Full meeting transcript - November 12, 2019

» one of these things and get after it we have a quorum mr connell is on the way he'll be here in a very few minutes he's caught in traffic it's a great day in kershaw county it's a great day in this all-american county uh there's dirt being turned over and jobs are being created by new business we've had our veterans just honored this past week in the schools and throughout this wonderful county and we have an agenda tonight that's filled with new opportunities and and jobs and philo and i think we ought to get on with the business that we have at hand before we do i just want to mention we have the cold weather coming on and we have a number of people who are less fortunate than some of us and as jesus said we should take care of the least the last the lame and the lost in this cold weather

» as we do so well in this county and in this city and every member in this room here has pulled together to help his fellow man and woman i ask you to consider that as we go into this rough winter weather it's about to hit tonight with that i would ask you to rise for the invocation and the pledge of allegiance and i remind you what the good book says about blessed is the nation whose god is the lord and in this veterans day i ask you to pray with me heavenly father we thank you for our veterans and all those who serve this county and this nation selflessly and courageously as do our first responders and our armed forces while there is confusion in the national capital. There is no confusion in this town in this county.

» We're firm in our belief in you and firm in our thanks for the devotion and dedication of those who serve us and even those who give their lives on behalf of our liberty and freedoms. All this we recognize in your holy name. Amen. Amen. I mean, the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance by the United States of America to the republic nation.

» With that, we move into public comments and i asked mr dubose to steer us through that please six people signed up mr chairman lemon is 30 so you take about six everybody will get their time so the first person that signed up is chip galloway as mr galloway comes forward i remind you this is a chance for comments from the public there will be no exchange of question and answers this is a time for the council here to hear your opinions and take note of them i ask you to remain in the decorum of this body so that we may conduct business efficiently and without any to and fro i would also ask you for those who are new to this body is up here we can't hear if there's a lot of chatter behind you but sometimes in among the audience are disrupted by that chatter and and noise so i'd ask you to kee

» p it quiet while you're in the audience so that everyone may hear and proceedings may advance expeditiously. Mr. Galloway, go right ahead, sir. Good to see you. Thank you, Chairman, members of the Council. My name is Chip Galloway. I'm the Chairman of the Kershaw County Committee of 100. Seated behind me are members of my board, and I'm going to ask them to come up, Amy Kiner and Melissa Emmons. At this time, I would like to have them come forward. The Committee Committee of 100 is a nonprofit organization that supports Kershaw County's efforts to recruit and expand industry locally. We are here today to celebrate, to celebrate the recruitment efforts of our economic development team and to formally announce the arrival of a new company coming to Kershaw County.

» This project has been confidential for several years as the county team worked under the radar to recruit and build a trusting relationship with this company. Today it has paid off and we would like to publicly thank your economic development office for the diligence and hard work. On behalf of the Kershaw County Committee of 100, our community, we would like to welcome Earnest Health to Kershaw County. Earnest Health is currently establishing a new rehabilitation hospital in the county's watery executive park in Elgin.

» The $17.56 million investment will create 114 jobs with an average wage of $25.61 an hour, which is above the county's average hourly wage chairman burns with your permission may we present again this time to commemorate this occasion the committee 100 would like to formally welcome you to kershaw county and present this plaque to you to honor and celebrate ernest health's investment in the wonderful kershaw county and if would be okay um chairman i would like to have a um an opportunity for i know mr gardner never turns that down come on up let's get a group photo please if there's um any more committee of 100 members y'all would like to come forward we would love to have you all right let's just be in the front let's go let's group up here pretty good oh more coming all right two thank yo

» u very much chip and 100 we couldn't do it without to make a few comments and speak about uh speak as a boat boat owner about some issues we have with the patriot landing boat ramp and what our expectations as motorboat owners are or would be for the you bring the mic up to your voice there you go thank you okay uh what our expectations would be for the new watery river park i've uh i've personally been launching boats at the patriot landing it wasn't always called that for i know i have friends i've got one back there that's been he doesn't want me to tell you how old he is, but he's been launching boats back there probably for 50 years or more. And we never had any issues launching boats back there until the pier was placed downstream from the boat ramp.

» And we understand why the pier was placed there. At the time the pier was placed there, the county did not have enough property on the upstream side of the ramp to locate the pier there, which is typically where a pier would be placed in a river waterway situation. So we're not, you know, criticizing that, and the pier was placed where it had to be placed at that time. I brought some photos here tonight, and I hope each of you have copies of those. The the photos provided show two examples of the problems that a small craft owner faces trying to launch a boat at that ramp right now. It can be hazardous, and I've damaged my trailer and my boat in the past couple of years launching down there. I no longer even try to launch my boat that ramp by myself anymore.

» I'm semi-retired now and I've got a lot more time that I could be spending on that river and it's pretty frustrating to me that I can't launch my boat down there by myself anymore. Both of the examples in those photos actually occurred with two experienced boat operators trying to launch one boat and it was myself and I've got a good friend of mine Billy Prather in the back here he and I were launching a boat down there and after you know the trailers swept against that pier and pinned there by the current it's extremely difficult and dangerous to try to dislodge that boat the if you look at the photo you'll see one photo in there with a piece of pvc pipe coming out the rear of it and this boat launch occurred in the wintertime and we actually had to wade out onto the frame of that trailer

» and attach a line to the trailer so billy could take his boat and pull his trailer out from underneath the pier so those are just two examples and i've spoken with a number of people that have pretty much had the same issue down there when they're trying to launch your boat, especially, you know, by themselves, but it doesn't really matter, you know, just one little slip, even if you've got two experienced guys down there trying to get their boat in the water.

» It's something, and I'm surprised somebody hasn't been hurt down there at this point, but we'd heard that a steering committee might be formed to collect input on the proposed uses for the new park and i'm not i'm not sure we're not sure if that happened or not if it did i'm not aware of it we only learned yesterday that the county currently has no plans to accommodate the motor boating segment of our community at the new park and we find that very unfair and hope we can convince you to reconsider the following figures mr arledge the Kershaw County Auditor, and these are approximate numbers, but we have like 5,800 to 6,000 registered boat owners in this county paying property taxes that average $145 per watercraft.

» And if you do the math on that, that's well in excess of three quarters of a million dollars in revenue that's generating. The kayak and canoe owners, unless they're motorized, don't pay any property taxes, and I'd also like to note that the kayaks and canoes don't have any problems or safety issues launching their craft at the Patriot landing boat ramp. We plan to return next council meeting. It was kind of a short notice for us, but we'll have more support next time, and we'd like to provide more input and some ideas, hopefully, to you folks and see if we can't convince you to re-examine your plans and provide some accommodations for the motorboating community in our county at that new Watery River Park. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Mr. Holland. Mr. DeVos.

» The third person who signed up is Susan Witzkowski from the talking about Vision 2030. I'm happy to be here this evening on behalf of the core team, Vision 2030. what I'd like to do is just give you a quick update of what this team has been doing as they've been zigzagging across the county this last month and a half going ahead and telling our citizens the opportunity that they have to be able to participate and engage in the survey that was created it is our fourth survey that we've done and it's an opportunity for our citizens to have their voice be heard of how vision 2030 is doing and a lot of the team and staff have been busy going to churches organizations evening meetings schools and I know it's a concern that not everyone has connectivity and able to reach a link that is in a compu

» ter so paper is available but we have made some opportunities with the library and down at the Community Medical Clinic to provide a link for those coming to our site and going out to Bethune with our community health workers to give them an opportunity to fill out the link so an update for you is we are a little bit ahead of last year with about 380 so folks that have filled out it takes about 14 minutes so I want to ask you if you can encourage your constituents to take a 14 minutes of their time or so to fill out this link if you have any questions please contact myself or Paula Scarborough who's here this evening and I think Michael Conley is right over here as well Julian burns and we have palm cards maybe somewhere out in the audience it might be on your chair a few of them yes those

» and they're y'all are prepared that's great so that's all I have thank Thank you so much for this opportunity and I hope you have a good evening. Great work on the survey. Thank you. Mr. DeBose. The fourth person that signed up is David Fuller. Thank you Chairman, thank you Council Members for letting me come and speak tonight. I understand tonight that we're going to be voting later on on the name for the park. American Legion Post 17 submitted a letter to the Council in July 2018. A couple months ago, I attended a council meeting and submitted to Mrs. Siegler copies of the same letter, and she handed out copies to each council member, and I'm sure you received those and hopefully had a chance to read them. That letter requested that the property that was purchased just northwest of U.S.

» Highway 1 and the Bobby Jones Bridge, intendedly named Watery River Park, could be named Watery River Veterans Park. And tonight, we hope that you will still honor that request by voting yes to name the park Watery River Veterans Park. We owe it to our veterans. In this county alone, there are over 6,000 veterans. There's a lot of military history that took place along the banks of the Watery River. I think this past week and yesterday, the citizens of this great nation realized how much our veterans are honored and loved. We owe it to all our veterans in our county. If you have a Veterans Park, they can be proud of.

» With an American flag flying high, a state flag, and with all the service flags representing all of our services, and a POWMI flag with a big monument and several other monuments added in the future. We have mentioned moving the 505th Monument down to this location. If we get to do that, that would be fine. If not, we can have monuments erected to represent the great history and battles that were fought along the river such as the skirmish at Carey's Fort the day before the Battle of Camden took place. Also monuments that preserve the memories of the maneuvers of 1941 and also the parachute drop that the 505th monument represents. Military men that served and fought for our state and country.

» So again, on behalf of the American Legion, vote 17, I ask you to vote in favor for naming the park Waterbury River Veterans Park. again, I want to thank you for letting me come and speak. Thank you. Thank you much indeed. Thank you, David. Mr. DuBose, the next person that signed up is Tom Webb III. Mr. Webb. First, I want to salute my fellow veterans up there. Like brothers and sisters, we don't always agree on things, but we'll still be brothers and sisters. Something quick I wanted to read. Something that Comptroller Ekstrom, Richard Ekstrom put out about a year ago. It's very pertinent then, very pertinent now, always will be. Quick little excerpt from it. One sure way to improve people's quality of life is to let them keep more of their money.

» Now, that's coming from somebody in government. Respect those who ask you tough questions. Just about every public body has one, the citizen watchdog. That's coming from somebody in government. And although they may be annoying to the politicians, their role is a vital one. These are warriors laboring to improve their government. And then the last little thing that I wanted to point out, citizens who care enough to become involved in the process deserve our respect. Yes, even those who ask the tough questions. I'm not going to be asking any questions, I don't think, but I do have three things I wanted to kind of talk about. And one thing is the title only procedure that you use here occasionally, it shortcuts the way to an ordinance when the public doesn't know what is coming forward.

» You get three chances to prepare for contending with the issue at the end in a public hearing, but it's shortcutted by having title only. There's nothing in it. It makes no sense, in my humble opinion, to have a title only. If you're going to do that, you need to put in somewhere in there another chance for the public to know what's going on and to be able to respond. And that's something that's called transparency. Next thing is about the military model versus the civilian model. For those of us served in the military, we know that everything the military does is highly planned. You have orders, oversight, rules, not much freedom. The military is kind of like a machine. It has to work.

» And so what its purpose is, of course, is to look out for the civilian model back here in this land we call the land of the free America. But it looks to me like the civilian model is more and more kind of giving away to something like the military model, where we have so many rules and regulations, ordinances, always another one, always another the one that we are tending to kind of blend to where we're not quite the civilian model that we used to be the America that our that our parents would have known is slipping away from us and if you don't believe that something like that is happening just look at what's running for political office at the national level people who are out outspoken in favor of socialism so we have a slipping and a sliding that's going on where people who want social

» ism they want stuff that's free, something else is free, but they don't care anything about the freedom of the people. We'll get free stuff that the government says we can have, and we can do things that government says we can do, and things that we can't do that government says we can't do. But one thing we won't get is free people, government model versus the civilian model. The last thing, and this is where some of my brothers and sisters might disagree with me, is the water park, veterans Park. I don't want it to be named that. I'm in post-17. I didn't hear any discussion among the rank and file about what are we going to do about calling this the Veterans Water Park. And the only reason that I'm against it is because there are questions that I've asked that are still not answered.

» And that's where did the money come from that bought it? Where did the money go? Whose pockets did it go into? How is it determined that that property was worth $11,000 an acre and it has almost no commercial value it looks like that's 10 times what it should have brought so until that is resolved uh it's a beautiful place and i think it would be a great part the veterans park but answer those questions first or if if this was happening in another county or in another state we would look at it and say hmm looks like corruption doesn't it somebody is uh pulling the wool over somebody's eyes there's money being moved and there's no good explanation of how that happens except perhaps in the dark and then what happens in the dark so i like the beautiful place but i don't like the ugly possibili

» ties that veteran's name will be associated with something that hasn't been explained very well yet so please forgive me if i've stepped on any toes i've done my duty thank you very much thank you mr webb mr debose mr chairman that concludes the sign-up list and that concludes public comments we move now to adoption of agenda gentlemen it'll be up on the screen and in your but it's at six do we have another i i think chip galloway al holland susan wachowski david fuller um webb and jeff maddox okay mr maddox has not been called mr maddox i'm sorry excuse me i apologize thank you very much i'm sorry jeff maddox i said that's okay i'm sorry man that's okay Gentlemen, me and my friend Polkchop are here to give you a little bit of history on economic development. Hi, my name is Polkchop.

