Full meeting transcript - February 28, 2023

» - Good evening, Kershaw County. This is the regularly scheduled meeting for February 28th, 2023, starting at 6:00 PM. I call this meeting to order. Our invocation today will be from Reverend Darlene Dillinger. Reverend Dillinger is making her way to the podium. She's from Camden First United Methodist Church and I'm really excited that she's here tonight. Thank you for being here, Reverend. - You're most welcome. Thank you to all of the council members. I'm humbled and honored by this opportunity. And just know that Camden First United Methodist Church. If there's anything that we can do for the council or this community, please don't hesitate to call on us. Thank you so much. Let us pray. Most holy and all wise God.

» Father, we first want to tell you thank you for life, health, and strength. Thank you for being our keeper, our way maker, our miracle worker, a light in the darkness. Thank you for being the God of hope and the God of faith. Now, Lord, we're not going to invoke your presence in this place because we know you're already here, God. So Lord, while you're here, we ask that you give wisdom, knowledge, and understanding and discernment to this great council. As they rightly divide the business of this Kershaw County community, Lord God, be with them and lead them, O God, in the direction that you will have them go. For Father, it is your will that they desire to do.

» Be with all of the families that are represented here, all the community organizers, businesses, and those who have invested interest in our community. Lord God, please continue to be with this county, this state, this nation, and this world, and the church universal, God. If there ever was a time that we needed you, Lord, we need you now. We need you to help us to run this race. We need you to help us to be about our Father's business in this time and this hour. And Lord, when you've done all that you need to do, we, your people, your children will be so careful to give your name to praise God. For you alone are worthy. It is in your son Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. - Amen. - Thank you, ma'am. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Right, we'll go into public comments.

» I'm gonna read the public comment rules that were just updated by this council. Public comment guidelines amended on January 24th, 2023. Public comment is an opportunity for members of the public to share information with council. It is not a time for debate or questions to be answered from council. It's a time for council to receive input. It's not a time for response. Offensive and inappropriate comments will not be tolerated and I will be the subjective voice of what is offensive or inappropriate. If a group would like to speak to council, we request that a spokesperson be selected. Public comment is a time to discuss issues. Public comment period is limited to five minutes maximum allowed per individual speaker.

» Public comments to council as an agenda item shall continue uninterrupted and be live streamed by audio and video where available until public comments agenda item is finished. - Mr. DuBose, how many people do we have for public comments tonight? - Madam Chair, I don't know if I've been provided these. - Oh, I'm sorry, it's right behind you. - Madam Chair, it appears that there are 10 people signed to speak in public comments. - Mr. DuBose, will you call each person up by name and also keep time and please give them a one minute warning. When they're at four minutes, just let them know. - The first speaker is Mary Brandenberger, subject sports complex. - Hi Mary. - I've been hearing a lot about the sports complex. I don't know very much about it. It concerns me a lot.

» I'm hearing $5 million is, they're asking for $5 million dedicated to the sports complex. I'd like to know more about where this money is coming from, what the sports complex is going to do for the city, or not necessarily the city, but the county, all the kids in the county. I do know that last year there was an incident where there was a baseball game scheduled, a little league game was scheduled. And all of a sudden they went to play at a field and they were run off the field and told that the travel league was taking that field for the day and they literally didn't get to play. That's not fair. I don't know all the specifics of that, but if we are going to have a sports complex, it needs to be mainly priority for the children of the city and county where they, you know, where it is.

» And, you know, they shouldn't be run off for a travel league. Travel league is nice. Yes, it brings money into the county. But, again, the money concerns me. There are a lot of people that are really suffering in this county. The people that have Camden Utilities have been hit really hard. And there are people that are just not able to make ends meet. They're going to churches to get food. They're begging for food from strangers. I know that this last tax hike that we got that was rammed through at the last minute before you took over, Katie, we have a lot in Peckwoods. And our taxes on our lot in Peckwoods went up 20%. That's a pretty steep hike. It's a vacant lot. It went from $500 to $600 a year. That's awfully steep. We don't need any more tax increases.

» We don't need to pay for a sports complex that a lot of people aren't going to get the chance to use. I just want to know more about the sports complex, it being more open, what it is, and who will have priority. I think the locals should have the priority. If they want to have a travel team, maybe a dedicated feel for that, but it should be for the people that are paying for it. - Thank you, Mary. - Next speaker is Heather Dykes, sports complex. - Hey, Heather. So I can stay on track. Building a $10 million recreation facility in Camden at the site of existing fields is at best short-sighted. We currently do not have the manpower budget for field improvements on fields that we have been left in disrepair for decades, much less field maintenance if they were good.

» There is not one outside recreation facility in this county that hosts games that is even close to being properly maintained for safety or proper play. I say this not meaning Shane and his staff are not capable. They are more than capable. I say this because you do not give them a big enough budget to hire enough qualified people to pay for turf management or properly repair dangerous existing fields. For our county leaders to even consider this just because someone is offering perceived free money is dangerous for everyone involved. I understand that this is not just for baseball or softball tournaments. Honestly, that's the best thing I've heard, because if you build it, they will not come, and here's why.

» Currently, there are tournaments being held over 45 weekends per year in multiple locations around the state, weather permitting. When I say around the state, I mean in every corner. Please do your research. I can name 36 facilities within a two and a half hour mile drive that we have. 17 of those are within an hour drive of Kershaw County. Let's look what's around our county first. We have Richland County, Kelly Mill Park, which is less than two miles from Elgin. It's a less than 10 year old facility with four field complex that sits empty over 40 weekends per year. Polo Road just went through renovations of infrastructure, new turf management plan, and field renovations starting this spring.

» Clemson Road, North Springs, a multiple field complex that has one new field and three other fields that are not being used outside of rec play. Blathwood Park is a 10 minute drive from Elgin, four fields that only host recreation leagues. Meadow Lake, 15 minutes down I-20 and has never hosted a tournament yet has several quality fields. This park struggles to even host rec leagues. Hartsville, Byerly Park. It's a 93 acre, eight softball, baseball, two soccer fields, two football fields, 400 meter, eight lane track with Neptune Island Water Park. This facility hosts tournaments but has 20 to 30 open dates per given year. Sunctor Patriots Park is probably one of the nicest parks that you'll see. They have all netting for quality viewing, covered seating, and great fields.

» Yet this place is like a ghost town on the weekends. Bobby Richardson Park, which is known more to people as Palmetto Park, has plenty of open dates like double digits. Dylan Park hasn't hosted an event in nearly 10 years, but has the capabilities. Freedom Florence has nine field complex that's newly renovated and stays booked. McLeod Park has open tournaments on the weekend. Florence soccer complex, six fields with four more coming this summer. They all have two other facilities in that area that host events. Let's talk Myrtle Beach. You have Market Commons. You have eight fields. Nine of these are synthetic. They're booked 50 weekends per year. Rip King Complex, synthetic turf, 300 events a year. You have South Strand and North Myrtle Beach totally booked each year for all those dates.

» You have Lexington, West Columbia, Pinegrave Road, Oak, Ballpark Road. All of these are booked 48 weekends per year. Irmo, you have Seven Oaks and Friars Gate, which is actually Richland County. They've just renovated those fields to have 96 fields and host at least 15 turnovers. You have Rock Hill, Cherry Park, which is one of the nicest parks. They have events in over 30 weekends per year, yet they're getting ready to build another complex in Rock Hill. This is not even all the fields within our area that I've mentioned. With that being said, there are hundreds of facilities for weekend play that are as nice or nicer than most of these. Go look at Lawrenceburg's new facility. It cost more than $10 million to build and has only hosted 10 events in three years.

» Eight Oaks and Georgetown, Shipyard Park, Moncks Corner, Newberry, Spartanburg, York, Fort Mill. I could go on all night. My point is if we're doing this for revenue for tournament play, then we're setting ourselves up for extreme disappointment. There are not enough directors, teams, and growth to support what the state already has. It's like building five more Dollar Generals in Lugolf. If that's not the goal and it's truly for the community, then I'm in favor of riding this ship. However, I'm still not for one complex at Woodward location. We could take the same amount of money and spread it throughout the entire country and greatly improve our recreational facilities in every community. There are needs for lights, irrigation, repair, grass installs, and proper maintenance.

» I'm so sorry. I have to cut you off because you're up five minutes. Thank you, though. Next speaker is Kevin Colt, again, Sports Complex. Hey, Kevin. Kind of like Heather, I have to write down my thoughts or I'll get long-winded. First of all, I appreciate y'all giving all of us the opportunity to speak here tonight. I also appreciate y'all's potential investment for recreation in Kershaw County. I'm a lifelong resident of this county, been here all my life except for when I went off to college. Me and my beautiful wife, she required that I say beautiful wife, participated in our younger years, my daughter, and most recently my son also have participated in the recreation department programs.

» I also proactively sought out an appointment last year to the Kershaw County Commission in order to help make this county's recreational experience as great as possible, not only for my kids but for all youth in this county. As I said, I currently have a nine-year-old son, Michael, very active. He likes to play any sport that has a ball. A lot of times he'll make up sports that don't have a ball. He just loves it. I've always promised him that I'm going to advocate for him and I'm going to provide the best opportunity for him to succeed in all forms and fashion and life, but especially recreation because he loves it so much. I'm also a big supporter of the CARE organization, which their mission is to advocate for the best recreational experience in Kershaw County.

» But I'm not only here to advocate, like I said, for my son, I'm going to be involved with youth and recreation in Kershaw County long after he's gone, graduated. I'm here to advocate for Elliot Kirkley, whose father is going to speak here later. Riggs Wilson, who at nine years old, I never would have had the courage to sit up here in front of y'all at that last meeting and say a speech. Advocating for Brant Tomlinson's kids, Gibbs and Baylor. Weezy Reeder, Eli Gwynn, I mean, it goes on and on. All kids in Kershaw County deserve the right to have a facility that they can be proud of. And I think this is a good start. One rumor that's gone around is it's going to be just a baseball complex, which is entirely not true.

» It's going to incorporate all types of recreational activities, baseball, softball, multipurpose, use fields for soccer, for football, ADA compliant playground that can be utilized for people that don't even play sports. And recently, I've noticed how big of a thing Frisbee golf is here in Kershaw County just being out of those fields a lot. Can it be used for travel sports? Yeah, absolutely. It seems like people are putting these as two mutually exclusive things, travel baseball and recreational baseball. Will those tournaments possibly impact Kershaw County financially? Yeah, absolutely. But is that all that can be done there? No. You know, I've heard that it's a sport that is only for rich people, that some people cannot afford it.

» I've coached my son's travel ball team or helped coach it for the last two years. And I'm proud to say that our families have had little to usually no economic investment. And that's because we've had generous support of donations and also sponsorships from people around here. 99% of them have also participated in recreational programs. So it's not mutually exclusive. They can coexist. I've done countless hours of research and spoken to a lot of places around the state with my job. They all say there's, you never get this type of partnership. It's a no brainer. So, you know, I'll close by saying recreation in Kershaw County is a lifeline. It's the bloodline of sports. When it comes to high schools, they're going to flourish. And Mr.

» Brazel said something in the last meeting talking about another subject. It was, I felt like it was kind of prophetic. He said, kids need to be kids. They need to kick dirt. They need to kick sand. So, you know, in closing, MUSC, the Health Service District of Kershaw County, they're building the sandbox. So, you know, you ought to fill it with sand. Appreciate your time. Thank you, Kevin. Next speaker is Charles Ives, Sports Complex. Hey, Charles. Madam Chair and council members, you know, I'm 76 years old in April and none of you folks were on county council when in 2004, Claude Campbell and I sold the West Watery Park to Kershaw County. We donated $1,100,000 on the sale of that property to the county. It's 100 acres and the county has probably used about 50 acres of it.

» There's probably 50, 45, 50 more acres left that they can use. It took the county probably from 2004, I may be mistaken in this time, but I'm going to say somewhere around 2016, 2017 to even pave the dirt road in there. When it first started building baseball fields, it didn't have bathrooms, had sewage there, but didn't have bathrooms. So, now we're talking about building another complex when you'd already had 100 acres that you can't even complete this complex. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense. We need to complete one project at a time and all these participations between health resource, MUSC, where's the city of Camden? They going to benefit. Have they made a contribution? Have they made a commitment? That's just things we need to think about. I appreciate your time.

» Thank you, Charles. Alan Judy, Sports Complex. Hey, Alan. I'm going to read this because I can get long winded and I do repeat things a lot, but I'm going to start out telling everybody good evening, Madam Chair, thank you for the opportunity. Commission, thank you. My name's Alan Judy, and I'm a member of the Kershaw County Recreation Commission Department. I'm here this evening to talk about the county recreation project being proposed. I had no idea this being proposed to the council, and in my opinion, this is a shame at this point in time because it was not fully talked about or brought to the council. First of all, I want to say that this county does need major improvements in all areas of recreation, and I'm not opposed to making improvements or building from the ground up.

» I also support any business or individual that would like to donate funding to the county and have it earmarked for recreation. I feel the county council needs to provide letters of guarantee that the funding being donated would be used for the apartment specified by the donator, and in this case, it would be the project with the amount of funds being donated for the recreation commission. I think we would need to get an architect to design the project with the amount of funds being donated on hand and get bids on all that is being requested. I'm not saying this county is at a minimum of about 40 years behind every other county in this state, and things must be done to improve recreation. This current proposal is what I'm calling putting lipstick on a pig.

» And by that I mean it all sounds good and it all looks good, but just like when the lipstick wears off a pig is still a pig. And when you go out there and you put all this money into recreation and things are not built according to specs, have proper drainage, within two years we might as well just go out there and level a cow pasture and put ball field, soccer field, football field, whatever you want to call it on that because it will not be nothing but a mud pie. You won't be able to play any ball. Everything will be drowned and we just need to do better. We as a county should do better. I have no dog in this fight. I have no grandchildren, no children, nobody. I'm here to fight for all other children in this county.

» I would like for this council to take a look at everything and put this on hold until there. Bids can be taken for complex being so stated here as well as for KC West. That's the West water reball park and Larry Doby fields. And let's find out what it would cost to get those facilities up to par, get them running before we try to bulldoze and totally rebuild another park. Let's complete, like he said prior to me, let's complete a project before we start two or three others, bring everything up to a standard. I like that. I got a little bit ahead of myself here. This county is, I've made a phone call today to another county and contacted the director of that county recreation commission.

» I was informed by that county director that anybody on this county council, this county council or the recreation committee commission that wants to go down to their county. One minute. To their facilities and look at everything. They will walk us through every aspect of what needs to be done, how it's to be done, what to look for and what not to look for. I've already been confronted by people and said, well, this project has a contingency attached to it. Well, a contingency is not going to put in a drainage system. Not when you're talking about an area that's going to require such a massive drainage system. The population, the 2023 census population of the county I just called and talked to is 64,379 people. Kershaw County is 66,516 people. 2,200 people difference.

» They have massive facilities and we have nothing. We're doing something wrong. We need to take a better look at what we're doing. And how to spend money. Thank you. Thank you, Alan. David Dabney, Sports Complex. Hey, David. Thank you for the opportunity to get up and speak in front of you guys today. When this started to come online and started to hear about this, I got really enthusiastic about it. And I'll tell you why. About 35 years ago I played at Woodward Park. And nothing's changed since then other than maybe a dugout got a new roof or something like that. Maybe a light bulb got replaced or something. Posted on Facebook and I had a gentleman comment, Mr. Price, that it hadn't changed in 65 years. He can attest to that.

» So I've done my due diligence and my research and things like that. And I've called some of these organizations and talked to the people that actually schedule these tournaments. Ms. Dykes brought up a great point. And most of these parks that she was saying were vacant and everything else were in Richland County. The vast majority of them there. According to Jason Gross, the USSSA State Director, that they do not like to go to Richland County because of the way they maintain and keep the fields. So they don't have a good working relationship. They have a good working relationship with Lexington County. I talked with Lexington County, Ms. Carrie Lyons. She's over Pine Grove Road and Oak Grove. Between those two facilities, they have 102 tournaments scheduled this year.

» That does not include just baseball. That's softball, fast pitch, and slow pitch. Now I've coached for 22 years. I've been coaching travel ball for about 11 years. I don't currently have a team right now. I'm actually currently signed up as an umpire. I'm going to take my beating that way, I guess now. But we were always able to provide fundraisers and we did it ourselves. The kids did it. The parents helped them. Whether it was selling doughnuts or raffling off a grill. That's the way we did it last time. We were able to generate enough money to pay for the vast majority of our uniforms and our tournament fees. Jason Gross, like I said, is the State Director for USSSA. And I talked to him personally.

» And he said that he would absolutely be on board with hosting a tournament at least once a month in Kershaw County. He said that would generate about 20 to 25 teams per weekend. I asked him, I said, well, 20 to 25 teams is not a very large tournament. And he said, no, it's not. He would still have tournaments coinciding with that in Lexington. I said, well, if you did one a quarter for a year. He said, yes. He said, I would be most interested in doing that. And I would make it our exclusive tournament for that weekend, which would bring 40 to 45 teams. And basically, based upon simple math, Clemson University did a study on a park up in Greenville. Greenville is a lot larger area than us. And they dumbed it down and they made it to where I could read it. And this was done in 2012.

» Now, participation hadn't gone down, but the cost of everything has. They said that each player represented about 3.34 people that traveled with them. They're neither spectators or coaches. And each person spent $72 approximately. And you do the math and just four tournaments alone in Kershaw County would generate, you know, half a million dollars in revenue. That's not profits to the recreational leagues or anything like that. But that's revenue to the surrounding communities. A new study that was just presented by Todd Miller in the upstate as an economic development as an impact to... One minute, Mr. Babney. Turner's real. They said that they... That number has gone up to about $93 a perk. Now, this is just baseball. And that's about the only thing I can speak of.

