Full meeting transcript - May 11, 2021

» test one two three for this a great day in kershaw county all members are present a coroner is recorded mary thank you very much and it's also a great day in this all america county we've had tornadoes in the last 15 months we've made it through covid now with now for the first time in a year we've had zero cases reported today we have a made it through a recession and now seemingly just like toilet paper and during covid people are now trying to get all the gas they can but we are a professional county we have suffered and we have overcome and we will make it through all these challenges we've had a great day with a budget and as you noticed camden has lapsed on the mask policy and this county council has is not renewed the emergency declaration so i'm wearing a mask out of consideration f

» or others but i've had my shot and the shot and the mask is optional so you can wear it if you want and don't wear it if you don't want it's the way It's kind of been in this county since we started, and look where we are. It looks like we're going to see a brighter day in this COVID. Unfortunately, I must tell you also that apparently the virus hadn't gotten the news, and we've lost four more people in the last three weeks. So I ask you to join me now in a moment of silence, please. Amen. We are now called to order. I've been detailed to do the invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance. Would you all please stand? As it says in the good book, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord in Psalm 33, and there's some good words in there.

» And so with that, we pray and we ask the Almighty's blessing on this meeting and guide us in our deliberations and give us every, every piece of wisdom that is in your best wisdom to give us a way clear ahead as your people trying to achieve the best we can for our county with the limited resources we have.

» all this we ask in jesus name amen amen join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance with that we move to public comments mary do we have any uh call-ins or okay we have none mr dubose who signed up the first person that signed up is cliff judy all right mr judy thank you and as you come up we limit it to about five minutes there's no question and answer in exchange but we do want to hear from you sir and we ask you to your comments be respectful and and to the point with that Mr.

» Judy go right ahead thank you first I want to submit this not submit it but show it this is a file and you bring the microphone over to your mouth so everybody can hear that is it better yeah it's better thank you this is basically a file that I've had on Palmetto Utility since 2011 and my dealings with them in hearings and otherwise I submitted about most of this, the meaningful stuff to this, to Mr. Bowes about two or three weeks ago for the county. And the file is this big, a lot of stuff, and it's not pleasant. There's another file that dates back to the 90s, 1990. This is a file of me dealing with the county on a sewer proposition that we built. I put the sewer pump station in in 1984. It exists on I-20 at Asia 92.

» Doing that I had to deal with the county, deal with the county chairman, all the different ones. And it was, it was pleasant. It was very pleasant. And the files are the same, the same thickness. One's pleasant and one is an aggravation. And so, I'm not sure who Palmetto is today. You know, this is It's going under some transition, but I would submit, I've dealt with people like Austin Shaheen, Bill Byers, who was a county attorney at the time, Jim McGirt, Ed Royal, Dave Screen, Ken, and I've dealt with you for 37 years, a long time. Never any unpleasantness, at least that I know of. And so what we have is a situation where the county does well, it has done well, continues to do well. The people are interested. Nobody that I know in this county government is easy to push around.

» I've tried to push someone around. They don't push. You know, but they work. They work with you. They work with you to get things done. So I'll close with this. This is a note. It has to do with Jim Girt, and it was December 5th of 1995. This is my file. Jim wanted to borrow. I deal with the sewer. It's very complicated. And it left the rights for me to charge right away for charges to pay me back for putting the sewer in there. The amount of money spent on it was like $360,000, $60,000 from the county, $300,000 from me. But it's too complicated for anybody to understand.

» So at some point, Jim called me and asked me, could the county borrow 15,000 gallons a day of sewer that Creighton McMaster and I had for our part of the deal? And, you know, I couldn't speak for Creighton, but I called Creighton. They said, look, they want to borrow 15,000 gallons of sewer. Well, his office is way above my head and his, too. But we said, fine. You pay the lawyer to draw it up. It's fine. And I think, looking at all the stuff on the board about this sewer stuff, this is the last file I'm going to give this to Ken. But Palmetto sought, and I thank God, permission to raise sewer fee on the residential people to $66 a month, up from $40.

» the county and this i got off the internet the average price of the fuel i'm not sure if this is on a use basis or not but it's 35 so you got a hundred percent increase in cost to the consumer i don't know of any advantage if i can work through all these guys and i and we get things done you really don't need that thank you thank you mr judy thank you very much uh mr dubose the second person that signed up is ralph demarco uh mr demarco well i guess you can tell by the shirt i'm with the solid waste department uh first thing i've got on my agenda mr chairman we need a portable i got it mr judy get on take it outside please thank you go ahead mr demarco first thing i've got on my agenda is our our landfill hours on a saturday are half days and we're we're completely filled up before we ever

» get to saturday afternoon so we've got no place to take this trash we can't send the people anywhere else except to another site and we've got people running around in circles trying to get rid of their own trash uh i think the landfill hours ought to be full days on saturday just like the rest of us second thing i've got on here is uh i'd like to invite all of you actually on a saturday afternoon to go to either elgin springdale which is my site or the airport and spend an afternoon there on saturday afternoon and see what's going on and see how much trash is being dumped every saturday and it actually starts on friday and the last thing i've got on there is we're we're sending our trucks up and down the road with a lot of air in them and no garbage And the reason for that is because we go

» t equipment broke down. Well, I got here a little over three years ago. I had a backhoe at my site. It was parked in the corner and there it stayed for nine months and finally got moved to the landfill. Right now, we've got two more parked at two different other sites that are broke down and we're not getting these. So we cannot compact the trash in the open tops by not being able to compact this trash.

» you're sending trucks down the road half empty you're sending twice as many trucks down the road every day half empty thank you gentlemen thank you sir and thanks for what you do for the county uh mr devos the third person that signed up is judge debbie bradham all right thank you judge good evening good evening um after leaving the budget workshop today um i felt compelled to reach out to all of you and so that's why i'm here tonight i can get y'all at one time um the first thing i'd like to say is i i am excited and very hopeful that some of you are have expressed a desire to take a serious look at the salaries of the of our county employees i do believe an in-house study is appropriate as was suggested today we have qualified people on our staff that could help mr carpenter with that stu

» dy but this is something that It does not need to be rushed. I know that y'all probably all calmed down after the workshop today. We need to be methodical in that research and gathering that data. Department heads need to be involved. They need to present to Mr. Carpenter as to what a particular petition position entails, its importance, what qualifications are needed that position to perform the task that that person holds I agree with Mr. Connell we need to integrate some private sector mentality when it comes to being able to adjust the salary of our outstanding employees every once in a while to do this you've got to have a little cushion in your personnel budget some some departments have it some departments don't what Mr.

» Carpenter presented today in the balance budget that that was presented today I believe in my opinion was a cost of living raise that's across the board some of you mentioned that you like the three to two three two one scale to me that's a salary adjustment which I believe is what calls kept us from taking a serious look at the pay structure from 2018 2019 fiscal year I ask that you go forward with the 2% cost of living raise across the board this year this budget year so that you can move things forward and devise a plan to do an in-depth salaries study to include the input of your department heads who present to you data and other credible proof of the importance of the position the desired salary range etc giving you all the time to figure out a conservative way to pay the cost of these

» salary adjustments um thank you for your time and thank you for everything that you do for the county um that's all i needed that to um put that in your ear tonight good to hear from you judge thanks so very much and mr devos that concludes the sign up list and that concludes uh the public comments we move now to an adoption of agenda it's on the board in front of you and also on your electronic tablets can we have a motion to approve the agenda let's approve the agenda mr chair mr tucker a second second second from mr gardner uh any comments the only question i have is jimmy we were going to move to a vote when we get to your item is that correct yes good okay good all right when we get to it i'll explain it okay but there is a vote there is that correct it's a new business mr chairman tha

» t's that's a yes is that correct yes i'm going to call for a vote good thank you very much proposal for sale of the wastewater treatment plan of the new business good means i'm going to want to discuss you don't want to wait i want to i'm going to have a discussion and then i may call for another vote between now and then i'll let you know all right i see um with that any further discussion okay all those in favor signify by raising your hand and that's unanimous mary the agenda is approved we move to now approval of minutes tab a and it's on the screen uh let's see uh can we move a motion to approve the minutes the move mr gardner a second second second from mr connell any discussion very good there is no discussion we move on now to a vote all those in favor so signify and it's unanimous

» and we move on now to administrative updates uh and covet mr members council is um has already previously been mentioned by the chairman today, there were zero cases reported. That's the first time in many months in Kershaw County. You will see in front of you the 14-day rolling average. It has dropped down to 102 in the last 14 days, so it is by far the lowest it has been this calendar year. And the average daily COVID test, as we move to the middle of May, we are significantly below every other month so far this year.