» The history of economic development here in Kershaw County begins somewhere around 2010-2011. Now, Polkchop, why would we want to know the history of economic development because those who study don't study history are doomed to repeat their mistakes that's right poor chop and so why would we want to do that well because i didn't we don't want to repeat the same mistakes we you know what i mean poor chop our history in cursall county of economic development is one of failure after failure for the for the last nine years this county spent over seven million dollars in excess of seven million dollars on economic development with very little to show for it we don't have nothing to show for it no pork chop not hardly a thing over that same time of economic development we've also spent nearly 1.

» 4 million dollars on a real estate team to market it what a real estate team to market it don't you have no real estate agent no we don't have a real estate agent we hire people who are supposed to market it and we give them funds to market it we pay them salaries and they don't sell no buildings no they haven't sold a building right now we got a three 3.1 million dollar building on 601 that we're asking 2.6 million dollars for and yet we don't we're paying 220 000 a year to a economic development team and they hadn't sold anything what i cannot believe this why didn't we hire why didn't we have greg nettles he he's very good at selling economic development and and property well i don't know this is the way government runs poor chop it doesn't run like private sector they hire uh bureaucrat

» s to to market these things and they don't really have to do anything they just have to show up and and who knows what they do well that doesn't sound right a real estate agent gets paid when he just when he said the property and the property closes and he gets a little bit well that's not how it works in government or top in government it works like this we hire four people we pay them 225 000 the county taxes and fees everybody and then we pay for it and they build empty shelves and hope somebody comes to get them that sounds a little crazy yeah i know it does sound a little bit crazy the part how are they supposed to know who what how what kind of industry needs a building how are they but that doesn't sound right how come we don't know that kind of thing well see most people don't pay a

» ttention to what county council is doing over the last 11 years 1.4 million dollars in salaries 3.8 million dollars in county 40 000 a month and in debt what else are we going to do well that don't seem right maybe they ought to stop doing these things and and look at the history of economic development and see it's a disaster it's a poach up bye thank you mr maddox uh mrs boas okay your math is with that we move to the adoption of the agenda can we have a motion on the agenda thank you mr. Tucker a second second second for mr. Gardner can you get it up on the screen oh there it is with that any discussion on the agenda couple things mr. mr.

» Jones if I could please on the agenda tonight I noticed that we have more public presentations I think our rules of order say we're i'm supposed to have certainly want to hear from these folks and i'll leave them on but i think we need to either change the rule or follow the rule in the future since we do try to follow the rules of order for this county council but uh certainly i want to leave these folks on and hear from them tonight but we just need to i think mr tucker you may be addressing some of that later on with some of the issues you're bringing forth mr yeah thank you mr tucker uh yes sir mr jones um that's in our our package tonight to address some of these agenda items on presentation and also some other rules within our package underneath tab n very good um other discussion uh

» with that we move to vote all those in favor of the agenda as published signify by raising your hand and it's unanimous we move forward with the agenda we move now to a series of proclamations and the first one is a proclamation honoring Dr. Thomas Joseph Sr. at Tab A. I will read it and then we'll move through our motion process. Proclamation honoring Dr. Thomas Joseph, whereas Kershaw County recognizes Dr. Joseph, one of its own, as a successful pediatrician, as a devoted public servant of his community, and whereas Dr. Joseph began his pediatric practice here in Kershaw County in January of 1967 after graduating from Georgetown University, the Medical University of South Carolina, and the Medical College of Virginia.

» He is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, a member of South Carolina Medical Association, and a member of the Southern Medical Association. And whereas Dr. Joseph married his wife Sharon in 1969, they have two children. Dr. Thomas Joseph Jr. is a practicing orthopedic surgeon in Camden and has two children, and their daughter Lori Joseph Buthorn resides in Spartanburg with her husband and two children. And whereas Dr. Joseph has delivered innumerable babies in Kershaw County and has provided excellent medical care in a family-centered environment, he is dedicated to providing each family with quality care by ensuring that each patient receives individual personal attention. Dr.

» Tommy has become a hallmark for caring and compassion among countless families throughout this county. And now, therefore, the county council recognizes Dr. Joseph. With that, can we have a motion? I look to Mr. Jones. I so move, Mr. Chairman. A second? Second. From Mr. Gardner and discussion. Mr. Jones, will you lead us? If I can.

» know i this is a good night dr tommy joseph has been around for quite a while and i won't talk about how there you go i see you now you know we used to think we played racquetball go somewhere but anyway uh tommy we're very proud of you in this county you've been there for our children you've been there for some of these folks in here and i'll never forget the time that i walked in his office and you know you always heard babies screaming and crying and i said how do you put up with it he said money money but and i'll tell one more thing on it too because this is really funny i uh i mean i take some of my children in there when they were young and they were not happy being in the doctor's office well let me tell you something he had some kind of jiu jitsu arm bar he'd put him down in it and

» he had no problem whatsoever tommy joseph i love you brother you've You've been a good friend. You've been a good doctor to this community. As I said, you've worked with our children. And I'll tell you something right now. We've been very fortunate to have you here, and I'm very honored to be a part of this tonight, friend. Congratulations. Let me real quickly. I'm a black belt, sir. Listen, I scream. Let me tell you, we were playing racquetball one night, and he and I were in the championship, the final round. So we were playing, all of a sudden, and this was for the championship. He hits me in the eye with his racket, and blood starts gushing out. He said, oh, I'm so sorry. Let me look at you. He said, you're fine. We can continue on. I said, okay.

» And I'm feeling dizzy, and I'm feeling woozy, and anyway, he beat me, okay? He said, oh, that's a bad cut. Let's go. I'm going to sew you up right now. I can't believe you finished the game with it. Anyway, he took me there, and he said I was the worst patient yet. But anyway, I tell you what, though, Tommy, thank you so much for reminding me of that.

» that was a nightmare but but thank you mr chair and good stories uh mr connell i'll just work around mr chairman mr jones i was so pleased to see this on the agenda tonight uh dr joseph slapped numerous connell babies for their first scream of life and actually kept me alive until i finished up high school um i can't speak for my health after that but you did a great job thank you so much for taking care of kids in the community you were one of them probably yeah Slap him now, doctor. Mr. Gardner? I'd just like to say that Dr. Joseph took care of my kids, and we appreciate the service, and, you know, he was never too busy to do it.

» And if he was on call after hours, he would leave medicine on his doorstep for us to come pick up, and that's just, you know, who can beat that? that's just shows how compassionate that he is taking care of kids and congratulations. Others? Mr. Tucker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Joseph, you took care of my two knuckleheads and my one prince. I can't say thank you enough, not just for my kids, but my nieces and nephews that you've kept in check and kept good health on. And the thing that I've always appreciated about you no matter what the clock may say. And it may be time to go home or not. You never rushed anybody out your office. You always tended to them. I never second-guessed any recommendations or things that you told us to do about our children.

» And that's hard to find sometimes where you're not comfortable with the pediatrician or the doctor or physician that you're dealing with. But we trusted you. We love you. We appreciate it. And I hope God will keep you of good health so you can serve as many more as long as the wife will let you thank you congratulations other comments oh if you would jimmy please sharon we have not forgotten about you thank you for putting up with all of us with him over the years you've always been very gracious thank you uh with that i am ready to move to a vote all those in favor signify by raising your hand and it's unanimous and it is so proclaimed and resolved mr dr joseph and sharon and can you come forward and we'll get a quick picture thank you very much dr tommy and we move now to the next item wh

» ich is another proclamation item number two recognize recognizing the hunger and homelessness awareness week that we spoke about early in our opening prayer it's a tab b and i'll read it and then take a motion a proclamation proclaiming november 16th through the 23rd as national hunger and homelessness awareness week whereas the purpose of the proclamation is to educate the public and to encourage our citizens to recognize that many individuals and families in Kershaw County do not have permanent housing and food security and need support from our fellow citizens and churches and private and public and non-profit and profit and service entities.

» Whereas there are many organizations committed to sheltering, providing supportive services, as well as meals and supplemental food, there still exist major barriers to stability such as affordable housing public transportation to jobs and health care whereas the kershaw county council recognizes that hunger and homelessness have a negative impact on the physical and mental health of many children and adults in our county and encourages everyone to help as they are able now therefore be it resolved with that let's take a motion and I'll give the honor to Dr. Mr. Snodgrass, sir. So moved, Mr. Chairman. A second? Second. For Mr. Tucker. And we'll open discussion. Reverend Snodgrass, sir. Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

» Just wanted to make sure that we highlighted this important week in our community and highlight the many community partners that we have, whether it be United Way or CCM or Hunger or Food for the Soul, many churches all around our community that go above and beyond to to take care of those uh take care of of the least of these so a lot of things happening this week saturday november 16th will be a food drive at the piggly wiggly and the the canton iga there's a prayer breakfast uh monday november 18th at bethlehem missionary baptist church uh wednesday november 20th we'll have a uh just there'll be community ride prayer happening in all of our churches uh during their bible study times and then thursday what's really interesting will be a Lunch and Learn Poverty 101 at Harmony of the Baptis

» t Church. And that's going to be a really neat, just a really neat session for us to see what poverty is from that perspective. It's easy for us to say what people should do when we're in a certain set of shoes, but when you look at it from someone else's set of shoes, it can look differently. So all kinds of things that are happening. And of course, Friday, November 22nd will be a luncheon and also a food drive there at the Food for the Soul. And so a lot of neat things happen there on the campus of the Holson Center. So thank you all so much for your support for this proclamation. Can you go through those dates again, David? You went through them very quickly. Yeah, would you do that? And also maybe to the media, make sure it's, yeah, let's do that. And maybe through Danny. Thank you.

» Other comments? I can hardly improve on that. Thank you, David. Other comments? Seeing there is none, we'll move to a vote. All those in favor, signify by raising your hand. And it's unanimous. Thank you very much for sponsoring that. Also, we have Marie Sheehorn and Father Bill, correct? Father Bill, would you stand up? Let's come up and get a picture and do all the things that we do with each proclamation. Okay, good gosh. All right, if you could come forward and get them forward, David, would you call their names? Thank you very much, David. Well done. We would move now to a series of public hearings.

» Item number one on the public hearings, as you see on the agenda, is in regards to an ordinance authorizing a code of laws as amended to execution and delivery of a philo or ad valorem taxes by and between Kershaw County and higher GE U.S. Appliance Solutions. And with that, I open the hearing. Seeing no one comes forward on this, I will close that hearing and move to the second public hearing, a public hearing in regards to an ordinance authorizing under pursuant to Chapter 44 of the Code of Laws of South Carolina, delivery of a fee-in-lieu ad valorem tax agreement between Kershaw County and Whale Chem as sponsor. With that, I open the public hearing. Seeing no one comes forward, with that, I will close the public hearing and we'll move ahead to the next item in the agenda.

» The next item is a series of public presentations. The first one is Shaheen Hancock and Godwin Audit Presentation by Mr. Mark Wood. Mr. Carpenter. Mr. Chair, members of council, tonight Mr. Wood will be presenting the results of the audit. As you know, every year the county is required to do an audit of all of its finances. We have engaged the services of Shaheen, Hancock, and Godwin, and Mr. Wood will be presenting those results. Mr. Carpenter. Is this Mr. Wood? This is Mr. Wood. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. Mr. Chairman, members of council, it's a pleasure to be with y'all tonight. I've got a one-page summary. We're just gonna run through that.

» that'll be easy i know y'all got a full agenda so i'll make this kind of quick and danny can you make sure the media has a copy as well later on okay thank you before i get started i just want to say this is the earliest we've ever presented this audit report to you guys so that's a testament to the hard work of the staff and i want to thank personally sandra your finance director and her our team, Pam, Sarah, and everybody that works with us. Sandra actually wrote a lot of this audit report that you have in front of you tonight, she did a lot of the schedules. And so it was a tremendous help to us, and that's why we're able to get this report out to you as soon as we did. So I wanna thank them, council should know y'all got a good finance team.

» You got some good continuity, stable staff, and that's a big help. more than y'all know when our team comes in and does what we need to do. So I just wanted to let y'all know how thankful we are for that. So let's get started. The county received an unmodified opinion again this year, which is the highest opinion we can give on a set of financial statements. So that's always a congratulations for that. One and two of this outline are pretty self-explanatory. I just tried to give you a rundown of what your audit report is, how it's broken up and the different types of funds.

