08/22/2025
How It Began
There’s no shortage of criticism about the City of Reidsville—but it isn’t coming from trolls or drive-by complainers. It’s coming from good people who, for years, held their tongues and gave the benefit of the doubt.
What you’re hearing now isn’t about a bad week or a single misstep. It’s the culmination of decades of frustration—patterns of mismanagement and a culture that too often rewarded connections over qualifications. Too many roles felt filled to “check a box,” not to do the work.
That hits hardest for those who invested their life, time, money, and soul here. Many of the voices on this page have run downtown businesses for years. Their needs went unanswered. That’s why they speak plainly: they know.
I’ve personally heard from more than six entrepreneurs who say they were told, “We don’t want that downtown.” Whether or not that was ever official policy, that was the message received. And every time it happened, a dream died, a storefront stayed empty, and a stream of tax revenue never began.
Are things improving? Yes—slowly. But the progress has come without real acknowledgment from leadership that the old approach failed. When protecting the record matters more than changing the results, it keeps us stuck. If doing something new that works would expose that the old way didn’t work, change stalls.
Meanwhile, towns across North Carolina have blossomed over the last twenty years. Reidsville hasn’t kept pace. That can’t be our fate.
It’s time to move from “no by default” to “how do we get to yes?”—transparent permitting, clear timelines, service standards that are published and tracked, and leadership willing to say, “We got it wrong, and here’s how we’ll fix it.”
Why hasn’t that happened here? What have you seen, and what would help? Share your experience below so we can name the problem—and finally change it.
