Full meeting transcript - July 25, 2023

» Good evening, Kershaw County. Everyone here in attendance with us and everyone watching online. Do we have Mr. Tomlinson on Zoom? No? Okay. All right. This is the regularly scheduled meeting for July 25th, 2023, and I call this meeting to order. And let the record show Mr. Brazel and Mr. Tomlinson are absent. We'll start off tonight with the invocation given by Mr. Sammy Tucker, Jr. Thank you, Madam Chair. Can we all stand, please? Once again, let us bow our heads and open our hearts, please. God, Father Almighty, we come to you as humbly as we know how this evening, thanking you for the many blessings that you have bestowed upon us this week and this past weekend and all through our lives.

» Lord, Father, we'll always be so cautious and kind and gracious to give you all the credit and all the honor. We thank you now for these minds that are up here that are doing the business for Kershaw County citizens, that we have a sound mind and that we make good, deliberate decisions, that we do what is in best interest for our citizens that elect us to these positions. Now, Lord, Father, when we leave this place right here, we ask that we never leave your presence. Give us traveling mercy to our various destinations. Bless our men and women who protect us, that gives us these liberties and these freedoms that we allow us to have. We pray this prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Please, Lord.

» I pledge allegiance to the Father of the United States of America and to the Republic of which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Mr. Tucker. You're welcome, Madam Chair. All right. Adoption of tonight's agenda. Make a motion to adopt the agenda, Madam Chair. Okay. Motion to adopt the agenda by Mr. Tucker. Is there a second? Second. Second by Mr. Cato. Any discussions or questions on tonight's agenda? I have one comment. Under new business, the applicants and the vacancies, there will be no vote. Also, item 15, executive session, we will need one tonight. So when we get there, I will ask for one. All those in favor of adopting this agenda, indicate by raising your hand. And it's unanimous. The agenda is adopted.

» Next item is public comments. Thank you, Mr. DeBose. There are 13 citizens signed up for public comments tonight. And Ryan, do you have the timer ready? Thank you, Mr. DeBose. Thank you, Mr. DeBose. Thank you, Mr. DeBose. Thank you, Mr. DeBose. Thank you. The first citizen is Carol Green. Hi, Ms. Carol. Make sure you move that microphone and speak into it so we can pick up your voice. Oh, there you go. Okay. My name is Carol Green. And a year ago, I moved here. A little over a year ago, I moved to Ridgeway Road. And we were living peacefully at 2681 Ridgeway Road. And then we got this message that the zoning planning committee was going to rezone our area for our Dollar General. And it is right next door to our property.

» And in an email I sent to all of you, I explained the reasons why we did not want a Dollar General right next door. It's just for us, we are old. We're in our 80s. And we need our quietness and our privacy. And we don't feel like a Dollar General next door to us would serve the community as well, you know, because it's just too noisy. It would be noisy. Big trucks going in all the time, cars, people, lights, and all that. And we just don't need that. And I would like to ask if any of you would like to have a Dollar General next to your house, right next door. Okay. Well, we are opposing it. And we are hoping that you do not decide to zone this area for a Dollar General. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Green. The next speaker is Tim McCormick. Hi, Tim.

» Madam Chair, council members, representing the developer in this project for the Dollar General on 2689 Ridgeway Road. I believe that we've answered most all the concerning questions. I do have a handout, if you will allow. We budgeted for a fence. I know Councilman Tucker brought this up last time we were here. Normally, it's a county requirement, so we budget that, especially when we're going next to residential. And so, these photos are from Sumter County, a store that we've already built. In fact, there are two different stores, one store, in the Dazell community. And so, I have, if someone could hand these to the council. Yes, sir. Mr. Templer. These are hot off the press, so I apologize I didn't get to staple them. I've been on the road all day.

