Steve Mensing, Editor
♦Over the past several weeks I’ve looked on with growing amusement as the city of Salisbury pushed its completely hopeless downtown Central Office application on the Local Government Commission. After learning of the application’s claims, it appeared the city concocted a ruse.
Think back–do you recall the city’s everchanging dance steps to avoid the searchlight? First they told the city’s other news source that the LGC application described a 20 year lease with yearly payments over $500,000. Of course anyone familiar with state statutes would quickly recognize such an application had no chance of making it. Within a short time the city manager back-peddled and chided the city’s other news source with information that the recipe always called for a 35 week lease. Something didn’t smell right. We also heard from several sources in city hall that a plan was being hatched quite similar to their previous initiatives to make the county commissioners into baddies. You know the shtick: Against progress, against education, against business. The LGC application was mentioned as the “point of attack”.
LGC Guidelines for Debt Issuance:
http://www.nctreasurer.com/slg/Debt%20Management/GuidelinesforDebtIssuanceFinal2.pdf
After reading through the LGC’s Guidelines for Debt Issuance, a check list LGC applications must pass, we noticed city’s LGC application had no reasonable chance of passing. My initial expression was: “Why did they even try?” The city manager had to know the LGC application had zero chance of flying. It was missing too many key pieces. Like wings and an engine. Missing was the ultra-important “No further Action Letter”–it couldn’t pass on this alone. A project must be “ready”, according to the LGC Guidelines. This means construction bids, required major permits, and Phase I Environmental Studies should be received before approval. Salisbury can’t produce a clean Phase I ESA study because the site is still an open remediation file with NC DENR due to groundwater contamination. The monitoring wells are still on the property as anyone can see and pumping there was caught by the RFP cameras several weeks back.
Two other huge strikes would end the city’s tap-dance: (1) The silly assertion that the public debt was for economic development of a “commercial” building when, in fact, the building is proposed to house a non-federal office building for the Rowan-Salisbury Schools — whose funding partner is the Rowan County Commissioners; (2) The 35 month tenant on a 20-year loan agreement.
The city grasped at straws when they cited this guideline: “Any threat or existence of litigation related to the project or financing must be satisfactorily resolved. Litigation could affect either the marketability of the debt or the borrower’s ability to repay the debt.” Suddenly unsubstantiated claims of litigation were being made, yet no one was ever named. Even more mysteriously the city extended the low-bid deadline to Saturday, September 7th which would not have been useful to secure their low bid contractor. The very next LGC Executive Committee meeting was not scheduled to occur until September 10th, according to the LGC Calendar published in January.
