Serving Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the Delmarva Peninsula
The mission of the Greater Salisbury Committee is to serve as a catalyst to improve the community. Since 1967, GSC has been actively seeking sustainable solutions to the challenges that face the Greater Salisbury area. We exist at the intersection where community, people, ideas, and resources come together.
A serious and growing crisis on Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore is impacting families, employers, and the future of our communities. The severe shortage of childcare has placed an enormous strain on our families, especially working parents and caregivers. Parents are often forced to choose between maintaining employment and staying home with their children, leading to lost income, unstable housing, and increased reliance on public assistance. Employers feel the impact through absenteeism, turnover, and reduced workforce participation. To demonstrate the severity of the crisis, Wicomico County’s licensed childcare programs have a total capacity of approximately 3,385 children; however, according to the U.S. Census, more than 6,690 children are between the ages 0–4. Even accounting for parental choice or informal care arrangements, the numbers reveal a significant structural shortfall. This means that even if every licensed slot were filled, thousands of young children would remain without formal childcare options.
GSC is pleased to share a research report prepared independently by graduate students from Johns Hopkins University that examines Salisbury’s municipal elections and compares election models used in peer cities across Maryland and the Delmarva region. The goal is to support informed discussion by making the research and data accessible to the community. GSC is not advocating for or endorsing any specific approach. Click on the links below to read the full report.
CITY OF SALISBURY ELECTORAL REFORM FINAL REPORT
City of Salisbury Electoral Reform Town Hall Report
Knowing there are challenges looming with regards to education funding, GSC has formed a special Blue-Ribbon panel to take a comprehensive look forward. While fully recognizing that funding for education is a political decision, i.e. the funding is a budgetary process at the Board of Education, County Executive, and County Council levels, the goal of this panel is to take a serious, non-partisan look at the education funding needs, not only in the short-term, but in the long-term – and make recommendations for the public and the elected officials to consider. Education is the number one economic development engine in any community/county. Doing all we can as a community to take a proactive look into the challenges, and making recommendations to meet those challenges, is paramount.
The Women’s Leadership Council (WLC) serves to inspire and empower women in the greater Salisbury area to flourish through assembly and partnership, facilitating advancement of members as professional leaders in their life, work, and community. GSC was instrumental in the creation of WLC in 2021.
This community-based mental and behavioral health initiative began in 2023. GSC has helped facilitate a collaborative effort with key community partners to address the Lower Shore mental and behavioral health challenges. This initiative, led by Dr. Samantha Scott, is known as Healthy Minds for Shore. Its partners include GSC, Salisbury University, Wor-Wic Community College, private mental health providers; TidalHealth, Chesapeake Health Care, Wicomico County Public Schools, the Richard A. Henson Foundation, the Franklin P. and Arthur W. Perdue Foundation, the Philip and Barbara Long Family Foundation, and the Wicomico Health Department. More on the work effort and successes of this collaboration can be found here: www.healthymindsforshore.org
The Salisbury/Wicomico housing market has challenges across the board. To address those challenges, GSC has assembled a Housing Task Force, chaired by GSC member (and past GSC Chair) Bill McCain, of W. R. McCain & Associates. The task force began its work in January 2024. The goal: to provide a plan to address housing development challenges such as the lack of new neighborhoods, the condition of current housing inventory, high rents, and a shortage of affordable housing in the Salisbury/Wicomico County area. The task force is made up of realtors, affordable housing experts, builders/developers, local business owners, and others who understand that the Salisbury/Wicomico housing market is underperforming.
GSC 2030 is an attempt by the GSC to do what it does best: take a critical look at the community to evaluate its opportunities and its challenges, and present potential solutions that can point our community forward. GSC 2030 endeavors to identify what lies ahead, and to identify potential solutions that can best position this community to thrive and prosper in 2030 – and beyond.
Community Connect is a collaborative GSC initiative with many of our area’s most significant businesses and organizations: Salisbury University, Wor-Wic Community College, City of Salisbury, Salisbury Area Chamber of Commerce, TidalHealth, Perdue Farms, Wicomico County Public Schools, and the Wicomico County Education Foundation. The goal is to bring new executive level hires from these significant local employers together two times a year. It’s meant as a way to share with those executives and their new employers all of the opportunities that this area offers.
TCL is an immersive leadership series, launched by GSC in April 2017, that is held every two years in partnership with Salisbury University. The goal of TCL is to engage future Salisbury area leaders in learning about the industries, institutions, and entities that are the backbone of our community. Every month for 8 consecutive months, TCL participants take field trips to learn more about these community and regional assets. At the conclusion of each monthly visit, exceptional leadership speakers share insights with the TCL cohort.
The GSC Water and Sewer Task Force has been working and meeting regularly since 2022. Wicomico County has approximately 18,000 septic systems. The Wicomico County Comprehensive Water and Sewer Plan includes a map of “Sewer Problem Areas” which are areas with known failures and further potential for septic system failures. The GSC Task Force has been led by two GSC members with extensive experience in the water/sewer arena: Matt Drew initially, and Rob Duma currently. Also included on the task force are representatives from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Salisbury University, Tri-County Council for the Lower Eastern Shore, Salisbury Area Chamber of Commerce, Center for Watershed Protection, and local engineers and GSC members who are interested in this significant challenge. The efforts of the task force have been widely respected and helped the Wicomico County government to create a Wicomico Sanitary Commission, and resulted in funding from Wicomico County to begin the long challenge ahead to address our water/sewer needs.
Junior Achievement of the Eastern Shore is an organization that GSC brought to Delmarva in the 1980’s. The Perdue Henson Junior Achievement Center, which opened in the Fall of 2023 in Salisbury, is a culmination of the tremendous work of JAES over the years. This new interactive/immersive facility will be visited by 10,000 students each year, from 8 school districts on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and one from Virginia’s Eastern Shore, to learn more about financial literacy. GSC is proud of its role in helping to secure lead philanthropic and state support for this $7.5 million facility.
GSC is playing a strong regional role in advancing the Offshore Wind industry, working closely with the two entities who are bringing Offshore Wind energy to Maryland: Orsted and US Wind. We believe our region can be a key player in the Operations and Maintenance supply chain that will be needed over the next 20 years as Offshore Wind comes to the area. Orsted and US Wind will bring the largest wind turbines in the world off the coast of Ocean City in the next five years.