» And so, one more thing that I would like to add is that we also have a restriction clause in our contract with the sellers. So, when you have remaining land left over, which I've already spoken before, that we didn't need six acres. That was a recommendation from the planning department. All we needed was two acres. That's it. But we restrict the remaining contiguous parcel, this remaining with the sellers. And so, you can't have an adult bookstore. You can't have a family dollar next to you. You can't have the nuisance. So, it's going to be on the deed, and it's going to follow that deed like a tick on a dog, to where you can't have a methadone clinic, and things of that nature, that sometimes we're the nuisance. That's why we build fences.

» And a lot of times, you know, Dollar General doesn't want a family dollar right next to them, and they don't want a methadone clinic or anything like that next to them as well. So, I just wanted to add that. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. McCormick. All right, Mr. Tim Taylor, you're scratched off. Okay. Just wanted to make sure. Right? Mr. Tom Webb, the third. Tom? I'll be beating a dead horse again. I hope that's not against some kind of animal control ordinance. I think that we are the animals that are going to be controlled. Us people from the boondocks are going to be controlled by people who like to wear suits and ties. I hate to see too much control, control, control, because if you're being bothered by animals that belong to a neighbor or something, you can go to court.

» You can sue them for it. That's the American way, rather than to have more laws, more laws that we'll all become entangled in, whittling away at our little bit of freedom that we've got left. But I've been on a shingles vacation. That's the reason I haven't been here. I've had a bad case of shingles. I've got my eye. It was really bad for two and a half months. Of course, it's so much better now. It's still a little irritated. I'm sure hell could be worse, but maybe not much. And I'm sure there are people out there who would say Tom Webb is so suspicious of any vaccine that might have messenger RNA in it that he wouldn't get a shingles shot. And so he got shingles. Yang, yang, yang, yang, yang, yang. Well, but I'll tell you this.

» I'd rather take my chances with shingles than with a medical profession that pushes a messenger RNA experiment on the whole world so the elite can use their most modern chemistry in search of a fountain of youth. It's not a new search. Ponce de Leon lost his leg in Florida to an alligator searching for the fountain of youth. Hitler had his Joseph Mengele doing terrible experiments on prisoners. Part of what they were looking for was a way to find an extension of life, a fountain of youth. The Japanese were doing the same thing. No telling what the Chinese are doing. So it's a fountain of youth for the elite, but it would be a fountain of death for the rest of us. Because if people's lives extended, then the planet's going to fill up all that more with people.

» And the people who are the elite, they think that we're just the rats in their house. We're the useless eaters that need to be taken away. They're working on it. I've collected about 13 stories around here that indicate messenger RNA COVID vax could be responsible for strokes, heart problems, brain clots, people dying in their sleep. The word is out. There was great variation in the potency of the COVID shots and boosters. It was a great and dangerous experiment, and there's no good reason to trust any of its promoters ever again, including government. Enough of that. About solar farms, a friend of mine wanted me to say something about it. He thinks that county council would have a real good idea where the two solar farms are going, and he wants to know.

» And I phrase it this way, don't you think the people in the area need to know, if you don't trust the people, how can we trust you? And about the ordinance, it was passed about two years ago, I guess, explaining what you could and cannot have on your own property, solar collectors for electricity or solar collectors for heat. It's stated that you couldn't have more than two solar panels on the ground. You could put them on your house, and there was concern that there might be reflection that would bother people. You don't think that a solar panel up on a house where people can see it would be more of a reflective problem than something sitting on the ground in your backyard.

» You couldn't have more than two in a series of either things that produce electricity or produce heat from the sun for your house. You might want to put one on the east, one on the south, one on the west, so that you'd have kind of all-day coverage of electricity and heat. But that's against the law because of this ordinance that was passed a couple of years ago. Very poorly done, very poorly done. I admonish you to do something about it because it says you can't have more than two panels in a series on the ground, or it's considered more than just simply a residential or farm-type thing. It's commercial. It never did describe how big the panels would be, that size. Could you put two of them? I bought some panels from the Chinese, unfortunately, from Harbor Freight.