» there's no questions on that we'll just go ahead and skip down to pay uh to item number three three four and five i'm going to kind of run through the general fund first and then i'll come back and we'll talk about the proprietary funds if you want to look at the details i built these and deferred inflows were 15.8 which left a fund balance of 10.2 million dollars now your fund balance you can see on four how that's broken out between non-spendable restricted committed and then unassigned which is about 6.3 million dollars um that gives you about three to four months of reserves is what that uh computes back to for the general fund that's about i mean that the rule of thumb is anywhere between three to six months so you're three to four so you're you're you're fine um and actually there's a

» bout 2.5 million dollars that are committed for budget reserves that you did for this coming year. Council can always uncommit that so if you uncommitted that puts you about four to five months. So you're fine as far as your reserves go. Number five, this comes from page 18. You can see the total breakdown between the different revenues and the different expenditures by departments. The total revenues were twenty four point six million. Your expenditures were twenty four point three which left you about three hundred fifteen thousand dollars of revenues over expenses. Then you had transfers and other financing sources of about $3 million, so your negative change in fund balance for the general fund was $2.7 million.

» We'll go to proprietary funds, and for number three, this information comes from page 20 of your report. Total assets and deferred inflows, $27.6 million. Total liabilities and deferred inflows are $10.5. That gives you net position of a little over $17 million. You can see that's broken up between your investment and capital assets of about 14.7, restricted over 700,000, and your unrestricted net position for your EMS and sewer funds is combined almost 1.7 million dollars. Total revenues for the proprietary funds is shown on page 21, and you can see it's broken out between EMS and sewer. Total revenues were 8.7 million. Your operating expenditures were 6.7. Other is basically your interest on your bonds of about $148,000. So your excess revenues over expenses were $1.8 million.

» You had some transfers that came into those funds. So your positive change in that position as of 6-30-19 was $3.2 million. Number seven talks about the budget. This is just for the general fund. So your revenues exceeded budget by about $800,000. Your expenditures were actually under budget by about $300,000, and then we were over as far as some of the transfers go, and a lot of those transfers had to do with some capital. Actually, your unassigned fund balance, if you compare from 6-30-18 to 6-30-19, actually increased because you spent some of the money that was committed for capital projects. Just a few other things to point out. Your pension liability for this year that has to be recorded, which is on page 14 of your report, $34 million.

» That's an increase of about $118,000 from 6-30-18. And your OPEB, your post-employee benefit, actually increased about $33,000 to almost $6.3 million. And that, again, is on page 14 of your report. Once again, I'm happy to report that the uh no findings in the audit report so that's uh just shows that the hard work of the staff and um they ought to be congratulated for that so with that i'll open it up any questions that any council members might have questions council thank you yeah david so mr wood am i reading this correctly then so then kershaw county we we actually spent less than we were budgeted to spend is that correct that is correct and we took in more than so i mean i i I know that was obvious, but I think it's important for us to show the fiscal conservative that we handle our b

» usiness with as a county. I think it's public needs to make sure we highlight that. Thank you. Yeah, Jimmy, go ahead. When we talk about handling the budget each year, pretty much there's been very few years throughout the history that Kershaw County ever spent more than they had. Yeah, I would agree with that. I don't think I've known of any time that we've done that. That's pretty common. THAT'S GOOD. MR. TUCKER. YES. JUST WANTED TO TELL YOU, MR. WOOD, THANK YOU FOR YOU AND FOR ALWAYS BEING THERE, ABLE TO WORK WITH US. AND I WANT TO SAY KUDOS AND THANKS TO MS. SANDRA BROWN AS WELL FOR COMING IN HERE WHEN WE HAD ALL THIS IN LEISURE BOOKS AND PENCILS AND ERASERS AND, I MEAN, JUST RAT'S NEST, IT WAS, AND THE STAFF AND MR.

» CARPENTER AND EVERYBODY AND YOU GUYS RALLIING AROUND JUST GETTING US WHAT WE CAN BE MORE EFFICIENT AND PROFICIENT AND HAVE GREAT ORDERS AND BE ABLE TO KEEP UP WITH OUR SPENDING AND OUR REVENUES. SO THANKS TO YOU GUYS, AND THANK YOU, MS. BROWN AND STAFF. THANK YOU. ANY COMMENTS? I THINK, AS YOU ALWAYS ADVISE ME, WE SHOULD READ THE NOTES IN THIS VERY SMALL, TINY PRINT, AND I WILL SPEND MY TRAIN RIDE TONIGHT READING THAT.

» and then if you are available i'd like to come by and go through it in detail i'm always available to any members of council with no findings and unmodified report that means a well-run fiscally responsible county government i congratulate you vic and i congratulate sandra and her team thank you mark thank you and now with that we'll move to the next item um that was significant and profound we move to the next item which is item number two our great sheriff lee bone the sheriff's new patch and signaling devices come on up lee how's my favorite county council at all kershaw doing tonight how's our favorite sheriff from your favorite current serving sheriff in kershaw county uh you'll see here on the board this is one of our first trucks we've uh we've got in striped up as of this morning um

» pretty proud of it uh we've got a few more coming we're out to our lieutenants on each shift, as well as some K-9 officers. This one here belongs to Lieutenant Bubba Morris. If any of you know him, I got a call from a citizen a little earlier today when they first saw it out on the road, cuz he's been driving it around everywhere. And says she had two questions. One was, do we have trucks? I said, yes, we do have trucks. Two was, how do you teach a set of teeth how to drive a truck? That's all she could see was Bubba's teeth cuz he was happy to get this truck. Now, this is not why we bought the trucks. This is something we've went over with council before throughout the whole budget process. The advantages of having these pickup trucks, they're actually, we can get anywhere we need to go.

» We've got about 300 miles of dirt roads, driveways throughout the county in which our cars could not make it to. We were getting cars that were bottoming out. We were losing oil pans. We were having to pay record bills to pull them. We needed a way to get to places in the county that we couldn't get to in cars. This is our answer. Now, we don't plan on getting a complete fleet of these, but like I said, our K-9 officers and our lieutenants got them first. We'll probably be looking at more of the midsize SUVs in the future, but we did want to get some of the trucks out to, for one, help pull out some of the cars when we do get them stuck. It's a little video here. We didn't know whether it was going to show up or not, but like I said, we're real proud of it.

» Second thing we wanted to do was some of our new patches. I think we've passed them around to everybody up here. We wanted a patch to be worn on our sleeves that, you know, did not represent us. Me as the sheriff or anybody at the sheriff's office, we wanted something to represent Kershaw County. King Hagler, 1791, you know, those were symbols of Kershaw County. Kershaw County Sheriff's Office, the words, we're not going to change the spelling on that. It's not going to change at all. So we wanted something that would be here.

» And when a new sheriff takes office, if he decides to change badges or whatever, don't have to change badges and patches because our badge and patch are not the same same symbol this is something that represents the county it's important to have 360 degree identification on our officers because we don't want to give a bad guy an opportunity to see us from a side view and to say well i didn't know that was a deputy it's important to have that uh those signs all around us a couple more things i wanted to kind of add to the list here uh if you know recently we had a we We had a deputy that was struck by a car at a school crossing. She's doing better than could be expected from being hit like that. She's still going through a lot of tests and everything. She hasn't come back to work yet.

» When she does, it'll be on light duty, taking it easy, taking it slow. Her spirit's good. Her mind's good. She is definitely a testament to, if anybody asks if a female can do the job, I don't know many males that could have took a hit like that. If the doctor had released her, she'd went back to work the same day. I mean, this is a tough woman, and we're proud to have her as part of our department. Because of this, I've been kind of getting involved with a state law they're trying to pass now on hands-free. I don't know when they're going to get a chance to vote on it, but what we're doing is to step out and lead by example. We're trying to create a policy now on hands-free that we're going to implement there at the sheriff's office.

» I think it's a common sense law, so why wait on a law to get passed to start practicing common sense? We're going to start doing it ahead of time, so I'm hoping to get it real soon, a policy up within the department. We also had an officer-involved shooting. That's not something we have commonly here in Kershaw County. Last year, we had one, and we've had one this year. The difference is, last year, we had one shooting, two deputies were involved, both had body cameras. Neither one of the body cameras were on when the shooting took place. So we have no digital evidence as to what took place there. It's all statements. That's all we have. The incident we had a couple weeks ago, there was two deputies. The first two that were there, both had body cameras.

» I went up to each one of them and asked them separately, did you turn your body camera on? Both of them said no. They didn't even remember they had a body camera. But we got footage from both body cameras because we recently purchased signaling devices for the cameras. In my opinion, they paid for themselves in that one incident. Cuz our car cameras did not pick up the footage. We got everything on body camera from both of the deputies. It was just, like I said, all of our signal devices paid for itself. That one incident. Our deputies did great. I'm not gonna go into details, but they, in my opinion, done everything they could to avoid the incident. And then after the incident took place, they done everything they could to render first aid.

» Even gave a, cuz we couldn't get a helicopter up, we gave a police escort to the ambulance to get the kid to the hospital. So, proud of what our guy's done. Again, we were able to capture it all on this, all our body cameras. And the deputies never had to think about turning them on. Now, we owe that to our Sheriff's Foundation for putting the money up. I think Steve Zobel's here today from the foundation. As soon as we asked for it, they voted, give it to us like the next day. But I will say, everybody on council, Vic, when I came to you with the same thing, everybody was looking for the money. They just happened to get it to us fastest. But I know counsel and Vic, I know y'all were doing everything you could to get us the money, and I appreciate that from everybody. That's all I have.

» And thank you, Sheriff. I imagine there may be a comment or two, but I do want to say thank you to Steve Zobel for being here and for the team that you bring behind our great sheriff. Mr. Tucker, you had comments. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sheriff Bone, thank you for coming out and giving us the good news and all the great things that your department is doing, you men and women. Can you just tell a little bit more how those cameras activate? Because, you know, when you're in a shooting and a drilling, you do forget things. I mean, this is survival mode now. Exactly, exactly. You know, and there's three things that can activate the body cameras we have now. One is when they turn on the blue lights.

» Two is when they draw their weapon, their firearm, their signal device attached to their holster. And three is when they pull out their taser. Those are your three biggest things that your liability and, yeah. So these are, it's technology, you've got to stay ahead of it. We're one of the very few departments. Matter of fact, our trucks, when we got them, we had the signal device put on. We got them done at a business that puts on a lot of lights, a lot of packages from all over the state, and we were the first ones to have these put on there. So we're not the first agency. I know Richland County has them, but I think that was where the tests were done at, at Richland County Sheriff's Office. They're a bigger department than us.

» I always like for somebody else to test stuff out before we get it, But they did talk with us, shared all the information they got. We went forward, and I think we're one of the few agencies in the state to have this. And I think it's very much needed. And like I said, it did pay for itself two weeks ago. We thank you for being an innovator, not afraid of technology and moving in that direction because it not only protects the officer but protects the citizens as well. And my last thing, can you have a touch of truck day for Snodgrass because he almost wet his seat over here when he saw that pickup. - Looks sharp. - We'll get him a test drive, we'll have two sets of teeth driving around here. - Okay, Mr. Snodgrass, defend yourself.

» - Sheriff Bunn, I don't have a question, I do wanna make a statement. I was gonna make it in my briefings, but you're here. I wanna comment on the incident that you just commented on. I was close to that, it happened really in my backyard, and it really made me realize what we already know, but thank you so much to our law enforcement first responder community that get placed in situations and where they have to make decisions in which none of us would really want to be in that situation to make that decision but in that situation i firmly believe you guys saved so many lives in that community that day uh because there are so many different ways that situation could have ended and what i saw was we have a sheriff's department in kershaw county that is highly trained and and just it really m

» akes me proud and just very very humbling that we have people that sign up to do jobs like that to put on that badge knowing that they're going to have to make some tough decisions and so thank you so much because it could have it could have went a lot different that evening but you guys you guys saved the lives of a lot of people that evening thank you so much and and this close to veterans day the officer that that did have to fire the shots he is a veteran one of 12 that we have at the sheriff's office now that are our veterans we're proud of what they've done other comments uh mr jones sheriff thank you for being here and i appreciate you keeping this council up to date on on what you're doing in your department and your expenditures even though you're certainly not perfect your departm

» ent isn't i'm not even perfect um whoa whoa but i'll tell you this that might not come out the right way but anyway uh i just want to tell you this i really what i appreciate I've had a couple of folks come up to me say boy y'all really gave the sheriff a lot of money this year said no we didn't we gave the same amount of money we gave the sheriff last year there was no increases at all in the sheriff's budget they said well I see some of the deputies got salary increases there were some additional positions put out there I said well what the sheriff has done is he's been working very close with that County Administrator which and I appreciate big carpenters always have an open door to you and pretty much to everybody else and y'all been working very close together but everything you've don

» e has been created or being creative within your own means and uh no additional monies whatsoever so i appreciate that and i i'm going to challenge you i hope we can do that next year with no tax increase as well i believe we can i believe we can whatever you say but thank you no sir good answer you're number one on the radio i can tell we're going to do the best what you give us well thank you so much but but i think it needs to be noted does with his and uh i really just appreciate the way you handle your money and you know you do things and you always keep mr carpenter informed he keeps us informed so thank you so much for the comments uh very good indeed sheriff thank you that was finally helpful thank you very much uh with that we moved to item number three on our agenda look off fire

» department and a bulletproof best kershaw county fire service can you help me introduce them please that's you chris thank you sir come on chief good to see you sir good to see you all as well um council thank you for letting us be here we are excited to be able to pass over some equipment that we have worked collaboratively with with other agencies i think gerald um you'll see we'll run through some uh some quick slides right quick because I know we're in a hurry and there's a big agenda here so there's no hurry we want to hear from you first and foremost I do want to thank every agency that was involved I do want to thank we need to make it a change there the media take care of that it's the health foundation of Kershaw County so it's kind of backwards on the agenda and Victor Jowers call

» ed me this morning to make sure we change that because if it wasn't for those people we would not be standing up equipment. It was roughly a grant that we wrote for $45,000 that impacted every single agency in this county. We supplied, and we'll go through the slide. I'm going to let Captain Jones talk about that because he put a lot of work into this. Italian Chief Chris Tillwell is here from Camden, and then I think we've got Chief Ray and Chief Wiles in the back. They're going to be, I guess, taking the vest off our hands and some other equipment there. But one of the biggest things that I would like to say before I turn this podium over to Captain Jones is I've been in this county for a long time. I know I look good, all right, and I look young, other than the hair issue.

