Jonathan Morris, U.S. Army Ranger Ret., Rowan County Sheep Baron
♦Simply and succinctly: I TOLD YOU SO. The Taj Mahal’s LGC application never had a freakin’ chance.
I’m sorry folks I never disagree with any utterance coming out of the Rowan Free Press. They always get it right. Every single prediction and word printed here is rock-solid and well-researched. The RFP said Pierce and Caskey would win and worked behind the scenes to make that happen. The Editor discovered the probable groundwater contamination at the South Main Money Pit. He knew from his copper mining days when a water table was breached. He broke the stories about the city’s wrongful terminations, the collapse of city services, the police civil rights violations suits and settlements. He reported what happened to the city’s badly treated forcibly annexed. He said the County Airport would get de-annexed and smiled at the city’s “special criteria” and “two-part litmus test”. Way back when Steve outed the Fibrant bunko.
Steve studied all those state statutes, consulted with attorneys and told us the city’s LGC application had no more chance than a chicken at the bottom of the sea. If you want to know what is going to happen in the entire county well in advance and chuckle it up, read the Rowan Free Press.
The City of Salisbury government is a never ending barrel of laffs as it careens down the road to nowhere without any apparent leadership. The baby-faced Fuhrer is Salisbury’s biggest entertainment. I’m serious many of us await his never ending flow of extra-terrestrial insights into the warp around him. So far the boy wonder has accomplished much in his one man quest to destroy the “bury”. In every battle with the county and its manager, the boy wonder got mashed. I guess this is what you get for hiring a kid with no social skills to hide the skeletons in city hall’s crowded closet. So far he’s struck out on airport de-annexation, Fibrant, and now the Taj.
It brought joy to this heart when Salisbury folded their School/Office Building LGC application to build the Taj Mahal on 38 feet of watery vapor intruded infill. Backroom word out of city hall says baby face had to yank the application because the LGC was asking too many questions about the city’s finances. Heaven forbid they do an in-depth audit on the city and Fibrant.
The city manager and his drone council need to be congratulated for the wealth of entertainment they have provided. I have no doubt they were nudged by the LGC to the realization their debt issuance package had stepped into the Twi-light Zone. Maybe the city didn’t learn from the Fibrant fiasco or from their airport de-annexation beating, but they might from this Taj Mahal adventure. They yanked the LGC application back just in time.
City hall will still try to put one over on their diminishing true believers with wild claims of county and now legal conspiracies. Gene Miller, the two-time sore loser for County Commissioner, said he heard an attorney was preparing to sue the city. What a whopper! I told my attorney brother and his hysterical laughing nearly shattered my cell phone. He said nobody he ever talked to EVER discussed litigation. He pointed out the LGC application was built on watery infill. (1) Salisbury isn’t a funding partner for RSSS and can never be a stakeholder. (2) There’s never been a “no further action” letter from NC DENR. (3) The school administration building is not a commercial building and therefore can’t meet the requirements for commercial economic development. (4) Salisbury’s proposed 20 year issuance of public debt with a tenant who would only hang for 35 months. The LGC application had no more chance of being approved than River Dance will be performing on the surface of the Sun. Its just that simple.
The city in their one moment of wisdom and not wanting to reveal the depths of the Fibrant blowout, yanked the application and beat it out of there. Now they’ll play the blame game against the county commissioners and the county manager. Only nobody’s listening to the city. They struck out too many times and have lost all credibility.
“Sometimes the Mind Plays Dirty Trix–Ralphie Walton in 2026!”
