Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ Last Wednesday the Chamber of Commerce’s program appeared to be another Downtown Salisbury’s “push” for Salisbury’s economic vision for the County. The folks dwelling outside of Salisbury’s “8 Block” were almost nowhere to be seen. In a city where non-Latin whites are now a minority according to last year’s U.S. Census, the city’s new majority was grossly underrepresented in a room where black folks could be counted on the fingers one hand and Hispanics were nowhere to be seen. The county was represented by a smattering of Salisbury groupies from China Grove and Granite Quarry.
After listening to two smart phone recordings of the Wednesdays proceedings where I got an earful of motivational platitudes and much shilling for Salisbury’s pet initiatives, I’m forced to observe the County’s economic development future looks like a fly without wings surrounded by famished spiders. The economic development experts were obviously hand-picked to support what the local economic development people were talking up since well before last November’s election. Spec industrial manufacturing buildings.
There are no well-kept secrets in either Salisbury or the county. Gossip is Salisbury’s largest export.
I’m glad a few of the speakers mentioned some of the multitude of Everest-like challenges Salisbury and the County face in trying to recruit business and industry. Wednesday they skimmed through some of the monsters. Here’s a laundry list:
• Crime, both violent and property, make Salisbury and parts of the county not so hot places to live. Salisbury has it worse. It is driving working class folks to scatter elsewhere.
• 25% poverty in Salisbury. A killer for economic development. This tells us that spendable income is lacking.
• Not so hot schools in the county and must to avoid schools inside of Salisbury. “D” scores on the State Board of Education’s website are distinctly unattractive to management and their families. The local school system is promoting itself as extraordinary education where extraordinary is better spelled extra ordinary. The school system is experimenting with digital initiatives and attempting to deal with systemic literacy difficulties in many city schools. The results won’t be known for a few years down the pike.
• A major heroin, meth, crack, and alcohol epidemic is hosing the entire county and Salisbury. Bringing your kids to the county and especially Salisbury means subjecting them to a hard narcotics culture run by gangs. Narcotics are easy purchases in Salisbury. Out-of-control heroin, meth, crack, and soft recreational drugs like pot make the potential workforce bad bets for drugs tests or even showing up for work. “Boss cut me a break they upped my Methadone dose. Sorry about the forklift.”
• Low spendable income. A turnoff to anyone investigating retail opportunities in the Bury. Shifting demographics means that working class people are moving away and that means a loss in spendable income. It’s looking like an ever increasing stampede outta here.
• Shop lifting and pilferage is in high gear in Salisbury’s chain stores. Would you desire to open retail in Salisbury if you knew a built-in major loss existed? Look at the army of shoplifters who get busted at Salisbury’s Walmart and the ones who got away. Yo!
• People applying for jobs need job specific skills, to be able to pass a drug test, have a history of work dependability. and to pass a background check. A lot of folks are disqualified from the get-go in Salisbury. As the warden says in those James Cagney movies: “Keep your nose clean and don’t come back.” Salisbury is prospering in ex-convicts and the great uncaught.
• Salisbury’s status quo has a history of thwarting economic growth in the county and the city of Salisbury too so they can gain a financial advantage. More recently the I-85 interchange leading into Southern Rowan got scrapped from the NC DOT list. Withholding that interchange stiffles for the Southern part of county’s economic growth. Who is behind that? Take a wild guess.
• In Salisbury if you have a home business you now have to buy a permit and if your home business takes up over 300 square feet of space, your home must be zoned appropriately. Time to hightail it out of the Bury! Golly if you have the misfortune of subscribing to Fibrant they can spy on your emails and know what you are doing. They also are arming code enforcement officers to inspect your premises. “Get tough on home businesses!” If you want to put up with that, high utility bills, and city taxes–go for it. Or slide on out to the county.
