A Letter To The Editor

SAPOA has the financial means to start policing its own.

The rental industry here generates, just through residential rents, something far north of the amazing figure of $57,000,000 annually. And that's just using the following rough formula:

8000 (overall housing units in Salisbury, rental and homeowner occupied) x .75 (percentage that are rentals) x 12 months x $800 (a low estimate per rental unit – low because of the high rents by the head or room to students and others, which may push a single rental to over $1600 per month. However, many rentals are unoccupied in summer months). Some have estimated that these properties generate as much as $85,000,000 per year gross, much of it in cash payments, and much of it that leaves the area to absentee landlords.

With those sort of numbers, why is it that SAPOA, instead of coming up with and having ready to execute a single plan that could reduce the efforts of the city, reduce the crime and lower the burden to the city's taxpayers, consistently ask for more concessions from the city and the neighborhoods. To this point, all concessions made between SAPOA and the city (and neighborhoods) have been concessions TO SAPOA, not the other way 'round. Efforts of earnest improvement by SAPOA as a whole have so far been either non-existent or so insignificant as to not even put the evidence or even promise of change in the public eye.

To my mind, SAPOA's latest ploy of begging for conflict resolution is nothing more than that: a method to put them in an underdog position with the city and in the public's mind. Nothing could be farther from the truth. With a mayor who, unlike his predecessor, puts full effort into enforcing the laws (the same laws that SAPOA and its council adherents watered down to a near-impotent state), and who sees the crime rates and neighborhood degradations as evolving hand in hand with the expansion of SAPOA and non-SAPOA ownership and lack of good stewardship, SAPOA feels threatened, and with those feelings, responds in a characteristic way, baiting and pointing a finger.

With the possibility of a sweeping change to the composition of the city council in spring 2011, SAPOA feels a pinch. They know that with a council majority that supports close rental regulation and inspection, they will not have the full leeway that they enjoyed with the likes of the Tilghman administration and the council that they purchased (Dunn, Cathcart, Comegys, Shields, and, to a lesser degree, Smith.) It can be assured that SAPOA will pull out all the stops in the next election, and will present candidates that will be forever in their corner.

SAPOA has only one thing in mind: protecting the interests of SAPOA. It's what it does; it's in its nature, bringing to mind the old story of the scorpion and the frog.

The new statement at the organization's website calls members to become involved so that it can work with government to “improve our community without over-regulating our industry.” This nearly in the same breath as “...there have been many obstacles to overcome (i.e., proposals for landlord licensing, increases in property taxes, proposed regulations to address lead paint laws, etc.) and there's no way to know what we'll be faced with in the future.” SAPOA has had its cake, and has been feeding off it for a long time at the expense of taxpayers and those who want cohesive neighborhoods and safe streets. It has created pockets of living areas that are little more than poverty magnets, dragging down areas adjacent to them (and the city as a whole) with physical decay, an overabundance of major and minor crime of all description and a look that says one thing to most of those who come to their borders: don't go in there - it's not safe.

I believe that with the tools that Mayor Ireton has available to him, many of them rusty, some of them dulled by SAPOA's grip on city legislature, he's doing an admirable job with trying to preserve and grow our neighborhoods, lower our crime rates and make the interior of Salisbury much more than it has been in decades.

So, SAPOA, what's it going to be? Present a workable plan you can present to the public to effectively and efficiently police rental properties and immediately and with the intent of law and purpose of government hold their owners to the light; to, with your brain trust and huge capital resources, actually improve Salisbury's residential neighborhoods, or whine like you are now until the next election (and perhaps beyond) that you can't get government to listen to you?

(By the way, I firmly believe that Shanie Shields should recuse herself from any further votes or opinions dealing with rental properties because of her relationship with her landlord, Mr. St. Fleur, whose properties are on the NSCC inspection refusal list, who has donated maximum amounts to select local candidates, and who , it appears, accepted zoning and other favors in return for those donations.)