Mayor & Council Have Failed Us

This is a letter from former Council Person Rachael S. Polk.

Both Mayor and Majority of Council have failed the citizens of Salisbury

Five years ago, while serving on the Salisbury City Council, I requested that the Institute of Governmental Service review our city charter to determine who had oversight of the municipal affairs of the City of Salisbury.

At that time, the city council was trying to exercise what it believed to be its fiduciary responsibility, as defined by the charter, to provide oversight of the administrative affairs of the city. We were compelled to take this action because the mayor had begun, as early as 2002, to show sign of an autocratic rule, i.e. withholding information from the council, providing the council with incomplete information,demanding that questions to department heads be directed through her office, refusing to meet with the council president, etc. In fact, to have timely responses to Freedom of Information Act requests, the council had to go so far as to pass a resolution for such documents to be handled by the city clerk’s office as opposed to the mayor’s office.

The mayor and council did receive an analysis of the charter from the Institute of Governmental Service and it concluded that: The mayor clearly heads the City administration, but the Council is required to exercise an administrative oversight function in order to perform its charter responsibilities. The Charter requires the Council to receive and judge not only the broad administrative policies of the City and its organizational components, but also the overall job performance ofcertain City managers, which further requires the Council to receive enough information about their departmental operations to make informed decisions about management performance.

The management and administrationof day-to-day operations clearly resides with the Mayor. The Council’s job is one of overseeing how those administrative activities generally are conducted by the Mayor.Upon receiving this critique of the charter, the mayor waged a public battle, unchecked by and thus enabled by the local press, including The Daily Times, to rid the Council of any members that challenged her autocratic reign.

Subsequent councils, instead of providing administrative oversight, abdicated their responsibility and thus allowed, as Bob Caldwell so adequately points out in the February 3rd edition of the Daily Times, flawed management at the wastewater treatment plant and the Salisbury Zoo, and a mishandling of the Salisbury Mall property and TIF process. This unchecked mayor has also allowed funds to be spent on change-orders before being approved by council, violated the policies ofprevious councils on annexation by providing water and sewer to Sassafras Village without annexation, and raised our sewer rates without knowing what the surplus was!

And the pattern continues. Councilpersons Campbell and Cohen are demonized and marginalized by the mayor and her sycophants on the council as they try to exercise their responsibilities to the citizens of Salisbury.Information about what is happening in the city has to be read on the blogs first before it appears in our local newspaper or on local television stations.

So as we seek credible answers to the indicting audit that was recently revealed, yes, address them to the one who relished and usurped this authority years ago, but also demand accountability from Council President, Louise Smith, who ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility, and Shields and Comegys who have failed us as well.

Rachel S. Polk

Rachael S. Polk is a former City of Salisbury City Council Person.