Full meeting transcript - February 22, 2022

» test test it's a great day in kershaw county after a long weekend and happy birthday ben connell and i think i'm getting tired of the joke about 2 22 22 and tuesday but uh i got a grandkid and i have to listen to it about every time i talk to her spring sports have started wrestling is moving into championships camden girls basketball team is on fire and headed to state we just had a great retreat at county council thank you to the staff very spirited about how do you have prosperity and how do you preserve and protect what you love about the sustained quality of this great county the great place in our schools communities and services that we provide so we'll have a number of items on that and we'll move ahead and with that i turned to mr tucker for the invocation and pledge of allegiance.

» Would everybody please stand? Let us bow our heads and open our hearts, please. Lord Father God Almighty, we come to you as humbly as we know how this evening, asking for your grace and your mercy and your protection. We thank you now, Lord. We thank you for life, health, and strength, and we thank you for every heart and mind and body that's on this dais up here this afternoon. We thank you for all that the county employees do and all the citizens born to this county. Now, Lord Father, as we are days away from entering into another war, We ask that you touch the hearts of those who are seeking to do destruction, to watch over them and give them the understanding that war is not always the answer.

» And if we're unable not to go to war, we ask that you bless the men and women who protects our freedoms and liberties so we can do the things back here in the United States that we so much deserve and so much enjoy to do. Now, Lord, Father, bless all of us. Give us traveling mercy to our various destinations. In Jesus' name we pray. 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, liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Mr. Tucker. Mr. Snodgrass is stuck in traffic, should be here in about 15 minutes. And, Mary, we'll update the attendance when he gets in. We move now to public comments. Mr. DuBose, what's the lineup? How many do we have signed up? Mr.

» Chairman, we have eight people signed up, and the limit's 30 minutes, so each one would have less than -- a little less than five minutes, four minutes each, about. Okay. I think that's going to be -- eight times four is 32. Let's make it three and a half minutes or so. Three and a half minutes. I will just tell everybody we're welcoming your comments. The rules here are that we allow you to speak, but there are no question and answering back. We have on this sheet there what your contact is, and we'll be quick to reach out to you after this meeting should the need arise. I would ask you to be economical with your schedule, your comments, so that everybody has time to make their points, and that we receive them up here.

» Keep your comments on target, and please be respectful of the body that we're trying to convene here. Mr. DuBose, bring 'em up, let's go. The first person that signed up is Brian Holmes. Mr. Holmes. Thank you. Thank you, Council, for having me tonight. Thank you, Mr. Burns, and thank DNR for coming out here and showing interest in what I've got to say. And, Council, I'm here tonight to talk about Lake Watery and Lake Watery's fishing, the economic impact of Lake Watery and the trend. I'm an avid person who fishes there. I have lived there all my life, And we have watched the steady decline of lake wateries fishing and natural resources go down in our eyes. I have fish tournaments since 1997 out there, and the size and the quality have dropped off. I know 2020 was a rough year.

» Everybody was off and everybody was putting a lot of pressure on the fish. But as a citizen, I've been looking at other great heroic stories from Lake Chickamauga in Tennessee, where they introduced a new strain of bass which has brought all the major fishing leagues there which brought major economic impact to the area i've watched county after county bring in business bring in revenue certain ways and i'm really looking to council to listen up and kind of take heed that our natural resources our lakes our fisheries can bring in just as much growth with the right people bring in your retirement people into the community with that you have taxpayers you have businesses that come in and follow the motels a lot of different things revolve around our economic system lakes streams are all perfe

» ct tools to use van branch and myself have kind of gotten a little group together and we're trying to really work on on getting our lake brought back to historic level and to draw the revenue we need back into our state. Chickamauga at one time ten years ago was a nothing lake now they are number five on the Bassmaster Trail. Their economic growth from motels and revenue people renting homes coming in on the weekends and staying the weekends has been astronomical.

» So where I can say where we where we spend all this time working on bringing business in let's bring the right people in let's bring let's bring taxpayers in to generate revenue just as well as business I mean we want people to come here and stay we want the fishery to sustain and have everything great for our kids in the future generations of their kids you know if you take a kid fishing and you go out and you don't catch much you lose his interest and he's gone so I'm just asking council and DNR to kind of look and see if we can put more money into to our natural resources to bring the right people here and generate some economic revenue. I mean, there's wonders to be done out there with Watery. Thank you, Mr. Holmes. Mr. DeVos. Thank you, Brian.

» The second person signed up is Matthew Hutchison. Hutchison. Mr. Hutchison. Good evening. Please forgive me. I have my printer broken home, so I have to read off my phone now. My name is Matthew Hutchison. i'm the host of the vote map podcast and the type of guy who reads all the council meeting agendas from front to back one item on tonight's agenda that immediately grabbed my attention is a proposal put forth by our council chairman for the ad hoc task force to address in quotes every goal in vision 2030 broadly with a specific focus on quality schools communities and county services along with recognizing the issues involved in a growing community such as ours this task force will be charged with finding quote alternative approaches to how to fund by federal state and county and grant ta

» x fees policies and ordinances of all these sources and examine in detail impact road and other fees and incentives all of this as politicians speak for how we are going to raise the taxes on the citizens of kershaw county without actually calling it a tax increase or avoid put it on a ballot for the people to decide for themselves. Whether you call it a fee, a millage, or the county gets a grant from the state or federal governments, it all comes from the same point of origin, the citizen's pocket.

» How can you be making such schemes to tax us any more than you already are while giving tax breaks and incentives to multi-million dollar businesses? How much road work could be done with that money? Vision 2030 is a globalist pipe dream copied from the pages of the UN's Agenda 2030 and watered down for consumption at the county level. I encourage everyone, councilmen and citizens, to read both documents to see how they compare. The politicians of this county are picking winners and losers with the decisions they make behind closed doors. They use secret project names and only reveal what has been decided once it's too late for the citizens to raise concerns.

» I'm 100% sure that if the citizens of this county were to take a few minutes to ask themselves how much Vision 2030 would cost the citizens, they'd be filling up this room beyond capacity. Vision 2030 would damage this county beyond repair if it were anything more than the pipe dream I mentioned earlier. It seems to be used by its visionary as a club, or better yet, a gavel, to beat back any argument against his agenda. The remaining council members, with the exception of one, sit on their hands and do nothing but play follow the leader. I cannot sit idly by and let something like this go unchallenged. I refuse to play nice with people who want to turn our beautiful rural county into an extension of Northeast Columbia's section of Two Notch Road.

» I will continue to employ the citizens of Kershaw County to get more involved with the dealings of this county council. I ask the citizens to hold your elected officials accountable and to never tire in doing so. To the members of this council, I say please think about what you are doing to our wonderful county when you invite outside industries with open arms while turning your backs on the taxpayers and small business owners. Please answer your phones, speak to your constituents, and for God's sake, please end the executive sessions and backroom deals. Thank you for your time and attention. Thank you, sir. Mr. DuBose, the third person that signed up is Mark Root. What was the last name, please? R-O-O-T-E. Okay, thank you. Before I introduce myself, I have a few things to say.

» Keep in mind that these are all rhetorical questions. According to the public comment guidelines for Kershaw County Council meetings, this is not a time for questions and answers from the council when and how exactly are we supposed to make our concerns and the council's opinion public knowledge if you're not supposed to respond to us here how are the citizens your employers supposed to know what you're thinking about what's on our mind it also says in plain english on that same public comment guideline sheet that the kershaw county council will be guided by the values of honesty transparency courageous leadership civility respect and understanding of issues how exactly are you being transparent when you go to executive session whenever something that might upsets the constituents comes up

» what are you talking about that the citizens, your employers, are not authorized to listen to. Is it more big government backroom deals and threats against those who disagree with certain other people that have been involved in government for way too long already? In my apparently uneducated opinion, unless an issue being discussed is directly related to a private citizen and they do not wish their private business to become public knowledge, there is nothing the council has the authority to do that I am aware of that we, the citizens of Kershaw County, should not hear as it's being discussed. Now, my introduction. My name is Mark Ruth. I moved here from Pennsylvania in 2015.

» I lived in Wyoming County up there, and in 2020, it had a population of 26,069 over 397 square miles, compared to the population of Kershaw County at 65,403 over 727 square miles. Kershaw County already had a higher population density than Wyoming County when I moved here in 2015. My problem with Wyoming County was not the rural life. I love my space and my privacy. My problem was the excessive taxation without representation and rulings being forced on us by the state and city populations of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg.

» Now that I'm here in Kershaw County, paying attention to my money and liberty because I'm a self-employed engineering consultant, the big government junk that you're forcing us to swallow without any input from the residents that actually live out in the county, not just here in the metropolis of Camden, is too much. I chose Kershaw County specifically because I liked what I read about the area. 90% of my work is done remotely, and I have to travel for the other 10%. This means I could have relocated to anywhere in the country. But I chose Kershaw County because it was primarily rural with a relatively small government. I was apparently wrong. I'm starting to look at moving away by the time 2030 rolls around.

» I'll have funds found somewhere else to move myself and my business, definitely before I hire anyone to help me here. I won't bring anyone to this county to work when I know they'll be overburdened with ridiculous taxes and fees just to live here. You know, like how people that live out in the county that have well water and septic systems are being forced to pay for the sewer system in Camden, Lugoff, and Elgin through taxation. If someone wants to live somewhere in the municipal sewer system, they should be responsible for paying for it. I don't pay for vacations I'm not going on. Why am I being forced to pay for someone else's literal shit? Young man, we'd ask you to keep your language straight, please. Thank you. That wasn't a curse.

» That was a literal word with a definition meaning what it meant. Thank you. That's the rules here. Point of order, Mr. Chairman. Point of order. I think he has a right to express himself. Whether I agree with his language or not, he has the right to express himself. Thank you, sir. Would you please continue? Now let me get back on topic. I want to talk about this ad hoc task force on growth for Vision Kershaw 2030. Who's on the task force? You've identified Dr. Robbins and Mr. Carpenter, but who else? You're going to add other people as determined by the co-chairs.

» Who are these others? I know for a fact that Shane would never allow me specifically on this committee is when my wife was part of the parent represent when my wife was the parent representative to the school board for midway elementary school for the 2019-20 school year he had the nerve to actually tell her to shush during a meeting when she was identifying all the laws both state and federal that he was violating with his late start wednesday policy he's yet to show his face in midway elementary school as far as i'm aware and that discussion was two years ago right before i came here to talk to y'all about it in march 2020 because the school board had been ignoring my wife. He has a very serious dislike of my wife because she had the guts to disagree with him on the record.

» I've never spoken to him myself, but I'm willing to bet money he remembers my last name for his interactions with my wife. Someday he'll realize that my wife is a whole lot nicer than I am. Shane Roberts should be run out of Kershaw County. Oh wait, he doesn't live here. He lives in Myrtle Beach. How's that work? The Kershaw County School District Superintendent lives in Horry County, about two hours away.

