Full meeting transcript - September 14, 2021

» all right danny are we up on uh mike good thank you it's a great day in kershaw county and we are convened in all america county football has started hunting has already started and people already bragging about six and eight and ten point bucks out there so it's a great day in kershaw county but we've had some heavy losses after 20 years with war in iraq and afghanistan many of you have lost friends. I've lost a lieutenant that I personally sent off to war and and he was shot today and 17 years ago. So good friend the family still and I talk on this day every year on this date. We've also lost Bob Vaughn from the library after what some 20 years and we've had 23 losses to Delta in the last six weeks which was the same number we had that lost in the first six months of COVID.

» So these are pretty tough times. And we've also lost a Marine, 13 sailors and Marines, and one soldier in Afghanistan as we came out. It's not been the best of weeks, and I think we should remember the words of Joshua in Chapter 4 when he set up the stones at Gilgal and his habit, and those of us who have served in the military that whenever you visit Afghanistan, the grave of a fallen comrade, you put a stone, like Joshua did when he said to the Israelites, saying to the Israelites, when your children ask their parents in time to come, what do these stones mean? Then you shall let your children know that Israel crossed over the Jordan here on dry land. And so with that, I ask for a moment of silence for these losses that our great country has endured. Amen. Thank you all.

» Pardon me for being such a sentimental old fella. we're called to order we have a quorum uh we're socially distanced we're applying certain uh voluntary things so that if those of you that wish to wear a mask or get the shots or whatever you can and those that you don't want to certainly go ahead we tried to space it out up here about six feet more or less with mary and jimmy if you want to move around fine but we'll put mary down there and off we go so with that i ask you to stand up and join us in the invocation and the pledge of allegiance mr tucker thank you mr chair let us all bow our heads and open our hearts godfather almighty we come to you on our knees asking for your grace and your mercy lord father we know that you are the often omega of this world that you created and now lord w

» e're asking for you to heal this land heal this land that you created bless united states of america and the countries around it, Lord Father, so we can be better people and better loved ones for one another and guidance and leaders. Now, Lord Father, bless the minds that's up here on this dais that you give us the discernment and the wisdom and understanding to conduct the business for Kershaw County citizens. Lord Father, I would be so remiss to ask you for the blessings of our men and women, for our freedoms and liberties that serve in our armed services. Guide them and protect them as you have done and will continue to do. We ask all these blessings in your son Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

» I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much indeed, everybody, and thank you, Sammy Tucker. We now move into the agenda that you see on the screen. Hey, Al. Hey, Al Bozart. Good to see you, sir. We have public comments, we have public hearings, and we have two of those.

» and mr dubose is going to help us through this because i know a number of you want to to speak but let me just break it down for you the public comments we got mr jones come on in jimmy i will take care of it jimmy we sure will come on in uh you're exactly right jimmy um so as i said for the record that people out there need to sign up that was shut out before 5 30 but chairman thank you so much how do you want to handle that i think probably they need to be given an opportunity to sign up so um maybe you can walk that out there yeah i can i'll walk it out there yeah why don't you go ahead and do that and that'll save now one take a second yeah we'll take care of that in a minute young man uh mr debose if you just walk outside uh with with the sign up roster and uh i think that man just com

» mandeered it i think that was the public here i'm at the um yeah the public hearing sheet he took yeah he took the public hearing sheet mr - Mr. DuBose has the public comment sheet. - Well, we'll pause here for a minute. - I mean, no disrespect, but to me, it's very obvious. We're not six feet apart, but we're requiring everybody else to be six feet apart. - Jimmy, you can move to the left. That's why we opened it up. - I'm fine. No, no, no, I'm fine. - Okay, well, you're fine, good. - I mean, suffice it to say, there are certain members on council, just it doesn't bother. So I mean, if it bothers you, you can move over, but it doesn't bother me. - Why don't we turn the mics off and we'll wait until Mr. DuBose come back, then I'll-- - I'll wait the mic.

» we leave the doors open so they can at least hear because i think everybody was unaware that council was going to go six foot distancing tonight i don't even know does what are the regulations required are they we'll go ahead and go to open the doors if you don't mind it just seems to be yeah just do that some mr deborah said we'll move ahead now how many uh signed up for public comments and how many for each of the two public hearings public comments 11 people have signed up for public comments and one two three four five people one two three five people have signed up for the public hearing on seagull on seagull any on uh the second item which i think is orion any on number two no no but oh yes um yes some people have signed up for the zoning yes and they for instance um one person two pe

» ople signed up for the rezoning which probably ought to be on the second public hearing uh dr jen pisuch signed up for the rezoning request and don canada uh so you would put them weird oh excuse me yes they're correct the second public hearing is on conveyance of the land that's correct no one signed up for that okay good yeah so they're correct all right so this way we're going to try to run it um we have public comments from 11 people and we normally allocate 30 minutes with five minutes max per speaker so what we'll do is call them up mr dubose and those that are outside and come in and then recycle back out again uh so with that uh what is that about two and a half minutes for each speaker about three minutes each okay and let me just tell you the rules of the house are uh we keep a de

» corum you can't uh we there's no question in answer we hear directly from you we require that you keep it uh genteel and talk about uh within the decorum of the body that you you attack no person but stay to the issue and i would also add that the last time we were in here we had a number of people who referred to political parties which we don't in this body this is a governing body and not a political forum secondly we had a number of people who were muttering to themselves and made a lot of noise and it disrupted the body so if there is any of that then we'll clear the room okay we'll just clear the room mr chairman you've already cleared the room and then secondly if there's that all right mr jones we'll go into another recess if we need to sure we will yeah but for those of you who i w

» ould like to have an outburst i will correct you and then after that i'll have the bailiff or the sheriff ask you to leave uh since we've opened the doors though the view outside if you all become disruptive then we'll have to close the doors and that's just the way we're going to do it so with that mr uh dubose please go ahead first person to sign up for public comments is al bozard mr bozard good to see you again council thank you for this time bring the mic over there al good man thank you can you hear now yeah sure can i had several folks to call and talk to me about the hotel won't come into town and they've heard all kind of stuff about what they wanted to give to them and some thinks that eight years at a reduced rate is too much i'm not going to express one way or the other but what

» i'm going to ask y'all to do is think hard and long about this because there are some business people out there that is thinking about it hard also and fairness to them we owe it to them to think about this thing long and hard before any decisions are million thank you very much thank you mr bozard and good to see you again um mr dubose second person signed up is gail branham miss branham good to see you ma'am i don't have the covet i've got allergies um the reason that i'm here is uh i talked with uh russell brazel a couple weeks ago gave him my sentiments on the fees that we're being charged in Kershaw County I don't think it's right I think that that the people that don't have these big homes and everything and have to live in mobile homes I think we're being uh railroaded i was charged

» uh two different 29 charges on my property i've got a little less than three acres there and it's a little small double wide it's a 24 by 40 and it's got two run down buildings on it and so i was charged one 29 fee for the home and another 29 fee for those two rundown buildings the way i understood it uh they the buildings that uh were worth less than a thousand dollars you didn't have to pay this on it well both of them together wouldn't uh be worth a thousand dollars and i just feel like that it's that it's not right and i feel like that uh that the the poorer you are the more you're being railroaded and that is not right that is not what we're supposed to stand for and so i want to see if anything can be done with this situation i called the first time over to the courthouse and the girl

» told me that i hadn't paid anything i said i know that's not true so uh i pulled my checkbook and called back and i had paid uh the one uh 29 fee the 80 fee and also uh the fee for another little piece of property that i have so uh i'm not sure that we're being credited with everything that we pay at the courthouse either i think this uh it's some uh supervision needs to be given to some of these offices and i i know yes i did go in there one day and i don't know what the name of the office is it's right the first one on the right when you come in i went in there and yes i did get irate and i know the police had to come in there but i wasn't scared of that either i was so mad that i felt like i could faint but i just do not appreciate being a run over by the county and that's why people are

» moving out of kershaw county is because they are being railroaded and that's just not right so is anybody that can give me any feedback for this am i wrong for feeling this way ma'am during this session we we don't exchange but we'll take your name and call you back well i certainly would appreciate it and uh uh mr uh brazel there he has my phone number yes ma'am i'll be glad to talk with any of you and all of you thank you thank you miss brown mr devos third person signed up is katie gwynn uh miss gwynn hello good evening sorry i'm in the nosebleeds out there so um this will be short so i'm here in um objection to resolution number 173.2001 where you are asking the legislator to preserve user fees um i don't think that we need to preserve your user fees resolution number 174 about 2021 a r

» esolution supporting senate bill 401 i'm also here in objection to that thank you thank you very much uh mr dubose the next person and fourth person to sign up is tom webb mr webb excuse me i'm sorry i apologize tim webb he signed up also first of all i'd like to thank uh several of the councilmen for seeing i'll pull your mic up please uh tim thank you very much first of all i'd like to thank several of the councilmen for seeing me in private so that we could talk and discuss the issues of project seagull having said that i know the vote is already pretty much gone the farm is sold at six to one no one's going to change, and it's going through. And this is what I see.

» First of all, have you sought out or done any independent study or research on the Seagull project at all? And if you have, where is it? Can your voters see it? Here's what I know. With everything in executive session, this is all I know. Even with funding and experience, most new businesses failed in the first three to five years of operation. The failure rate is higher in the restaurant and hospitality industry than in other general businesses. Take five seconds to google it and you'll see a wealth of data pointing to this fuck. So what has been discussed behind closed doors that would lead you to making this decision without full and open public discourse without the use of public funding to prop up a private startup.

» Seagull gets eight years up to 85% tax-affirmant and a building appraised at $750,000 without providing anything beyond a speculative value to the community. Why have not why not provide incentives and resources of those who struggled and scraped to stay open during the COVID pandemic and the regulations imposed on them during these trying times. And please don't say you have when you're trying to take credit for funneling a limited credit actually provided by the federal government. Rather than playing economic roulette with taxpayer dollars.

» Why don't you invest your own personal resources if you believe this is such a grand idea it's another boondoggle enterprise just like your swamp land veterans park you probably aren't listening as usual i hope you are but i see i'm i got a master's degree in counseling i look at uh body language and i see there's just not a lot of engagement right now you so you're probably not listening to me as usual because this is the second third time i've been up here talking never had any comments back however those of us there's a lot of different uh council districts that are with me not with me but here tonight and we have a lot of meetings and discussions about a lot of things going on however those of us who entrusted you with the care and fiscal responsibility for our community are listening a

» nd watching and will speak loudly in june thank you thank you mr webb uh mr devose the next person signed up is dale truesdale and i believe mr truesdale is mr truesdale here yeah he also he changed it to the public comment all right good all right public hearing public hearing excuse me the next person is don canada thank you hope y'all are doing well um i haven't lived in kershaw county but about 25 years i moved here from lexington county a little town called pewey in south carolina grew up on a little farm was real pleased when i moved here bought a house bought my first house um in fact i bought my second house when i moved to hermitage pond road and they're wanting to rezone the property adjoining mine on hermitage pond rome from rd1 to r15 i think is the way you say it but um and all

» of that means to me is that instead of building one house on it per acre they can build 2.9 houses per acre and it's 66 acres well actually i think they changed it to 86 acres now but um or it's a well over 80 acres i think now but um i urge you to deny that and i do that because i know they're not going to plant trees back and they're not going to bring the deer back that we lost but they have been hundreds of acres of land cleared along hermitage pond road and highway 34 in the last four years between my house and i-20 it's three miles a little over three miles between hunt incorporated on hermitage pond road and joy road my property sits about halfway there was 20 houses accessed by hermitage pond road on that on that when i bought my property they're wanting to build however many houses

» a house per acre or more i know we can't get the deer back when i moved out there in january 2011 i couldn't have been prouder there were deer turkeys running through my yard squirrels fox squirrels i hadn't seen a fox squirrel in 30 years of sitting in deer stands all over south carolina until well 20 years ago until i moved into my house in 2011 and there was so many fox squirrels on that land that they're cleared and wanting to build these houses on right now i haven't seen a five squirrel in five years. I haven't seen a rabbit in over two years. I haven't seen hardly any deer or turkeys. I've got pictures where I moved on the property in 2011 with nine deer in one picture, 19 squirrels in one picture, 11 raccoons in one picture. Now I might see four squirrels.

» I might see five raccoons. I might see four deer in a picture. I know they're not going to re-habitate the land with deer and all the wildlife. But now when I walk out my, well soon to be when I walk out my front door, because this property is 50 yards from my front yard, right across the driveway, and I'm going to be looking at all these houses. I'm going to have to tolerate them complaining about my rooster crowing at four o'clock in the morning. When I moved out there, there wasn't any honeybees.

» I never saw a honeybee the first year I lived in my house put bees out there i brought bees out there i bought bees put them in hives established bees out there we see bees in the pool we see bees in the feeders um i really hope that y'all won't rezone that property but they can build that many more houses it's just going to make if they build 50 houses going to be 100 more cars on the road and to build 200 houses which 86 times 2.9 that's 249 houses which i know they can't build 249 houses there because they got to build some driveways and all that and the board only knows what else but uh please don't let them do it yeah thank you sir uh mr dubose the next person signed up is ruth um white miss white good evening i'm back again i was here last month and i talked to you and it was in oppos

» ition to your project seagull um i'm not any happier with with what now is coming to us and we understood it it was gonna be five years, I wasn't happy with that. But now it's gonna be eight. And once again, I just wanna express that I'm not happy. Along with Tim, for some of the same reasons that Tim addressed, we're not happy. We don't want our tax money used this way, or we don't wanna give credit with our tax money that's used this way.

» So what this means that during the eight years that this corporate company we are paying the services or our tax dollars are paying the services that they will be receiving and i and i don't see where that's going to help us any and there's another thing i want to clear up that was stated in the newspaper after last meeting was that the people those people at the lake they um you know they were concerned about their businesses or their restaurants there at at the lake and of course y'all stated that it wouldn't affect them well we're well aware that it won't affect our customer bases we know where they come from they come from the local people that live there they come from the people that enjoy the lake on a regular basis but it won't help us either because we're not going to get any custo

» mers from from downtown to come out there and you know so we're not going to get any benefits from it but it may take away our employee pool and if it takes away our employer you pool then those businesses can't get their doors open and it won't be just those business it'll also be these local businesses because they'll lose their employee pool too to a corporation that can pay better and give benefits i mean i don't blame anybody for going for that so it will hurt them it may make them lose their job or their business so um you just you know there's another downfall to that so i i studied this this is what y'all have it is unreal and there are other things in there of course i could oppose of course you know i can but um i think that y'all have a situation in here that we might recoup some

» thing if they fold like tim talked about how often they do I think from understanding all this and I also understand that it's pretty much died in the wool and going to happen so it doesn't really matter whether we oppose it or not but I hope you do and I hope that does mean what I read that we will get something back out of it or they'll just go bankrupt and we'll get nothing like the people in York County or Rock Hill that helped with the Panthers and then they decided not walk out I think Duke Power also did something in Greenville and they got all these benefits they walked out but anyway just to just to let you know that we don't oppose the business we don't oppose it coming in what we oppose is we oppose them getting an unequal level ground playing field because the other small busine

» sses didn't get that and I just think you're giving too much we're getting a building they're getting county and city tax abatements I just don't get it and I understand your job is to use our tax dollars wisely that's what we trusted you to do and I hate to say it but obviously we're being taxed That's too much if y'all can gamble with our tax money this way. And I'd like to see my tax going down. I did talk with Mr. Russell over there and he said that you couldn't go up more than 15%. Well, I went back and checked and I know y'all are smart enough not to go up 15%. But I have only been here three years. I don't have a business. I don't even have a pony in this race except for my tax dollars. And, of course, they only went up 10% in my three years.

