People need reason to want to join city
Annexation reform is the law in North Carolina. Our governor did not sign the bill, and it took Republicans taking control in Raleigh for the first time in 140 years to get the annexation issue passed. We now have the freedom of choice we thought we had guaranteed to us under the Constitution. Voters should remember this at the next election.
To justify involuntary annexation, one city official stated they had the right because the county people were using city services for free. Help me out here. As a county resident, I don’t use Salisbury’s utility services. My fire and emergency protection comes from the county and I live on a state-maintained road. Just what city service am I using for free?
The issue of annexation will come up. Salisbury must offer the citizens of the county a reason for us to want to join the city. This can be services they can offer that we can’t get, or at a much better price to offset our real estate taxes doubling and the cost of water and sewer. It can’t be to help them pay for investments they made that have gone bad without getting their own citizens’ approval.
This answers a question directed at me in a May 7 letter to the editor. The writer questioned why this county resident was questioning the city’s investment in Fibrant. Prior to July 1, any county resident had the right, based on the lack of annexation reform, to question the city’s investments since they could be made to pay. In the past, when the city budget had to be balanced, county residents were tapped on the shoulder and told we belonged to them now. Not anymore.
Based on the number of letters in the paper and an excellent editorial cartoon in Sunday’s paper, Fibrants investment is still being questioned.
— Robert N. Stone
Salisbury
Stop spending
Apparently, our elected officials did not get the message from the last election. Now I see that they are considering a new school administration building so the the governmental educational bureaucrats can sit back in a posh new building while the people who pay for it cannot even find work.
Let the political shell game begin. They will try to come up with all kinds of reasons why we need this and how it is not going to cost us anything. They will claim that money is coming from here or there, and that we can’t afford not to do it. All the while, claiming that we have to cut back on everything else.
I was born in the day, but not yesterday. Anybody with common sense can cut through that nonsense.
I have a novel idea; instead of giving away land for more government buildings, why don’t you give that land to a business in the private sector that is able to create jobs instead of giving it to something that is just going to cost us more money?
I want our elected officials to know that any of them that support this project will be held accountable in the next election. Then maybe they will get the message. It is not hard to understand. Stop spending our money!
— Spencer Drye
Salisbury