What's next in charting Salisbury's future? You can make your voice heard on it

Salisbury's City Council weekend "retreat" attended by council members and Mayor Randy Taylor was just the first step in establishing an agenda of pressing issues slated for public comment.

While not a formal legislative session, the publicly announced meeting was presided over by a neutral party free to the city to facilitate a vision for Salisbury's future. The public will get a chance to sound off on what became a list with a period for public comment to be scheduled at a formal session in chambers.

"It was goal-setting session where we went over what was important to us and what we wanted to see in this city," said D'Shawn Doughty, Salisbury City Council president. "What's remarkable is as much as we're different people from different backgrounds, we all want generally the same things for (Salisbury). We'll be formally sharing what was discussed within the next two weeks."

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Fighting homelessness among top issues discussed

Key issues included housing limitations with attention on the current inventory, area homeless, and community partners that are serving those in between a permanent residence.

"This is a chance to say 'this is where we are, where we want to be' and clearly there's a gap there. We need to merge that in some way," Doughty said.

Code of conduct for employees a work in progress

Revisions to the current employee conduct policy were not covered in the retreat, yet Doughty noted there have already been meetings between representatives from the council and administration. Revising the code is not a new idea, and has been on the city's ever-expansive to-do list.

The issue has even been discussed in open session of council meetings, with proposed revisions being collected from both sides. The council president said the code should be revised by mid-September.

"While this is a new and different way for council to meet and guide their efforts, we're not excluding the public from the conversation. We'll accept public comments on the notes from this meeting and we always welcome their (input). We'll do this periodically so that we're all in accord with our best foot forward," Doughty said.

Doughty noted a third-party facilitator makes it that much easier to avoid any personal biases on a given issue.

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This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: What's next in charting Salisbury's future? You can make your voice heard on it