» And every year that we pay, eight years, and you're going up 10 years, I don't know that we can do that as a family that moved here just recently. Ms. White, can you kind of wrap it up, please? Okay. So I'm just asking you, please don't do it. It's not fair to small business. Let them come in. Let them do their job. Just please don't use our tax money this way. You've opened a, you know, you have opened a can of worms because now we're paying more attention to what you're doing. Before, we sat here blindly, or I did, for three years and allowed y'all to just spend your money however you wanted to. So thank you. Thank you, Mrs. White. Mr. DuBose. Yeah, and the next person, I might mispronounce his name because I'm going to have a hard time reading the writing. Mrs.

» Phillips, Saleria Phillips. Ma'am, can you repeat the name so we got it? so my name is sabria phillips phillips thank you this may not be the proper form for this but i'm a mother and i need you i am here tonight because my 19 year old son jaden phillips can't be he's a 2019 graduate of lugo felgen high school worked part-time at food lion throughout his years at lugo felgen was a big brother and best friend to our daughter jordan phillips he recently completed his freshman year as a mechanical engineering major at anderson university he was an avid outdoorsman the more dirt the better the faster he could make his mother's heart race the more he loved it on may 15th he turned 19 on may 16 2020 he went camping on the congaree river with his father and a group of his father's friends that mor

» ning was the last time i I heard his voice to be PC and brief. He was riding on a boat with a 30-year-old male who was allegedly intoxicated and drove his boat, lodged his boat into a horizontal tree attached to the river's bank. That driver never called 911. My son was six foot four, 250 pounds, okay? When this gentleman arrived to Bates Bridge Landing in Richland County, my son was lying in the floor bleeding profusely follow me from the back of his head snoring and gurgling for air so a bystander called 9-1-1 law enforcement was dispatched and as my son lay dying no one even asked his name nor the driver of the boat's name nor what happened nor did they inspect the boat or the incident scene dnr was never notified to be clear we 110 back our law enforcement 110 percent that's not what th

» is is about i'm here asking what happened to jaden phillips the driver's pleading the fifth there was no investigation conducted so per the solicitor's office because of law enforcement there will be no charges as of yet in my son's death it's wrong i need your voices so after an emergency hemicraniectomy where they evacuated blood and removed half my son's skull. He never regained consciousness. I held my 19-year-old boy as he died. Are you parents? Do you have any clue what that does to you? Not one day, in every moment. I'm a nurse. You know what sights and sounds and smells do to the human body? I'll continue to fight, but I need your voices.

» Again, to be brief, after Jaden passed away, my mind was able to begin to think and i quickly realized that what i saw and what i heard did not align after making calls saying i need the report i need to speak with investigators to be told there's no report on file we have no record of this an investigation was launched a week after so what if i hadn't began asking questions what then who else has there been who else will there be can tell you when I met with the leader of this agency I was told that the 15 minutes and 16 seconds of body cam that I got to watch that will never be leave my brain or my heart as I watched my boy lay dying and no one did a thing that this leader has not watched the body cam footage this deputy has not been investigated in fact three weeks ago he's promoted to c

» orporal and the man that took the life of my son walks free. I need your voices. I cannot change the outcome for 19-year-old Jaden Corwin Ray Phillips, but we can work together to make certain that this doesn't happen again. You cannot change what you refuse to acknowledge. Give me an example of anywhere else in America where you can fail so terribly at your job that it results in death and nothing happens to you because you wear a badge on your chest. Qualified immunity, tort law. It's wrong, it's wrong. I'm continuing to fight for justice within that fight. I will ask for your support in Jaden's law. I want to make it illegal, not a violation of policy because we see policy obviously doesn't work.

» Illegal for any law enforcement agency that responds to an incident, and this incident was a crime scene, to simply leave. Can't do it. want it illegal you don't get to just leave you notify the agency that should be involved in that case whether it be sled whether it be dnr you give some kind of report i'm here asking what happened to my son may 16 2020. my prayer is that you'll do the same thank you thank you mrs phillips a gentleman i suggest we stand at ease for a minute thank you mr jones for that taking the kleenex up All right. Well, let's reconvene. Mr. DuBose, please go ahead. The next person signed up is Tom Webb. Mr. Webb. I love our families and I'm dreadful, especially when a young person is so much ahead of them and can't fulfill that dream.

» But there's more to life than breathing and working. This American dream is to do it your way, to be free to do it your way. So I'll speak a little bit on, I guess, American liberty. I signed up to speak about Seagull, Project Seagull, but it's more general than that, so it'll be very short. It's an old question, very old question, how much is enough? If a little is good, then more is better, until maybe it isn't.

» You know, just how much is enough? So how much mixing of government and business, how much can you mix these things on and on and on, perhaps to the exclusion of uh of the citizens and their input to it government and business colluding leaving out the individual so if you on county council are a little unsure about it you might listen to these people here today speaking about project seagull when it comes to mixing government and business they say they have had enough thank you mr webb mr dubose the next person signed up is dr jim pisuch c u c h doctor can we just have the full name so we got it yep jim pikich okay good okay thanks for the opportunity to speak tonight uh you heard earlier from my friend and neighbor don canada about the hermitage pond rezoning um i am also affected by that

» in fact unlike don's was part property only partially borders the proposed development area the entire east side of my property, the west side of my property borders that development area. Ideally, I would like to see the zoning kept unchanged so that we've limited to 80 some odd houses. When I moved here in 2005, there were several great properties that I was interested in. My wife and I decided on this one because of the privacy, the quiet, the natural environment that Don spoke about. We've seen that receding.

» I have concerns about the traffic on Hermitage pond road if anybody has driven that little end stretch of hermitage pond road past hunting ink you've seen there's potholes in the potholes and constant patching there's no extra width i don't know how the traffic is going to be managed if you know several hundred homes go in there and i'm also concerned i spoke about this with the developer when i spoke about this before the zoning board i said well you know i'm a realist it's probably unlikely that the zoning is going to be kept as is but whether it's kept as is or not whatever is developed what i would like to see and don would also is a solid barrier such as a solid wooden fence along the property line that would not only maintain our privacy but that would keep pets i'm always but you kno

» w a couple of times a year i'm bringing stray pets as it is to the animal shelter on black river road because they wander in and you know i have to do it sometimes it's a big german shepherd or something that i don't dare touch they have to call the county children also wander teenagers wander looking for a wooded place maybe to uh have a little you know party time or something so it would make things much safer for the neighbors myself don anyone else the blanchards who are next to us and who are elderly if at least and i've spoken i said with the representative of the contractor and they seem very amenable to this but if there's a change in the zoning i'd like to see that actually put in the conditions that there be a solid say six foot high wooden fence or other barrier that would protec

» t our privacy protect us from wandering pets and people and also protect the neighbors i mean i have a husky and she's fenced and she never goes out without being on a leash but sometimes she slips the leash and she thinks everybody loves her and she'll go in and try to get in somebody's house I mean that hasn't gotten away more than once or twice in the last couple of years but it would just I think it's Robert Frost who said good fences make good neighbors and so if there is going to be a change in the zoning I would hope there wouldn't be but as I said I'm a realist we would like to see that it's actually put in there uh that there is a barrier to preserve the privacy of the people who have been there for many many years and also as a safety concern going both ways so thank you for takin

» g time to hear me thank you doctor uh mr de bose and the last person that signed up is brian berville can you say again the last name please berville berville even how y'all doing can you me yeah go right ahead sir fundamental precepts of equality is how i in part see this but there's a large part to it some other before me touch me go under the law is that what this is going to be equal under the law here's a look blue golf elgin camden magazine local businesses free most of them here in camden area lougolf kershaw county some outside these people all should be equal they they all pay the tax the same some may pay more some may pay less but it's based on they're all paying equally these people are treated equally budget seagull they're not being treated equally unequal we've been through t

» his before nationally we've been through this equal under the law 14 amendment right we all have to be treated equally under the law some people are going to lose i venture to say a lot of people are going to lose this is past there are a number of things needed an address printed the whole 95 pages out i looked through as best i could the eagle project and there's the numbers that are missing and i'll talk about that later when the 10 minutes comes around if we have it the main thing i want to report now is equal under the law these people you know what's here as a business they're all treated equally under the law when it comes to taxes right sir you're here to talk to us please thank you i am but i want them to hear too and can hear me but i want to look at their eyes also because they'r

» e standing behind me that matters to me anyway that i look in their eyes so that's it i'm a little short than three minutes they need to treat everybody equal what you might think is going to be a benefit everybody may not turn out and the numbers you don't have there are numbers in here that don't support it you don't even show the numbers that i'm going to ask in the 10 minutes when that comes up later on equal under the law that's basically what you all do is you create law you don't pay your taxes and something's going to happen to you right anyway that's it you treat everybody equally under this under this project that's not the case so thank you thank you sir mr debose and i believe that concludes the public comment sign up okay let's just make sure is anyone else on public comments b

» efore we go to public hearings it appears that we got everybody uh ken good job thank you thank you mr jones that was very helpful so uh mr bose with that i think we move now to public hearings The first item is a public hearing regards to an ordinance by Kershaw County Council authorizing the execution of an infrastructure credit agreement by and between Kershaw County and Kershaw Hospitality LLC, providing for the issuance of special source revenue credits, the inclusion of certain property in a multi-county industrial park, and other matters related thereto and is put on the agenda by legal counsel.

» this is the public hearing that i think how many we have signed up uh mr chairman i but five people signed up for public hearing but i believe they all indicated they're all here in regard to the first one which is project seagull okay so we'll begin that but first the rules on the public hearing guidelines is uh people should sign up to speak which has happened and prior to that hearing it should be announced that persons wishing to speak should identify themselves which has been done when the public hearing is open persons be notified as to how many people have signed up which has been done and speak with persons will speak in the order which they signed up and identified and then each person can speak a maximum of 10 minutes and comments of public hearings should be germane to the subjec

» t matter to the public hearing and be liberally construed so mr depose let's begin first person signed up is katie gwynn okay and with 10 minutes and five people we could be here for 50 minutes or longer miss gwynn go ahead thank you mr chairman so in army aviation we use this term called hoodwinked and it means to deceive by false appearance i started really realizing months ago with the exception of jimmy jones this council was trying to hoodwink us all ma'am at this point i must correct you and you're no you know the rules here that we're not here to attack but to speak to the matter at hand all right and you can retract that statement i don't think the statement needs to be retracted she's just speaking her feelings mr jones thank you very much i've ruled on the point of order and we'll

» move ahead you're wrong that's all right mr jones go ahead miss juan i appreciate the councilman that met with me and talked to me on the phone and answered my questions for me throughout this process i'd like to take this time to respond to some of your comments because i believe they have contradicted some of your previous votes or comments in the past at the last council meeting business owners from the lake voiced their opinions and i felt the council was dismissive because they were lake business owners i'm a small business owner directly caddy corner from the project's location so i hope you will hear me out first and foremost i was told that that my beef is with the city.

» I disagree with the city's incentives for this project, which I understand are gifting the building valued at $750,000, purchasing the Nettles building for the parking lot and purchasing the plans, but I don't vote in the city. I own a business in the city, but I don't have a representative in the city as I do as a county voter. Furthermore, the county is the governing authority when it comes to the tax abatement. This council is granting the city permission for the tax abatement. This council has discussed the tax revenue behind closed doors and is trying to convince us that this project is going to provide significant economic benefits to the county. So I do believe my beef is with the appropriate council.

» I was told that the hotel is gonna be good for growth, but I wanna rewind back to the spring when Councilman Jones discussed the possibility of privatization of the sewer system. heard multiple members on the council object to that privatization out of fear of growth one councilman said we do not want to be Lexington now with project Siegel growth is a great idea members have stated that this will pump people into downtown I would like to know if that is supported by any data or foot traffic resource research or this is just wishful thinking there seems to be no research or data supported of any of the assumptions you are hoping it works out but what if it doesn't this is a gamble with tax dollars if the hotel is not booked I don't believe any people will be pumped into downtown business pl

» ans I asked several councilmen if they saw a business plan for this hotel and the answer was no if you are about to vote on something without knowing how successful this company plans to be that is simply irresponsible would you allow a total investment of 1.4 million of your own dollars into a company without seeing their business plan because I certainly would not the next is a quote there's not a whole lot we can do when it comes to somebody that has 13 million dollars I don't think this council should be able to be bought I don't think that should matter that they have 13 million dollars it was insinuated at one of the previous council minions meetings that councilman Jones may have received money from the private sewer company and that was the reason behind his push for the privatizati

» on yet then months later we have this comment that there's not much that council can do when someone shows up with 13 million dollars it was stated that the hotel might not come unless the abatement is given maybe you don't believe that the county we live in is the best in South Carolina but I do Kershaw County is phenomenal because of the people that live here in the businesses and anybody should want to open a business here we have so much to offer if this hotel was coming if they're coming was hinging on a tax abatement then I don't believe they had a good business plan in the first place regarding the commercial development policy this public this policy was not published anywhere I had to contact the county to get it because I remembered someone saying you have to have a creation of 50

» jobs as part of the policy the ordinance states that there's an anticipation to create at least 35 new full-time jobs so I went back to the July 13th agenda packet looking for the policy I did finally get it and after reviewing that policy I found several discrepancies the policy states that the maximum tax credit percentage for qualifying commercial development is 50% yet in the authorization ordinance the first year will be equal to 85% 75% for the second 65% for the third and 55% for the remaining years so for eight years the maximum is going to go against the policy that this council set itself moving on to the primary employment requirements number two states that the company will provide quality employment opportunities for Kershaw County citizens and the region what does quality empl

» oyment mean is minimum wage quality employment is a service job quality employment this terminology is so subjective I don't understand how you are determining what quality means then in bold italicized and underlined font it states minimum of 50 new in all capital letters jobs yet the authorization states the company anticipates at least 35 jobs it does not clearly say it will create 35 jobs it says it anticipates so we don't know how many it will create whether it's 35 or less it doesn't meet the policy of the it doesn't meet the requirement of the policy so I ask you all what was the point of the policy being in the hospitality industry myself I can say with confidence that many of the jobs this hotel will bring are service jobs and this county is in no need of service jobs all you have

» to do is drive down to Cal Street or Broad Street and see the now hiring signs we have businesses that have closed their doors because they don't have an adequate employment or reduce their hours because they simply do not have the staffing hopefully by the time the hotel is finished many of these places will find that employment but what if they don't the hotel is going to compete for these service jobs just as the restaurants are doing your Your policy states that the company will demonstrate a long-term commitment to the county. Has anyone seen this long-term commitment, or was this just policy fluff? Without seeing a business plan, I don't know how anyone can ensure a long-term commitment is with this hotel. And what is long-term? I hope it's longer than eight years.

