RFP Staff
♦ Tuesday during Salisbury’s City Council meeting the city’s mid-year financial update was delivered and it sent collective shivers through those watching on the city streaming website and the few unfortunates remaining in the audience. Another “no turning the corner” year for the city’s hopeless 10 gig albatross being brutally stomped by the city incumbent internet and TV providers. You know TWC, AT&T U-verse/DirecTV/Gigapower, and DISH. Being run as deep-pocketed and highly successful businesses, the big 3 are outcompeting weakling Fibrant with better prices, advancements in technology, and extreme high-speeds for both residential and business customers.
Fibrant for 5 straight years of horrific losses was drowned in the incumbent’s tidal wave of marketing. Time for Fibrant to bale up its squirrel eaten fiberoptic cable and return its buildings to the banks. Nobody will buy this pitiful network and until 2029 they have to keep paying off the debt and interest. Meanwhile the City of Salisbury has no real police force (badly understaffed), provides skeletal city services, and has among the worst public schools (Ds and Fs) in the state. The first two problematic conditions are directly attributable to Fibrant doing the “big gulp” on the general and enterprise funds.
During the presentation of the city’s mid-year financial update we learned Fibrant cost the city a whopping $3.7 million dollars in just the first half of fiscal year 2016. Fibrant chugged
the city’s general fund and the general fund capital reserve to the tune of $1.8 million. Yo! The cost to the enterprise fund was in the vicinity of $1.9 million. The tote is an UGLY $3.7 million. The finance director Teresa Harris said something to the effect that they “expected” to pay it back during coming half of this fiscal year.
F. Lane Bailey, the City Manager, told the council the financial numbers were not where city hall wanted them to be. Somehow a strong fund balance would help, but that was not explained. After 5 years of staggering losses hidden behind wild claims of “turning the corner”, city hall has only unfounded high hopes for the future of Fibrant in an impoverished and violence-torn city with its working class and upper class folks melting away.
David Post raised questions about Fibrant having a deficit for its five years of operation and Bailey said it was. Post also said it was important for Fibrant to become self-sustaining because not doing so took funds from other city projects. The city, according to Post, needs to develop a strategy for its fiber optic network and treat it like a business. Fibrant needs to be a business and compete. The challenge is Fibrant lacks the very deep pockets of corporate incumbents often stuffed with billions of dollars.
Fibrant is hopelessly over its head in competing for residential and business customers. The corporate incumbents don’t have the major drawbacks that a municipal broadband has.
The city continues to duck public information requests about their actual numbers of residential and business signups. Fibrant’s claims for its numbers appear grossly exaggerated. Claims from Fibrant are taken with a grain of salt due to the fact the City of Salisbury previously made wildly fallacious claims about “turning the corner” and showing a profit.
Last fall our Associate Editor Todd Paris went public with the allegation that the City of Salisbury was funding Fibrant from the General Fund and not just the Fibrant Fund. He stated that Fibrant wasn’t really making a profit, but a loss when we take into account the amount of money being siphoned from the General Fund to keep Fibrant solvent. He specifically stated that this was being done to the tune of $1M or more per year. Councilmembers Karen Alexander, Maggie Blackwell, and Brian Miller stayed silent as Paris made his comments. They were focused on touting the city’s new 10 Gig Speed in order to get re-elected.
At the February 2nd City Council meeting, the Salisbury City Council finally disclosed that Associate Editor Todd Paris was correct during the city’s quarterly financial review. City Manager Lane Bailey took management of the city’s finances away from Assistant City Manager John Sofley and gave them to a new employee Teresa Harris. As a result, Lane Bailey and Teresa Harris studied the allegation and found that the actual amount being siphoned from the General Fund to fund Fibrant was nearly $3 million per year, with $1.8M being siphoned off from the General Fund in the first six months of the fiscal year alone.
General Fund money should not be spent propping up Fibrant. It should be spent on services such as bolstering our city’s police force. For comparison purposes, if the $3M a year being spent on Fibrant was spent to hire new police officers and outfit them with training, uniforms, weapons, and vehicles, the city could hire 30 new police officers. For comparison purposes, if the $3M a year being spent on Fibrant was spent to give police officers raises, each officer could receive a raise in excess of $30,000 per year. City Council would be wise to pursue a mix of the two options above, which would go a long way to resolving this city’s challenges with the police force.
We applaud City Council for finally coming clean, but we doubt they will take any action to fix the problems with Kenny Hardin and David Post having only 2 out of 5 votes on the board.
Video: Magic Math Theater:
Who was on City Council in 2010?