» But let me tell you something. I've been around public service to know, long enough to know, there was times where we all played in our own sandbox and we all did our own thing. Well, I can tell you those times are gone. all right we we have stepped up and you'll see just roughly here in a minute how important it is that every single agency in this county is on the same page and we have achieved that it took us a couple of years to get it done i very vividly remember you walking through county count or walking into his office um um carpenter and gerald and i were meeting in his office this was directly the day after the Parkland shooting in February of 2018, you passed that office and you said, we have got to do something about what is going on in this nation.

» We've got to do something about what is happening as far as and what is our plan for active shooters. And you just stuck your head in that office and Gerald and I were already working on that. And you said, well, you know what, it's probably gonna take more than just you two. But guess what? Contrary to that belief, we took care of it us two took care of it and we hopped on it and we got on board we pushed everybody together i'm going to give it to gerald because gerald has pushed we meet once or twice a month and have since then since early 18 2018. we're fixing to hit 2020. so we have worked on this thing hard we've worked on it on tabletop we've worked on it paperwork wise research We've done everything we could possibly do. We've been out in the field.

» We've trained with the sheriff's office, the city police officers, Bethune, Elgin, everybody. Every agency, public safety agency in this county, we have trained with together all at once, not separately, and said, you know what, we're going to put this together. We're going to put this together. We're going to put this together. Let's just see how it works. No, we stood there together in the same room, and we do that once a month to make sure we are protecting this community and the people that are in it. So a big, huge thanks to the Health Foundation, who could not be here tonight. They've had some other things that have come up, and they have been very busy. We met with them earlier last week as well.

» So I'm going to turn it over to Captain Jones right quick and let him run through the slide, and then we'll make a quick presentation. Obviously, we didn't bring two tons of ballistic vests in here to hand out tonight, because not unless everybody wants to give a hand. So I'm going to turn it over to him and let him do his thing. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Captain Jones? Yep. Thank you all. Appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of council. And I couldn't do what I do without a great team. So, again, to echo what Chief Spitzer said, you know, we have a great team here in Kershaw County. Whether they're wearing a Lugov, Camden, Kershaw County, whatever patch they may wear, then we're all one team.

» And I couldn't do what I do without a great leader like Chief Spitzer, who I go to him with these crazy harebrained ideas sometimes, he kind of looks at me funny but this was one idea he didn't look at me funny he was like go for it so i thank him for giving me the leeway to do it um so like he said the asher committee was formed early 2018 you don't advance to the next slide led by gerald blanchard and chris spitzer who's my chief we gathered up all emergency services even school district hospital and other interested parties the gold asher committee was to bring these players to the table to discuss what what we do in kershaw county what would we do if it happened here and the quote that i used in the grant application was from sutherland springs texas if y'all recall that shooting it uh

» it seems like we have so many they're getting hard to to think about anymore but small town in texas population 600. i looked up the population today for bethune it's like 293. the population for elgin is about 1300 and that was a few years ago so if you think it can happen here unfortunately asked the guy in Sutherland, Texas, or Sutherland Springs, Texas. It was a small town and they had it happen there too. So we don't want to be behind the game. We want to be ahead of the game. We want to be proactive. So that's why we all came together as one. With the ultimate goal is working with law enforcement partners and working EMS and fire and dispatch and all those involved is to stop the killing and stop the dying. The law enforcement goes in and stops the killing.

» We come in and help stop the dying. We treat the patients. We stop the bleeding. Next slide. So our ASHA committee began working on policies, training, tabletop exercises, and we're leading to eventually more full-scale exercises. And ASHA, the acronym ASHA, it doesn't just involve active shooters. It could be a knife. It could be any kind of weapon. It could be a major incident. So it's not just active shooter events. We're training for everything. Next slide. EMS has hosted some tactical emergency casualty care. It's called TECC classes. They've hosted two. We've sent people from Lugoff to Columbia to take TECC classes, but a lot of this stuff came from the military. So we talked about veterans, we talked about military.

» A lot of our combat, a lot of the combat lifesaver training that you learn in military has been adopted for us as first responder levels. We've participated in two active attack integrated response classes. We hosted one, EMS hosted another. EMS has been a big training partner with us for Stop the Bleed, Smart Triage. They've really, really wrapped that up, even offering classes to citizens now. First responder classes, EMS has been training our first responders, not only for active shooter events, but chest pains and heart attacks, all that kind of stuff.

» And we've, Lugoff and Camden both, has hosted incident command classes to help our law enforcement partners help fire EMS all across the county next line so once the Asher committee started to meet it became apparent that we had some shortfalls and some equipment and some training so we talked about that and like I said with Chief Spitzer's permission I approached the Asher committee about doing a grant to help some of those shortfalls for fire and law enforcement like I said earlier once law enforcement stops the threat and even an example good example is the Pulse nightclub in Orlando if you have ever read about that one law enforcement saved countless lives because that was a chaotic scene the scene was not secure there was chaos everywhere so you had law enforcement officers supplying t

» ourniquets you had law enforcement officers packing wounds taking people even to the hospital and and police cruisers um so law enforcement and and and fire and ems we all work together and gerald's used the term before we become a force multiplier if you will when we all work together we've got deputies now thanks the sheriff bone who are first responders they're able to do what we do as fire departments and and you know we don't carry a gun but you know we do a lot of what they do now too um our firefighters are going to go into that warm zone we call it a warm zone so the the officers the deputies the the city police officers whoever they may be they go in and take down the shooter and normally in most cases that's one shooter maybe more but typically in the united states it's been one a

» ctive shooter or if somebody has a knife or whatever weapon they go in take that shooter down they take that threat down and we go in behind them we go in protected they're protecting us so we go we call it the warm zone they're in the hot zone we're in the warm zone so we come in with a police escort just the the vest and all the protective gear we need because if something changes these these scenes can be very dynamic for those of you that have been in law enforcement i know mr trucker you've you've been in some law enforcement Mr. Jones. Things change very quickly so we have to protect our firefighters, we have to protect our EMS providers. We don't want to send them in with no protection at all.

» So that's why we looked at the equipment, found out our shortfalls, we apply for the grant and thankfully, next slide Danny, you can see here on the photo that Chief Spitzer was assigning the award last year. This is a picture of Vic Jowers and our local paper Chronicle Independent presenting the award to us for forty four thousand eighty three dollars and eighty eight cents this was December of last year so we've been working on this thing since December of last year to procure the equipment to make sure we got the right thing as far as vest looking for the best quote looking for the best bang for the buck next line so we talked with law enforcement found out that they didn't have what we call individual first aid kits, which are called IFACs.

» And the IFAC contains tourniquets, trauma shears, chest seals, bandages, and gauze. It's, again, borrowed from the military. A lot of your military people, they wear them on their self because it is what is called an individual first aid kit. If someone gets shot, that's their personal kit. Now, can we use that on a citizen? Yes, we can. But typically, it's for the officer or, like I said, it could be used for the citizens. So we purchased those first with the grant funding, thanks to Health Foundation. I distributed 75 to Kershaw County Sheriff's Office, 35 to Camden Police, seven to Elgin Police, and three to Bethune Police. Our goal was to get every sworn officer in Kershaw County that worked on a local level, and that's what we're able to accomplish with this grant. Next slide.

» And this is mainly what we're here for tonight is also to talk to you about the fire services. prior to this grant no fire department in kershaw county had any kind of ballistic protection there was zero protection for firefighters for this capacity so we work with sheriff's office i had rick bailey from the sheriff's office i had sergeant jeff chafis from the city of camden i had battalion chief chris tillwell we all met and we discussed and we vetted some vendors and we kind of looked and seen what the best options would be and this is the vest we came up with on the screen and i have one here tonight to show you and present ceremoniously to you on behalf of lugo fire and ash and the health foundation but um the vests have been distributed camden fire and lugo fire and then kershaw county

» fire will pick up their vest this week so they'll be able to get their vest out to their staff and we can be protected um each vest if you see that big pouch on the front those are those ifacs i was telling you about so each vest will have an individual first aid kit already attached to it so next slide also with some funding EMS was able to give Camden Fire Department and Lugoff Fire Department and what we call an Asher kit so the Asher kit contains two disposable litters it contains a smart triage system which is basically if you're familiar with triage you have green yellow red black for your triage system and we can not only use this for Asher events but you could also use this for what we call a mass casualty incident say a tour bus on interstate 20 you know you have multiple victims t

» he firefighters can get there using the ASHA kit go ahead and break out the ASHA kit they have a smart triage kit in there they can start triaging patients they can put the greens with the green yellows red so we can prioritize so when EMS gets there and they can make further transport decisions based on how many reds or greens or yellows or even blacks we have the goal is each county volunteer fire department so there's 12 main stations would receive one Asher kit also they're receiving two ballistic vests so that's where the number 24 came from so you each each main station will get two ballistic vests and one Asher kit so that would be spread out throughout the county and that's another one of those force multipliers is you've got this equipment spread out so if something happens in Buff

» alo Mount Pisgah you've got equipment up there if something happens in Elgin, you've got equipment there. Next slide. So our future goals with Gerald's leadership and the other members of the committee, we're going to continue to work together. We're going to work more on talking about unified command. That's our big thing is all three, all the big three plus dispatch. Can't never forget dispatch because they are the true first responder. But the big three, fire, EMS, law enforcement, dispatch, we're going to all come together and start working on more unified command training at some of our events, such as Lights of Lugov, Carolina Cup, parades, that sort of thing, to kind of implement Asher into that. So we're training, I believe, in train like you fight, so fight like you train.

» So that's what we're trying to do. And then we're looking to bring more training to Kershaw County for some of our volunteers, some of our other staff, as far as active shooter response. So the sky's the limit. We're working hard, and we just thank you all for the time, and we've got some more comments if you want to add. Yeah, just a quick one. I just, Sheriff Bone just mentioned to me that dividends have already paid off because the IFAC kit, or one of the IFAC kits that we issued to the Sheriff's Department was indeed used last week. So that right there, just go ahead. It speaks volumes of what we've done. So we've taken up enough time.

» we would like to present um ceremoniously the kit and the vest and that would mean one more picture for the night i don't know what the rest of these fine folks have going on or what you have going on so we are going to take one more picture if you do not mind and then we'll be out of your hair well you always have some questions first mr tucker what's the life expectancy on the vest that's a good question so we we debated that a lot and uh i don't want to get into details about the the protective levels and stuff like that for security reasons but these vests will last 20 years they're steel plates so they're a little heavier than a ceramic plate but they don't have the five-year life shelf life um so we don't have that problem so and and we try to make them fireman proof if y'all know how

» firemen are or firefighters are we like to tear up stuff so uh those ceramic vests are are very fragile so we we debated a lot and that's decision we made because we had to look at future budgets yeah does that kit velcro on or does it strap on the ifat kit yes it velcros on you got to be careful when you're moving about with the holes and stuff other comments uh mr jones chief i'd like just like to share this with you and as i did with the sheriff i really appreciate what you do and i truly do and i don't think many people know that your first year you came in you didn't ask for a tax increase you utilized money from within and you made things happen i just want you to i really appreciate that i i'm not sure that many people in the community know that i'm looking for another challenge like

» that for next year as well sir i am too unfortunately but my um good friend dennis artage i hope he treats us well this year and we we get good news come march or april and well you work very hard and do a great job and i think some of your commissioners are here tonight absolutely i think mr bob lavangie he's here and i believe he's the only one y'all can always count on mr bob he's everywhere yeah he's non-stop so uh we got a great board of commissioners um mr carpenter vick carpenter came and spoke with us last monday night at our board meeting and um presented uh again vision 2030 and the census for 2020 we're pushing that out uh social media we want to make sure that's taken care of so um i know again y'all got a long night so thank you mr jones for that and we appreciate uh allowing u

» s to come up present tonight appreciate y'all being other comments any yeah mr snodgrass i just just want to echo what i mentioned sheriff bone thank you guys so much, fire service, ambulance, dispatch, for signing up to be put in tough situations for the sake of the community. Thank you guys so much. You know, I'm connected to several firemen in the community, and so just a lot of respect for those families who do that. Thank you so much. Yes, we appreciate that. And again, like I said, you all have somebody to really be thankful for with Gerald Blanchard starting this whole thing.