» The vaccines are slowing down, but we have moved back up into a 14th place again in the state our recipient rate but as you follow the news you know that people are starting to slow down and receiving the vaccines and then the total monthly cases again we've had 60 so far this month which if we can continue this this will be a very long month so it's a good sign good prognosis this is great news uh any questions mr tucker mr uh carper yeah you are aware according to the fda and cdc that may be able to do the 12 to 15 year old starting thursday yes sir wow that's great that's terrific okay that's the pfizer shot though yeah yeah pfizer hey jim go ahead something i haven't seen in the news at all that i think people should be aware of it's just encouraging is if you take the cdc survival rate

» and then you overlap that with the projected undetected and asymptomatic rate uh it's really encouraging for overall survival rate i mean you're pushing high 99.99 you can the calculation changes day to day based on actual diagnoses but uh you don't hear that anywhere and i think it's really encouraging it really is other comments i see uh a covered survivor in the audience good to have you here al i have a comment yeah mr john thank mr connell for that comment giving us a a real positive outlook on some of the reality of it thank you absolutely absolutely thank you very much and with that i think we can move on to the first item on the agenda thank you vick for all that good work first item is an ordinance first reading and title only uh for the budget year mr carpenter would you just open

» that up please chair members of council as you know by policy we uh generally will provide the uh county budget first reading title only in order to start the legislative process uh this morning we did have a budget workshop several hours where we went over the general fund and we'll continue reviewing the rest of the budget next tuesday um on the 18th very good uh so can we have a motion to approve the first reading of the budget and title only make a motion we approve the first reading and title only uh mr tucker second second uh mr connell uh any discussion yeah mr snodgrass sir i i would just encourage folks that are listening and able to access everything online to go to our you the county youtube channel and you can find the previous budget workshops and you know if you really want to

» dig into this thing which i would encourage everyone to do that go and watch the previous budget workshops and uh dig into it and also just making myself available to not only you know constituents in my district but all all uh constituents that you know reach out to us and uh we will be happy to kind of walk you through walk you through the budget and uh but i thought it's very helpful that we broadcast all the workshops and as a citizen you can you can get in there you can really dig in and uh i appreciate how we've been really we're always transparent but we've been able to take it even a step further this year so i appreciate that it's been a tough year mr connell sir i just look forward to this budget uh cycle really because it represents a return to normalcy for us i think we're able

» to dig in and we've been working on budget sessions and and getting to interact more with department heads and folks locally that are telling us what the needs are in the community so that we can consider them and and try to accomplish as best we can with that said on my short time in my short time on county council um i think it's traditionally mr gardner who who leads off with the uh the big number that's requested in all the various budgets from different departments and he says you know this is what we're actually able to do um that's typically that's that's typically how it goes the requests are much larger larger than what's uh what we're capable of but uh in the work that we've done so far i feel i feel confident that we'll be able to accomplish those things that really matter and uh

» just look forward to it thank you mr chairman yeah those other comments yep we got some real meaty issues i think we can move to a vote and title only just remembering that we have a work session 10 o'clock uh on tuesday next week and then another work session 10 o'clock the following tuesday on the 25th and then this is for you tom you were not there and then of course the second reading of the budget uh in the evening on the 20th and 25th so with that all those in favor signify by raising your hand and it's unanimous mary and we move on to put that rock in your rucksack there vic as they say in the military good luck we have now a new business item number one is a proposal for sale of wastewater treatment plant there are no attachments but over to you mr jones you want to make the motion

» yes thank you mr chairman i will take it from here the proposal to sell the wastewater treatment plant i would like to this time move for our discussion of the agenda item i will later make a motion for more official action so mr carpenter would you invite our guests up please we need a second i'm sorry second second by whom uh mr tucker uh any discussion if i may yeah go ahead would you mind inviting our guest up sure we have with us tonight mr michael carton from southwest water utilities and he has several people with him as well that he will use as he needs for backup so mr carton all right come on up welcome back it's great to have you back in the team and thanks for your advice to mr carpenter in the last few months on capacity and other ideas please sir mr um mr i think we need to ta

» ke our vote don't we yeah we do of course all those in favor signify by raising your hand and we move into a discussion please thank you thank you for the opportunity to be here if you would uh we've been talking about the sale of the wastewater treatment plant is something that i have been interested in many many years could you just give us a scenario of how that could possibly work sure so vic and i have been discussing this over the past few months for the council's request to work through mr carpenter and when we talked about how this process would work i vision it as a 60 to 90 day process where we collaborate i see this as a partnership so we work collaboratively with the county to put together a people plan first we want to create jobs and then we need to put together a capital plan

» and we need access to the facility so we've never i've never laid my eyes on the wastewater treatment plant but my vision this process is us working together with county officials and employees mr could you pull with a mic i just look closer please um working together with county employees and officials and getting y'all's feedback to understand y'all's vision and the strategy on how best to meet the long-term needs for wastewater in this west watery portion of kershaw county so i see it as a collaborative process i think it would take us 60 to 90 days probably to put together you know evaluation plan a people plan and really get a better idea of of what we're working with and take a look under the hood as we call it so that's how i see this process working as a partnership and a collaborat

» ion to work together to see if it does make sense for kershaw county to partner with south carolina water utilities i have a couple of questions i'd like to lead off with and i hope my colleagues will ask some of their questions that they were asking me the other night as well um mr carpenter feel free to follow him with uh michael on answering these questions in case there's a difference of an opinion or whatever. Is it true that DHEC records indicate that we are at 90% capacity? And if we started today, how long would it take us to upgrade from a 2MGD to a 4MGD? I don't know that we're at 90%. We were closing to 80% last I saw. As far as the amount of time it would take to upgrade, I would depend on the engineers to tell me that. I don't know how long it would take to build a system.

» know that in the past we have looked at for the purpose of industry coming in how quickly could we do it and it's possible to get it done in about 12 months if we had to do it quickly I can't tell you what a normal process if that would add a month six months or whatever to that time frame so it would take us you think maybe we could do it in 30 days upgrade the plant yeah so you're looking at what six months to a year or well you'd have to engineer it first and then you'd have to go out for bid and then you'd have to build it with your experience how long so just give me a do you have an answer as to how long it would take us I would I mean I would say at least two years from start to finish correct two years what about if you were involved by the way let me ask you a question you are Sout

» h Carolina utilities correct South Carolina water utility utility okay you're not palmetto utilities correct okay so we acquired palmetto utilities correct 1985 was 35 years ago too things change in life um how quick could y'all do an upgrade do you have any idea without having looked at anything or just basically what you've read well our our facility right now has approximately five million gallons of capacity so we wouldn't need to make any upgrades necessarily today to provide service to additional growth which seems to be coming this way to elgin i'm seeing a lot of growth people want to want to live here they want to work here and we could you know we can provide it today you know we have capability today okay let me ask so we're looking at two years versus today let me ask another qu

» estion you know i know that there had been a number thrown out there 12 to 15 million dollars if we had projected to upgrade from 2mg to 4mg gd um mr carpenter do you know that because of time that has gone by would it not be a higher number now i don't know that but it wouldn't surprise me so it could be 20 million dollars we're looking at that would have come with the upgrade from a 2mg to a 4mgd and I know we're upgrading our flow capacity at the southern loop let me ask you this how much is it gonna cost us to complete that low capacity that's about a seven million dollar project seven million dollars okay so so far you know we have a plant eighty or ninety percent capacity whatever may be we're looking at twelve to fifteen million probably twenty million to upgrade it we're struggling

» right now trying to find money to upgrade a fire department then there much other needs out there as well then we talked about how quickly it could be done two years versus already available um the southern loop that we're working on seven million that's something we wouldn't have to work on if we were to go into a partnership was with with a utilities company um can you let me ask you this question mr.

» Carver can you tell me where we're going to be within the next two years with our flow capacity do you have any projected outcome on that we'll be done with all the upgrades to the system so our capacity and in our conveying system you know it'll be designed to handle whatever we can anticipates coming to us in delay I think we talked about this question and in our work session this morning our budget work session when's the last time we had a sewer rate hike it's been about 10 years hasn't it before my time i believe right let me ask you i think well one thing i think i think we need a comprehensive plan study and i think that could be done relatively quickly working with uh an outside agency mr carden could you provide a study on rates staying the same with sewer if y'all if your company

» or whatever were to bid on this this council wishes us to do so absolutely we could like i said in 60 to 90 days do a comprehensive feasibility study working collaboratively with Vic. We could certainly provide that as an alternative and show you what that would look like. But here's what concerns me and I'm going to stop and let my colleagues hopefully ask their questions to you as well. Here's what concerns me. It goes back to what I said. Our capacity's about there. We're going to have to upgrade. It will be close to 20 million dollars probably and I'll probably be sitting here when that study comes in to show that I'm right.

