Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ I watched a video yesterday where a candidate for County Commissioner danced around and side-stepped several questions. Claimed to be respectful of others and said he would never duck interviews (yet has dodged interview requests with the Rowan Free Press). If you enjoy folks who answer questions in a calculating manner or defer answers to important issues so they can’t pinned down–that’s your guy.
What brings a smile is when this fellow and other persons of a similar mind say: “Steve Mensing and the Rowan Free Press are doing measurable damage.”
Any harm that’s been done to Salisbury has been done by those persons who created Salisbury’s false persona and for a number years covered over the extent of the city’s crime, it’s soaring 28% poverty, the abysmal school performance within the city proper, governmental corruption and cronyism, lack of transparency, a scarcity of jobs, and greatly diminished city services owing to its lack of money due to the Fibrant debacle. The fact is Salisbury is “smoked” and will no doubt get worse in 2015 when Moody’s junk bonds the city for not paying back the 7.6 million dollar debt they owe the water and sewer funds.
Salisbury’s plummet to 330th ranked city and town in North Carolina (areavibes.com) and basically being an extremely dysfunctional small city is the result of poor management, a major build it and they will come gaff, and its habit of curtailing its own economic growth and the growth of the county to protect the interests of several of its real estate and banking families.
People are leaving Salisbury as fast as they can and nobody can blame them.
The Rowan Free Press has offered many solutions for a raft of the city’s challenges.
If it wasn’t for the Rowan Free Press many persons in Salisbury would’ve been kept in the dark. You can’t correct unseen difficulties.
We broke Wall Street 24-7 report about Salisbury’s soaring 28% poverty.
We wrote about the inequitable exchange between Salisbury and its forcibly annexed neighbors.
We were the first to mention that 329 S. Main was badly contaminated, didn’t have a parking lot, and was basically a postage stamp in size. Unfit for being a consolidated Central Office.
We were first to report Salisbury’s heavyweight violent crime, drugs, and gangs.
The lack of police patrol presence due to the police being woefully understaffed.
We broke the stories about numerous city employees being “wrongfully terminated”.
We turned the searchlight on the Fibrant debacle and what terrific damage it’s done to the city’s finances.
We reported on the city’s public school’s poor composite scores on the State READY Report.
And much more. And more to come.
Here’s the undeniable statistical skinny on Salisbury:
http://rowanfreepress.com/salisbury-nc-statistics/