» If it wasn't for Gerald, we would all probably still be sitting where we're at or where we were before and uh you've got a good guy over there sure do all right let's uh let's get a real i got a quick picture and and everybody come forward bob lavenger to come up to and you gerald certainly i'm on up mr bob you got fire i'm not here asking for money i'm here to thank y'all for all the uh support that you give us we are in the process of building a paid fire service in Kershaw County along with our great volunteers that we have in the county we started with the beginning of the budget wrong for us with all this at this point we we did two interview sessions for battalion chief we had a nine battalion we interviewed and as of November the 4th of this year we hired two and at this time I'd lik

» e to call them up and introduce them if y'all would like to meet them absolutely first one being Stephen Teal second one being and I'll give you a little bit of history up on about these guys Stephen Teal he comes from the Cassett area he has been in the fire service for 14 years He comes to us from Columbia Fire Department. He's Firefighter 1, 2, Instructor Certified, and Leadership Qualified. And we had nine people put in. We had a lot of great people to choose from. And he is a local boy. He's been with, I remember when he was a kid. So I've known him for a long time. And he's all right. But we think he'll do us a good job. He's known throughout the county, through all the fire departments, so we think he will be one of our good guys, and he will be one of our battalion chiefs.

» Our second guy is Gary Parnell. For those that don't know Gary, Gary, he was with the Charlotte Thompson Fire Department as a volunteer. He also has 14-plus years in the fire service with Columbia Fire Department. He has Firefighter I, Firefighter II, Instructor Certification. Both of them have had extrication training, and they're going to be a great asset to this department as we grow. Because, again, they started on November the 4th. We used them last week for orientation. We're using them this week to go around and look at all the fire departments and meet some of the members. And they're also doing air flow tests on our truck, on our air packs, which lets them look and see what we have at each one of these stations.

» And coming this Thursday, they will have interviewed 12 firefighters. We felt like to make them a part of our family, that they would be better off to us if they helped with the hiring. They went and did the interviews. They talked to all the guys. And by Friday, we should be giving out, calling the people to ask them do they want to take the jobs. They start this week, Saturday morning, 7 o'clock. They'll be starting. He'll be over at Blaney Fire Department getting ready for his fireman to come in by November the 30th. But he will be starting Friday. Gary, unfortunately, drew short straw, so he starts on a Saturday. But 12-hour shifts. So he will be starting this coming Saturday, and then he'll work Saturday, Sunday, even a fall-in Monday, Tuesday. Yes, sir, Jim. I have a question.

» Yes, sir. Now, first off, congratulations to both of you. I'm going to say this to Parnell. Name is a strong, strong history of firefighters. You've got a tough name there to live up to. And all good folks, too. Tell me exactly what are their duties within 10 seconds. Short. Short. yeah uh they'll be in charge of the guys which you'll have 10 overall counting them per shift uh they'll check the trucks they'll make sure the guys are lined up and scheduled for the they'll do all the fire reports they'll help out with investigations uh they'll run some calls depending on the the severity of the call but they will also be running from blaney to buffalo proud to have you all on board thank you uh we've also we ordered their gear and their uniforms luckily theirs has came in but you cannot order

» the gear till you find out who you hired so that's that's in the process of being done um we've ordered the vehicles for these guys uh one of them has came in it's over in columbia now radios lights sirens all being put on uh one of them is on hold right now unfortunately gmc had a strike so we were knocked off a little bit on the second truck but we're looking for it soon i hope um we're also working at the blaney fire department one thing we have is with blaney we have our ems in there with them now so we're working around them and we're going to paint do flooring we're actually going to come back to you shortly with a request about it building an ems station behind blaney fire department uh and they'll be the firemen will move in at that time but right now we're going to work a 12-hour s

» hift with these guys uh 24 well seven days a week 12 hours a day and we'll still use our part-time but we're also looking at putting generators at blaney fire department so we can once we go to that we can work our 24/7. So we're doing that. For those on the East Watery side, we purchased land in Cassett for the Cassett Fire Station. Hopefully by once we get Blaney up and rolling we will take and start on our Cassett Fire Department and by the end of next year hopefully have that up and running 24/7.

» That's another project we got going and at this time we've had peep for a long go out and address some of the issues such as drawings of the buildings and what we need we've done geo studies we've done perc test we're just waiting and hoping we can get there and get it going but i'll take any questions or uh comments from the council uh mr tucker yes thank you mr just want to make sure that i think the titles are battalions battalion chiefs thank Thank you. Other comments? Mr. Snodgrass. Go ahead. Congratulations, guys. Welcome aboard. I know you guys are highly qualified, and I know there's a tough field of candidates, so glad to have you on board, and Mr. Jones, Parnell does come from a very strong fireman line, but I got confidence in him, and he'll do well. Okay. Other comments? Mr.

» Parnell's dad made a career fireman at Camden Fire Department, so he does have ... That's right. I remember him. And Mr. Jones, you probably worked with him. Who's his dad? Who is his dad? Gene. Oh, my word. Not this one. Gene Parnell. I think at some point we'll need to make sure the towns of Elgin and Bethune know this forward progress. I'd suggest you find a moment to get on their agenda and tell them how it's coming because that will impact their tax rolls.

» secondly uh at this point we're on budget and we'll see how we'll take a look at it during the budget cycle to make sure that the plan we put in place after three and a half years of study led by mr connell and participated by and by us all is being carried out but i congratulate both of you gentlemen welcome other comments let's go thank you very much gene and chief uh with that we move to the next item which is a series of resolutions item number one a resolution by kershaw county council naming oh no i'm on the wrong page approval of minutes at tab c can we have a motion make a motion we approve the minutes uh mr tucker uh second second for mr gardner discussion uh doesn't seem like there is any let's move on to a vote all those in favor the minutes as presented raise your hands please a

» nd it's unanimous now we move to a series of resolutions uh the first one is a resolution by kershaw county council naming the watery river park veterans park it's at tab d uh can we have a motion on that mr tucker yes sir i'd like to make a motion that uh we name our watery space over there uh by number one the watery river veterans park second second second for mr gardner a discussion if i may uh i yield okay mr jones go right ahead if you had something mr turkey go ahead no go right ahead sir okay let me just say this as a fellow veteran i too am a veteran i appreciate all of what you guys have done and all our veterans um it's no secret that i have not supported this park but it's a waste of money to buy it the land is useless um i won't support the name tonight because i've talked to a

» couple of you folks out there sitting there and we discussed it we own it I mean, I want to see it be the best it can be, but what I do not want is to start putting money into something, a new project such as this, when we still have so much we haven't completed, Larry Doby's or the West Complex. There's so much more that needs to be done there. And I have a question, and maybe somebody can help me, give me an answer to this.

» who introduced this or who initiated the naming veterans part or the river part i mean was it initiated by one of y'all or was it initiated by someone on council i mean i'm just curious i i said who who's the individual though there had to be just one person to come up and say yeah absolutely come on mr commander fuller coming up i'm commander uh david fuller of the American Legion post 17 in Camden and yes our like say the the letter that you that was handed out to the council members is back in July of 2018 it was signed by Glennon Abnett our historian our adjutant Jimmy Rabin and myself commander David Fuller and this is by the council that we would like to name after the as they found out about the the park property there and of course the 505th monument that was brought up in that also

» and the reason we brought that up anybody that's been to the 505th ceremony out there that where it's located everybody knows where it's located in front of the Vista property there the DuPont once it was a DuPont property it's hard to get to and we've always talked about possibly moving that monument someplace we don't have no place to move it so once we found out that they had purchased that property and I can't say when they purchased property I was all for but they the county purchased the property they're not going to give it back so let's go ahead and make the best of it so we decided we'd move the planet right there I'm not saying we're gonna that's gonna happen I'd like to see that done it's hard to get to the monument if you go from the highway one and I think I mentioned this befo

» re the council before if there's probably several people in this room right now that's driven by that monument and I'd like to see everybody in here raise your hand but they're not going to has anybody ever seen anybody stop their side of the road and see them look into that monument no I mean sure I've sworn so what's about as many people I've seen at the River park um let me let me just say this um the paratroopers back in the 50s jumping down where the river park is bought was that part of do you know who they were y'all have any idea what they were doing when they were doing their exercises in the 50s i remember i was on the bridge i remember being on the bridge in the 50s standing there watching the parachuters come down that be the 82nd airborne 82nd okay i i was just curious to as to

» who that might would have been i just i didn't know well let me just say this so all i asked was who initiated it who was the first person to initiate it and that would have been post 17 i guess i mean as far as the whole group together yeah i mean we talked about we had a once we found out that they had purchased the park yeah we had a special executive board committee meeting and we met and we decided yeah well i'm going to ask questions and i'm going to get answers and i'm going to support it tonight as a veteran for my fellow veterans and i appreciate some of them out there who have taken time to talk to me and not ignore me thank you so much butch thank you all all of you anyway mr chairman that's all i've got thank you other comments okay all right let me read the resolution and then

» we'll vote on it a resolution by the kershaw county council naming watery river Veterans Park, whereas Kershaw County has a park adjacent to the Watery River, and whereas American Legion Post 17 has requested that the park owned by the county adjacent to the river be named and dedicated in honor of all Kershaw County veterans of military services, and whereas Kershaw County finds it appropriate to honor all Kershaw County veterans by naming the park in their honor. Now, therefore be it resolved that the Kershaw County Park adjacent to the river shall be henceforth be named and known as the Watery River Veterans Park. The park has been named in honor of all military veterans and all veterans who have served and continue to serve.

» The park has been named dedicated in honor of the sacrifice and service of all county veterans who have served our nation in both foreign and domestic capacities and helped to preserve the constitution of all the great freedoms it protects. Four, Kershaw County finds it appropriate that a monument be installed in honor of those veterans from whom the park is named and such a monument may be erected in the park by interested parties. The use of private funds following approval of the proposed monument by this council. Five, should a monument honoring Kershaw County veterans be erected, the proposed monument shall be erected so as to be visible to passers-by traveling on U.S.

» Highway ONE AS WELL AS BE FULLY OPEN AND ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC AND ADOPT IT AND RETRIFY IT IN THIS COUNTY COUNCIL ANY FURTHER COMMENTS WITH THAT WE MOVE TO MR. TUCKER YES SIR I WOULD JUST LIKE TO MAKE THE ONE COMMENT THAT I KNOW THAT Y'ALL HAD MORE IN YOUR LETTER THAT YOU REQUESTED BUT I THOUGHT THOSE WERE DISCUSSIONS FOR ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER FIGHT BUT THIS TAKES CARE OF THE NAMING AND A FUTURE monument and I would encourage post 17 since you had the lead to get with your fellow American Legionnaires here the other posts and VFWs if you decided to do a fundraiser to get the monument erected to include all of them so we can fill a nice monument out there for all. And the VFW and the Munco League and the Navy League and all those guys. Who all wants to help fundraise.

» Okay are you ready to vote? I am. with that let's move to a vote all those in favor signify by raising your hand and it's unanimous thank you mr tucker we move to the next item on the agenda item number two a resolution to support a free roaming cat program it's at tab e i'll read the proclamation uh slightly amended from the pop and one in your product mr chairman if i could for for the record i'd just like to make sure we read the one that i handed out right here and change we need to make sure the media gets it well thank you jimmy well they will once you yeah thank you uh whereas kershaw county council finds that free roaming cats threaten the health and safety and welfare of the citizens and whereas county council further finds that free roaming cats increase the number of strays and c

» ontributes to the animal population and whereas kershaw county seeks to reduce the feral and stray cat population by authorizing the implementation of a free roaming cat program and whereas the program would implement, trap, neuter, and return, which is known as TNR method, as a humane way to handle cat overpopulation. And whereas the feral or stray would be spayed and neutered, vaccinated, and eartipped before being returned to the area where it was trapped. Whereas the program will be administered by the Kershaw County Humane Society, which will collaborate with the county code enforcement to develop rules for the program. Whereas Kershaw County Humane Society shall report to Kershaw County one year after the program's inception on its functionality and success.