» So we'll have to find the 20 million dollars from somewhere and then we're looking at seven million dollars that we're going to have to spend on the loop the upgrades and then we're looking at two years to do our upgrade versus that if we work with a private company of some sort we may could do it a lot quicker immediately who knows um at this time i'll yield to my colleagues let me first uh ask you to introduce uh your colleagues here we'd like to welcome them to uh please sir yeah thank you so craig sorenson our president good to see you again sir Nicodemus about works on with developer and builder services all right Mary have you got those names recorded please okay thank you thank you all right my backup yeah yeah there you go all right well so Jimmy what do you want to do now well I wo

» uld hope y'all would have some questions to ask them chairman you said is there any discussion there were a lot of questions asked to me the other night when I was saying that I was gonna try sitting this up to bring these folks in so that we could get our questions answered by the professionals okay so if you would i'll start off with is there an offer on the table today a bid on the table no not today but what i would like is the opportunity to take a better look at these assets and understand what makes the most sense we want to be part of the solution if it makes sense and it's in the best interest of kershaw county then we'd like to propose that to you i just want to clarify what we're looking at here jimmy there's no offer and there's no bid on the table okay gentlemen please mr tucke

» r i think we all knew that mr chairman go ahead thank you uh how you do sir good how you doing doing well to see you again same here i'm smiling behind my mask um we were talking about the study what you think uh that cost would be to do that and then who will eat that will that be bill back to the county or will that be something that your company provides we would do our own internal valuation of the company determine what we're willing to pay for it and that would come on our dime we have a deep roster of in-house civil engineers and financial modeling team and accountants regulatory professionals that would be on our dime okay thank you mr chairman uh yes sir ben go right here uh mr carton was great he took my call today i think uh family or kids or somebody's running around in the back

» ground but made some time to talk to me is very accommodating and very open in some of the questions and comments that I had each deal has some pros and cons and you know whether or not one can be made here I'm interested to find out I mean I'd like to know I don't know how to value a sewer system as I told you on the phone just frankly this is a new horse in the barn for me I've never been involved in a sewer sale or valuing a sewer system starting off hopefully this prompts us to actually do the the sewer study we've been talking about I've heard about it a number of years even before being on council and in some ways it feels like the uh the digitization of our code you know we talked about it for many years and then something kind of triggered it and pushed it over the edge and we actua

» lly decided to fund it um i'd appreciate of course uh an in-house study but i think just like any deal mr tucker we won't have a third party or our own independent view on valuation as well and then you can kind of average the two if you need to one usually comes in high one comes in low um a few of the concerns i have are it's a private company so you have shareholders you're required to provide some type of rate of return on that and since you are a sewer company you know how to do it that's you know you have a profit-making incentive uh to do it really well and efficiently and and the fact that we're even considering this would would suggest that maybe you do it better than us maybe you do i don't know i'd like to learn a little bit bit more about that but if you have a seven to nine per

» cent rate of return maybe six percent that you're trying to provide on equity to shareholders um those are those are profits that we wouldn't necessarily charge in the form of rates and maybe you just are that much more efficient i'd like to learn i'd like to know um one of the things i think is really uh that could be attractive as a pro would be uh something you mentioned and i was trying to articulate but a non-exclusive franchise agreement where at least from my perspective one of the big concerns i have is control.

» If it comes to the time where you or I are not here and at some point this council says hey it's in the best interest of Kirstall County to take a sewer line that way however many hundred or a thousand feet and expand in these ways and accommodate a particular business or a residential area and there's a disagreement with the private entity well we gave up the control how do we how do you rein that in is there a contractual clause or agreement we can come to on that point and there may be I don't know but I would like to know there may be you could have buyback clauses which we discussed today that might make it attractive it's possible um and then also the relationship i think has been good under the new ownership at palmetto utilities or south carolina water utilities and uh it could be e

» ven better um whether it's affluent that might be used for a perspective um perspective industry that comes in and maybe needs to cool something um y'all have indicated a willingness to accommodate or work with something on that or even if the deal doesn't happen and the values aren't there for us to say yeah we want to undertake a sale there's nothing to say you wouldn't be willing to make a margin per gallon if we needed a stop gap while we built our own facility uh you say it was two years as mr jones or mr carpenter may have commented we could direct a certain number of gallons to you guys and you'd be making a margin per gallon if it assisted us was that something that could work yeah it's possible that could work and speaking to the effluent we're we're water people that's all we do a

» nd as stewards of the resource that's absolutely something i want to explore with you guys you know reuse water reuse is the future and it has a great environmental component you mentioned our shareholders our shareholders are very interested in protecting the environment and that's one of our our core values so on that reuse water component that's something i want to explore i just think it makes sense and i want to i want to do this study because i think it makes sense for us to partner and work together you know we're uniquely positioned here in kershaw county i've done deals in various parts of the states we entered with kiowa island utilities that's obviously worked really well for us and we made some commitments to kiowa island which we've stayed true to and that's just the type of pe

» ople we are so but we're uniquely positioned here because we're employers we're taxpayers and we have the capacity and the infrastructure right next door in kershaw county so i just see this as as unique compared to some of the other deals i've done i think that's where a lot of the value can come and i appreciate your kind words it's it really is a privilege to serve here in kershaw county and we we really enjoyed being here and we look forward to being here for a very long time i've lived here my whole life and as i mentioned last time if you remember my president back here he actually relocated his entire family so if y'all are concerned about our commitment to this community he brought his three children his mother-in-law um you know he brought his entire family here so we're trying to

» do the right thing by the community and protect the resource and the environment. And like you said, this is all we do. We're incentivized to be efficient. And, um, I think there's plenty of guardrails in place that we could do and something that, you know, I don't know what that looks like yet, but that's, that's what hopefully an outcome of a study would show that we, y'all can still control the growth and, you know, we can provide our expertise and our resources to be a good partner. And, um, I think it's something that's worth exploring. Yeah. Mr. Chairman, just since I have the floor, I'll finish up. That's what's intriguing to me, is I want to determine if the value is there. There are some points where there could be some value.

» If we can retain control that satisfies this body to a necessary level for future purposes, that'd be interesting. You know, Kewa, there are no slouches down there. I'm sure they fully investigated it and vetted your company, and that's going to be one of my next calls to some of their council members down there and representatives to figure out other considerations that they had as far as a vote tonight you know i wouldn't be able to vote in favor i know we don't have a motion before us but you know i would support a rate study i think we need to do that we've been talking about it for years already um as far as hey let's go ahead and sell the sewer system i just think that's premature and we don't know enough yet yes chairman i would just want to follow up on a comment that you were askin

» g i want to make it clear that i am not promoting or recommending the sale of the treatment plant and sewer system to any one individual i am only promoting and recommending that the treatment plant and sewer system be sold to eliminate the unfair sewer tax and provide for much needed funds and better sewer service the presentation is only to tell us how the sale of the sewer system could work for our county benefits of receiving much needed funding and better sewer service when i say better i'm talking about the expansion yeah i just want to make that clear that was a very helpful clarification jimmy and uh that's why i asked if a vote was going to be proceeding because in our minutes from that we just approved from last time it was quoted as mary saying we're presenting an option to sell

» the sewer plant to a private entity thereby freeing money to be used elsewhere so that's an assistant that's consistent with what you just said correct okay well thank you so we are going to get to a vote on a sale just yes sir you want to see if anybody says any questions and comments and i promise you yeah i will get to my motion that was very helpful thank you uh who else next uh mr gardner yeah i'm uh a lot of thought to this i think we've got the cart before the horse and my opinion is we're talking about doing all this and as a council we haven't had discussion amongst ourselves whether even we even want to sell it or even a vote to that point yet we have a potential buyer essentially here talking tonight and would we would we not have to open this to bid if we voted to do that would

