Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ In recent weeks we were heartened to learn the State Senate tossed bill SB 287 into a committee known as a graveyard for unwanted bills. The State Senate has almost no interest in reviving “tax credits” for historic preservationists. “Let the local municipalities pay the freight for their cronies,” suggest many in the state senate. However this isn’t such a hot idea either because municipal taxpayers are forced to subsidize local special interests. The best possible answer? Let historic preservationists pay their own way. Stop sponging off taxpayers who would rather spend their money as they see fit or on their own businesses. That viewpoint seems lost on freeloaders and senile moneychangers.
Sen. Andrew Brock noted during yesterday’s breakfast that the legislature would be in a position to lower taxes overall if it removed credits for corporate and personal income tax. Brock’s position acknowledges that state tax payers were being forced to subsidize someone else’s business or industry when they might better off spend their money where they see fit.
If buildings are falling down and dilapidated that’s the responsibility of the owner not his neighbors or persons living many counties away. Why not let modernity create new history with private financing. A bulldozer and modern construction works for many of us. Historic blight, like broken antiques cluttering an attic, are best put out on the curb or dumped off at Goodwill. Sometimes its best to move on and let bulldozers sweep the urban landscape. Redistributing the wealth to fat cats and sponging out-of-state itinerant carpenters is not my idea of progress.
Our Downtown would look much better if it has a spanking new chain store giants or a super block of boutique corporate stores. Private money works for most of us. If you want to gussy up a dump building–use your own money.
Downtown Salisbury isn’t prospering at all and the city’s young people are moving away from a dying city that swilled historic preservation tax credits for years and went nowhere.
Salisbury requires a complete disavowal of its dead-in-the-water approaches. It hasn’t worked and it won’t work. Simply look at the city’s poverty, violent crime, substandard public schools, it ghost town downtown, its mushrooming heroin, meth, and crack culture, and the fact that its working class are bolting for more liveable and safer places.
The Historic Preservation Tax Credit is a symptom of what never worked in Salisbury’s old order that needs to be rousted.