» I have seen softball tournaments. Okay? They're one-day tournaments. Participation there is great as well. But you probably get about 75% participation there compared to a baseball tournament. But you've got soccer fields. You've got football fields. Lacrosse is something that's becoming huge in our area, in the Midlands. And they do not have any Midlands place to go do that. Perfect Game is another baseball organization that has no representation in the Midlands. I've also talked with Top Gun, who does baseball and softball. They're coastal director. They have no Midlands director because, actually, Jason Gross kind of pushed them out of there with the USSSA. Would also be interested in holding tournaments here. So, that's just four or five weekends out of the year.

» You've got 48 left to fill it up. David, I'm so sorry. You're at five minutes. Okay. Well, I appreciate it. I can talk forever. But I appreciate y'all giving me the time to speak in front of you. Thank you. Next speaker is Hank Kerfoot, Sports Complex. Hey, Hank. Good evening, Madam Chair. Council, thank you for having this opportunity to afford to all of us. I'm a 23-year Kershaw County resident. My children have come and gone. So, their activities on the sports fields in this county are not a concern of mine. But our county is growing. And I think we deserve nice things. And I think this is a vision of something nice that attracts people to our county. But I do support the thought that we do have a lot here that's not being maintained properly currently. And I think that's a problem.

» I get leery when my church wants to add things on to the church. And I look around and we're not taking care of what we have. And I believe that there's some of that going on here. I fully support a project like this. If it's for tourism, I think you need to be looking bigger, as you've heard. I mean, I think you need more facilities. So, if this is -- I don't know enough about it to know. But if this is the beginning and there's more to follow after this to really draw those types of tournaments in here, you know, I think that's great. But if it's not, build it for our kids and build it for this community, but take care of it and take care of what you have. I think that's the main thing. And just, you know, I see so many things get built. And this is my industry. This is what I do.

» I see so many things get built, some of them that I've built in this county. And I went and looked at them today. And they're not in good shape. They're not something you want to hang your hat on. And, you know, just so you know, when you all are discussing this and you're moving forward and planning projects like this, to properly maintain 10 acres of athletic fields, you're talking about $70,000 a year. Okay. And that's, that's weed control mowing fertilizer. That's not taking care of the parking lots. That's not really your water bill. That's the, that's the on the ground maintenance for that.

» So think about all the, what you do spend on that right now within the county and the projects or in the facilities that we do have and maintain and try to apply that to them and try to apply it to anything you do moving forward. That if you, if you want to make it a showcase either for us and our children in this community, or if you want to expand that and to bringing people in the, the maintenance factor of that, I think is something that you really need to consider. Thank you very much for this opportunity. Thank you, Hank. Hank, can you tell me one more time the square footage on that maintenance figure? Your 10 acre facility that you're proposing. I think that that's 10 acres of turf and that, that roughly what you've proposed or what I've seen in this proposal.

» You're talking about $70,000 a year for, for a good maintenance program. That's not every whistle and bell, but it's pretty solid too. Thank you. Matthew Hutchinson. Hey, Matt. As you can see from my hat, I'm a fan of baseball, the greatest baseball team to ever. Grace the field, St. Louis Cardinals. But Anheuser-Busch owned the stadium they played in. Wrigley owned Wrigley Field at one time. All private organizations own these fields that make money. If these baseball fields are such a great idea, going to make so much money, then I question why a private entity hasn't stepped up and built them yet. Probably because it's not a good investment or they want to spend somebody else's money to do it, which pro teams do at times.

» I struggled a lot on what I was going to say today because I don't like bragging on myself. I don't like bragging on myself. I don't like, and it's going to break a cardinal rule of first responders. While I was a full-time firefighter at Camden Fire Department, I was a part-time firefighter for Lugov Fire Department. I also worked part-time for Kershaw County EMS. Now, that wasn't because I love seeing blood and guts and gore all the time. It was because I had to pay my bills. My starting salary at Camden Fire Department was $27,000 a year. This is 2018. In my time, I've seen some of our citizens in their worst days, right? I want to ask a question here. How many people in this room have held a burnt child in their arms? I've had to do it twice, okay, in Kershaw County.

» How many people have had their radio cut out on them in the middle of a burning building? So the radios that we're using now are going to go out of date in 2027. It's a little over, I'm guessing, it's a little over $2 million to get the whole thing replaced. We have the ARPA money to spend on it. We can do that easily. I want to say that spending money like this, this $5 million of ARPA money, which I don't agree on us taking the ARPA money in the first place, on baseball, when we have facilities that aren't even finished yet. Westwater Reed, Larry Doby, to name two of them. We have 15 parks in this county. Nine of them have baseball and softball fields. That has a grand total of 31 baseball and softball fields in Kershaw County.

» I was at the goal setting meeting this weekend, and I know nobody else in here except Jeff was there because the place was empty. It was just us two nerds coming in here to see what's going on. It seemed to me overwhelmingly the number one need in this county is to fund EMS. Station one, which is right down on Church Street, right down here, is a two-room building in a little Quonset hut, cinder blocks, that's covered in mildew, mold. They do their best to keep it up. When it rains, the floors seep water. Just this morning, I worked with EMS1 on the interstate. When I got on 20, there was a horrible wreck where a woman broke her femur in multiple places. I was the first medical professional on the scene as I was going to work.

» And I was thinking about how those folks were sleeping in that nasty building, get woken up at 6:00 in the morning to respond to the interstate, and then they're going to go back to that cramped, dingy building to write the reports before they go home to their families. EMS station two was abandoned two years ago, demolished a year ago. Nobody has ever said a word to the county council about that as far as I can tell. They have a million dollars on hand to build the building there, but they can't build on the site due to line of sight issues, and it was discussed during the meetings, and I talked about it with Mr. Tucker. So they need a piece of land to build on. Then they need to build a building. They need a new building for EMS1. They need headquarters.

» All this stuff that you heard Director Edge talk about. We have all these projects already started, this parks and rec, and I hear a lot about economic development and whatnot. You all know my personal feelings on that. I don't think the government should be in the economic development business. I don't think it should be in the baseball business. I think you need to take care of the first responders in this county. Make sure that they have a livable place to live, to sleep while they're watching over your families. Make sure they have the proper radios and the proper equipment to take care of you. We have, what, five stations now. We need eight. If they're a short person, one person a day, they'll shut down to four stations. That's pretty much it.

» I think the priorities were set this weekend. I liked what I heard and from what I saw of everybody putting their stickers on the papers up there on the wall. I'm interested to see what the full results are. Hopefully we have our priorities straight with our first responders up at the top. Rebuilding Woodward Field in the middle of downtown Camden should be at the bottom in my opinion. If the health service district really wanted to help the people out of Kershaw County, they could build a clinic up in Bethune. If USC wanted to give $3 million, they could pay off all the medical debt for the people of Kershaw County.

» That would be awesome for everybody in county, right? We need transportation for people to get to and from their medical appointments, especially from where I live in Cassett. Thank you very much. Thank you, Matt. Tom Webb III. Hey, Tom. You got my attention. How much can we forget and still be free? How much can we not know and still be alive? I won't inflict this who killed Justice Scalia on anybody for another year. He died in February 2016, apparently assassinated and found dead with a pillow on his face, no autopsy. And I won't say any more about that other than it looks like an assassination. It's a dangerous world. It really is. And if you want to do something for children, there are some things you could do, in my humble opinion.

» This thing about playing ball, recreation and bringing in money. When I was a youngster, I had some friends that used to like to play ball. I didn't care for it. I would watch them sometimes. They would find a vacant lot or an old empty field and they would organize it themselves. No uniforms, no bleachers. But they had fun. They went out and got their exercise. What's different about kids these days that they can't do that? Are they so special? If you want to do something for young people these days, you might look at my crystal ball, which shows me some rather bleak aspects of the future. We're probably closer to a nuclear war right now than we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And there are other aspects of war and famine that are very close to us.

» If you don't think it can happen here, what's the matter with you? You're not thinking. It has happened here before. We've got the revolution. We're all about that recently. You know, the bones they found. The Revolutionary War right here on this soil. War between the states. The poet laureate of the South starved to death over in Columbia. Sherman burned Columbia. There was war right here. So if you really wanted to do something for the children, besides teaching them to seek after distractions, I think it might have been better if they never invented a basketball or a baseball or a football. Just distractions. There are important things to do. We're just going to live the lives of distraction. Build a great, huge facility. I'm in favor of this.

» But build it to store grain like the Egyptians did back when they had famine. And everybody flocked to Egypt for grain. Joseph, the old guy who had the suit of many colors. He went there. He got to be powerful. He sold them to slavery, but he got out of it. He was a good slave. He became important. And he looked out for his family. They came to Egypt to get something to eat. My inclination is that something like that could happen right here. That's what it looks like in my crystal ball. That gets input from all kinds of different sources. I listen to all kinds of things. And some of it is way far out. I know. But if you don't think war can happen, it has happened again and again and again. There has been famine. There has been cannibalism in various places.

» The Bible has many aspects of that war and famine and cannibalism. So build a big facility, store it with grain. County ought to be able to come up with some money. I mean, instead of spending it on a ball field for people to practice distractions, do something for the children that matters. Keep them alive when things really get bad. Spend some money on a facility. Fill it up with corn and beans and rice. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. Jeff Maddox. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Katie. Good to see you guys. I got notes tonight. I don't want to miss it. How in the world has mankind survived throughout millions of years without organized state-sponsored recreation? It's amazing and strange indeed.

» It's a great day for baseball, basketball, badminton, skateboarding, archery, fishing, and even watching paint dry if you choose. It's a great day for riding a bike or riding the river. It's a great day to do what you want to do. It's a great day to build a fort or play tag or who here remembers kick the can. Recreation is not a right. You have no right to recreation or recreation facilities. If I was a betting man, of which I'm not, but if I were, I would bet this sudden push for baseball fields is not as sudden as some would have us believe. I find it interesting that CARES suddenly forms in the spring or summer of 2022, not even one year ago. I think that it's an interesting coincidence when just a couple of months later, Mr.

» Kirkland comes to council to announce and introduce the CARES cult. In another interesting coincidence, CARES had a plan just about like Mr. Ogden is now supporting as if the hospital board came up with this idea completely separate from CARES and their comrades. How many coincidences do you need to see before it becomes self-evidence that the fix is in? Where or where is any of this proof that this scam will do anything that these proponents claim? Show us their receipts. They make claims of economic development and tax revenue as if thousands of traveling baseball fans will descend on Camden every weekend to spend money at fast food restaurants, gas stations, and a couple of nights in a hotel. I don't think so. Show me the receipts.

» They claim that this is for kids, but when you look at this travel baseball fad, you find it leaves out the majority of the youth population. By moving forward with this plan, Kershaw County will be picking winners and losers, and the losers are the majority of Kershaw County residents, while the small group of rich will benefit at their expense. There's a quote that I think is relevant this day and time that was from a historian, Alexander Teitler, back in the mid-1700s. And I quote, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers that it can vote itself largest out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits.

» With the result, the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing. Always to be followed by a dictatorship and then a monarchy. I ask you, what part of the timeline are we on now? With all these dictates from above, and all these largest, these community grants, and these mandates, and all that. And the Council of Governments planning our economies. What are we teaching our children? Are we teaching them that government provides everything to everyone? Are we teaching them to beg at the altar of the god of state? Are parents using their kids as political tools to sway public opinion? Where are the cornholers and the hula hoopers special interest groups? Why baseball? What is good for one may not be good for another. But this is one size fits all plan.

» Government is more than happy for us to be dependent on them. The more dependent, the better. I find myself ashamed of my fellow Americans who instead of taking personal responsibility, they now beg at the altar of the state for everything. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. That concludes our speakers, Madam Chair. Thank you to everyone that signed up and spoke to us tonight. Let me get my agenda. Right. Adoption of tonight's agenda. Is there a motion to adopt tonight's agenda? So moved. Second. Mr. Tomlinson? Motion. Mr. Tucker? Second. And all in favor of adopting the agenda? Mr. Tomlinson, Mr. Jones, myself, Mr. Shoemaker, and Mr. Tucker. And please note that Mr. Brazel is not here. No proclamations tonight. So we're up to public presentations.

» The first public presentation will be the Health Care Service District of Kershaw County by Chairman Daryl Ogburn. Hi, Daryl. Welcome back. Daryl, can you -- Okay, there you go. I'm sorry. Is that better? I don't have a lot to add over and above what I told you all two weeks ago. But I did want to come back and offer to answer any questions you might have. A couple of points, though. I just want to tell you that, in my opinion, I believe the Health District wants to couple this project at Woodward Park, the expansion and the upgrade. With the indoor recreation project in West Watery, we believe that that gives us balance in our community. It provides our children and us recreational opportunities and a lot of things that come along with it. You drew a circle around both of those places.

» You'd probably encompass well over half the citizens of our community. I appreciate the comments that you all made at our last meeting. It was refreshing to hear some folks talking about looking through the windshield rather than looking in the rearview mirror. You've heard some criticism today of the situation of our complexes now and of our programs. That criticism is not directed to five of you because you're new. So that was unfair criticism, I felt like. We just need to do better. And we need to do better together. Taking Woodward Park, the Aquatic Center, Scott Park, and adding 33 acres to that complex and upgrading it would mean approximately a 100-acre project here in Kershaw and Camden that could be used for all of our children. The economic development part of it is not my gig.

» I just want to talk about that a little bit because I've heard it talked. What we want to do is provide stuff for our children here in our community. Two other things. There will be obstacles that come along. And I think our board is committed to work through those obstacles. And I don't believe our board is in the mood to walk away from this project. We think it's worthwhile. We think our county council should give it careful consideration and work with us to move this project down the way. With that, I will finish my comments. And I will be happy to answer any questions anybody may have. Council, any? I have two questions. Mr. Shoemake, you have the floor. Mr. Ogerman, thank you for coming again. Just two kind of questions to clarify. You talked about doing some additional facilities.

» And I just want to be clear and make sure I understand. That is something that you all are doing on your initiative, on your dime, correct? The additional facility. Yes. Yes, it has nothing to do with the county council. And so this would be an addition. In addition to what you're doing on one side of the river, this would be an additional piece. But the Health Services District with MUSC support would be completely covering sort of what I would call the Lugolf side of this project. Exactly. And the second question I have is the $5 million that you have. What you're talking about and what I understand this is, for lack of a better word, is an agreement to agree. In other words, we've heard conversations today about things that could come up, catastrophic things.

» As I understand it, the Health Services District is not asking us to write a check today, nor are you asking or volunteering to write a check today. What you're asking for is a vote that we come to a partnership to go forward to develop a plan. And if that plan falls apart, it falls apart. But nobody's writing checks with this vote or the vote that we may have in the future. Is that correct? Mr. Shubank, if I wrote you a check today for $5 million, your bank would laugh at you tomorrow if you took it in there. No. Just as you said, we're agreeing to agree. And to continue the conversation, to discuss. This project came out, I believe it was the Alliance study that was done in regard to Woodward Park.

» We looked at some numbers on that sheet and felt like there were some places in there that were inflated and maybe some pieces in there that could be done cheaper. And we settled on $10 million for the project. We believe that's probably close. We hope it's close. So that's why when MUSC agreed to partner with us to do some outdoor recreation projects, we went to them and they said, we will give you $3 million for this project. And our health district agreed to put up $2 million of our money to match with the county. All I'm asking you to do is to continue to consider it, continue to debate, and see if we can't work out something that's good for our community. Thank you. Those are my questions. Thank you. Mr. Guns, do you have the floor? I do. Mr. Auburn, good afternoon. Good afternoon.

» Sorry, I missed your presentation last Tuesday. I think I was cruising. Yep. You said that an indoor facility in Lugov, is that the YMCA? That is an indoor facility that the health district is considering constructing, and we would lease it to a third party to operate. Which would be? Right now we're talking to the YMCA. Thank you. I called, I had a message sent to the health district's office and also MBSC, and I asked if they could show me a copy of the commitment letter. And of course there is no commitment letter yet. Is that true? I haven't received it yet, but when the president of the MUSC tells me he'll give me $3 million, I think he'll do it. But is the strings that are attached is $3 million? No, sir. There are no strings attached to it. Well, let me ask you a question.

» Yes, sir. Okay, go ahead. No, I'm sorry. I'm serious. Go ahead. No strings attached to it? Will we get this $5 million if we don't agree to do the Woodward Fill? No, sir. No, sir. But there's no strings attached? I wouldn't call that a string. I thought, I'd call that a fact. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. You know, where I, guys, this is just where I have a problem with this. I'm all about finishing what we've started. And we've got the Larry Dovey's field over there. It is really a nice field. I rode by there and looked at it again today. And I'm just amazed at how big it is and how much is, you know, how much they put into that. And then we've got the West complex. And it would take $1.9 million to complete the West complex. Let me say this. I am for recreation. I am for Woodward Field.

» But you and I differ on this. And I think you know that. And, you know, so you are the spokesperson for MUSC. I wouldn't say that. I'm just chairman of the health district. Okay. And MUSC manages our hospital forum. Right. And I asked the president of the medical university to make a commitment and he did. with those, well, with the fact of the strings attached. It has to be for this specific program. Outdoor recreation. But we have, we have two that are uncompleted. They're not. Mr. Chairman, I, I mean, Mr. Jones, I am not responsible for projects that y'all didn't complete. Right. Well, you made that clear about the one sitting up here looking in the rear view mirror. Okay. I have been here quite a while. But one thing I've always ran on, I've always ran on finishing what we can start.

» That's why I did not support the Veterans Park. We should have taken that money and put it into recreation. And I, I fought that battle and I said that time and time again. Um, we want the same thing, folks. We just don't agree on the, the, the, the, the, I guess I'm saying we don't, I just don't agree with the delivery or the way to get there. I just don't think that we should be putting 10 million into Woodward Field where we've got incomplete projects. Now I'm all for putting money into Woodward Field. And let me just say this about recreation. Recreation is going to move forward regardless of what is said here tonight. It's going to move forward. It may not be in my direction. It may not be in your direction, but I want to say one thing too.