» it not be we would not have other entities that would be interested in perhaps mr carbon yes okay thank you i can't tell you that anybody would be interested but we would have to put it out for bid for consideration i understand that so to me we're we're at a point where we're ahead of ourselves a little bit you know i think that discussion amongst ourselves and then bring that to a vote and say okay yeah we're interested in a sale now let's start talking about how we're going to do it that's my personal feelings on it uh the other part is if if and are we talking about selling it are we talking about a collaborative agreement to work with somebody because that's i'm kind of getting a read on both of those things here uh and as as we have a sewer tax i i'm concerned about those folks on tha

» t sewer line that that are going to assume probably much higher rates i would think because we spread it out over our 60 70 000 people that 20 or 30 a month roughly 1700 customers and then if you bring that in to you know rolling that in into a few people it seems to me that those rates are going to go up maybe i'm totally off base and totally wrong but that's my thoughts on it so other comments uh mr tucker i have another question um michael are you guys currently running richland county sewer we have acquired a portion of Richland County's sewer system and just last year the Public Service Commission did a thorough review of that and deemed that it was in the public interest and they're very satisfied with our customer service and our rates and our operations so it's been a proven success

» they've done that for multiple deals that we've done in the past few years and that's majority in the northeast end of Richland County am I correct that's correct thank you if i may i just wanted to remark on try to clear something up that mr gardener said you know i think we're exactly where we need to be because we are discussing the ifs and ands and hows and whys we would get into selling the sewer plant and bottom line is y'all haven't heard my motion yet so when you hear that i think that will answer all your questions mr gardner um thank you you Jamie thanks mr.

» Cardin good good to have you with us and thanks for being here a couple questions but first I'll ask a big question talk about capacity so what would precipitate us I mean obviously I know we're 80% 9% whatever but what would be the big precipice that would put us needing to expand capacity quickly obviously a new industry coming in new industry I mean that or a very very large housing development that had plans on building very quickly depending on what the industry is don't who would who would help I mean would there be anyone to help us expand that sewer system given an industry come into Kershaw County that would precipitate that sort of demand as a rule an industry that would be large enough with enough investment to generate that much wastewater would probably have state incentives of

» which that would be on the table for the state to consider paying for right so we wouldn't be by ourselves trying to not necessarily okay no that's been a general practice and part of one of our bargaining chips with the state when we had a big offer uh sewer was a part of the bargaining place okay i'm not good anything sorry okay and then so let's talk about they these guys talk about wanting to look under the hood so to speak and i get that is there is there anything proprietary that with these with this industry that okay so goods it's i understand i just i'm uh yeah this is not something i deal in every day so you know i'm on a septic tank so at least on our i mean if we're a private industry then we might not want people in there but we're a public entity so there's right that's that's

» what that's what i figured all right mike um so let me ask you this how would how do you think your company would react so let's say let's say we move forward with this say you guys acquire but at the same time or thereafter we feel as a county we feel that our growth is is an unhealthy growth is going too fast and this council votes to put holds on building permits how do you think your company would react to you just acquired a plant but now the county in which you're servicing is is not building as many homes as you probably thought that they were going build does it ever have you ever had to deal with that mr chair thank you uh council appreciate the opportunity to speak real quick and and uh and i'll say that identify yourself to the people because there are people listening you want t

» o know who you are go ahead thank you i'll leave my card for uh i'm just talking about the people on facebook right now watching uh my name is craig sorensen i'm the president of south carolina water utilities and uh as as michael mentioned uh a proud new resident of the state of south carolina so um i wanted to um i'll speak to that uh briefly and then return to a prior comment that you made that i'd like to uh i'd like to add some some thought to yeah and uh what i would say is that is that you know as as we look at a utility and as we look at um valuing uh a a business essentially what what it is uh we'll look at growth as one as one aspect of the value of that of the of that business of that utility uh but it's just one value and uh currently today at the at the capacity that the uh tha

» t the system is at at uh a million eight or so average daily flow uh in a two million gallon plant then you know there's not a lot of growth that we would bake into that you know so so i think that we would be coming into this understanding that that there is not a lot of growth available in the in the existing facility now we could we could leverage uh leverage the ownership of that facility and redirect flows into our existing facility and i think that's where the efficiencies and some of the value can come in um and that would be at relatively low cost uh and so i wanted to to clarify that and then uh we've talked uh broadly about uh capacity in in the in the plant and was whether it's 80 or 90 or or what whatever the actual number is uh that's average daily flow and as as anyone in the

» utility business will tell you you you know you deal with average daily flows but you you have to plan on peak flows and and so that is where i get nervous as a utility uh owner that you know once it gets into the pipe it's it's it's ours and we've got to got to find a way to treat it and meet the permit at the back end of the treatment facility so if you've got three million gallons coming down the pipe during a wet weather event to your plant and i'm not sure exactly what the wet weather uh flows are at the facility but but i will i will uh assure you it's higher than than the average daily flow just just by the definition of average uh and so that is the is the piece that has the utility guy in the room that concerns that would concern me as as the owner so thank you but and i guess back

» to my my original my question is there's obviously a risk there I mean you guys are you guys are interested in a system in a county that is experiencing growth but at the same time while we welcome growth well I'm speaking for me we're not interested in becoming becoming Columbia part two I mean we're Kershaw County we're Camden we're Lugolf we're Elgin this is who we are we're not interested in being like anyone's you know partner so so sometimes even the growth we we have to be want to be intentional we want to be methodical with our growth not just hey everybody show up and start building stuff so i'm just just curious how you know how a private entity would would would have to react if you're basing your investment on something and then your your customer base is not grow maybe doesn't

» grow as much as you thought it was going to grow sure and and i would say that absolutely the the county would still control uh control the the growth by by zoning or or the the methods and means that you have available available to you permitting and and all that of which the wastewater piece is just one one component um surely uh the utility would would prefer more growth and less growth we've got capacity available and and that would be preferable uh to to us and and improve our our scale and and capabilities to provide services at low cost but um but but that's not necessarily the you know we have we have lots of utilities that that don't have high growth rates how far after how long after you so you you're in hilton head or keel island correct correct and then also up in blithewood i a

» sked this last i mean i said a couple of months ago when you were here how long after you acquired those systems did you have to did you see a need to increase rates well every deal is unique right yeah we don't have a set time where we come in but i think i touched last time we acquired kiowa in 2016 and we were called by the psc to come back in in 2018 following the tax cut and jobs act to reset our rates at a lower federal tax rate so the kiowa island maybe that's not the best example but when you talk about hilton head we're talking about buford so we've been we're invested in buford we acquired two utilities down there and their last rate increase was in 2015 and we've not yet brought them in i think they'll need to come in soon but you know everyone's unique and then the most recent o

» ne that we did was kalawasi island and spring island which is down in buford and again we work collaboratively collaboratively with the poas down there held multiple meetings sent out surveys you know communication communication that's we find a lot of value in that and you know we agreed to stay out for at least four years at minimum before requesting an increase and one thing about us Us being a private utility, we're completely transparent. I mean, you have full transparency with us at the PSC. So when we do need to come in for a rate increase, and it's been five, six years, we're an open book. And any citizen, especially the council, will be privy to all of our financial information and our earnings and all of that. You know, we're completely transparent as a private utility.

» And I think that, you know, regulation and these guardrails that the state has in place are important. So we're interested in investing in regulated utilities. All right, Russell, please. I'm the only one who hasn't had anything to say. Thanks for coming tonight. Certainly. Certainly a lot of questions to answer and a lot of things to think through. A couple of notes I've made. We've had some citizens that say, hey, we're on septic and we keep having to pump it. Would you guys be able to run to existing neighborhoods that were, say, four or five miles away from existing sewer? Would that intrigue you to run a sewer line, to knock on doors at existing houses and say, hey, we want to offer you sewer? Because some of the people have reached out to us and said, hey, we're on a septic system.

» We'd love to have sewer. What gives? Is that something that you would be interested in doing? It is, and that's something I think that we should explore as part of this study. You know, what would that cost and what is the desire of the citizens to really have that? and that's where I would lean on you and Vic, 'cause y'all have y'all's finger on the pulse of this community, and you can help us understand if that's really what the people want. But absolutely, and I understand their concerns. I mean, septic tanks, they have limitations, and they're not necessarily the most environmentally friendly system, and that's something we would explore as part of this.