» I think it was about $100 and 100-watt panels. And if I put more than two of those in front of my house, I'm breaking the law. It's atrocious. It's kind of a European sort of thing to do, little by little, whittle away at our ability to produce electricity for ourselves. And the whole thing, I think, behind the solar farms is to get us caught on electricity from some source we don't have control of, and all the gasoline and kerosene and propane will go away, no resilience left. Thank you, Mr. Webb. Great. The next speaker is Jeff Maddox. Hi, Jeff. Let's see if I can get this thing up or I can talk. Good evening. How are y'all? I'm sorry I missed you last meeting. I want to talk about the greater good.

» Who is this fellow? And what does he get to take from me to build all kinds of stuff and claim that he's going to fix the roads but never fixes the roads? And it's all for the greater good. Every time I look and everything, I can't find the greater good, people. I see county council, and I see councils over the years, and they pass these laws and all, and they say it's for the greater good. And these ordinances restricting all kinds of building and everything, and it's for the greater good. And then years later, they say, oh, great day. That wasn't for the greater good. But now we're going to do what is good for the greater good, whatever that means. I don't know who this fellow is.

» I don't know what gives him the right to rob me and all these people to pay for whatever the greater good wants. I thought we were better than that. I thought we were founded on the ideas of individualism and not collectivism, not for the greater good. And so now we've justified the means for the goal. In other words, now we say it's moral for a group of people to get together and scribble down on a piece of paper that we can rob the people for the greater good because we're going to fix the roads or we're going to put up street lights or we're going to restrict private property or we're going to do something. We might even go into the sewer business, but it's for the greater good. So what we're doing is we're using an immoral act of theft by proclamation to then do something good.

» Is that not poison fruit? Is that fruit from a poison tree? I mean, I can't get over, I can't get anybody to answer how is it possible for people that don't have a right to steal to get together enough people to make that right and call it taxation or call it a fee or call it a fine. I've been struggling with this for the last 15 years and I can't get anybody to answer me why. What is the justification for theft? Is this for the greater good or not? You know, you look at 247 years when we just birthed a nation and all the government was very small, very small. But they proclimated that they had the right to tax. Now, of course, right then it was just imports. It's just going to be imports. And then slowly they taxed this and slowly they taxed that. And it's for the greater good.

» It's for your protection. And each and every step, we misstep. We take away the individual. We take away and now it's the greater good. And the means justify the end because we want this, because we got to restrict growth, even though 20 years ago we wanted growth. We're meddling in the affairs that we should be looking at free market solutions and not these solutions that require force. And I think that's why we were trying to limit government, to limit that force. I think we all understand that. But it's gotten overwhelming now. I don't know exactly what we got to do about it. But we need to start thinking about how do we get government out of it and get the individual and their personal responsibility elevated. Anyway, sorry I missed last week. Maybe I'll miss the next week.

» But thank you, guys. Think about what I said, please. Thank you, Mr. Maddox. The next speaker is Shannon Mines. Good evening, y'all. Live down the street from the proposed lot of land that's getting rezoned for the Dollar General. Past two weeks, I went around within about a half to three-quarters of a while, and I collected a petition. I tried to email that all to y'all today. I hope y'all got it. A lot of folks in the very close vicinity of this piece of land do not want to see this Dollar General going in. They all like how quiet and how rural the Salt Pond area is. If folks want to have a nice, convenient store, you know, right down the street from them that they can walk to, I challenge you to move into Lugoff, move into Camden, move into Ridgeway, move into Elgin.

» Leave Salt Pond alone. It's beautiful and wonderful the way it is, and I hope y'all listen to these 40, 50 voices here. On top of that, you know, what's the point of even having zoning rules and laws if we're not going to abide by this stuff? This piece of property has property right next to it, nothing but residential houses. Places across the street, nothing but residential houses. So why are we going to cherry pick this one piece of property here? I mean, let's just ban or do away with zoning laws and rules if we're not going to abide by that sort of stuff. So hopefully y'all think about it and consider that. I appreciate it. Thank y'all for your time. Have a good night. Thank you, Mr. Mines, and thank you for your service. The next speaker is Janice Mesa. Hi, Janet.

