RFP Staff/Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ Tuesday evening’s “Time to Talk” Salisbury City Council candidates forum at East Square Artworks was well organized and attended by somewhere in the vicinity of about 40 folks.
Before we go much further the RFP hopes to put up a video of the “Time to Talk” Forum as soon as possible. Videos of candidates forums tell a much fuller story of what was actually said, including not only the words, but capturing such important nuances of facial expression, intonation, body language, emotion, presence, and sincerity. Candidate forum videos, unless highly edited, rinse out “slant” and words purposely left out often present in some “media” reports.
The 2015 Salisbury City Council race shapes up as the first time in over a decade that non-incumbents have a very high likelihood of being elected. Throughout Salisbury a strong disaffection exists with City Hall and its lack of connection with the city’s many communities outside of the Historic District and the Country Club. Crime, the current city council’s cover-up of its broadband Fibrant’s failure ($12.6 million dollars negative in the 2014 budget audit) and the mutual termination of its former city manager. Add to this City Hall’s lack of any transparency, the very loud call for the removal of Chief Rory Collins, 11 unsolved murders, and the fact that working class people both black and white are unloading their homes and moving elsewhere for safety and a better life. The young have scattered to a new life far from their hometown and parents seek alternative forms of education for their children in the light of Salisbury’s public schools D and F report cards, behavioral problems, campus drug abuse, and gangs.
Last night at the candidates forum, challengers Kenny Hardin, Todd Paris, and William Peoples stepped up and stole the show. Incumbents Maggie Blackwell and Brian Miller were flat except when Miller took a swipe at former city “employee”. Karen Alexander was a no show, being out of town. Former city councilmen Mark Lewis (the major driving force behind Fibrant and Empire Hotel fiascos whose financial repercussions have done enormous harm to the city’s finances, city services, and the Downtown area) and Scott Maddox who many voters don’t recall from his lackluster days on council appear to be the status quo’s heir apparents for council seats. Mark Lewis, voted off city council several years ago, drags a pile of very loud tin cans behind him making his candidacy an easy target for non-incumbent candidates.
The “Time to Talk” candidates forum focused on two important question areas:
• A demographic comparison of Salisbury with Ferguson, Mo where violence reigned throughout the city after the fatal shooting of a Black teenager by a white police officer.
• Multi-issue questions centering on creative ideas to handle city problems and how to bridge the divide between Salisbury’s current city council and the city’s minority communities.
The candidates were provided time enough to make opening and closing statements as well as answer the “2 questions”.
Here are some sound bytes and reflections from the forum candidates.
Kenny Hardin: The community advocate connected easily with the audience and drew applause for his insightfulness about the city’s diversity and that diversity’s lack of inclusion. When he said: “If everyone wasn’t a part of the process, then we needed to destroy it then fix it. We need to start over.”
Hardin recognized the disproportionate representation existed among Salisbury’s residents and its leaders. “We possess five seats so we can have more than one black person on city council.” The clapping grew loud in East Square Artworks. Hardin stole the show when he went hardball, talking about unkept promises, the city council’s failure to meet on problem communities turf. He promised to keep talking about problems even if it pisses people off. Amens mixed in the clapping.
Todd Paris: Attorney and on a mission to “out” a missing-in-action city council and get rid of the security guard police chief Collins who can’t name or count the Salisbury’s unsolved murders. The fireball attorney from hell is the quintessential reform candidate who loves combat and who will gleefully sledgehammer the incumbents at every turn.
Todd publically scoffs at city council’s claim that negative campaigns don’t fly in Salisbury. Apparently city council suffers from an impaired memory about Jake Alexander’s Rowan Alliance and Todd’s last flame throwing group that terminated Jim Sides return to the county commission. Todd’s got a scull and cross bones decal on his F-80 Super Sabre and he plans on adding Maggie Blackwell, Karen Alexander, Brian Miller, and the other pretender Mark Lewis “scalps” to his trophy case. “These four people have destroyed Salisbury and they are standing in the road to a Salisbury Turnaround.” It’s easy to imagine Todd slamming the accelerator to the floor and sending meat and blood spatter flying.
Paris spoke about Salisbury’s government by the “right people” for the “right people”. Paris brought up Salisbury subsidizing Fibrant and cutting back on the Salisbury Police budget. He noted Salisbury has fewer officers than had in 2008. He mentioned, as he’s done throughout the early stages of the campaign, that Fibrant is absorbing too much of the city’s budget.
Todd Paris told the audience that police Chief Rory Collins needed to be fired.
Paris scored high last night on the attendees’ clap-o-meter.
William Peoples: His deep base voice resonated with the audience when said Salisbury is not very inclusive and spoke at length about the city’s crime situation which has graduated to the top rung in the last year as the major issue in Salisbury. Shootings are all over the news on an almost daily basis for the last 7 days. Salisbury is under siege from its gangs and break-in artists.
