I am going to tackle each highlighted area on its own.
The highlighted blue section regarding the "11" Crime Task Force Meetings is a huge joke. I would like for Jim to respond publicly and let people know how many total members of the City of Salisbury attended these meetings? And the second part is the safe streets legislation was not the reason the crime task force was formed. Jim may want to try to use it as a political tool now, but that was not it's main purpose of inception.
The Purple section regarding the "8" safe streets coalition meetings has the same problem as above. How many total members of the public from the City of Salisbury attended these meetings?
The Green section is a huge Joke, the Mayor's Roundtable meetings are hardly ever held, have very little participation from the public and again a question must be asked how many of these meetings actually went into detail about the safe streets legislation alone?
The Red Highlighted section however takes the cake and is the biggest fraud of all. The Dec 7th "public forum on crime" was in direct response to Debbie Campbell and Terry Cohen along with Jim Ireton using the robbery and shooting of Greg Knowles at eastside deli as a way to try to maneuver Chief Webster out of office. The 70 people in attendance? friends of Debbie Campbell, Terry Cohen, Jim Ireton and people that hated Chief Webster, along with perhaps maybe 15 actual people with no agenda. This is a fact. Jim of course will deny it and act like it was all legit but the people that actually know politics in Salisbury know otherwise.
I will even play devil's advocate here and ask this, say the 70 were all legit had no agenda and say the other meetings have had 150 people from the public in attendance, that would mean less than 250 people in a City of 30 thousand have had input on the legislation.
The blue highlighted section is Jim at his best, trying to paint SAPOA like they are the problem but he will sit down and tell them what they have to do. Kris Adams came to a City Council meeting after this letter and spoke at public comments on June 14th check yourself and informed the public about all the steps SAPOA has taken to try to work with Jim and his refusal to even sit down and talk with them. But in Jim's world they are evil so he refuses.
Jim Ireton needs to learn that he can't have his way and throw a tantrum because something isn't being done at his whim, and actually care bout the citizens. Like it or not SAPOA needs to be a part of this process as they are 75% of the rentals in the City of Salisbury. Jim Ireton is using all the fancy wording and games to try to get around the fact he wants things done because he says so and not because the public has demanded it.
