The Major Issues of the 2015 Salisbury, N.C. City Council Election: Issue II

Steve Mensing, Editor

♦ It’s not much of a secret what Salisbury, N.C.’s foremost major issue is and that’s the Fibrant debacle and its financial aftermath which has lead to greatly diminished city services such as police, fire, and streets among others.

Sometime in the early months of 2015 Moody’s bond rating service will come hammering on the door and they will make good on their threat to turn Salisbury’s bond rating into junk bond status. Put 7.6 million or so back into the reserve funds or else. Myra Heard, the City Clerk, told the Carolina Journal no such luck. Going junk bond is certain to set off a cascade of catastrophic events including the city’s inability to get loans.

From it’s first year out Fibrant was overwhelmingly non-competitive in an overly crowded field of big name and deep pocketed internet and TV incumbents: Time Warner Cable, AT&T U-verse, DirecTV, and Dish and more first-rate cheapo VOIP phones in an era when most everyone uses their smart phones anyway. Fibrant has zilch marketing in a heavily marketed field. Some people in the Salisbury are still saying they never heard of Fibrant.

Mike Jury, Fibrant’s at-a-distance contract head honcho and manager of Infrastructure Services (traffic lights etc.) had his contract doubled during the Paris regime. It was last listed at $113.799 in 2013. Mr. Jury’s contract could make him expendable when the city is hunting for more and more cost cutting measures to keep the badly listing ship afloat.

With Fibrant an irrefutable debacle what can the city do to unload it? Sell it for nickels on the dollar to private investors? Turn it into a cooperative? Send it back to the creditors? Pray for lightening to strike the head-end on MLK and turn it into a mushroom cloud?

http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/05/18/video-in-solemn-memory-of-fibrant-november-2010-to-june-2011/

http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/02/21/10-reasons-why-we-should-not-subscribe-to-fibrant-or-keep-it-the-fibrant-debacle-is-eating-salisbury-alive/

http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/06/05/how-to-jump-ship-from-fibrants-soaring-prices-and-get-the-best-deals-possible/

http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/08/15/craig-settles-self-ordained-consultant-pushes-aggressive-marketing-for-fibrant-on-the-city-taxpayers-dime/

http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/08/06/fibrant-only-had-three-100-mbps-customers-from-november-2010-through-july-2014-now-the-debacle-wants-to-be-gig-city/

http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/08/14/why-fibrant-will-continue-to-fail-and-fail-badly-why-salisbury-needs-to-find-a-way-to-unload-fibrant-to-survive/

http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/06/06/fibrants-new-tv-pricing-scheme-certain-to-drive-off-customers/

http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/05/15/fibrants-moodys-low-bond-rating-well-deserved-fibrant-rocked-salisburys-limited-future/

http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/07/26/is-fibrant-watching-you-fibrant-subscribers-beware/

http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/07/24/from-the-carolina-journal-salisbury-shouldve-listened-to-sanera-about-launching-fibrant/

http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/07/20/the-outer-limits-of-municipal-patriotism-supporting-a-municipal-fiasco/

http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/07/12/carolina-journal-weighs-in-on-fibrants-debt-and-downgrading-of-salisbury-n-c-s-bond-rating/