William said we don’t talk about unfairness in hiring city employees and unfairness in education. He mentioned the breakdown in parents talking with their children and the effect it had on youngsters turning to crime. He underlined the fact that felony conviction follow someone for their entire life. He closed by telling the audience that Salisbury residents needed demand more from their leaders.
William called for the firing of Chief Rory Collins which brought applause.
Jeff Watkins: Jeff acknowledged that Salisbury didn’t need a situation similar to Ferguson to occur. The City simply would not have the manpower to deal with it.
Touching on police relations, Jeff said when he was a youngster it was common for children to aspire to be police. Today children are scared.
Watkins was among those who called for Chief Rory Collins to be canned.
Rip Kersey: Answering the Ferguson demographic question, he said the only statistic that mattered was the probability that someone might make a mistake that could trigger violence in the streets of Salisbury. “We have to address the problem immediately and with force. It’s been done in other cities and with other people.”
Stephen Arthur: Noting the demographics in Salisbury and Ferguson are similar, Stephen said Salisbury is on the verge of an explosion. He believes that leaders should care about everybody and should not care about special interests. He saw the importance of opening dialogue and listening to each other.
Constance Johnson: Constance saw that Ferguson and Salisbury’s demographics are almost identical. She believed we are just one step–one snap away of being the same town with the same problems and the same violence. People in the audience nodded in agreement. She believes Salisbury’s diverse cultures distrust each other. Salisbury focuses on one culture alone and excludes others.
Roy Bentley: Bentley said it was incumbent for government to have a positive relationship with the communities and blamed the lack of trust for what happened in Ferguson. Bentley suggested that increasing trust could prevent a violent backlash under similar circumstances.
David Post: Because of Yom Kippur obligations, David could only give an opening statement. He urged people to choose the five best candidates. He mentioned that he was committed to remaining in Salisbury. He noted that Salisbury won’t regain its lost Textile industry.
David believes Fibrant was one of the best things Salisbury has ever done which brought eye-rolls from members of the audience and panel. Then he followed it up with making Fibrant free to all the businesses and residents Downtown. (Some candidates and audience members shook their head in disbelief. Post in one swoop proposed decimating likely a third of the Fibrant’s subscribership to a free ride). He would also revitalize the Downtown’s storefronts. (Manikins in the windows for an occupied look? Graffitti proof paint? Unsmashable windows?)
Troy Russell: Troy urged candidates to work with each other and that one person on city council could not independently make changes. He pointed that Salisbury lacks money and forces people to walk on the streets. He said bringing more businesses to Salisbury might help improve the city’s demographics.
Tamara Sheffield: Tamara believed little difference existed between Ferguson and Salisbury. Tamara subscribes to the idea that when Salisburians watched the news about Ferguson that Salisbury was one incident away. “The big difference is the love people in the city have. She believes that there’s a big difference.”
Maggie Blackwell: Blackwell said Salisbury’s demographics appear similar to Ferguson, yet they are also similar to a thousand other cities that are thriving. She saw Salisbury’s better days are in the future. In a low voice she admitted she has never seen race relations in Salisbury as they are now. She planned to junket to another city in October to learn how that city bridges the gap in race relations. She believes the best way to solve a problem is see what is working. Many in the audience were unresponsive to what Maggie was saying.
Mark Lewis: The former city councilman who was voted out of office over Fibrant, told the attendees that there’s a steady degradation in the community dialogue over previous years. He blamed the N.C. General Assembly for legislation as a contributing factor. He believes nobody trusts anymore and cited six people standing out with confederate flags by the Confederate Veteran Memorial. He wondered if that was what our community is all about. “Why were those protestors more important than the 300 people who showed up at the bell tower to pray?” He added that is important that the county and city leaders work together. (Lewis received polite clapping).
Brian Miller: Miller shrugged off the Ferguson question, stating that demographic statistics can be morphed to say anything. (This brought eye-rolls and silence from many in the audience) Miller said “Might race relations in our community be improved? Absolutely.” Miller sounding defensive predicted that several of tonight’s candidates would put forward the notion that the incumbents do not care about our citizens? I reject that 100%. He listed several events the city hosts that honored all the citizens in the community. Many in the audience appeared puzzled by Miller’s reaction.
In his closing statement Miller spoke about Salisbury leaders needing to bold changes to improve the city. He tried to call out Todd Paris for his critical statements about the city council and said they were ironic. “A lot of those issues that Paris Brought up and talked about were decisions made by a former “city employee” that had a lot to do with where we are today. I think everybody knows what I’m talking about.”
Scott Maddox: Maddox stated that Salisbury’s problems: Trust, communication and tolerance are similar to those faced by the entire nation. “We need to get to a point where people are not afraid to say what’s on their heart–that people are not afraid to say how they really feel. We need to address others concerns whether they are our concerns or not.” Maddox believes fixing Salisbury’s inclusiveness will take time.