» Why would he need to be close enough to visit the schools he's actually in charge of sir can you wrap it up please you have it in there no i back to my issue we're going to ask you to finish up pretty quick if you stop interrupting me i will be finished back to my issue tonight are there any citizens that will not directly benefit from this vision 2030 plan going to be involved with any part of this ad hoc committee i'm willing to bet the only people surveyed in those thousands of surveys are people with money and influence in camden and their friends in the rest of the county i certainly wasn't asked for my opinion i didn't know about this vision until I started looking into the big government projects I noticed happening around Kershaw County.

» Y'all gave a large corporation five years tax-free, but screw the little people, you know, the small business owners. In closing, I demand as a citizen of Kershaw County, you stop hiding your deals in executive session and stop making decisions for the county that only benefit you and your friends. You need to abide by what the little people, you know, citizens outside Camden want and need. Stop making deals like selling your family properties to the city or county to line your own pockets. Stop. Keep Kershaw rural, where people that want that rural community life can live. If you want big government, move yourself to someplace that already has it. We don't want it. Stop trying to ruin our way of life with your globalist socialist agenda. We're Americans. It is our right to live freely.

» Thank you so very much, sir. Mr. DuBose, please. Next person signed up is Tom Webb III. Mr. Webb. Today is Washington's birthday, not yesterday. I think it's sad that we're relegating our first president to just another president and not celebrating on February the 22nd, the birthday of the father of our country. And I guess you could say the father of the free world. Things have been so different if it had never been for Washington. Talking to Mike. I can't hear you, Tom. I'm sorry. Well, I'll start over then. Today is Washington's birthday, not yesterday.

» so we have been sort of fudging and relegating our first president to just another president and i don't think it's appropriate he is the father of our country and i guess you could say the father of the free world he struggled to give us this greatest country on earth of constitutional government and law blending with people power but there always been enemies both foreign and domestic. And Benedict Arnold comes to mind. He served with Washington during the Revolution, did very well for a while, but because of some selfish personal reasons, I guess, he decided to turn coke and join the British. So he was found out, but he got away, lived out his life in England, a traitor.

» And I think that now it's kind of ironic that the city that was named for Washington Washington the District of Columbia is crawling with clones of Benedict Arnold now thank you mr. Webb mr. DuBose the next person signed up is Debbie Smith and Smith good evening thanks for hearing me talk my name is Debbie Smith I'm a big soccer proponent in the county of Koshel I've been a resident for eight years I'm a board member of technical soccer club that Kershaw County Rec has had a partnership with for many years and I just want to go on the record tonight just to make my voice heard as a parent I have two boys that play for the club and also three boys that have played in the Rec Department for the last five or six years so I've had a close relationship with the Recreation Department over the pas

» t few weeks Kershaw County in my opinion has made some troubling decisions with regards to soccer in in our county Technical Soccer Club has been a club in the county for 20 years our board of directors head has been a resident of Elgin for 20 years and he has been the Lugov Elgin teacher and coach for the last 20 years also so we have really firm roots in the county and it came as a complete surprise to us as a club a couple of weeks ago that Kershaw County Rec had decided without informing us ahead of time that they were going to switch gears and go with a different club a club in my opinion does not know kershaw county does not know kershaw county kids um and it just troubles me that we um that we were blindsided completely after filling uh fulfilling our uh partnership with kershaw coun

» ty over the last five years um that they without informing us would uh decide um without consulting us and giving us any feedback that they were going to go with south carolina united over the past couple of weeks we have got back into talks with kershaw county um but um i i'm just really troubled the um the rec department has decided to go with a bigger entity club um when technical soccer here is here right on their doorsteps um like i said we have a 20-year history in kershaw county and we know the kids we know the wreck kids we know we have so many families from from our area that um we feel like we're the best club to fulfill this obligation in kershaw county um so as a parent and as a board member of technical soccer club i just want to make you all aware of what's going on in your re

» c department we have had a relationship with them for five years we've been giving free coaching clinics to all your soccer rec coaches for free we have supported your rec leagues for the last five years we are kershaw county born and raised a lot of these families and feel like the way that we've been handled over the last few weeks is just unacceptable and it just doesn't make sense for kershaw county soccer we're a small community of soccer that's up and coming um like i said we know we know the county we know the kids and it makes sense for technical soccer to be given the opportunity that they deserve um to continue to progress soccer in this area thank you thank you so much and i enjoy seeing that young man in the back back there thank you uh mr devose the next person signed up is Kat

» ie Gwynn. Ms. Gwynn. Hello everyone. Alright I have been in touch with several soccer league families in our County and also after speaking with the director of SC United I understand that in January Kershaw County reached out to SC United to discuss the problems with the current program and a partnership. I understand that since then a decision was made not to pursue that partnership and to present Mr. Allen Riches with technical soccer a contract. Mr. Riches have been working hand in hand with Parks and Rec for five years. He is the Lugoff Elgin head soccer coach and an educator of the arts. He has been investing in our youth for 20 years. This is an individual making life-lasting impacts on our children. He is a part of our community. He is one of us.

» The soccer families that I have talked to have nothing but great things to say about the soccer program, and due to this whole debacle with United, the soccer registration has now been pushed to March 17th the first soccer game is March 27th that gives Mr. Riches 10 days to assess the children build the teams get the coaches get the referees and train them all all while he's working at Lugoff Elgin High School educating our kids per the contract he will be evaluated at the end of the season on this program I believe that we are setting Mr. Riches up for failure to be completely fair I believe technical soccer deserves a longer contract considering their contribution to the rec department for five years and the lasting community impact that they've already had.

» If there is a lack of soccer participation or signups that is completely out of his hands and 10 days is not nearly enough time for anyone to build a successful program. We should always set up people up for success, build them up and help them succeed. My second comment relates to number two on tonight's agenda, establishing an ad hoc task force on growth.

» we are behind the curve the citizens of Kershaw County are concerned about the rapid growth schools are packed you can ask any Lugoff Elgin teacher and you can see it on the roads when you drive through Lugoff and Elgin my concern is that this new committee only kicks the can further down the road council only meets monthly so any decision that's going to take place to address the growth will take three months it will take an ad hoc committee months to do whatever you determine they is they need to do this just continues to prolong and already serious problem our citizens deserve the growth issue to be addressed immediately the time to afford an ad hoc committee for growth was five years ago i believe this council has the resources they need to come up with the plan there is a wealth of kno

» wledge in our community if you listen to the citizens ideas council has legal advice and you know from your seat what your constituents are asking you for so i think it's time to attack the problem from your seats and not create another ad hoc committee that will take more months more time thank you thank you very much uh mr debose next person signed up i believe is alan alan hutto mr hutto all right mr hutto passes uh mr debose the last person that signed up is rose pattison miss pattison good evening good evening kershaw county council um this is my first time at this so i won't tell if that i'm totally relaxed but i'm here for the soccer league as well and um also am shocked at the thing at this being sprung on us so fast i'm i'm the grandmother of two boys who've just become involved be

» cause of um our technical soccer league director and for one he cares about these kids beyond what anything i've ever seen i have spoken with other parents as well and even before this ever came above us um about their experiences with the united which were not in any of those cases favorable of how their children were overlooked um you know i i they're saying he got a contract but it wasn't in a contract he gets two weeks to get a whole season together after he was sprung upon blindsided by not our rec department but finds out he no longer has position by the director of united through an email um i just don't understand how and how in the world he could be led to believe i don't know when they intended on telling him but um when he faced our rec department with asking the question of why

» he had no answers um so they have set him up to fail exactly because there's no way you can get a soccer league ready in two weeks he asked at the beginning of the season or before the beginning if he could um please know how he could help to get sign up going because kershaw county had not done any advertisement on his part had not supported him in the past so he was going to take it upon himself um at his cost to get the advertising out and get everything you know to where the parents could read it i don't think his intention was to up the cost and now it is up per united um by twenty dollars at least for this season I don't know where they intend to go but I just feel like it must have been done behind closed doors because no parent no coach of course the league director nobody had any c

» lue until two weeks ago when our league guy got an email from the other director which was you know at the very least very insulting I would be I would question who all of you was were consulted I know the Kershaw County Rec Commission was not consulted there is even a a commission member with children on our league that had no clue this was going to happen. My understanding is he arranged a meeting to get answers as well with the director of the Kershaw County Department, and he had no answers for him.

» About him having even to set this up by March 17th, what are parents going to think? What kind of signs are we sending out as a rec department when they've already signed up? They've gotten all these emails from this club who just came in with no no announcements and they think they're done we've already had a huge cry out on facebook about who is this you know the rates went up or their fees went up they're already confused and now they think we're going to go back out there and he's going to advertise again they're going to be so confused it's not i mean they've i don't understand how we can even allow this um they're from richland county area i want i mean who who over there is in kershaw county they they operate like a business where our director is a educator and has been for 20 years

» in this in our county he has the best interest up here but um i just i don't understand how this decision came down with not known i believe to most people um i don't think he should be made to sock to also to he was only given with this agreement the opportunity to do the spring league well you can't prove something when you're given two weeks to organize the whole thing and then they say okay did you do do it or not well of course they're setting up to fail but as a concern grandparent and citizen tax paying should i say and these parents are tax paying in our county i i just want to know where our voice is and and yes i would like to know you know how a decision like this can be made from what i can tell heavily by a very small group of people thank you very much thank you rose uh mr bos

» e uh that that concludes the sign-up list thank you i do want to take a moment here let me pull these out we had a number of emails that came in before I came in here and given to us by the clerk and they'll be provided to each of you right after this we're near the end of our time but I will summarize it under our record under our rules we have seven that came in and it will be given to each of you for the record could you read them out loud and I will read I will summarize them let they come from julie lyons aaron sire i think i pronounced that correctly charlotte gibson a young lady named katie not further identified missy avila mark moore and terry robinson they all support year-round soccer they support the tsc and a league and with a rec league to round out uh they have citing the lon

» g incompetent service of mr alan reaches and extend the period of performance. I'm going to ask the administrator to discuss some of this during his comments and I'm going to quote from each of them and then you guys will see the full comments later to preserve time now that we've gone over time. Charlotte Gibson says we decided to put her in travel soccer with TSC and I watched her grow tremendously in her skills and self-confidence. I would love for TSC to continue to partner with the Rec Department. Charlotte Gibson, a young lady named Katie. I'm writing to support TSC. We are a military family and moved to Kershaw County, but the school's over Sumter. She continues, my youngest is now playing for TSC.

» They're dedicated and committed to teaching young players, plus TSC is a local soccer program, so let's support our community. And I go on now with Melissa Avila. let's see my proud bulldog my husband has been a teacher at Montessori for nine years and I have two high school students and one in Camden High and one central north central our family is very excited about TSC and the Kershaw County Rec Department working together to grow soccer in this area the sport has been long disregarded but is gaining popularity especially with the USA women's soccer winning the world cup and this year being a world cup year she concludes by saying please take into consideration as you move forward we're all growing our local small businesses and this is a great way to show our kershaw county pride um mar

» k moore i ask that you consider extending the period of performance for the technical soccer club to allow time for their program to enact effective change in our sporting opportunities during my time as volunteer coach i have been i've seen many issues that can be addressed by having this partnership in place i move on to julie lyons i hope that tsc is allowed to continue to run their camps and practices here in kershaw county my hope is that one day the county will have designated soccer fields to hold home games and tournaments for the children to grow their skills and love for soccer. Let's see. And the last one, again, hard copies will be provided to all of you. Terry Robinson, Coach Allen, doesn't see social economic status in his players.

