Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ In Salisbury’s gradual decline into bottom rung city over the past decade, Salisbury has sadly become known for its crime, its 25% poverty, the city’s public schools grading no higher than Ds and Fs on the state education report card, 11 unsolved murders who Chief Rory Collins can’t name. Where else in the United States does a police chief in a city notorious for crime, moonlight as a security guard? The city’s municipal broadband network Fibrant owes $7.6 million dollars to the water and sewer fund and the 2014-2015 budget audit cites Fibrant as having a $12.6 million negative balance. City council saw fit mislead the public that Fibrant turned the corner and made a profit.
The Big Ticket Issues in the Salisbury, N.C. City Council Race:
• City Hall’s lack of any transparency. Bad government practices and corruption can be hidden where truth doesn’t penetrate and public information requests go unanswered until Attorney Todd Paris recently threatened a lawsuit. The Rowan Free Press and others dwelling in the city hold stacks of unanswered public information requests. The city of Salisbury is in violation of state statutes in its attempts to thwart honest government and transparency. This must end.
• Salisbury’s high FBI violent and property crime statistics make the city among the state’s more dangerous cities (per capita). Denial can’t hide the murders, the break-ins, the armed robberies, and the street beatings anymore. Most of Salisbury’s communities struggle with safety issues. 11 unsolved murders speaks volumes. The current police chief/security guard Rory Collins now tries to downplay the runaway crime stats.
• Our police are understaffed and underpaid which means experienced officers get recruited out of our police department. Its said an estimated 75% of the police force left the Salisbury Police for greener pastures and higher pay over the last 5 years. Even Chief Collins admitted this. What is left behind are inexperienced officers and substandard crime scene investigations.
• The Salisbury Police, under Chief Rory Collins, appears to be underreporting Salisbury crime. This is accomplished by the downgrading of a crime report to a lesser offense and by an understaffed police department ignoring calls to certain crime-ridden communities like the West End. If no police officers show up, then no crime report is filed. It creates the illusion of a drop in crime. Crime is rising in Salisbury and no end is in sight.
• The city’s municipal broadband network Fibrant owes $7.6 million dollars to the water and sewer fund and the 2014-2015 budget audit cites Fibrant as having a $12.6 million negative balance. Salisbury’s city council saw fit to mislead the public that Fibrant turned the corner and made a profit through hiding salaries and other shell games. Fibrant is a drain on the city’s limited resources and it impacts the city’s ability to provide services. Fibrant was kept on life supports by bleeding the city’s water and sewer funds. Now city hall is running a “10 gig” ruse when Fibrant only sold 3 “one gig” subscriptions to date.
• Recently it was revealed that Fibrant, during its initial rollout, hired an outside contractor to place its fiber optic up on the poles. The contractor did a sloppy job and failed to follow specific National Electric Safety Code standards. Besides being out of compliance with their pole attachment agreement with Duke Energy, Fibrant, due to their violations, endangers Duke Power lineman and others who work on the lines. The City of Salisbury has yet to fix this very expensive safety hazard said to cost several million dollars to repair and are liable for any harm these violations may cause. The City of Salisbury also spent many thousands of dollars in legal fees to deal with Duke Energy. The legal fees are siphoned from the city’s water and sewer funds which slams utility bill payers in the pocketbook. The incumbent city council knows all about this, but chose to cover it over.
• The city’s U.S. census showing 25% poverty places tremendous stress on the city and county systems. Numerous approaches exist for creating jobs and business even in areas with poverty, high crime, low performing schools, and limited spendable income. The city is not currently utilizing any of these common solutions. They are paralyzed to take useful action.
• Working class folks, both black and white, are pulling up stakes and moving out of Salisbury to safer and more livable cities and towns elsewhere. The census shows our educated young are moving away for better jobs, safety, better amenities, and more fulfillment elsewhere.
• The city’s public schools graded no higher than Ds and Fs on the state education report card. The public schools suffer from behavioral problems, safety issues, hard drug abuse, all too common illiteracy, and gang activity. The school system superintendent pleads for another 5 years. Parents are moving away or putting their youngsters in private schools. Are the city school’s problems even fixable at this point? Behavioral problems, safety issues, illiteracy, and hard drug abuse are giant granite mountains to move.
