Mayor Vi Lyles opened the May 18 zoning meeting by acknowledging she had not chaired one in years.

"I am just delighted to be able to join you guys. It's been a while," she told the dais. "You know, somebody in the newspaper said she's not done this in years."

She had not. The Charlotte Mercury reported May 8, citing WSOC's Joe Bruno and others, that Lyles "stopped attending almost all rezoning meetings" through her current term. Council Member Ed Driggs (District 7) had chaired each of the four zoning meetings held earlier in 2026. That absence, the May 9 lead piece reported, was one of the public signals that her resignation — announced May 7 — had not surprised the building.

Monday night was the first zoning meeting Lyles chaired in 2026. It was also her last.

The Charlotte City Council calendar does not include another zoning meeting between Monday and Lyles's resignation date of Tuesday, June 30. The May 26 Business Meeting and the June 8 Budget Adoption are the only council meetings remaining on her schedule. Both are full-council sessions focused on FY27 budget work. The next zoning meeting falls in July, under a mayor who has not been named.

Lyles introduced herself to the room as Charlotte's "short-term mayor." She handled the deferrals, the consent agenda, and items 3 through 10 — the decisions portion of the night — and then handed the chair to Council Member Danté Anderson (District 1) for the public-hearings portion.

The work she chaired was routine. The consent agenda passed unanimously after Council Member Renee Johnson (District 4) pulled one item — petition 2025-136, the Larry Cooper conventional rezoning — to discuss her standing concern about conventional petitions filed without site plans. That petition then failed 5-4 on the floor, the only contested vote of the night under Lyles's gavel, before the council unanimously moved to defer it. The Manor Theater redevelopment (petition 2026-003) drew nostalgic floor speeches from three members and passed without opposition. The Atrium Health hospital expansion (petition 2025-135) was approved unanimously after a brief procedural restart, during which Lyles told the room: "I'm going home to let these experts do this right, and there is no harm in doing that, because I understand that sometimes you just have to do what you got to do."

Before turning the meeting over, she offered an unprompted thank-you. "Almost every one of you, I think I could call out your names or at least one place that you've been with me," she said. "I want you to know I'm just grateful for it. What has happened through my life and my livelihood has been because of all of you."

The vote that decides who fills Lyles's seat has not been scheduled.