» My name is Janice Mesa, and I live at 37 Indian Mound on Ridgway Road, approximately 200 yards from the proposed Dollar General site. I support the Dollar General being built, okay? And I understand that there's a lot of concern among the people about if you put a Dollar General there, well, it's going to be... Mr. Mesa, I'm so sorry. Can you put the microphone closer? Okay, I'm sorry. Thank you. Sorry to interrupt you. Okay. I understand that there's great concern amongst the people of the community about, well, if you put a Dollar General here, it's going to increase the crime, the traffic, the noise, and the litter.

» Well, I can honestly tell you, I realize also that several families have moved for the rural country life, and I, for one, love the rural country life, okay? I was born and raised in Kershaw County, lived there all my life, okay? In the mid-1960s, I started school. When I went to the end of the road, the dirt road to what we called Highway 34 at the time, you might see one or two cars go down the road. That's rural, okay? And then when I was a teenager, I would walk down the Highway 34, 10 o'clock at night. This is in the 70s. You might pass two cars, okay? And I would be going to a little country store that was on the corner. But this is no longer the case anymore. This isn't rural country that I grew up in. Now, there's between 40 to 50 logging trucks barreling down the highway.

» And when I say barreling, I mean barreling. I can't even check my mailbox getting blowed off the road, okay? Then there's cars, motorcycles, pickups, traffic coming off I-77 in Fairfield, cutting through 34 to get to I-20 in Lugolf, and vice versa. I-20 coming off of Lugolf, cutting through 34 to get on 77. All right? And I know this is traffic has been going on for years. The building's been going on for years. This community is not what it was 40 years ago, okay? And I'm aware that any time you put a new business like that, crime seems to go up, whatever. Well, crime's been going up in the Salt Pond community for the past 20-plus years. People going in yards and stealing. Drugs has run rampant there.

» And I don't know about the new people that's moved in up there and live long, but it is nothing like it was before. But I feel like a Dollar General will increase the police force. I feel like they'll do better patrolling if they get there, if the trash becomes a problem there. That's what code enforcement is for Kershaw County and calling the Dollar General corporate headquarters, okay? I'm also aware that, yes, that having a Dollar General will be a huge convenience for us to elderly people. I have an uncle that lives there that's elderly. My father's elderly. He has cancer. When he goes or they go, it'll be so much easier for them to go to the Dollar General. And like I say, I don't feel like it's going to increase crime any more than already what's going on up there.

» And I feel like a police presence will be more patrolling and will be more on site. So I support the Dollar General. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mesa. The next speaker is Mark Taylor. You have a submission? What do you mean? I'm sorry, sir. Can you explain? Um, no, sir. I don't have you on the agenda. Which item? Okay. Yes, sir. When we get to F, I'll invite you up. No problem. Thank you. All right. The next speaker is David Dabney. Hi, David. Good to see you guys again. I haven't been here in a couple months, but I've been an advocate on social media, following what's been going on and so forth. I'm here to just speak on a couple things. I can't come all the time. I work at family life, and I work, and I try to take care of the things I need to do and prioritize what I need to do.

» But today I'm obviously here as a builder and a realtor, and I'm very interested in the zoning, rezoning, and the talks of impact fees and things like that that I've heard in the last several meetings. I wanted to put my two cents in and just say the impact fees. That's not going to be your answer. Builders that are building have four or five houses going on one acre, a $2,000, $3,000 impact fee. They don't care about that. They're just going to pass that on down to the end user, as most people would. So what you're going to get is you're going to have an inflation, and we talk about inflation at food stores and grocery stores and how hard it is to buy groceries and things like that.