» Now, therefore, be it resolved that Kershaw County Council supports, Jimmy, supports the implementation of a free-roaming cat program in the county. Can we have a motion, Mr. Jones? Mr. Chairman, I will still move on the motion, but we'll have some discussion. Absolutely. A second? Second. from mr snodgrass defer to you jimmy go right ahead and might want to go to ken devose if i could if you look on the third third paragraph now which says authorize the implementation are we okay to leave that word in there is that since we got support on the last yes it mr jones it makes it clear that you support the program but the program it says will be administered by kershaw county humane society so they're going to minister the program and they do say they will corroborate corroborate with kershaw c

» ounty code enforcement of course they're the ones that pick up the animals right thank you yeah other comments yeah mr snodgrass mr carpenter question so the way this is worded so is is code enforcement prepared to collaborate with this with this effort do i need to do we need to do anything more no it's really not going to require any changes because they're already picking up stray cats and taking them to the shelter okay yeah i just um i attended the uh the session that they had on uh what was it september 18th i believe uh the informational session i attended that and a lot of great information and really you know the only the only humane way to handle our cat population i don't know if you noticed kershaw county we just might get a new mascot because we've got cats over the place as as

» a i reside in the neighborhood we have our own little population of community cats is it just each can to say okay well we're happy to have them bring them on you know um but uh i i've studied other programs in other counties and this is a very uh i said a very effective way uh to uh to handle that so i'm proud to support this uh other comments uh thank you for bringing it uh thank you for bringing that forward we move to a vote all those in favor signify by raising your hand and it's unanimous uh danny and we move on to item number three an inducement resolution providing a filo between kershaw county and project walnut a uh with that i go to you mr carpenter to introduce this mr chairman members council tonight we have a few projects wanted a and walnut b you'll see following walnut a we

» present tonight to the council for an inducement resolution and a first reading and title only for those two projects um comments uh title only a little later on under ordinances you'll see item number seven and eight that further carries this forward you want some comments now yes please okay i guess i do need to put the motion before i i thought i might have missed it but i thought i might take a quick nap and miss that thank you jimmy uh we have a motion to approve so many uh thank you mr connell a second second thank you mr snodgrass uh jimmy you opened it please go ahead thank you so much the inducement resolute uh resolutions for project walnut a and project walnut b are good for kershaw county the administrator tells me these projects are real possibilities from real companies and i

» believe that in eight weeks running economic development vic carpenter has done what was not done in eight years of failed economic development leadership politically and administratively congratulations vic vic carpenter has shown that he is capable of running economic development in kershaw county and i believe he should continue to run economic development kershaw county he's going to want to shoot me but i'm giving you my opinion it is more effective as to results and more cost effective kershaw county is spending over a million dollars a year on economic development and has lost significant jobs and significant investment county administrator appears to be turning things around that he is a capable man he's capable of doing economic development and reversing eight years of failed econo

» mic development and failed economic development leadership i believe that carpenter can and should direct economic development for kershaw county along with county administrator um you know i look at the the word inducement and it brings to my mind just it's like two folks coming to holding hands on a first date and walking it's a good move and to know that i've come up here many many times to see mr carpenter he's been gone he's either been in columbia he's either been somewhere else or he's been meeting with staff and we're very fortunate to have this young lady as part of the economic development i'm very proud of what you do i just want you you to know that she never stops she's always there to pick up the pieces and thank you lauren but uh anyway job well done vic and i look for this y

» ou know you close that you're closing the deal buddy we haven't had that happen thank you so much uh other comments uh mr tucker thank you i just want to address this very quickly a concern one of our citizens had earlier mr webb in reference to entitled only if you read this resolution that we have it's got pertinent information and it just doesn't have the industry it does it may not have what type of jobs in it and how many jobs has got the amount of investments in it and that's public knowledge but you know these days and times everything is so competitive and not just here in County of Kershaw the state of South Carolina or the United States it's global and a lot of these THESE COMPANIES ARE -- THEIR COMPETITORS ARE WAITING TO CUT THEM OFF AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF WHAT THEY MAY KNOW OR WH

» AT MOVE THEY MAY BE DOING. IT'S LIKE PLAYING CHESS, IS WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY. YOU CAN'T ALWAYS LET YOUR OPPONENT KNOW WHAT YOUR NEXT MOVE IS. SO IT'S NO SECRET HERE FOR US, WE'RE HONORING THE WILL OF THE COMPANY THAT WANTS TO COME HERE. AND IF THEY CAN'T TRUST US BEFORE THEY COME HERE, WHAT MAKE YOU THINK THEY'RE GOING TO TRUST US ONCE THEY GET HERE, IF THEY EVER COME? SO JUST MY TIDBIT OF INFORMATION.

» comments uh i do thank uh mr carpenter for this uh there are some other players lauren reader and stuart kidd were in on the hunt and uh but i would say this that we ought to show grace for the work that's been laid down by uh by peggy who departed uh i will tell you firsthand for those that spend time in this business that there was a lot of work that went on for over a year on many of these projects and i will pass along congratulations to miss mclean when i see her again uh any further comments uh with that we move to a vote on the first item all those in favor signify by raising your hand and it passes unanimously we move to the next item which is likewise on walnut project b mr carpenter mr chairman members council as with the first one this is um a project walnut b We have in front of

» you an inducement resolution, and later on we'll also have first reading and title only. Very good. Can we have a motion to approve? We'll move. Second. I didn't get the first. David, thank you, and then a second from Mr. Tucker. Any comments? I would. Mr. Jones, go ahead. I would very quickly. You know, when I think about economic development, I think about the workload, how much they have to do, and what has to be done in it. Gentlemen, let's listen to Mr. Jones, please. Go ahead, Mr. Jimmy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I excuse them this time. We love you. But when I think about what industries look for, a couple things come to my mind.

» I think when it comes to the county administrator, the economic development director, the chairman of council, or members of council, they could give a rip about that. I think what industries really want, it's all about is location, location, location. And you've got to be able to sell that location. That lead person has to be able to sell that location. I agree with the chairman. This lady over here is an extremely hard worker, very confident, has done us an outstanding job. I thank the Lord we've got her with us, and I've always felt that way. But when it comes to the economic development director's position, that's what it all boils down to. One, they've got very little to do. They probably have about 15, 16 hours' worth of work a week. I think it was Mr.

» Ralph Norman went to Washington. He started looking at the federal economic development program. I thought it was one of the biggest botches of bureaucracy you could have. But, anyway, needless to say, good job, Vic. Appreciate everything. Lauren, thank you. Other comments? All right. We'll move to a vote. All those in favor, signify by raising your hand. And, Danny, it's unanimous. Are you recording it for us? Yes, he is. Okay, Lauren, thank you very much. Danny's late. I don't know why you tell him. Danny, wake up. Thank you very much. We move to the next item, which is a series of ordinances. No, correction, we're -- yeah. Yes.

» ordinance item number one which is a tab h third reading of an ordinance authorizing the execution of a fee in lieu between kershaw county and higher ge appliances mr carpenter can you introduce mr chairman members council you have for third reading tonight an ordinance that authorizes a fee in lieu between kershaw county and higher doing business as ge appliances this has previously been known as project sweeper previously known as project sweeper so now we expose it with that can we have a motion to approve make a motion we approve this mr tucker thank you a second second for mr gardner uh discussion anybody okay very good it's gone through uh three readings uh with that we move to a vote all those in favor signify by raising your hand and it's unanimous we move to the item number two whi

» ch is the third reading of an ordinance authorizing uh execution delivery of a philo agreement with whale chem uh mr carpenter again please introduce that mr chairman members council um third reading tonight an ordinance that previously council has voted on the previous two times this is previously known as project wildcat okay project wildcat can we have a motion to approve so move uh mr gardner a second again from uh from mr snodgrass uh discussion now this does this have to do with the restructuring of whale cam or this is an additional investment in addition to that thank you clarification for me thank you very much uh with that no discussion all those in favor signify by raising your hand and it's approved unanimously moved to item number three second reading of an ordinance to amend t

» he official zoning map if we can get that up on the screen danny uh for 13 acres more or less mr carpenter can you open that mr chairman members council you have in front of you tonight for second reading an ordinance to rezone two parcels of land of approximately 13 acres total from r15 to rd2 previously this was approved by the planning commission by a vote of five to two five to two all right can we have a motion to approve thank you mr tucker a second second second from mr snodgrass any discussion thank you uh i just want to add i think this is a good happy medium of respecting our land use map but also remaining flexible for in this particular case a family that wants to um who wants to utilize a mobile home on their family land and uh so thank all the hard work of the staff at the pla

» nning zoning office okay uh any other discussion how elbows are mr carpenter those zoning changes tell us what those zone things what they mean um pull it back up from r15 to r2 basically it's moving um from a um 15 000 square foot to roughly a third of an acre to art I might come out and help us out here thanks Al yes sir it's yeah I mean it's actually decreasing the density because it makes larger minimum lot so you have to have at least one acre for a minimum lot and they already to which they're asking to go to potentially for putting a mobile home on the site but they're actually gonna inadvertently make them have larger lots which is actually fairly prevalent in that area So it actually meets the characteristics a little bit more than the smaller residential R-15 zoning that's on it n

» ow. Yeah, I heard him, but I ain't sure I understood what he said that last part. They're asking, the zoning they're asking for, the RD-2, is actually, their minimum requirement is for larger lots. So they'll be required to have larger lot sizes than the R-15 in which they sit in existing at this particular moment. So at this particular moment, where they're sitting in, they could subdivide that lot down to 15,000 square feet and have much smaller lots, which really isn't character of the neighborhood. The character of the surrounding area is really for larger lots. Thank you. Yeah, that's helpful. Good question. Other questions? Comments? All right, I propose we move to a vote. All those in favor, signify by raising your hand. And I see it's unanimous.

» Thank you very much, and thank you for introducing that. Item number four is at tab K, second reading an ordinance of the council to change the zoning map for 14 acres more or less from R15 to RD2. Mr. Carpenter, help us out here. Mr. Chairman, members of council, also I slightly missed the vote previously was four to two, not five to two.

» On this ordinance you have in front of you for second reading an ordinance to take two parcels again approximately 14 acres in total that are currently r15 and gd which is general development and emerge them into an rd2 single lot this has previously been approved by the planning commission on a five to one vote thank you very much uh can we have a motion to approve the motion mr chair uh mr snodgrass a second second second from mr tucker a discussion chair yeah david this one is in my district and uh just want to echo what mr connelly previously said about the other situation basically it's a situation where we're the rezoning this is make it makes it more consistent with the characteristic of other residential dwellings that are that are around there so I support I support this this chang

» e thank you very much other comments back to your point there with that let's move to a vote all those in favor signify by raising your hand and again it's ANONYMOUS AND WE MOVE TO THE NEXT ITEM WHICH IS AN ADVALORUM ISSUE ITEM NUMBER FIVE IT'S A TAB L AND I THINK IT'S ON THE SCREEN A SECOND READING OF AN ORDINANCE RELATIVE TO THE MIDLANDS REGIONAL REHAB HOSPITAL WHICH WE JUST TALKED ABOUT IN OUR OPENING SESSION MR. CARPENTER MR.

» CHAIR MEMBERS COUNCIL YOU HAVE IN FRONT OF YOU TONIGHT ON A SECOND READING AN ORDINANCE THAT WOULD BE THE EXECUTION DELIVERY OF A FEE AND LUE AGREEMENT BETWEEN KERSHAW COUNTY AND THE MIDLANDS REGIONAL REHAB HOSPITAL WHICH PREVIOUSLY YOU SAW TONIGHT RECOGNIZED THEY HAVE ALREADY BROKEN GROUND ON THIS HOSPITAL AND IS GOING UP AS WE SPEAK VERY GOOD CAN WE HAVE A MOTION PLEASE I'LL MAKE A MOTION MR. TUCKER THAT WAS REALLY FAST SECOND CAN WE HAVE A SECOND SECOND THANK YOU MR.

» CONNELL AT HIS DISTRICT COMMENTS PLEASE NO COMMENTS I'M DELIGHTED TO SEE THIS AT LAST IT TOOK US YEARS to get here and a lot of hard work by everybody currently in and also previously in the economic development office all right with that we can move to a vote all those in favor signify by raising your hand and it's unanimous and we move on to third reading for that move to item number six the first reading of an amended ordinance determining rules and order of business is at annex m i don't see it on the screen if you can find that we'll move on into the motion process that's it okay I can't believe I was a tanker shooting at 3,000 meters with that can we have a motion mr.

