Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ Steve Mensing: Today I’m interviewing Stephen Arthur a candidate for Salisbury’s City Council. From what I understand this is your first time running for public office. Stephen could you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Stephen Arthur: Steve, I pretty much grew up in Salisbury. My parents moved back to Salisbury when I was 7 years old and I’ve been here ever since. It’s pretty much a running joke around here that no matter where you go, you always end up back here. I’m an everyday working guy who holds down two jobs–I work at Romo’s Pizzaria Downtown and in the Food Lion warehouse. I work with a lot of really good people. Going back to college is in the near future. I’m running for city council. I have to pinch myself.
Steve Mensing: What motivates you to run for city council?
Stephen Arthur: I’ve thought long and hard about it. It felt like its something I needed to do. I grew up here and now Salisbury is in really in a bad way. It’s nothing like the city I remember back 10-15 years ago. That city died. Take a look around. It’s messed up. Many young people who remain are caught up with hard drugs or spend an inordinate amount of time drinking. The streets are dangerous anymore. Shootings just about every weekend. No police anywhere in sight. It’s scary. Many people are just giving up on Salisbury and moving away. I can’t blame them. It’s the smartest thing they can do if they have young children and want them to be safe. There’s better public schools elsewhere. Way better than D and F public schools in Salisbury.
Steve Mensing: What are the most important issues is this election?”
Stephen Arthur: There’s so many. Where do I begin? Crime is huge and Salisbury has become North Carolina’s largest outdoor “shooting range”. Fibrant is dragging the city down. The city covered Fibrant’s failure over for too long. Fibrant’s $12.6 million dollars down in the 2014 budget audit and owes $7.6 million dollars to water and sewer. Fibrant can’t compete–they were never able to compete. Nobody on city council admits it, but you can see the city is a hurting in a major way. They can’t pay police. A lot of the city workers are doing the work of two. So what do we do about crime? We can start off with a new police chief. Collins is an embarrassment. City council can put pressure on the city manager to let Collins “resign”. After all city council hires and fires the city manager. Right? So they do have leverage in this situation. They need to find a competent police chief. It’s getting out of control with 11 unsolved murders and kids getting shot in crossfires.
Steve Mensing: What would you do with Fibrant?
Stephen Arthur: Losing enormous money like it has for 5 years, Fibrant is nowhere near turning any corner like the city council once claimed. But how do you unload it so the taxpayers take the smallest hit? It seems way past the point to be growing Fibrant enough to limit some of the arterial bleeding. Can we really recruit any persons to Salisbury to buy even one gig, let alone 10 gigs? The F and D schools, the high violent crime, the poverty, the lack of economic development inside of Salisbury, the heroin, crack, and meth epidemic, the fact that working class people are leaving town–these facts make attracting people from out of town here for Fibrant extremely unlikely. We have to be realistic.
Steve Mensing: What can be done immediately to fix the city?
Stephen Arthur: Right off they need to become transparent. Not answering public information requests has got to go. It sure makes city hall look like a crookdom. My first vote on city council would be to go forward with an independent forensic audit of all the departments. I hear William Peoples, Todd Paris, and Kenny Hardin support that. Its something that’s got to be done. The very loud whispering about city hall must be put to rest one way or the other. Salisbury’s city hall has developed a bad rep throughout North Carolina. Play for pay? Bid rigging? Embezzlement? Squelching embezzlement investigations? If there’s corruption here, as too many people insist there is, it needs to be surfaced and sent to criminal court.
Steve Mensing: What else needs immediate fixing?
Stephen Arthur: City Hall’s lack of any real connection with people living outside the historic district and the country club. These “outsiders” are cut off from many city services. They get nothing, but runarounds when they knock on city hall’s door. Another area for immediate fixing is the city aging infrastructure. The water and sewer system needs upgrading and fixing said to cost upwards of 20 million dollars. The city doesn’t have that kind of money because they poured it down Fibrant’s bottomless drain.
Steve Mensing: I appreciate you answering our questions–I know you are pressed for time to get to work. Let’s finish this off in the next day or so.
Stephen Arthur: Definitely.
