Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ For over a week we heard from sources in city hall that Kent Winrich was on the doorstep of becoming another casualty in Fibrant’s massive debacle as the City of Salisbury continued its freefall into the municipal broadband’s deepening financial sinkhole. Winrich’s salary increasingly became expendable as Fibrant kept hemorrhaging multiple millions per year in losses and city services became the object of ridicule. Yesterday Winrich became the 3rd Fibrant head to “resign” since Fibrant’s rollout in 2010. He joins Michael Crowell and Mike Jury as ex-Fibrant honchos.
Kent Winrich:
Say what you will about Mr. Winrich he was always a gentleman even in the face of insurmountable adversity. We wish him luck in either retirement or latching on elsewhere with a more reputable work environment. With Fibrant’s abject failure to date, facing a deep pocketed array of broadband private giants like AT&T Gigaverse, Spectrum (formerly TWC), AT&T U-verse, DirecTV, and DISH, and their hopes for expansion crushed by the Federal 6th District Court of Appeals, Winrich had to acknowledge Spectrum’s reputation for eating even the big boys alive let alone an unrequired and overpriced municipal fiasco.
Mr. Winrich is of the ages. According to a press release he is replaced by Evans Ballard who worked 14 years in City Hall’s Finance Department. He’s helped prepare budgets and contributed to analyzing departmental performance.
Evans Ballard:
According to a press release the City Manager Lane Bailey handed Ballard the task of making Fibrant financially viable. The deck is so heavily weighted against that ever happening. There are simply not enough people in Salisbury with enough spendable income to make it happen. And more working class people are moving away. 6 years of being a milstone around the city’s neck is far too much evidence. Time for Salisbury to pull the plug and to perhaps scratch at starting a decade long comeback from Fibrant’s horrific damage.
FIBRANT:
