RFP Staff
♦ So Many Promises–So Many Broken Dreams in Salisbury’s 2010-2014 Consolidated Plan for Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization. One more reason why Maggie Blackwell, Paul Woodson, Brian Miller, Karen Alexander, and “Pete” Kennedy will be brutally targeted for a 2015 voter’s wipeout of City Council. These 5 city councilmen are responsible for the City of Salisbury, N.C.’s drowning in such big ticket issues as:
• It’s failure to live up to its promises in the 2010-2014 Consolidated Plan for Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization. Just one more example of “we’re working on it”.
• A police department requiring a complete house cleaning at the top and better pay for its remaining police officers.
• The cover-up of the “mutual termination” of former city manager Doug Paris and his Fort Knox style “golden parachute”. City council knew what happened and they failed to be forthcoming. You’ll be breathing in the Salisbury Reform smelling salts all campaign long and even before its official. Resignation for health reasons is a good way to bow out–maybe you can say your Brazilian Botox failed and you need to recuperate. You don’t want to put up with what an army of the “dis-included” is fixing to spring on you from now until you’re given the boot in November. There’s a very irate coalition ready to swarm at you at every turn. You will be publically humiliated time and again. Find meaningful volunteer work at Rowan Helping Ministries or get a job at the S.A. Punch out and go home.
• City Hall’s utter lack of transparency in ducking public information requests. By summer the whole city will turn on you and ask for your resignation. We are not interested in your whining and bleeting. You’re gone. An unmerciful-wind is blowing throughout the city. You have nothing to campaign on. You cooked the city.
• City council’s threatened complete streets bicycle paradise that will turn East Innes into a slow-motion gridlock and harm the city’s major viable tax base: Its East Innes chain retail and restaurants. Get real.
• City council’s passing over much needed safety lighting in the West End for bicycle lanes for the city’s 6 bicyclists. How are you going to explain that? The next innocent child shot in a crossfire–their blood will be on your hands.
• The Fibrant Debacle and it’s “magic math” has decimated the city’s ability to provide proper city services and cleaned out the city’s water and sewer funds. Rowan-Salisbury utilities possesses a crumbling infrastructure in dire need of at least 20 million dollars in repair. Moody’s and Fitch downgrading of Salisbury’s municipal bond rating is a direct result of Fibrant’s siphoning off of $7.6 million from the city’s tanked water and sewer funds.
• City council’s okay with ripping off the County’s water and sewer utility payers to pay for Fibrant and other failed Salisbury “projects”. We look forward to many people living outside the city pouring into Salisbury and helping to run off city council.
• The fake promises to the beleaguered Downtown merchants that they would score $5,000 dollars per anum per staff and administrators with the coming Downtown Central Office. That dream will turn into another city council nightmare when the “chickens come home to roost” in dying Downtown Salisbury.
• City council’s lack of response to gang violence and people in communities all over the city fearing break-ins, bullets ripping through their houses, and their teenagers being hooked on heroin, meth, and crack. They sent Chief Collins, who should’ve been given the boot years ago, to try to pacify the West End with false promises and substations where citizens feared going because they would be identified as snitches. Bad pay was only half the problem, experienced officers wanted out because of Collins lack of intelligent leadership. Now Salisbury is easy pickings for the gangs, the burglars, and break-in artists. The crooks have their run of the entire city because the police force is grossly understaffed and it lacks enough patrol cars on the street.
• City hall’s non answer to Salisbury’s army of drug lords pimping heroin, meth, and crack has got to go.
• City council sitting on its hands when civil rights violations are evident and a few of its officers employ excessive force. Time for an independent civilian review board!
• Where is justice for all those wrongfully terminated city employees? City council knew and did absolutely nothing. Maggie Blackwell knew. Paul Woodson knew. They did nothing but change the subject.
• City Council sat back and did nothing as Salisbury’s Downtown became a trashy and blighted “no fly zone” of vacant buildings painted up with graffiti and gang tags while local “historic” realtors claimed Salisbury had no gangs.
• City Council smirked as it continued Salisbury’s bullying and leaching off the county’s citizens.
• Salisbury is now being hailed across the state as “Lil’ Cicero” the corruption capital of North Carolina where “play for pay” is the tune and “Money talks–nobody walks”. There’s a reason why Lumberton, N.C. passed Salisbury by and so did a lot of other cities and towns. The days of cronyism and playing favorites is coming to end.
Way before the summer is here and candidates sign on the dotted line, City Council will have a dream team of candidates running a “turnaround” reform campaign to clean out city council. The roster is nearing completion and they will represent ALL of the city. The days of a tiny insider ring providing insular, controlling, and self-absorbed leadership disconnected from most of the city’s communities are over.
