Rowan County spent $3.425 million buying the Salisbury Mall, paid for with tax dollars from the county’s reserve fund. The county has requested approval from the Local Government Commission for a 10-year loan of $3.950 million to reimburse the general fund.
County Manager Gary Page called for developing it over 15-20 years at a possible cost of $10-$15 million. Page says that last year the county spent $2 million more than it took in and that a property tax increase would be necessary because the county was down to six weeks operating expenses. Page wants $22 million in that account and is proposing a tax increase of 3 cents or more to the current rate of just over 62 cents per $100 of assessed property value. Of course, this has nothing to do with the mall purchase. I have it on good authority that each one cent tax increase generates an additional $1.1-$1.6 million in revenue. A three cent tax increase would generate $3.3-4.8 million.
Now is not the time for a property tax increase. The excuse that cheap square footage should be purchased now is a bad one. Cheap square footage doesn’t cost county taxpayers an additional $10-$15 million.
My proposal? Let’s sell the mall for $3.425 million. It will sell quickly because of the bargain price we paid. We can then put the money back in the general fund and not increase property taxes and not have to borrow $3.95 million now and an additional $10-$15 million in the future. Then there will not be a tax increase now or in the future because of the Salisbury Mall. Now is not the time for a property tax increase, especially one for the Salisbury Mall.
We should instead focus on keeping the property tax rate low, give county employees a modest raise for their excellent service, and bgin to humanely euthanize animals at the shelter.
A different path on the former Salisbury Mall can provide this outcome.
— Todd Paris
Salisbury

While I appreciate your “laurels” to the parents who served lunch to the staff at Salisbury High School, I did not appreciate your inference that we are “foul weather fans” of our teachers.
There is no denying that teachers have an extremely challenging job and they play an imeasurably valuable role in society. It is also true that parents in this nation may not regularly laud teachers as they deserve to be lauded. However, choosing Salisbury High to make your point was ill advised. If you had done a bit of research, you may have discovered that the PTA at Salisbury is extremely active, providing occasional snacks and drinks in the teacher lounge, refreshments monthly at staff meetings, dinners for all the teachers at biannual Open Houses, a full week of staff appreciation breakfasts or lunches, and welcome gift bags for new teachers.
The lunch you focused on was actually the second in three months that the staff had enjoyed. Maybe educators are neglected and disrespected too much in this country, but Salisbury High parents love the teachers and staff at our high school and we show it. Often.
— Amy Wimmer
Salisbury

Wimmer is the president of the Salisbury High School PTSA.

There are many who think the distinguishing marks of American culture are our liberty and vigor, that our being “the land of the free and the home of the brave” is what makes us unique. This view (or rather, attitude) is rife with difficulty.
One, while we have been blessed with a great deal of liberty and courage (thanks unto God), we also have no shortage of restrictive laws and cowards. Then, too, many other nations have plenty of liberty and courage (courage more than liberty), in some cases surpassing us in these fields: the U.S. ranks 12th in economic freedom, for example. It seems to me that what truly exemplifies us — I daresay defines us — is our penchant for legislation. That is, we seem to believe that any and all problems can be made to disappear, if only we can pass the right laws.
Climate change? Pass the right law and all will be well. Poverty? Illness? Illiteracy? Crime? High unemployment? Pass the right laws and they will be effectively remedied. Our belief in the power of passing laws (respecting established law, not so much: courts strike them down and executives ignore them when they disagree with their own ideologies) is unhealthy and, in some cases, almost superstitious, as if merely passing laws is a magical formula that will banish all evil from the land.
This attitude, common among both Left and Right, distinguishes us, a fact which is most unfortunate. We are now at a point where, as the English author G.K.. Chesterton said, “Law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop.” Pretty much every matter is covered by law now, a fact which makes the claim of “land of the free” rather dubious and irrelevant.
— Tom Hervey
Stanfield

My dad, Jack T. Owen, who died in January at age 90, delivered mail in Winston-Salem for 30years and never had a weather related absence, including the famous March 1960 “three Wednesday” snows. A few years a go, I told him about the China Grove Post Office closing due to weather and not delivering mail. He was apoplectic: “What are they? Sissies?”
I hate to concede the point, but he really was of a greater generation!
— Steve Owen
Kannapolis