Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ When I arrived here back in the summer of 2008 from Philadelphia I immediatly noticed Downtown Salisbury ONLY’s “Big Pushes to Nowhere”. You know those initiatives often poorly thought out with little consideration of future consequences. Any realistic due diligence be damned and zero public input save for Downtown Salisbury ONLY (Historic preservationists, historic district, country clubbers, the Salisbury Post, “progressives”, downtown merchants, chamber of commerce, Downtown Salisbury Inc., and Rowan-Salisbury Schools)
These “Big Pushes to Nowhere” put a major hurting on Salisbury or soon will. Often these initiatives are borne out of knee-jerk anxiety and neediness about the future. They ramp up Salisbury’s downhill tumble. The Fibrant debacle made a fillet out of Salisbury. Will this town go bankrupt? Likely on its present course of hiding reality and tossing money away on expensive misadventures.
During my stay here I’ve witnessed these hard sell “Pushes to Nowhere”:
• The Fibrant Push to Nowhere back in 2008. The city’s inability to listen to either warnings about getting involved in a municipal fiber optic enterprise or to a public divided on the subject. Fibrant eventually cost the city somewhere in the vicinity of 70 million in debt and broke its spine. Now Salisbury can’t afford to keep up many of their necessary city services. A bad place to be when the city staggers under the weight of its soaring 28% poverty, severe crime, and low ranked public education. Almost daily in 2008 the Salisbury Post talked up how fantastic it would be to build a fiber optic network. They built it, but only the city’s best friends subscribed.
Then came the crazed push for building the Central Office at 329 S. Main on a lot where residual ground water contamination still exists. The lot itself contains 38 feet of infill with the water table running through the middle of it. Recall the brick by brick ceremony at city council? 329 S. Main was more about taking 7 banks off the hook for the Empire Hotel flophouse. The building of the Central Office was supposed to create magical investment on South Main, The proposed Central Office never had parking and died for lack of air.
Now we have two “Big Pushes” going at once: the Mac Air Laptop and iPad initiative supposed to be a multi-million dollar miracle cure for poor academic performance and illiteracy. The “Stop the Mall Tax” Big Push, if it passes, could harm the county’s bond rating and X-out an outstanding purchase.
15 years of Downtown Salisbury ONLY’s “Pushs to Nowhere” left Salisbury, N.C. a train wreck with little viable future and people packing up and moving out. Salisbury’s statistics for crime coupled with its extreme poverty and poor public education acts to repel new blood and economic growth. The same old same old hasn’t worked much in 15 years.
http://rowanfreepress.com/salisbury-nc-statistics/
