Jonathan Morris, U.S. Ranger (Ret) & Rowan County Sheep Baron
♦ I’ve been watching this latest City Council fiasco with the Miller Recreation Center. Mr. Kenny Hardin’s article in the Rowan Free Press was spot on. One key matter caught my eye: Salisbury’s leadership fails over and over to involve the people impacted by their decisions. City council could care a twit. Same old, same old. Typically a municipal parks and recreation department is not self-sustaining, and city officials know that. Had the people being served by Miller Recreation Center been influential enough to matter to City Council, they would have held ‘visioning’ workshops; brought in a national speaker; and touted how proud they were to engage the various community “stakeholders”.
Instead, staff was laid off, and an unannounced contract was cut with an outside entity to take on the obligation of maintaining a recreation center on the city’s West End. “Patriarchal” is the Salisbury frame of mind, as it has been for generations. In the City of Salisbury, if you’re not part of “8-block”: the Country Club, or the Historic District, then your neighborhood is viewed as a drag on the rest of the city. Check out the simple request by William Peoples for less than a hundred grand for extra lighting in the West End, while hundreds of thousands were spent on a bike lane on the other side of town. It’s said “mutually terminated” Doug Paris dabbled in bicycling. Salisbury’s leaders are in the habit of patronizingly patting Black residents on the head, at a few perfunctory awards ceremonies per year where City Council toots their own horn about how much THEY have done for “them”. Same old, same old.
Rewarding the Black leaders who will ‘play ball’ with Salisbury’s patriarchal leadership is keeper tool in the City’s doctor bag to placate the minority communities, which now comprise the majority of Salisbury’s residents according to U.S. Census. So with the demographic shift, it’s expected that some of the Blue-Bloods are alarmed that the city is not able to keep up the “appearances” any longer.
Gone are the days when mistrust can be overcome by a polite distribution of awards to a few key Black leaders. City leaders have failed minority communities miserably, and their failure is evident in the deteriorating condition the leadership is willing to settle for in at-risk neighborhoods, while it squanders hundreds of thousands on neighborhoods that are not distressed at all. Mayor Paul Woodson has given lip service to the leadership of Ronald Reagan. Yet Woodson apparently failed to hear the adage, “A rising tide lifts all boats.”
As long as cronyism is the guiding light at City Hall, Mr. Hardin shouldn’t hold his breath waiting for any substantive changes that will come from city hall. As long as decision-making is done behind closed doors, as the Rowan Free Press noted from over 20,000 FOIA emails, Mr. Hardin can’t expect open and honest engagement of community stakeholders. As long as wealthy groups continue to be welcomed by City leaders with open arms when the lack funds to repair their structures, or pay ad valorem taxes on their properties, Mr. Hardin can’t expect Black leadership to be regarded with respect when they attempt to engage in community decision-making. And as long as the same Blue-Bloods keep getting elected, again and again, to City Council, Mr. Hardin can’t really expect that because they’ve changed their rhetoric, that they’re really ready to embrace the “diversity” they preach.
Attending meetings is a nice way to make your voices heard. But City leadership has a preconceived notion of how it intends to allocate resources, and they will continue to be uncomfortable with any other suggested outcomes. City leadership perceives this as a temporary crisis, to overcome anger directed at their leadership. They believe that this, too, will blow over, and that voters will forgive or at least forget by next November’s election.
It’s time for voters to chant, “lies, lies, lies!” every single meeting where the City’s leaders fail to address real problems. Keep up that chant until you’re asked to leave meetings. Then call your own press conferences after every City Hall meeting, subjecting them to the “Truth Test”. Keep up the heat, and then toss them out on their sorry butts in November 2015.
For Salisbury’s leadership, “Our Strength is in Our Diversity,” is merely a slogan, designed to placate minority communities, while the same tired crowd continues to pilot a sinking ship of their own doing. It’s not unlike the former Soviet Union’s notion of “World Peace”—on THEIR terms. But you now have the numbers, Mr. Hardin, to change all that. May God be with you on this mission, for the corrupt and the unhearing are not vanquished without a fight.
