Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ Steve Mensing: I’m interviewing Salisbury Attorney Todd Paris, one of several non-incumbent candidates I’m going to support for a seat on Salisbury’s City Council. In recent months, Todd and I have held long discussions, leading to clarity about Salisbury and its current status.
Steve Mensing: Salisbury has over 33,000 people, spread out over 17 plus square miles. Many individuals have expressed that City Council’s over-focus on its Downtown has become myopic, particularly as crime and poverty have soared city-wide. If elected to city council how would your focus go beyond the current city council’s Downtown-centric interests? How might you reach out to lift up other areas of the city?
Todd Paris: The country is filled with cities with empty downtowns suffering in poverty and despair, surrounded by strip malls and more affluent suburbs. The “shining city on the hill” is often two cities. The inner city shines, not so bright. Statistics show that younger citizens in particular are driving less and prefer vibrant downtowns with places to go and things to do. We have been losing our young for years. A healthy city needs all areas of the city to do well. Downtown property owners do pay a special municipal service tax that effectively gives them the highest tax rate in the county to support downtown efforts.
That being said, Council members represent all areas of the city and must do so equally. I have already begun efforts with IT firms outside Rowan to bring new business to Downtown and even possibly to the mall, for larger businesses. For too long, different sections of this city fought each other for businesses and government offices like starving men on a lifeboat fighting over the last can of tuna. We need to all work together, paddle to shore, and maybe catch some fresh fish along the way.
Crime, poverty, poor economic development, and substandard education are the four horseman of our local apocalypse. They ride together and all must be fought with equal vigor.
Steve Mensing: So true about the Downtown over-focus and City Council’s requirement to connect with the City’s other communities. Let’s change direction. WBTV ran an article about a week ago depicting Salisbury as having the 9th worst crime rate in the entire State, and anecdotally, it was reported that over 75% of the Salisbury police force took jobs elsewhere in the last five and a half years. Of course, when the RFP reported virtually the same statistics, incumbent city council members criticized the source as well as the numbers. But now, not a peep can be heard from them. Will you address the realities of our really lousy FBI crime statistics with an eye on finding solutions? Would you crunch a few toes?
Todd Paris: As a former prosecutor, current defense attorney, contract council for The Police Benevolent Association, Fraternal Order of Police, and member of the NAACP, I am in unique position to understand these problems. When I graduated law school in 1987 and for many years after, the Salisbury Police Department was considered the finest department in the county, and there was a flow of officers to it not from it. For a number of years after the great recession started, Council did not deal with decreased revenues by reducing spending or increasing revenue. They spent down the fund balance to the point where we received a 13% fund balance warning letter from the Local Government Commission – the State’s financial watchdog. Late in Mayor Kluttz’s term the City had to freeze salaries, reduce services, and have a reduction in force. This was not a popular decision or a gradual occurrence.
Salisbury Police Department salaries fell woefully behind other departments. While exceptions exist, we no longer can get the best candidates, and the turn-over has created a terrible loss in talent, experience, and intelligence – by that I mean what is needed to know who the criminals are and what they are up to.
Ten unsolved murders since 2010 is the bellwether for this. We have to find a way to make our salaries competitive and to be willing to expect more from our department, even if it means a change in leadership. I hate to say it, but the City Manager needs to take a close look at Rory Collin’s performance. We need a full time Police Chief. It’s well known among our officers that Chief Collins has been “moonlighting” for the Housing Authority, and making very good money on the side the last time I checked. With ten unsolved murders, he needs to focus on being the city’s Police Chief full time. I don’t know of any other police chiefs allowed by their city councils to keep significant side jobs like that, and the current City Council should not have allowed this. He needs to go if he can’t be the City’s full-time Police Chief. The Chief’s job here is full-time, and it needs to be his total devotion. The community deserves it; he is already paid well.
You get what you pay for, and we had better get it.
Steve Mensing: The city’s bond rating took hits twice in 2014, by Fitch’s as well as Moody’s, for raiding the water/sewer reserve funds for a $7.6 million “loan” for Fibrant operations, and financial cross-resourcing. This year’s budget, on the surface, is not as dependent on the water/sewer funds. But cross-resourcing, legal as it is, appears to be going on when the city claims only three Fibrant employees. Is truth-in-budgeting a goal that you would encourage? ”Fibrant turning the corner” or “showing a small profit” appears to be the result of moving Fibrant employees to other departments and Fibrant costs over to non-Fibrant departments.
Todd Paris: There is nothing illegal about “cross resourcing” or inter-fund loans and both techniques are widely used. At the time these measures were implemented, there was no other choice available absent a tax increase. It’s no big secret and it’s not just a gimmick. For instance, I have been to Fibrant’s head, and they really do run the stoplights and perform other IT duties related to city business.
On the accounting side, I admit it looks shady. The marketing employees for Fibrant don’t even show up on their budget at all. I am in favor of transparency in all things allowed by law, including the budget.
Fibrant has to begin to honestly pull its own weight and deliver the economic prosperity we were promised or we need to revisit trying to sell it to a corporation that has expertise in the field. To grow, we can do this by improving security and redundancy, so large IT users will come here to places like the mall and by inserting medium-sized firms on lines already in place, like downtown. These firms will use our new GIG plus capacity and pay much larger fees per month then residences without the expense of geographic expansion of the network. Our fees are still substantially cheaper than in surrounding large cities. We have cheap land and rent and incredibly cheap fiber. My efforts already started to recruit these businesses, and they will continue even if I lose the race. Just a few weeks ago, I brought some regionally known specialized experts to Fibrant’s head and am pleased to say that Kent Winrich and the employees have taken some of their advice and are working to improve network stability and security so that larger firms with specific security concerns can locate here.
