Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ Monday at 3 p.m. the County Commission meeting will likely be turned into sideshow when the public hearing on the financing of the West End Plaza takes place a little ways down the agenda. No doubt the public hearing will have little bearing on the West End Plaza because the West End Plaza is bought and paid for. And apparently the staff of the Local Government Commission was swayed by a heavily scripted “public groundswell” much overemployed in Salisbury in recent years.
Who can forget the scripted “public groundswell” made up of school system employees and chamber of commerce members who stacked bricks and followed former city manager Doug Paris’s script? 329 S. Main mercifully never made it.
And who can forget the former city manager Doug Paris’s immortal words and scripted pauses coming out of the mouth Jon Barber?
On Monday a group of about seventy people, most never politically activated before and who possess only a vague awareness of local government and repurposed malls, will act out their misplaced anger toward those hateful parent figures occupying the county commission seats. Finally these seventy or so escapees from the Island of Lost Toys have a “cause” chosen for them by city hall to protect the interests of banking and real estate families.
We look forward to Monday’s scripts, sounding crafted for trash-talking pro wrestlers and flung like rotten eggs at those mean and uncaring county commissioners.
The opposing side will be there to support the commissioners for creating a successful and financially stable county government and for the good fortune of their LGC application. The opposition will likely have talking points such as:
• The West End Plaza is only 27 years old, got a clean bill of health from construction engineers, and is a sturdy structure that will last many, many years into the future. False claims that the West End Plaza is a decrepit structure were created by those fearful the Plaza would ignite a mass exodus from Salisbury’s vacancy marred and blighted downtown–a very expensive place to lease and rent. There was never a plan to pull all the downtown county offices out of downtown. That was a fabrication created in the city manager’s office to galvanize downtown business owners against the commissioners.
• The West End Plaza keeps its surrounding neighborhood alive and attracts many to the businesses and restaurants on Plaza’s periphery. If the West End Plaza was abandoned or demolished, it would greatly harm its surrounding neighborhood.
• Many successful “repurposed malls” flourish across our country whose mixed use repurposing leads to great savings for governmental and business office space, retail, storage, medical clinics, veteran services and boards of election, restaurants, and after school literacy programs among other valuable purposes.
• Retail and restaurants in the West End Plaza contribute several kinds of taxes to both the City of Salisbury and Rowan County. For example K & W cafeteria owns its own building, but not it’s land. K & W pays property taxes on its building. The West End Plaza retail and restaurants pay state sales tax on goods sold and local sales tax on goods sold. These taxes are gathered by the state who redistributes the sales tax money to the Salisbury and Rowan County by a formula. Further the retail and restaurants pay business license fees (privilege license tax) in Salisbury. Owners also pay federal and state income tax as well as tax on utilities they use.
Picture the ecological and economic effects on its surrounding community if the West End Plaza was boarded-up or torn down.