» And I say that because I want to make myself perfectly clear that I appreciate what everybody has put into it. You yourself, I appreciate what you've done. I appreciate what everybody over here has done with the CARES group. I appreciate the citizens who come here who don't support it, but I just cannot vote and support something that, uh, we're going to start a new multimillion dollar complex. And yet we've got two fields that are very nice fields that are incomplete. And, um, I think what makes me scratch my head a little bit. Maybe you can help me with this. Is that, um, a council member who's no here, I call his name Ben Connell. He had made a, he was going to make a motion, put something on the agenda for this same project, but it was 14 and a half to $15 million.

» And of course we came back, of course last week you came in with your presentation. I think you're asking for $10 million. Where did the other 5 million go? I have no idea. I don't know anything about that. Mr. Jones, the Alliance project or the, not the project, but their assessment was that it would be $15 million. So I think that's where that is coming from. Okay. It was 14 and a half or 15. I'm not sure which one. Thank you for clearing that, Madam Chair. Well. Mr. Jones, I would like to, to, to elaborate on one statement. You said, you said that we were going to be creating a new project. Woodward field and the aquatic center and, and, uh, uh, Scott park is, is, is an old project. Some of it city owned, some of it county owned.

» Uh, our goal is to incorporate all three of those parks with the new acquisition and make one big park. Well, Larry Dobie's been here for a while. Not as long as Woodward. And the West complex has been here for a while. And I think it was, I think it was pretty much completed in 2006. Uh, right before I got elected on in 2007, you know, I just can't see us. I just can't see us starting a new complex. And it is starting a new complex because they're, they're going to have to go out there. It's going to be like ground zero. You got to have, you got to have a drainage issue. You got drainage issue out there. You need to look at that. You need to look at irrigation. You need to look at buying the remainder part of the land.

» And we already own the land totally as one person said here earlier this evening. I, Mr. Jones, I don't want to try to pick out what color the bathrooms are going to be painted. I'm here today to talk about a broad conversation with $5 million coming from the health districts in MUSC to upgrade and expand Woodward Park. It's pure and simple. And this council at some point, I think we'll address that. And so that's all I, I don't know what else to say. Well, you gave us 90 days. Is that firm? Is that firm 90 days? I have to go back to the camp to the board. I can't say where it's firm or not. I'm one of nine. Yes, sir. Now your motion, I noticed that the motion that y'all passed at health resources said nothing about Woodward Field.

» I think it was, it was specific, it was specific enough to, to know that it's Woodward Field. I think that's, that's what, that's what we, that's what we passed. Okay. Well, our money is for Woodward Field. But it's, but it wasn't in the motion. I, I, I read it. I mean, maybe. Okay. Well, you know, we can disagree about that. Um, yes. I get it right back. Darryl. Um, what's the timeframe? This is. I don't have a timeframe. Okay. I know that, I know about the, you've asked for 90 days for us to. We respectfully ask you all for a 90 days window here to tell us, are you interested? Are you interested in it? You want to continue this conference? Do you want to do this project with us? And, and if you don't want to do it with us, then say no, we don't, we're not interested in it.

» And we'll, we'll turn our attention somewhere else. But your board hasn't determined a timeframe. If we are, if this body does determine they're interested, you know, when. For the build out and all those sorts of things. Yes sir. Uh, and our money would be available at any time. Okay. Uh, and of course the county could do what the county needs to do in regard to its money. But our money would be there available at any time. Okay. Okay. Um, Chair, that kind of question. Yes. Mr. Tomlinson. So basically what you're saying, Mr. Augman, and thank you again for presenting. Um, this is two, two meetings in a row. You're here. Thank you. Come on a regular. Um, so we, you're that 5 million is, is a, you know, promise.

» And it's a, it's a good opportunity for us to invest in ourselves and the county that we don't have to raise taxpayer funds. However, this is 90 days of all we're doing is saying, Hey, we potentially have, we promise 5 million to match it and don't have to spend it until we determine the timeline for the project. That's exactly right. If I may. Mr. Brad. I want to look at this. I want to look at this project from a different view. Um, you're pretty good at what you do. I don't know about that. I've got a proposal. Okay. Um, see if you can raise 6 million, allocate a million towards the other complexes that Mr. Jones has pointed out that are incomplete. Let's match that for a $12 million complete recreation facility revamp that would include Wilbur Park.

» Well, that that's, uh, worthy of discussion, I suppose. Um, I won't say no because I, I don't have the authority to say no. Um, just one of, of nine, as I've said, um, I'll be happy to take that back to our board. Um, from all the comments that I heard, um, today, um, the major concern, nobody's against the, or at least very few people are against, um, recreation in Kershaw County. Um, and I agree with the fact that we should finish what, what projects we have. Wilbur field is the oldest field, um, in the community. But let, if we're going to do it, let's do it right. That's kind of my theory on getting it done. Uh, checking the box, making sure everything's done correctly. No tax increases. Um, and then we need to consider maintenance costs.

» Um, once we consider maintenance costs, we can, we can talk about options to make sure that that's covered and done correctly. And again, no, no tax increases. Uh, let me make sure I understand what your request is or your suggestion is. Mr. Vaisal, you saying that the district will ante up another million dollars, uh, from some funds that you will use that money to upgrade some of the other parks. Is that what you're talking about? Correct. Okay. And we, we could potentially also match it. Well, I'll, I'll be more than happy to ask my board. We'd meet again. The first, um, first Monday, second, second Monday, uh, in, in, uh, March. So just around the corner. I think, I think that would close every conversation that I heard today. We, we would take care of, of, of Lugolf.

» We'd take care of Camden. We would take care of old facilities. We would take care of, well, I guess what was not a new facility, but it would take care of, of that project as well. And we could get recreation up the bar and then we could have further discussions about personnel, how to manage, how to improve, how to maintain. Um, and that's, that's not my job. That's, that's not my purview. My purview is a 30,000 foot view of the situation and funding it. Well, Mr. Vaisal, I think you've, you've hit on exactly what I've been trying to communicate all along is let's have a conversation about how we move forward and not look through the rear view mirror, look through the wet, the windshield. And I think you've made a good suggestion.

» I can't say yes or no whether the, the district will do that. But I'll be more than happy to present it to them. And, and I will advocate for it. Okay. Thank you, sir. If I may. Mr. Grimes. I want to speak on that one sec. Mr. Templer. How much would it cost to complete the west complex? Uh, we have two outstanding projects there. So you're looking at, I'd say around $1.9 million with contingency. So, I like what you did. I just don't think it's enough money. Open the suggestions. Yeah. Uh, what about Larry Dobie's? Larry Dobie is not as definitive because we have, AC West for example, we have a concessions restroom project and then we have a paving project. So that was very defined. Um, Larry Dobie is a little more nebulous if you will.

» We would have to make a, an assessment out there to see exactly what is needed. Well, I think we need to know. I think. Mr. Jones. Any more questions for Daryl? No, I don't have. Thank you, Mr. Ogwin. Okay. Mr. Tucker. Jones. Good evening, Mr. Chairman. How are you? I'm doing, Sammy. How are you? Doing fine. Doing fine. I've listened to, um, public comments that were made and, um, a lot of people I trust spoke tonight and a lot of people that I helped raise, but I won't call their names. Right, Kevin Culp? Um, I say that, um, because it's got my wheels turning up here and there was some, good, valid points. So my question to you is similar on the line of what Councilman Brazel asked.

» Um, is there any other partners out there that you can think of or drum up because, um, that would be able to kick money in? Because in order to do this project and to make sure that everybody is, um, going to be taken care of, it's probably going to be more of the tune of about 18 million because you're going to need about two and a half, three to do the other parts. And I know you don't have a, a dog in that fight, but, and then I'm getting the number back. Even in my folder that I have right here tonight from, um, the rec department, this facility that has been proposed is almost 15 million. Um, no, I don't know of any other partners out there that would be willing to give us any money. Okay.

» Um, because I think before we can head down this road, um, there's two things that has to be, um, looked into and one is cost and the other one is who's paying. Um, you know, we don't go out and shop and buy brand new cars cause we like them. We try to, um, cause we can afford them. So they won't take them back. And what I don't want to happen is let's say this body decides that they're going to put up to 5 million. I don't know where it's at right now. Cause there's a lot of different feelings up here. And then the health district and, uh, MUSC puts up their money, which is 10 and it's 14 million to bill. Then we're doing what we've been doing all since I've been on council and my 22 years of coaching and recreation. We're piecemealing. And I don't want to do that.

» I most definitely don't want to do that. Um, I can't make recreation perfect in Kershaw County. No, sir. None of us can, but we, we can stop piecemealing. I agree. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. If I may. Yes, Mr. Brazel. Um, to Mr. Tucker's point, this is something that we received on October 4th, 2022. It's a Woodward park master plan that was put together by ADC engineering. It's a preliminary cost estimate for the, for the work. It's, it's a lot of round numbers. And the round number is actually $12,183,410. It has a 15% contingency clause and a 4% escalation clause that brings that number to four and a half million. So actually it's, it's about a $12 million project. And I think what we were willing to do is allocate some funds and see if we can build it for the allocated amount.

» And I think that's one of those, you have to kind of wait and see and, and work through as, as you go. Um, if, if the funds are allocated, if we have funds that, that are allocated from you, sir, and we allocate funds, uh, from, from ARPA, then we can, at that point, we can, we can get a hard quote from four or five different contractors. And we can then vote yes or no, we can't, we can't make that decision tonight with limited information. Well, Councilman Brazel, to your point, that was something that was pretty, that document you're looking at was given to us, or at least given to me in the budget workshop over this last week when Brett presented.

» And when I looked at that, I also noticed that I believe they're estimating about $400 a square foot to build concessions and also paving walkways, which could not be paved. So I think, to your point, I think there's other things in there is, it's a, and again, I go back to, we're agreeing to agree. If, if we agreed with the five million, you match the five, we could still have these future discussions about potential more partners and potential more. It, the project doesn't, the project only begins with that vote. Is that correct? Well, sir, what, what I'm, and we can't work these details out here. These are all down in the, in the weeds. And what I'm asking you to do is agree to agree and, and move forward. Uh, the detractors of this, this program won't go away.

» They're going to be here as detractors for whatever their reason is. Uh, we're, we're honest when we say we want to have a first class outdoor facility in our county. And we want to have a first class indoor facility in our county. And that I think fits our mission of being, of supporting health in this, in this county. And that's what we're doing. Mr. Jones, is it a question for Daryl? Yes, it's a question. Okay. You talk about distractors. Mr. Auburn, who are the distractors? I think I heard some folks here today. I, I heard one statement that I know is flat wrong. Well, I guess what I'm saying is that just because maybe we don't have, agree on something, doesn't mean that. I'm not saying you're wrong with what you want. We just got two different vehicles we're going in. Um, but.

» Well, what, what's a better term? What's a better term than detractors? Let me ask you. The other group could be detractors. That's right. I don't mind them saying that about me. Let me ask Mr. Templer a question. You know, last I heard we're a county administrative form of government. We're not a county council form of government. This is great that we're talking. We need to talk to the public. But I want to ask our county administrator, what would you like to see? How can you help us in this? Because you do run the county and you, you are supposed to be making recommendations to us. Mr. Jones, can we hold this for our discussion? It's on the agenda. This is Mr. Ogburn's public presentation. So if it's not a question for him, I want to move on because he's passed us 20 minutes. Okay.

» I got you. And you want to stay on course? Yes, sir. Please. Okay. Mr. Ogburn, anything else? Well, let me say this. I'm done. Yes, sir. And I will respect that. But it wasn't on the agenda for the last meeting that y'all talked about. So that wasn't still. It was in his public presentation. Yeah, but it wasn't on the agenda. Okay. We're moving on. Thank you, Daryl. Thank you. I hope it didn't make you mad. Thank you, sir. Thank you. All right. The next public presenter will be Kershaw Families Advocating for Recreational Excellence. Shane Kirkland. Kirk Lee. Time we build a park. Thank you, Madam Chair. I've been wanting to say that all night. You're welcome. And I'm sorry about the name. Yeah, that's okay. I figured. First, I want to thank you for having us here tonight.

» And I want to thank the council members here for having us here tonight. And I want to thank you for your courage for what you do for our county. In the positions that y'all are in is tough. Y'all are in a tough spot. And as someone said tonight, you got 65,000 people in our community that you are trying to please. And it's very hard. So I thank you for that courage to want to run and represent Kershaw County. I want to start off. This is your budget packet. And I've gone through it and looked at it. And I just want to start off by reading this one line. We are currently working on a new master plan, which proposes redevelopment, refurbishment, or renovations of current facilities. This master plan also addresses the addition of new amenities to existing parks.

» You can't get a better opportunity than what you have right now. If you want to stay true to your word, time's now. Private-public partnerships don't come around. People don't throw $5 million to a county to help our community, to help our kids. We are their voice. So what I'm going to try to focus on listening to all the conversation here tonight almost made me want to change what I wanted to talk about. But I'm going to stay on track because Jack's going to talk about some things too. But my background is finance. I'm a CPA. I work with numbers. And so my topic of discussion tonight was to try to talk about the economic impact that this could have on our community. And so what I've done is I've prepared my own study.

» So disclaimer, my own studies, informational only, okay? So please don't go out there saying everything I said is perfect. All right, you got it? So what I did is I reached out. I looked at many different studies that have been done, some of which some have spoke on tonight. And I've worked with some other people. I've talked to many counties throughout this process, trying to put something together. But what I'm trying to get you to understand is the first thing we're doing is building recreation, okay? What we're building is for Kershaw County recreation. It's not travel ball. It's not any of the other stuff that you've heard tonight. It's not baseball. It's recreation complex, outdoor living for our kids, for our community.

» You go out to Woodward Park and there's people walking around in dirt because they want to be out there. Woodward Park is a nice place. But what I want you to understand is this is for our kids. We're going to take advantage of travel ball is what we're going to do. We're going to take advantage, use it to our advantage to be able to build a facility like this. We're not building something to make a bunch of money, okay? Understand that's not what we're doing. We're building something that can help sustain itself and then in turn benefit the businesses that we have in our community. We have 1,600 businesses in Kershaw County that employ 28,000 people, okay? That is important. Our county is growing. We have to grow with it.

» We have to make sure that what we're building in this county can sustain 5, 10, 15 years down the road. So all we're doing is trying to build something and take an opportunity. Times have changed. Travel ball didn't exist when I played. That was not a thing. But it's a thing now. Travel, just about traveling, any sport you play, you travel. There's a lot of travel. And let's take advantage of it. Kershaw County has so much to offer. People would love to come to Kershaw County. I promise you, we're central in the state. It makes the most sense. So what I did is on this study that I did is page one is the overall summary. And pages two, three, and four are more detailed. They kind of pull to where the numbers are that I have on this report.

» So I ran the numbers if we played four tournaments a year or 12 tournaments a year. And I ran it on an average of having 20 teams or 45 teams and took an average to come up with how I came up with the numbers that I did. I used, when I considered my teams, I'm going to kind of give you a criteria of how I used to do my study. I did 20 teams or 45 teams, and I said each team had at least 12 players on average. That was my average. I averaged with three coaches per team. I averaged two fans per team, and I think you heard tonight that some studies show that the actual fan was like three and a half. So I stayed very conservative on that end. I averaged one kid extra per player for like a sibling, just one.

» I used -- so the average that you've heard tonight from some people that spoke in the public comment was $92. And the most recent study was $92 average per person was spent in these areas that they traveled to. I used $70, $35 basically per day per person is what I used. And then I did a concession -- I used concessions in there if we brought back concessions, because right now we don't even have concessions in Camden. I'm not sure about Lugolf. And then I also put in terminate fees and gate fees. So there's a lot going on here. So what I did is if we hosted for a year, for a year, for a whole year, if we hosted four tournaments for baseball, soccer, and softball -- that's the only three sports I considered. I didn't consider football, lacrosse, or any other opportunities.

» I just focused on baseball, soccer, and softball. For one year, if we hosted only four tournaments, the potential impact that it could have on our local businesses was almost $1.2 million for that year, for our local businesses. If we hosted 12 tournaments between baseball, soccer, and softball, it would have a little over $3.4 million of impact to our local businesses. What a lot of people say is that it doesn't -- they don't have any effect from this. And they really do. When you bring money in and show that you're trying to help your businesses in your county, when you help your business, you help your employees. Employees are able to get raises. It's a way to grow where people don't -- they don't understand how we're growing.

» You know, cost is increasing, increasing, and businesses are suffering. And this is the way -- another avenue to help those businesses find ways to bring in tourism dollars. People that are coming in and then leaving. They're going to come in and spend their money, and then they're going to leave, okay? That's just an opportunity. So over a five-year span, four tournaments per year would be $5.8 million. Twelve tournaments would be $17 million. And over a 10-year span, it would be $11.6 million for four tournaments per year, and $34 million for 12 tournaments per year. Now, that has nothing -- that's not coming to the county. Understand that. That's not dollars that the county is going to be getting. That's not what I'm telling you. That's for our businesses. That's for our economy.

» The only thing that the county gets out of this is they'll get a part of a gate fee, and those gate fees will be used to help pay for keeping up the property. Maintenance. You talk about maintenance. That's what it's there for, for maintenance. And so many counties do it differently, understand. There's either a rental fee per field, or you can do gate fees. The Lexington County does gate fees, and they collect 51% of the gate fees for these tournaments. And if you hosted 12 tournaments for a year, the potential -- and I'm very conservative. I tried to be as conservative as I could. It was $224,000 a year for just the gate fees for a tournament if you just held 12. Just 12. If you held four, it would be $75,000. And then, obviously, my study goes over a five-year span.

