Where will Salisbury go after Tuesday?

Unless there’s a write-in campaign I’m unaware of, Tuesday will be the coronation for Jake Day as Salisbury mayor. But the question is what sort of City Council will he work with?

With the revamped five-district Council map,  the deck was shuffled for the composition of City Council. Two incumbents were placed in the same district, while two of the new districts have no incumbent. Thus, City Council will have no more than three holdovers but it is possible that only one incumbent could survive, and that’s only because she is unopposed.

Publicly I’m sure Jake would be tight-lipped about who he would prefer from each district. Obviously he has worked with the incumbents but there may be some challengers who more align with his economic plan. (I had to look up just what “place-based economic development” was, though.)

It seems to me that Day will be able to lead effectively, but I suspect if Jim Ireton is elected to City Council it may result in more butting of heads between a mayor and former mayor, particularly on issues Ireton has advocated like rent control. Will Ireton try to promote his own failed agenda from a Council seat?

In the next few years, assuming current trends continue, Salisbury will be the county seat of the Eastern Shore’s largest county. We are gaining on the current leader, Cecil County.

For the longest time Salisbury has billed itself as the “crossroads of Delmarva.” But the city is at a crossroads itself – as Day himself points out, “we have been slow to recover from the recent recession.” Perhaps we have assets to leverage, but the other thing we need is a leader to tell Annapolis we could use a little help in some areas and to back off in others.

Regardless of who is elected to City Council, Day continues a generational turnover in county leadership positions. With the exception of Delegate Mary Beth Carozza, all of our county’s representative Delegates were born in the 1970s and all of them are in their first terms in Annapolis. If you want change in Salisbury, well, we are going to get it.