Gettysburg has named a new mayor following the sudden departure, and subsequent arrest, of former Mayor Chad-Alan Carr on child sex crime allegations.
Borough Council appointed local business owner Alison Lintal as mayor from among a dozen applicants at a special meeting on Monday, March 23. Lintal will serve in the role until the winner of the November 2027 municipal election is seated in January 2028.
During her five-minute presentation to the council, Lintal described her intent to “strengthen trust, collaborate with calm, and ensure that safety and accessibility are balanced in our community.”
“Trust is something you give to another because they have earned it,” Lintal said.
“It remains important,” Lintal told the council during her five-minute presentation, “to not let individual bad acts define an entire community.”
During her speech, Lintal detailed her background as having grown up in south-central Pennsylvania and moving away amid a career as an attorney who specialized in housing.
After serving as an attorney for the General Counsel’s Office at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Chicago, Lintal moved back to Pennsylvania and began working as an administrator in higher education.
She has lived in Adams County for 11 years and in Gettysburg for two years, Lintal said. In moving to Gettysburg, Lintal opened her own small business, a yoga studio, Hidden Wisdom Yoga. Lintal additionally teaches at Gettysburg College as an adjunct professor in public policy and serves as an administrative hearing officer for a local housing authority.
Lintal received her law degree from the University of Miami and a Bachelor’s in international affairs and Spanish from Lafayette College.
Among the most important roles of the mayor, she told the council, is strengthening community relations between residents and their officials.
“All parties feel more empowered when they get a chance to share their story or perspective,” she said.
In that role, Lintal told the council that she would like to meet with representatives of the police force, the business community, the community organizations, the college, and the public in order to understand their needs, constraints, and opportunities to collaborate.
“The mayor is an instrument of the people,” she said, “and should be appointed due to their ability to listen, to exercise judgment, to understand the overall community needs and interests.”
“Not every constituent can have the exact outcome that they personally desire, but everyone should feel heard.”
Lintal takes over the role from acting mayor and council president Matthew Moon, who assumed the mayor’s duties following the abrupt resignation of newly elected mayor Chad-Alan Carr on Tuesday, March 3.
Carr, who began his first term as mayor at the start of 2026, was arrested by Pennsylvania State Police on charges of alleged child sex crimes that were filed on Friday, March 13.
“Even though this has been a stressful month,” Moon said, “the lights are on, the bills are getting paid, the police are patrolling, the garbage is getting picked up. Our government has continued.”
“Our role here tonight is to continue to move forward.”
The voting took four rounds of voting after as the council heard five minute presentations from 12 applicants, including former mayor Rita Frealing, who had lost to Carr in the 2025 general election.
Also among the candidates was councilman Chris Berger, who recused himself from voting due to being a potential candidates.
Two additional candidates had applied, Moon said, but did not submit required documents for the residency requirements.
In each round of voting, council members each submitted their vote for their pick for mayor, with the applicant that has the least amount of votes being eliminated from consideration, and rounds continuing until a candidate receives a majority of votes.
Moon expressed his gratitude for the extensive interest shown by the community, noting that Gettysburg is a weak mayor-strong council system.
In such a system, he said, the main function of the mayor is instead to “preside over the events in our lives that define our community.”
Carr awaiting hearing
As Gettysburg looks to the future with a newly appointed leader, the community’s former mayor continues to move through the criminal justice system.
The specter cast by those allegations continued to hang over the meeting, with Moon giving a brief statement prior to hearing from the applicants. In that statement, Moon reiterated his characterization of the issue as a “personal legal matter” for Carr that “has nothing to do with the borough or his elected positions.”
“To the best of my knowledge, no one person in the borough government knew of these allegations or suspected this was coming until after his resignation,” Carr said.
Carr, 48, who had been held in Adams County Prison after initially being unable to post $100,000 bail through surety bonds on March 13, was released after posting bond on March 17, court records show.
A formal arraignment for Carr is scheduled for April 16 in the Adams County Court of Common Pleas, court documents list.
The court has scheduled a plea hearing on the charges for June 15, 2026, according to the documents.