» If you held 12, that's $1.1 million. And over a 10-year, it would be $2.2 million. Again, we're bringing Woodward back to life. This is where I grew up playing. I played at Woodward. I'm from Lugolf. I grew up in Lugolf. I went to high school in Lugolf. I went to college for four years. It was the only time I haven't lived in Kershaw County. And I played at Woodward. I played soccer, football, baseball. I played it all. It was there. That's where we loved to play. We had a Dixie Youth All-Star tournament there. Guess what? Kershaw County can't host All-Stars. We don't have the facilities. We have to go to Macbee or Hartsville. You know, we can't do it here. And I understand. Finish projects. Yeah, we do need to finish projects. But I do want to ask one more question.

» Can I ask a question real quick? You can. When you said it costs $1.9 million to finish West Watery Complex. Is that in addition to the almost $1.1 million that's in the budget already? Yes, it's in addition. That comes from the master plan that Alliance did. That's their estimation. So it's $1.9 million in addition to the $1.1 million already in. So the budget that you have is last year's budget. Yeah. So just as a point, this council didn't make that promise. So we're going to do a new budget. It will be done in June. So you're saying it's $1.9 total even though we budgeted $1.1 million? I don't know because I wasn't on council for that budget. Okay. I'm just curious. I just wanted to clear that. Mr. Tucker. What's in the budget now is for $22.23.

» So it has nothing to do with the $1.9 million that they're saying that we need to complete. So it's really $2.9 million to finish. Yes, sir. That's the question. Yes, sir. Because I don't think it's not complete yet. No, we put up some lighting and stuff this year already to complete all the fields over there at West Waterbury, but there's still some things they have to do. And then the only thing I want to touch on, and y'all can go through, I mean, there's a lot of detail. I'm not going to go through all this detail here. This is just for y'all's information to try to help you get some numbers. I think you've been wanting to see some numbers, and I'm just trying to help find some numbers. The only other thing I want to touch on is why I think Woodward Park is a good place.

» And Woodward Park makes a lot of sense. I know, Jack, I don't want to steal your thunder. But Woodward Park is the central location of our county. And it needs to be accessible to everybody in our county, from Cassett, from Elgin, from Bethune, from Westville. It's the place that you can build something, and everyone has an equal opportunity to get to it. It also makes more sense because if you do take advantage of travel ball, or however you want to call it, they have to come to Camden. And so the chances of them leaving to go spend their money in Richland County is low. They're going to have everything they need in Camden. I want Westwater Reeves Park to be nice. I want that. I do. I want Russell's proposal. Let's put up nine million and match nine million. I wish we could do it.

» I'm all for your proposal. But I'm just telling you that tournaments that are held in Camden, I feel would have a greater impact because it wouldn't allow travelers to go to Sandhills or Richland County to spend their money. We want them to spend it here. That's the whole benefit of that, is to help our local businesses, the businesses that invest in our community. Let's invest back in for them. That's what we're trying to do. And the last thing is Woodward Park would tie in to Scott Park. It would tie in to a facility you already have with the aquatic center and the splash pad. You know, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, just bring it back like it used to be. And I just think -- I don't know how you could argue the point that Woodward would not be the right spot.

» I think we get -- I think what we've done over the years, and it's just my opinion, is our infrastructure grew instead of -- we didn't shrink it. We built too many facilities. Larry Doby and Wilbur Park right across from each other. You've got parents that have kids on the soccer field at 5:30, and they've got practice at Woodward with another kid at 5:30, and they don't know how to get there because they don't want to leave their four-year-old at the soccer field at Larry Doby and have to take them across the street at Woodward. Let's build one complex that can do everything and then figure out where to go from there with the other stuff. Let's don't try to run too many complexes. We can't -- we can't maintain that. I promise you that.

» We've got to shrink the infrastructure to two nice facilities and have satellite facilities in Westville, Bethune. Heck, let's put one in -- I don't know -- cast it. You know, let's have satellite small areas for everybody can access and then two really nice facilities for our community. That's what we should do, not have three, four facilities with eight baseball fields that we can't maintain. That would be my goal. So with that, thank you very much. You're welcome, Shane. Go ahead, Jack. Jack, we have about seven minutes left. There's 20 minutes per public presentation. So I want to give council an opportunity. I want to give you 10, man. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. I'm Jack Carrington. I'm up here with Shane again. We started CARE a few years back.

» And again, it was born out of the necessity of trying to improve recreation. This Woodward Park project wasn't even in our purview. We were looking at the facilities that were around the county where our kids are playing baseball, where our kids are playing football, where our daughters are playing soccer, where they're trying to play volleyball. And the facilities are just not being maintained. This project has come out of a lot of discussion, a lot of hard work by a lot of people. Shane Kirkley has put a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of energy. Daryl Auburn and the Health Services District has had countless meetings about this. This isn't just some willy-nilly thing that they're throwing together. Sally Harrell has been unbelievable in organizing finance committees.

» Walter Long, the head of the finance committee. We have run numbers. We have done everything in our due diligence to get this to this point for the county council. I just want to kind of sum some things up. Again, the Woodward project is not about travel ball. I know that's been said. But for me, it's more about recreation, health, wellness for the entire citizenship of Kershaw County. You're going to put a facility in place that has got a two-and-a-half-mile walking trail. It's got an 18-hole Frisbee golf, outdoor basketball. Basketball is so underserved in this community. There is one facility where kids can go play right now. One facility. The rest of the rims are bent. No one's paying attention to it. This is going to put a nice six-court facility in there.

» There's going to be outdoor volleyball. There's going to be picnics. There's going to be an ADA-compliant playground for all kids to be able to play at. We don't have that. You go to Sumter. You go to Georgetown. You go to Andrew, South Carolina. You go to Hartston. You go to Jefferson. Their facilities are awesome. We've got to have that. Why Woodward? Again, just to echo what Shane said, it's central to the county. Yes, KC West needs to be finished. 100%. But we cannot host a soccer tournament at KC West because the fields weren't done correctly. I saw the Lexington last week. The last tournament they held for a female soccer tournament at Lexington hosted 84 teams. We can't host a single tournament there right now. Why Woodward? Multipurpose fields in the center of the county.

» It is a 42-minute drive from Bethune to KC West. That doesn't benefit if we just concentrate down there. Larry Doby? Absolutely. It's in shambles, Mr. Jones. I completely disagree with you. We were playing with plastic fences. We got dugouts with no roofs on them. We've got a bathroom that I don't even want to take my kids in. We've got shootings that happen out there. If we concentrate funds at Larry Doby, it's going to be the same thing that we've got to do at Woodward. Wreck it over. It is four adult softball fields that we're asking our girls to play Little League softball on. Back to Mr. Brown's point, I could not agree with you more. You nailed it. Yeah, if we can get more money, let's get more money. Whatever we can do to help you all finish these projects, we're all about is care.

» Anderson just finished a project and just started a project where it's earmarked for $7 million for a tournament-style facility that's going to serve the recreation needs for Anderson County. $7 million. Yes, we got that engineering firm to put that study together. They loaded it, like Mr. Shoemake said, with concrete pass, $2 million in contingencies. Can we dumb that down? Absolutely. This council's got an opportunity to get a $10 million facility for $5 million in ARPA funds that is not going to spend one dime of a Kershaw County taxpayers' cent. $5 million from the graciousness of private enterprise and $5 million from ARPA. Do we need to come up with a plan to fix a rest of rec? Absolutely. We're here. We're here. We've got 800 kids signed up for spring sports right now.

» We've got to do better. We've got to finish these projects. Shane's right. Shrink that infrastructure. Put something nice in Bethune. Put a field up there. Put a walking track up there. Go fix those Westville fields that have concrete barriers for dugouts. Finish KC West and let's fix up Woodward. Have a showpiece for the county that's going to bring in tourism dollars. Last thing. Rock Hill had a boys soccer tournament that had 30 teams from July 6th through July 10th of 2022. These are actual numbers. These aren't projections. These are actual numbers from Rock Hill. I got it from James Headley, the executive director of South Carolina Parks and Recreation. Direct business sales from that three-day tournament. $2 million, $79,165. Overnight attendees, $4,122 on 30 teams.

» Next project was this January. A girls volleyball tournament. One-day tournament. $1.8 million in total business sales. 4,961 people spent the night at Rock Hill. All of them went and spent money at the restaurants, at the shops. Let's celebrate our historic heritage here in Kershaw County. We can fill it with tournaments. I don't want 40 weekends of it booked. Let's do four. Let's do five. Let's do six. Let it sustain itself, but let it be a piece that serves Kershaw County. Serves the health and wellness. Not just the kids. You see how many elderly people are walking the track at the Veterans Park? Put a two-and-a-half-mile walking trail at Woodward.

» You want to attract new teachers? If I'm a 25-year-old teacher, fresh out of school, I want a community that's got a nice, safe facility that I can go exercise at. $10 million project for five millions of ARPA funds that aren't being spent on any Kershaw County taxpayer. We appreciate it. We're here to work with you. We're not here to benefit from it. We want better rec. We're asking you to help us, and we'll do whatever we can to help y'all. We'll have questions if you got any. Jack, you said when this organization first got established, it was to improve recreation, and Woodward Park was not any part of that. What are some of your recommendations, or what was this group thinking about before the Woodward Park project came into play? So a couple points of clarification.

» Woodward Park was what actually opened our eyes to it, because there were open junction boxes, fences with rust. The dugouts had not been updated since my father-in-law played in the '60s. We had a practice where there was pine straw all throughout the fields. We just wanted the rec to do a better job of maintaining what we already had. This project got born out of the fact that we started to look around and say, hey, we want better facilities. We want our kids to be able to compete on a high level, and we don't want them having to go to Rock Hill. We don't want them having to go to Columbia. So that's when the Woodward overall big project came. But the initial beginning of care came out of looking at the overall care of the facilities and the current status.

» And does your group have any recommendation of how to take better care of them? Yeah, do a $10 million project. And that's going to take care of the maintenance? Like, if you look at Shane's numbers, rec runs at a -- well, actually, let me point this number out real quick, too. Do you know that the rec department has under-spent their budget by $1.1 million over the last 10 years? Let me say that again. The rec department has under-spent their budget by $1.1 million over the last 10 years. Give them the ability to utilize those tools, direct them to use those tools to fix it up. It takes a can of spray paint and a little bit of fencing at Lowe's. We can get it right. We just got to have some direction out there. And they got to spend the money that you allocate to them.

» Some would say that's actually a positive thing. They save the taxpayers' money. I know. I wish my wife could do that. I have no further questions. Any other comments? Yes, absolutely. I'm just wondering what else CARES recommends besides the Woodward Park projects. Since you care about recreation excellence, there's got to be more that your group has come up with. I just wanted to make a point that sometimes it's hard to maintain something that's not nice. And sometimes our recreation are on the wrong end of the stick because they're not given the benefit of the doubt. We're asking them to take care of gates that are falling off and dugouts that are falling apart. I mean, it's hard to maintain. They probably can maintain if we give them something nice to maintain.

» And that's what we're trying to say is let's build something nice to maintain. I mean, you look at it's easy to keep something up that's nice and done right. It's easier. It really is. They know how to maintain it. There's a standard how to keep it up. Right now we have no standard. It's just drag a few fields and be done with it. And I'll go out there and help maintain it. Part of the care. I do anyway. We have. I cut the grass. I'll do it. I just want us to have something nice to maintain. If we have something nice, I got a feeling people are going to want to take care of it. Thank you, Shane. Yes, we do. We've got a lot of ideas and we're working directly with the rec department. Y'all and the previous council has put me, has put Shane, has put Kevin, has put Alan on the commission.

» We're committed to getting this right. We're just asking for y'all's help and take advantage of this opportunity. Yeah, we're going to fix rec. We're going to make it good. Shane Duncan's awesome. We just got to give them some tools and some help and we're here to do it. Thank you, Jack. Any questions? Mr. Tucker. Thank you, Madam Chair. Jack, I'll ask you the same question I posed to Mr. Darryl Horgerman. Is there any connections throughout your professional, personal circles that we could have other partners, private partners that could come in and contribute resources to this project? Mr. Tucker, yeah, I think so. I don't have any in my pocket right now.

» I think we could reach across to the private sector within the county and if they look at the benefit they're going to get, maybe there's a capital campaign that you can delve into there. I know Major League Baseball has got some potential pockets there. I know the NFL has got pockets there. There's places we can dig. We need to. But again, we've got a pretty good thing right here. Anderson, seven million dollars. And we've been offered five. And I'm not saying that the monies that's been offered is not a good opportunity. But I have to also remind myself, as I used to tell my wife, you know, she comes on, she used to say, but it was on sale. Well, you know, if it wasn't free, it wasn't in our budget. I don't care how cheap it was. But I appreciate what you guys have done.

» And I thank you. Mr. Tucker, just to piggyback on that. Again, you're not going to be able to direct five million dollars into any type of other government entity that's going to generate tax revenue for the county. I understand that. So it's a very good opportunity. And listen, we're not saying this is a boondoggle. We're not going to be printing gold at a Woodward Park facility. It'll make enough money to maintain itself. But the economic benefit to local businesses is astronomical. The economic benefit to future economic development is astronomical. The benefit to bringing in teachers is a huge thing that we need to concentrate on. I talked to Dr. Goodwin about it two weeks ago. They are all in favor of this. All of the coaches are in favor of this, too. Thank you. If I may. Mr. Jones.

» I didn't want to say anything, but I can't help myself. Jack, it's okay to disagree with me, but I disagree with you on that, too. But I do want to tell you something. Yes, sir. I admire your hard work. And Shane, I admire yours as well, too. You did a great job to make your presentation. I just don't agree with it. And I want to thank everybody who came here to speak tonight. This is not personal. I just, look, we're going to have recreation. But I'm going to look at, I want to look very closely at what you said about Dobie's. And I'm going to find out for myself, Mr. Templer, what it would take, or if it's usable, whatever. Because it looks nice when I ride out there. But anyway, that's another time, another conversation. But I appreciate y'all's hard work. And Mr.

» Jones, I should have said respectfully disagree. And respect y'all. It doesn't matter. I'm okay. Me too. I want to respond to Sammy's question, too. I think when you're asking for other businesses or other ways to raise money, that avenue opens when y'all show a commitment that this is what you want. No one's going to say, yeah, I get a lot of people, it's never going to happen. It's never going to happen. But when the county can show a commitment that this is important and that we want this for our kids, remember, we are their voice. We have one kid that stood up here. And I think Russell's daughter stood up here. But we are their voice. And if we can show a commitment to them, I think there's going to be a lot more doors that open. Well, you bring up an interesting point, Shane.

» So, back at you. You guys are the CARES group. And you're an active group in this community. You know, Jack just listed, you know, MLB, possible grants, possible private partnerships. Gather those people up and bring them to the table. We always ask people that want to partner with the county, what are you doing for yourself to help yourself? And I'm not saying that you're responsible for every child or every citizen in this county. But you're the formal group now that has convened. And so people will look for you to sort of carry the water. And so that's why I'm going with my question. Because I want your help. I'm soliciting your help. And I'll do anything to help you in between to help get that started.

» But sometimes in order to spend money, you've got to have citizens involvement so people can understand and appreciate even that much more with the private government partnership. Madam Chair, can I ask the administrator a question real quick? Yes. Go ahead. I believe we invested in facilities, recreation facilities alone. Not including, I mean, baseball fields to parks over the last 10 years in Kershaw County. It doesn't have to be an exact number, just an average number. The best I can give you is there was about $2 million with the 2014 bond. That was a vast majority that was put into KC West. So $2 million that you know about over a 10 year period that's been invested in facilities upgrades. Yes. Including everything PRT, parks, rec and tourism. That's what I can come up with.

» And what about, you know, Councilman Tucker, you've been on council a while and Mr. Jones. What, what do y'all, like over, over the period since y'all been on council, how much do you think we've upgraded? It's, it's been millions and it's way more than 2 million because. Like 10 million? Yeah, probably so. 10 million over about 18 year period. I don't have that number, but I can have it to you by the, by the, before the end of the week. Okay. But we have gotten grants from PRT. We've gotten grants from where, um, Shane and, um, his predecessor, um, um, Davis and, um. Joe Easton. Joe Easton have, um, written and got grants and Shane may have that number better than I do. Cause he's been there over 10 years. And we've invested in parks. Yes.

» That have been a disaster of Liberty Hill that you voted for and I did. Mr. Tomlinson has the floor. Um, I just wanted to get, get that number just to kind of get an idea of that. Have we had a private organization? I know that we can't consider the health service, service district private organization. So let's just say a public entity, a private, a private company invests in our recreation since y'all have been on council or in the last 20 years or ever. Not at this level. No. So 10 million, let's just say over 20 year period round about. And we have five that is going to be given to us for an opportunity. If we say no, what are we saying for our children? So 23% of 66,000 people in this county, 23% are under the age of 18. Under the age of 18 years old. What this is more than baseball.

» I hear that, you know, what is a baseball complex? I don't, I don't care where really where it is. We need facilities. We need opportunities for our children to get out. Recreation sports provide an opportunity for kids to get out and learn time management, personable skills, your healthy living. It also gives the elderly a place that is lighted, safe and access. If I think somebody in the personal comments earlier said that we're 40 years behind. I think Mr. Judy said that. I think this is an opportunity. And all it's asking is saying, hey, we'd be willing to match. We got $5 million. I like, I like money given to me too. I think we have an opportunity and I just, I'm, I'm for it. Thank you, Mr. Tomlinson.

» Is there any other questions or comments directly related to the CARES group? Yeah, I would, I'd go far to, I would go as far as to, to agree with Brant completely. Um, Mr. Tucker, you brought up a good point. Mr. Brazel, is this a question for the CARES group? Cause their public presentation is beyond time. There was a comment related to yes, ma'am. Okay. So I, I think Mr. Tucker's point was bring some money to the table. Um, no disrespect, but they're bringing $5 million through two organizations. So I think they've, they've done enough and you guys have my support. Anything else? Shane, thank you for this information. Um, this is very valuable. Jack, thank you for coming tonight. Thank you guys so much for your support. I appreciate it.

