LaWana Mayfield

LaWana Mayfield

At-Large · Term 2025–2027

LaWana Mayfield serves at-large on the Charlotte City Council. She is the council's most vocal advocate for zero-based budgeting and requested that city staff model a housing bond in the $200–$300 million range for the November 2026 referendum, the highest figure any council member has named publicly.

Mayfield was one of four council members who voted no on the Crosland Southeast affordable housing project, arguing East Charlotte has absorbed a disproportionate share of subsidized housing. On April 13, she successfully pushed a street vending ordinance back to the Safety Committee after the mayor moved to table it, telling the mayor she would bring the item back herself even if it meant "firing me." She has been active on the Citizens Review Board, MPTA board appointment rules, shelter policy, and city consulting work. At the same April 13 meeting, Mayfield chaired the Housing Trust Fund staff recommendations review and traced River District’s history back to 2017, citing verbal commitments for mixed-income housing that were not codified in legal language, while current River District studios list above $1,300.

Mayfield chairs the council’s housing and neighborhood services committee. In September 2026 she voted against three of the four annexations before the council, saying it needs to decide what it wants in return for extending city water, sewer, police and fire service to new land. She opposed moving the youth curfew earlier, telling Police Chief Estella Patterson she had “a concern with changing the time when we don’t have the data to say why the 11 o’clock is not working.”

In The Mercury