• A major substance abuse epidemic exists in Salisbury. Many are afflicted with alcoholism, heroin, meth, and crack abuse which impacts crime and families in a major way. Examining arrest reports shows that many persons arrested are in possession of hard narcotics and drug paraphernalia.
• The issue of being strongly bound to the visible “status quo” of old Salisbury real estate and banking families with a history of placing their self-interests, control needs, and greed above the interests of residents and taxpayers living in Salisbury and Rowan County. Establishment money determines all the priorities in Salisbury in order to assure their continued power and control.
• The Downtown with its South Main Badlands and decrepit Empire Hotel is in dire need of bulldozing. The South Main Badlands with its expanding array of vacant storefronts is an unappetizing picture of blight.
• Salisbury received a downgraded bond status from Moody’s and Fitch bond rating services due to $7.6 million big gulped from the water and sewer funds. Today that bond rating has become even more precarious owing to recent discoveries of a $12.6 million dollar negative balance in the audit of the 2014-15 budget, Fibrant’s costly violation of its “pole attachment agreement with Duke Energy”, and Fibrant’s failure to comply the National Electric Safety Code. Fibrant owes so much money and they are being trampled by an army of top-flight private broadband providers: TWC, AT&T U-Verse/DirecTV, DISH, MagicJack and others with immense marketing power.
• Lack of transparency in city budgeting. City Hall has spent over a million annually to subsidize Fibrant at the expense of city services. Fibrant subscribers are getting an approximate $28 per month subsidy at the expense of city taxpayers.
• Economic development is limited due to Salisbury’s poverty, lack of spendable income, badly performing schools, and FBI crime stats. Its even difficult to find employees here who can pass a drug test or who are not saddled with felony charges.
• The Chief of Police Rory Collins wonders why his inexperienced few police officers are not getting trust and cooperation from the Black community. The lack of trust runs deep and from experience. Black persons are put in harm’s way if they go to the police because in the past officers have blown informants cover. Gangs have far more presence in some black communities than the sporadic police patrols that often fail to show for calls for help after shootings, murders, and robberies. Black persons have been victims of Salisbury Police excessive force. Police officers routinely search Black person’s without “probable cause” in all parts of Salisbury.
• Many ask why Catawba College is getting a Fibrant discount while Livingstone College gets nothing.
• The covert targeting of “have not” neighborhoods for gentrification and “shrinking” of their city services.
• The City of Salisbury government has not comply with EEOC hiring guidelines and clearly discriminates in minority hiring.
• Salisbury’s aging, hazardous, and poorly maintained infrastructure suffers from the city’s money being “big gulped” by Fibrant.
• Downtown needs to do something different to be a draw. Too many vacancies and too few people means the current formula is not working. The exorbitant municipal taxes add to the burden of attempting to do business.
• City Hall suffers a major disconnect with its communities outside of “8 block” and the country club. Many citizens are angered about city hall’s inattention and a lack of city services to communities outside of “8-block” and the “country club”. A lack of public playgrounds, sidewalks, and safety lighting are well noted in underserved communities such as the West End. Is your community receiving full city services? Adequate police patrol–trash pickup–pothole repair–city property properly maintained?
• Salisbury’s estimated 700 to 800 vacant, neglected, and abandoned houses create major blight throughout much of the city. Although new code enforcement rules are in place, can a city hurting for money actually start implementing code enforcement and clear away some of obsolete structures?
• The city suffers from undeniable gang activity. City Hall is behind the 8-ball with creating recreational facilities and activities for youth. How can the city replace gang culture with something better? There’s nothing better than something better to do.
• A dreadful traffic light system coupled with closed streets and the coming “traffic calming” on East Innes. This will surely harm the chain stores and restaurants on East Innes a large chunk of the city’s tax base. A congested and slow moving East Innes will also drive people away from coming into Salisbury.
• Ask yourself if cronyism isn’t rampant in city hall and that city council’s friends get curb service? How many of you or your neighbors tasted a city hall vendetta? How about the Spite Hole? Or a median planted in front of your business because you didn’t play ball? Or favoritism shown in zoning?
• The city’s long standing inequitable exchanges with the city’s forcibly annexed neighborhoods is in need of change.
• City Hall’s conceding public housing to outside private entities which means some of our poor families are kept from residing in newly constructed public housing because they can not pass a credit check.
• Unabated toxic areas in many sections of the city create public health concerns.
• A crumbling water and sewer system needing many millions to fix and upgrade.