• The magic of being considered “cooperative” or in Salisbury-speak “working collaboratively” is being pitched non-stop. Cooperation here means you support Salisbury getting all the economic advantages. It means cooperation is a one way street. We all need to work together for the betterment of “8 block”. Would anyone with a sound mind listen to Salisbury’s vision of anything? Look at it–its a seedy drug infested and crime ridden dump with little going for it. The people in many of its neighborhoods outside of “8 block” are turning purple from being underserved. But it’s “America’s Gig City”.
• The crumbling Rowan-Salisbury Utility had $7.6 million dollars siphoned off to support the Fibrant Debacle. Now Moody’s and Fitch bond rating services are threating to junk bond Salisbury. Its alleged that even more of these water-sewer funds were “big gulped” by the city of Salisbury to prop up other city projects.
• In Salisbury some of the chain stores are seeing “underperformance” and pilferage. Salisbury’s Staples may be on Staples underperforming endangered list. 255 stores across the nation are slated for closing and possibly as many as a 1,000 across the U.S.A. Staples is being shellacked by competition and internet sales. Like Office Depot and Office Max, Staples brick and mortar stores may do the big “shrinkeroo” into boutique size stores and rely heavily on Staples internet presence.
Were there any silver linings anywhere in Wednesday’s Salisbury vision for the County’s Economic Development. One comes to mind. Greg Edds mentioned the “Shoppes at the Summit” which currently boast Dick’s Sporting Goods, Hobby Lobby, Kirklands, Mattress Firm and hopefully others on the way. These may help some in staunching the retail leakage out of the county due to better shopping opportunities South on I-85 and the internet. The internet has reshaped the way most people shop for large ticket items. Maybe Rowan County can get into the warehousing and distribution business…if its not too late. Concord snagged an Amazon warehouse.
• The big centerpiece was for “speculative industrial manufacturing buildings” whose track record across the country is abysmal. The reasons are explained in a recent RFP article:
Another “expert” mentioned the platitude of creating a vision, articulating that vision, and driving it to completion. Basically create a specific, but flexible plan that changes shape as the plan meets up with real-world feedback and changes directions accordingly. Ra-ra-sis-cum-bah! This is basic ageless SBA talk was made to sound almost new and exciting. Now if you can only get folks to drop anchor anywhere in the county and utilize SBA approaches that never die in value.
At Wednesday big economic development summit another expert spoke about companies working together in a specific industry being brought together to share ideas. The challenge is both Salisbury and the county lack even pairs within the same industry. Hey maybe an asphalt company can pair up with another like-minded polluter and share ideas how to beat the system in Salisbury.
It was suggested that looking at what other counties in North Carolina are doing. The challenge is that someone looking at other counties might just want to jump ship to greener pastures. Certainly anyone dealing with Salisbury might want out for survival sake.
The idea of workforce education where folks can learn job specific skills is excellent.
Not mentioned was the value of starting a basic education for home grown entrapaneurs and for those who would like to throw together and form cooperative businesses and manufacturing companies. They have many of these success stories here in Madison, Wisconsin. If nobody comes to the County and especially Salisbury, business, retail, and manufacturing can be built from within where everyone is an owner. Training and mentoring needs to be done.
Incentives were mentioned and they are a necessary if your are going to recruit businesses. But where do we draw the line when a business asks for more than it is worth to the community. It was inappropriate for Salisbury to give away overloaded incentives for one business that still sits in a 2/3 empty building for over a year. Is the city getting any good return on a 2/3 empty building?
In the future more and more people will be self-employed. A smart move if someone want to make money and control their own destiny. Perhaps community colleges could create basic courses in successful self-employment.
Like other chamber of commerce forums this one smelled like another typical Salisbury hard sell as witnessed with the previous 329 S. Main “gas lands” push for the Central Office and the Fibrant hard sell. If this is the direction the Salisbury status quo is taking, then take care to notice the previous fruits of their labors. Drive through Salisbury and take note. Keep your doors locked.
http://rowanfreepress.com/salisbury-nc-statistics/
