Rowan Underground
♦ Early Monday afternoon, local banker Mark Lewis, Chair of Downtown Salisbury Inc. and chief architect of the Fibrant debacle, fired off a mass email from his bank’s electronic mail account. The recipient list was not suppressed. However for privacy sake and the emails of several of our RFP friends, only the body of the letter will be shared here: http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/02/25/the-marc-lewis-email-concerning-the-disturbing-demographic-trends-in-rowan-county/
Rowan Underground had a copy of the mass email within moments of Mr. Lewis hitting the “send”. The actual text of Mr. DSI’s mass email is only three paragraphs in length. He notes that the mass email is “the most efficient means” of sending the invitation to the Chamber of Commerce “and the other development partners in the Gateway Building.” Revealingly, he stated, “the Boards of our Economic Development related groups all recognize that, as a community, when we fail to plan that we actually plan to fail.” Thus, the first paragraph sets the stage for the importance of the Gateway Building and EDC related groups, as the parties who must control the community “visioning” session. (Salisbury is in charge of its county neighbors)
The second paragraph reads, “There are disturbing demographic trends within Rowan County and we know that failure to act in a timely basis will result in further deterioration. To assist us we are asking you to attend a morning session on March 6th to brainstorm and provide feedback on what YOU feel are the most important issues that we need to address as a community. We can’t make a laundry list and expect to complete them all but we can zero into one or two initiatives that can return some joy to our citizens with a promise for a better future. Then, please plan on returning to the Trolley Barn for a dinner and final presentation by our speaker about creating our Vision. Paragraph two defines “WE” who must create a couple of initiatives and empower “OUR” speaker to convey “OUR” wishes. Quite a bold admission.
But paragraph two is revealing, also, for the reference to “disturbing demographic trends within Rowan County”. What “disturbing demographic trends are there in Rowan County? Is he referring to the 28% soaring poverty that plagues the City of Salisbury? Certainly that is “disturbing”. Or perhaps he’s referring to violent crime that, according to the FBI statistics shared by a reader of the Rowan Free Press ( http://rowanfreepress.com/2013/11/09/letter-to-the-editor-fbi-crime-stats-comparison-between-detroit-and-salisbury/ ) Certainly that, too, is quite “disturbing”. But does the reference to “disturbing demographic trends” reference mean to the majority of Salisbury’s residents—the ones who, as minorities who now comprise over one-half of the city’s population, may hear this phrase as a rallying cry for non-Latino Whites to take back their city? Words mean things. And making poor choices in the wording—“disturbing demographic trends”—after already having defined the group of leaders who are expecting to be in charge, seems to betray the agenda belying what I will call the “RE-Visioning of Our Community” by Salisbury’s business elitists. For many of us, THAT is the most “disturbing” notion contained in Mr. Lewis’s call to arms!
But there is more! The final paragraph before the request to register early, begins, “From these meetings we hope to establish a core group of leaders that will continue to meet to plan and implement OUR Vision. We need you!” Well, from the looks of the recipient list, it appears that there is special emphasis on power, privilege, and control from the folks who are most troubled by Salisbury’s waning influence in Rowan County politics.
A trusted insider was asked about this email. He opined that the “disturbing demographic trends” comment likely pertains more to the poverty and unemployment rates. So from the perspective of an outsider, looking in, how is this “Visioning” thing any different from what Salisbury’s elitists have already expected of their neighbors who are not part of the power and privilege of Salisbury’s blue bloods? We at the Rowan Free Press ran an 8-part series on how Salisbury could pull itself up by the bootstraps. CITY LEADERS must face reality, and work toward fixing it by re-examining the insanity of repeating the mistakes of the past. But when CITY LEADERS present themselves as the driving force toward an agenda-driven visioning session, it appears that CITY LEADERS fully intend to pack the forum with enough of their own to be firmly in control.
Like everything else the City gets their oily palms on, they will “delphi” the forum to their own preconceived conclusions for what is best for the CITY, and try to pawn the final product off as being best for the County. Will they succeed in this slight-of-hand? Doubtful. After all, they’ve ensured that working class folk, who may have the most middle-of-the-road opinions, will be excluded by virtue of the visioning session being held on a workday, during work hours.
Let’s face it, folks. Salisbury elites find discomfort in having non-Latino Whites in the minority, now that it cannot gobble up more affluent neighbors through the tools that were once available through forced annexation. That’s what really bothers the Establishment the most. It is what will motivate them to show up, to devise a master plan that they can promote under the guise of “Unity”.
In reality, the efforts of the Salisbury Establishment is more divisive than any previous desperation they’ve produced yet. Folk from outside of Salisbury will have only token attendance. There will be no meaningful efforts to really focus on anything outside Salisbury because let’s face it, outside of Salisbury, there is less concern about “disturbing demographic trends”. So mostly the Salisbury Establishment will show up; they’ll arrive at two or three ideas they already have in mind; they will proclaim a mandate and the city government’s newsletter will hail it as a grand success; then “The One-Hundred Thousand” folks who do not live in Salisbury will laugh at their desperation. In the meantime, the Rowan Free Press will highlight the desperate efforts of those who have invested in the failure of the Empire Hotel loan to DSI. We will highlight the City’s desperation to force our county to spend millions on a Central Office at 329 South Main Street. We will highlight how angry and desperate they are over the purchase of West End Plaza for use as county government offices. We will highlight how every available dime in the coffers of the City of Salisbury are diverted to cover the bloated costs of their $73 million debacle, “Fibrant”, while they expect the rest of the county to give them an economic BAILOUT. And we will outline the “Delphi” method by which the community Re-Visioning process is masterfully conducted.
Perhaps it is time to distance ourselves from the “drowning man” that Salisbury has become.