I want to reiterate this. Whether I get elected or not, I am working to make Fibrant work. If we are not competent to do this — then a sale should be seriously considered. “If you build it, they will come” is not working.
Steve Mensing: While its worth attempting to recruit ITs to Salisbury, it may be difficult to recruit them in large enough numbers to make an impact. I say this because of your previous observation about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Crime, poverty, substandard education, and poor economic development.
Switching horses, let’s look at our public schools inside Salisbury’s city limits, which received very bad letter grades on the State Education report cards. The letter grades would give most parents pause about having their children attend public schools inside of Salisbury. Many of our youngsters are in a poverty-stricken public school system where over 65% of children qualify for “free” lunch programs. There are kids who have trouble reading anywhere near their grade level. What might Salisbury’s leadership offer to improve our school children’s performance?
Todd Paris: Allowing the school system merger back in the eighties and surrendering our city system may have been a mistake. Mooresville kept theirs, and it is one of the best in the state. At this point, we need to be supportive of the schools in any way we are allowed. However, economic development, more and better jobs, and fighting the other “horsemen” should have a positive effect. I am working with a good friend to explore creating an IT start-up incubator that would teach computer coding to underprivileged kids and provide them training without the expense of traditional college. Give poor kids hope and a way out of cyclical poverty and then businesses to hire them and they will rise to the occasion. Why sell drugs when you can get a high-paying job in a few years? The IT business nationwide is importing tens of thousands of foreigners with work visas to fill these jobs.
Steve Mensing: Over 400 Freightliner workers live inside Salisbury’s city limits. Yet when layoffs, furloughs, and reduced orders afflict the company, its always Rowan County that has stepped to the plate with resources, proposals and job growth initiatives. Salisbury is a key funding source of Rowan Works — the nonprofit formerly known as the Salisbury-Rowan Economic Development Corporation. With the funds they’re contributing, do you believe Salisbury’s workforce is getting its share of the benefits? And what could be done to improve results for Salisbury’s workers and tax base?
Todd Paris: I recently met with leaders from Freightliner’s UAW Local 3520. They tell me that Freightliner could probably add a third shift if they could find potential employees that can pass their testing and be drug free and have clean criminal records. They tell me that the local schools and RCCC could help by reinvigorating their industrial education programs to specifically teach the skills that Freightliner and other skilled plants need.
Economic development in this city and county is not working well. Old ways of development channeled through “old guard” business elites has to stop, and county and city departments need to do their jobs and do them quickly and efficiently or we need to fire them and hire those that will.
We shouldn’t have to hire outside firms or have potential businesses surrender a percentage of their incentives to private firms to “smooth the way” for economic development. We pay the EDC and the city and county employees to do that.
The City can’t stop decisions by businesses like Freightliner to lay-off folks, but we can help by recruiting high paying alternative jobs, in case they do.
Steve Mensing: In the light of the city’s major challenges with Fibrant, was this municipal broadband a “good’ decision” for Salisbury? And what would you do to make it either a success or the alternative, a more tenable deal we could live with?
Todd Paris: I wouldn’t have voted for it back in the day. It was way, way too expensive, and governments shouldn’t try to compete with private businesses. We lacked the expertise. Of course, no one realized the extent of the recession and its effect on city revenue. While it’s easy to “Monday morning quarterback” that decision, it’s similar to the mall decision. We have it and have to figure out what to do. I love the service, and we have great folks working there. However I say, make it grow or make it go.
A private company worth $227 million and one of the most reputable fiber-to-the-home providers in NC wanted to begin talks to acquire Fibrant. Our current mayor met with them and dismissed them without even seeking a price. That was a very bad move. No decent businessman would do that. At a minimum, the acquisition should have been explored and an offer for a purchase price received. The public should have been involved. This is another example of less than optimal leadership by the current city council.
I have made contact with the CEO of this company to let him know that once elected I would explore this option. The public should be involved; it’s their system. Also, we need to protect the excellent staff and make sure that if Fibrant is acquired they have jobs, either with the city through vacant positions or with the new company.
Steve Mensing: We learned of examples of embezzlement by city employees who were given an opportunity to repay the money they pocketed without criminal charges. Some of these deals occurred with City Council complacently acknowledging them with an alleged intervention by only one member. What would you promote as City policy towards embezzlers and internal corruption, if you were elected?
Todd Paris: I am an attorney. City Council pays “gas money”. I am not losing my license and livelihood to anything illegal or unethical. I will “drop a dime” on any kind of illegal or unethical activity with exceptional speed. Council members, by law and by contract are not supposed to have anything to do with hiring, retaining, or firing employees. Embezzlers need to go to prison, and with the State’s new Special Prosecutor’s Office for Financial Crimes, it is a likely possibility. I have their number saved in my phone. Embezzlers can keep the money they stole and spend it on cigarettes and phone cards in the “big house”.
An additional issue is supervision. At some point, Human Resources has to be held responsible for “bad hires”, and supervisors have to be held responsible for a lack of supervision. And once again, Council members need to stay out of the hiring and firing process.
Furthermore, if I get elected and find evidence of illegal or unethical activities, I will ask the City Manager to report, reveal, and replace the staff involved. If I can’t get that accomplished, I will go to the media.
Steve Mensing: I appreciate your candidness in responding to our questions.
Todd Paris: I Look forward to the next invitation.