» I do not believe the council has done its due diligence in information gathering for the taxpayers to justify a tax abatement. Has anyone asked how this business will use these tax savings? Do you think they will donate the tax savings to nonprofits in our community or will they be able to competitively reduce their prices driving business away from the other restaurants? If you can get a steak for $15 at the Boutique Hotel, why would you go to Sam Kendall's? Your tax abatement could give this company a competitive advantage over the rest of us. So tonight you will vote on this ordinance and also tonight you are going to vote on two resolutions describing how you will need to increase taxpayer fees and millage.

» doesn't make sense to me the 1.4 million dollar package and i understand that's with the city's incentives as well is going against your own policy without proper research and then in the same meeting you're saying that you need fees from the taxpayers it just doesn't make sense state that you lost revenue to the covid19 pandemic yet you are not willing to collect all the taxes available from a multi-million dollar project this is why i use the term hoodwinked It's simple, if you need tax revenue, do not give an eight year tax abatement to an incoming commercial business. The bottom line is that I believe what you're doing is wrong and I believe how you have done it is also wrong. You created a policy for a company and now claim that this project meets said policy when it doesn't.

» With the exception of Jimmy Jones, I think the council has missed the point on this. I'm not against economic growth. I'm not against competition or new business in the downtown area 'cause competition makes us better. With this vote, you are creating an uneven playing field, though. You are rewarding a business that you somehow have deemed worthier than the rest of us, and with this vote, you are helping a private business compete with every business downtown. I cannot support this ordinance. I believe in smaller government, and I do not support the government's involvement with tax abatement in the private sector. We have to consider how our decisions will affect the future. Fifty years ago, no one thought... Ma'am, can you wrap it up, please? Yes, sir.

» no one thought the government would be this big today 50 years ago so looking forward for kershaw county what big box companies does this policy bring next what million dollar projects will be rewarded next we've opened up a can of worms it's opened up the door for the council to hand select which next big business is coming in and out of the county it's a hotel today and it might be a major retail establishment tomorrow maybe it will all turn into big businesses just like lexington thank you thank you very much mr dubose the second person is i'm pleased to mr webb others we don't clap in here thank you very much the second person who signed up is irving branham uh mr brown thank you mr chairman councilman ken de bose um i served nine uh ten years on the kershaw county school board there we

» re nine of us that worked diligently every year to make sure that we brought you folks a balanced budget a budget that did not have millage increase in it i know there were times that you know that was not possible but we strived every year to do so and i hope that council does the same thing but i think you need to look at doing it without um taking away from the taxpayers that's already paying you know taxes in the to the county we have just been assessed on all of our properties assessments this year of course i've appealed i'm a landlord and i've appealed you know most of all of the ones that uh y'all sent to me and some of them were changed some of them were not but you know what i'm afraid of is as these assessments go up these fees go up my attendance rent's going to have to go up an

» d you know who you're hurting you're hurting the most vulnerable people there is in the county when you do this i'm not opposed to new businesses coming into the county i think it's good for new business and i look forward to businesses coming into the county i think this business would be a great business for the county what i am opposed of is giving it away when a company has or a company or anyone has no skin in the game it usually does not work an example of that is a little town called blaney south carolina they got five years of tax abatements when the elgin watch factory came in the citizens of blaney voted to change the name to elgin because of the watch factory five years later there's no watch factory i think the company that moved in after that was bf goodrich there was a joke go

» ing around that they were going to change the name to sneakerville you know this is a great county kershaw county and again i'm not opposed to a business coming into the county i think it'd be great i am opposed to giving it away camden is a historic town i would love to see that historic town stay historic and i would not like to see jokes going around about how we gave things away thank you thank you mr brown mr devose third person signed up is tom webb mr webb well still on the subject of uh maybe government is um is not looking out for the people like it should pretending to or thinking that they do but there's more to look out more than just the economic circumstances it's that very american thing liberty so government staying small is an american thing especially american thing and so

» it could look out for liberty a little bit more and maybe let us just look out for our own business um and government playing um playing favorites it looks like now with the seagull thing somewhat this is set a lot of people on edge i wish you would table it and uh let us chew this over a little bit longer thank you mr webb uh mr dubose the fourth person that signed up is brian bevel mr bevel again some numbers i couldn't find in the uh printout site you're going to credit for eight eight years first year 85 75 second year 65 could you bring the mic over mr bible third year 55 for the fourth fifth sixth seventh and eighth year i didn't see any any dollar amounts credit what's the total credit they're going to get in those eight years we have a number yes sir we're here to hear from you go r

» ight ahead please can you all be quiet in the back please mr bell will go ahead so what's the total amount of credits they're going to get over those eight years we don't discuss now we are here to hear from you go out ahead please sir i thought this was a no it's not i could ask questions no sir it is not mr bowes give a ruling excuse me can you engage in public hearing it's not a question and answer okay thank you mr jones i thought i thought it was i thought it was i'm sorry it's not go right ahead please sir well all right that number's not available i'd like to know what it is someone must know what it is i heard someone worse 1.4 million maybe that's it i don't know those eight years go by then what nothing in nothing in the write-up that explains what's going to happen after those ei

» ght years what's going to happen if those eight years someone which would 1.4 million dollars are going to get in credits what's going to happen after that eight years it's not in the write-up we don't know what's going to go up it's going to happen i hope you all know what it is and if you do know i think you should have put it in the in the in the write-up it's not there i'd be happy to address this russell we'll do it later go right ahead please can he address mr dubose no he cannot go right ahead mr bevel what's what what we're hearing mr jones is public hearing for the public to speak not a question answer or dialogue so a lot of my public speaking is going to be questions go right ahead please sir just just so they can hear too go right ahead and y'all also so that's off the list that

» 's off the list also kershaw county is going to be liable for public services um according to this 100 public services county is going to pay for the like services such as sewage water fire and police that's right there on the write-up kershaw county if property is in kershaw county portion of the park expenses kershaw county 100 going to pay the expenses so if sumter county which is kind of strange because sumter county is nowhere near camden zero percent revenues are going to be made through payments of fees in lieu of the taxes for the ad valorem property taxes kershaw is going to get 99 of that that's going to be 99 of that after they get the credit break of what might be 1.4 million dollars so during those eight years they're going to need a credit break and kershaw county is going to

» get 99 of what's left after they pay the credit to this company just a note for your clerk of county council certification that this document is accurate um need to put in there kershaw county you have the undersigned clerk county council of charleston county need to fix that if you go through the uh yeah find this in time termination kershaw county and sumter county that just tickles me sumter county is involved with this they get in one percent revenues the disagreement may not be terminated by either party with respect to any property included herein without the consent of the affected property owner for the term of any infrastructure credits to which kershaw hospitality llc is entitled sounds like do they um you need their permission to terminate it so it sounds like to me reading that

» i have another question who's going to own the building who's going to own it who's the property going to belong to you're going to belong to kershaw county at the beginning at the end after eight years never or hospitality is going to own it don't know couldn't find that in here if it is in here i missed it and i apologize but that's another one of my questions who's going to own the building don't know not there a lot not there okay that's it for my questions and mostly my statements then i'll say it again there's a lot missing there's not a lot here i don't know why it isn't public you would think this is public for us to look at and read and understand um so i wholeheartedly disagree with the process you did in making this an industrial or business park.

» I think a lot of other people would like to be deemed in that category so they can get the breaks. That's a little satire. Thank you, sir. I'm done. Thank you, sir. Mr. DuBose, the fifth and last person to sign up for this public hearing is Phil Truesdale. Mr. Truesdale, sir. Good evening. I was born and Raised in Kershaw County, I've spent my entire life here, 53 years. Never felt the need to attend a Kershaw County Council meeting. Always thought you people had our best interests at heart. As evidenced by me coming here tonight, I don't feel that way anymore. It's a seemingly shady and unfair manner in which this latest proposal has been brought about. There seems to be little information regarding the details of this project.

» The number of employees projected for this 35-room hotel have ranged from 35, from what I've heard, Councilman Snodgrass's statement on Facebook over the weekend that they projected 90 employees to be hired for a 35-room hotel venture. I doubt if anyone can take that number seriously. And there lies the question: why make numbers up? Why, if you were truly doing something good for the people of this county, would you feel the need to over-inflate numbers that are being tied directly to the benefits given to this particular entity? We should all be asking questions about this. Usually, when people make things up, they're doing it for personal benefit of some sort. If a business owner thinks that opening a business in this county will be profitable, they should choose to do so.

» They should not base opening that business on the ability to sway local politicians in order to gain deals and treatment that no other businesses in the area have been afforded. It's my belief the local government should stay out of the private sector. You can tell a lot by looking around this county. The biggest and nicest buildings in this county are occupied by local government. That's not the way it should be. People are sick and tired of the tax and spend way of government that funnels all the way to the federal government, apparently all the way down to local government. People are sick of the unfairness in the way we are treated by government officials based on how much money you bring to the table. I will not support or vote for anyone that is okay with this type of governing.

» And I only hope more people start showing up to these meetings and speaking out and vote the people that agree with this nonsense out of office. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Truesdale. Mr. DeVos. that concludes the sign-up list for the uh first public hearing of mr chairman i believe let me just make sure we got everybody as any further sign-ups that concludes then uh the public hearings and the public comments thank you gentlemen thank you every ladies and gentlemen uh we went through a significant amount of public discourse and we appreciate it we move to the next item but before we do i thank mrs phillips again for coming ma'am and and uh you certainly made an impression here we've it's apparent we have some work to do uh with that we'll move uh to the adoption of the agenda can we have a m

» otion to approve the agenda make a motion to approve the agenda mr mr tucker a second second second for mr gardner any discussion uh seeing there is none we move to uh vote all those in favor of the agenda as written on the board signify by raising your hands and it's unanimous and we move to a public presentation access kershaw with lindsay kilgo the director of access kershaw and karina vargas library social worker please uh gentlemen uh the slides are on the screen oh we have amy too good to see you ma'am and uh we have at page four and your electronic books are the briefings themselves go ahead amy thank you thank you for having us the library social worker initiative has been going on for about a year now I hope that you guys have heard about it it's certainly been something that has b

» een a huge effort between myself and Lindsay Kilgo the director of access Kershaw and then once we brought her on board Karina Vargas our social worker so it's been something that we've been putting a great deal of effort into and I'm here today to talk a little bit about why we did it how it's been working and why we think it's successful so libraries and social work they're not necessarily two things that have always gone together when you think of libraries you think of places perhaps that are quiet with books where we have programs with children book discussions all those things are true but we also have patrons who come in every day who need basic services they need access to food they need access to shelter they need help finding mental health services medical services so librarians h

» ave been faced with the issue of trying to serve these people who need the most basic help but not having the skills to do that the people that do have the skills to do that are social workers and if you think about social workers also the kind of work that they do connecting people to resources guiding them through it helping them to navigate all the different institutions all the different agencies that might be able to provide them help it's a complicated process but it's also about finding information and that's what libraries do so putting a social worker in a library to me is a a great fit it is something that larger places have been doing for up to a decade San Francisco was one of the first places to do it when I worked at Richland where I was from 2014 until 2020 we developed a lib

» rary social work department it started with one person and it ended up with about five or six because the need is there libraries are also very welcome opening place places anybody can walk in we're friendly we're known for that if someone has a perception of a bureaucratic entity as a place that may not be welcoming it may be a place that would be avoided but not a library libraries are places where anyone can go and I think by and large they think of us as friendly I hope they do so it's a good good fit and I've also developed a lot of respect for the work that social workers do if it were easy to fix the problems of poverty if it was easy to fix the problem of people needing help and not getting it the people that we see every day we want to help if that was an easy thing to do then it w

» ould have already been solved by now so social workers are trained to address these issues and that's what we're doing so to give you a sense of of the timeline all of this is possible it's not free but right now the county is not paying for it so we are awarded a grant from the usc center for rural and primary health care which we got at the end of 2020.

» at that moment lindsay and i started working together and i'd like to mention too that because of our size because i'm not a social worker because this does take specialized skills if we didn't have the um cooperation and i would say almost integrated uh working together that i have with access kershaw and lindsay we wouldn't be able to do it so i think that's speaks to the interest and the ability of people in this community to pull together we're two different entities but we're working almost like we're one with this so end of 2020 we got the funding which is about $100,000 from USC at that point we developed a plan we got an MOU in place we developed our budget and then we started to recruit the recruiting process as you guys probably have heard recruiting is not as easy in some situati

» ons with social workers we looked until we found somebody that we were happy with and when we interviewed Karina it was pretty apparent that she would be a great fit. It was immediately apparent that she was very confident, very engaged, compassionate. She has a BSW. She'll tell you a little bit more about herself and her story, but we knew she was the right fit, so I'm glad that we waited until we found that person. March through May, onboarding, training, getting to know the Access Kershaw system. There is a procedure that happens with Access Kershaw, there's a methodology for getting people health. There is a focus on self-empowerment and getting people to the stage where they can be self-sufficient. All of these things are built into how they do their work.

» So March through May, we were really focused on getting Karina to the place that she needed to be to do what she needed to do with clients but may is when she started to see people working with individuals one on one she meets with them in the library in Camden and also in Bethune it is a grant that's focused as you might have guessed from the name the USC Center for rural and primary health care the focus is on rural areas of the county Camden Bethune although we do not exclude people from other parts of the county as well so she meets people either in the library she'll meet them in places like access Karshaw she also makes home visits going to where people live so the networking that was a very important part of the onboarding process and we did a lot of it so Karina has had over a hundr

» ed meetings with different organizations and groups that would be invested in this process she's integrated herself really well in the school system she's got great relationships with the people that do English as a second language, the guidance counselors, different schools. We've worked heavily with Jackson Elementary. Social service agencies, she set up a table at Food for the Soul where she goes monthly to meet with people directly. Different clergy, sister care, Live Well, the community medical clinic. There are many, many, many places that she's met, both to get people to us that she can help, and also to learn where we can send people for help.

» So to get a sense of the network that we have here, and we are very fortunate to have a lot of different groups who are supportive, who want to make a difference. So this first part, this networking, onboarding phase, was learning about that. And then the marketing piece, getting the word out. Karina has done an amazing job at getting out into the community. She has been everywhere. She has been to back to school events. She's been on the book mobile, mobile nutrition center stops. I would also like to give her a huge shout out because she's tenacious and brave. And some of the places that she's gone are places that we didn't ask her to go, but places that she thought would be places where she was needed.