» He sees players' potential and helps them develop. Many of the players on TSC may not have them monetary means or transportation to play but this is never a hindrance as tsc parents and coach allen network like a family to fill the gap so again with that that concludes public comments and we move on to the next item on the agenda which is the adoption of the agenda can we have a motion to approve so move mr gardner a second second mr tucker any discussion on the agenda seeing there is none let's move to a vote all those in favor of the agenda raise your hands and it's unanimous mary we move now to a series of public presentations the first one is john henderson from the alliance of counties risk management award i'm getting used to seeing you john as long as we keep mr kato on board who is

» that coming up with it good evening mr chairman members of council ladies and gentlemen pleasure to be up here again this year. As you know, we have Barry Cato and Todd Schaefer here, and their work in the improvement of your cybersecurity awareness program is what we're recognizing today with an outstanding safety achievement. And just wanted to make a couple of comments. This cyber stuff is scary, and a lot of folks don't quite understand how devastating it can be and what we've seen in other counties and around the country I think is bringing it to the forefront and we want to recognize you for taking those forward steps to make it a stronger program here in Kershaw County. I think there's a number of things that you've done that I'd like to mention.

» You increased your excess liability insurance for cyber last year and i know you're working on it again this year and uh your insurance brokers did give you a target list of things to work on and i know that you're working through that list now but it's not easy to do but there's a lot that can be done through the education of employees and a lot of this cyber stuff is keeping employees and other folks from making simple of mistakes that can be corrected with some education and training, and y'all have certainly done that. One thing that I'd be remiss if I didn't mention is please continue with your work to include multi-factor authentication in your program.

» That's a key, and as we're in the renewal season for cyber insurance, I'm hearing a lot of things around the country that risks that do not have multi-factor authentication are not going to be considered as favorably as others so please by all means keep working on that and hopefully you can get where you want to go but let me talk about a few things you've done the cyber security awareness training that's part of the enhance you training program has been a great thing and this is what we're talking about with the simple things that you can train employees not to do like don't open that email that you're not quite sure it is and if they think that vic carpenter is asking somebody to buy a bunch of uh gift cards forget it he's not gonna ever do that i even fell for that years ago when that f

» irst started going out and uh but you know it's a little sophistication and just training to remind people another thing that y'all are doing i think is great you've contracted with a a group called know before to do fishing attempts y'all know what fishing attempts are not pure fishing i think it's great that y'all are doing that and uh once you get one of those and then you get called out for not doing it and then you have to go through an online class you'll be a lot less likely to do it again. But the phishing attempts and schemes are so sophisticated that even the experts are falling for it. So, I mean, anything you can do to train people is great. I know you also have two vulnerability scanner programs that are essentially friendly attacks on your system to see if they can get in.

» And I think that's a great thing. And the fact that y'all contracted with a group for family court to go and try to strengthen their systems through this vulnerability attacks is really fantastic. So that's a great, great idea, and I know you're also working with NACO, and I know that Barry and, was it Todd that went through the class? It was a five-day class to simulate cyber attacks, so that was really good.

» Also, finally, I know that you're working on a recovery plan and that's the start and not having it online only not having it online at all is certainly the way to go because that's where the hackers are going to go to know what you're trying to do so pulling that out is important but I think y'all are doing a great job with that and we commend you for your support and so this is the 2001 outstanding safety achievement award presented to kershaw county and uh many years in a row y'all keep doing it and thank you all for your support come on up let's have everybody come on up here guys mr chair members council i think barry's got some family here as well tonight all done thank you thank you vick for pointing that out um with that we move to the second public presentation uh the other kind of

» fishing uh this was russell and i met with the dnr people and the law enforcement people and with a number of uh fishermen and found we might want to take a review i want to introduce mr ross self who came all the way from columbia and it shows you that dnr is really on our side thank you ross good to have you here and can you introduce uh your compadre there thank you mr chairman i appreciate the chance to be here tonight to speak to the council about what's going on lake watery or what what may be going on lake watery and with me tonight is lynn quatra who's our assistant chief of freshwater fisheries she uh she she's in charge of day-to-day operations and i'm the figurehead i'm the talking head she's the uh she takes care of the day-to-day operations for us but um you know i guess just f

» rom for point of reference watery's always been really important to me i i came to south carolina from alabama in 1980 as a student intern with the with back then the wildlife marine resources department and i worked in the area that can that had lake watery in there and then when i came back from graduate school in 1985 full-time to south carolina i worked out of rock hill and worked on lake watery so the first the first several years of my career involved working on lake watery and watery has gone through as those of you have been in the air for a long time know tremendous change over those years um i've got just a couple of slides to show you that that kind of show you some of the the fish population parameters we look at with largemouth bass and i'm going to go through those quickly uh

» because the the science doesn't always tell you everything about these things there's two two components to to managing fisheries in in public waters and that's the biology of the animal how it's how it's performing how it's growing the relative abundance and then there's the the the social component of that how is that population performing to meet the expectations of the community that rely on it for the recreation and livelihood so if i don't know how i do this the next slide there we go magically um so this this is uh this this shows you the uh the average total length of largemouth bass now these are fish that are collected with our electrofishing sampling every year and this this is a data set that goes back to 1984 and and those those lines that go up and down are the are the uh the

» confidence intervals they call them and all those confidence intervals overlap so there's no statistical difference across this continuum here and and generally you can see kind of a moderate increase in the in the average length of fish in OUR SAMPLES EXCEPT FOR THE SAMPLE THAT WAS TAKEN IN 2021 THAT THAT DECLINED NOW AS FOR CLARIFICATION IN THE LAST OH 10 OR 15 YEARS UH WE'VE GONE TO WE'VE GOT SO MANY PLACES TO SAMPLE ACROSS THE STATE AND A RELATIVELY SMALL STAFF SO WE WE TEND TO DO ROTATIONAL SAMPLES WE'LL GO INTO A WATER BODY AND SAMPLE IT FOR TWO OR THREE YEARS IN A ROW AND THEN WE'LL TAKE A COUPLE OF YEARS OFF AND GO SAMPLE in another reservoir so uh 2018 16 17 18 was the last three-year sampling interval on on watery 2021 was the first year of another three-year evaluation and um we'

» re anxious to see the 22 data that'll be be available or mid-summer to see if if this uh this this trend in in a decline in size uh continues let's uh flip on over to the next slide i think there this is this is a slide that indicate this is the thing called relative weight and you can think of that as a measure of plumpness how how plump is the fish how how has it been eating is it in good condition has it had enough enough forage to sustain itself and generally relative weights above about 90 or 90% there are considered good. So our relative weights in largemouth bass in the lake are relatively good. There again, we see a little down tick in the 21 samples.

» We're anxious to see the 22 data to see if that was just a flyer, an aberrant data point, or if it's indicating the start of a trend. And if we'll flip over to the next, this is a thing called proportional stock density. This is the relative abundance of specific size fish in the system. That top line is the abundance of fish greater than 12 inches. That middle line there is the abundance of fish greater than 15 inches. And that bottom line is the abundance of fish greater than 20 inches. And this is fairly typical for what we see in Piedmont reservoirs in South Carolina. Now, if you remember, we had a little bit of an increase in that first slide in the mean lengths.

» And then if you look at these last 10 years of data here since about 2012, it looks like the relative abundance of fish above 15 inches has increased. And it probably has because that coincides with the implementation of a 14-inch minimum size limit statewide. so it stands to reason if you can't take fish less than 14 inches you're going to see a greater abundance of fish well less than 15 inches in in a system so that that's there's an explanation for that little that little increase there and it's and i think it shows that that that size limit change did some good that time if you flip over that last this is the last slide uh this just shows shows uh mortality the mortality rate of bass and watery and the average size of of fish at age three compared to the state average.

» And water was still a little bit in better shape as for it. Mortality rates were lower than it is, than the state average. And the average size of an age three bass is a little larger than the state average. Now, if you just look at these population parameters, you think, well, everything is kind of rocking along.

» There's nothing there, nothing to-- you get too concerned about as far as those population parameters but you know we hear we've been hearing from members of the public and and and through the through the contact from the council here you know we recognize that there's there's not satisfaction with the way the fisheries perform and it's not satisfaction with the with what folks are experiencing when they're out fishing and you know there was a major league fishing tournament there it was held in September and in broadcast some months after that and and some unseemly comments were made about their their success now to put that in perspective September is is probably the most difficult month of the year to catch bass so we got to keep that in the back of our mind but but clearly those the com

» ments of those angles comments we're hearing from local folks is that the fisheries not performing at the level that that the community would like to see and as their speaker earlier mentioned now there is there is a tremendous amount of economic value and economic impact associated with quality fishing opportunities so um like like i mentioned earlier we our 2021 was the first year of a three-year sampling period for lake watery that work will continue in 22 and 23.

» um we are we are becoming as a as a management section within the department of natural resources we're becoming more and more aware and concerned about our uh what what we call black bass populations and black bass is a generic term that refers to large mouth small mouth red eye and spotted bass in south carolina so we're we're becoming increasingly and concerned with the way large black bass populations are performing across the state some of that has to do with the expansion of invasives of a non-native invasive species the spotted bass that came in from the western part of georgia we don't see spots in watery at this point but they'll be here eventually probably they're in wiley um so we we are going to uh intensify our evaluation of black bass in the state uh we we're in the process of

» trying to establish an agreement with our marine resources center in charleston through their genetics lab to look take a close look at the at the genetic makeup of our largemouth bass populations in our inland reservoirs watery is on it will be on that first cut we'll start those samples hopefully the spring we're hoping to get a delivery of sample vials from our folks in Charleston this week to when distribute those to the field staff to start taking samples for genetic evaluation. And we're going, we're launching this genetic evaluation to kind of redo some work that was done 25 years ago to look at, you know, a lot of you who pay attention to recreational fish, in particular for bass, probably heard about Florida bass.

» Well, South Carolina's in an integrated zone where we have Florida and northern bass occurring together. So part of our fish in South Carolina are almost purely Florida's and another part are about 50-60 percent northern we want to reevaluate that you get it to do a little a little deeper look at that and see see what our makeup is see where we're having problems with the expansion of non-natives with an eye toward potentially working toward some some additional public water stocking for large amount you know we're not ready to say we're gonna be stocking watery in the next 18 months but we are gonna be looking at those parameters that we need to look at to make informed decisions about how to go about stock enhancement of those populations and where those things need to occur first you kno

» w what as I've watched watery over the years it's really been fascinating to me because when I was here in the early 80s it was before tertiary treatment it was a lot of a lot of nutrients coming down out of Charlotte down the Catawba River. And the standing stock of fish in water, and standing stock you can think of the number of cows in the pasture. You know the standing stock of fish in water reed in back in the early 80s was almost a thousand pounds of fish per acre.

