Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ Yesterday I watched the city hall’s website stream the City Council meeting. Paul Woodson, the “current” Mayor of Salisbury, the acknowledged Gay Mecca of North Carolina, lamely dance around a Gay Pride proclamation with his habitual side-step of “being too controversial”. On top of that he gave his all too familiar excuse to avoid taking action “I’ll take everything that was said into consideration”. His other favorite non-action response is “we’re working on it” (Woodson used this for safety lighting in the West End).
I wonder if the Mayor of America’s Gig City might sidestep a human rights proclamation condemning “human trafficking” or even slavery because it didn’t fit the requirements of the city’s alleged guidelines for mayoral proclamations. The guidelines say proclamations regarding matters of controversy, taking sides in political debate or addressing convictions will not be issued. When did city council cook this taffy up? Too controversial? What planet is city hall from? Matters of controversy need to be spoken about loud and clear. That’s one of the reasons why Salisbury has a table overloaded with enormous challenges hidden and festering for too long. Working class people of all colors are leaving town for safer and more prosperous environments elsewhere.
How easily some people forget the reason why former Mayor Susan Kluttz was narrowly defeated by Woodson in vote getting two municipal elections ago. It wasn’t her proclamation delivered by Mark “Disturbing Demographic” Lewis at Gay Pride. Two items ended former Mayor Kluttz’s 14 year run. The first being the Fibrant debacle and the second, in a low turnout election, the Bares cooked up a card and a door hanger which conspicuously left Mayor Kluttz’s name off it and put Woodson, Miller, Lynch, and Kersey on it. A small group worked a $40 campaign (the cost of printing) helped put Woodson in the driver seat. What a mistake that was!
It doesn’t take much to change the course of a municipal election since hardly anybody votes. It takes door pounding, talking face-to-face with people about the issues, and getting enough non apathetic people out to the polls to make a difference. Know there are dozens of no cost/low cost ways to get name recognition and identify your candidate with solutions to strong issues.
Mayor Woodson’s number one issue today is making sure he gets city paid for healthcare. Maybe Vogue Cleaners might offer him a better package after November?
Whether you see the city of Salisbury through the lens of diversity as the Gay Mecca of North Carolina or through the fundamentalist lens as the “Apostate Sodom and Gomorrah”, if you dwell in Salisbury you need to get out and vote for people who will patch Salisbury back together before an outside government entity does it for you.