» The next public presentation is Southwest Water Company. It's a sewer assessment by Michael Carton. Michael, good evening. Thank you for being here. Thank you, madam. You'll have to move that up. Thank you, madam chair and members of the council for the opportunity to, to be here again tonight and speak. Citizens, please, um, exit quietly. So can you give them like two? Yeah. Just a second, Michael. Let me let them get out. I understand wastewater is not quite as parks and recreation. I know we're switching gears completely. All right. All right. Thank you, madam chair, members of the council for the opportunity to be here and speak today. Um, today I'd like to discuss some of the key challenges that I see this county is facing.

» Um, when it comes to providing safe and reliable wastewater service, um, and not just this county. I think it's challenges that thousands of small to midsize utilities are facing, not just in South Carolina, but across the entire country. Um, and I'd like to talk about some unique opportunities that I see this county has to address these challenges head on. Um, and, um, as it enters into its budget cycle, explore some potential solutions that could provide better service to the county and save taxpayer money. Um, before I get into that, I'd be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to just introduce myself a little bit. Um, introduce my company and then talk about some of the great things we've been doing in this community.

» So for those who I haven't met personally, my name is Michael Carton. Um, I'm a native South Carolinian, born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina. I'm, uh, passionate about water, passionate about the environment. I grew up, um, fishing on Lake Watery, taking field trips to the Revolutionary War site here in Camden. And, um, I, I still live in Columbia, South Carolina with, with my wife, Tricia, my daughter, Polly, and I work, um, in Elgin, South Carolina. I've spent my entire career working in investor-owned regulated utilities, five years as a consumer advocate and a regulator. And for the past 10 years, I've been working in the private water sector. Um, yep, that's the right slides up now.

» Um, so who is South Carolina Water Utilities? We are the largest investor-owned water and sewer utility in the state of South Carolina. We serve over 60,000 homes and businesses across the state. We first entered into South Carolina with an acquisition of Kiowa Island Utilities outside of Charleston. And since then, we have continued to grow. We now own and operate seven sewer utilities in the state of South Carolina. And most notably, we acquired Palmetto Utilities from the Paculet Millican family in 2020. Um, without being too verbose, we are water professionals. That is all we do. Um, we don't do electricity. We don't do natural gas. We don't, we're not in the real estate business. We have a core focus on owning and operating water and sewer infrastructure. And we're really good at it.

» Do I have a clicker for like the next slide or? I'll just point to you if that works. I'll, I can just tell you next slide if that works. Appreciate it. Um, again, I wanted to take this opportunity to, to update the council on some of the things we've been doing in the community the past few years that we're really proud of. Um, as a utility provider, we have an obligation to give back to the communities in which we serve. And we've been doing that consistently, um, here in Kershaw County since we entered Kershaw in 2020. We've created over 40 jobs here in Kershaw County. We pay more than $2.6 million annually to this county every year in property taxes. Um, we've acquired multiple utilities across the state that were struggling to meet, um, compliance standards.

» We've made the capital investments, um, and still the right processes. We've closed out those consent orders, brought utilities back into compliance. And we take a lot of pride in our relationships with both our environmental regulators and our economic regulators. We have a great working relationship with both of them. I mentioned the economic development office here in Kershaw County. I work closely with Jeff Burgess and his team at the Kershaw County's economic development group. We've spent countless hours and time, money, and resources to help provide various options and solutions, um, for the county's economic development group to market its industrial mega site. Um, just a few weeks ago, um, Jeff reached out to me. They were in a jam meeting a timeline.

» They needed to, they had supply chain issues, couldn't find the parts and pieces they needed. They reached out to us. We were able to get it on site here in Kershaw County in less than 10 days to make sure that they can meet their obligations to a potential manufacturer who was locating to an industrial site that we don't serve. We're not a part of. And I mentioned this just to let council know that we are committed to economic development here in the county. And I've lived up to many of the promises that I made to this council a few years ago. Um, every employee at South Carolina water utilities is required to do minimum of eight hours of community service within the communities they serve. Last year, we completed over 800 hours of local community service.

» We've donated $150,000 for low income assistance to help people paying their utility bills. Um, we've created, and this is kind of my baby. I love this program that we've created. We've, we've created a paid internship program for local high schools to try to find the next generation of water professionals and expose younger generations to the water industry and provide hands-on STEM education opportunities for them. Um, we did that pilot program last year in Richland County, and we are now expanding it to Kershaw County. I'll be presenting at the high school technology center here in Camden in a couple of weeks to try to recruit some new interns to come get some really hands-on STEM education experience here in the county. That's awesome. Thank you.

» Uh, yeah, we got that pictures are national. We did like a national signing day thing like they do for, for sports. And you know, some kids aren't, are looking to do a trade rather than go to college. And, um, yeah, it's been a great experience. We're excited to expand it. Next slide, please. Um, we've invest, last year we invested, uh, around two and a half million dollars and built a grease treatment facility here in Kershaw County. So we are treating brown grease. And one of the byproducts of that treatment is a biofuel, which we use to power, um, our facilities. So it's got a great environmental component. Um, it's reducing our carbon footprint. It's creating jobs and it's creating another roughly a hundred thousand dollars in annual property taxes to this county in perpetuity.

» And that was just a really cool picture. I took that I wanted to share. Um, and we've talked about economic development and this is it right here. That was our first, um, batch of grease hauler that came to our site. Um, we're just really proud of that project. And, and what we're doing here, we talk about economic development. This is bringing people from all over the state to Kershaw County to do business with us. They're spending money here, spending time here. We're creating jobs, creating tax revenue, investing in green infrastructure. And I just wanted to take this opportunity before I jumped into the wastewater side of the presentation to just update this council on some of the things we're doing here in this community.

» Um, so I want to just take a couple of minutes, talk about what I see as the challenges facing Kershaw County and other small and midsize utilities. The first two really go together, financial resources and aging infrastructure. Um, with rising interest rates, inflation, and, you know, other factors that have combined, it's, it's really put a strain on small to midsize utilities to make the necessary investments it takes to keep up with, um, to keep up with aging infrastructure and maintain compliance. Um, these challenges are challenges that we face on every day. It's part of our ethos. It's things that we are addressing every single day at work. And these are challenges that we address on behalf of our partners. Um, increasingly stringent quality standards.

» The EPA is continuing to, um, have dynamic regulations. They're making, um, you know, effluent discharge limits more strict, tighter, and along with that comes cost. It comes expertise. And, I mean, I empathize with smaller and midsize utilities because you're gonna have, a lot of times, you're gonna have to contract out and have other people come in and tell you how to operate your system. Scale is extremely critical to the resiliency of utilities. Being able to, to address some of these, these issues head on, sewer is a super capital intensive industry. Much more capital intensive than electric, natural gas. And, you know, scale makes this possible. And having to make these necessary investments to expand and provide adequate service, coupled with an extremely small customer base.

» I believe Kershaw County has roughly 1,200 customers, um, that creates challenges. Trying to spread that cost over a very small amount of customers, um, that really they're the only ones who are receiving any benefit from the service. Those are some of the challenges that I'm seeing, not, not just in Kershaw County. You're seeing it everywhere. Um, and so moving to the next slide, I want to talk about, you know, it's not all doom and gloom. There are some really exciting opportunities here in Kershaw County, um, to work with a private utility like South Carolina Water Utilities to address some of these problems head on, um, Kershaw County is uniquely positioned.

» Um, and I believe y'all have an advantage over other counties because you have a highly skilled wastewater utility located here in Kershaw County. Well capitalized and a willing partner here in the county. Um, I wanted to provide a couple of options that I think this council should consider as it moves into its budget season. And it's faced with the challenges of addressing, um, the future wastewater needs of this county. Um, next slide, please. So before I talk about these options, oh, sorry, one slide back. Oh, it's right here in front of me. Um, so the, you know, a couple of opportunities I'll talk about today that, that I think the council should consider. Um, I just wanted to emphasize that all of these options would require a majority vote by this council.

» And it would require approval by the South Carolina public service commission, which is a quasi judicial body tasked with representing the public interest and making sure consumers are protected. Um, and I'd also like to emphasize any of these options if they were to be executed and a partnership were to be struck. The county still retains all control over growth and it still controls planning and zoning. You will never see me or any of my colleagues show up at planning and zoning lobbying for one project or another. We simply would have the obligation to provide sewer service. Um, and I'd actually, I'd argue that you have more control over your growth because if something does fall on your doorstep that y'all think is a great, a win for the county.

» You have a partner who's ready with available capacity today and the expertise and the ability to provide service tomorrow. It's, it's what we do. It's all we do. Next slide, please. Um, so this first option is something I explored with, uh, the prior administrator. He was, seemed super interested in it. So we did spend some money and did a feasibility study. I think this option is a bandaid personally, but it would provide the county some time. Um, and it would alleviate the capacity issues and constraints that y'all are faced with today. So we could explore a wholesale sewer service contract between the county and South Carolina water utilities. On the Southern loop of your system, your infrastructure runs right beside one of our large lift stations.

» We've done a feasibility study to show that we can interconnect the two systems and divert the flow on your system to our plant. And we can negotiate a wholesale agreement that would free up some, some capacity in your plant. You know, the major benefits I see with this is it does buy the county some time and it's a relatively inexpensive. When you look at the capital side and it can be done relatively quickly. Next slide. Uh, the other option I really want to talk about today is one that I view personally as the most viable option. And one that is in the best interest of the Kershaw County and its citizens. And that would be an asset sale and a franchise agreement between the county and South Carolina water utilities.

» The two parties would negotiate a price to be paid by South Carolina water utilities to Kershaw County to acquire the wastewater assets of the county. This could and should be done through a franchise agreement for South Carolina water utilities to be a designated sewer provider for the western portion of Kershaw County. I'm a proponent of the franchise agreement for a lot of reasons, but probably most important is it will lay out our obligations to the county. And it will ensure that our goals are aligned when it comes to providing high quality, safe, environmentally compliant service in this county. And again, it most importantly, the county would not be ceding any control over the planning and growth of how y'all want to best lead this county.

» I understand that is what y'all are great at doing. We're good at water and sewer. That's all we do. It'd be taking something off of your plate. And the next slide will talk some more about what I see as other benefits of an asset sale and a franchise agreement, a partnership between the two parties. The most glaring would be the avoidance of having to take on new debt. I think it could cost upwards of $40 million to expand the county's wastewater treatment plant. Right now, the county has issued as many permits as it basically can. And then in June, I saw there's 100,000 gallons of excess capacity available today at Kershaw County sewer plant. So the avoidance of taking on $40 million of debt.

» $40 million is a very large number when you look at how many customers actually benefit from it. It's only 1,200 customers. So avoiding that new debt would be a huge win for the county. Also, proceeds from a sale of your asset could be used to retire existing debt. Also, us being a private utility, we pay property taxes on our assets, as I mentioned earlier. So if we were to acquire your assets, we would pay more in property taxes every year to the county. And a franchise agreement that we've struck in other areas in South Carolina provides a percentage of revenue earned that would be given to the county to use on many other projects, many of which I've heard here today. The sale of your assets, the proceeds would go to your general fund.

» And so that means they could be used for anything that you all best decide. You know, I know this council can do a ton of great things with that, with not having to take on the additional debt and then the proceeds from an additional sale. And again, you can truly control your growth now because you have a ready, willing, capable, highly capitalized, well capitalized partner. That's not going to be making decisions about where you grow, how your vision is for this county is going to go. It would lay out our obligation to provide sewer service to a agreed upon portion of the county. Removal of annual rate increases. I've read a few times now the county last year commissioned a sewer rate study to better understand the state of sewer.

» And in that, the outside consultants have recommended substantial double digit rate increases every single year for the foreseeable future. A partnership with us would remove the need to come in for annual rate increases. We don't come in for annual rate increases and we never will. I'm not saying we don't ever increase rates, but we certainly don't come in every year. And when we do, it'll be an open, transparent process that every council member would be a party to at the Public Service Commission. You would have access to our books, our records, our revenues. You would be highly involved in a prudency determination of our capital expenditures.

» And as a former regulator and as difficult as it is sometimes to get things done at the Public Service Commission, I am a proponent of utility regulation. I think it's in the public interest. And the removal annual rate increases is just another benefit of a partnership with us. The ability to serve the industrial mega site promptly. Right now the property is being marketed with no available sewer service and limited water. And I've came to this council and I've worked with Jeff and we've done feasibility to provide reclaimed water, which would be the best use of this county's drinking water. You need to protect your drinking water resources for future generations.

» We have 7 million gallons a day of water that I can treat to whatever standards are required for any manufacturer to come and do business here in Kershaw County at the industrial mega site. And that's something that I'm working with the Department of Commerce and the Economic Development Group all the time. And we talk at least once a week. And then we have 5 million gallons, roughly 5 and a half million gallons of capacity available in our plant today. And when we get to 90% capacity, we'll begin construction to expand it another 6 million gallons a day. Public Service Commission regulation, I touched on that earlier. Again, it's really important for you guys to understand that we don't just charge whatever rates we want.

» And we can't just earn crazy double digit returns on our investment. We are one of the most regulated industries in the entire country, not just for environmental, but also we're economically regulated. So the Public Service Commission, it would be taking the pressure of this council with all the different things I've heard here tonight and over the past few years that y'all are tasked with doing. Take one thing off of your plate and allow the Public Service Commission, the Office of Regulatory Staff, the Office of Consumer Advocate to do their job and determine what is a just and reasonable rate. What are just and reasonable service levels. And again, as a former utility regulator, I just think that's a win-win for everybody.

» One other thing I really haven't touched on is the rising customer expectations. You know, customer expectations, the average wastewater customer today, they expect to be able to view their bill on their phone, pay it on their phone. They want to be able to use a credit card, they want to set up recurring payments, and they want to pick up the phone and call and know that they can talk to another human being who is well trained and can respond to their concerns in a timely manner. And that's something that I told you a few years ago that we'd be doing and that's something that we have done. I'd be happy to share our customer service metrics. We're an open book.

» But I think that it's something that should at least be explored further as you enter into a crucial budget season, trying to address the challenges associated with the future wastewater needs of this county. So with that being said, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here. It's a privilege to work in Kershaw County. I love my job. I'm really proud of our team and all that we've accomplished. And I always enjoy coming and speaking with you guys. I'd be happy to take any questions. Michael, thank you for being here. I heard this brief, just a second, Mr. Jones. Last year I was sitting on that side. This is much more in-depth than the last brief I heard you give. So thank you for some of these numbers. I am a huge proponent of privatization. It shrinks government.

» I have a couple questions. Is this slide deck available to us? Yes. I've emailed it to Danny. Okay. Mr. Templer. And the current avoidance of new debt of approximately $40 million, what do you assess that from? I've seen some numbers in the mid $30 million range from your sewer rate impacts. But what I'm seeing on the market with inflation, the fact that the county contracts out a lot of their work, their construction engineering. I think $40 million is a reasonable number. On top of that, that includes the number to complete the Southern Loop, which will be redirecting your flow the other way. That's still a lot of capital that goes into that $40 million number. That's just my professional opinion. It could be a little more, it could be less. Okay. And Mr.

» Templer, do you know what our current existing debt is? I don't have that number right now. Okay. Mr. Carton, do you know? It was $7.5 million, $8 million on the sewer system. That was a year and a half ago. Okay. Assuming that number's gone down some. I hope so. Mr. Jones. Thank you. Do you know what our sewer system is worth? I have been working on evaluation of the system and thank Mr. Templer for providing some of the data. We're not quite done, but I'd be prepared to submit a formal offer to this county within 30 days of today, telling you what we believe it is worth and what we could be willing to pay. Yeah, I'd like to see that. I would like to see that. You know, if we were to go in this direction, procurement's something we've got to watch out for.

» But then again, procurement? Yeah, so we've done legal due diligence on this county council's authority. And this isn't something that needs to go to procurement. This county council has the authority to make these decisions for franchise agreements and asset sales. It would simply be up to this body. And we're, I mean, we are the only, we're the largest sewer utility in the state. We're the best. And we're right here in Kershaw County. So I'm not sure what other procurers would be out there, but it's not a requirement legally for the county to put this out to bid. Are you familiar with our Southern Loop? Yes. If we had been, if we had worked with y'all, could we have saved some money? We, I mean, possibly for sure.

» I mean, what we would do, you know, what I think my engineers are telling me is having the two systems. And if you can flip to the next slide, that might actually help answer this question. So the Southern Loop, you know, on this left Western portion of the red outline, that's Kershaw County service territory. Okay. That's where a lot of the growth is. That's where the system started. You know, this wastewater treatment plant is located right there along the river. So your re the Southern Loop is designed to, because those pipes aren't large enough to meet the growth that this county is experiencing. So y'all redirected the flow to come back, back west, then down south and come past the industrial mega site.

» So I guess you could say we would have just redirected the flow to our existing plant. We didn't, we wouldn't need to do the Southern Loop necessarily, but I'm not saying it was a bad decision at the time. I mean, hindsight's 20/20, but we, if we owned both utilities, it provides us flexibility. Also, y'all serve a lot of industrial clients. And I mentioned, I should have mentioned more. I'm really passionate about protecting the watery river. I think it's one of the greatest assets this county has. And they teach you this in elementary school and they teach it to you when you're getting your master's in civil engineering. But dilution is a solution to pollution. So as more industrial customers come online, that's part of your vision.

» We'd like to send some of that industrial flow potentially to our much larger treatment plant to ensure that the effluent being sent to the river is at a much higher water quality standard. I don't know if I answered your question, but potentially you could have saved money, I think. It wasn't an option at the time. If we would not have had to do it, we'd have saved money. Well, we don't have the option to tap and send it to there to show you. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Any? Mr. Shubank. I just had two quick questions. The -- so you mentioned about growth with, you know, let's talk to ownership options for a second.