» So she went to all the motels that dot Highway 1, meeting with people, the managers that work in those offices, leaving her flyers. She went out on the Meals to Wheels stops, met with those participants. She put the flyers in the boxes. We've had also traditional marketing, press releases, social media, the radio, and I may have mentioned we're very fortunate that Karina is bilingual, and that has opened up a lot of different uh options for us that we didn't have before one of her radio ads is in spanish and then the website that we created the whole focus is to try to make her accessible that's one of the benefits that i mentioned with libraries social workers and libraries are particularly strong partnerships because anyone can walk in anyone can see her so we have made her presence very

» very easy to get to so she has office hours tuesday thursdays 9 to 12 2 to 5 at the camden library we've also started office hours in the bethune library this is the website so anyone can make an appointment on the website they can call they can drop off a form we also get referrals from partners i mentioned she's met a lot of people the police know where the the detention center knows her, the alpha center knows her, so we get referrals from many, many different places. At first, the focus was on getting the word out and learning about the community, and now it's really about continuing that, but seeing people and making differences with individuals. So, to date, this is approximately what we've been doing.

» She's had 286 encounters that's individual meetings with people sometimes taking an hour or more where she'll assess find out exactly what they need and give them guided support in finding whatever it is that they're needing and she's got approximately 56 active cases so that's what a social worker would call a caseload and that varies people do roll off once they get the help they need Once they're in a place of stability, those people will roll off; new people would come in. So the caseload of 56 is where we are now, but that's going to continue to grow. That's what we've seen happening, and we have expectations that that is going to extend to capacity.

» At this point, I will turn it over to my partner, Lindsey Kilgo, who's going to talk to you a little bit about Access Kershaw and what they do. Good. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Lindsay Kilgore. I'm the director of Access Kershaw. Happy to be here. I'm watching the clock here. Can you make it, wrap it up in about five minutes? I can. All right, because I want to leave time for questions. Okay. Absolutely. So just a quick tidbit about Access Kershaw.

» We are an initiative led by the Community Medical Clinic who is CEO of Susan Witowski and so part of what access Kershaw does is that we provide support to individuals for primary care specialty care and really address the barriers that are moving around that individual and so we are primarily funded by the Duke Endowment that also receives support through the Health Services District and other partners like the library so partnerships are tantamount to our success and we work to mitigate avoidable emergency room and inpatient services emergency rooms can be seen as a revolving door for those individuals that don't have access to primary care and so which is not appropriate and also it's ineffective and it's also an economic drain so thus this natural partnership that was created between ac

» cess Kershaw and the library system it's just evolved as in nature as a grant to connect individuals to primary care and so you know partnerships and create ways and paths to reach the whole person you know not only are we connecting to primary care but we really are trying to work to get folks back to work to obtain health insurance while also managing chronic illnesses and addressing environmental factors along the way and the work cannot be done alone in silo and so in order to make systemic change we all must work together and then thus the community and individuals that live in this community then fully are impacted so that's really the big picture and I want to talk a little bit about why a social worker and I promise I'm moving fast so this was really important important for Amy and

» I to hire a social worker we felt this profession has the skill set that addresses the needs within Kershaw County. Social workers also follow a code of ethics. We speak for those that do not have a voice, those that are discriminated against. We stay informed on policy, knowledge, and skills. We also hold ourselves to the highest professional standards. And so it's very important that I talk about why a social worker. And then also a social work lens encourages self-sufficiency. Amy mentioned that earlier. Excuse me. And we use, you know, techniques such as motivational interviewing and strengths-based approach. And these are tools in which we move patients from their journey as we are helping connect with resources. So this is a picture here of Access Kershaw.

» It's in our West Watery Medical Complex. And just a couple of things as it relates to, you know, our approach. CMC is physically located in Camden. Access Kershaw is physically located in Lugoff. Karina spends time with us at West Watery. She's a part of our team. She has a caseload. The rest of our Access Kershaw team is made up of social workers, nurses, community health workers, and other supportive staff that we have. So there are various roles within Access Kershaw to be able to move patients along their journey.

» a lot of what drives the approach is the data and I just be remiss if I didn't mention that you know in 2019 Kershaw County showed still an 11.7 rate of uninsured individuals so the need still exists it isn't is there there are individuals that still need that connection and so I'll end lastly with some data and so these are numbers that you'll see and so outcomes I'm show impact and that's important for programs like access Kershaw we need to be able to show what is happening so Karina as Amy mentioned has 56 active patients and so out of those 56 patients there have been over 1,200 plus resources connected so you'll see the top bar here social service referral so there were 492 social service referral type connections to resources and that could be COVID related the way our system works t

» hey're they're tagged as social service referrals it could be coveted related it could be clothing it could be food it could be legal assistance or utility assistance the the remainder can speak for themselves but the medical home and the medical referral are the connection to primary care in connection to the primary care specialty services so you know that's a lot of work that's a lot of connection and so we're happy about that and that's not only happening with karina but that's happening all across the county with the remainder of the access kershaw team so lastly just real quick there's a there's one there's a one pager in your packet take a look at that we can maybe dive deeper into that maybe in another another conversation but just know that data is important to us it drives decisio

» ns it helps inform process improvement um and needs within the county and then my last you know comment you know emphasize the overarching goal here of this partnership is the opportunity for access kershaw and the library to continue to make kershaw county a healthier place to live and to work and so i'll hand it off to karina she's going to tell you a little bit more about herself we're running very short on talk a little bit about a patient's journey we can extend the time mr chair we're We're running very short on time. Karina, how much time do you need? All right, gentlemen, let's extend that normally. Please. Are you guys okay with that? Thanks. Go right ahead. Thank you, sir. Hi, you guys. I know we want to get home, so this is a quick graph. Come over to the mic. Thank you.

» This is a quick graph of my outreach efforts. So, for example, the top of the diamond right there, it shows me at one of my outreach stops where i passed out flyers out of that outreach stop an individual reached out to me that received my flyer later on that day he gave me a call to set up an appointment at that appointment the following day he came to the appointment and that's where we did the needs assessment and the access cursor intake within that intake process i found out he was a single african american male 63 years old disabled stressed out because he's about to lose his housing he wanted to go back to school get back to the community he can't afford his bills he's going through anxiety depression all these things that was just by the initial meeting so after that we did a goals

» list going from primary need all the way till what the last thing he needed so that's what it shows on the graph so applied for financial assistance to the school he wanted to go to so we did the fafsa application we also applied for an agency that provides him a free phone if he has a state program like snap or medicaid and he qualified for that phone and he got it which eliminated a cell phone bill then he needed eviction assistance so legal assistance so we were able to find him someone who can help him with that at a low fee we also applied for a rental and utility assistance program which he was approved for and it paid his back rent and his utility bills that he owed and then we also connected him to aspen dental which he needed dental care and a primary home we got him squared away w

» ith all that so these are just a few instances of of services we connect individuals to and that that's my primary goal is to help these people get connected to services become self-sufficient less stressed less depressed after so i've worked with him for about three months and at this point he's at a state where he can function by himself feeling more self-confident in himself to achieve what he wants to achieve in life and that's pretty much it good amy first let me just say if amy can we go to questions now i got one more thing that i think is important which is the funding so i wanted to stress this is a person of the this is the the total funding that we got for this year we're guaranteed two more years of funding through usc um i do think that the work that we're doing is pretty pheno

» menal i wish i could be more emotional about it but that's just not my style in this but i will tell you that that one little story that karina gave that's life-changing for that person and that's one story there have been many many stories like that of children who have gotten operations that they needed of people who had who were moved out of those motels that were in families so there is a tremendous amount of good work that's being done usc is funding us this year it's about to end we've i just filled out the paperwork for next year we've got one more year but i want the sustainability of this to be on your radar to be on everyone's radar because it does have a it has an end um and this is a personnel cost that's usually an operating cost so i think that's something that i want everybod

» y to be aware of and i'd love to have other conversations uh to discuss the value of this and to discuss the sustainability of it thanks very good i'm sure we have questions but i wish uh i wish we had more of you karina thank you mr jones go right ahead thank you i appreciate going first amy i appreciate everything you do you do a great job and you ladies thank you for being here tonight I believe in what you're doing of course I'm married to a therapist however arguing with one is pretty hard but I just want to say this thank you so much you're doing a great job and for me personally I'm not in a hurry to get home if we're all in a hurry to get home we need to have two meetings a month and not just one but I'm glad you took your time I'm glad you explained to us and I'd like to get some i

» nformation from you as well you're in the Lugoff area correct okay I got you well i represent the entire county as well so i will be talking to you soon i'll leave some brochures thank you you're welcome excellent other questions uh mr tucker thank you mr chairman i just want to say amy and um and the crew thank you for um this program and um i hear you loud and clear um start early you know how it rolls you this is not your first time at the at the rodeo and and i appreciate you bringing some of the new innovative ideas that you learned when you left us but you can't go anywhere in the near future now you do know that okay but we thank you for all your hard work and and i love that you're being innovated and trying to help the most needy in in the county thank all of you david sure uh ladi

» es thank you so much uh amy thank you for your leadership i was i was honored to be asked to be a part of a strategic plan uh for the library just to give input and and so it just kind of shows kind of where you are as a leader forward thinking um access kershaw thank you for what you guys do uh you know i get to be a part of uh part of you guys through the live well uh some of those initiatives and uh it's good to have you uh on board karina and thank you so much for being here and i think this is vital because the last the the last census numbers that we or the the most recent census numbers that we have seen uh the greatest the fastest growing population in our county are spanish speakers so i think this is uh this is vital so thank you so much for for ladies for being forward thinking a

» nd uh helping make sure that nobody falls through the cracks thank you other comments i've got one yeah go ahead a question rather for karina hey thanks for what you're doing uh obviously fantastic work the the specific example of the gentleman i think it was that you helped get back on their feet um you stop just as i was getting extraordinarily curious because um i like to see people that are in those bad situations find that help and i want to know where does it end do you connect them with um like vote rehab maybe at some point to get them to get them back into the workforce why don't you come over to the mic because i know the people on facebook or something bad happened in his life situation he can contact me again so it's not there's there's no end i mean as soon as they get served a

» nd they don't need anything at that point he can reach out to me a couple months from now and request assistance so it's more as as as they go along in their life they're sustainable themselves if for some reason a traumatic experience happens or crisis happens i mean so we define each person defines their own crisis so if he happens to have a crisis along down the road he can contact me whenever and this is for anybody i serve very good thank you so much other comments um i regret i missed your strategy session i thank uh uh mr snodgrass and mr verazel and mr jones for attending and i'm sure we'll hear from more about that later other discussion points okay with that thank you so very much ladies appreciate your waiting to this last moment appreciate it thank you thank you thank you ladies

» all right uh we move now to the next item which is a proclamation we'll follow the normal procedure i'll read it and then we'll hear from you with motions it's at tab b page seven and it's on the screen a proclamation honoring the 20th anniversary of september september the 11th whereas on september the 11th 2001 the american people endured the worst terrorist attack on u.s soil in in the nation's history with courage and heroism. In response to this tragedy, Americans across the country came together in a remarkable spirit of patriotism and unity and carried out countless acts of kindness, generosity, and compassion.

» And whereas community organizations and family members of 9-1-1 victims began observing the anniversary of September the 11th as a charitable service day to honor the memory of those who were lost and those who united in response to the tragedy, including first responders, ordinary people, those in the field, in the Pennsylvania field, and in the Pentagon, and volunteers.

» And whereas Americans everywhere participate in service and remembrance activities, on September the 11th, as a positive and respectful way to remember the lives of those lost, pay tribute to those who rose in service, and honor those in and out of uniform who continue to serve our uniform country today, active Guard and Reserve and their families, veterans and first responders that America may never lack for willing citizens to rise up and defend her in the future.

» Now therefore be it resolved that Kershaw County Council here proclaims September the 11th as a 9-11 day of service and remembrance and with that we'll take a motion uh can we have a first please make a motion that we approve the 9-11 resolution mr mr tucker a second second from mrs snodgrass any discussion i know many of you took part in the march uh between the two fire stations i watched it on facebook and it was well done thanks sheriff for you participating and all your team as always and especially the firemen and other first responders who went out uh other comments so with that we move to a vote all those in favor signify by raising your hand and it's unanimous and thank you mary for those words that was well well done with that we move to approval of minutes uh august 10th is our l

» ast meeting tab c and page eight can we have a motion to approve the minutes second uh mr gardner on first mr tucker a second any discussion i'd ask you to look at page 11 at the top of the page where it says the clerk of council requested the chairman address noise in the audience he asked them to be quiet so the clerk has the ability to hear and the tracks actions might continue in order to take the minutes uh and i think i've addressed that today maybe i was a little strict on that but it was clearly out of hand last time and i appreciate that those who are here today were respectful of the of the weight of what we're trying to achieve here today so with that uh we'll move to a vote all those in favor signify by raising your hand and it's unanimous mary just note that mr connell was out

» briefly would you please thank you miss mary all right with that we move to administrative updates i go to administrator on COVID-19 update members of council at the chairman's request I am bringing before you again status for uh Kershaw County um just in a snapshot for today we had 45 new cases reported in Kershaw County today uh from the inception of COVID in Kershaw County in March 6th of 2020 10,696 of our citizens have been infected with the disease which ranks 24th in the state of South Carolina. Total deaths from the beginning, DHEC estimates 170 of our citizens. Six deaths last week alone as well. Vaccination rate for Kershaw County, we have a 48.9% vaccination rate for both shots and a 58.09% for at least one shot that has been received.

» The school district wanted me to share with you and our community that it is their intention, working in tandem with DHEC to have a vaccination clinic at the Camden football game on Friday um to uh and anybody who is vaccinated um they will uh be able to enter the game without having to pay for the ticket uh for it and then they will move it to Lugoff Elgin and North Central as well in upcoming weeks that's my report very good um any comments for Mr.

» Carpenter as I've said before masks are encouraged social distancing encouraged shots are encouraged but this is a free country and you should do as you wish but i do encourage myself personally that shots begin to be taken where you have medical advice to that effect uh some some of you will note that there's starting to be language out there that says that the uh shot begins to have less and less effect after six months and after eight, you should get a booster. Again, I'm not a doctor. I'm taking my own advice on that tomorrow. Any other discussion? That was a very good summary. I just point out to you again, we have had as many deaths in the last six weeks. The coroner sends me and Vic the report.

» We've had as many deaths in the last six weeks than we did in the first six months of the previous COVID variety, and one would draw the conclusion that this particular COVID run is a little more dangerous than the previous one. So with that, we will move on to the next item, a series of resolutions. First item is a resolution to express Kershaw County Council's request that the General Assembly take necessary actions to continue to allow the local government, excuse me, to collect user fees that fund critical needs such as public safety and fire. It's at tab D, page 13 in your electronic book, and as is our practice, I'm going to read this and try to shorten it a bit.

» A resolution to express Kershaw County Council's request that the General Assembly take the necessary actions to clarify the authority of local governments to collect user fees that fund critical needs such as public safety and infrastructure now this language given to us by the south carolina association of counties so i'm reading what every county council in the state is reading over the next several months whereas kershaw county along with the vast majority of citizens acknowledge that as a result of the recent supreme court decision and revenues lost through the COVID-19 pandemic counties throughout the state have been and will continue to struggle funding critical needs such as public safety and infrastructure and whereas counties were specifically granted the authority to impose unifo

» rm service charges and road fees were specifically considered and deemed allowed by the Supreme Court in 1992 And whereas in 1997, the General Assembly, which defines service or user fee as a charge required to be paid in return for a particular government service or program made available to the payer that benefits the payer, in some manner different from the members of the general public not paying that fee. And whereas relying on this code section, the Supreme Court ruled Greenville County road fee ordinance invalid, and I'll move on through, whereas the Supreme Court made it clear in its decision that the fee payer must receive a different benefit from paying the fee and not merely a greater benefit.

