone his conduct that night.
The footage has not been released. The case is at the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
What the legal fight has cost
In June, WBTV reported that invoices showed the town had been billed $71,820.64 by outside counsel in the WBTV open-government case alone, and that the total would grow after the appeal. Later invoices released to The Charlotte Observer, covering the Charlotte firm Hamilton Stephens Steele + Martin from August 2025 through May 20, 2026, put the billed amount near $83,500 for that case. Those figures do not include other litigation or settlements tied to fallout from the same period.
In April, commissioners voted 4-2 for a resolution asking Carney to resign and expressing no confidence. Carney stayed. This week he set a date.
Sept. 30 is three weeks from the announcement. The video fight is not over. The legal bills are already past the $71,820 figure that first made the news, and the tape is still not public.