» So would the goal of your organization be to grow the current sewer line? And how would you sort of -- can you speak a little bit about how you would grow in conjunction with sort of this county's wishes? Because I'll just tell you bluntly a concern I have is the idea of, you know, this council wants to sort of do growth a certain way, which may be in direct contravention to what the sewer company wants to do. So who wins in that? Does the sewer grow the way it wants to grow? Or do you abide by council's wishes of growth? We provide by council's wishes of growth. We would have an obligation to provide sewer service to that red -- red portion. And we like growth because growth makes me not have to go and increase rates. No one likes to increase rates.

» So, you know, the prior owners at our utility, they got -- you know, they had a reputation, I think, with this county, and relationships that were old, but they were increasing rates every 18 months, every two years. And we bought that utility in 2020, and we have not increased rates. We don't plan on increasing rates this year, and hopefully not next year. Now, unforeseen things can happen, but growth keeps rates down, so that's good. But we don't make growth decisions. We just simply have an obligation to provide service. And the last sort of question, and then one quick comment. If there was a -- if there was some debate about how the sewer needed to grow -- so, you know, and this kind of dovetails what we just talked about.

» So, if this council believed that, you know, sewer service was in any particular area, but your company disagreed as owners of the sewer, who would control in that decision? In other words, would the sewer company have the ultimate -- so, would the sewer be able to say, no, we're not going to put the sewer where you're asking us to put the sewer? No, I mean, if we -- the franchise agreement gets in the weeds a little bit. And I was trying to provide more detail, but a high level. But in that franchise agreement, we would iron these things out. But typically, what we like to do is, I don't want my existing customers to pay for the developer's benefits. So, a lot of times, we will serve, and the developer needs to get to my lift station. And we review it on a case-by-case basis.

» But we have an obligation to serve at the PSC. And if we make any capital investment, we don't earn a return on it unless we go in front of the Public Service Commission and show them the burden of proof is on us that we made a prudent business decision. We bid out for capital. You know, we make prudent business decisions to provide service. But we would not -- we would have the obligation to provide service without adversely affecting our existing customers. So, my last is more of a comment. So, I -- you know, in the interest of full disclosure, you know, I would probably lean against selling the sewer. But as I've talked to my fellow council members and people in the community, I mean, I've always said that I'm -- you know, we'll consider all options.

» I'm new to the council, so I'm still learning. So, the last comment is, I'm just telling you where I stand. But I would be interested in talking to you more, but also talking to other groups that may have a different opinion. So, I would be interested in doing that. And I just want to, you know, at some point maybe we could -- we could talk more. Because I'd like to go deeper into the weeds and I don't want to take up everybody's time. Absolutely happy to. And I appreciate that. And I did want to leave this -- I've brought a couple of handouts. Mr. Templer, if you can leave these with the council members. Madam Chair, if I may, before he closes. Mr. Tucker's next, after he's done.

» And I can stay as long as he -- but I just had some handouts that I wanted to provide to the council members that -- that provide a little more color. I mean, it's really my background is regulatory stuff at NPSC. But that'll kind of show you who the PSC is, how they regulate. Customer Bill of Rights is in there. I just thought that'd be good information you ought to have. Mr. Tucker. Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome again, Mr. Michael. Thank you. And I have to agree with Madam Chair, the presentation was a lot more informative. Not that you did a bad job last time, but you brought a lot of information, I think, because now you've got your head around what you're doing here locally versus flying in just a few weeks prior to a month or so. But I have one -- well, a couple questions.

» One is, when you guys obtained this, we had already started the Southern Loop. Is that a fair statement? That is. Yes. And what is the cost if we decide not to franchise with you but partner with you? Will you service, say, some of that on the Southern Loop where you were talking about connecting into your system? A guesstimate? Right now, our -- we pay a flat fee regardless of consumption for each individual residential customer. So, you know, if you -- each customer pays $59 a month, though, I imagine the wholesale sewer service would -- we're not -- I'm not going to go in and change our rates. They just would be -- you'd be put on our existing rates. But we could explore those options further. I haven't done a -- Okay.

» You know, I know the capital costs associated with it, but typically, you know, $59 per connection. Well, that's what I'm asking. For you to -- for you to connect our system to yours, what's the estimated or guesstimated cost on that? This was done a year ago, so inflation has been pretty brutal the past year, but $450,000, we thought, and depending on how much we need to upgrade our lift station. I haven't seen the actual flow data where we propose the most -- what we think makes the most sense on where to interconnect, so it would also depend on how much flow is running through that portion of Southern Loop. Right. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. And, again, I appreciate your comments earlier.

» And, you know, when I came here last time, I said I'm here to build trust over the past few years, and I hope that I've delivered on all of the various things that I promised that I would do a few years ago. So -- Mr. Brazel. Yes, thank you. Yes, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. You have built trust, and you've been consistent in coming to visit with us. A couple of things that you mentioned that have been hot topics -- growth. You mentioned growth, that your company liked growth because it kept your rates low. Right. And I could certainly understand your perspective. I think the citizens in Lugolf, especially where I live, have been a bit overwhelmed with growth lately.

» And a lot of things that are out of our control, properties that are already zoned, general development that allowed for 6,000 square foot lots are under development. And more of those are on the books. That would be a very heavy concern for me. And I don't necessarily know that we've got any issues right now with our system. I think it's functioning pretty well. It might not have a lot of allocation left to allocate more capacity to big subdivisions and big industry. But I think as a general consensus, most of what I hear from the community is they're not really pining for any of that. They're not -- it's getting kind of busy around here, and we're used to a laid-back kind of life here in Kershaw County. It doesn't mean that I don't like the idea of privatization.

» I know you guys could do a better job than I'm sure we could do as a government entity. And I take that point very well from Councilman Jones, and he is correct in that point. But let me just ask you one question. I know you guys serve Northeast Columbia, and we're allocated a certain amount of capacity in the river to discharge into the river. So if we franchised or if we kind of let you guys tap on into a partial agreement, would you be able to send sewer from Richland County into the river as a part of our allocation? Because you've got more treating capacity -- you've got more treating capacity than we do, but we've got more allocation on the books that's not being used. Is that a fair statement? No. Well, the statement isn't exactly true. I think I understand what you're saying.

» And that's why on one of my benefits slide, I think the previous slide, I tried to address your concern because I've heard you speak about this. You don't want to give up your capacity in that river to Richland County. That's a very valid concern. And so that's why I put that as -- and I probably didn't touch on it like I should have -- but reserved capacity is something that you would want to negotiate as part of a franchise agreement. Y'all have -- you know, you have a 2 million gallon plant. It needs to be expanded to 4 million. And I think -- Just for clarity, why does it need to be expanded? Because your DHEC -- I call it my checkbook. You know, you balance your checkbook. But the permits you guys have issued is over 1.9 million gallons of capacity. That's spoken for.

» I call it my checkbook. You know, you balance your checkbook. It's not running at 1.9 today. But if you want to -- say a new Publix and a brewery and a multi-retail system wanted to come to Kershaw, y'all don't have the capacity to give them a permit to serve it. You would need to upgrade your plant to 4 million gallons a day. And that's where I was saying you could reserve that additional 2 million gallons of capacity. And we can talk about other things if we were to go down this road. But I understood that that was important to you. I'd heard you say that in the past. Would you guys be willing to work with us on a case-by-case basis in a scenario such as you just spoke about? Oh, absolutely. I view this as a partnership. Right. In a franchise agreement, I view it as a lease.

» You know, it's typically their 30-year agreements. And our rent is due every single day. You know, every day we've got to show up and meet our obligations to this county to protect the river, to provide exceptional customer service, and make the necessary capital improvements that need to be made. We don't wait for things to break. We don't, you know, we try to be proactive. We got a full-time dig crew. That's when they're not responding to customer concerns, they're out doing preventative maintenance full-time. So I think a franchise agreement is a good thing because it lays out my obligation to the county. If we did go down that route.

» At the end of that 30 years, new to the discussion, what happens to the sewer system? At the end of that, you mentioned a 30-year, typically in your standard 30-year, at the end of that franchise 30 years, it reverts back to the county or you have to buy it back? Well, everyone's different. So I've seen franchise agreement where the county has, reserves the right to buy back the system at a fair market value determined by the courts. You've seen that happen. I've seen that happen. That's not what we would intend to do. But if we didn't hold up to our end of the bargain, you would have those protections. You know, that's very common in franchise agreements. But typically they're 30-year agreements. And we do 30-year financial models.

» When we came here, I told you I wasn't going to sell it in two years, three years. We're not. We do a 30-year financial model. But they typically have renewal terms. And then typically another 10-year renewal. But it's not like a reversion. It's not like it reverts back to the county. No. Okay, that's correct. If I could. Mr. Jones. That's what excites me about it. We've got a lot of things we've got to fund. There's a lot of things in public service, recreation, EMS, police. We've got the fund. What excites me about the possibility here, we certainly need to see the agreement and see what it's worth and what you'd be able to pay. But if we didn't have to run it, and you ran it, and you paid us a franchise fee, and we also had our assets paid off, and we could put some money in the bank.

» I'm curious to see just how much it is worth and how much we would be able to have in one sum at that point in time. I'm curious too, Councilman Jones, and we're working with Danny to put these numbers together. I think we're really close to giving you guys a concrete, you know, preliminary evaluation. We just came, there's not many places to find money. And I think the will of this council is to stay out of the taxpayer's pocket. And that's with creating new fees as well. And I think my history shows that that's where I stand. But anyway, thank you. Madam Chair, may I have them? Yes. Mr. Cummins. Michael, thank you so much. This was an absolutely wonderful presentation. I appreciate all the hard work you've put into it. Thank you. I look forward to looking over it more closely.

» The only real question I have is, is there, and this is, I don't know the answer. I know that, you know, the difference in municipal or county on sewer and then private on sewer. As far as, so for us, the permitting, so for resident and industry, they're only responsible for the, you know, the permitting of pollution of the water once it leaves their facility or your house, right? And then the county's responsible for, you know, from the permit. Right. Is there any difference in that with it being municipal and privately owned? Is it, would the risk then go to the industry or the resident? Would they be responsible for their pollutants that go all the way to the Waterloo River? So, that's a two-part answer. No changes for residential and commercial, you know, domestic waste.

» We would have to modify our permit to provide service to the industrial customers. And we're in the process of doing that right now. We already serve a gun manufacturer that's, you know, high metals content that comes into our system. And our permit is different than municipal owned. And I'd be happy, Adam Delk is our vice president of engineering and he's working on that. I'd be happy to have him provide Danny with a write-up. But the long and short of it is we're responsible ultimately for what goes in the river. Where now, y'all can point the finger at the industrial and say they weren't doing their pretreatment. We don't get that luxury. We're going to have to hold them accountable to make sure that they're meeting their pretreatment limits for industrial discharge.

» And I mentioned Adam. And we have had that happen. Oh, yeah. I've seen some of the, you know, the DMRs. And I understand the challenges with a smaller, you know, y'all are running a smaller utility system. And you might get 20,000 gallons all at once. And a pretty, you know, some pretty nasty stuff, for lack of a better word. Very nasty. But I can have Adam provide Danny with some more detail on that because he's working through our permit modification now. And I mentioned Adam because he's a lifelong resident of Kershaw County. And he was our VP of Engineering and Finance. What's his last name? Delk. And he's just, you know, I always say that we got some of the best in the business. He's one of them.

» And I just think, you know, I'd heard in the past that maybe we're not local or we're not part of this community. But he has lived in Kershaw County his entire life. You know, he went to Clemson, got his master's in civil engineering, has an MBA. He lives in Kershaw County. Our director of finance is a Kershaw County resident. She runs our entire South Carolina finance. Her children go to Kershaw County public schools. And we're really proud to be doing business here. I believe she lives in my district. I mean, she's on the Clean Communities Commission. Yeah. But thank you again for the presentation. This information is very, very helpful. Thank you, Councilman. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you, Mike. Mr. Tucker. Can you please email Mr. Templer or Ms.

» Reeder? I'm going to call you Branham. The presentation that you passed out and if you have this one, if it's different. So I'm at the handout. Oh, yes. Sure. I will. May I ask something of our administrator? Since the conception of the sewer system, the taxpayers of Kershaw County have invested in our sewer system. If we're going to have an offer made to us, I'd like to know how much money we have spent on building the system and putting all the lines in over the last however long, 20 years, 15, 20 years. I'd like to know what are we trading? What do we have to trade? Thank you, Mr. Brazel. And we should probably do an appraisal ourselves. That's for another conversation, not in yours. But, Michael, thank you so much. You're always well prepared and can answer our questions.

» So thank you for being here tonight. Appreciate the opportunity. Thank you, everybody. Michael, is your info on here? It is not. But here, there's a couple of cards. Danny. And you'll bring us back a number. Yes. We are very close to finalizing our valuation. And I'm committed to getting you that number 30 days or less. I think would be enough time to get us where we need to be to begin this discussion at whatever, whenever the council deems it's appropriate, in the appropriate forms. Let me know. And, Michael, I know you've done your research and you kind of know this council. We plan on doing our comprehensive plan and we plan on changing our zoning codes to better manage growth. We can't eliminate it, obviously.

» Knowing that, would Southwest Waters still be interested in our assets if we didn't grow at all? We're interested in doing things that make sense. So if it makes sense, you know, we'd look into it. If you're looking at not growing at all, it could change our financial model. Right now I use the growth projections that your outside consultants put together in the sewer rate study. But I wouldn't say that would be a deal killer. Okay. I mean, we can't not grow at all. But just hypothetically. Yeah. People want to live here. I always enjoy shopping downtown Camden. I grab dinner here on my way out. So. All right. Thank you, Michael. Thanks, everybody. All right. We're done with public presentations. Approval of the February 14th minutes. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

» Madam Chair, I make a motion we approve the minutes. That has been submitted by our dear Dr. Court. Okay. Mr. Tucker makes the motion to approve. Mr. Shoemake, second. Any discussion? Thank you, Ms. Lauren. All right. All in favor of approving the minutes from February 14th meeting. Mr. Braswell, Mr. Tucker, Mr. Shoemake, myself, and Mr. Tomlinson. Mr. Jones, you weren't there. Would you like to abstain? Oh, I'm sorry. I was reading something and my hand was moving too. I abstain. Okay. Mr. Jones, abstain. And the minutes are passed. All right. Discussion. So I didn't mean to cut any of the councilman off when CARES or the Health Service District was here. I just knew that we were going to have this on the agenda. So I wanted to stay on track.

» I had a whole thing and they got all their claps. This, I put this on discussion knowing that. From this side of the room. Knowing that Woodward Park was on the agenda. And that is a hot topic in our community. What I would like to do is discuss our master plan. So we have contracted Alliance Consulting Engineers to do our master plan. They did one in 2012. They did one in 2022. It was presented to the former council in November of 2022. And it's right here if we have any questions on it. So, there is a 10-year plan. Their assessment in 2012 and their assessment in 2022 was that Kershaw County lacks adequate facilities and lacks the proper maintenance upkeep on current facilities. So they do give a recommendation. It's based on population. It's based on growth.

» It's based on said lack of maintenance. It's broken down by district. So I encourage everybody to get -- dive into this very deeply and see what they recommend. Our comprehensive plan, we are rewriting it, but our current comprehensive plan states that we will use this master plan to guide us in our recreation votes and facilities and projects throughout. So I want to bring us back to this just because there are some things that I think have been ignored over the years. And it goes through a five-year capital improvement recommendation and a 10-year. So in the 10-year capital improvement plan, there is a recommendation that we have an indoor facility and an outdoor facility. That's in this master plan. It's a 10-year goal.

» There are things that should be -- well, the recommendation is that should be addressed first. And I just wanted to kind of go over those. The very first thing that this master plan recommends is the Bethune Community Center improvement. The second thing is Copeland Park improvements. Third, Conifer Acres Park improvements. Four, Scott Park improvements. Five, Science Park improvements. Six, Larry Doby Complex improvements. Seven, Boyd Young Park improvements. Eight, Knight Till Park improvements. Nine, Park System-wide improvements. And that's the ADA equipment. This is something I've talked to Mr. Templer about multiple times. I hope that is at the top of everyone's priorities to get ADA-compliant playground equipment at every single park. It's something we're lacking.

» Number 10, Quick Response Reader System. That was their recommendation QR codes for each park system for our citizens. 11, Kershaw County review of additional walking trails and bike trails. And number 12 is KC, Kershaw County West Complex improvements. So that's just to start the conversation. I'll give it to you guys. I'll jump in first, if that's okay, Madam Chair. Yes, absolutely. So I think in terms of the master plan, I think one thing that may change what we do here is, you know, the infusion of money that, you know, is offered for a specific purpose. And I think that would keep with the spirit of the master plan and whether that needs to be revised. I mean, obviously it seems like this council in a lot of ways is going back to the drawing board.

» So maybe it's time to revisit that as well. So I don't think necessarily one should caution against doing the other. I think there's a way to do both. I think, again, the spirit of the comprehensive plan is the indoor and outdoor rec and to grow that. And I think this, I think that this does it. So again, I mean, I won't say, I think, you know, other gentlemen here have said what I would say, but I'm generally a supporter, particularly of, and the reason I asked the question, particularly the sort of agreement to agree. I mean, I understand there are questions and I think there were fair questions raised, but I do think that it makes sense to take that next step forward. Could particularly, for example, I know for Woodward Park, we would have to do some acquisition.

» And so the county administrator would have to be empowered to at least have those initial discussions. And so I would like to see us at least moving on the sort of steps we need to take before we are locked into a formal agreement. But I think a lot's been said about that. And I generally am supportive of it for a lot of the reasons these gentlemen said, so I won't belabor everyone's time. And our plan does, this is the 10-year capital improvement recommendation, 10-year goal to be implemented by 2032. Due to the increased interest in sports in Kershaw County, a tournament venue sports complex facility capable of hosting teams and leagues from across the state and southeast by either upgrading an existing facility or constructing a new facility. So that is in our plan. Okay. Mr. Dent.

