Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ Monday evening the Chamber organizers Kenny Hardin, Pastor Anthony Smith, and Chris Sifford joined with the West End Community and West End Pride Organizations to host a Community Town Hall Meeting at the Miller Recreation Center in the West End. Dee Dee Wright (West End Community Organization), Shirley McLaughlin (West End Pride Organization) and mentor Alex Clarke also facilitated the event. The meeting focused on using data-driven information about community needs to generate solutions, especially regarding the three main concerns that emerged in data from the initial meeting last month.
Monday evening’s meeting was not as heavily attended as the previous event likely due to rain, a time misprint elsewhere, and last night’s focus on audience participation rather than the promise of guest speakers. Last evening was a follow-up to last June the 23rd’s focus on crime and responding to a multi-part questionnaire. Chamber organizer Kenny Hardin said at the outset it was important that attendees would take back many of the survey result ideas shared at Monday’s meeting and bring them back to their communities to uncover solutions.
Young people, while not much in attendance, were front and center in the Monday’s topics of community discussion such as gangs, gun violence, and drugs. One point stressed repeatedly by attendees was that young people did not have enough for them to do in their communities. Ideas about youth involvement in sports, the arts, culinary arts, and even science were mentioned. Mayor Woodson suggested that Salisbury business owners provide young people with more jobs.
Kenny Hardin said a possible solution was to provide young people with a place to learn a vital trade or skill not found in tradition school setting.
Other topics included athletic leagues, town watches, and working with churches and community organizations.
The Chamber identified five points of interest based on the survey results:
• Residents don’t feel safe in Salisbury, nor do they feel have a high quality of life because of the issues identified.
• Residents want police to be more visible.
• Residents want police and city leaders to culturally understand and respect them.
• Residents want to to know that the city leaders care about them.
• Residents want their neighborhoods to look clean and beautiful. They want to partner with the city to achieve it.
The Chamber organizers will meet in 90 days with residents to see if Monday’s suggestions were getting back to various city communities.
The entire Monday Evening meeting was videoed by the Rowan Free Press.
The following slideshow is the data results gathered from the first meeting, shared during the Community Meeting:
The following document contains participant comments from the initial Community Meeting. Use the scroll bar to move the page down.