» whereas the decision potentially puts certain user fees in jeopardy which could result in the loss of millions of dollars in county revenues throughout the entire state and whereas one solution to this issue would be for the general assembly to amend the law to allow counties to have the option to utilize user fees that benefit the payer in some manner different or greater than the members of the general public and whereas the above solution does not increase county revenue raising security excuse me authority beyond its ability prior to the recent decision and therefore does not constitute a new fee or a new tax and whereas another potential solution is to amend the law to state that the general public may derive a benefit from the fee as long as the substantial benefit goes to the payer n

» ow therefore be it resolved that the council has in support of the legislation that would preserve user fees as a vital source of local revenue and request that all members of the south carolina general assembly take action to ensure that home rule is protected and that appropriate legislation is enacted to preserve this financial resource in the next general assembly session can we have a motion to approve make a motion that we approve the resolution for the user fees mr tucker uh second second for mr gardner uh you want to lead discussion mr tucker i just want to say mr chairman that um i know that um a lot of people have their opinions when it comes down to this um we here in kershaw county of course is not affected by the ruling in greenville at this time but it could easily turn and if

» um the general ASSEMBLY DOES NOT ADDRESS THIS, YOU CAN LOOK AT PROBABLY ALL 46 COUNTIES IF THEY HAVE TO PAY BACK GOING BANKRUPT BECAUSE IT WOULD DEMOLISH OUR RESERVES AND ANYTHING ELSE THAT WE MAY HAVE. SO WE DO NEED YOUR SUPPORT ON THIS AND WE DO NEED THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY TO ADDRESS THESE ISSUES COME JANUARY. THANK YOU. NEW SPEAKER: OTHER COMMENTS? YEAH, MR. SNYDER-GRANTS. NEW SPEAKER: SURE. NEW SPEAKER: MR. DEBOSE, ARE YOU UP FOR A COUPLE QUESTIONS? NEW SPEAKER: YES, IF YOU HAVE A QUESTION. YES. NEW SPEAKER: ABSOLUTELY. I DON'T WANT TO GET TOO LONG HERE. I KNOW HOW MR.

» DEBOSE'S lectures can go but i actually enjoy them because i i uh this kind of i kind of nerd out on this stuff but give us the 60-second lecture on home rule what is home rule home rule is where the counties have the ability to rule themselves where they were granted powers by the general assembly to legislate and have budgets on their own prior to home rule the legislature did it okay so essentially it says the county can can legislate itself and the voters of that county can elect uh people to county council because before that the senator made up county council is that correct or they appointed and the budget yes and the budget in effect so in the same way that i don't think dc knows the best for south carolina i don't always think that columbia knows the best for kershaw county that's

» probably the the spirit of home rule and you don't have to i'm not trying to put words in your mouth but um at least for me that that is a spirit of of home rule and uh i don't see this as a vote for fees i see this is a vote for liberty this is a vote for home rule this is a vote for a county to be able to to govern themselves and should we govern ourselves in a way that is not worthy or uh to the voters then the voters will let us know that and that's that's called democracy that's how it works uh how many counties are in the state of south carolina 46.

» do we know did you or did you know according to my rough estimate about about 30 or so counties have have some sort of road fee or some type of user fee probably greater than that a road fee or a fire service fee or a user fee so there's a lot of members of the general assembly particularly in the senate chamber uh that they've got they've got to figure something out because that's a majority of counties so thank you appreciate it other comments mr chairman yeah mr connell go right ahead another solution would be if if the state complied with existing law on the local government fund there's many many years where local municipalities are supposed to have their tax dollars repatriated come back to them so that home rule can actually be animated and stated and you get to spend those funds on

» what you need so because the local government fund which is millions of dollars doesn't get funded each year in kershaw county and other locations you have an obligation from the state to provide particular services in your jurisdiction but they don't fund the fund that would allow you to do that so the counties over over many years have come up with other ways to to cover their responsibility as issued by the state that would be another solution that i hope would encourage state legislators to look at and fund it as required by law and not uh not push it out of the budget each year thank you mr chairman yeah great others uh mr jones go right ahead thank you mr chairman members of county council i absolutely don't believe anything you just said and let me tell you why with all due respect u

» m a fee is a tax in disguise a fee is a way to get around the millage uh a fee hurts 65 years and older folks more than a millage does what we're doing by this resolution is we're asking the folks over in columbia to allow us to generate fees we have generated fees to expand and grow government and um for that reason i will not be supporting this tonight okay other comments uh there's not a language in there that says we're trying to increase the fees we're trying to make sure that we're doing everything on the up and up and legal that's been done since 1992 uh secondly it is as i say in the military it's immoral to ask someone to do something and not give them the means to do that to include whether it's a soldier in a foxhole or in this case a county that's required by the law passed by t

» he great men and women in the state house that we provide fire i see we have a fireman here tonight sheriff we have sheriff and his deputies here tonight and all those things that must be paid for and so they passed a law that limits that authority and then they had the supreme court further limit that authority so this is an attempt by the several counties to tell this legislature look you told us to do x and you didn't give enough money to do that and so we're asking your help so we can do what you asked us to do it is not an increase it is trying to rationalize what was otherwise a very difficult task for mr carpenter and us to keep balanced books and to pay for the sheriff's cars and his deputies and you can't be for something and not pay for it you can't say i'm for the sheriff i'm for

» the fire and then not step up and pay for it So this is a part of the dialogue that Mr. Snodgrass has said. We're trying to tell the State House, "Hey, look, give us some help." So with that, let's move to a vote. All those in favor, signify by raising your hand. Mr. Snodgrass, Mr. Tucker, Mr. Gardner, Mr. Burns, and Mr. Connell, those opposed. Mr. Jones and Mr. Breissel, and it passes. So we move to the second resolution to express Kershaw County Council's request that the General Assembly allow counties to increase the millage cap set by U.S. Code laws in a limited manner, and it's at tab E, page 15. And again, this language was provided by the Association of Counties and provided to every county in the state, and all counties are addressing this in the same way.

» So I'll read it again, and we'll move to a series of motions and a vote. A resolution to express Kershaw County Council's request that the General Assembly allow counties to increase the millage cap of the code in a limited manner set out in Senate Bill 401, Whereas Kershaw County, along with the vast majority of citizens, acknowledge counties' abilities to raise revenue are limited due to the passage of Act 388 in the year 2006. And whereas it is widely recognized that many counties have not raised their millage over the past years due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

» and whereas many fire districts are shifting from volunteer to a mix with career-paid firefighters and do not have the necessary revenue due to the millage cap restrictions mentioned below, and whereas many counties are using outdated equipment and do not have the personnel to effectively provide critical and life-saving fire protection needs to the citizens, and whereas many counties are already close to their millage cap while others could potentially raise millage but the slight increase in revenue would not pay for the services needed and whereas act senate 401 would allow counties to adopt an ordinance or resolution to suspend the millage rate limitations as set out in the law for the sole purpose of supporting a fire protection district created pursuant to Chapter 19 of Title IV of th

» ose fire districts created pursuant to Title VI. And whereas Senate Bill 401 would provide a short-term solution by allowing for one-time millage increase above the caps for fire protection within two years of the effective date of the legislation and whereas the senate 401 is not a statewide tax increase but merely provides those counties in need with a resource to combat their already strained budgets by lost revenue during covid 19.

» now therefore be it resolved by the council that it is in support of senate 401 and requests the general assembly to taking such action can we have a motion to approve that resolution make motion yeah thank you mr connell a second second uh from mr brazel brazel thank you uh with that mr connell i yield to you sir thank you mr chairman briefly this goes kind of hand in hand with the um the prior issue on the agenda quick backdrop if you were in a county prior to this law that already had a full-time fire service meaning personnel that were paid full-time it doesn't really bother you very much however if you're a rural county like kershaw county and you had a volunteer fire service but you needed to transition to a full-time fire service it impacts you a whole lot because the millage cap mea

» ns that you can't hire full-time firemen and so the county tries to accommodate that and pay for the fire service demand with fees this would allow for a reset of the millage cap if you're in charleston county or greenville or other places they already had a full-time fire service the legislature in my view did not think that at some point agrarian counties with all volunteer fire service would need to go to full time but there we are we're experiencing a bunch of growth in the county and uh and therefore i would i'd support this yeah very good uh you had a second uh russell yeah so thank you mr chairman i i agree with ben i'm not a i'm not a tremendous fan of fees and uh that's why i chose not to support the first resolution the second resolution I think is a more equitable solution for ou

» r County and if it could replace some of the old fire fees and if we could reset and fund fire the way it needs to I think this along with other revenue sources such as fee and Lua tax and revenues that will be coming from project seagull those are also we can use those to fund fire and um i think sometimes we need to get creative but i'm a bigger fan of of the uh millage it's it's fair to the citizens versus the fees thank you um other comments um again this kind of goes back to my previous uh previous comments you know for me this goes back to home rule and it goes back to the county being able to manage uh the way that it sees fit and so and in fact this s401 is a sponsored by a member of our our delegation in fact just point of personal privilege our legislative liaison miss gwen is her

» e as well so just want to make sure thank you for being here and um and so i think for this this you know this kind of goes back to uh it goes back to to home rule and it goes back to mr jones's comments that yeah fees are inequitable and this is how we this is how we fix the fire fee is to put it on put it on millage mr carpenter what is the current fire millage on the books a little over 10 mils 10 mils did you know that most career most career fire services operate off of probably at the minimum 28 to 30 mils so you know this is this isn't a an attempt uh to you know just raise a raise the cap we know without some sort of limit but for us it's a it's an attempt to be able to make an adjustment as mr connell has pointed out as we move from a an agrarian type county to in a county that is

» there's a need of a full-time career fireman and uh so and we're seeing it move forward we're seeing uh cassette station uh coming online soon transition 24-hour service and uh so i think this this all helps us helps us move forward and uh it in my view it supports home rule so i'll support it other comments yes jones if i may well first off if this which is not but if this was to be uh overruled at the state house it would give kershaw county council an unlimited amount of millage they could what what was it mr carpenter he said the average millage is about what 30 mils 29 mils yeah roughly yes sir and what is our millage now about a little over 10.

» so i was to probably go there um you know i think we have to think outside the box i think we need to think of alternative ways to fund services in kershaw county versus just raising taxes creating new fees i have done that i think we need to uh private partnership in a lot of the areas in the county we can i've always said well one one example is when i brought sewer to the table you know we could have gotten rid of the sewer department and it could have paid off there's no doubt in my mind i could pay it over seven million dollars we we're spending on the southern loot right now to increase our flow it could have paid off the 6.5 million debt that we have it could also have paid off the 10 excuse me the uh 15 to 20 000 that we're gonna have to probably pay to enhance our two million gallo

» n a day sewer system which doesn't have a couple hundred thousand gallons left right now so i wonder how we're gonna bring a lot of industry in but bottom line is we could save doing that we probably could have had some money in the bank but at that time this council voted it down we did not even entertain doing an assessment on it i think this is dangerous i think this is giving uh us the authority well it is to to just go back and raise the millage to an unprecedented amount and you know when we talk about to sustain we're trying to sustain our own growth because we keep growing you know the private industry industry is certainly not growing as fast as government is growing if you think that well government does a better job i ask you to go look at the post office ups they're in existence

» probably because post office look at health care i think government does the worst job when it comes to running services for our community however that's just my opinion i'm against this i'm going to vote against it and mr chairman members of council i uh respect y'all's opinion but i just absolutely disagree with it okay thank you other comments uh this gets back to my original comment on the previous one uh the legislature requires us to do stuff and legislature now needs to give us some flexibility to pay for what they require us to do secondly i i thank the members of the task force who three years ago put together a plan to improve our fire service to augment our wonderful volunteers along with some full-time and to put stations in cassett and elsewhere so we can do the dangerous jobs

» such as firemen did on 9-1-1 and do for us every day secondly i point out that mrs white was here tonight right russell uh and she talked to you and she talked to us tonight about the the fees she's having to pay well on on buildings that she considered worthless well that's the law that was passed by the state house and the state house tells us how we have to administer those taxes and in order to provide fire service we have to provide a fee what's wrong with a fee a fee is inequitable as mr connell has pointed out a village is based on the value of the property instead of a flat fee and i wouldn't say mrs white was elderly she looks a lot younger than me and i don't consider myself to be elderly at 74 years old but the point is we've got to get our tax code sorted out and we need the peo

» ple at the state house to do it and i'm hoping uh mrs gustafson and mr dabney and all those folks understand we're not being critical we need their help we need dialogue instead of saying this is an unlimited tax increase it is certainly not it is when the budget we have already said so we can transfer transfer fees into millage that don't harm such people as mrs white who was here tonight and i hope she's listening to that so with that we move to a vote all those in favor signify by raising your hand mr snodgrass mr tucker mr gardner mr burns mr brazel and mr kyle thank you gentlemen and those opposed was mr jones and it passes thank you very much we now move to item number three which is tab f page 16 in your electronic book and i think this is the last time i have to read a resolution to

» night but before i go into the resolution i also point out to you page 17 and on where mr carpenter has written a very good summary of what these arpa funds mean that we're getting from the federal government i just think it's magnificent if you into those kinds of things and let me read the resolution then we'll ask a little later on for motion but i'll also tell you a little later on in our agenda mr tucker and mr jones are going to ask us to act on that so you all pay attention to the to the language a resolution regarding usage of arpa funds whereas kershaw county will receive approximately 13 million dollars in federal funds with the express direction of quote helping to turn the tide in the pandemic address the economic fallout and lay the foundation for strong and equitable recovery

» in Kershaw County end quote and whereas Kershaw County has previously spent approximately 1.5 million dollars in direct aid appropriation and support of our local businesses nonprofits nursing homes and medical communities and whereas the state of South Carolina itself will receive over 2.5 billion dollars which it can use to invest in broadband, housing, medical care, small business initiatives, economic development, and other outcomes.

» And whereas the Kershaw County School District will likewise receive approximately 25 million dollars to invest in its students, facilities, and faculty, and whereas towns and cities in Kershaw County will also receive approximately $4.5 million to invest in their communities, where it is reasonable and appropriate to expect the state of South Carolina, our school district, and our towns to invest these significant funds that they are receiving in those areas that will most benefit the populations that they serve it is therefore appropriate for kershaw county to focus its resources on those areas that only it has responsibility for providing therefore be it resolved on this 14th day of september that kershaw county utilize its designated arpa funds or and i'll enumerate and you'll see them

» on the screen there support public employees one million dollars expand its wastewater and storm water infrastructure and capacity 10 million dollars reclaim lost revenue using it to make the following investments in the following potential areas of need to the sum of two million dollars one invest in its computer and internet infrastructure invest in its recreational tourism and related infrastructure, invest in public safety radios, invest in public infrastructure, invest in non-profit agencies that suffered as a result of COVID.