» During this process, Mr. Administrator, with the CARES group and all, how much have you been involved in this decision-making or the request for these decisions this afternoon? That's with this council and with the group. Very little. So what I was saying earlier, and I held it to now, we're a county administrator form of government. You run the county. You should be bringing some recommendations to us. When we sit up here and I realized that there's a large sum of money there. There are strings attached to it. And there's no free money. And that's my biggest fear. And I'll probably be right on that.

» But what would you want to see us do at this moment with recreation? You know, from looking through my lens, I am clearly looking through the administrator's lens on the level of service we provide. I've been out to the different facilities around the county and looked at where we are clearly missing the mark. I cannot disagree with some of the comments I've heard tonight from the public in field conditions and things of that nature. It's countywide. It's not just one of those countywide. Right. And up in Bethune, I see that we've missed the mark up there. But my goal is to have a consistent recreation experience from top of the county to the bottom of the county. So every field should look the same. It may not be tournament ready. It may not be striped or lined.

» But it should have clay on it. It should be level. It shouldn't be a trip hazard. The trash cans should be empty. And so, again, through my lens, that's on me. I have got to give Shane and the rec department the resources they need. They are on a limited budget considering the amount of responsibility they have. It's a $1.7 million budget. The library has a $1.1 million budget. And I see that department as being relatively static. It's three buildings. But Shane has a tremendous amount of work to do with very little money. So I see us as a county, as a recreation provider, needing to get a lot of these basic elements squared away. And how do you do that? How would you plan to do that? I would go out and have someone who is a third person removed come in and help me with an assessment.

» And it doesn't have to be an earth-shattering amount of money. But just to come in and say, are we using these fields properly? Can they be used in a different way? Are they too big? Are they too small? Can we fit other components here such as where would softball be the best suited in this part of the county? And just consider, I think as a county service provider, sometimes we're operating in 1985 as opposed to 2023. And I don't know that we've really looked at the needs of what Kershaw County residents have in terms of recreation and we're keeping up with that just from a very granular level of everyday operations. So I would have someone help me do that and just look and say, what can we do better? Are you saying you want to do a quick assessment? Yes. Yes.

» We say quick and I say quick because we have the budget coming up. Right. I would look to, depending on the cost, I will reach out. And I don't see this as costing $50,000 or $60,000. I think this could be a relatively short endeavor. Something that's done within a week or two as far as the assessment and then compiling the data to see what needs to be done. What can be done immediately? Not with any kind of large revenue projects. Just what in-house can we do with somebody coming in and consulting, if you will, and say, hey, this is my area of expertise. This is where you're falling short in turf management and all of these things. Because it's a whole technology in and to of itself and how to manage these fields.

» And again, are they right sized? Do we have too much at one place and we're not diverse enough in terms of the activities we offer? I don't know that. Could it be done in-house? Potentially. But I would much rather have someone from outside come in and just help me with that. And from my standpoint, to help me really not miss the mark at the very core levels of recreation. Mr. Jones, I just have one quick question. Would it be possible to include in that, kind of looking at, and this doesn't only include recreation facilities, but county-owned facilities that are around that are vacant, run down, no longer used, and look at maybe some assets that we could potentially sell off to somebody.

» You know, like in Antioch, the fire, or the old school, the ball field right there used to be all county prior to the day. And now, you know, Mr. Outlaw, private citizen bought it and made it into a rodeo and a community center and everything. So, but I think there could be potentially other things that we could sell off to kind of look at when we're, you know, to go along with the plan Madam Chair presented as well. Yes, and that's something I would clearly look at. Any kind of dormant field that just doesn't reflect positively on it because it's overgrown or whatever, is that better used somewhere else? Do we offload it? Is there potential? But just really taking a very quick look, but, you know, understanding that if there is something that's dormant doesn't mean it has to be sold.

» Could it be rejuvenated? I don't know. But just shrinking our footprint and right-sizing our recreation footprint for Kershaw County and into a manageable group of fields, understanding that trying to work within the current budget. Well, I want to know that, but I'm just one council member. Thank you, Mr. Templer. So I did ask Shane Duncan what he thought we should concentrate on first. If he had a magic wand, what he would do. And his response was fix the current parks. And so, Danny, I hear what you're saying. They either need a larger budget or we need to shrink the footprint to make them successful and have less to manage and do. Would your recommendation to council at this time be to move forward with the Woodward Project or not? Is that a fair question? If he's got an answer.

» If it's his recommendation. I think it's our job to give the administrator direction, not -- I mean, we have the tail wagging the dog. That's an unfair question for me to hear a response of. What is your recommendation that this council does first? I would -- my recommendation would be to help us be successful at the basic things every day. And be it through this first step, this study, if you will, to look in and see what we need to do within the current budget. Thank you. To fix the small things, the low-hanging fruit. Mr. DuBose. Any legal issue with the question that was presented? Not necessarily. The -- again, this is a council administrator form of government.

» The administrator essentially acts as a CEO, for lack of a better term, and is tasked with trying to present stuff to council and act in best interest to council. So, seeking his input on the granular kind of day-to-day operational stuff and what his priorities are, or the shortcomings that he has seen within any aspect of county government is probably an appropriate question. Okay. Thank you. I'm not going to ask you again. I don't want to put you on the spot. I just want to know what -- we heard Shane's priorities, and I want to know your priorities as well. Just -- I want to clear something and make sure I heard you right, Mr. DuBose. I look at it, we're a county administrator form of government. We're not a county council form of government.

» In other words, county council doesn't run the county. We just said the policies, but he runs the county, and he's also -- as running the county, he has an obligation to bring us recommendations on how the county should be ran. Am I correct? Correct. Okay. You said that a lot more succinctly than I did. I didn't understand what you said. The only -- to be clear, the only question that I was concerned about was the direct question regarding what should we do about Woodward Park. Everything else I completely agree with 110%. I think that's a fantastic approach is to clean up low-hanging flute and that sort of thing. But, I mean, we've had a wide debate among all of us about Woodward Park and recreation in general. And to pin that on -- I felt like it was being pinned on Danny.

» So if I mistook that, I apologize. That just -- it kind of caught me off guard. May I say something? Okay. Mr. Templer. And I'll do respect my colleague. Mr. Jones, I have a question. Oh, I'm sorry. Mr. Templer, what would be your recommendation to this body as the administrator with the Woodward Park Project? With the Woodward Park Project, you know, I will never go against any kind of something that expands what we can do in this county. I consider myself somewhat of a visionary. I like the idea. I think it's great. I think it ties in a lot of things that are needed. But again, beyond that, I just revert back to my lens of the daily operations. Okay. And Woodward Park, it would be included in just as it is now, not the enhanced version.

» I just feel as the administrator, I need to provide a better service and recreation as we sit right now. Okay. In this building. How many additional employees would you anticipate Parks and Rec needing if we expanded Woodward Park to this project presented? I think you would need dedicated staff out there, at least two to three groundskeepers. And they would handle everything from the facilities themselves, the brick and mortar structures, restrooms, to turf management. And then getting into that, somebody had mentioned turf management as something that's been neglected in other places.

» You know, is that something we start to look at contracting out, maybe countywide? How much would those, if you had two or three additional employees, what would that be like impact to the budget for the county? If you do, you know, say average $38,000 or something? Yes. You know, I don't really have a number with that because I feel like that would be somewhat of a more skilled position. If you're going to put this much money out there, you're going to want someone with some skill. But it would be more than contracting it out for $70,000, right? Potentially. Yes, when you consider fringe and worker top. Benefits and everything. You probably have at least, county would have probably around $160,000, $170,000, not more invested in three employees. Sure.

» And depending on price point, you know, do we need three turf management individuals? Probably not. But yes, push them close. But if hired, you know, modern turf, said they could do the whole facility a year for $70,000. I think that, you know, outsourcer would be an option. I don't think, you know, this is my thing of about is they put a timeline on it and said they would take the $5 million away. I don't think Woodward, like it's not an immediate need right now. We have a lot of needs in this county. I mean, as a lot of people said, EMS are fired that we need immediately. But if we don't, you know, this is something that we have funds coming in, additional FILA funds in 2024. But if we say, hey, no, we're not going to match it. These funds are going away.

» And that's $5 million that we don't have. I'm not saying we have these $5 million that we put this $5 million immediately that we're spending in addition to the budget this year, and this project starts. I think looking at, you know, 2024, 2025, kind of go from there. But at least we have that $5 million confirmed. If it doesn't go through, the $5 million never existed, and we don't spend anything. That's my thoughts on it. Thank you. Mr. Burns, I did want to clear this up. There's really not, we're not putting the county administrator on the spot. That's why we pay him the big bucks. You know, and I think he has an obligation, if we ask him a question, to answer that question. And I respect going against me, as long as we're direct. You know, we're not him hauling around about it.

» So I thought that was a fair question. But I do appreciate your concern on that. I don't know that the money would go away if we didn't do the Woodward Field. I'm not sure that that would be correct. Maybe some of it would be. The Health Resource, I think he indicated he would pull his back. But I don't think MUSC has indicated that, you know. But anyway, that's just another day for another thought. That's all. I think the MUSC would be more willing to pull it back first than the Health Services did. I think they're more invested in the county, you know, part of it. But, you know, that's, I've, you know, said my part of it. And that's why. And y'all probably got to vote as far as I don't want to beat it down. Well, perhaps we need to ask MUSC to come to council.

» And I think when you do, yep. And they said they were willing to continue the conversations going forward. So that there is no, we're not signing a dotted line. Hey, this is, this is exactly what's happening. But I think we're, we'd be admist to our, to the residents of Kershaw County if we didn't take a deeper, bigger look into potential $5 million of an investment in our county. I just think Kershaw County needs to make sure we control the money and the outcome of where we're going in this direction. You know, each one of us up here ran for office. And the people elected us. And we need to get the input of the people. But let me tell you something, this room was split tonight. It was split. And, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. DeBose, legal question.

» Can an outside entity or a private partner tell us how to spend the money? The outside partner, as I understood the proposal is MUSC and the health district are willing to make this contribution to a specific project. Okay. And if that project doesn't proceed, as I understood Mr. Ogburn, the $5 million would not be provided because they're interested in these specific projects. So, if that's responsive to your question, they are saying we will give you money, but only if you use it for, is what I've heard. Is that directing y'all's activities? Yeah. I don't, you know, y'all are, if y'all choose to meet them halfway and make a matching contribution to fund a project, completely that's a policy decision for county council. But Mr.

» Ogburn's point, yeah, the $5 million does seem directly tied to this specific, the indoor project. I believe he said they'd perhaps contribute to that, but the Woodward Phil project as well. And we would need something in writing though that is very specific what it's for. Because currently the motion was, it's being put towards an outdoor recreation facility. Correct. I believe Councilman Jones discussed that. I was correct. I was correct. I think that the motion wasn't incredibly specific to Woodward Park, but we've heard from Mr. Ogburn that that was their intent. And that was kind of the precondition of MUSC's commitment and the district's commitment was, it goes to this project. Okay. in other words, it's been verbalized on the record. Yes.

» But I mean, to Madam Chair's point, I certainly think if it proceeded further, obviously the county will want to flesh out those commitments in writing from the parties and fully understand what the commitment is. Again, Mr. Ogburn spoke to the district's commitment, represented that MUSC was, was fully committed to this specific project. But again, he also said he doesn't really directly speak for MUSC. So yeah, I completely agree with Madam Chair. We need it in writing. And that's what I was asking tonight, Mr. Broussel is cause I had asked for a commitment letter from MUSC and from the health resource and there was none available. And so I had, I had heard somebody say, well, when does 90 days start? I said, well, it ought to start when you get a commitment letter.

» We can talk more about that. Thank you. Yes, sir. We should get that. Um, another priority for Parks and Rec that came out of the goal of Siting Retreat is storage space, office space, storage space for equipment, um, and offices and staffing. So, um, I ask that everybody keep that in mind as we move forward, that we're not leaving our department just completely left behind and not thinking of them and what they need. Like Mr. Templer said, they need the resources to be successful. And history shows that we haven't, this council hasn't been giving them, not us specifically, but council in general has not given them, given them the tools to be successful. And Mr. Templer, one last thing. This master plan from Alliance that's done every 10 years.

» Um, is it not the assessment that you can use moving forward? It is, yes. Um, but I don't think it gets to the operational level that I, that I need. Okay. Um, so I, I think it's a good blueprint and I think it's a more higher level, but I'm thinking more daily operation and, um, you know, getting maintenance, maintenance practices, best practices and things of that nature. Okay. Mr. Templer, do you, do you foresee us having to, to increase millage to, um, cover the, the duties to care for these fields and that sort of thing? Or I think I heard them speak of $110,000 a year surplus. So does recreation indeed have surplus money that they haven't spent throughout the year? Most of our departments do have, you know, so they, they'll say they turn in money. Nobody turns in money.

» They just don't spend it. So, um, but, uh, and it, it's, that's a tough question because it, it, operations and, and personnel cannot be mixed. So it, it could be something where it was just carried over or it can be something where a, um, you know, maybe a contract didn't come to fruition and it, and so that, that can be a little misleading, but as far as personnel, I can almost, almost assure you that those line items are drawn down to include overtime and things of that nature. So I would imagine that the, those, um, overages, if you will, are going to be more on the operation side and not personnel, which cannot be blended. Okay. Yes. All right. Thank you. Because sometimes projects lead into different, different budget years. Right. Right.

» Um, and I think there was some confusion on what, um, Shane Kirkley brought up with the, um, the money that was either encumbered or carried over, but it was, so there were two projects that we were attempting to take care of out at KC West. That was a concession stand in the paving, but due to inflationary pressures, we were only able to do one. Right. So we cannot do both out of there. So that's a little point of clarification. And there lies my issue. Okay. This is from, um, Mr. Cato district six. He was unable to come to the meeting, but this is his contribution to the discussion. Our County is in desperate need of a parks and recreation renovation in many areas. We have a County have fallen way behind compared to our neighboring counties.

» And I feel we owe it to future generations to do what we can to upgrade and improve parks and recreation and tourism. I believe we all can work together to find ways to fund these projects without any additional costs to the taxpayers. I myself have some requests concerns for district six. Keep in mind that there have been no upgrades or improvements made to any of these locations in over 15 years. One Copeland park in Bethune, additional playground equipment and renovation of the bathrooms, which also serves as the bathrooms for the ball field to Mount Pisgah. The old elementary playground would be a great place for a park in the Mount Pisgah, Buffalo area, which they have never had before.

» The playground needs renovations to include an updated playground equipment and a restroom, picnic shelter, and walking track. Fencing and some playground equipment are already in place along with an outdoor basketball court. Three Westville. I have been approached by several residents in the Westville area requesting that their tennis court be restored. These courts have been left unattended for several years and will need some replacing. and TLC. Four Cassett. At this time, the only park provided to Cassett has been provided by a private citizen who has taken it upon himself to create a place for the community to come.

» These are not unreasonable requests, and I ask my colleagues to help me find a way to fund these apologies, and I apologize for not being able to attend tonight's meeting. That's coming from district six. And Mr. Templer, we talked at the retreat a little bit. When you said you want more consistency in the place, you want a ball field in Bethune to look like a ball field in Camden that looks like a ball field in Lukoff. All right. Any other good-for-the-group comments? I have a question, Madam Chair. Yes, sir. When, I mean, I know we still got more discussion and due diligence to do, but when you're anticipating on trying to have a vote from this body? I would like to have a public hearing.

» I know we have public comments, but I would like a hearing dedicated to Parks and Rec and do a town hall. Okay. So, I hope to schedule those in the next month. So, I think April is a good goal. I'm just asking for timeframe. Okay. I'm glad that we're doing a due diligence, so I have no issue with that. Any other comments? Questions? So, I like the April timeframe. The only thought I have is, before the April timeframe, if we could have a vote, I think it would make sense to have a vote on authorizing, if we need a vote, and that's, but authorize Danny to at least have preliminary discussions with the surrounding property. Because if that falls apart, then none of the other stuff matters. So, I just don't know. That's a concern.

» Do we wait until April until we start, you know, talking to these other property owners on the outside about? How about a legal opinion on that? I think if council so goes to do that, yeah, you could authorize the administrator to, it's essentially doing due diligence on the, you know, five or $10 million question, whatever you call it. But it had to be a vote for him to do that? Yeah. You'd authorize him to explore due diligence with adjacent property owners whose properties might need to be acquired for the Woodward project. Just to see, to Ms. Councilmember Shoemake's point, if the people are not willing to convey their property, the whole thing falls apart. I would like to put that as an agenda item for a vote again. I'm not talking about the project.

» And it could potentially shut the whole project down if they say we're going to overpay for the land. No, no, yes, yeah, that's fair. That's a no-go anyways. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously, I know any of us can put an agenda item, but I don't want to just shoot on it, too. I'd like to at least see it. Are y'all taking votes down there or are you just saying? No. No. I'm talking. Did you see a hand raise? Nobody said, are you for it? The vote by hand. No. I agree with Councilman Shoemake's comment about bringing it, put it on the agenda and bring it before us, but I'm not going to vote to do that because I'm going to support the project. No, not necessarily. How did you get there? Because I just saw you talking to Russell.

» I was asking, was he okay, Councilman Shoemake? So, I don't know that we need to talk to the landowner if this council isn't even willing to further the discussion with Woodward Park, but if you put it on the agenda to authorize him to go ahead and have that conversation, it would be up for a vote. Yeah, I'm not going to say you shouldn't or should. Okay. All right. Okay. I'm going to close this discussion and move on to the next agenda item, which is old business. The first item of old business is a finance committee resignation and recommendation placed on the agenda by Vice Chairman Jimmy Jones. So, Jimmy, you have the floor. I do.

