Who Is Abandoning Salisbury’s Neighborhoods?

On June 7th Salisbury Mayor Jim Ireton vetoed the budget passed by the Salisbury City Council the previous evening. As we noted at the time, Ireton’s rationale for vetoing the budget was long on rhetoric but short on substance.

One item Ireton used to attack council members Debbie Campbell, Terry Cohen, and Tim Spies was:

Neighborhood Lighting Upgrades - I support. Council has turned its back on taxpayers in the Canal Woods and Spring Chase neighborhoods. Citizens expect city government to hold up its end of the bargain and provide services. …Has council really turned its back on those neighborhoods? Well, if your definition is refusing to spend tax dollars on something because some residents want shiny new street lights then I guess you can make that argument. However, if your definition is providing services WHEN NEEDED then I don’t think so.

Do the neighborhoods of Canal Woods and Spring Chase NEED new street lights? Let’s look.

Canal Woods has, admittedly, an odd mix of street lights. There are some (on the left) that are brown and boxy. There are others that look more like what we think of when we talk about city street lights (on right). They all appear to be working. Therefore we have to ask what all of the hullabaloo is about.

It should also be noted that there is one light as you enter Canal Woods which has a broken lens. The light works, but the lens is broken. The city has a separate budget line for repairing street lights. This has NOTHING to do with the city council’s decision not to replace the lights in Canal Woods.

What about Spring Chase? Their lights (on right) all appear to be working. The neighborhood may want them replaced. Perhaps they offend Jim Ireton’s personal aesthetic. Who knows.

The bottom line is simple – if the neighborhood has working street lights, how is this “abandoning our neighborhoods”?

Perhaps this would just be a case of agreeing to disagree. However, the rhetoric coming from the administration has been increasingly inflammatory, culminating in the Mayor implying that some members of council were racists. In addition, some of the Mayor’s “allies” (in reality people who will support anyone who opposes Campbell, Cohen, and Spies) have resorted to putting up deliberately false information online and claiming that refusing to replace perfectly serviceable street lights is somehow “political payback”. One example is the photo on the left. Posted by one of the more disreputable local bloggers, it purports to be a street light from either Canal Woods or Spring Chase. As evidenced by the photos above, you can clearly see that it is not.

We are forced to ask the question – Couldn’t more be accomplished for city residents by attempting to work together rather than attacking someone because you disagree with them?