» The Clean Water Act kicked in, they initiated tertiary treatment of wastewater coming out of the north carolina region and and clean the water up not nearly as many nutrients coming down the system and we documented the change in standing stock in water we went from a thousand pounds of fish per acre down to between five and six hundred pounds of fish per acre so you know folks that have been watching water as long as i have will realize they're not nearly as many fish out there as there used to be but it's hard to throw stones at clean water so um but we are we we i think i think the take-home message i want to leave you all tonight is we recognize that that the the fishery and watery is not meeting the expectations and the hopes of the community and we are we are anxious to look at that a

» nd see if we can find a path forward to make improvements we recognize the significance of recreational fishing to to south carolina into local communities and the economic driver that can be for folks and uh we are we are looking forward to working with y'all forward make seeing some improvements there to make that fishery as good as it can be thank you for your love of our waterways and our and our county it shows it really does uh when we can we expect you to come back with some kind of update the summer after the census you know maybe maybe late late summer that'll give us time to uh our our federal grant runs through june the end of june where that supports this work uh and and once we get into july our folks will take time to start compiling all that information so maybe late summer e

» arly fall we can come back and give you an update we should have hopefully lynn and i both have our fingers crossed we'll start to see some genetics data by then too yeah this is mr brazel's district russ you got anything to say there yeah hey mr self um enjoyed meeting with you whenever we thank you spoke what a month or so ago um i'm happy to help in any way um as we talked about i grew up fishing on the lake and uh also have an interest in helping any way i can the uh are you guys going to go do a fish count with the electrode yesterday our staff will be back on watery this spring um probably like mid-march into april um to to do another another annual assessment of of largemouth bass and i know that they are they are looking to get in touch with members of the council to let you know wh

» en that's happening you're still going to take me with you i'll be glad to take some of you out so y'all can see how that work is done yeah i'd love to see how it's done all right thank you russell anything any other comments we've got somebody who loves our county and recognizes uh the pressure on our population is not just on humans but also on the waterways and if you do this i want you to fix the quail population too thank you i wish you a safe journey i want to tell you how special you made us feel today thank you thank you sir thank you with that that concludes our public presentations we move to approval of minutes it's on page three tab a and up on the screen can we have a motion to approve so move uh mr gardner second second uh mr tucker any discussion uh seeing there is none let's

» move to a vote signify your approval and it's unanimous mary we move now to new business which is not item number one and tab b page six it's up on the screen uh tax savings for improved historic properties this for discussion tonight um then yes for discussion and a vote to direct staff to bring options back to council okay you want to make the motion i do thank you mr chairman i make a motion that we direct legal counsel and staff to propose options within the next three meetings for council to consider for a vote on bailey bill tax relief second second from mr snodgrass um ben would you want to lead us on discussion thank you mr chairman so with the um the hotel that was eligible for tax abatement under state law it raised a lot of questions that also had as well on how how can if state

» law governs us at the county level, how can we actually provide tax abatement or some type of benefit or relief to smaller businesses? And so multiple council members and also people who develop properties that fit within the Bailey tax bill said this is an option. Apparently the county had done a study called the Historic Resources Survey in Kershaw County, October 2001 through May 2002, that identified over a thousand properties that are outside of the city of Camden that would be eligible for Baylor bill tax relief. Let me describe briefly what that is. Essentially, if a property is over 50 years old and has a structure on it, you can, the county council could elect to freeze the tax rate on that particular property.

» If there's a certain level of investment that goes into it, city of Camden has one, which is attached in the records. We could mirror that for properties that were within city of Camden. We could do something different for outside the city of Camden, but there are over a thousand properties that would qualify outside the city of camden and we've had this this study that has been on the shelf for some time so properties 1972 or before roughly could be eligible for a tax rate freeze for 5 10 15 years at their current rate pre-development and i like this idea uh gentlemen because on the one side you're looking at do we have a a rubbish or public nuisance type law that you have to try to enforce because it's a wasted property it's an attractive nuisance for kids to go in or drugs to be used in

» we find needles in these older buildings all the time or you can incentivize folks to develop it county council again is governed by state law for fellows and abatements our legal counsels expect explained in the past that usually that threshold is two million dollars of investment or a certain number of jobs coming to the county and then we can consider the door open for possible action this is one that lets you act on properties that are down to i mean the value could be a ten thousand dollar piece of property it could be a hundred thousand dollar piece of property or more or less and so i like it because it seems a little bit more equitable it allows us to reach out and uh and impact other small businesses in the community that are working on older pieces of property and that's what i ha

» d to share so far thank you mr chairman uh further discussion mr chair yeah mr snoggrass i just want to echo a lot of what uh councilman connell mentioned a few in fact before as i was running for uh for council a lot of discussion that i had was centered around commercial it's incentivizing commercial growth because i feel like that's what we lack in our county everyone understands kind of how school funding works and other funding mechanisms a lot of the commercial side rolls into that and so one of the ways that we can incentivize commercial growth is through this bailey bill because like mr connell stated larger projects they get philos and again those are all things that come down from the state not rules that we make up and and so the question has always been hey how about the how abo

» ut the little investor you know how about the mom and pop and as i talk as i talk to folks in camden and other business owners they always bring to me the bailey bill that a lot of municipalities have including camden and a lot of counties in our state already have and a lot of a lot of a lot of the revitalization that you're seeing even in the city of camden a lot of those folks have utilized the bailey bill in camden and so i think it's i think it's our due diligence as a county to explore how can we expand that program on on a county-wide level so that it's not just the two and a half million dollar investments that are able to get breaks but it's it's mom and pops who just want to open up a store in the vacant building that's been vacant for 50 years or or for however long and help them

» get into that building and then they not have the overhead that comes when you purchase that building when you fix it up and then it gets assessed and appraised for for for hire so this would allow that business owner to make that investment and then have their tax burden be the same as it was when they acquired that building in its original state thus giving them a better a bigger window of opportunity to get some ROI on their on their business and and to grow stronger so I support this I've looked at this for many years and I'm thankful that we have other council members that are helping us drive this I do recognize that we're probably going to run into some staffing issues when we talk about you know how do we put the logistics of identifying their properties and approving them propertie

» s I realize but I think that we least need to explore this because this is another tool in the toolbox to to spur growth incentivize growth and give relief to the to the to the private market mr. Bose is this is this for commercial and residential is that correct well what is eligible can be limited um for instance the city ordinance but yes it can be commercial but from the state it yeah it can be from the state it could be a 50 year old house or or commercial yeah this could be used very good although what qualifies can be quantitated in the ordinance good good and uh so anyway i i think it's really our discussion uh i had i had a meeting with legal about six six seven weeks ago about at length about this uh to try to begin to get this going so i would appreciate your y'all's attention on

» this as we try to move it forward okay excellent other comments all right yeah mr jones go right ahead thank you mr chairman you know i had a very close close friend of mine call me and and he asked me would i support this and i said i will certainly look at it and consider it um and i what i'm trying to put i've been struggling what i've got in my head is that the county would act we would enact the bailey bill by ordinance which would be three readings correct mr devos that's correct okay historical properties the assessed value of the property at the value prior to qualified improvements is where they would stay if they went into a new building an old building they would basically mr carpenter or whichever whoever maintain that level of taxation if they spent another 500 000 on the build

» ing they would be taxed for improvements even if it was up to a hundred thousand five hundred thousand it would be whatever value the council chose to set as a how long would this how long would they get this tax incentive again that would be the council's determination i think it's up to 20 years is the maximum that could be done the bailey bill doesn't give a specific no more than 20 years no more than 20 years kind of like a fee and loot what what worries me and my colleague over to the right uh pastor did did hit on it just a little bit about staffing you know staffing issues bottom line is we right now how do we qualify who is and who isn't how would we do that mr carpenter well building would have to be identified as a landmark building in some fashion um and so you would essentially

» have to go and and certify you know the buildings i think mr connell was referring to a study done some years ago of the buildings in the county that would probably have to be updated to to reflect 20 years of past in order to to identify those buildings that would qualify at least on paper does excuse me does the county at this current time have the staff and resources to do that well we wouldn't be able to do that in-house no sir would not no sir how would you get it done we'd probably have to reach out and find somebody to come in and survey all the buildings in the county okay let me ask you this as the chief uh employee here at kershaw county i know you're going to do what we ask you to do but what do you think of this i'm going to do whatever the council asked me to do sir mr dubose i

» i think the administrator quite correctly said that you need to identify um as a threshold eligible properties and identification wouldn't be exclusive of course because time keeps going on but you'd have a um beginning point all the ordinances i've looked at and i've looked at the cities the city's ordinance i've looked at richland counties and several other counties they do have some threshold of identifying what is eligible as a starting point otherwise you have the unenviable position of council having to review everyone and that would be overly burdensome time consuming and uh in my opinion not practical MR. DEBOSE, THANK YOU FOR THAT OPINION. EXCUSE ME. I AGREE. THIS IS WHAT CONCERNS ME.

» I WOULD LOVE TO BE ABLE TO SUPPORT THIS, BUT WHAT CONCERNS ME IS THAT WE DON'T KNOW HOW WE WOULD EVEN ENFORCE IT OR PUT IT IN PLACE, BUT YET WE'VE TAKEN FIRST READING TONIGHT, SO THEREFORE IN TWO -- NO, WE'RE NOT TAKING FIRST READING TONIGHT. NO, NO, WE'RE DIRECTING THE STAFF TO DO THIS. HE'S DOING EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT. OKAY, GOOD. WELL, YEAH, I WISH WE COULD HAVE DONE THAT TONIGHT. I WISH WE COULD HAVE DONE THE RESEARCH AND HAD IT HERE TONIGHT. I don't know who got a copy of this or whatever this came up. But anyway, so you'll be going back and you'll be identifying how this process would work. Yes, sir. Okay. Then I'm going to hold my vote to myself to see how the process is going to work. Just to be clear, Ben, I got it correct.

» You've asked the staff to come back within three meetings to tell us how it might be done. Mr. Chairman, if they can figure it out beforehand, by all means, I'd be happy to vote on it sooner. But a few other comments. SO THE PROPERTIES THAT WOULD BE ELIGIBLE WOULD BE ALL OTHERS BEYOND THIS 1,000 THAT ARE ALREADY IDENTIFIED. RIGHT? WE ALREADY DID A STUDY IN 01-02. THEY ONLY GOT OLDER. SO THEY'RE IN THE WHEELHOUSE. RIGHT? SO WE DON'T NEED TO REDO THESE. SO IT'S ONLY THOSE THAT AGED INTO THE 50-YEAR TIME PERIOD OR ALREADY FALL WITHIN A HISTORICALLY DESIGNATED AREA, PRESUMABLY THAT WOULD ALREADY BE IN THE STUDY. So I think we have over 1,000 properties that already are eligible.

» Now, if it's within the city of Camden limits, county can retain the right to revoke the approval, but the city of Camden already has a process and staff and such and such in place to accomplish it. As I understand it, that's where you could educate us more on the issues outside of that. I'm sure we can come up with an application process to provide folks tax relief. So to make it practical, if you had a property that just hypothetically was called $100,000 property. And someone, to use Mr. Jones' example, puts in a couple hundred thousand dollars to improve it and make it into what's called a functioning business. And the overall value increases substantially.

» If the prior tax bill was just call it $2,000, and because of their improvements and how much more attractive the business is, it'd be reassessed at maybe a $400,000 or $500,000 piece of property. They're going to save the difference over whatever period of time we would choose to approve. So say it's a $2,000 or $3,000 difference.

