Jonathon Morris, U.S. Army Ranger, Ret. and Rowan County Rescue Rancher
♦ Look I’m couching this letter in the concepts most common to people dwelling in Salisbury–street drugs and alcohol. Anyone visiting America’s “gig” city soon realizes that roughly 70% to 80% of the Bury’s population struggles with heroin, meth, crack, or alcohol addiction or all of them at once. Scan through their telephone directory and you will see page after page of drug and alcohol addiction programs. Drive into the Bury and there’s a high percentage chance the junker in front of you is swerving erratically or the driver is parked at a weird angle in the middle of the road with his head recumbent on the steering wheel. Go to most corners on Main Street where young men on undersized bikes pass off little plastic baggies. Or those 40 oz cans and bottles come arcing out of SUVs let you know where the Bury is on the map: Cloud 9. Even the traffic lights are “high” in Salisbury.
Many of you are familiar with Fibrant’s infamous “triple play” option where you get basic internet, basic TV any halfwit could get for FREE with a rabbit ear antenna, and monthly telephone service that’s somewhere around 8 times the cost of MagicJack. The fiber optic network is so typical of city hall’s vast mind. Always use other people’s money first–lots of it and provide little accounting of where it goes. So the “New Beginnings Economic Recovery Program” is tailor made for a grant crazed city hall and the city’s multitude of dopers and alkies.
Salisbury’s “sustainable” City Council is determined to spend millions on “traffic calming” on East Innes and attract non-drivers to the Downtown. In retrospect likely 60% of people passing through the Downtown area on their way to robbing either a bank or a train either can’t afford a car or their licenses were revoked for hit n’ runs, boozing, or seeing a street nobody else sees at 4 a.m. on a drug a little to the right of ether.
I’m waiting for city council’s community focus groups and the city’s newsletter to start pushing for a perfect niche market for Downtown Salisbury: Methadone.
The great minds at City Council no doubt recognize that a methadone clinic out on Jake Alexander is “unsustainable” on a number of levels. First, it clogs traffic in the wee morning hours on Jake Alexander Blvd. Second, it puts junkies into cars who probably don’t belong behind the wheel after receiving their morning ‘fix’. And thirdly, the closest Salisbury Transit bus stop to the methadone clinic is the Employment Security Commission—not a very pedestrian-friendly walk for the “patients”, particularly after their daily dose.
So Salisbury City Council might consider the Empire Hotel, as ground zero for a shiny new government-run business that simply cannot fail: A Methadone Maintenance Clinic. Just think of how they could take the old basement of the Empire Hotel, and pack in the daily dosers who come to get their “fix” each morning before work/school/court. Now, they have the option of taking a stroll through beautiful downtown Salisbury.
Right now, the daily cost of a methadone “fix” is $11. But Salisbury could use water and sewer fees, like they did with Fibrant, and subsidize methadone to bring down the daily cost to $9. Since the bus line runs downtown and is rarely used, the City could offer free rides to and from their new Methadone Maintenance Clinic for all those who have a current scrip.
PLAN ONE: The Methadone would cost consumers the low monthly total price of $270, and includes round-trip transportation. Name another city in the U.S. waving this kind of deal over their head.
PLAN TWO: The Methadone fix would include overnight accommodation in the new hostel-type dormitory on the top floor of the Empire Hotel. Spartan accommodations would include a cot for your sleeping roll, and a communal bathroom for every gender commonly found downtown. It would be made available for the low cost of $10 per night, or $300 per month. But through city government “cross-resourcing” of water-sewer funds, and in furtherance of the City of Salisbury’s “Smart Growth” goals as articulated in their Vision 20/20 plan, the monthly cost of the methadone fix and a flop at the Empire would be made available for $550. The plan is affordable even for the economically disadvantaged. Of course with a little help from the deep pockets of working class Salisbury.
PLAN THREE: Toss in some freeze dried grub along with a methadone fix would include all of the accoutrements above, plus a continental breakfast and a hot dinner, for an additional $10 per day. The monthly cost would be an extra $300 most places, but thanks to the generosity of the City of Salisbury, it would be added into the other costs, to bring it all to you for $750 per month. A bit pricey? Not when you consider the advantages of urban living. And the warm bodies that might stagger Downtown.
PLAN FOUR: For those on methadone working as professionals. This is the luxurious, all-inclusive plan for a mere $800 per month. And if you qualify for Medicaid benefits, the cost of Methadone Maintenance will be comped, and you’ll only have to pay $530 per month. Government picks up the rest.
Imagine the federal grants available to Salisbury, if the City could draw in the largest enclave of recovering Heroin addicts on the East Coast.
Can you imagine the marketing campaigns: “Get High N’ Bike!” “Get in on the bottom floor of Historic Preservation movement and find money stuffed in the mattresses” “Turn Downtown Toxic Waste into GRAVY.”
OPM baby!