» You know, I think we would be looking for you to give us some direction and part of the study to say, "Well, what does that look like?" And we could absolutely explore that see what it looks like that's something we'd be interested in yeah so that's something that's happened in other locations y'all have come in and bought a place an existing sewer system and then provided services to existing customers i've seen it happen and or existing homeowners i'm sorry correct and you know one of the biggest roadblocks i've seen with that is they want to tie in but they don't want to pay for their service line so we own the the mains and the distribution lines but once you get to that water meter on that other side of the water meter that's that's your property so it would require some investment on

» the homeowner to tie into our system and pay their portion of the capacity to ensure that they're not adversely impacting any of our other existing customers in kershaw county at that point would there be a fee as well as is running pipe would it also be a fee to tap on yes we have a impact fee tap fees for a thousand dollars for new connections okay so it's a thousand dollars currently thousand and fifty dollars correct okay so i don't know what our average sewer bill is or if it's done for a thousand gallons how was y'all's average residential bill um compared to ours for the old palmetto utilities that we acquired the bills right now 55 flat rate per month so it's not based off of water consumption um again when speaking with vic he said that he'd like to see a proposal of what it would

» look like to keep existing kershaw county utility customers rates the same what would that look like for some period of time but our rates right now are based off of a flat rate it's not based off of consumption so you don't see your bill spike when you're filling up your swimming pool or irrigating um so i think we make exceptions for those things we talked about this morning in budget um since you and vick have had some conversation what is our average um sewer bill 35 to 40 dollars okay so we're looking at 20 more dollars a month that could be one of the alternatives we look at but i i don't think that would ever pass this council based off my discussions with all of y'all and with vic it would it would need to be some sort of proposal where those rates stay the same for some period of t

» ime but we would be allowed to expand our service territory to where the growth is coming in elgin right next to where we have a lot of capacity and so you can we have the ability to keep those existing rates the same for some period of time but bring on new customers who are not currently kershaw county utility customers at our existing rate so you would treat customers differently correct we have customers all over the state that have different rates um let me let me finish a train of thought real quick if i may sure um vick do we as a business model our sewer does it make a profit i know the word profits improper but is there a positive cash flow yes sir is it a goal can we set a goal if um say we we didn't sell or maybe we partnered or maybe we you know you guys end up helping us with a

» piece of it certainly being open-minded here is there a way to relieve ourselves of the sewer tax that our citizens pay it's such a nuisance is there a way for for our system be self-sustaining like theirs is yes sir I mean if it's important now we haven't done a race study in a long time so it's it's certainly possible that we could do a rate study that would include everything from refinancing the remaining debt on the sewer plant using rates to pay it versus millage all the way to including any necessary um capital costs as well so how many customers do we have roughly 1700 plus that's all that's commercial that's industrial as well as residential um a couple more questions thank you a couple more questions i was just curious about um you answered one of them you've got five million um g

» allons per day of capacity is that right correct we have approximately five million gallons per day capacity available would you be willing to commit to expand to our mega site and to all of our areas that we have industrial parks absolutely it's something that we could do we have the capacity today and that's something that um we'd like to explore i think it makes a lot of sense i think a question would be would you be willing to provide the service to those sites without any infrastructure cost to us to us being the county i think we as part of the study i think it's going to be extremely important that we look at the providing service at industrial park i understand that's something that's very important to every person on this council so absolutely um you know we give if a customer was

» coming a lot of this stuff is speculative right we don't know who's coming when's coming are they going to be a huge user i've seen i'm copied on inquiries that that vic is where they're looking for four million gallons a day capacity you know absolutely we can do that and we can do it we can do it quickly and we want the we'd love to serve if um so if you guys were to take the reins and and buy the sewer plant um would we have any say as to where the lines will run for residential growth or would that be your call completely no i'd look for the council to really direct your constituents to to tie on if they so choose and we would run lines there and let me get a partnership let me rephrase new development or new development um you know we're a bedroom community especially elgin for folks w

» orking in columbia um if a big national builder came in and you know we wanted to build three four five hundred houses um i think to mr snodgrass's point if we said whoa that's maybe a red flag and we want to check on this and see if that's something we can do would we have conversations before you ran that sewer line for them or would you be able to just run that sewer line without council's consent no we would need council's consent and i think that we would come to an agreement that y'all still control the zoning and the planning of residential development and like you said obviously we want growth but one of the advantages we have against other utilities across the country is that our objective we're long-term perpetual hold strategy so we we can afford to wait for the growth to come in

» a response you know we don't have to get a thousand connections every year like we're seeing on different parts of town like we have the ability you know we're not we're without a sunset horizon on our investment strategy so it's a long term hold strategy that provides us the ability to to wait for responsible growth to come online we're not focused on short-term capital gains we're focused on creating generating future cash FLOWS. OKAY. THANK YOU. I THINK THAT'S EVERYTHING. ALL THE NOTES I HAD. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME. OTHER COMMENTS? THANK YOU. LET ME MAKE A COUPLE. JIMMY -- NO, NO. YOU GO AHEAD. I'LL FOLLOW UP AFTER YOU. YEAH, THAT'S GREAT. WELCOME BACK, LIKE I SAID. THANK YOU. AND TO YOUR POINT, SIR, THE LAST TIME WE MET MR.

» CARTON, WE TURNED TO VIC AND SAID LOOK FOR WAYS TO COLLABORATE, CORRECT VIC? AND THAT DISCUSSION SUCH AS YOU JUST LAID OUT IS SCENARIO-BASED PLANNING ON INDUSTRIAL sites and things of that nature and that shows what you can do when you put two professionals working on a common problem and it's very much within vic's charter to find the best deal whether we do that or whether you do that in southwest water or other people and i recommend you and vic for being professional and working a good solution for all of our issues and and i assure you that's what vic is motivated by and i've i've talked to vic about it too and we'll find the best deal on sewer and other things as when we're starting to put together many of the industrial site packages that we do and with jeff burgess and his team that

» happens thank you uh that needs to continue to go forward and i thank you for that um for me much of this discussion is captured in the word your title of southwest water why is it called southwest water because that's a texas-owned organization yeah so we've been in business for 130 years we're very proud of and um yeah our company started in the southwest i wish we were called southeast water company probably because i'm born and raised here i'll change the name yeah we're south carolina water utilities but southwest water comes um from our shareholders which we do draw on our resources outside of of Houston, Texas and insured outside of Houston, Texas for things like IT. I mean, Chairman Burns, I know with your background, you're very aware of cyber threats out there.

» So we rely on our folks in Texas to help us with IT and billing and things of that matter, customer service. It brings a lot of power that you are a corporate entity. But my point here is it's a Southwest entity. And then you're further owned by a company, I think, Investors in New York. Is that correct? We are owned by an infrastructure investment fund, which is advised by J.P. Morgan's asset management group. That's correct. So my point there is we're delighted you're local, delighted your president's local, but corporate decisions are not made here. And in our previous round with Palmetto Utilities, which was, I believe, Paculet Millican, they said that they were here for 40 years. And now, three years later, we have a new owner. That's my point.

» so I'm talking about who I deal with who we deal with is a corporation that's remote from this site and I'm concerned about local responsiveness we do everything by buying local and I appreciate that you're here but corporate decisions are made somewhere else okay that would be to me no question secondly it's water so I'm staying with the name the theme of your name so you provide water as well as sewer or just sewer in this area in Kershaw County we treat water correct and put it back into the environment environmentally compliant safe fashion but we provide drinking water in other parts of the state and other parts of the country but can you tell me where those are yes we provide drinking water to all the residents on kiowa island all right harbor island utilities and um kalawasi island s

» pring island we provide all the drinking water to those our customers down there right so have you thought about addressing the lugav elgin water as a utility and we don't have to divulge corporate policy but that's certainly within your uh job description and your title i gotta let mr sorenson speak mr president mr president i didn't put enough color on it i was just i was just going to stand up and say that we're interested in in providing water and wastewater services where we feel it makes sense right now we see a tremendous opportunity to partner with the county in our area where we are currently with palmetto utilities and the the business that we've just purchased the the location of our assets connected to the the growth area and the the areas of the county that that need to be serv

» ed we think that is a tremendous you know no-brainer fit and so that's that's what we've focused on uh we've not we've not paid any attention to to looking at at uh any number of the water utilities in the state of south carolina uh beyond beyond which where it makes sense have you talked to lugoff water we've we we deal with lugoff water um you know you know commonly uh but but we've never discussed uh acquiring them or or or anything like that and you haven't discussed that acquiring us either so that's my point here is that you are a a water company that does sewer and water and the prospect that worries me is someone who has all the utilities in the lugoff elgin area and that concerns me in terms of how we as a county shape our future and so i'd have to express that uh as a as a larger