» Over a period of time, makes a big difference you know if you call in 10 years you're 30 some thousand a dollar now could we do more if state law allowed us to we could consider it but we've asked for research and been able to find this as an option to provide some tax relief to smaller businesses below having to provide a two million dollar investment or a certain number of jobs and so i think it makes sense for those reasons other comments if i made it i'll yield to mr he hasn't said anything yet so do we have to do a study of the entire county or can we just take it on a case-by-case basis if we get an application that's part of what the research would is just how in-depth we would have to do we would have to have something that identified a property as qualifying just what that means wh

» at we'll have to find out is can we just again i don't know the exact detail of how much but as as ms connell was saying we've had 20 years since um that survey was done so there's probably hundreds more houses that have now qualified for we'd have to identify those well say we enacted we get no applications for the first 18 months I mean I don't see doing a whole lot of work on the front end if we don't have applications and maybe we do maybe we have four or five but I think we could just take them case by case just like a building permit or whatever and assess it and what I've been able to tell most of the cities all the cities that I'm hotel and the counties that participate have some kind of an organ either a historical commission or some kind of an entity that is the buffer between the

» county and the the property owner that's the entity that kind of manages that list we don't really have a county-wide entity like that so we'd have to create one okay it's my it's my guess but i just let me interrupt there um i heard the word threshold so we'll need some help on that from the staff and then we would need approve that threshold because that represents the standard at which these applications would be approved or not the second thing is uniformly throughout South Carolina there is a commission there's one in Camden if you go look at the Richland County example there's one there's more than one in inside the Richland County Columbia district and then there's a countywide one so that we up here wouldn't be bombarded with approvals we use the yardstick of this threshold that we

» agree on the front end and our classic policymaking role but we would have a commission that we would commission or appoint and we would look I think then to the staff to tell us how to do that too Mr. Chairman I have no doubt and actually have every confidence that we would find a group of people who would volunteer for approvals of tax reductions or freezes for local properties right other comments just make sure we all understand I think we all have a lot of questions and I think the vote tonight is not whether or not we're gonna do this but the vote tonight is just to give staff some motivation to go answer go find the answers to these questions because I mean I've had these questions for a while but they're just without an official vote of counsel you there hadn't been a really a motiv

» ation to see hey can we do this or can we can we not do this so if am i correct that tonight's vote is really just we want to give staff the direction to go and explore this and come back with answers so a vote tonight doesn't mean that you're for against the bailey bill it's just saying hey i need you to i need you to get me some more answers would that be a correct i mean i'm happy to reread the motion that's as best no no no you don't need to do that you don't need to do that i just want to i'm just just so the everyone in the room understands that's the thrust sir that's the thrust correct great other comments uh jimmy well here's what i just don't know enough about it i realize we're asking you to bring this to us but i wish we could have just had instead of doing a vote i wish we coul

» d have just said dick would you bring some information back to us and we'll see what we're going to do from there mr chairman that's kind of what we're doing but i take both your points uh go ahead ben well i'm mr jones the reason i put it up for a vote is i think one of the things we try to emphasize more recently is accountability one amongst ourselves but also among staff so many times we've asked for a study to be produced or something happened and we didn't put a timeline on it. And then it just kind of falls through the cracks or something else pops up. So this way, within the next three meetings, we are directing staff or council to bring this information to us so that we can take action. And I'm just, I think it's important for us to be more deliberate that way. Yeah. Jimmy? Mr.

» Connell, I get it. You made perfect good sense there. I understand what you're talking about. I will support this tonight only to get information, to have information brought back to us in a presentation given to us. I can't promise you I'll give my vote any further than that, but I do understand that was a good explanation. I appreciate that. Yes, sir. So, Mr. Carpenter, I look forward to hearing you answer all my questions because I got a lot of questions on this. Okay, I think we're ready to move to a vote. I think we've settled all the finer points all those in favor of this study as pronounced by mr.

» Connell one quick point yeah is it gonna cost us any money for the study this aspect no okay all those in favor signify by raising your hand and shenanigans Mary thanks for that discussion item number two is on page seven up on the board as well at tab C, establish an ad hoc task force on growth. This doesn't require a vote, but we need to get it on the table and then I will read what I have. All those, can I have a motion to put this up for discussion? I make a motion to establish an ad hoc task force on growth. Okay. Second? Second. From Mr. Gardner. Okay. I'll take it from here and then we'll have a discussion.

» First of all, I will read portions of the document, but it all impacts a very complex issue that has arisen over the last two or three years, especially with roads, now the growth with significant housing areas and so on and so forth. And with the request of the municipalities and the school district and several others, they've asked for a commission that I would appoint under my authority as a chairman. And as you know, ad hoc is Latin for a temporary committee to get the job done and back out and get on with the action. The purpose is sustained quality in schools and communities and county services.

» It's a comprehensive joint ad hoc committee to address population growth in Kershaw County for near and long-term action by respective bodies in the school board and the Kershaw County Council. It will start out by phase one to gather relevant resources and collect analyzed data from the census. That requires the collaboration of the school, of the county, and many other agencies to get it all together. The second phase will be appointed to report and recommend possible non-binding approaches to present it to the school board and separately to Kershaw County Council. It goes on to say growth is both an opportunity and a challenge. We need more information to act or not to act in some cases.

» And the consensus has emerged to form a comprehensive review in the school board and county council and in the municipalities and together to capture what can be known, identify what is unknown, and then present unified, joined-up recommendations. The scope is to analyze trends, especially as impacting crowding in the roads, schools, services, fire, justice, police, detention, solid waste, sewer planning, and zoning, federal and state agency, and legislative and COG frameworks impacting growth, funding, budgets, and the revenues picture. It's pretty complex. active members as determined by the co-chairs of the two boards from the school superintendent and the county administrator in phase one. Phase one being fact-gathering data and analysis. That would be Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Robbins.

» And then they would, they in turn, would refine the problem statement, which has not been done, build relevant data, which we don't have all of it yet, to include demographic assistance which is not available to any of us right now develop courses of action and a provision of quality schools communities and services draft and present the non-binding report to the council with draft language and suggest and this is an important point I got from my good friend Russell Brazel there's some things we need to do right now and a little later on mr. mr.

» Tucker is going to bring forward a motion and that is a do now suggests a do now and do later construct in your recommendations for immediate and for further review and action later emergent issues can be brought up impacting the current budget cycle will be welcome phase two is where elected officials from the school board and the county council would meet and that would be two members from the school board with one co-chair and two members from the county council and that would be one co-chair a representative from elgin bethune and camden they've all agreed to do so and other members as is necessary and it is fully expected that that body of the when comprised of the elected of members would bring in contractors developers, trail riders, boaters, conservationists, fishermen, right, Ross,

» all sorts of farmers and hunters and anyone who's an interest group to see and understand the growth and what it means for our county. The supporting staff would be designated by Mr. Carpenter and by the school superintendent. Nothing in this effort is to change that which the county has already directed to the administrator on 25 january to examine zoning and we have already put that in motion with the administrator can i have that quick slide uh mr this is a chart that i briefed the council on during our retreat uh the first item is that is the directive that we the council unanimously voted on to improve planning and zoning services uh the second one is a codification project and meanwhile understand and act and not just understand on growth. To quantify and recommend that would be Mr.

» Carpenter and Mr. Robbins and then the ad hoc task force committee would then move out with along with advice from stakeholders and plank holders throughout the county. So with that that's the action plan. I want to tell you that Mr. Connell has agreed to the chairman he did a great job on the fire study and russell and uh westwater e will be the other member so with that uh comments gentlemen uh mr jones go ahead and get mine out of the way you know a couple weeks ago i made the motion that council be directed that we direct the administrator to inquire as to and prepare for consideration an amendment to the unified code of zoning land development regulations and come back to county council with that and we set a time frame on that what in my motion it says part of the meat of it was uh to

» meet at least quarterly with the kershaw county school district as to planning and zoning matters including industrial commercial and residential growth you know um if you look at our comprehensive plan our comprehensive plan is what drives this county it's what directs us in what direction we're going to go um and in the planning and the planning and zoning also at this time well at least i was told THIS AT THE LAST MEETING THAT THE ZONING ORDERS WILL INCLUDE A NEW COMPREHENSIVE PLAN AND OF COURSE THAT'S MANDATED BY STATE LAW AND MICHAEL CONLEY DID DID INDICATE THAT AND UH IT WILL ALSO INCLUDE UH ALONG WITH COMPREHENSIVE PLAN BUT IT ALSO HAVE THE UH ELEMENT OF GROWTH IN THERE THAT WHICH IS SOMETHING WE TALKED ABOUT AT THE LAST COUNCIL MEETING THAT TALK ABOUT THE ROADS AND EVERYTHING ELSE L

» ET ME SEE WHAT IT SAYS HERE OR ARTICLE 3 UNDER THE PLANNING COMMISSION I MEAN under the comprehensive plan uh the local planning and the comprehensive plan process it it's got a whole bunch of stuff here but the basic planning process of all planning elements must include but not be limited to inventory of existing conditions statement and needs and goals implementation strategies and frames i mean it goes a population element considers historic trends and projections household numbers it just goes on and on and on this is our comprehensive plan which we're mandated to do by state law i think creating this ad hoc committee is just bureaucracy i just think it's just piling on something that that we don't need it that it has no i thought it has no meaning it has you know it's not uh enacted b

» y state law as the comprehensive uh plan is um i just would like to ask this council to slow down please let's let the administrator and the planning zoning commission do their job and because and let's don't complicate it and this will absolutely complicate it and it's going to tie up staff why aren't we putting this kind of energy into the comprehensive plan why are we putting this kind of energy into the planning and zoning land use ordinance which is so out of touch so out of touch that it's a miracle they can even do their job in planning and zoning but what we've done we've taken what I've done what I what I brought to the table a couple weeks ago and I think what we've done is just absolutely create bureaucracy with not much thought in it but that's my comments mr.

» chairman they have something else before we end this by vote Thank You mr. Jones either mr. Connell Thank You mr. chairman the chairman asked me to serve on this committee and I thought it was interesting because if I can rewind back and by the way mr. Jones all your points are very legitimate I mean they're all very good points I don't like government meetings, who needs another government meeting, or another agency or bureaucracy, but if I can rewind back to the fire ad hoc committee years ago, I think that was pretty effective. We needed it because we didn't have the data to make decisions.

» At the time, we were sending, you know, God bless every one of them, fighting fires, but, and responding to calls, but we were sending faxes with handwritten notes on them, and the faxes would go through, and we couldn't actually get accurate counts on what calls we had or didn't have, and therefore we couldn't justify funding or expenditures on really anything. So between Mr. Jones, Mr. Gardner, and I, we were able to do the fire ad hoc committee that produced a lot of good data. I think we're able to actually update and modernize everything, get the technology where it needed to be so firemen and women could report more quickly and not have to focus on as much paperwork and get out and handle and serve calls.