» Tucker I think yes sir I'd like to make a motion that we amend our ordinance County Council very good as included in NXM a second second that's you jamie it was me a second from mr jones uh with that we move to a discussion mr tucker yes sir um mr chairman thank you um you have before you if uh well you don't have it's an annex m okay um our rules are ordinance that uh we adopted a few years back and uh there were some CHANGES THAT I WAS RECOMMENDING TO THIS COUNCIL, SO WE COULD BE WITHIN OUR OWN GUIDELINES, BASICALLY. IF YOU GO TO YOUR PAGE ONE, PREPARATION OF THE AGENDA, YOU SEE THAT THE AGENDA SHALL BE PUBLISHED BY 1:00 P.M. ON FRIDAY. THAT WAS ONE OF THE CHANGES, BECAUSE WE GET MS.

» MARY THE INFORMATION BY WEDNESDAY, AND SHE HAS TO TRY TO GET IT OUT ASAP and it doesn't always work and it was in violation of what our rules were so we still turn our information in by 1 p.m on wednesday but um she has to 1 p.m on friday to get it out to uh to us in the public um as you go down you'll see for special meetings uh the word proposed matter stretched out an agenda and then publish um not provide publish at least 24 hours prior to the meeting and then we struck through for meetings that proposed agenda shell we struck through all of that i'm just going over the changes so if there's any discussions you guys can feel free section 2.5 order of business the only thing in there somehow in between tweaking this over the years we left out public hearings so we just want to put that i

» n and if you skip down on the 2.5 uh part b adoption of the agenda what was added was the order of ABILITY OF THE AGENDA MAY BE VARYED IF REQUIRED BY THE CHAIRMAN. ALL THAT STATES, SAY YOU HAVE SOMEONE THAT MAY COME UP AND THEY'RE ON A TIME SCHEDULE WHERE THEY'RE TRYING TO MAKE COUNTY COUNCIL AND CITY SCHOOL BOARD, THE CHAIRMAN WOULD HAVE NOT TO AMEND THE AGENDA BUT VARY FROM THE ORDINANCE OR THE ORDER THAT WE HAVE WRITTEN OUT TO CARRY OUT THE AGENDA, SOME FLEXIBILITY IN THERE. THEN THE RULES AS PUBLIC HEARINGS AND PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS MAY BE VARIED BY COUNTY COUNCIL. THAT'S IN THERE, BUT I WANT TO REVISIT THAT, AND I'LL TELL YOU WHY YOU WANT ME TO GO INTO IT NOW.

» IN OUR RULES, IF YOU LOOK IN THE FRONT OF YOUR PAGES, BUT IT'S ALSO ON THE HANDOUT OF THE AGENDA ON THE BACK OF IT, IT STATES THAT WE'RE SUPPOSED TO HAVE 15 MINUTES, TWO WE ARE NOT FOLLOWING THAT AND THIS IS NO BLOWBACK OR NOTHING ON STAFF. SOMETIMES YOU GET PEOPLE THAT WANT TO COME UP AND SPEAK AND IT SEEMS LIKE THEY'RE ALL IN THE SAME MEETING OR THE SAME MONTH. WE WANT TO GET THAT WHERE WE CAN HAVE A LITTLE BIT MORE CONSISTENCY ON THAT AND NOT TONIGHT BUT MY PROPOSAL TONIGHT STANDS AS IT IS THAT IT CAN BE VOTED ON BY COUNTY COUNCIL BUT I I TALK TO MR. DEBOSE AND NEED TO PUT A LITTLE BIT MORE INFORMATION IN THERE, LOOKING FOR PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS TO BE MAXIMUM OF THREE, 20 MINUTES, AND THEN THAT WAY WE CAN KIND OF STAGGER THESE.

» AND IF WE CHOOSE TO GO OVER, WHICH WE CAN, WE MUST TAKE A VOTE BY COUNCIL, NOT JUST A HEAD KNOT. WE HAVE TO TAKE A VOTE. SO WE CAN BE MORE CONSISTENT ON WHAT WE'RE DOING VERSUS, YOU KNOW, SOME PEOPLE WE LET GO OVER, SOME PEOPLE WE GIVE THEM EXACTLY THE 15 MINUTES, WANT TO BE MORE CONSISTENT on what we do with our public presentations, and we don't want to pile them up like they were tonight. So, that's -- and I'll bring all that back. But virtually, that's what that sentence is saying, but I'll have more detail to it next meeting. The other one go on Section 3.2, the chairperson, the chairman. Chairperson presides at all regular and special meetings, and it says, "And vary the order of business on the agenda as required." The chairman shall. That was added.

» and then skip down, there was a whole section added into that. Chairperson acts as parliamentarian and rules of parliamentarian and procedural issues while presiding at meetings, the rules on points of orders and delineates points of orders as when a challenge is made to the ruling by the chair as to point of order, or after an explanation is made, it is to the challenge of a ruling by the chair.

» And after the chair rules on the point of order made and any appeal from a ruling by the chair is debatable subsequently to which council votes on the appeal and with the chair breaking a tie and it has motions to consider a matter already decided next meeting of council you've done a great thank you for recognizing me pulling this together and i'm very comfortable handling it all in one ball one body yeah because you're giving us an explanation we have an opportunity you know to ask questions and i think the changes you've made are well noted and and uh will work well mr john thank you i just want to say this this is not this is ours so so dive in give input um give your suggestions if you don't see something can be enough what what we were trying to do when i was talking to the county adm

» inistrator is not on hands but we can't govern well let me ask you this since we chairman just recognized me i'm still hopefully still on the floor what about the uh regulating the setting of the proposed budget what have you where's go back over your the issues dealing with that you're saying you want to deal with this no i don't want to do it i just want you to tell us what it is trying to think what you're saying setting the proposed budget you know the county administration proposed budget um i think this is what you're asking me i'm trying to make sure i'm clear on your question i know i just want to see if we're on the same you know like um i guess you're you talking about when we have to come back and reopen the budget the agenda when the agenda is being prepared the county minister

» prepares the proposed agenda yes sir okay that's in the rules yes sir and you're not touching that no sir no sir no sir okay i got you no sir no no we're not touching that the only changes are what was i didn't see anything when i was reading i just want to clarify right no no no no not the way you still um can put things on on the agenda as a COUNCIL MEMBER, IT'S STILL SET BY THE COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR AND THE CLERK TO COUNCIL AND THEN WE -- THEY GET IT OUT AND THERE'S SOMETHING THAT THERE'S AN ISSUE OR PROBLEM, YOU KNOW, THEY WILL CONTACT US OR THE CHAIRMAN WILL CONTACT US. WHAT I'M GETTING IS A SENSE OF THIS BODY THAT THE RULES OF OUR HOUSE HERE ARE FOR US TO DECIDE, WE'VE GOT TWO MORE READINGS OF IT AND MY PROPOSAL IS THE SAME AS MR.

» jones is that we look at it as a body uh and not voted on it line by line that would be our arduous and staking uh so uh if there's no further discussion maybe there is we can move to a vote any further discussion one quick comment yes i think mr dubose and especially sammy for stepping up uh it will just get better by communicating with each other about how we interact and just sets it forward without being so doggone high bound any last comments mr tucker i just want to say starting tonight we still won't get this done until the first of the year you have plenty of time all right with that uh let's move to a vote and recognizing this is a first reading and let's jump on mr tucker's suggestion to pile on and look at it if we want to amend all those in favor signify by raising your hand and

» it's unanimous and we move to the next item uh which is item number seven and it is no attachment here it's a first reading in title only of an ordinance walnut a mr mr carpenter chairman members council first reading tonight in title only of the previously discussed project walnut a for the execution delivery of the fee agreement between kershaw county and the project very good thank you uh can we have a motion ask the vote mr chairman thank you mr tucker a second second from mr gardner any discussion all right very good with we move to a vote all those in favor so signify and it is unanimous we move to item number eight also no attachment uh likewise a uh first reading entitled only mr carpenter mr chairman members of council as with the previous one this is a title only execution deliver

» y of a fee agreement between kershaw county and project walnut b all right let's have a motion please make a motion for project walnut b mr tucker uh second second uh second from mr bozard uh discussion uh seeing there is none we move to vote all those in favor signify by raising your hand and we move forward thank you uh economic development and mr carpenter uh we move to new business action item next item on the agenda uh item number one a clean community community commission appointment it's at tab n you can see highlighted there i believe uh mr connell you may have a nomination mr chairman i'd make a motion that we appoint pam delk to the clean community commission and i believe the record is somewhere in in the backup file very good can we have a second second thank you mr jones uh any

» discussion mr chairman i'll just say miss uh miss delk has been a great part of the elgin community she's been very active in the clean community commission in the past with the various cleanups that we have. Her application's been in the packet for the required number of times, and I'll ask for your support. Thank you very much. Other comments? I will say that we had a very successful week out there with Wanda Swan, and this committee is active, and with their help, we have a grant that's now been passed to Mr. Carpenter to execute for litter control, and it's been very active on Facebook as well.

» I want to publicly thank Danny for working with Wanda and with the sheriff's office thank you sheriff bone i think you issued a lot of tickets as people speeded by uh i saw one of them sped by me and the sheriff had some people on him in no time at all so this uh this motion about the clean community commission that mr jones and mr bozard brought before us is going to last and have it really impact the climate of our county and i thank ben for bringing forward that nomination without any further question yeah i just want to say that you know the odds are not just on us here in this county but also statewide too because there's a lot of people talking about what we're doing here in kershaw county with the clean community commission absolutely uh very good we'll move to a vote all those in fa

» vor so signify uh hey waiting on ben jimmy and that's unanimous and thank you and someone please notify her please uh second item on the new business is brazil lane paving bids it's at tab o and on the screen i look to vick carpenter to take us through this mr chairman members council you have in front of you tonight for your approval a bid for the grading drainage and paving of approximately 1400 linear feet of an unpaved road and a 600 linear foot access road in eldon south carolina this browser lane is the road leading to the um pacla millican uh pameta utilities wastewater plant this is part of the process that began when they shut down their their ribs and their their lagoons and built their new wastewater treatment plant they are paying for this out of their funds and the county is ma

» naging and will be a county road when it's finished okay well can we have a motion to approve and we'll get into discussion a motion to approve Thank You mr. Tucker a second second that Thank You Ben comments Al, go ahead. Carpenter, tell me again where the money's coming from. It's coming from the industrial fee that Packland Millican is paying to the county. And where'd that money come from? From Packland Millican. Tell me again why we're paving this road. Because we agreed to pave the road as part of the process. They shut down their basins and built this new facility. And this money is fee in lieu? It's industrial fee, yes, sir. It's not a fee in lieu, but it's industrial fee.

» Are they telling us what we got to do with the money that they're going to give us, that we got to pave a road? No, sir. no no they didn't tell us what to do but this was part of the discussions we had we when we talked to council about this earlier this year part of the overall sewer plan this is part of that that we were discussing was paving this road to the sewer plan he was part of that agreement talked about when we were going to pay this road yes sir thank you very good any further comments yeah mr tucker i just want to clear up because i think i might miss this is a part of our agreement when we signed the agreement to get the fee in lieu am correct yes sir okay so just yes right yeah we're just following we didn't give any any break or fee but we did agree to pave the road right ok

» ay i just want to make okay very good uh further comments uh and the lowest bid is which one please um jf contractors from sumter from 73 to 76 okay any further comments uh with that let's move to a vote all those in favor signify by raising your hand and it's unanimous and moves ahead to the next item which is the council briefings and i think Let's start with you, Mr. Bozard. Please go ahead. Thank you. I appreciate that. I want to thank the Clean Commission one more time for the cleanup date they had last week. And I had one phone call that people said that they really enjoyed, really appreciated the fact that we were getting out and doing this. I want to pass that on to the Clean Commission. Also, I appreciate the louder litter signs that are going up all over the county.

» They're handmade signs, but they're good. and i appreciate that i want to comment on al hollins al i've known for a long time he's a surveyor here he was until he retired and i think he's pretty much retired now but that ramp down there does need work but he was under the impression that belongs to us and it does not belong to us belongs to the state but i do agree with him that we need to put that ramp in place in our property over there we need to fix that ramp and put it in place so we can launch boats when the brown them on that property i launched many a boat out there and fish watery but it's in need of repair right now and i understand that we're gonna launch the canoes or whatever they use in there off to the side but i think that ramp needs to be made usable so we can use it becaus

» e he brought up a very good point that that ramp that they're using now over there It belongs to the wildlife people, the conturfing country, think of what I'm saying. Anyway, the state, it is very dangerous, and I've seen some boats go up under that ramp. We need to do something about that, getting rid of it. I know we've sent some letters to the state, and the state comes back and says it was in the original contract when they put it in, but they took it out to do something different there. Anyway, I do agree that we need to look at fixing that ramp, Mr. Carpenter, and put it in.

