Dust bunnies in the corner

I don't want to belabor the point too much, but a lot of what I said was actually borne out by the election results. Indeed, I was right on the money with my prediction of a 3-2 split on Debbie Campbell's anti-TIF side. Unfortunately, that's not enough to override a certain mayoral veto so the TIF is going to stand. This means that Louise Smith and Terry Cohen are going to have to help Debbie find every possible non-public safety budget cut there is in order to start the process of saving the city enough money to hold up their end of the millions the Old Mall TIF will cost the taxpayers of Salisbury.

On the other hand, the odds-on favorite to get hold of the City Council gavel would have to be Debbie Campbell. I would have to assume that given the choice between Gary Comegys and Debbie Campbell, both Cohen and Smith would vote for Debbie (although I see Louise as the swing vote.) Personally I think Campbell would be the proper choice despite having less seniority than Gary Comegys. Gary wouldn't be a bad choice but not the best choice, because Debbie does her homework on the issues.

I was having a discussion at work yesterday with a cohort of mine who was squarely behind the Comegys/Atkins/Ewalt ticket. His biggest problem with Tim Spies was his bugging out of the now-infamous SWAC forum, and I wonder if that action cost him enough votes to miss out. It certainly didn't help Tim in his effort to move out of fourth place, nor was I surprised at all that Gary moved up to second. I'm going to go under the assumption that Gary has enough absentees to stay in the number 2 slot.

But I have to extend my congratulations to Louise Smith. She ran a tireless campaign and, even though I didn't think she came across as well at the forums, obviously did very well in her door-to-door campaigning. I guess maybe she'll have time for John Robinson now that she won!

And with that, the elections are now all over but the final counting, if only for about 10 months. I know I'm a little burnt on politics, and with the General Assembly coming to a halt in a week, I can write about more issues in a general sense and now quite be so politicentric (if that's a word.) I've got a couple GA posts I'm planning on, but other than that the focus will go onto national and presidential politics this spring and summer, with the other regular summer feature being my picks for Shorebird of the Week.

So Mayor Barrie Parsons Tilghman will still run the city of Salisbury, and the bloggers end up with probably half a loaf. However, we in the blogging scene have managed to make ourselves a force to be reckoned with. That's part of the story that will continue to be written about the Salisbury City Council election of 2007.