» And, of course, the data informed us that we needed to go to a full-time fire service, which we've done, which we've pursued. So I actually look at this as fitting within the good motion that you had in your broad vision to inform the comprehensive plan in planning and zoning. I'm interested in getting data that will help us make good decisions. And if you remember, Mr. Jones, on fire and Mr. Gardner, when we were talking about fire, we didn't even know what we didn't know for some of it. And so that's why I think it'll be a useful exercise. A lot of these folks haven't gotten together in the same room and discussed their issues or concerns regarding growth, or really I kind of look at it as the control of growth and how you grow intelligently and wisely.

» Now, some of the people who are going to be meeting in this room are going to have interests that are very much aligned. Some of them are going to have interests that are very much adverse, and that will be interesting to see what data comes from those discussions. But like fire, it'll come back to council, I imagine. I think that's the direction. And then we'll be able to make some decisions on what I hope will be some good data. Thank you. Other comments? Mr. Garner. I think, excuse me, the big picture here is that this has a lot of working parts, a lot of parts that work together and a lot of parts that work independently of each other, such as the school district. They work independent of us. We work here. Roads. Roads work. We have virtually nothing to do with roads.

» So I think that what this ad hoc committee will do, we'll kind of pull those things in and take some of that data that we got the other day at our workshop, as opposed to what the comprehensive plan -- I think, John, your point well taken. But I think the comprehensive plan is groundwork. But I think, you know, what most people don't understand in the zoning issues that people that are out there building those houses that if that property's already zoned residential, it never gets to council. It's zoned residential. They can go build all the houses that is allowed by whatever zoning is there. So it doesn't come to council. So we don't know exactly how many are going to be built.

» So if we don't do something on our end to address some of that based on the information we got the other day, then, you know, they're going to build houses and we're not going to have anything, any say on it because it's already zoned that way. So when they go to rezone, then it comes before us. So if they rezone it and instead of building a hundred houses, they want to build 300, then that comes to us for a rezoning vote.

» But if you take the properties that are in West Water Reed is where we're talking about primarily, then we're talking about plans for 5,000 homes is what we looked at the other day, you know, not in the next couple of years, but in years down the road, if that property is already zoned that way, then we really don't have any any way of stopping that so we need to start planning accordingly now with the school district and what they're going to do with schools and i think that's what this ad hoc committee will do it will take the data that we have and that we get and put that together and apply it to whatever information we see and where we need to go based on what the school district because if we get that many homes we're going to be building at least one more high school middle school ele

» mentary maybe more and again that comes at a huge price tag so i think it's important for us to start studying that now uh to see where we're headed but you know the real real deal is we don't have a lot of control over zoning as they are zoned now if they're zoned to build they can build nothing we can do you know i mean we can come up with moratoriums and all these other things which i don't think are good ideas but there's there are some things that we can do but i don't know that they're good things that we can do for that so i think it's important that we start gathering the data and look at the data we've got and i think that's what this ad hoc committee will do yeah other comments i'll get back to you mr phone yeah mr tucker thank you mr chairman um i'm just going to give you a littl

» e bit of history lesson here um the same time that uh chairman burns formed fire at all don't fall on the floor bed um was the same time that we did the uh the growth and sro committee and i was a part of that committee i actually co-chaired it we brought back five of y'all sitting up here right now the only two that wasn't was snortgrass and um russell brazel um good recommendations and um wanted to do a impact fee study but no one gave the administration the direction we spoke about it put it on the shelf and nothing happened uh dennis arledge and al bozart myself along with tom mcdonnell and others from the school board worked real hard on getting information the best thing came out of that was we did get the sro situation resolved and work through that but what i'm saying we could be a

» further along had we just had an appetite from this body and i hope this body does not sit on the information that this ad hoc committee brings back like we have done the last four or five years because then we look for administration to work miracles i'm going to support this tonight but i'm not going to wait on just this to be the answer i'm going to make some recommendations and some motions in the next uh order of new business thank you mr mr tucker and thanks for your work on that study uh mr snodgrass and then jimmy just i think i think what we see here are two things coming together to work together uh mr jones i supported uh your motion a few a few weeks ago uh and i think this is a good move as well because it's going to help inform uh one another because here's the thing our issue

» is not a one-size-fits-all um you know you may say you may think oh this isn't complex we just need to do well i mean you just can't do without having some sort of plan and have some sort of understanding of what we need to do and see happen because it cannot be a one-size-fits-all uh the issues that west water years is having is different from the type of issues that we're seeing in east camden or even even further out on that part of the county and so we just can't say we just can't make decisions based on what's going to stop or keep something from happening in west water we need to make decisions based on the good of the entire county and i'm optimistic that this committee along with what mr jones proposed a while back of directing staff to do what they need to do will help us understan

» d that i also see this as a move to help us be more efficient i don't know about you guys but there's nothing more frustrating than seeing government bodies not communicate you know you ever see someone out there um fixing uh paving a road and then like two weeks later someone's out there digging it up to put in new water lines and it's like did you guys not can you not get together and realize hey don't pave that road yet we're putting in new water lines i mean that is just the epitome of government inefficiency and and so i think this will help us curb that and it's i would also have requests that we ensure and i don't know how we can do this because i know they don't work for us but to make sure that someone from dot is a part of this and and so that they are understanding what our growt

» h needs are i can't tell you how many times that we have meetings with d.o.t and we try to tell them something and then a year later they come to us with this great epiphany of like hey did you guys know this and we're like yeah we told you that two years ago i still remember the time that danny and i were in a meeting and d.o.t said to us did you guys know you had flooding issues in east camden we're like welcome to the party like we've just been trying to tell you that for the last you know 10 years and so hopefully that this this team will we can have someone from d.o.t because i mean that's part of our issue right we don't some of the strain on the growth in west watery and we're beginning to even and we see it in east camden is our road infrastructure and the way that our system is set

» up we don't have direct control over that so they need to be at this table being informed of the strains that are on the infrastructure here in kershaw county so i see this all working together and and helping us move forward to to ensure that we know what we're doing and we're on the same page thanks thank you sir other comments uh mr jones you want to bring us home thank you so much i'll do my best um state law says that all planning elements must be an expression of the planning commission recommendations to the appropriate government government governing bodies with regard to the wise and efficient use of public funds the future growth development and redevelopment of its area of jurisdiction and consideration fiscal impact on property owners the planning commission shall review the com

» prehensive plan and all its elements of it and all as often as necessary but not less than once every five years to determine whether charges or changes excuse me it's a small print in in the uh amount kind of direction of the development in that area um here's once again i everything you guys said that what we proposed of what i brought to the table will do that what legal advice what's the difference between the ad hoc committee and what i proposed at the last meeting i think that well we understand that how committees can gather data isn't that what the planning commission did is in in itself will not do anything that's binding without further action the county council and that would have to be through the comprehensive plan most probably so it would still have to go back through the com

» prehensive plan i said well one of the elements of the comprehensive plan is growth but not all the elements so this would be considered this data would be considered when the zoning and comprehensive plan is done the comprehensive plan is the road map yes but mr connell says that's correct the the um clean excuse me the planning commission has the authority to appoint ad hoc committees maybe not ad hoc committees but appoint advisory committees do they not the planning commission well i think when you do the comprehensive plan you usually have a consultant do it and i think you do get community input yes okay um well it usually does that that's a lot of money but that sounds like a lot of money oh it's gonna call yeah the redo the zonings and cost a significant amount of money but we have

» to do that by state law well you don't have to do it council voted to do it gotcha well i think it needs to be done because the planning the land use orders we have now is just a total book of um absolute confusion i just feel like this is i just don't agree with it you know i just feel like that we need to be putting our focus on the planning commission we need to be putting our focus on the comprehensive plan and that'll do everything that we're talking about doing here i think what we've just done is just get a lot of politicians involved and it's going to be very burdensome on our staff very because they have to do that as well as they're gonna have to go back and do that how can we possibly had to go back and do what we voted in two weeks ago are you capable of getting this done mr.

» carpenter with no extra money it will do our very best to get it done sir yes sir all right mr. chairman I'm done thank you thank you very much there are people in the audience and people watching that want clarity and they want clarity soon and we were asked by the school board and other municipalities to do this and I quite heartily agree if this if this was easy it would have already been done mr. Snodgrass has touched on the complexity of this thing to include roads to which the comprehensive plan does not address because it's done by outside agencies and we need to bring those people in and line them up and I'm sure mr. Connell shown his excellent leadership and mr. Brazel his too. It has no patience for going slow on this. Mr.

» Ketchy, I have a point of order because you said the comprehensive plan doesn't include roads. Let me finish up and then I'll let you come back in. Okay, thank you. But there is a clear focus here of what we need to do now and what we need to do later. Businessmen, landowners, farmers, people in Boykin, Charlotte-Thompson, Antioch, Cassid are all impacted by this and we need to give them clarity as soon as we can. I would like you to focus on the fact that we all have a different look at the elephant and we think it's a camel. We're looking at it in different ways. The data needs to be clear and unmistakable and presented. And the right people to do that are the staff that are already engaged in that. And there are things that we at county can't do that the school board must do.

» and there are things here that can only be done in the reverse so that's the reason we'll get this done uh mr jones you said you had a comment a legal opinion if i can comprehensive plan when we talk about leading our future doesn't that include pretty much everything that drives our budget whether it goes to parks roads um housing whether it's current or future one element of comprehensive plan is public infrastructure that would include roads sewer water because the Chairman just said roads were not included in it, and I wanted to make sure we clarified that. I'm not trying to put you guys in a tough situation. I just want to make sure we're being factual on what we're saying. But anyway. Yeah, back to the point that Mr. Snodgrass made. The roads are not impacted here.

» We need to bring in outside agencies to get this right, and there are things in motion right now that we need to influence, and I think Mr. Connell can get a handle on it. With that, we'll move to the next item on the agenda. It is item number three, directions to study impact fees. Mr. Chairman. And I turn to Mr. We need to call for the vote. We didn't vote. Call for the vote, sir. There's no vote on this. Okay, that's right. Okay, we move to item number three, directions to study impact fees. Mr. Tucker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to make a motion.

» I would like to make a motion that we direct the county administrator to investigate the possibility of imposing development impact fees in all or portions of Kershaw County pursuant to South Carolina Development Impact Fee Act, SC Code 6-1-910. Can we have a second? Second. Second from Mr. Gardner. It's on the table. Mr. Tucker, bring it in, please. All right, I will start off. Some of these things we're doing already up on the board. We talked about them in our retreat. But I don't believe our existing citizens should pay for the tax burden associated with offsetting the impact fees of new development on public services and facilities.

» We're seeking rapid growth in the West Waterbury area and other areas of Kershaw County, and I believe it would be prudent policy to consider impact fees so that we can have growth, pay for growth, and provide some relief to the existing citizens of Kershaw County. I say that because we need to address growth and the cost of growth growth will come wherever we want it or not we just need to provide for it and have growth pay for itself immediate things we can do to make growth pay for itself is what we're doing now is the impact study and this is what council controls sewer impact fees we already have a sewer impact fee we can change the method of payment pay when we reserve the CAPACITY VERSUS PAY LATER.