» Any unused funds from the categories of supporting public employees and expanding wastewater and stormwater infrastructure capacity should be available for use in the reclaimed loss revenue category can we have a motion to approve this resolution make a motion we approve the resolution mr chairman mr tucker a second second uh is that you russell yes i'm sorry my ears are not so good all right we have a second mr tucker do you want to lead i thank you mr chairman i just want to say that this kind of outlines what the council and the county is going to do with the funds that's been awarded to this county and you see the bulk of it is going into OUR OUR SEWER PLANT AND WASTE WATER TREATMENT AND AND THAT IS BECAUSE IT IS TIME THAT WE HAVE TO UPDATE THAT AND WE HAVE UH THE FUNDS AVAILABLE TO MAK

» E A JUST A AT LEAST HALF FIFTY PERCENT OF THE COST THAT IT'S GOING TO TAKE IT'S GOING TO BE ABOUT 18 TO 20 MILLION DOLLARS TO TO UPDATE THAT PLANT BUT I THINK THIS IS ONE OF THE SMARTEST WAYS WE CAN SPEND THIS MONEY so we do not have to tax you in the near future so we can upgrade the plant for industry which is going to bring in another tax base and some of that will also be used for residential so thank you russell yeah lots lots of the money 10 million is going towards sewer infrastructure i think the intention for this large sum of money was was meant to go into infrastructure so that's definitely something we've talked about all year and uh look forward to seeing it become self-sustaining and hopefully we can do away with some of those taxes that are attached to it and this is a great

» sum of money to take the right step in the right direction so i agree with this wholeheartedly i'm going to let everybody else speak but let me be clear vic your your intention is to bring to respond to these gentlemen in terms of further detailed guidance and over a period of time you may even bring forward how these funds would be expanded within this broad policy guidance is that your idea yes for mr at the end of the day the county council will always approve all budgets okay guys so we'll hear from you over the next several weeks and months and then we'll vote on it um other comments please thank you russell mr chairman yeah ben please right here this this won't be new you'll heard it from me before but um i just fundamentally disagree with awarding bonuses or hero pay to public employ

» ees as a subset of kershaw county's population you've got 66 000 people well the census bumped us up from that i've used that number so many times i forget what the new higher number is i guess a six percent increase but you've got uh under the rules that were given under under this arpa funding i'll just i'll share one of the categories that is not ranked in any particular order it says assistance to households funds may be used to assist households or populations could be mortgage could be cash assistance home repairs that's everybody in Kershaw County, yet we've selected a subset of Kershaw County to award, you know, $2,500, $1,500 to sometimes $2,700 trying to do tax adjustments. And I just, I can't understand why these folks were able to keep their jobs.

» There's other ways beyond using these funds that can go towards capital projects, which were a much higher goal, or actually were a goal prior to the pandemic and prior to us receiving these funds. If you look at our goals prior to um prior to the pandemic you would have seen sewer on there and paying for sewer infrastructure but i don't believe you would have seen you know large individual bonuses to particular subsets of employee government employees in kershaw county i just did some rough math um based on staff's report to me you know say the uh the sewer project and i think this is important for us to consider before we vote on this the sewer project just hypothetically say it cost 16 million dollars say that we use 10 million to go towards that project if we have to bond out the rest f

» or every million dollars that we bond out on a 15-year bond at two percent it costs us twenty thousand dollars so in the first year of interest on say three million dollars if we used it all all of this 13 towards our sewer expansion project we'd already have some of the bonuses that folks want to pay covered permanently for 15 years but we're going to be spending that in interest. And that's just one of the things that I try to avoid if at all possible. And for that reason, for those reasons, I won't be supporting the resolution tonight. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah. To be clear, Ben, I want to make sure I understand is a little later on, we're going to vote on one of those hero pay things.

» You don't need to forecast your vote, but I think I know where you're going is the resolution is, I think, fairly broad and doesn't prejudge an outcome. well i'm how you would see it no it doesn't except for some of the funds have already been expended i as i understand it mr carpenter uh they haven't been expended yet they've been committed by the council the budget however correct so the employee bonuses have already been committed by the majority by the council yes correct yeah so i mean this this is not forecasting anything it's already happened for me uh however many weeks or months ago we voted on it yeah um and and so i'm voicing that same opinion again and therefore i can't agree with resolution i agree with a lot of it but that's a sticking point because we could have given these f

» unds to absolutely anybody in kershaw county but we picked a subset and and then we also could avoid substantial debt by putting this towards a sewer project but we're going to bond out and be paying two percent interest it's an attractive rate in the market i agree but you know if it's 20 to 60 000 a year over 15 years that matters yeah good arguments mr jones yes i would so what What I'm hearing is that Councilman Connell would rather see it go to the public versus going to the employees. So if you make that amendment, I'll agree to give it to the businesses and the public if you want to make that amendment. That's what you just said. We already voted on the majority of council, and I was on the losing side, so technically I'm not allowed to bring that up, as I understand it, Mr. DeVos.

» You were on the losing side. That's correct. Thank you for the reminder. You could have just said yes. Yes, yes. I didn't use the word losing. was non-prevailing side yes the non-prevailing side okay mr mr connell being an athlete doesn't like to lose he was on the non-prevailing side mr jones go right ahead well i was just gonna say i'll be glad to make an amendment if we want to put it to the businesses if we want to put it to the people um you know i feel very good about what i'm going to vote on later on when it comes to the public safety employees and employees in kershaw county you know uh blue golf fire the volunteers the paid the part-time the county fire the paid the part-time you know and then our other employees i listen i think it's an investment into that infrastructure i think

» it's a good thing for morale it's a once in a lifetime probably hopefully opportunity to do this but i will say this too i i don't agree with the sewer because we could have had that taken care of just by listening to me but nobody did that now having said that we're facing excuse me let him finish david thank you thank you mr progress mr chairman um one thing that concerns me is you know we've got our 800 radios we've got to have a complete overhaul of all our radios probably within the next couple of years you're talking about multiple a multi-million dollar expenditure and i think we need to look at that and that really needs to be taken care of what we're doing with the sewer is a band-aid it's nothing but a band-aid and we're going to have to and you know we did a defeasibility of the

» bonds we shifted them around i called it a p and shell game well it's called generational debt because we've just passed it on anyway thank you for your time i believe we're doing an engineering study and on the sewer so we'll be able to talk about that with more precision other comments okay uh with that i think we're ready to go to a vote all those in favor of the motion oh please one quick thing and thank you so much for and for me just jumping in on this i don't support the 10 million for the sewer but i do support what we do it for the employees and that's why i will vote for this tonight go ahead okay very good with that we move we move to a vote all those in favor so signify uh mr jones mr brazel mr burns mr gardner uh mr tucker and mr snodgrass and those opposed it was ben connell a

» nd it passes and that's our broad policy guys so we'll be able to operate on that i'd ask you to look at the letter that mr carpenter wrote is fabulous and it will be a matter of record with that i think i'm through reading resolutions for today and we moved and moved to a series of ordinances item number one is the third reading of an ordinance authorizing uh infrastructure it's at tab g it's at page 23 in your electronic books mr carpenter would you introduce the topic chairman members of council you have in front of you tonight for third reading an ordinance that authorizes the execution and delivery of an infrastructure credit agreement between kershaw county and kershaw hospitality llc previously known as project seagull that provides the issuance of special source revenue credits and

» the inclusion of the property in a multi-county industrial park and other matters related thereto very good i see we have uh perry mcclendon here from sinkler boyd in florence sir thank you for coming all right with that um can we have a motion to approve make a motion we approve third reading on project seagull uh mr tucker a second please second uh for mr risal uh do you want to lead discussion uh sammy thank you mr chairman um i'm gonna be very uh brief and just SAY I KNOW AND I HEAR ALL OF YOU THAT STOOD UP NOT ONLY TODAY BUT IN THE PAST AND SOME OF THE STATEMENTS THAT WERE SAID WERE NOT FACTUAL AND I RESPECT ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE YOUR OPINIONS EVEN IF IT MAY DIFFER FROM WHAT MINE IS BUT I ONCE AGAIN WOULD STATE THAT I THINK THIS PROJECT WOULD DO MORE GOOD THAN HARM AND THE COUNTY HAS A V

» ERY LITTLE PART IN IT WHICH IS THE ABATEMENT VERSUS city's responsibilities and um what they're doing for for the project so that concludes my remarks um mr brazel yes sir this has been a great topic of debate and i just brought a little prop here i think this is a a point of perception we've had a lot of negative comments and i i do also thank and respect everybody who came in life we have a choice no matter what it is we have a choice to look at that glass and say is that glass half full or is it half empty and that is exactly what i've seen with project seagull the the building is sitting vacant or nearly vacant and has for a period of time in the first eight years is the abatement period there will be no tax dollars taken from the kitty and put into the developer's hand not a quarter to

» my knowledge from kershaw county mr de bose please correct me if i'm wrong no it's an abatement yes not a rebate not one quarter from kershaw county will go into the developers pocket am i correct in saying that it's an abatement of taxes no there will be no payments by kershaw county so they're going to res we're going to receive more money in the first year of existence than we did in the previous year that's correct because there's none now wrong to the city okay so i heard all the arguments and they said there was no planning if you can read all these numbers these numbers are planning ladies and gentlemen there's been a ton of planning there's been an inordinary amount of thought put into it by very intelligent individuals they even let me look at it i may not have fallen into that cat

» egory but i want to bring up just a few key points in the first eight years the abatement period it'll generate on average 110 000 per year of tax revenue that tax revenue can go into special let me not say special let me say it can go into a fund that has been underfunded for years it can go into our fire service the reason it can be used to help fund our fire service is because it's a fee in lieu of tax agreement regular taxes regular millage goes into our general fund we cannot dip our hand into the general fund and take money out for fire it's illegal according to south carolina state law so for these reasons that glass is half full not half empty and i'll tell you i'm not a fan of politicians you don't see me with a facebook page posing as one just as much as many of the public are i'm

» here to do the right thing even if the right thing looks like the wrong thing and tonight i'll support it at 110 percent support because after the eight year abatement period the next 12 years we'll collect another 4.6 million dollars in tax revenue now who in this room wants to discourage these gentlemen from investing in kershaw county not i i'll say it again not i and i'm proud of it and i own a small business a family business that started with nothing i get it i get it from the ground up brother so if anyone needs any real clarification call me uh mr mr brazel yield for a question go ahead not russell david so you talk about the um the average over eight years um did you know so from 2007 back or 2013 to 2007 that's that's the records i could find because the 2014 did you know that's w

» hen the city of camden um purchased it which did you know we have no control over what the city of camden buys did you know that i've never had a meeting with the city of camden i think it must happen at the same time but did you know that over those between 2007 and 2013 uh this property when it was on in the private sector uh this this building collected or generated a total of 37 thousand five hundred and fifty four dollars over a seven-year period that that's the total that the tax yielded in that seven-year period did you know that wouldn't that be less than the first year's income I think so so you know I think what you've seconded on mr.

» Brazel is a is a is a plan correct me if I'm wrong is it take a building that in seven years generated about thirty seven thousand dollars currently is generating zero and you seconded on us just given an abatement that's going to generate what you said what over eight hundred thousand dollars in a year period it's gonna average a hundred and roughly a hundred two hundred ten thousand dollars a year over the course of the first eight years okay all right thank you okay I see mr.

» Jones you had your hand up sir well I don't mind waiting to everybody finish I see your glass half empty and half full but anyway let me just say this I don't agree with this I think it's wrong in so many ways we've never done this before before this is uh dealing with commercial private business this is not dealing with industrial there is a big difference and who's next big fitness centers is going to be that the canyon builders the millers builders i tell you what i would hate to be in the building company now because big box store comes in they qualify under the policy that we have you wouldn't survive you just couldn't make it i just think for government to take tax dollars and put into private sector is just not good thing you know I was looking through this and of course I've you kno

» w one thing about this is that it has been done in total secrecy it has not been transparent these numbers I know some of my colleagues here were calling their colleagues for some numbers just a couple of weeks ago I need an update on this project seagull well they got it but anyway um you know we we have a policy that this council voted on I think it was July the 13th that they voted on it tax abatement it was a commercial property abatements policy and it was under H and a new business and also here's a copy of it it says here that the maximum is 50% that they would do well what they voted on here tonight now remember the policy said 50% and what they've got here tonight is 85 percent for the first year 75 percent for second year 65 percent for the third year 55 for the fourth fifth sixth

» and seventh year um i i just don't get it you know as i said we're just not seeing out on this but uh one thing we're not following our own guidelines we're actually throwing different numbers out there than we agreed or that this council agreed it was a 6-1 vote i voted against it and i think councilman brazil might have made the motion i've got it here but bottom line is we're not even following our own guidelines we also said in our guidelines on the in the policy that i have right here and with um excuse me right here i got a lot of tabs because i've been trying to read over this but it also says that it's got to have a minimum of i think how much was it uh 50 50 jobs yes well this now is 35 jobs that we're voting on here tonight so one we're just not even following our own guidelines a

» nd you know if i didn't support it then i'm certainly not going to support it now but i i worry i worry about the damage it would do you know i was talking to a friend of mine who's a small business owner in lugo and he said uh you know jimmy he said in greenwood there was a boutique hotel restaurant bar that he he was talking to a friend of his he said i went in and sat down today he said my martini which was eight dollars down the street was five dollars my steak that was down the street twenty five dollars was fifteen dollars he said he asked the boutique hotel how in the world do y'all keep your prices so low they said well we get some subsidies from the government city so it does not lay a to me it just doesn't lay the groundwork for a fair play um now let me just say this I've only me

» t with them once I don't know the folks I haven't nobody said one more word to me about this entire thing tonight is the first time I've talked about it since our last County Council meeting I have had I've seen I've known of no meetings no discussion no anything it's as if I i did not exist um you would think that you would be getting some kind of notice that there was a meeting uh pertaining to this but anyway i can't support it for those reasons again i just think it's a bad bad move for us but anyway i'm asking my colleagues please consider at least just tabling this right now you know any way you look at it has been no transparency there's been no one one council member said to another you'll get the information on third reading i've got it in my cell phone well that's just not good en

» ough for me i've got to have more input i've got to have more involvement and uh i i too question was the building will be given to them free i don't know i've heard that are they going to buy another piece of property tear it down to make private parking i don't know i've heard that you know and um we're going to encourage these folks to come in and give them your tax dollars to compete against your other businesses it's to me it's just not fair and i just can't i can't grasp it at all and and i guess what bothers me most of all is that we're not even following our own policy our own guidelines so once again it's just majority of this council can do what they want to do but i'll tell you this i make no apologies for my vote my position on this i stand alone on it i respect my colleagues fo

