Candidate Profile: Namrata Yadav
The Short Version
Charlotte’s at-large ballot is crowded. Namrata Yadav stands out by translating a corporate skill set into a plainly stated civic program she calls ABC: Accountability, Business-driven opportunity, Community engagement and safety. That’s not branding. It’s a checklist.
Who She Is
Yadav immigrated to the United States as a young adult, learned the system the hard way, and then spent nearly two decades at Bank of America building talent pipelines and community education programs. She speaks the language of outcomes: dashboards, targets, follow-through. If she wins a citywide seat, expect more “show your work” than “trust us.”
What She’s Proposing
Accountability that lives in daylight
- Open-file governance: Publish clear, searchable dashboards that track spending, outcomes, and council attendance and votes.
- Real public process: Major decisions in open session, not closed-room marathons. Plain summaries before votes.
- Service measures that matter: Transit on-time performance, housing units delivered by income band, code-enforcement cycle times, and public-safety metrics that include prevention.
Business-driven mobility
- Workforce pipelines: Pair employers with training partners so residents can move from certificate to paycheck without getting lost in paperwork.
- Small-business support: Make permitting and storefront improvements faster and legible, especially in corridors where a two-week delay can sink a quarter.
Community engagement and safety
- Prevention first: Youth programs, mental-health response, and neighborhood problem-solving paired with targeted policing.
- Measure re-entry supports: Track repeat calls and repeat offenses alongside housing and job placement to show what’s working.
The Transportation Question
Yadav supports a 1-cent sales-tax package for transportation if the public gets three guarantees:
- A rider-focused buildout—money to the bus network now for faster headways, shelters, sidewalks, and safer crossings, with rail staged where it unlocks access and jobs.
- Trustees who use the system—oversight by people who actually ride, not just read briefing books.
- Procurement that invests locally—contractors and apprentices from the neighborhoods that will live with the project dust.
Call it a grown-up answer: the plan isn’t perfect, the status quo is worse, and accountability beats slogans.
Housing and Growth
If Charlotte keeps growing, we either build smart or we sprawl dumb. Yadav’s approach looks like this:
- Produce and preserve: Pair new units near jobs and transit with preservation of existing, naturally-occurring affordable housing.
- Follow the money: Score projects by cost per affordable unit and proximity to reliable transportation and services.
- Cut friction, not corners: Faster approvals for projects that meet affordability and design basics; clearer denials for those that don’t.
What Could Change With Yadav On Council
- You’d see fewer surprises and more receipts.
- Budget hearings would include progress charts you can read without a decoder ring.
- Transportation decisions would talk about minutes saved, not just billions spent.
- The city would treat workforce and small-business questions as economic mobility tools, not photo-ops.
Questions Voters Should Ask (of any at-large hopeful)
- Will you publish your own vote log and committee attendance, every month?
- What bus improvements come this year, before we lay a foot of track?
- How many units at or below 60% AMI will your housing votes actually deliver, and where?
- What’s your plan for multilingual outreach, not just translation after the fact?
How Her Pitch Lands
If you like government that behaves like a competent project manager, Yadav will feel familiar. If you prefer vibes, you may be disappointed. Her pitch is not romance; it’s a work plan: decide in public, post the scoreboard, fix what misses the mark.
Where To Go Next
Start here and drill down by beat:
Then jump into our special 2025 election project—equal parts explainer and turnout nudge:
- Poll Dance 2025; Join the Dance: Election 2025 Hub
The Fine Print (because we actually mean it)
About the Author
Jack Beckett is a senior writer at The Charlotte Mercury. He files late, drinks coffee strong enough to frighten small appliances, and keeps a notebook full of numbers the city would rather summarize. If you have receipts, he’ll review them.
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Creative Commons License
© 2025 The Charlotte Mercury / Strolling Ballantyne
This article, “Namrata Yadav’s ABC Plan: Accountability, Transit Funding, and Housing in Charlotte’s 2025 At-Large Race,” by Jack Beckett is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0.
“Namrata Yadav’s ABC Plan: Accountability, Transit Funding, and Housing in Charlotte’s 2025 At-Large Race”
by Jack Beckett, The Charlotte Mercury (CC BY-ND 4.0)