» WE USED TO HAVE THAT HERE IN CRITICAL COUNTY AND WE CHANGED THAT COUNCIL CHANGED THAT BUT WE USED TO PAY FOR THOSE IMPACT FEES WHEN YOU WITHDRAW THEM OUT OF OUR CHECKBOOK WHEN YOU RESERVE THEM YOU PAY FOR THEM WE WENT AWAY FROM THAT AND WE START SAYING WHEN YOU GO TO ACTUALLY MAKE THE CONNECTION THEN YOU PAY FOR THAT WELL THAT CAN HAVE A BIG COMPANY JUST RESERVE UP EVERYTHING AND BECAUSE THERE'S NO MONEY UH THAT'S ATTACHED TO THAT SO I CAN EXERVE AS MUCH reserve as much as i think i may need not what i actually need and have to pay for you can change that method look at the sewer impact fees and look at the amount charge update the fees mr um carpenter i think we're about to the end of that study or um that's coming soon on the um impact fees for sewer on the rate study yesterday okay um re

» leased rfp and planning and zoning for the the ordinance comprehensive plan needs to be updated as mr jones has said look at all facets of planning and growth needs and costs um released his rfp study for the impact fees where to impose the parts of the county for these impact fees i don't know how many of you aware that lancaster county just passed an impact fee and it's not uh their entire county they have a serious problem THE PROBLEM OF GROWTH IN INDIAN LAND, AND THAT'S COMING OUT OF CHARLOTTE. SO WHAT THEY DID, THEY DID THEIR STUDY, SO WHEN WE DO THIS STUDY, I WOULD LIKE TO LOOK AT ALL THE COUNTY AND THEN PORTIONS OF THE COUNTY, BECAUSE THEY JUST DID INDIAN LAND. AND WHAT THAT DID, THAT TOLD THEM WHAT THE COST WAS FOR FIRE, EMS, SCHOOLS, ROADS, POLICE.

» I MEAN, THE LIST JUST WENT ON, AND THAT STUDY SHOWED OUT OF WHAT THEY CHARGED, THIS IS THE percent or the dollar amount that would go to these different entities to help offset the cost go look it up it's it's public knowledge it's a good plan i have buddies that sit on county council up there and i have plenty of friends in lancaster county um it's something that you might want to look to see how it's working for them and um it's in place they hadn't been sued by it so um and no one's up there um you know protesting and carrying flags and so forth so I RECOMMEND THAT YOU TAKE A LOOK AT THAT.

» WE WOULD DO A CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PLAN AS PART OF THE IMPACT FEE, THE PLANNING AND ZONING COMPREHENSIVE PLAN WHICH IS MANDATED BY THE STATE LAW AND THE CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PLAN AND THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN WILL TIE TOGETHER. ALL OF THOSE NEED TO TIE TOGETHER. AND PLANNING AND ZONING FEES PAY FOR ITS COST. IF OUR FEES ARE NOT WHAT THEY NEED TO BE, THEN WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THEY ARE. MY LAST THING IS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. spending money for new jobs. This is what this council has done in county and recruiting new businesses and new jobs. We need to provide an orderly process for growth and need to accommodate the workers for the new jobs we're creating. We want people to work and live in our county. And that's what we've done.

» You know, the old thing, you know, you ask for one thing and industry is great because it relieves us on our taxes because they pay more taxes than any of us in this room but comes with that is people you know you're going to have people commute from um columbia from charlotte and tell them okay you're not welcome to live here um i don't think that's the sign that we want to send as uh citizens and residents of kershaw county thank you mr chairman yeah other comments mr uh mr gardner i'm not a huge fan of impact fees but i think it's one of those things that uh given the direction that we're going in the growth that we're having, it's one of those things that may solve some of our problems.

» I think impact fees tend to hurt the small developer, the small contractor, but I think it also helps you out in some of your infrastructure from some of those fees. So I certainly am in favor of a study to look at them, and I think it would help us, perhaps, those people who are calling for some immediate results. This is an immediate thing that we can put out there pretty quickly, or maybe not pretty quickly but quicker than most things and it may solve some of our problems early on so look forward to a study on this thank you mr. grass or mr.

» Carpenter couple questions so why do we have to do a study why can't we just vote open down we're not going to impact fees it's not grass the General Assembly some years back put fairly significant limits on the ability of local governments to assess impact fees they limited who can assess an impact fee they limited what you can assess an impact fee for they limited the amount of time you're allowed to collect the fee and not spend the fee and they said created a set of criteria that you had to follow before you could even impose a fee one of the first aspects of that legislation was a requirement that a study be done that would determine the actual need it would take into account a variety of other conditions as well a long-term growth rate the impact on the housing stock uh impact on road

» s and schools etc so there's a a fairly significant criteria list that have to be addressed as part of that study that would then determine whether a fee was warranted even by law and if it was warranted then then what the need was so are are you saying that we could do a study and it may by state law it may not warrant that we can impose this fee is that what did i hear that correctly as i understand that that that is possible yes sir and i asked that because i don't want i don't want us to feel like that we're just a study happy council because every so far tonight all the studies that we've had to engage in are many of them are the state state the state government and its infinite infinite wisdom has you know put in places has put in place some some very tangled webs that you have to nav

» igate um to to get through and so i want to make sure that we're all on the same same page uh on that so i appreciate that you know i think this isn't going to i don't think this is going to stop growth let's say we would we would incur this i don't think it would stop growth i think it would give us a mechanism in which we can invest and reinvest into the infrastructure that these these homes or these that these homes are going to make on our on our county because i think i think the the growth is coming no matter what i i know some people are they don't want that but in in many ways i i think it's coming no matter whether we want it or not it's just the nature of the growth that that we are currently in it's the nature of how the state is is growing and i think what we need to do is make

» sure that we get out ahead of it and make sure that we uh plan accordingly you know everyone says i don't want to be lexington county i don't want to be lexington county either i'm move from there I that's that's not what I want to be about either but I think a part of it is doing some of these things to get out ahead of these things you know the the old proverb that says you know the best time to plant a tree was a thousand years ago the second best time is now and so I think at some point we got a quick kick in the can down the road and get a hold of these things and I'm not saying I'm for against impact feeds of this at this moment but I think it's worth studying and understanding our options uh because we've got to we've got to provide for the infrastructure one way or the other so um t

» hank you mr tucker for um helping us stop kicking the can you okay other comments uh mr tucker oh you you mr jones i'll go after you sir i just want to address what mr gardener said about the small businesses that's the reason why the impact fees NEED -- STUDY NEEDS TO GO ALONG WITH OUR COMPREHENSIVE PLAN BECAUSE THERE ARE GUIDELINES IN THERE, MR. MICHAEL, IF I'M CORRECT, I THINK IT'S 10 HOMES OR MORE CREATES A SUBDIVISION, IS THAT CORRECT? SO WE CAN SET THOSE GUIDELINES WHERE WE CANNOT HURT THE SMALL BUSINESS FOLKS THAT'S DOING ONE AND TWO AND THREE AND FOUR OR FIVE HOMES.

» IF YOU'RE DOING 10 OR MORE, YOU'RE NO LONGER CONSIDERED A SMALL BUSINESS EVEN RIGHT NOW by a comprehensive plan so um you know and there's other guidelines and things we can tweak once we get the information back i think councils are going to have a lot more latitude than they think but we've got to get a what i call a a guideline or some type of reference point so we can move within our legal rights to formulate what works best for kershaw county okay mr jones go ahead david oh thank you mr jones just a quick question or a point of clarification yeah so in our in our code i believe i'm correcting this mr conley uh that we determined a subdivision as 10 or more and have i have i heard that correct or a major subdivision major major subdivision so i think there's already as far as whether or

» not we heard the little the small builder i think there's already mechanisms in place in which we can study this without a guarantee of hurting the small home builder or the family that wants to build a home on family land you know at this point i see the nature of this study is going after the larger builders that are trying to you know build 10 20 30 40 plus homes uh at a time so thank you okay mr jones thank you so much mr chairman members of county council uh everything we've talked about tonight when it comes to impact fees ad hoc committee um the motion i made and the work i put into everything two weeks two weeks ago would have resolved that it would have brought it back to us but we haven't even given he hadn't got his feed in the bathtub and we already have put an ad hoc committee

» on top of it an impact fee on top of it and but everything that I've mentioned about the revamping of the planning and zoning land use ordinance and the comprehensive plan would take care of everything we've talked about up here it's as simple as that that's just a fact you know we talked about impact feed not hurting the big it hurt Hurst a little man but doesn't hurt the big man and then we talk about the state you know passing a lot down to us we've created more bureaucracy for ourselves in the last two years than the state has ever created for us and they've created a lot for us for time to time with act 380 and the local by not addressing that and also the local government fund by taking it away from us folks we just have a different of opinion here I think an impact fee will not help

» us in any form where we're trying to go I think the impact fee is going to be put on the properties and the homeowners the citizens gonna end up paying that impact fee so I just failed to see where that's the answer to what we're trying to find here I made an outstanding proposal a couple of weeks ago as I see said our feet hadn't got wet on it and we're bringing back all these other things that I think is nothing but a bunch of bureaucracy and what I want and you know we've got some tough times ahead of us we got some fees you know the class-action lawsuits with fees going on in this state and we've created new fees and you know I just think I just think this is going in the wrong direction right now i would have liked for this council to just sit back and what we voted on two weeks ago gi

» ve that the opportunity because there was some immediate concerns in there and then there was some long range concerns in there you know we knew three to four months we talked about that on my proposal for the administrator to get more involved also uh we talked about certainly two years to do the land use ordinance and the comprehensive plan because you got to give it time but we we haven't given it time we we're just throwing more stuff on top of staff that they're going to go out and spend more money how much is the impact fee study gonna cost us we don't know sir give me a ball you a guesstimate it could be I really don't know how much it do you have any in the past mr.

» Bowes you've been here all your life I don't know how much it won't be insignificant the amount will not be insignificant right and neither neither will it the zoning study it will not be insignificant either correct correct but anyway that I felt like that uh my proposal was a solid one and you know we talked about how much money we put in economic development yeah we did a 1712 million dollar bond it will be a 30 million dollar payback over 30 years and this council I said let's stop slow down quit spending the money I made a proposal that would have been a very solid solid position for us and he cannot develop it and you know I think we talked at the office retreat at other County Council we talked about industrial jobs at real jobs we've gotten in courthouse county it's maybe 40 to 50.