» Now it's just going to cause the same thing in your real estate, and it's going to affect a lot of different people, me, of course, as well. So I just kind of wanted to let you know that I'm very interested in that, and I wanted to put my two cents in for the impact fees. Secondly, the last time I was here, a very hot topic that was kind of dissipated a little bit, was the Woodward Park Sports Complex. Notice I didn't say travel baseball facility or baseball park, and we asked for transparency. I heard a council member last meeting being transparent, wanted to be transparent, wanted to have transparency on it.

» And Sidney Freud was a famous mind guy, and there's a Freudism out there that if you say things over and over again, all of a sudden, it starts to come true, and people start to believe that. When we talk about the Woodward Park Sports Complex, it's not a baseball facility. It's a sports complex. And I'd like to be transparent in that. I would like transparency in that when people are talking about it, to try to stop putting a negative spin on it, that it's just a travel baseball facility. We spoke, I did, and gave an example of how that park could be used a couple times a year after talking with people who hold tournaments to help an economic impact of the community and help support the park. I wasn't an advocate.

» If it's a travel baseball facility, that's a bad idea, because it's not going to work. But talking with Shane Duncan, he had planned on using it. Shane's the director at the Recreation Department. He'd planned on using it for recreational facilities. We also gave an example of how soccer and football and soccer, or football and soccer and basketball, they could have those tournaments out there as well. And I was talking about like two weekends out of the 52 in a year. So we're not taking up a whole lot of time there. But also transparency in that. There was also talks of bigwigs in Camden building on Larry Dove. I hadn't heard any more about that.

» Obviously, being a builder and being in real estate, I'd kind of like to know who my competition is and what kind of property is being sold out there. But I hadn't heard anything on that lately. And with that being said, I've got an idea for you guys. It's very ton of cheap. This is a travel baseball facility. We need to make some amendments on what you're going to put out there. We don't need the picnic shelters, the walking tracks, the playground, the disc golf, the soccer or the football fields out there. Because in travel baseball, we don't need that. And if we're going to make it a travel baseball facility, let's get away with the portable mounds. Let's put permanent mounds out there. And let's make it what it is.

» And again, I say that tongue in cheek because that's what I hear as I sit and listen to county council meetings. It's directed towards one thing. And the Freudianism is travel baseball park, travel baseball park, travel baseball park, baseball park, baseball park. Say it over and over again, guess what it becomes? It becomes a habit. People start talking that way. And if that's the case, let's take all those things out. Let's tell everybody to go to something or Florence or Richland County, participate in those recreational activities over there. And we can save a whole bunch of money here and not have to come up with the $6 million or the $20 million or whatever the number is here now. So I thank you for this time.

» And I appreciate you guys have a whole lot of other things to talk about and issues to discuss. So I'm just going to back down and I'm going to sit and listen to the zoning thing is what I'm mainly here for. Thank you, Mr. Dabney. Thank you. Madam Chair. Yes, sir. Just a point of order right quickly. And we may need some clarification here. The gentleman said he was taking his name off the public speaking. He was going to speak for his first reading of his ordinance. I think that's not what we normally do. So when we get to it, I'll read in his ordinance. And if we get into discussion, I will ask him. Then you're going to ask everybody who does that on first reading. Yeah, if they're here, I do. You follow what I'm saying, Mr. Tucker? Yes, sir. But he can be part of the discussion.

» I don't think he's going to be up here all night. But I don't care about that. But I just want to make sure that we're consistent. I consistently ask people with rezoning, if they're in the audience, to come to the microphone and answer our questions. That's okay. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. The next speaker is Irving Branham. Hi, Irving. Thank you, Madam Chair. Vice Chair, Vice Chair, Council Members. Once again, my name is Irving Branham. I've been here several times now. I live at 324 Rapid Run in Camden, South Carolina. I'm here to recap the reasons that we feel that the property at 2689 Ridgeway Road should be rezoned from RD2 to B2. My brother and I have owned this property at 2689 Ridgeway Road for the last 33 years. It's been in our family for the last 125 years.