» issue here all right well thank you and then um i want to talk about immediacy uh and the sewer plan that i've been briefed on that's been around for a while and probably needs updating there is an engineering effort that goes against upgrading our sewer and that has to start in the next year or two but mr carpenter in your view are we in a crisis mode now or do we have time to work this through well dhek requires when you hit that 80 that you start the process of engineering so we're in that range where we have to start engineering our expansion our as was mentioned earlier our average daily flow is a good bit less it's eight hundred thousand to a million gallons a day is average daily flow you do have peak events we all remember the 2015 flood but even that one we never exceeded capacity

» or had any spills from that flood which actually one of the few utilities in the state that could say that so you know crisis is you know is generally a matter of immediacy we know that we need to be engineering and we need to be looking at long-term solutions but as far as an immediate issue we have capacity in system of the plant right now for daily flows and as we upgrade our conveyance system that's where our most pressing needs have been is the conveyance system where we had degrading pipes and we had pipes that were too small for the flow that was coming in that direction and as we had the southern loop and we can reroute flows we're not putting 100% of the flow through one set of pipes then that takes the pressure off that part of it which is our immediate set of urgency was getting

» our conveyance system in control you know I watched with a great deal of admiration what packing packlet Milliken did and putting in new pipes and and anticipating water events and growth. And so I think you've done that as well. So, and I think Southwest Water inherits that very fine system. So over and above, I think between you, Vic, and collaboration with Southwest Water, we have solutions that are really quite optimum. And that secondly, I disagree with the portrayal that this must be done right away.

» think we have time and deliberate approach and that's what i'm hearing here not a crisis not a rush with incapacity and with engineering to be done this could be brought before council in the next two years or so so that's vic is that basically what you're seeing uh yeah yes sir in in uh in the sewer proposal for the budget we'll be um putting in funds to do an engineering study on the plan expansion there you go so we can get the engineering done in this current budget we'll be discussing yeah well thank you jimmy for bringing this up go right ahead okay thank you mr chairman uh appreciate the questions you guys engaging uh these folks um at this time i'd like to and please listen to me carefully at this time i'd like to make a motion because this is going to go in the same direction that

» some of you have talked about here tonight i'd like to make a motion for county council to authorize the administrator to provide alternatives to council for the sale of sewer treatment plant and sewer system as well as the necessary steps wait a minute jimmy mr mr brazel is just coming right back in can you do you mind starting over no i don't okay thank you no that's quite right jimmy's making a motion all right thank you mr brazel is a total council you weren't in here that uh listen to my words carefully the way i make this motion please i think it answers some of your questions on council i make a motion for county council to authorize the administrator to provide alternatives to counsel for the sale of sewer treatment plant and sewer system as well as the necessary steps and procedure

» s to sell the treatment plant and sewer system that's a motion which could be a comprehensive study as well go ahead all right um mayor you got that and jimmy can give that to you i'll make i'll say it again if you want me to no that's fine i just want to make sure mary's got the verbatim all right do we have a second second uh mr tucker a second all right mr jones open for a discussion okay thank you so much i've heard a lot of concern tonight about rate hikes i i think mr carlson made it very clearly there would not be an immediate rate hike there's gonna be a rake hike where it stays with kershaw canyon or goes any west eventually down the road that's just that's just life and the way it happens i would hope that this county council would be as concerned this year about creating new fees

» and raising new creating new millage are trying to get the cap taken off of Act 388 so we can jack it up as high as we need to service that service that they are about rate hikes there's no fear that the rate hike is gonna break anybody these guys are professionals that they have done a great job with their company so basically this is what I'm asking to authorize the administrator to provide alternatives to council for the sale of the sewer treatment plant and sewer system as well as the necessary steps and procedures to the sale of the treatment plant and sewer system which which they would have to bid on or if it was deemed there's a sole source but bottom lies you'd have to go through procurement and I understand that Thank You mr. chairman members of County Council mr.

» Tucker you did the second yes sir I am I have nothing mr. chairman okay other comments Mr. Snodgrass. Mr. Carpenter if if if you as County Administrator along under the advisement of our wastewater treatment director felt that you needed to provide alternatives to us moving forward wouldn't that be within your purview as administrator to say this is what I'm seeing this is what we're looking at we would like for you to consider this? I mean yes sir it would be I think Mr.

» jones's as i'm understanding it what it would direct me to do is to probably come up with every alternative we could think of so council has a full range in front of you to consider in addition to the steps you would take if you chose to sell it so i think as i understand his proposal we would probably give you more alternatives some of which we might discount initially ourself but and by doing this way you can see every alternative we can come up with so you'll have more options in front of you but at the end of the day if you felt if you felt that the situation was dire or urgent and you as administrator were trying your best to operate the county with the best solution possible i mean you could you could explore these options yes sir yeah other comments mr chairman yeah please make sure

» i understand the motion it was unclear to me i mean i think mr uh carpenters which you just shared kind of suggests that the way i heard it alternatives to the sale yes so you'd be presenting other alternatives beyond just the sale it'd be any alternative of how the sewer system in kershaw county could be handled going forward that's how i interpreted that part of it that's what i heard is that your intention with your motion listen i cannot recommend any certain one company we have procurement to go through i've asked the administrator i've asked this council to ask this administrator to authorize him to provide alternatives to council which include this and others as far as the sale of the treatment plant and sewer system as well as the necessary steps and procedures to the sale of the tr

» eatment plant sewer system and since you asked me a question i want to say this here's here's what we're faced with guys we're faced with 20 million dollars it's going to hit a square in the face we're faced with the sewer debt that we have on the bond with six and a half million whatever you know um these are things that that i just think we could avoid if we move in this direction let me just make it sure i'm clear because i didn't see in addition to alternatives i saw alternatives for the sale do you want me to read it again yeah would you probably i will i make a motion for county council to authorize the administrator to provide alternatives to council for the sale of the sewer treatment plant and sewer system as well as the necessary steps and procedures to sell the treatment plant an

» d sewer system and understand he brings that to us we can vote it down yeah we're asking him to do some homework so it is about sale ben is what i'm i read not alternatives to the sale but sale um okay ben back to you sir you know my earlier comments were i think when you do a rate study i think that is where we need to start internally i'd like to work with y'all on understanding where the value is um because well unless unless there's some night job i'm not aware of for the council members up here none of us really know that much about sewer and i would rely on vic or russ to make recommendations about your valuation or ours internally yeah so i don't know that i can support the motion and plus to me generally it's it's vague for that reason i couldn't support it tonight but i do think we

» need to do a rate study but i'm not making a motion to uh to amend the motion okay i think you've already got it in the budget to look at engineering on sewer expansion would you need a motion from us for a rate study um it'll be proposed in the budget we could do that i think we had a rate study about 15 20 minutes ago we're at 35 he's at 55. well i think i think it doesn't can get a whole mr.

» Brown's got the floor your points taken Russell but I think we've been at that rate for was it ten years at least so so separate from South Carolina water utility even being in the room we got to understand what should the rate be and are certain people being inequitably or equitably charged based on the rate 54 50 and then was that you uh you figured it out yeah russell let's stay inside of discipline here go ahead but um and if you add that sewer tax that's charged on top of your sewer rate yeah there's just there's there's so much more than personally so much more gentlemen that i need to understand about how a sewer works and uh i feel like i've got to get some more building blocks before i'd want to consider alternatives for sales and um or whatever was captured uh encapsulated in the

» motion thank you mr chairman other comments i i think yes you want to go ahead did i want to say something else this gentleman stood up here tonight and he made it perfectly clear there would be no rate hikes if this council so saw fit if if his business were to partner because we can we can control that so i just want everybody on here to remember when you're talking about 35 and 55 they're willing to stay at the 35 for four or five years or whatever things always have to go up you don't believe it look how much a hamburger cost you 10 years ago look how it'll cost you now and um so i think to throw that at them is very unfair and um our mission statement mr carver do you know what our mission statement says in kershaw county just basically um that essentially it is our mission to provide

» quality services to the citizens of canada work with the private sector okay and we talk about how good of a job government does running things like i just tell you folks look at health care look at the post office ups was created out of that and we could go on and on but um i would ask y'all to consider this tonight to ask the administrator to go out and i'm not going to harp on anymore to go out and authorize excuse me to provide us alternatives for the sale and all necessary steps and procedures it doesn't mean you've got to do it it just means we're finally going to figure out what we have so we can understand that we're not going to be putting seven million dollars into a southern loop 20 million dollars into an upgrade i plan to be here i'm running again and i will remind each person

