By Tamara Sheffield

Special to the Salisbury Post

As you know, I ran for Salisbury City Council. For a first-time candidate for public office, I was overwhelmed by all the support and unsure of how it was all going to go down. I had fun, learned so much about the process and truly enjoyed meeting and learning more about what we as citizens want and need.

Of course I was disappointed not being elected to a seat on Salisbury City Council, but I am far from defeated. So over the last month, I have taken time to connect to why I, or anyone else for that matter, would go through all the campaigning which has nothing to do with serving the community.

Personally, I would have liked all the time and money spent on campaigning to have been donated to many of the worthwhile charities right here in Salisbury.

Anyway, the candidate field was large this election. I couldn’t help to have thoughts of why some candidates, including incumbents, seemed so interested in serving when they had been doing so little over the past few years in giving back to the city or communities (at least to my knowledge). Trust me — several candidates DO give back — so don’t critique me for throwing the baby out with the bath water.

As I said, the candidate field was large. I had already talked to the great folks at Rowan Helping Ministries early in the fall about this opportunity to serve. We had such a great collective of people;  how could we as a group volunteer to give back, at least one day? On the eve of the election I sent this email to all 16 candidates:

“I wanted to reach out to the entire group to see if we as a group can make an impact. Since there are 16 of us — we could collectively do something positive. I wanted to suggest that as a group we volunteer one day together at Rowan Helping Ministries. We can divide into two groups based on schedule availability — one group can do food prep and one group can serve. Regardless of the election results, I think we can all still do positive things to help the city and this is just one small thing.

“If enough of us are interested, I will be happy to connect with Nate at RHM to get some dates and get us scheduled.

“Let me know,

“Tamara”

The initial response from the group was positive and most wanted to do this. Now it is after the election. Our day to serve at RHM is this Thursday. Most of us have jobs so scheduling is tough, causing many not to be able to attend. This is understandable; I am lucky to have some control over my schedule. Some candidates didn’t even bother to acknowledge the follow-up emails to get scheduled, and one person asked to be taken off the email trail. Looks like five of us will be able to attend and help out. But I am hopeful more will just show up.

I wonder, if this had been before the election, how would the other candidates have responded? Would they have made the schedule adjustments? Would they have seen a personal gain to help in the election and made it happen?  Would they have attended if it had been a candidate forum? 

I suppose this letter could be construed to be self-serving as well. And if that’s what it takes to get more people involved in this community and city, then so be it. What I don’t wonder about is where I stand or why I went through all the campaigning.

I love Salisbury!

Tamara Sheffield lives in Salisbury.