» r their position i think they're absolutely wrong i will say this i am very impressed that they got a crystal ball i am very impressed that they can project what's going to happen 8 10 20 years down the road because i can't project what's going to happen eight days down the road with everything that's been going on um in this world i do believe my colleagues feel they're doing the right thing they're not certainly not doing anything illegal it's just i don't agree with them and i think time's gonna prove me right as it has on pretty much everything i've said up here for the last 15 years with that mr chairman i'll yield for now i think we're ready to go to a vote unless you want to say something a few more comments i've asked some questions but just just so everybody can you know understand

» my my thinking on this uh you know people ask well what's the benefit for you know i i live in you know i live in mount pisgah i live in uh casser lugo what's what's the benefit here uh but but we see an opportunity to generate sales tax and if you're a if you a property owner here you see a lost credit uh on your uh on your taxes and that's that's a direct representation of the sales tax generated in this county so uh you know for me i see a i see an entity that's uh that's going to that's going to do that i do that for us uh mr mr brazel held up a revenue uh revenue sheet uh that was made available to us um i have seen a and reviewed a a marketability study that the city of camden did um i would love you know they it was kind of proprietary so you know i've i'll show it to you one-on-one

» i guess um but just well i don't know why i wasn't put into the into the agenda but you know it's it's a 35 45 page document in which they spent a ton of time dissecting the the boat the boutique hotel market and other cities other communities in which have done this and uh you know the numbers came back favorably that hey this is this is uh this is a worthy investment uh worthy enough for for a private private investor to uh to say yeah i'll take a i'll take it i'll take a chance on that and you know as far as i don't see government money i go at least at least for the county uh i don't see the government uh the county giving the money or getting in bed with business i see us getting out of the way i see us maximizing investment uh and and i see the ability of getting all the boats in the

» harbor to be able to rise uh that's that's basic that's basic economics economics that we have that we have we've we have uh paraded you know and and built upon for years that you know that you that you generate uh this the economy which everyone is able to benefit from and i have spoken with folks downtown you know i have spoken with restaurants and with retail shops and you know other places of business who they see they see the value in yeah you put 55 rooms across the street from me you put 55 rooms uh just a block away and i can see where that's going to generate traffic into my into my shop into my into my retail place and so the retailers that i've spoken to downtown they they see the value in this and i think from a county standpoint i think because of because the building is curren

» tly getting zero and you're asking me just to get to give this abatement that's going to lead to so many other things uh to me i i see the i see the value here and then as far as fees and we've talked about fees and in previous discussions this is a way to get away from those fees because if if this if this hotel came in under the normal tax structure structure the County Fire Service couldn't get a penny of it because they're in the city of Camden they would pay the millage that would go to towards the City Department another but we couldn't even get a good access to it but because it's going to be changed to a filo it gives us the ability to to put it in essential services and and so for me i i see it i see it as a as a as a way to i think it's something that's gonna that's gonna be trans

» formative it's gonna be transformative not just for the downtown camden community uh but uh but even even beyond so uh mr carver real quick will you explain the the multi county industrial i know we're long guys but this because i had to ask this too because i looked at i'm like why in the world are we getting an agreement with sumter so i i ask questions that i know the answer to for the sake of the public so just really quick explain that and why we have to do that the way the state law is written in order to create a fee from a tax you must put it in a multi-county park the idea behind a multi-county park when it was first created many years ago was to try and direct some revenue from growing counties into those counties that did not have the benefit of growth so they came up with an inc

» entive called a multi-county park where you would pair with another county that at that time would have been at a lower tier than the county that was the receiving county then the benefit to the receiving county is by putting your property in that park you can convert it from a tax into a fee which is both you and mr brazel have indicated once it is a fee it is the discretion of the county council and how that money is spent to where it is directed okay okay and so does anybody ever does anybody ever want to get into a park with us i mean i think we got something later on the agenda but i know we talked about this we we always have to put other people in but nobody ever chooses us most of our counties are lee fairfield and chesterfield yeah too much and so when they talk about the language

» of who's responsible utilities i mean this doesn't apply to this right because this isn't a physical park right this is just like steeplechase or one of those parks so it's not like we're not on the hook for the utilities the hotel and the owners of the hotel they're on they're paying their own utilities response for all those things there are no physical expenses for this park it's a paper park they're the only expenses might be legal fees things like that to create it that'd be the extent of thank you I yield my time okay yes I just want to make sure that I'm a clerk the council has the correction on page 27 for Charleston the Kershaw that's what that was that okay all right thank you miss mary and with that we will move to a vote all those in favor signify by raising your hands uh mr con

» nell mr brazel mr burns mr gardner mr tucker and mr sygrass and opposed as mr jones in the motion and passes on third reading we move to item number two which is third reading of an ordinance authorizing conveyance of a parcel of land it's up on the screen at tab h page 49 and i have some comments about the enclosure with mr bowes's help but first uh mr carpenter do your magic here please mr members of council you have in front of you tonight an ordinance that allows the sale of a parcel of land located 15 mesa lane to an entity known as project orion this is the building that is also known as the spec building very good can we have a motion to approve i think most to approve mr chair mr tucker a second second uh for mr snodgrass uh we'll go into discussion in a moment but if you look at pa

» ge 67 in your ebooks there we have the wrong plat uh it includes mistakenly the ems station which we're not selling uh mr debose can just summarize i think i got it right correct yeah mr chairman i handed out the um correct exhibit which is um 26.6 acres more or less which does not include the ms building you got it correctly all right very good all right with that uh mr tucker i think you have the honor uh who had second uh mr snaggrass please sure i think this uh this is uh moving moving forward with uh with economic development and it's good to it's it's good to see to finally get this uh get this thing off our books yep uh we have jeff burgess here tonight so we can he can take any questions you have uh other comments uh russell go right here a question for jeff excuse me is it is it ti

» me to ask jeff a question yes sir um have we secured access to track two the 19.1 acres no sir we have not we are working with weston industries which owns the utah facility which is where STL is located. They would entertain an offer on a purchase right away off the cul-de-sac. Target has indicated it'd be three to four months before they made a determination. They've indicated that they're more or less interested in the amount of traffic that's going to create for their trucks to compete with.

» For whatever reason, when Utaka was constructed and when Target located, Target ended up receiving that parcel which basically landlocked that particular parcel in because the cul-de-sac at one point actually in the park itself so at this point in time I've been in touch with the brokers to secure that tract or access to that tract great question with the with the cam folks that are buying the building not entertain such access I can introduce you to the CEO and advisor at this point I have to go spoken with mr.

» dry you come on up sir uh about doing just that i just i wouldn't want to find ourselves in a position on landlocked in 19 valuable acres well i will give you a little details on the 19 acres if it's okay yes going back in the files and this was a question that councilman canal had asked and rightfully so was why was it landlocked when the spec building was built up until 2017 from the records i've seen there was a concept of possibly going back and making access to that parcel when When the spec building was built, according to the contractor that built the building, it was built to roll out to 600,000 square feet.

» When you build it out to 600,000 square feet, you have to move the retention pond that is there and you would have to slide it back onto that 19 acres, along with a portion of that building. So the intent was at that time to possibly just roll out what was ever in the spec building back onto that adjacent property. I've looked at running a road to that parcel and 675 feet just to get to the property line is over 275 000.

» that's not undoable but once you get onto that back parcel it slopes off and to run the road to the usable acreage which is located just off two business parkway which is roughly 12 acres you're going to have to do another 300 to 400 feet of road construction that doesn't include cut and fill to make it so the 275 is the cheap part it's going to get more expensive to go from that way so i've just been pursuing weston on getting access through two acres of that their property if they're willing to sell it to us or if they're interested in obtaining that offer but at one point or another our determination was not made to actually show that property i don't like that i want to try to figure out how to get to that property to sell it it's the there's 10 to 12 usable acres back there for a compa

» ny to go on okay i just i don't i don't want to handcuff ourselves tonight i guess that's my only concern um you introduce someone here yes I'd like to. I'd like to introduce Tom Dry. He is the COO and advisor to Orion, which is the compounding company that is a subsidiary of Conventus LLC, which is the polymer company that will be locating there. Thank you, sir, for coming tonight. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. I'm sorry it went so long, but we got to listen and that's the way we do things here. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. We're excited. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome.

» other questions those were good questions we got some work to do right jeff yes sir what are you doing here sitting here tonight i don't know i just thought i'd come and hang out with you guys yeah uh other questions comments uh ben i was just gonna say yes sir i don't think we're any worse off on track two necessarily i mean prior to many of us on council at some point it got landlocked it just kind of is what it is it sounds like the anticipation was county retain it for whichever company potentially expand there and then use it to comply with the existing regulations on on retention or otherwise um and then the topography even though it's nice how it climbs up the hill topography is just weird there and quite expensive to build in so it was land like before uh it'll be land like now but

» it sounds like we're pursuing options to try to improve the value of the property i will put something up there give me time okay other comments i think right quickly jimmy go right ahead what i'd just like to welcome i'm going to support this because i want to see it sold and i support you folks and i'm glad to see you here however we've lost money on this spec building and i hope we don't go into this kind of venture anytime soon thank you have we lost money on the spec building jeff uh according to the contractor 2.4 was put into the building uh that includes 100 000 in roadway um the building itself is being sold for 2.134 we lost money and then talk to me about what happens over the life of the building jeff uh yes sir um we will get 151 948 dollars first year in taxes and then it'll b

» e about 150 000 after that per year so we should make up the difference in what we lost in the first two years thank you you just said lost thank you and so it should or will it will okay don't use subjunctive we are trying to i'm giving support to this because it will let him let him speak speak for himself there you go thank you very much thank you other comments all right with that we move to a vote all those in favor signify by raising your hand and it's unanimous in the past sir thank you and congratulations welcome to kershaw county uh with that we move to the next item on the agenda which is item number three uh first reading of an ordinance to amend the zoning map of 86 acres of land uh out in uh under the agent king street of camden it's on page 71 in your ebooks and tab i and it's

» shown on the map there uh vic can you open this up please mr chairman members of council you have in front of you tonight for first reading an ordinance to amend uh the county's um zoning map to take approximately 86 acres of land that is currently rezoned rd1 and rezoned it to r15 it has previously been approved by the planning commission on a vote of five to one all right can we have a motion to approve so move uh first from mr snodgrass a second there is no second i'm gonna give it a second on first reading and then we can discuss so we have a second uh with that uh mr snodgrass please sure i just i think this is why we have the process of three readings I think anything deserves for us to kind of look at it I mean I understand understand why they want to go out there's that means you lo

» ok at the map it's near pine tree school which is which is which is a great school it's it's near a lot of other up-and-coming things so this is this is worth us continuing to study and you know I was sitting here thinking you know we some of the folks that that spoke to this I think it's indicative of where we're going with kershaw county i mean people this is the best kept secret in you know in the state and fortunately or unfortunately however you want to phrase it uh where where people are beginning to begin to realize it while we all love kershaw county home and uh so but i think it's our our goal to make sure that we we have responsible growth so i think my first reading this is this is worth this is worth to keep on exploring okay other comments sure mr chairman yeah i gave the secon

» d because unless it seems like there's just absolutely no way there's any support i've heard from a couple folks that supported it um they actually didn't show up tonight but i heard from one gentleman that he's interested in the fence and i'm not sure he didn't propose how that would be funded or who would pay for that or what it'd be made out of or how big or how long or what but essentially privacy fence could could make it um somewhat palatable i guess and i think the the potential developer and uh landowner should have an opportunity to discuss that and just see where it goes yeah let me just add to that with um uh mike can you come up and just give us a quick rundown on how the the commission looked at this thing and and if there were any dissenting votes go ahead please uh yes sir ag

» ain as mr carpenter pointed out it was a five to one vote there was one dissension from a planning commission member who had objections to the removal of the trees um the trees have already been removed and the property was timbered a number of a couple years ago i believe yeah two years ago all right uh but were there any other citizens that came in against this item yes sir there were two uh the neighboring citizens um i believe they spoke here today as well um they came in and and voiced the same concerns that they voiced here today okay good i just wanted you to tee that up uh any questions gentlemen any further discussion just real quick yeah and i just kind of just kind of hit me you know we two months ago or a month ago we just we just put 300 plus jobs uh out there off exit 101 whic

» h is nearby and it doesn't if you're a real estate agent you know the market is it's it's tough so you know this is uh this is kind of this is kind of where we're going these people have to live somewhere so again like i said this is this is worth us to keep on exploring and study some more all right if you'd like to hear yeah jimmy send a call for the question i'm sorry to vote oh yeah okay but michael's going to share something real quick before he uh i'm sorry mike are you guys ready all right let's go ahead and vote on the first reading here all those in favor signify by raising your hand and uh it's mr connell mr burns mr gardner mr tucker and mr snodgrass those opposed uh mr bryson mr jones i abstained on the grounds that i want to go out there and look at it this agenda i didn't have

» time to do that and i think in fair fairness to everybody involved i can't make a decision on this today but i will vote on it next meeting and i don't listen i don't abstain very i think it's probably about the third time in 15 years i've done it but i want to make sure that i go out and look at this and talk to some folks and uh record that as an abstain thank you very much all right we move on to a second reading with that item and i myself am going to go out there too and talk to the people number item number four is the first reading of an amended and restated ordinance to create a multi-business multi-county business park with lee county it's a tab j and page 85 in your electronic book uh and i think there's a map at page seven i know it's not either go ahead with that uh introduce th

» e topic vic please this chair members council um county's legal counsel has uh requested this be placed on the agenda uh for consideration uh by the county council i would defer to uh county legal counsel for any specific details of this ordinance all right mr chairman this is part of um well we'll get to that okay i'm sorry i'm fine thank you very much yeah all right let's get it on the table let's have a motion please do we have anybody want to put a motion forward please so move yeah mr gardner a second second uh thank you uh and uh with that go ahead can you explain yourself yes mr chairman this is this is part of the um prestige um plant 150 million dollar plant this is governor's hill and basically what it involves is extension of terms of a multi-county park agreement to coincide wit

» h the terms of their um agreement for county well it could not have been less clear it's a multi-county park that includes prestige farms okay or prestige industries the one that we currently have and we're extending that the term yes we're extending the term that means the date the date from what to what well it's 2005 for 38 years i believe so it'll be extended from present that many years actually 43 because you have investment period but it's um 15 years into the old agreement so it's just a multi-county park agreement has nothing to do with taxes in this case it's not we're just bringing into harmony what was yeah yes that's correct thank you the agreement that we gave to presage farms went beyond the length of this multi-county parks agreement so we needed to extend this multiple coun

» ty parks agreement so that it coincided with the agreement we've already given to prestige farm okay previously there was no agreement on the property because nothing was located there so it was not an issue until this happened yeah it takes that many words to explain it all right so i open it up for questions gentlemen all right it seems to be very straightforward you should write that way too thank you all right mr connell gave him a class all right with that thank you everybody we'll move to a vote and all those in favor so signify thank you very much and it's unanimous mary and thank you everybody for all the hard hard work the staff has put into this uh jeff and and ken and everybody else we move to the next item which is item number five first reading and title only of an ordinance se

» tting the millage rate there is no attachment and i'd ask mr carpenter to introduce the topic and we'll place it on the table mr chairman mayor's council this council has previously approved a budget with this specified amount of money it is the responsibility of the auditor to determine what the millage would be because this is a reassessment year they had to recalculate millages he was unable to give us the final figures because he was still waiting on some figures from columbia the department of revenue so he's asked that we begin the process by approving in title only it does appear that millage will be rolling back because of the growth and assessment he'll be able to buy those figures for us once he gets the figures from the department of revenue all right can we have a motion to appr

» ove make motion to approve mr thank you mr tucker a second second uh was that you david thank you uh any discussion and we'll see the numbers at our next meeting yes sir our next meeting is the 12th of october uh and then we will vote on the third reading in the first in the meeting in november and that will go in okay mr jones thank you you don't have the number so my question you probably cannot ask my answer excuse me but i can ask you anyway is it going to be an increase in millage no sir it right now it it's very strongly looking like a decrease in mill a rollback rollback but he can't tell the amount because he needs these figures from columbia on some of the valuations that are set out of columbia not out of our office i get it then i'll vote on when you get the numbers thank you all

» right very good we move to a vote all those in favor signify uh mr snodgrass mr tucker mr gardner burns mr brazil mr connell those opposed mr jones thank you very much mr jones we move now to new business which which is item number one, authorization of the expenditure of ARPA Act funds for service pay. Mr. Tucker, can we have a motion, please? - Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a motion that we approve authorized expenditure for the ARPA funds in the approximate amount of $67,000 for Lugo Fire and our volunteer firemen. - And that's our being county? - Yes, sir, Kershaw County. - Okay, very good. Can we have a second? Mr. Jones, would that be you? - Second. - Very good. Mr. Tucker, you wanna introduce the topic? - I just want to thank a couple of people.

