Todd Paris, Salisbury Attorney and Candidate for Salisbury City Council
♦ The city council race continues to heat up. 8 forums or events will be held prior to Election Day. Interest in this race appears strong. Even an incumbent mentioned at last city council said he would find it difficult to complete certain tasks due to all the forums scheduled. Whether that interest benefits the best candidates remains to be seen, but my fingers are crossed.
Mayor Alexander campaign continues to be a train wreck. Her shushing of community activist Carolyn Logan and ejecting her from council continues to be an angry boil with local voters. Someone (not me) designed a protest t-shirt on “t-spring.com” that folks can wear to register their indignation. I ordered one. Get yours too! It won’t be long before Karen’s Billboard, where she claims to be “a voice of reason”, becomes a gag t-shirt.
Alexander’s deepening unpopularity has risen to the point where her few wealthy supporters took to donating money for billboards on major roads where she claims to be “positive leadership” and “the voice of reason.” RFP staff and Salisbury’s favorite vultures Roscoe and Ernie already opined on billboard. I can not recall billboards ever being used in a council race before. Are they of legal size?
A Voice of Reason?
The Salisbury-Rowan Realtors had a lunch meeting this week at the Salisbury Country Club. Stuck in court, I arrived kind of late, but they allowed me to speak anyway. Not my best effort due to being rushed. While I am not a member, I occasionally get invited to things there and the service and food is always good. I asked who among the group of 40 or so attendees had actually sold a house in Salisbury in the past 30 days and I was happy to see ten or so raise their hands. I explained my 2900 plan to use grants to help move the 2000 or so empty homes in Salisbury by owner financing to those potential purchasers who suffer impediments to housing as identified in the 2014 report. This report revealed the significant hurdles citizens and in particular, black and brown citizens have to home ownership. This plan might jump-start sales. It was hard sell as bankers and realtors would not directly profit from the program, until sales really took off from the rejuvenated neighborhoods. Karen, Brian and Maggie just voted to give around 63K in tax dollars to a downtown developer to build one apartment downtown. Imagine how many “hard sell” houses we could have moved for the same amount of money?
Tuesday’s City Council meeting saw a return of local community activist Carolyn Logan to public comment. I adore this lady! A champion of the First Amendment, Ms. Logan meted out non-obscene, non-threatening, constitutionally protected and well deserved criticism of numerous council decisions. While the mayor’s gavel wavered above its anvil, Carolyn emerged without being handcuffed or gaveled after her three minute governmental critique. You can be sure should Karen Alexander survive the November election her iron curtain restrictions of free speech will descend once again.
Thursday would find me in front of the Local AFL-CIO headquarters answering questions about labor, fair wages and unions. I was endorsed by the unions last time I ran. My dad was a Union member from way back and I remember walking strike pickets in grade school. I would later work three summers in the same plant while I was in college. My successful efforts to get Salisbury Police Officers a real wage increase this past year were noted. I mentioned to them that all city employees below management level had not received a real pay increase during the past ten years of the Fibrant debacle and that this needs to be remedied. Many Salisbury voters are Freightliner employees and I like these guys. We could really use another high paying union plant in this county.
The main picture is me posing outside Clyde’s antique shop across from my office on East Council at the start of the 5th Annual Downtown Busker’s Bash. That’s Clyde, Mike-o Martelli (dressed as Lord Salisbury) and myself. Mike-o and myself rarely agree on anything, however I still consider him an old friend. Clyde? Well, he is immutably “Clyde.”
I spoke to one downtown eatery owner who said that he sold lots of beer, but not much food during the “bash.” I had dinner at his establishment around nine and it was little better than the average night by then. While the DSI’s first Fridays do benefit downtown merchants, they always tend to end way early and we “roll up the streets” early. It might help if we extended the events to a slightly later hour, then again there’s the problem of gunfire.
Tonight saw this week’s installment of “Politics This Week” on the Ford Broadcasting Network which will hopefully air at 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on Saturday October 7th. Only Commission Candidate Michael Julian and I were able to attend. This show airs on 1140 WRNA and 1460 WKRB. You may listen on line only at those times here: http://fordbroadcasting.com/site/ This weeks topic include the NRA’s response to the bump-stock Las Vegas shootings and the continuing failure of the Rowan-Salisbury Schools despite tens of millions wasted on the Apple computer take home scheme.
