Will McCubbins, China Grove, NC
♦I take great pride in the extraordinary accomplishments of our Rowan County Commissioners, especially in Chairman Jim Sides, Vice-Chairman Craig Pierce, and Mike Caskey. Thank you for fighting for our county taxpayers and your efforts in resisting Salisbury and the poor performing Rowan-Salisbury Schools with their administrative money sinkhole. The Rowan-Salisbury Schools less than stellar record on the NC ABC Report Card, and their record for graduating kids who can’t read or write, speaks volumes.
Image means everything to the Rowan-Salisbury Schools and actual performance, little. County parents see right through those meaningless awards like one given for all those IPADs purchased so the big team can jet out to Houston on the taxpayer’s dime. And there’s still unanswered questions about all those school system warehouses crammed with unboxed IPADs, new and used furniture, unused expensive software, computers, and equipment. Surplus buildings galore. They don’t need King Solomon’s storehouses, and we need accountability rather than waste of our taxpayer’s dollars.
I am so sorry, commissioners, that you are assailed daily with the Post’s rampant twisting and omitting of your words. Always their eye is on getting their Gene Millers, Richard Millers, and Ralph Waltons onto the county commissioners from a school-system in lock-step with Salisbury’s questionable city hall and its habit for milking the Rowan County taxpayers for every cent possible. They tried to nail us for the Taj Mahal to be built on a juiced lot. The city and their friends are still attempting to rescue the fleabag Empire Hotel, last open in 1963. The Empire agenda was solely to save the former flophouse from foreclosure and its endgame effect on DSI Inc. Everyone’s exhausted from listening to the yearly prattle about the alleged ”new” interest in the Empire. This rot hole-needs to be torn down and filled in with a Jack-in-the-Box or a Sonic, something to improve South Main.
Lets look at some of the many outstanding things our county commissioners did for us since Craig Pierce and Mike Caskey joined with Jim Sides.
•The 911 Telecommunications Center. This state-of-the-art center upgraded the safety of the entire county. This especially helped Salisbury in its understaffed attempts to battle crime on a more level playing field and finally produce a faster reaction time than the Salisbury Service Center. It also saved Salisbury’s City budget over $400,000. Doug Paris needs to thank Gary Page for helping to prop up Salisbury’s budget.
• The County Budget was a masterpiece again this year done without raising taxes, County taxpayers are ever grateful. Even Jon Barber said at a recent commission meeting the budget passage on the county side has never been as civil as it was this year under the valiant and courageous leadership of Jim Sides. Sincerity was never one of Commissioner Barber’s strengths, but Jon sounded on target that night.
• The Commissioners worked hard behind the scenes with our local legislators to get an I-85 interchange built somewhere South of Old Beatty Ford Road and bring long overdue economic development to Southern Rowan. Many across the county cheer the idea of chain retail and light industry coming to this area.
• The commissioners supported Hutton Company’s interest in bringing major retail to Summit on Julian Road. There’s a large retailer supposed to nest there.
• Rowan County, thanks to our environmentally-minded and business savvy commissioners, will soon be home to a 4 mega-watt solar farm. Our local greens will love that.
• Thank you to the Rowan County 5 for standing up for the right to pray in Jesus’ Name and for our First Amendment free speech rights. Many thousands will be pouring into Salisbury today to help prop up the economically flat-lined Main Street area at least for a few hours. That’s more than Sleepy Hollow ever did. The Main Street Merchants should thank the county commissioners for this gift from the Bible Belt.
• The County commissioners fought to de-annex our county airport from the city who put a “Big Gulp” on it for taxes and added nothing in improvements. A real win for all the county and even Salisbury and for economic growth. Thank you County commissioners!
• Thank you county commissioners for earmarking money for classroom supplies so it would not be picked off by the school administration. A lot of teachers are thankful.
• Kudos for saying no to putting a three story Taj Mahal on 38 feet of unstable infill with a contaminated water table running through it. No doubt the Taj Mahal would’ve gone over 12 million dollars if built under those bad conditions. The LGC would’ve said no to any loan without a “no further action letter”. The property still suffers from groundwater contamination.
• The growth of jobs in such companies as Hitachi, Tuscarora Yarns, Infiltrator, EI Solutions, and Gildan,
• Looking out for the county’s best interests by exploring the bidding process for the rapidly emptying Salisbury Mall.
• Commissioner Mike Caskey showed strong leadership in sponsoring a resolution to protect Rowan citizens 2nd Amendment gun rights.
It irks a lot of us out in the county to see this day-in and day-out attack on our county commissioners especially Jim, Craig, and Mike. The county’s accomplishments leave a shadow across Salisbury whose accomplishments are nowhere to be found. Fibrant flopped. The Main Street area is a deadzone. City services are basically out of commission. They couldn’t get their Taj past the LGC. Their downtown Master Plan has sputtered on the launch pad without a fresh infusion of county taxpayer money. Salisbury is a mess and the Post and their special interest friends are a large contributing factor.
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