» I would like to this time give you my resignation, no longer settle on the finance committee, and I would like to, if it's appropriate at this time, to make the motion that Councilman Derrick Shoemake take that seat that I'm in on the finance committee. Okay. Mr. Jones, thank you for your resignation, and you're making a motion that Derrick Shoemake is on the finance committee. If he accepts. Mr. Shoemake, do you accept? Yeah. I'm permitting this council to vote for it. Yeah, certainly. Is there a second on the motion? I'll second. Okay. Mr. Tomlinson. And any discussion? Yes, Madam Chair. Even though we hadn't had our first meeting, it was good having you, Jimmy, in spirit. But you're kind of like some relatives. I'm happy to see you go when I come, and I'm happy to see you leave.

» I'm only kidding. I appreciate you stepping up to the plate, and welcome, Mr. Shoemake. Thank you. All right. All in favor of Mr. Shoemake being on the finance committee, indicate by raising your hand, and it's unanimous. Congratulations. You're on the finance committee. All right. The next -- The next will be vice chair. Next topic of old business, the Watery River public boat ramp. So Mr. Brazel has been tracking this issue, and Mr. Tucker and Mr. Jones as well. We currently have a study going on about what should happen at the location at the river in regards to the boat ramp. That study is not complete.

» But to ask our legislative delegation for some help at the state level, I'm going to ask this body to authorize me to communicate with the Kershaw County legislative delegation via letter, so to give them our skin in the game, per se, that we're willing to contribute to the boat ramp project if they're willing to help us out. So at this time I motion to authorize myself to communicate with the Kershaw County legislative delegation on behalf of Kershaw County to assist in the installation and repair of the boat ramp and floating dock on the Lugoff side of the Watery River by making a monetary contribution to the project, and within the contribution not to exceed 10% of the project cost or $20,000, whichever sum is greater.

» Madam Chair, could I make an amendment to your motion? Is there a second to my motion? Second. Mr. Tucker, second and discussion. The amendment I would like to make is that I make the motion on your behalf. Oh, okay. Okay. I would like to -- Hold on just a second. Is there a legal concern? Not necessarily. You know, the body would typically move to authorize you to take action on behalf of the body. But in as much as you are a at-large representative of the citizens of Kershaw County, I certainly think it's not prohibited for you to advance motions yourself. It's -- I mean, it's not incredibly typical, but I don't know that it's prohibited by any means. But, you know, for the sake of clarity and convention, Mr. Jones making motion would be keeping -- more in keeping with y'all's customs.

» So, if it's not prohibited, is there a problem? No. Okay. Can I make an amendment to the motion or potential amendment? I just did. To your motion, though? So, I made a motion, Mr. Tucker, second, and we're in discussion. And I made an amendment to your motion that I make your motion. Okay. Do I get a second on that? Here, I'll second just to -- I'd like to -- I think Russell's also been very engaged this entire time. Okay. Mr. Brazel, just -- Mr. Tomlinson, just a second. You're seconding his motion to amend -- Yep. To discuss. Okay. His amendment is to that -- To amend your motion, yes. To amend your motion that he appoints you instead of -- He appoints you instead of -- Instead of yourself. Okay. Yeah. All right. Discussion on that amendment. Well, I'll discuss. It's not necessary.

» Yeah. I was going to say, I don't know that a motion to amend the moving party is necessarily a proper motion in and of itself. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Mr. Jones withdraws his amendment. All right. Discussion on the first motion. Yeah. I would -- I think it could be a good idea to include Russell also with you. You all partner as a team with this because he's been involved, you know, the whole time and really pushing this and his -- you know, I think he could give some background and potential help. Some conversations that he previously had. So it could be of help if you think it could, you know. I'd like to make an amendment if possible, please. To your motion. Okay. Amendment to the motion.

» What do you amend? I would like to change 10,000 to 100,000 because 10,000 isn't going to get the dirt turned over. Good. It's probably to do it right. It's going to be a -- Mr. Brasel, state your amendment and then we'll get a second and then we'll go into discussion. Okay. I'd like to make a motion to amend your motion from 10,000 to $100,000. So it was 10% or 20,000. Okay. So just 100,000. No percentage. Keep it simple. Right. Is there a second? Can we do that? I'll second. Mr. Tomlinson seconds and discussion on the amendment from 20,000 to 100,000 and removal of the 10%. Yes. I'd like to discuss it. So this is something that we actually allocated $65,000 a year and a half ago, roughly.

» I don't know, a year ago, it's been a long time, to get to the point of actually having conversation, which is coming up in March. So to allocate only $20,000 when we allocated $65,000 to have a study and to remove the old boat ramp I think would just be an insignificant amount of money. We need to show the state of South Carolina and parks, recreation, and tourism that we're going to pledge a significant amount of money. And I think they'll heavily match it and we can get the project done. That boat ramp is, not only is it not safe, there are fire lanes underneath the bridge. And on any given Sunday in the summer, you can get on there and all the fire lanes are blocked. It's unsafe.

» The deputies can't ticket, it's some sort of an odd law that for some reason they can't ticket the vehicles that are blocking the fire lane. I'm not sure why, but it's a major hazard. And if someone were to get in a boat accident or wreck, it's a single ramp. We need two ramps. We need parking. It needs a major overhaul. So it's going to be a significant amount of money and I just would like to see it done right. Wasn't there something done in the past that was similar with PRT and council? There was a match of, I think it was a designation of $100,000. Ben and I were talking about it recently. There was a match and then PRT actually came in and funded the project and the county got reimbursed. Mr. Tucker. I'm not sure of that. Yep. Mr. Tucker. Mr. Tucker.

» Does that ring a bell? Something with the veterans? I don't know. I can't remember so I don't want to put words in. Okay. I'll get more details. Yeah. Yeah. So I have a few questions on this amendment motion here. Because I think that was the starting negotiating price that Madam Chair Lady was trying to get to. Were we going to get the $100,000 from Councilman Brazel and when will this be due? Is it this budget season or next budget season? Yes, sir. It would have to be this budget season. It would have to be part of the recreation conversation. It could come from ARPA. It could come from ATACs. Mr. Templar, do we have a fund balance on our ATACs? I don't know what those numbers are but I would imagine it's greater than $100,000. I think that would be a great source of revenue for that.

» It has specific allocations for projects such as that. So I think ATACs would be the greatest source. And I don't want to put words in Madam Chair's mouth. I think what I understand your motion was to let's have some skin in the game but we don't have to show our whole hand and see what the state comes back and says, no, we need you to do X amount versus C or D or whatever we submitted to them. Correct. I want the delegation members to be able to go to Ways and Means or PRT or wherever they go and say, hey, we received this letter from Kershaw County. They need this boat ramp and they need some help. The study's not done yet so we don't know what the cost is. That's why I think it's important to have a percentage.

» If it comes back and it's $150, we're going to say with this amendment that we're paying $100 of it. And Mr. Tucker, do you know who paid for the last boat ramp? It was DNR. And how much did Kershaw County put forward? Nothing. It's their property. Mr. Templer. It's their ramp. Yeah. Okay. So do we, Madam Chair, do we need to have, do we need to have that language about numbers in there? I mean, because I personally would be fine with a language that just allowed you with, if you want to team up with Russell. I'm, I'm good with that too, because clearly you've lived this issue as well, Russell. But to have, you guys have the authority to talk. I've been on this issue for about 10 years, but couldn't get counted. Well, you jump on it. I don't care who jumps on it.

» I was just saying that, do we need to have the numbers specific, like in other words, do we need to have it capt or can we just give her the, you the authority to just. I think the Chair should have the authority to go do it. I think that might be a legal question also. Yeah, I'm agreeing with you, Jim. I'm just saying, I don't think we need to restrict her with numbers. Like, can't she just have the authority? I yield to Russell whenever he made it, there are two years that he's done very well. So if y'all, if council establishes a, a percentage or just a flat number, there's some certainty in y'all's commitment for the budget process. The authority to go to the delegation without restrictions is maybe a blank check.

» And I guess the concern would be just from an operational standpoint of what if Madam Chair committed to a certain amount and then y'all took issue with whatever that amount was after the fact, then the county's purported to commit to something and then changes its mind. I appreciate that. If I may. That trust, but I would not feel comfortable just negotiating with the delegation or the state without y'all's input. If I may. I don't, I don't need to be involved. You're capable of handling that. Well, it's just a letter. I don't, I don't, I don't need, you don't need my help. It's just telling them that we're willing to contribute. Ben made the suggestion that we put a fair amount of money in and I was leaning on his advice.

» He thought he could get us more money from PRT if we would come up with about $100,000. I don't know, I've never worked in state government, so I don't know how, how effective it'll be to come in with 10,000 versus 100, but we certainly decided a year and a half ago that we were going to be the people to fix the problem because no, they, it got kicked around back and forth, back and forth. I mean, it's like a bad game of badminton. Nobody wanted to take control of the situation. So, so we as a body, we took control of the situation. We got the floating dock out that had almost killed one person, had been trapped underneath it. Dozens upon dozens of boats and trailers had been wrecked by it. So, so we fixed that. And so now we're, we're trying to improve the situation.

» And I just always say, Lee, by example, let's, let's get it done. And I think we've got a tax funds that are available. I think it'd behoove all of us just to be able to move ahead and get it done. And they can do something at the state level for us quickly. And we can get this behind us. I mean, I've got people asking me, you know, every few weeks, are y'all ever going to do anything about it? And I said, yes, we are. We are, we are, we are certainly, certainly moving forward. So I can't speak for all of you guys, obviously. But I feel like the common consensus is that we want to have a safe way to get in and out of the river. I think our sheriff's department, our fire, EMS, we've got boats available if someone's hurt.

» If there's three people trying to take a boat out and there's a situation, time, time's very important. So we need two launch points on that river. And if we can't get it done there, let's move it to Veterans Park. Let's cross 25 Mile Creek and put a parking ramp in and two boat ramps in there. We certainly don't need to ask anybody about that. There's plenty of land sitting there vacant. So let's do that if we don't want to do this. I'm game for whatever. I just know that the Kershaw County deserves better. They do. And the state PRT budget is so robust. With our budget and the things that we made goals at the retreat and other things we have to fund, I'm not comfortable going to $100,000 on this and no percentage.

» This to me is reasonable for our county and our budget, what we can tell them we can do. If they come back and say they can only do a certain amount, then this body will have to decide if we can come up with the rest of the money or not. Yes. Okay. The amendment is change the dollar amount from $20,000 to $100,000 and delete the 10% of the project. Go ahead and put that to a vote then. All in favor of that amendment, Mr. Braslow, Mr. Shoemake, and Mr. Tomlinson. And all opposed, Mr. Tucker, myself, and Mr. Jones. Oh, it's a draw. The motion fails. It's a draw. It's a draw. Mr. DuBose. The motion would fail for lack of a majority vote. Thank you. Okay. Now to the original motion. Any further discussion? All right. I'll call for the vote.

» Vote on the motion to authorize myself to write to the legislative delegation to assist in the installation and repair of the boat ramp and floating dock on the Lugoff side of the Watery River by making a monetary contribution to the project not to exceed 10% of the project or $20,000, whichever sum is greater. All those in favor indicate by raising your hand, Mr. Braslow, Mr. Tucker, Mr. Shoemake, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Tomlinson. And the motion passes. So I will do that. Mr. Templer, when that study is done for the boat ramp, can you notify me immediately and brief the council on the results? Thank you. That entity doing the study will come and present to council. Oh, okay. Great. And then we'll, we anticipate public input on that as well. Okay. All right. Moving along.

» No new business council briefings. And Mr. Tomlinson, I'm going to start with you tonight. I don't have much. Just thank you for everybody's participation. This was, this was great. I think conversations were good. Yeah. So I think, thank you to staff and I, I really like the opportunity to kind of sit down, but I think we need to, we got a lot of other priorities that we just put up on those boards that we really need to start working on. And we've spent two meetings back to back on, on one issue and I don't think we've gotten anything really resolved. So we gotta, we gotta start getting our organization as far as, and that's me too, but I think it was a good meeting. Thank you. Mr. Braslow, we'll go to you next.

» Yeah, I'll say thanks to everybody who showed up, um, to express their opinions. You know, everybody's got an opinion and we heard from, from both sides of the debate regarding the, uh, the recreation. And I think we're, we're headed in a good direction. I appreciate, um, MUSC and the health services district. Um, I mean, what a contribution, $5 million combined. I think that we can do a lot of good with this. This is a nonpartisan issue. This is a issue of community and, and we love our, our kids and we love our community. So, um, looking forward to seeing how this recreation plays out. Thank you. Mr. Tucker. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, let me start off by saying that, um, Ms. Lauren and, um, Mr. Templer and Mr.

» Gerald Blanchard, he's back there somewhere, rock stars and the staff of Kershaw County. What a retreat. Um, I was so proud of just everyone who presented. And Lauren, I appreciate you getting this stuff together and getting it out. And we have in our notebooks. Um, it makes life a lot easier. So I just want to say publicly again, thank you, Mr. Templer, Ms. Reeder, along with Mr. Blanchard back there. And please thank the staff on all of our behalf. Um, with that being said, uh, you should have had your workshop, um, dates outlined for you. I think it's about nine of them. And as you can see, uh, Mr. Shoemate, uh, we're trying not to tie up all your day, but absolutely try to take advantage of the times that we're meeting.

» The finance committee is going to try to meet right after we, uh, have the budget workshop. So we can stay right on top of, uh, of the budget. So this is a pretty aggressive schedule. Um, all of you are invited to stay after the workshop. Um, feel free. Um, but we're going to try to just dive right in and then be done on time. We will manage time because everybody has very little of it. Um, I won't stop in the middle of something, but if I don't see that we can start it, I will not start it. Okay. Because I want to be conscious of everybody's times, including the staff. With that, Madam Chair, I want to say thank you to all my colleagues, uh, for coming tonight. And I will talk with you guys in two weeks. Thank you. Mr. Shoemate. Yeah, just a few quick things.

» Uh, I just want to, again, thanks everybody. And, uh, Councilman Jones. Thank you for the, uh, endorsement on the finance committee. I'm looking forward to helping out there. Um, having watched a lot of these meetings on the other side and on the little live feed, I think there's some discussions here that is like, that are likely to produce some disagreement, but I think this body handled it in a very respectful way. So, I just, I appreciate that. Um, just in terms of, uh, district three, I did want to mention some stuff that touches on, well, several districts, but, um, just three, uh, well, two shout outs and a heads up. Uh, Lugolf Elgin's wrestling team had eight qualifiers at the state tournament.

» I don't want to name them because some people don't like their kids' names being publicly out there, but Coach Monroe did a great job with those young men. Uh, Jessica Hewitt, who is a teacher at Blaney Elementary School, has been nominated for a Life Changer of the Year Award. If any of you guys had Jessica, well, she's my age, so you didn't, but if any, well, if any of you know people that had Jessica, you can actually do nominations. So, if there's anything about Jessica that you guys can think of, those nominations are open right now. And, uh, if you live in or near the town of Elgin, there's a community survey because Elgin's doing their comprehensive plan. And if you go to the town's Facebook page, uh, so anybody that has any input in Elgin, it's not limited to town residents.

» So anybody who has thoughts about Elgin and everyone on this body should, there, there's an open survey for their comprehensive plan. I just wanted to point those things out. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Jones. Yes. Uh, I'm glad everybody was brief. I've got about 10 quick things I want, 10 points I want to hit on. One time. Good night. I have no comments. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Um, I have a couple things. Um, thank you, Mr. Tucker, for getting the budget workshop schedule and Ms. Reeder working together on that. Um, the jail. So, I talked to Mr. Templer. Um, I was actually going to ask this body to authorize the study of the jail to see how we can begin to fix it. It's already in the budget allocation for last year. Correct me if I'm wrong. Yes. Yes. Okay.

» So, it's already been allocated. So, I've directed Danny to go ahead and do that. Um, the, I wrote clerk of court, but I just mean clerk to counsel. Um, we'll have more interviews on Thursday. So, I just wanted to update everyone on that. We're getting very close to having, um, a clerk candidate to prevent, pre, to present before council. I thought she was going to wait until July 1. I might be sick Thursday. Um, the animal shelter. So, I've been in contact with the director of the board. Um, also, um, Gerald's been talking to them and conversations have started on a new contract. So, the contract is from 1999. So, it needs to be updated anyways. That's, um, in the works. So, there will be another meeting on March 13th. Um, so, I just wanted to update everyone on that.

» That's where we stand with the animal shelter. And that's all I have. Mr. Templer. Madam Chair, members, council. I have no report. I was going to go over the budget workshop stuff. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But that's, that's, that's fine. But, um, but I will say I, I was very proud of staff. This past weekend at the, the budget retreat. And, um, Lauren did an amazing job. So, I can't thank her enough for the handouts. I thought they were very helpful. So, but, thank y'all. Thank you. Mr. Dubose. Any legal briefing? No, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. All right. We'll move to executive session. We do have an executive session tonight, um, to discuss the administrator's contract. And there will be no vote.

» Is there a motion to go into executive session? Madam Chair, I make a motion to go into executive session. Mr. Tucker makes the motion. Is there a second? Mr. Braswell seconds. Is there any discussion? Mr. Would you clarify who you want to go into? Yes. Members of council and Mr. Dubose. All right. All in favor of going to executive session. Great. It's unanimous. Thank you. Is there a motion to come out of executive session? So moved. And a second? I'll second. Mr. Braswell motions. Mr. Shoemaker second. Any discussion? All in favor of coming out of executive session? Unanimous. We're now out of executive session. And we're up to adjournment. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. And a second? Second.

» And for the record, an executive session, the county administrator's contract was discussed. No votes were taken. No decisions were made. There we go. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dubose. And it was still agreed upon that she would get with the county administrator. Correct. We'll continue to work on the administrator's contract and put it on the agenda for March 14th again. All right. Is there a motion to adjourn? Moved. Second. For a second time. Mr. Braswell, Mr. Tucker, all in favor? Aye. It's unanimous. This meeting is adjourned. Good night.