RFP Staff
♦The five members of Salisbury City Council face an Everest of major issues, anyone of which can make returning to their seats extremely difficult. The top campaign issue is no doubt is the Fibrant debacle. The city’s ill-considered municipal broadband enterprise staggered badly during it’s soft rollout and never gained any momentum except in its fluffy press releases and padded stats. Fibrant’s name is forever welded to failure. Fibrant’s lack of signups, it’s record lengthy outages, and it’s multi-million dollar big gulps from the city’s reserves are well-known. Who can forget Fibrant’s undeniable impact on both the city’s debt and the city’s dwindling employee roster. Yet Fibrant’s debacle is just one of many overwhelmingly powerful issues that dog our city council and it’s infamous city manager’s office. These issues have turned Salisbury into a bottom rung North Carolina city.
Among the major issues the city council and it’s city manager’s office face in the coming election are:
•Salisbury’s extremely high violent crime rate making Salisbury one of the very top per capita violent crime leaders in North Carolina. Couple this violent crime rate with a dangerously understaffed police department and a high property crime rate.
•Bad treatment of minorities by some Salisbury Police Department officers has cost the city substantial settlements and sullied Salisbury’s reputation among civil rights groups. The city government’s claims of being champions of diversity and civil rights are taking a major hit. Perhaps its time for an independent civilian review board?
•The city of Salisbury’s extremely poor treatment of its loyal city employees and its pattern of wrongful terminations and forced resignations is becoming well-known throughout the city and the county. The city is already paying out substantial settlements (taxpayer money) for its wrongful termination game. City council is on record for turning their backs on it’s workers. Mayor Paul Woodson’s irresponsible statements, at a recent city council meeting, will be trumpeted loudly and repeatedly during the fall election.
The city workers know they have no one on city council who will stand up for them as the city managers and HR cut employees safety nets and their rights to unemployment compensation, health benefits, and owed vacation money. Many city departments are short-staffed. Read our Rowan Free Press interviews with former police officer Kenny Lane and ex-city worker Scott Hunt. More interviews will be coming out as the RFP reaches behind the city’s cover-up and smoke screening.
•The city of Salisbury’s “harvest of shame” where it abuses its forcibly annexed neighborhoods and practices an inequitable exchange with the forcibly annexed. The forcibly annexed gain little, save for a plot in a city graveyard. The city doubled their tax rate, forced them to pay thousands for running water and sewer lines to the street, crushed their septic tanks, charged them storm water fees for existent non-storm water systems, and provided these beleaguered citizens duplicate services. We strongly urge the forcibly annexed to vote out the city council and replace them with more responsible stewards. Wisdom dictates a class action suit for millions for the city’s failure to provide promised services. Know that the Rowan Free Press supports your exodus. De-annex Salisbury now!
•The city of Salisbury’s lack of economic growth and its poor record of stifling much required chain retail here. We see lateral moves across the city with Belk’s and Big Lots, yet little else. Penny’s, a long time big box store in Salisbury, packed up and will leave the city all-together. Our Main Street with its NIMBYs, historic preservationists, and it’s downtown merchants offer a short-sighted battle to keep major retail chains out . The monopoly of bric-a-brac, junktique, and trick-novelty stores are not attracting much in the way of customers. Numerous vacancies and empty stores are a payback from the public. Only the restaurants and bars keep that area marginally afloat. Could you imagine what Trader Joes, Joseph A. Banks, and other much needed establishments would do to attract people to our alleged “vibrant” Main Street area?
•Our city’s ill-advised all-out war on its county neighbors is well-noted in the county. Most in the county are tired of the city of Salisbury attempts to leach off them to pay for the city’s badly thought out Master Plan where only a select in-group of bankers, architects, and construction outfits ever profit. Our county seems disinterested in being taken to the cleaners. The county commissioners snubbed the over-priced Taj Mahal at 329 S. Main. Salisbury’s “build it and they will come” philosophy is lost on most of our county commissioners who recognize the great expense of building on 329 S. Main’s infill and the city’s tradition of costly construction overruns. The county commissioners could care less about Salisbury’s Master Plan that includes the resurrection of the Empire Bat-tel or of the city’s plans for a Convention Center to house midget wrestling and broken down country acts.
•The city’s ongoing urban flight and rampant poverty (22.4% of the city lives below poverty) is an issue. Joblessness inside Salisbury city limits is mushrooming and the city is missing-in-action with solutions. City hall has contributed to area unemployment by cutting many of their employees adrift.
•The city’s gang menace grows virtually unchecked. Our local government and the city’s other media seems to be silent on this major issue that effects livability in many neighborhoods.
While the city managers and city council still attempt to cover-up and smoke screen Fibrant’s debacle, most citizens in Salisbury are well aware of our city’s municipal broadband’s failure. Fibrant is a case study in mismanagement from its inception. Most area residents, save for a few downtown “true believers, recognize the following:
•Fibrant’s massive impact on city debt. Last budget Fibrant ran up a staggering 73 million dollar debt. It is still enormous.
•Fibrant’s subscribership fell far behind city projections. No surprise there. Fibrant attempted to push its over-priced and substandard services to a city already well-saturated with Time Warner Cable, AT&T U-verse, DirecTV, Dish, Magic Jack and Google Voice. Fibrant, with their high-prices, contracts, and now bad reputation, found few takers save for city workers urged to show their loyalty.
•Many city workers were canned due to Fibrant’s catastrophic impact on the city’s financial core. Many await the next shoe dropping.
•Fibrant scorched the city’s reserve funds for millions and has yet to pay anything back.
•Fibrant is run by a part-time general manager who runs his own cable companies in Georgia and Florida and is charged with running Salisbury’s traffic lights. Seriously.
•City hall’s nose grows as it tries to palm off Fibrant as a success. They trumpet their alleged money saving strategies (Basically canning city employees without a parachute).