» we start hitting the high dollar marks of the expansion of our plant and the lines and we'll keep up with the figures i'm going to be bringing them forth to the public but anyway thank you gentlemen for your time this is my grass sir just before we vote just want to say i want to let you you guys know that we please know that we value you as a corporate citizen or i mean i well i'm speaking for me i value you guys and i know all these guys do as well as a corporate citizen i think at this point i'm i won't be able to support the motion tonight just because i feel like i feel like we're at step three or step four in this process and uh we didn't even do step one or two and uh but obviously just want to let just want to get you aware that you value guys as a corporate citizen and um and just

» appreciate appreciate all that you do all right well very good i think with the point of uh vote and i thank you for jimmy for your passion on this issue you can it's a characteristic of you to have done your homework and also i appreciate the professional level of discussion by you and mr sorensen so we have the motion to authorize uh jimmy would you restate it so we vote on it one more time i will the motion states that we will ask the county administrator will authorize him to provide alternatives to the council for the sale of the sewer treatment plant and sewer system as well as the necessary steps and procedures to the sale of the treatment plant and sewer system mr chairman yeah if i could i was going to say to jimmy's credit this might be an appropriate motion in my view in 60 to 90

» days i think we've heard from from the speaker tonight that there's so much more that has to be learned before they could even be presented as an an alternative i mean vick if he if he wanted to um and plus there's no time frame on when the alternatives i guess would be presented but say couldn't do it by next meeting certainly couldn't do it in 60 to 90 days but it might be appropriate motion in the future i think the conversation tonight has been really useful and it's gotten me up the learning curve uh someone sewer which which i needed so i appreciate that and jimmy in that sense it's been a great service so with that we move to a vote all those in favor of mr jones's motion on the sale signify by raising your hand it's mr jones and all those opposed signify by likewise by raising your

» hand it's mr connell mr burns uh mr gardner mr tucker and mr snodgrass uh mr brazel i'll abstain mr brazel do you have a reason to abstain uh there's there's good and bad on both sides and i'm just conflicted and mr brasil abstains and so the motion fails and we can move to the next item thank you very much yeah um before we move off subject here um i want to make sure that we're giving clear direction to our administration and also um discuss another motion for sewer since it's on there for uh and we haven't closed out the opening discussion so we'll have to do that in a minute so go ahead you can make an amendment if you wish well you just voted it's nothing to amend you just voted on the well he well protocol i don't understand where you want to take this sammy um i'm i'm making a motion

» on the sewer um hear me out and i'll give it to you i want to so i think i just want to tell you where we i think we are as chairman we're still in the discussion phase that jimmy initiated we've closed out the motion on the sales right jimmy i think we'll defer to i will yield to mr tucker okay mr tucker go ahead and make a motion i would like to make a motion that the administration explore examine methods to expand improve and finance the kershaw county sewer system and plant meet the present needs and future growth do you have a timeline on that jimmy i mean sammy administrator would take care when he gets it done he'll bring it back to us all right can we have a second second thank you mr jones uh discussion sammy well this THIS GIVES CLEAR VIEW FOR THE ADMINISTRATION TO GO OUT AND DO

» THEIR DUE DILIGENCE, LIKE THE ENGINEERING STUDIES, TALKING TO POTENTIAL BUYERS SUCH AS SOUTH COLINA UTILITIES, I GUESS THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE CALLING YOURSELF, I DID WRITE THAT DOWN, ALL THESE NAMES, AND OTHER INTERESTED ENTITIES AND COME UP WITH THOSE DIFFERENT OPTIONS. thing with mr jones's motion was for sale um i'm not asking him to prepare to sell a plan i'm asking him for all the options that this council at this county may have with the sewer plant to improve grow and um in partner if that's what's best i don't know what all he will find into moving forward but we do want to report back um on what our options are and you know that could be several months from now it may be next budget cycle i don't know i'm not putting a timeline on it because i don't know what all you need to do and hav

» e to do and i want you to do due diligence that seems to be what you were talking about ben uh you had a second thank you mr tucker we sort of talked about a comprehensive feasibility study yes sir i think i think it's very reasonable your motion and i after my motion failed i appreciate you moving in that direction you're welcome other discussion mr connell please ben i would i would view the motion as unnecessary based on mr carpenter's uh communication tonight that he already plans on putting in front of us in the budget engineering for expansion so they've viewed that as necessary to comply with dhec requirements and uh so he's already got it in the budget and then i think i heard him say a little while ago that he's going to have in the budget the rate study issue as well so those cont

» emplate growth i would think um yeah so i think we've already got it covered i think i think we've given that direction in the past and he's already acting on it by putting those those items in the budget it's never been in a formal motion and that's what i'm doing tonight and it doesn't cover partnering with uh south south carolina water utilities and any other potential buyer so so it's not covered and we have not as a council voted to give him the directions where we want to go that may be but i think they've already been doing it via uh almost like unanimous consent um because i've heard vic and mr carton say multiple times they've been communicating about values and i don't know i just that's how that's how i read it i'll agree they're on their way but um but what i'm telling you is th

» at it's um it's it's it's a direct order to administration okay if i may john's please i remember when we were at i don't want to do this i can remember when we were updated on the sewer that we said where did this come from we just heard about it you know what i'm talking about mr tucker so we don't we didn't know and we don't know and i think your motion is very appropriate it's just asking charging administrator to do basically feasibility study and that's what we need because you know and i know we've been caught off guard in the past correct or not we yes or no we've been informed i'll just say like that okay thank you uh mr snodgrass i get whether it be the our clerk or so i i feel like this these two emotions are two sides of the same coin or did i or um there's no sale in my mind bu

» t did you you're supposed to have the word sale in it okay to bring us back information as to the sale of the treatment plant wastewater RESOURCE SYSTEM WHICH WE COULD HAVE STILL VOTED DOWN WHEN HE BROUGHT IT BACK TO US SO THEREFORE A LOT OF THE COMMENTS TO ME DIDN'T MAKE A WHOLE LOT OF SENSE RIGHT WHICH IS KIND OF WHY I'M ALL RIGHT WELL IT IS ALL RIGHT SO WE'VE HEARD THE DISCUSSION AND WE HAVE THE MOTION UM AND MARY YOU'VE HAD IT RECORDED SAMMY YOU WANT TO RESTATE IT JUST TO MAKE SURE EVERYBODY UNDERSTANDS SINCE THE WORD SALE IS NOT APPARENTLY IN THIS MOTION NECESSARILY AND LET ME SAY BEFORE I RESTATE IT mr chairman um if you're not comfortable vote your heart and your conscience i i'm not gonna um defriend you off facebook and block you and all that stuff that's not who i am let's do what

» we have to do i make the motion that the administration i didn't say administrator the administration because it involves your engineers and all your staff folks so i want to make sure that's clear explore and examine methods to expand improve and finance the kershaw county sewer system and plant to meet present needs and future growth okay all right all those in favor signify by raising your hand and uh it is mr snodgrass mr tucker mr gardner mr burns and mr jones and those opposed uh mr connell uh and uh mr brazil okay interesting all right mr uh brazil uh abstains so with that i would like to to move on out of this discussion uh we have been into a thank you question motion thank you chairman members of the council of the opportunity today and with that i think i don't need to have a mot

» ion to come out of discussion but i think we can move ahead jimmy if that's all right with you all right now we move to the next item on the new business which is an airport runway it's a tab b and also in your electronic book at page seven uh mr mr carpenter MR. CHAIR, MEMBERS OF COUNCIL, I HAVE IN FRONT OF YOU TONIGHT FOR APPROVAL A PROJECT TO REHAB OUR MAIN AIRPORT RUNAWAY 6-24. THIS IS AN FAA-FUNDED GRANT PROJECT. IT'S APPROXIMATELY 62,000 LINEAR SQUARE YARDS OF MATERIAL THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. THE LOW RESPONSIVE BIDDER IS FROM BOGS CONTRACTING OF MONROE, NORTH CAROLINA, FOR $1,657,177. THE COUNTY'S PERCENTAGE OF THAT WOULD BE 5% MATCH.

» five percent match and did you have a map just to talk we'll get to that once we get the motion uh can we have a motion to approve so made thank you ben a second second all right sir uh over to you evict further information about this project yeah mr uh mr members council this is the uh was the number one on a priority for the airport on the um five-year plan that is updated each year submitted to the FAA. They have indicated their intention to fund it, though obviously it must be final funded in federal budgets. If it is not, this bid then is not issued. But assuming the feds fund it, then you would go in and rehabilitate. So they dig it up and then resurface the entire stretch of the main runway. Very good. With that, we'll move to discussion.