» Councilman Jones is one and Mr. Carpenter for helping us put this together. These folks are well deserving and it really means a lot to me as one council member that we're taking care of the volunteers as well. And I appreciate the time you put in to figure out how all this is gonna work. And just for clarification to my colleagues and the public, know that the same principles and policies we set for the county employees uh will be the same policy for distribution to the lugo fire department as well as uh the system that mr carpenter set up uh for the point system for the volunteers so theirs will be a little bit of volunteers but it will be off the same point system that they derive at to get paid for now okay very good mr jones i i couldn't well i could have said it better mr tucker but c

» ome on man you did a great job on that and i support it thank you mr chairman thank you other comments this is in the spirit of 9-1-1 uh our firemen light along with our great sheriff and ems and everyone who served so well and with you kato thank you sir for being here tonight with that we move to chairman yeah mr connell um the amounts are the same you said as yes at the 1500 and 2500 that we did for our full time and part-time employees okay and what was the overall cost related to what you're proposing tonight? Approximately $67,000 for the volunteers and Ludo Fire. Just for the record, I'll state why I oppose it again. First, I think I've shown I really try to support local fire service from moving towards full-time fire and funding it in a way that makes sense.

» But again, if we take a subset of the population of Kershaw County, carve them out, and say everybody in Kershaw County is eligible for these funds but we're just going to give it to a certain subset of government employees i just fundamentally disagree with that i think there are other ways to take care of expenditures that need to go to employees i would support a millage increase related to competitive market pay i'd support a millage increase for lugo fire already told the chief that uh that helps them be competitive in the market if needed um and i think we also just voted on the highest ever salary increase for employees at least 15 or 20 years i think some people dispute that but it's highest one i'm ever aware of in the last budget between the other issues related to debt avoidance

» and spending funds on capital projects like sewer that was a very high priority for the reasons i cannot support it thank you mr chairman thank you sir other comments okay very uh just real quick is there i get with lugo being a special purpose district they were they're not a they're not connected to anything else that would receive arpa funds is that right they're kind of in a loop they're in a donut hole i guess of that's correct so everybody got money except for special purpose districts essentially yes yes mr chairman um neither is caset water or lugoff water authority they're uh in some ways a public entity and if we're going to use that rationale why aren't they receiving a bonus i mean i would not encourage or support that but mr oh yeah sammy um let me make clear first and foremost

» that these are not new funds this is a part of what we have already allocated into the employees one million dollars that we approved in our budget so this is not additional money or a tax increase or anybody anything like that um and let me make it very clear too lugo water authority acid water authority where i get my water from has not approached this council about any funds and we have outlined what we wanted to spend these opera funds and i'm asking my colleagues to try to stay within those guidelines that we've already established to uh to do these expenditures thank you yep um to me it's heroes like our sheriff like our ems like cato and uh and fire who served not just 9-1-1 20 years ago but all during this covet environment and that's where that that's where i put my heart and that'

» s where i got my vote with that let's call the question all those in favor signify by raising your hand uh mr snodgrass mr tucker uh mr burns mr bryson mr jones those opposed mr gardner and mr connell and emotions passes and make it so please now we move to a second item on the new business is a waste water rate study it's at tab k page 95 and it's also up on the screen uh vic would you introduce it please chair members of council um as part of the budget process and in In some of the extensive discussions that we had related to the sewer system, it was determined that we would begin a process of evaluating, among other things, the true cost of providing the service and the true cost of putting necessary capital into that. In order to do that, a rate study was needed.

» The rate study takes into complete consideration the current and the anticipated and future capital and operational costs of the system. we put out for bid you see four responses were received to our rfp um you see the rationale behind it we are recommending the wilden financial services from orlando florida i received a bid for a bid a bid price of twenty nine thousand nine hundred and sixty dollars and a delivery date of um delivered back to council final form uh in late january uh early february the latest and the idea gentlemen is that be available for uh us to move right into our budget cycle all right so do we have a um a motion make a motion that we approve the rate study uh second second uh russell comments again how much a twenty nine thousand nine hundred and sixty dollars and you

» have that budgeted obviously yes sir a fixed fee any other comments this is very important it goes right along with all the other initiatives that we've all been struggling with on sewer and this one's very important and it will i think open our eyes yeah let's go right ahead i have a comment i'm looking forward to seeing um where this lands and um looking at all the data when it comes back i very much look forward to repealing the sewer tax and any fees associated um looking forward to our sewer system standing on its own and financially supporting itself so thank you so much for having this done yeah it sounds like the discussion me and jimmy had this morning other comments all right with that let's move to a vote all those in favor so signify uh and it's unanimous and we move now to the

» uh work plan for redistricting under the census we can make a motion or i can just talk about it let's go ahead and stay with procedure uh may we have a motion to approve that item please i moved and second second and there's no vote here i'll just talk each of you have had an opportunity to talk to our technical support and the lawyers i think it's been excellent and you have i think some of you have been more than just once. My purpose here is to talk about county redistricting and in accordance with the federal and state law. And then our next opportunity formally to put this before our population and us is on the October the 12th with a briefing. And to stay transparent, we want our population to see how the census impacts the districting within the county. This is not the state.

» This is only within the boundary of the county and then on the 9th of july will be a public hearing and a vote so with that uh are there any questions and we move ahead seeing there is none and thank you guys for taking time during your work days to come in and meet with that technical representative i have every confidence will deliver a good product so with that we move to council briefings and starting with sammy please thank you mr chairman um i have a couple quick things um One is, was able to have a cog meeting, that's Santee Lynch's Regional Council of Governments yesterday to get the good news that the UV lighting grant that they went after, that we went after on the cog has been approved and funding should be coming down very soon.

» What this does is gonna allow us to put this on buses. So when the kids get on the bus from home, they'll get cleansed before going to school any type of viruses and then when they leave school they'll be cleansed again on the way home so hopefully this is going to help combat some of the infections that we're having i think it's a great thing it's not any increase once again in taxes here locally this is federal dollars coming down our staff there at the cog went after this grant and i think there are maybe one or two in the state that actually receive it it's about a half a million dollar grant it's going to be in the county of kershaw lee sumter and clarendon so um those are the four counties in our region and i'm really excited about that they should have the test bus and clarity up thu

» rsday and we're looking to have them all completed hopefully by the end of the month is the target goal so that's that's real good news for our children who sometimes cannot defend for themselves um i want to say to miss phillips i am terribly terribly and deep in satin for your loss i have three kids of my own and six grandkids and i hope to god i never have to feel your pain um i do would like to have more conversation with you in the near future so i can understand the jurisdiction you're in because that would never happen only if i'll find sheriff watch i can assure you that so yes ma'am so looking forward to talking with you soon thank you that concludes my report thank you mr gardner yeah just i'd like to clear up something that somebody said in public comments that we have done nothi

» ng to do to help businesses during covid you know unless you forget that we pulled a million dollars out of reserves uh and gave it to businesses many many businesses and although the average amount that we gave to those businesses was probably around four thousand dollars you know four thousand dollars goes a long way and that's money that we took no other county in the state did that kershaw county did that we took a million dollars to provide help for businesses that were in trouble and probably saved a number of them secondly as far as seagull goes and and given abatements i would invite anybody out there who has a commercial business that would like to come to kershaw county and invest 10 million dollars and bring 50 employees we invite you and we'll be certainly happy to negotiate an

» abatement with you but bring your abatement i am a business owner in the city of camden i don't live in the city of camden i don't have a vote either. But I think that that is a great project. And I think when you compare that to what our policy is four times what it is for the industrial part, we only require two and a half million investment there. Ten million is a sizable investment for a commercial business, no matter what you do. So we would invite you to come to Kershaw County.

» I personally would invite you and welcome you to come to kershaw county thank you thank you uh tom good words uh russell yes um in remembrance of september 11th i'd like to thank all of our firemen ems and police officers thank you all for what you do for every one of us um don't think it goes unnoticed even even when someone's uh putting you down publicly we will support you and we thank all of you very much miss phillips god be with you um prayers for you and your family moving forward um i heard about the accident when it happened i grew up duck hunting and fishing on those rivers and if there's anything i can do i don't know if there is or there isn't but i'd be more than happy to sit down and talk thank you so much for coming mr connell thank you thank you mr chairman um looks like thi

» s saturday coming up we've got the elgin toy roundup car show event 9 a.m in elgin a a lot of cool old cars there and then onto some weightier matters um miss phillips your story just touched my heart so sad um i believe you've mentioned the jurisdiction of richland county those folks that are solicitors over there work over here too so they've got to listen to us on some level my cell phone's available online please feel free to call me or i'll talk to you right after and get your number um because we we know them and uh i just want to tell everybody you know hug the people you love and and do it do it soon i'm not going to mention any names um because this is their time to mourn. But even today, one of my coaches lost his relatively young son.

» And if there's someone that can have any bigger impact on a young man than a high school football coach, I don't know who it is. My heart just goes out to him. Just a terrible, terrible thing. So hug the people you love and let them know. Leading up to 9-11, we tried to educate our kids a little bit about what happened and what it meant to the country and how we rebounded. We listened to a bunch of the voice messages that were compiled by those who were on planes or otherwise stuck in a tower who ultimately lost their lives. Every single one of the messages that they left was about how much I love you. Please tell the kids I love them forever. Keep this message always. We care about you. I don't know what's going to happen, but, you know, I love you.

» You didn't hear anybody say, you know, Jim owes me five bucks. Make sure you get that back or any of the petty things that we get hung up on in life. So I hope we'll just focus on that and have a little more love and compassion and kindness towards others. thank you mr chairman well said sir thank you mr jones yes thank you mr chairman mrs phillips my heart is broken uh hearing your story tonight just you know i have a 25 i mean i have a 21 year old son i have two daughters i have a 46 year old son and ben's reference to his coach is a friend of mine who lost his son today and you're in my prayers my number is 803-427-7968 you can get it the county administration if there's anything i can do please don't hesitate to call me and i too as well would be at your disposal and and god be with you

» and your family and you're certainly gonna be in my thoughts and my prayers all right uh you know for immediate release you know i was jail administrator and uh it's a tough job and believe me you either control it or it controls you i controlled it and i'll tell you um we have a man here now that's doing the same thing i was was we were very fortunate to have Peggy Spivey who retired she got her national jail administrative certification and actually Tyrell Cato as he's earned his national jail management certification and I applaud him for that this certification is granted upon the successful completion of a rigid experimental background application and extensive for our exam jointly prepared by the Jail Administrator Association and I'm gonna tell you something folks when i was jail adm

» inistrator you got to accumulate so many points to take this exam right i didn't get all the points before i retired but uh i know how hard that was and i remember jail administrator spivey tell me how hard the exam was um i salute you sir good job job well done that that is great for kershaw county to have you in that how many in south carolina so there's about 10 national certified and we have one of the 10.

» congratulations keep the doors locked keep the doors locked and and you know ben cornell's right about i do believe you need to tell somebody you love them because bottom line is life is not promised forever five minutes from now five years from now and uh you know we we disagree up here but i have no hatred or discontent for any person sitting up here i just don't agree with them and i'm a lot smarter in a lot of ways than they are when it comes to where the rubber meets the pavement coming to county government but there but but But we all do what we think is right. And with that, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Mr. Nogrens. Just want to just briefly, you know, tonight we had a lot of difference of opinions on some very important policies.

» And I just was reminded of a quote by President Ronald Reagan said, the person who agrees with you 80% of the time is a friend and an ally, not a 20% traitor. and i feel like we live in a world where if you disagree with me that much then that just automatically means that we are diabolically opposed to one another and that's just not the case or at least not with me you know we have to we have to share the iga and then the restaurants and every other places together we have to see each other and and we have to you know be aware of that there may be policy differences uh but at the end of the day uh we we all want to see kershaw county become or continue to be a place where we want to we want to live and worship and raise a family in place so that's that's just some thoughts i have on that

» anytime that we have we have policy differences i did want to make notice we had the kc connect public transit was here earlier that's made possible through through some through the first round of some covet funding cares act money that came to us and the live will kershaw coalition was instrumental and just kind of pulling the pulling the strings and pulling everyone together for that and it's it's a route that runs from elgin all the way into to east camden around the area where the board of disabilities is located and so we're very proud that we were able to work on that as well as make sure it got into uh deep into kershaw county uh there was talk of of not wanting to to bring it uh too far east uh but i'm thankful we were able to to make sure to make sure that happened and uh just than

» kful for everyone who came tonight and be a part of the be part of the process and of course uh miss phillips just want to echo uh the sentiments of the gentleman here thank you for coming and sharing your story that story is is important and uh and we won't forget so anything that we can do please let us know that concludes my remarks oh very good i'll close it out jeff vic ken good work uh what an amazing package tonight it took a while didn't it mary thanks for pulling it all together sheriff thanks for being here cato thanks for staying uh mike good work tough judgment calls just a great great county staff performance and this culminating point we'll see you uh in the 12th of october uh mrs uh phillips thank you you blessed us tonight and with that i turn to you the administrator chair

» members council i will wrap this up the best way you can wrap something like this up with a good feeling and and just further put a bow on what mr jones has wrapped up for us tonight official certificate all right Go that's my report and he has very clean vehicle the bows Mr.. Chairman I have nothing No, no report no report with that. Let's have a motion to adjourn most adjourn miss Jim. Mr.. Tucker second second Mr.. Gardner any discussion next meeting is the 12th of October. Thank you. Thank you gentlemen We had a wonderful exchange with that. Let's move to a vote all those in favor, and it's unanimously