What does a better Salisbury look like? Mayor Day shares vision with State of the City

In a comprehensive and nostalgic annual State of the City address, Mayor Jake Day highlighted a bevy of initiatives poised to keep Salisbury a progressive and fiscally responsible city.

The Tuesday night speech focused on everything from job creation, public safety, business development, multiculturalism, homelessness and infrastructure. This year, Day underscored the shortfalls in such areas not as challenges, but as opportunities to implement much-needed solutions by "stewards of this community that is on a continuous and unending path from its founding in 1732 to whatever the future might hold."

Day started with the concise, but complicated, question: What does a better Salisbury look like?

On job creation and housing

Past economic realities with the likes of Campbell’s Soup, Dresser Wayne, Labinal and Brunswick moving an estimated 2,030 jobs to locations of "lax regulation and cheap labor" like Mexico and China still meant a resilient Eastern Shore, Day noted.

"Wicomico County maintains 8% manufacturing employment, and Salisbury maintains 12% manufacturing employment — still tied as our largest employment sector with health care and professional services like architecture, engineering and finance," Day said.

He also noted Salisbury has seen a nearly 30% growth in the number of manufacturing firms from 2015 to 2022. That figure mostly includes small, high-skilled firms oriented on defense communications, AgriTech and life sciences.

Since 2015, Day added the city has seen a jump of more than 7,000 jobs to the Salisbury urban core right in the center of Wicomico County. That includes the recent announcement of more than 150 new jobs coming to Chesapeake Shipbuilding.

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"Since 2020, Salisbury is now the No. 1 place that people are moving to who leave the Baltimore Metropolitan Area. Salisbury is now the No. 1 place that people are moving to who leave the Washington Metropolitan Area," Day said.

Accommodating the influx of workers also meant investing in affordable housing.

Homebuilders, landowners and real estate developers responded to overtures by the city over the course of a 90-day window for proposed projects with $1.4 billion in new housing proposals. According to Day, that is a 175% increase in the total existing housing in Salisbury. That also represents a 67% increase in the total assessable base of the city.

More than 8,000 new housing units were proposed, including single-family, duplexes, apartments, student housing, townhomes, and assisted and senior living.

On crime, traffic, pedestrian safety

Efforts to keep the public safe have also led to a statistical decrease in crime in the city.

Day argued since 2009, the Salisbury Police Department has brought the crime rates to new lows. From 2006 to 2016, Salisbury had the fastest declining crime rate of any city in the United States, with a 100% decrease in arson and 63% decrease in burglary. Statistical crime rates continue to go down, as they have every single year since 2017, bucking the national trend of rising crime rates during the pandemic.

"This is how trust is built and rebuilt. And we readily acknowledge that our officers have perhaps the most difficult job in America," Day said. "(They are) entrusted with deciding life from death, protecting and risking your own life, expected to make all decisions in an instant, and serving under a microscope with the worst examples always caught on camera and shared millions of times over. And we believe to be trusted, we must be trustworthy."

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Safety from crime is just one element Day noted, as more people means more pedestrians and traffic.

In 2018, the city adopted Vision Zero, a plan that challenges us to reimagine what infrastructure should look like to no longer have pedestrian deaths.

Work is already underway on East and West Carroll streets, and soon to begin on Eastern Shore Drive, Day says, to make "these streets safer by reducing speed and volume of traffic" while using the wasted space by providing pedestrian and bike facilities to make them more accessible by means other than automobile.

Since Vision Zero’s adoption, injury accidents have fallen 19% and no fatalities have occurred on city streets. All categories of accidents have declined, while nationwide, crashes have risen more than 10%.

While the pandemic has slowed implementation with supply chain issues and high material costs forcing delays, none of the Vision Zero projects have come to a full stop, and work is nearing completion on West College Avenue. Development of urban greenways is also facilitating more pedestrian-friendly locations in the city.

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Salisbury’s rail-trail, serving the same purpose from north to south, provides safe access for pedestrians and cyclists through the heart of the city, connecting Salisbury University and the Naylor Mill Forest. Just last month, ground was broken on the northernmost section of this Rail Trail.

These east-west, north-south primary routes are critical connections in the city’s Bicycle Network Plan, voted into law in 2016, which is aimed at reducing the number of bicycle-related accidents.

On business development

Issues like infill and new business development have been the cornerstone of much of Day's agenda for the city center. During the State of the City, he highlighted the changing face of downtown, painting a picture of a place welcoming patrons.

Input by the public in the 2015 Downtown Master Plan has precipitated a "revitalized" area.

Salisbury now boasts:

• 20 restaurants, bars and bakeries.

• 70 small businesses, retailers and shops.

• Every building renovated since 1990 and for the first time in memory — every single building either fully occupied or under construction.

• A completely renovated riverwalk with new landscaping and lighting.

• Spaces filled with parks: an amphitheater, a labyrinth, a dog park, an edible garden and a riverfront games park.

• Unity Square with construction in the coming months.

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On arts and culture

Among the key point was the vibrant culture of the city complete with a number of events for the public.

"By bringing the National Folk Festival to Salisbury, we were able to successfully lobby for funding from Gov. Hogan that helped get us across the finish line. Finally, after some 45 years, we have that outdoor entertainment space that has been considered one of the lynchpin projects for downtown revitalization," Day said.

Events like the National Folk Festival had $67 million in direct economic impact, and some 400,000 visitors attending over the four years that Salisbury served as host city.

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For Day, the soul of the city can also be found in its public art. His speech highlighted its 20 painted electric transformers, 10 murals and four sculpture projects throughout the city's center. Just some weeks ago, it also cut the ribbon on our area’s largest mural on the recently exposed side of the Evolution Craft Brewery and the basketball court mural on Waterside Park.

The Salisbury Zoo remains at the center of the city's efforts to have "unique regional amenities," Day noted. Construction is soon to be completed on the new administrative building; and it has welcomed new sloths, red wolves, baby wallabies and two Andean bear cubs this year.

Coming soon is a new pavilion that can be rented for outdoor events and weddings.

Just as Day began his address, he ended it answering his own question saying all is possible for the city on the precipice of its next era of responsible and realistic growth as long its residents did "not quit until there’s no fight left in us, to make this little city of ours the absolute best small city in America."

This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: Mayor shares vision for 'a better Salisbury' in State of the City