» i got one more comment on our park i think we need to make some uh changes in our scheduling for that thing i think we need to clear that park down there of all the trees brush weeds and everything else so we can see what the land looks like talking about putting the if there's a memorial putting it up on top there but we can't see what the land looks like carpet i think we need to go ahead and look at clearing that land and getting it fixed up where we talked about thank you very much uh mr connell yes mr chairman two things first i'd ask that council just consider the car wash that recently sold on the opposite side of where the watery river veterans park is that that lot sold for i think it was over seven hundred thousand dollars which is the nearest and most time sensitive comp that you

» would have for the top portion of the river park gets the same traffic counts uh as we move forward in figuring out what we're going to do with the the top portion of that lot, I'd ask you to consider the commercial value and the benefit that there might be to having a restaurant up there or something else like that so that people can come up, have restrooms and food and whatever else they might want to do in recreation. But I think it's a very valuable piece of property on the top portion, given the recent comps. The other thing I want to report, Mr. Chairman, is I recently attended a CLE and it was on ethics And a portion of that presentation was about ethical codes or canons that apply to elected officials. I've been speaking with Mr.

» DuBose about any regulations that we have in the county or that apply under state law to this body, this Kershaw County Council. And I was surprised to learn that there's relatively little that actually applies unless a county actually opts in and creates their own code or ordinance to govern their behavior, say, regarding lobbyists, other financial matters, self-dealing. And I plan on presenting that at some point in the future after conferring with Mr. Carpenter and Mr. DuBose further to see if we want to actually do that opt-in and self-police and make sure that our behavior lines up to the letter of the law. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That's all. Thank you, sir. Mr. Jones. Mr. Bancanel, on your last comment, no worries here with Jimmy Jones, I can assure you.

» Sheriff, all our firefighters, I just want to say thank you again for everything that you do and public safety. Also, our vets, our veterans, Mr. Foreman, it's good seeing you. Glad you're here. And all the rest of you out there, appreciate y'all being here. The folks that were here tonight, they called me. I had talked with them earlier, and I'm glad they came and voiced their opinion about motorized boats. And, you know, maybe that's something that this council can think about down the road. I don't know. But certainly, I think, Vic, I know you. You've already started turning the wheels in your head thinking about it. And I think that's something that's worthwhile looking at. Tonight, we had our meeting start at 530. We had 160-something pages in our agenda.

» That's a lot to cram into one night. I just want to make sure that I just really hope that down the road, this council will really look at maybe going back to two meetings a month, because I just think business runs smoother that way. We're not cramming so much into one meeting, and it's almost like you get disconnected a little bit between one month to the next. I mean, I'm dealing with citizens every day, 20 calls, whatever, 15 calls. I mean, I'm getting those every day on request for services.

» but i i just really feel that this council needs to meet twice a month and i know we're going to be addressing that in december i believe in the right mr tucker yes sir in december uh mr chairman members of council that concludes my comments thank you uh mr snodgrass thank you mr chair members of council i want to take some time to highlight some folks in our community that are doing some really really neat things um a couple months ago we were presented with a community health improvement plan uh by catherine johnson and uh livewell kershaw county and recently they were they were recognized uh by the live healthy south carolina uh which is a initiative between alliance for healthier south carolina and department of health and environment control and so livewell received a community coaliti

» on and community innovation award for for the health improvement plan so just want to say kudos to to to those folks that live well also she was here earlier and she commented on the vision 2030 plan but Susan Wazowski was also given an award she received the dr. Rick Foster leadership award and this was given to her because he's a champion for health and health equity within our local and regional and state levels and she just exemplifies all of these uh all of the things that that organization stands for and anyone who knows knows her understands that that's well deserved and for her for her work in our community so i just want to highlight just some kershaw county citizens that are doing some really really cool things and i realize that we don't we're involved with things and people have

» different opinions about what we should be doing what we shouldn't be doing uh but we have to realize we're we are governing for the whole county and so just because you may think a health improvement plan or a healthier this may not be something that should be important we got to remember we are governing for all 68,000 people and so these things matter to us and so we're we're grateful for that I know 9-1-1 dispatch received some awards recently I guess Vic probably wouldn't will mention that so I don't want to steal that thunder but our 9-1-1 dispatch received some awards and so kudos to them uh because those are uh we said but they said it tonight those are the true first responders really i mean those are the ones over the phone that are you think about it listening to some really uh t

» ragic calls and they're on the other end of a phone and their job is to keep that keep them calm until uh until gerald and his staff or the firemen or police can get there so uh thankful for them thankful for uh planning staff uh joey and also michael had several meetings with them in the last five weeks which is you know it's a good thing because i'm meeting with them because people are wanting to open up businesses particularly in east camden and so we had some meetings and so michael thank you so much for setting those up and getting the players at the table and and figuring out the best way to to do that i do want to i do have a district 5 pride award that i want to recognize uh will falconberry who's not a kershaw county resident he's actually a lancaster resident but he is investing m

» oney in kershaw county we have a new car wash for some reason 2019 is the year of the car wash in kershaw county uh amen i don't know if you plan that with the chamber or not but it's the year of the car wash and so we have our own car wash and he's candid i want to make you guys aware of that and it is the kind that will will give you the experience and and the uh kind of the the self-worth of getting out and washing it yourself and uh so i want to i want to thank will for opening that up and yeah exactly yeah but he took a property that as you guys know had been had been blighted for many years and put a lot of money into it it's it's well lighted uh you'll feel safe if you want to go by there and vacuum your cars and uh put air and whatever so digit five pride award goes to goes to him a

» nd uh for him investing in that so that's that's just good NEWS GOOD NEWS AND BASED ON THE MEETINGS I HAVE WITH MICHAEL I MAY BE HAVING SOME OTHER DISTRICT FIVE PRIDE AWARDS THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH OKAY THANK YOU MR. TUCKER MR. TUCKER THANK YOU MR. CHAIRMAN UM JUST DOVETAIL ON WHAT UM MR. SNARCRAFT WAS SAYING THAT GENTLEMAN ALSO OWNS THE ONE BY LITTLE MIDGET AS WELL THAT'S DOWNTOWN FOR THE ONES THAT ARE NOT FAMILIAR WHO HE IS UM I WANT TO THANK ALL OF MY COLLEAGUES AND AMERICAN LEGION POST 17 AND ALL OTHERS FOR FOR THE SUPPORT ON THE NAMING OF THE VETERANS' PARK. I WANT TO SAY THAT I HAD AN OPPORTUNITY ABOUT A WEEK OR SO AGO TO GO TO NATO CONFERENCE, AND THAT WAS A GOOD CONFERENCE. IT'S THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION.

» FIRST ONE I'VE ATTENDED, AND A LOT OF GOOD INFORMATION THAT I'LL BE GETTING WITH VIC AND STAFF WITH. THEY TOOK SOME -- I WENT ON WHAT THEY CALL A BROWNFIELD TRIP, WHICH WAS AN ALL-DAY TRIP, AND, YOU KNOW, just took some incredible properties and opportunities. And these don't have to be abandoned gas stations is what I learned out there when I went out there and how they made bases like Walmart partner with them and end up creating hundreds of jobs.

» But they also in Nevada got a 1% sales tax that went back to that local tribal community because, you know, STILL IN TRIBES IN NEVADA AND IT BUILT A MEDICAL CENTER WHICH HELPED YOU KNOW KEEP PEOPLE HEALTHY KEEP PEOPLE WORKING KEEP PEOPLE LIVING THEY JUST HAD SOME INTERESTING WAYS OF DOING SOME THINGS AND NOT SAYING THAT WE CAN IMPLEMENT ALL THAT THEY DID BUT IT'S DEFINITELY WORTH LOOKING INTO AND AND SEEING HOW OTHER PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD MANAGE THEIR COMMUNITIES SO I'LL BE SHARING THAT WITH YOU AS SOON AS I CAN GET WHAT THE POWERS TO BE AND BRING YOU BACK SOMETHING WANT TO SAY HAPPY THANKSGIVING BECAUSE THIS IS OUR LAST MEETING FOR THIS MONTH SO ALL OF YOU HAVE SAFE HOLIDAYS AND SAFE TRAVELS AND UM I'LL BE ATTENDING THE SCARK CONFERENCE UH MYSELF AND MRS BURNS ARE YOU GOING THIS YEAR ONE

» SCARK DOWN AT DAKOTA NEGATIVE I'VE GOT TO GO TO DETROIT OKAY SO I'LL BE ATTENDING THAT I'LL BRING YOU BACK REPORT WHEN I WILL GET BACK THAT THAT'LL BE THE WEEK BEFORE THANKSGIVING AND I'LL APPRECIATE ALL THAT UH YOU DO THAT CONCLUDES MY REPORT Mr. Gardner. Just I think if you listen to some of the things that were said when you talk about our county and what a great place it is to live, and we talk about Dr. Tommy Joseph and so many more like him here. We talk about our fire, our EMS, our law enforcement working together, and I think doing such a better job collaborating with each other on all the things that we do in this county that make it such a special place to live.

» So the input from people that we listen, you know, like our American Legion post, I think naming that park the Veterans Park is an outstanding idea, wherever it came from. Just those things all together, if you listen tonight, I think that's what makes Kershaw County proud to be a citizen. Well, amen to that, Mr. Gardner. You see the sheriff here. You see Captain Jones. You see Bob LaVangie. You see Gerald Blanchard. See what they did when they got together without having to ask permission or get guidance from this esteemed body. They did the right thing without any help from up here, and they came up with a better solution, and I'm going to keep the patch, Sheriff. Thank you very much, and this kind of team play makes us a better county because we're better when we work together.

» uh 100 the chamber of commerce vick uh lauren and steven uh excuse me steward kid jumping in when there was a hole this is just terrific um i would like to mention a couple of um housekeeping matters uh survey uh 2030 is out there i'll say it again take the time to take it i guarantee i'll read every comment and so will most of the men up here and we'll get a report in January. The full count census is fully underway. I believe there's a meeting in this chamber on the four o'clock and on the 21st. Mr. Tucker, you are kind of our lead hitter on that and we'll have a bunch of people in here.

» I ask every organization that has anything to do with the census to have at least one person here to be represented because that census leads to federal and state money apportioned by population i need not say any more on that issue uh but with respect to that vic i think it's time for us to get an update on housing permits and growth uh i i get a daily phone call from people in the west watery section i know you do jimmy and ben crowding traffic over there if we can just get an update on housing permits the last one's about eight months old, if we can just get a brief update here. I met with the governor twice this past month, once on Rev War 250.

» As you know, we got about $5 million going to us, that the city of Camden, this county council, and the CCTC are participating in a world beater of a Revolutionary War Visitor Center. And the governor is fully behind that, and so are a number of national organizations that are giving us money to expand the size of the battlefield. What does that mean? It means tourism. It also means community and state pride in our role in the Revolutionary War.

» The second meeting I had with him, I'm due to report to you, was a Japanese ambassador and console on economic development for this county and a report will follow in due time as that's developed lastly each of you have in front of you the value annual evaluation appraisal form for the county administrator i'll look to miss mary to collect that from you by the end of the year i think that would be good the 31st of december so we can roll that into a review in our first meeting in the new year. With that, I have nothing further. Mr. Carpenter. Mr. Chairman, members, council, a few things. First of all, Mr. Jones, I appreciate the kind words. I must however emphatically say that all the projects tonight began one to three years ago.

» Fortunate to be able to bring them to the county in the form they are today and I appreciate the support of this county, of the council, and of the citizens behind me and in this community at large to make sure that we've got a great economic development program. I I WOULD REMIND COUNCILMEMBERS THAT STARTING TOMORROW AND THE NEXT DAY, WE'LL BE INTERVIEWING MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY TO GET THEIR INPUT ON WHAT OUR NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR, WHAT THE SCOPE OF THAT PERSON SHOULD BE. AND SO I REMIND YOU TO, IF YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP YET, PLEASE LET ME KNOW AND I'LL GET YOU A POSITION ON THE CALENDAR SO YOU CAN DO SO.

» ALSO AS DAVID WAS SAYING, WE'VE GOT A LOT TO BE PROUD OF WITH OUR 911, AS YOU ALREADY know it's very easy to talk about good things and this is one of those just a few weeks ago out of the five awards that are presented each year to the entire state three of them were presented to Kershaw County Trish Crawford Bubba Hinson and Daisy Falkenberry received honors at the annual convention these honors are determined not by peers not by committee but rather by out-of-state independent people who reviewed the process and the applications and made these decisions. So that makes it even more important that and more impressive that these men and women who represent us receive these awards. Trish Crawford was named the Director of the Year for the entire state.

» Bubba Henson was the Trainer of the Year for the entire state. And Daisy Falkenberry received the Palmetto Award for 24 years of dedication to the 9-1-1 Communication Center. Amazing people we have there, Mr. Chairman, Members of Council. That's my report. Thank you very much, Mr. DuBose. Mr. Chairman and Members of Council, I have nothing. thank you very much it took you a long time to say it mr. chairman motion to adjourn second please mr. Gardner any discussion a happy Thanksgiving to everybody and be safe that weather out there is nasty with I do this all vote and mr. Gardner very good it's unanimous and we are adjourned