» Who had the first on that ben please you want to lead off sure um i was just wondering how long would the project take that runway would be down for approximately how long um and then our five percent match is contingent on the federal government committing the funds yes sir we don't have to pay if they don't pay yes mr chairman i support this uh primarily you heard mr carpenter say it was one of the number one things if not the number one thing that they need done out there but also we've got other issues that will be falling behind between the hangars and i think we took care of drainage and field issues was at last three plus years or so yeah um so this is the next one on the list that we need to take care of if we want to attract industry and stay relevant in that way this is one of the

» big things that economic development tells us people look at yeah this is our front porch as ben was saying this is where ceos get their first impression of our county uh let me just make sure the airport commission will need to go back and review their priorities of course they don't give us priorities but they advise us on that i want to make sure they're up to speed on this and the next steps they met last night and they're up to speed they're very involved in what we're doing somehow i knew you'd do that uh who had the second on that i did mr chairman sammy i'm good thank you uh other comments just yeah jimmy please i've been dealing with the grant to five percent where would that come from um because it's an economic development project we take it out of the economic development fund a

» nd that amount would be roughly about a hundred thousand dollars just wanted to hear it again thank you so much yeah other comments i i have one particular and that is uh is there a way we can work in corporate jets and other things that they need to find time in there and landing if we get a big event during the 15 days when it's closed yes sir okay there's so once started we're gone and so that my second question is like unto it is is there a penalty or is there an incentive for them to finish early or not or a penalty if they don't okay so fellas i think uh danny's got it pretty well wired at least in my view do we do we have um experience with bogs um bogs is yes sir yeah they do a lot of work for the state of south carolina they're one of the major contractors in the southeast so you'r

» e very reputable yes sir with the quality of their work yes sir okay all right can we uh take it to to a vote or there's no further discussion all right well very good to all those in favor signify by raising your hand mayor is unanimous thanks a lot danny and vick that's good work thank you very much for our front porch uh with that we go to council briefings there's no need to go much further starting with you sir i have no comments mr brazel mr connell yes sir hopefully this is again um a semblance of returning to normalcy uh we've got yak the river coming up on 5-15-21 this Saturday. I'll be out there with my family. I've got a lot of folks in the community who are saying they're looking forward to getting out there.

» Appreciate the Recreation Department and also the Mulliken Law Firm through their various eco companies or projects sponsoring and helping with that. And then you have the Carolina Cup coming up the next weekend. So that'll be before our next meeting on 5-22-21. And again, that'll make Kershaw County feel a lot more like normal.

» jimmy thank thank you julian listen um judge thank you so much for your words tonight um i'm with you i'm with the employees i think everybody up here is as well and we need to do this the right way and things that you recommended is the right way and i appreciate those comments uh once again i know there's a lot of litter pickup going on this coming saturday morning all over the place all over kershaw county but i'm one i'm very proud of steve zobo as i said in the work session today was going to call his name out for going around in his golf cart with his cast on his leg handing out flyers and he designated my residence as a meeting place out in the front above the road so i informed my wife that we definitely could not go to the river to kayak with our kayaks in the back if people meet i

» n our front house front of our house but no we plan to participate with that and we're so proud of what the clean community commission has done and uh that's all my comment comments for the night thank you jamie um sure i want to just share comments based on the a lot of a lot of the super discussion and i still feel you know even though i voted on the prevailing side on that on that one motion i still felt like that that was certainly within the administrator's purview um and but at the end of the day i am looking forward to exploring uh exploring options and part of those options and i've talked to the administrator about this and i know councilman brazel you've you've expressed this and i hope those options are to take a look at the sewer tax to take a look to take a look at that sewer m

» illage that you know many people who um don't don't have the ability to maybe get on the sewer as easier as as others to to see how we can restructure that so that's not that's not there so just want to share that and just make people aware that make the folks aware that i am aware of that and that's hopefully in voting with you on that those are some of the options that that we're going to that we're going to come back to but uh good discussion and um just for me i'm always looking not so much what the immediate gratification may be but perhaps being able to go into the future 20 years 25 years and be able to say you know what we did 25 years ago was that a good or bad decision so uh and and that's that's not always easy you know but that's that's where we're going to that's part of my how

» i process a very serious subject like the like the subject of the sewer so that concludes my report my remarks thank you mr tucker uh thank you um i just want to say a couple quick things um councilman uh bozart good to see you man um it's been a little while i'm glad to see you up and out and moving and I hope that you and your family continue to stay healthy. I just want to say thank you to all of you guys up here for a vote of confidence into our administration, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised whenever we come back with a report from our administration on some of our options that we can do with the sewer. So with that, that concludes my report. Thank you, sir. As always, Mr. Gardner. No report. And I'll conclude real quickly. Al, great to see you.

» uh i saw your ears perk up when we talked about airports and judge uh our steam probate the best probate in south carolina thank you ma'am i appreciate your advice on uh on personnel pay rises uh to ben's point it does almost feel like normal absolutely i'm just going to recite a couple of things that i saw happening and it just brings joy to your heart to know that we've gotten state of the county to thursday we opened the elgin park that mr connell had a great deal to do with and shane duncan took care of for us that's on the 14th on the 15th yakking the river as jimmy said and jimmy i'm not going to be able to make it either but um well i have a two-seater we have the clean community it's been an explosion of community pride tom webb is here from that committee thank you sir but there's

» so many other people there are 200 people have signed up to clean the community this weekend and i think you're going to go out as well right russell thursday afternoon yeah that's great and then the jail has already picked up 500 bags people keep asking about are we using our uh detention center and the answer is 500 bags thus far and we've issued out 400 bags for this weekend with roughly 30 miles of pickup tom webb you get the first 29 all right but this is just an explosion of community pride and at the same time you got to ask yourself why can't we get inside the heads of those who feel like they're compelled to litter and we have two a rodeo friday night talk about normalcy up in antioch and another one saturday night and then on the 18th another work session to get through the next p

» art of our budget and on the 19th the county kershaw county health services district is going to break ground we're going to have a groundbreaking ceremony behind the roses store up in beechwood and here we go with continued return to normalcy as mr connell said thank goodness but uh the virus is still here and we still got to deal with it with that we go now to your briefings uh mr carpenter thank you chair members of council to further um uh pick up the point on the 14th of may friday the elgin community park will be having this ribbon cutting two o'clock p.m the park is located behind the elgin urgent care off of whiting way at i-20 the interstate exit for elgin encourage the community certainly to come out and be part of this official opening i'm aware that our our mayor of elgin and ot

» her neighbors there have been breaking into the park and using it um so they'll be legal after a friday when we officially opened the park up saturday again is the um the acting the river and the community cleanup as well eight o'clock people will be meeting up at the tail race outside of the dam and putting in and taking down the river and taking out at the watery river veterans park again thanks to the mulligan law firm as was mentioned they're providing lunch free to everybody who participates uh there will be um comings and goings with the neighborhood cleanups showing up there as well so it's going to be very active and busy day at the park if you can't make the river itself come out to the park and see everybody come in and then finally mr chairman members council i'd like to introduc

» e someone i'm very proud to do for you tonight i'd like to introduce to you the new fire chief the first fire chief for the um 24 hour seven day a week kershaw county um fire uh fire department will glover will comes to us from the city of sumter he's worked there for over 12 years he currently serves as the captain of training for the sumter fire department will started as an explorer in kershaw county fire services many years ago and he's still a volunteer with the charlotte thompson fire station will is homegrown he's from here he's us and he will start officially on the 21st of may and i introduce you Mr. Glover, Will, would you like to come say anything? Mr. Chairman, members of council, excited to be here tonight. Excited to be a part of this organization.

» Like you said, I'm from Kershaw, invested in Kershaw. I'm excited to work with the men and women of Kershaw County Fire Service and have a chance to meet with each of you and speak with you as we move forward with the fire service in Kershaw County. So just excited for the opportunity to be here. Look forward to it. Thank you. Thank you, Kershaw and Thompson. Welcome.

» you're working with a great team back there in the back of the room i mean to tell you right scott yes sir and that's my report sir and we also have uh the county is supporting the carolina cup on the 22nd yes right yes that's correct and we'll have a tent and i think the council is aware of the invitation list and all that okay thank you mr devose i don't have anything mr chairman thank you sir and then uh we have we have no executive session tonight so can we entertain a motion to dismiss motion to adjourn thank you very much mr second second from mr connell any discussion next time we meet will be uh either at the community cleanup the yak in the river or on monday at 10 o'clock all those in favor signify by raising your hand and it's unanimous and thank you very much