» i know we've gotten precious farms in here but you know they wanted to come here um wasn't so much from our our efforts or our huge huge uh investment we put first off i always give an alternative plan to spending money i always give a plan to to to utilize monies within to not have to go back to the citizen to take more money out of their pocketbook and i did that on on that issue and i bring it up because it was brought up as a point of issue tonight when we talk about economic development but uh my plan would have worked and uh basically we started doing what i suggested anyway i think way back on the uh 74 to me dollar um 17.2 million dollar uh bond that we issued am i right mr carpenter kind of slowed down with it we're trying to well i mean where we at where we we slowed down because

» we sold it all because we were successful what it says that we got rid of it did we not uh the bond yesterday yesterday we defeated the bond and who who was saying that all along right here anyway thank you mr chairman minister county council i've really enjoyed tonight i just don't agree with this thank you thank you other comments i call the question oh mr connell go ahead this is a more of a legal question for mr dubose so i think i heard earlier that a subset a geographic subset of a county was applying an impact fee are there any equal protection issues that come up that so say you have two properties that are exactly the same one of them's within the the smaller area in the county and one of them is not are you allowed to treat them differently unless you set up like a special purpose

» district or something like that impact fees you can target the area that is experiencing the growth that's why you have to get a consultant and do what they call a capital improvement plan which looks at the entire county and quantitates why you're going to do it where you're going to do it for what and for how much but yes counties do not they do enact impact fees that are not over the entire county and so it's state statute that lets you get around the equal protection issue or what well the equal protection issue more comes in to how you assess the impact fee within the area that is a very significant issue within the area you assess the fee okay one more hypothetical and i'm sorry lawyers live in hypotheticals but so if it was are we able to apply something like the bailey bill to just

» a portion of the county or that has to be applied all throughout due to i think the neighborhood legislation calls it to be throughout the county now you can delegate in the bailey bill the administration to political subdivisions so for instance you could delegate to the city of camden things in the city of camden yes you can do that you can delegate to other organizations as was alluded to previously by mr carpenter in the baby bill okay but it happened but you but it needs to be enacted county-wide all right thanks mr chairman i digress guys i'll i'll settle the rest of the legal getting the legal weeds it's lawyers excited i call the question uh with that and mr brasil absent let's move to vote on that motion all those in favor signify by raising your hand uh mr connell mr burns mr gard

» ner mr tucker mrs snodgrass those opposed is mr jones and it passes uh we move to the next item which is all business a boat ramp update mr. carpenter mr. members of council as you recall the council directed the staff to ensure the removal of the floating boat ramp at the Patriots Landing that contract has been awarded it will be removed the weekend March 9th through 11th those three days it'll be taken out of the river and we will store the ramp for future use we'll also be meeting the The other part of the guidance from the council was to begin the process of determining what could be done with that location, how it could be enhanced, improved, and even expanded. We will start meeting with engineers on the first of March on that process.

» That'll probably take into the summer as we would look to get community input and council input into what they would like to see at a boat landing. So we would anticipate that that would start in the first of March and it would end sometime probably in august with a report uh delivered to the council for council's consideration okay very good any other comments yeah ben are the pylons going to be significantly damaged in removal and we can't save those or do we know no the pilings will be cut off as close to ground level as we can get it okay but they will be removed but the ramp will save somewhere yes it will save the ramp yes sir great all right and i'll update excuse me i mean the floating dock floating down yeah yeah there you go uh i'll be touching base with russell on this one uh wit

» h that way that ends uh business we move to council briefings uh starting with mr tucker uh no report mr chairman mr gardner uh just one announcement that uh i've served here for in my 12th year and it will be my last i will not be seeking re-election this year thank you sir uh mr connell thank you mr chairman um it was mentioned earlier but all the wrestlers throughout kershaw county going into championship competition this upcoming weekend and afterwards. So let's pray for them to be injury-free and successful according to the effort that they put in. And two other things I wanted to mention. At our budget meetings we've had this past week and before, it's costing us about $200,000 at least. That was the number I heard in our meetings.

» It's costing us about $200,000 a year because people from outside of the county are coming in dumping their solid waste at our recycling centers and solid waste facilities but we've got to do something about that at some point in the future expect a motion that we already talked about it either to do a test run at one location on like a license place reader or maybe code enforcement being able to show up a little bit more but we're carrying all these additional loads of other people's garbage and and it's costing us significant money in addition I've received numerous calls lately about uh litter on our public roads I don't know if we need to increase the fine add community service to it or something but it's got to happen Mr.

» Templer just gave me an update today that they pulled another 14 or 15 bags of trash off of White Pond Road which uh really should just be a beautiful and well-kept area we actually just cleaned it up I think recently with the um with the Clean Community Commission and they organized usually two or so cleanups per year throughout the county and i think we got like 340 or 350 bags of trash at one of our last cleanups so i think we have to do something about it we got to do something with some teeth whether it's part-time uh code enforcement to make sure the laws we actually have are enforced or we got to address the issue with solid waste also thank you mr chairman thank you sir mr jones yes uh two couple of quick things here one on these recycling centers we just need to check their driver'

» s license if they are resident of kershaw county you know they can dump if they're not they can't um i want to thank paris who came here tonight with the recreation issue they were brave they got up here they spoke their mind they were uncomfortable many of them haven't done that before but uh you don't mess with a mom i'm very disappointed very disappointed in the way our rec department handled that it was an absolute tobacco and and i'm going to tell you something we need to focus on our leagues and we need we need some some enthusiasm with the leagues like we did when uh on the river park uh but somebody like gunner cato in charge of the leagues i think he would really turn it around you'd see uh some good things happening but i'm very disappointed and i hope i hope and i won't stay on t

» op of it that we're going to give in in a contract we're going to say what we're responsible for and what they're responsible for and we're going to absolutely give him more than one season when he doesn't have just a few days to get ready for that season and when when this other and it's not about this other company it could be anybody it wasn't their fault they were they were sought after by us from Columbia and and they're fine folks I have nothing against them but bottom line is it was handled totally wrong and that concerns me and now especially about baseball softball soccer all the above so uh mr carpenter i hope that you will look at that take some give us some deep thought on where we need to go with recreation how it needs to be handled because this can't continue to go on we can'

» t do business like this when the commissioners know nothing about it nobody else knows anything but and i'm not going to ask who made the decision that's not important the poor thing is that you jumped on it you got involved in it but i want you to jump back in it and give this man a fair chance and what we've got in that contract is not giving him a fair chance and he's been here many many years you know a lot of coaches have six months to to 10 months to organize and get ready and get their leagues ready we'll give them 10 days of whatever it is but anyway enough on that i went to a group meeting this morning or earlier today or mid-afternoon and a couple people came to and said jimmy would you please say something about east camden we feel like we've been left behind so i would like to m

» ake sure and i know this is no punt to mr snoggress he has fought he has talked about east camden but they have fallen behind we need to we need to just in our planning phase we're going with now that y'all got the ad hoc committee and we got comprehensive plan going please please let's make sure we're thinking about the whole county and east and i know that's what y'all want but that's not what always happens um and i got a couple other things too mr mr uh gardner gosh 12 years time flies when you're having fun i wish you the best but we still got a few months to do with each other but uh we've we've we've agreed on very little very little but it was never personal with me and it won't be the next 10 months and uh but i will stand my ground and state my facts and and be who i am and and i

» just have sometimes sometimes not all time differences of opinion and i have one other thing i want to say too one he announced he's not running i i am running i think i announced a year ago two years ago i am running again and uh look forward to it um but i want to bring something that came to my attention today just make make mention on one of my colleagues here on county council he and i don't agree on a lot either but i have a lot of respect for him ben canal is a good man i don't agree with his politics he's a he's a he's a he's not a republican or a democrat he's a christian man he's his family is a solid family in our community and to have any personal jabs at him or his family insults me as well that that does mean i'm gonna vote with him or agree with him you know sometimes we do b

» ut i just felt like it was important for me to say that you know i run on my merits not my good looks because if i ran on that i probably wouldn't have won but um and i think that's exactly what everybody should do is just run on your your merits and credentials I'm gonna continue to fight what I think is right I'm not going to I'm not gonna bow down I'm not gonna buckle under if I think I have a better idea I'm gonna bring it to the table and that's what I do so anyway Thank You mr. chairman members of County Council and that concludes my report thank you mr. Scott grass mr. chair members of council just there's a couple of brief notes on the on the recreation issue mr.

» Jones I echo some of the concerns that you have and i know um just kind of going back to the timeline i was in contact with vic carpenter uh for as early as february 3rd uh when that announcement came out and uh this is probably a good lesson for us as there's a balance here of policymakers and being managing operations and that that's what we that's kind of this this balance act that we have we set policy uh mr carpenter his staff implement that and of course we are the elected body so there are times where we have to uh call things into into question to make sure there's there's accountability um this this whole thing has really been unfortunate because i think unfortunately we've gotten ourselves probably in the middle of a philosophical battle um i've been around the soccer world a whil

» e and i know that everyone feels like their philosophy is the best like oh we we teach holistic soccer no we developed we developed a holistic player and i'm not i'm not jabbing at either one i'm just saying i'm just kind of stating where i feel like we've maybe have placed ourselves uh because you have two groups who are saying oh no we're the we're the better one and i want to go on record and saying for me it came down to realizing that we didn't follow our process it came down to realizing that we consulted our commission um at one point and then at the another point uh we didn't and and really it brought to light for me the importance of uh council members staying on top of our commissions and and making sure that those who were on our commission um when we when there's someone rolls o

» ff or when there's an expired term uh that we keep those up to date because those are those are our eyes and ears uh out into the community and and i do think this was an issue that should have came back before the commission uh but mr carpenter just thank you so much for uh walking with us through that i know it wasn't easy um and and i know that again there are times where we have to remember that we are the policy makers and and we need to recognize that staff does have a great deal of of variance to be able to make a decision based on what they feel like is uh best for for their program but at the same time i think in this situation um we didn't we didn't follow our process and uh hopefully the tse they they've they've been aware of the of the change and i'm hoping i am rooting for them

» so much to to go to go after it uh i'm thankful uh that we were able to to go in the direction that that it went in but i'm also i'm i'm rooting for them um but uh that concludes my remarks and uh thank you i'll close it out i want to say thank you to the parents and other people who were there to support what they thought was the right thing on the soccer issue but i want to back it out a little bit and and also remind us all up at this table that there's a sense of humility that uh we ain't perfect either and when something goes wrong and it did then we learned from it and quit kicking the man down unnecessarily the process is in back where it needs to be and we should thank the people who stepped up and said i made a mistake and i'm going to fix it and i have stronger words for the peopl

» e that continue to kick it down the road we're going to fix this and we we own the problem and we should thank vic and shane for stepping up and our recreation committee for doing that i think the problem will be resolved uh secondly uh airport commission back to the mundane there's a nominee for airport commission in your packets and maybe we'll put that before you at the next meeting which will be the 8th of March. Mr. Tuck, Mr. Carpenter, please. I'm frequently confused for Mr. Tucker. That's understandable. Yeah, it's the good looks. It's not a bad thing then, Mr. Carpenter. Mr. Chair, members of council, to just address the issue on the rec commission or the soccer program. Staff takes very seriously what has happened and is committed to doing the best thing.

» The rec Commission has given recommendations to the staff of what they would like to see happen which is what we were currently doing we are working with TSC on on the terms of the agreement that the recreation Commission was unanimous in in advising that we have a an agreement that there must be they had a chance to review the agreement proposed and again they were all supportive of it right now we're just working the details out I would say that at no point his staff put an arbitrary time of when the program has to start, when it has to stop. So staff has not set an arbitrary date and time that it has to start. So we are still working with TSC on those final details, but it is our expectation that we will be able to get those resolved post-haste.

» The kids will have time, therefore, with the date that they will set for when the program will start and when it will end. So they'll have enough time to put into it. That's my report. Council? Mr. Chairman, i have nothing can we have a motion to uh close make a motion to adjourn mr mr tucker a second from mr connell any discussion seeing there is none let's move to a vote all those in favor and it's unanimous we are going home