Ed Driggs

Ed Driggs

District 7 · Budget Committee · Ballantyne · Term 2025–2027

Ed Driggs represents District 7 on the Charlotte City Council and serves on the Budget Committee. He is the longest-serving current council member in a district seat. His district covers the Ballantyne area of south Charlotte.

Driggs chaired the March 23, 2026, zoning meeting where the Crosland Southeast affordable housing project passed 6–4. He voted yes on the project. He has been active in MPTA board appointment discussions, transit safety after the Zarutska killing, shelter policy, and zoning disputes over density and growth across multiple meetings.

Driggs joined the council in 2013, after a corporate finance career. He has been characterized as a pragmatic conservative: fiscally disciplined, focused on basic services, and willing to back major capital investments when the long-term economic case is solid. Earlier in his tenure he chaired the Transportation, Planning and Environment Committee, the council lane that handles roads, transit, and development rules. He ran unopposed for re-election in November 2025.

Driggs is Charlotte’s delegate to the regional transportation planning board, where he casts the city’s 31 weighted votes, the largest single bloc. Through the summer of 2026 he told that board the city’s opposition to the I-77 South toll lanes was unchanged while talks continued on a path acceptable to opponents. He was the only member of the council committee he chairs who had not supported withdrawing from the project in May. On the youth curfew he asked whether enforcement would end in arrests of teenagers.

In The Mercury