» We believe that the salt pond community for years has needed a grocery store. The BG Market is a full-line grocery store with fresh meats and produce. We believe that this will meet the needs of the needs of the community. This would eliminate many elderly and retired folks on fixed incomes from having to drive 20 miles to get to a grocery store, or even just to go there to buy something like bread or milk when it runs out. We have had over 100 people in the area to sign a petition in favor of a dollar general store in the area, and we didn't even go very far. Could have probably gotten many more. This would be a $2 million investment in this area, and it would bring in over $20,000 a year in revenue to Kershaw County.

» As I have stated before, my brother and I believe that you should be good stewards with what God has blessed you with. We also believe that you should try to be a good neighbor to your community. That is the reason that we have never tried to sell any of this land in the last 33 years that it's been in our name. The DG Market sounded to us like it made sense, that it would be great for our community, and that we would be acting as a good neighbor there. I'm asking once again for all those from the Salt Pond community that are here tonight that are in favor of having the DG Market in that place, please stand. This is just a few of the people that actually live right around the Indian Mound Road area, and just outside from it.

» We're asking you, the county council, to vote in favor tonight of changing 2689 Ridgeway Road from RD2 to B2, and that would allow my brother and me to do what we want to do with our land, and that it would also give us the opportunity to have that DG Market to serve the people of this community. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Branham. The next speaker is Marshall Branham. Hi, Marshall. Good evening. Madam Chair, Mr. Vice Chair, County Council members, my name is Marshall Branham, and I'm sure you're tired of hearing from me. As stated in the previous County Council meetings, my brother and I have owned the property at 2689 Ridgeway Road for 33 years. It was deeded to us by our dad. He told us to do with the property as we pleased.

» It has been passed down through generations, starting with my great-grandfather. It is only 2% of the property once owned by our ancestors. We have never developed any of that land for any purpose or ever considered selling any of it until we approached to have a Dollar General built. Over the past few years, I have here letters from people wanting to buy our property, and the folks that live right next door to it, they don't want this. They don't want it. I promise you, they don't want it. They would rather see, and I'm speaking on behalf of myself, they would rather see a DG market than what we could have done with this property. But we are taking the community, all the things that would affect the community, we're looking at that, and the DG market is the best thing for them.

» As I stated in the last County Council meeting, the undeveloped nature of the property has attracted unwanted trespassers that have been trashing our property that the folks may not be aware of. And having a DG market located here will improve the community and will put a stop to this. As a reminder, I sent each of a letter three weeks ago detailing a number of facts about the DG market that is proposed for our property. I also addressed some ridiculous speculations, mistruths, and misunderstandings that a few opponents had previously stated. I trust that the letter discounted those issues, so I will not rehash those except for one item in my letter. And let me read from that letter.

» I said, I would not be surprised if one of the vocal components of the DG market attempts to gather signatures as evidence that the community does not want a Dollar General. If one is successful in getting some signatures, it would be my belief that it was sold on misconceptions, untruths, and speculations. I would remind you that my brother and I personally met with over 100 residents in the community that would be affected by the DG market. We received an overwhelming 95% support wanting for their community, understanding what it would mean to them. Many of them asked, how quickly can it be built? The Dollar General would not be right next door to any residents. The lady that spoke earlier, their residence is approximately 500 feet from the road frontage.

» The Dollar General is going to be on the road frontage. And the property all around it is already zoned as B2, including the property across the street that was referenced earlier tonight. Due to the fact that my dad grew up in this community, my brother and I have an allegiance to this community and the residents living there today. It's there for the residents that's been there for a long time and it's something they've needed for a long time. Based upon the overwhelming support of the community wanting a DG market, we are fully convinced that using our land for this purpose would receive my dad's full support. We're asking you tonight that you support the wishes of the community with a unanimous approval to rezone our property to B2 so that this project can move forward.

» We thank you in advance for your consideration. Thank you, Mr. Branham. Thank you. Thank you. All right. The next speaker is Carl Branham. Hi, Carl. My name is Carl Branham and I live, I don't live 300 miles, you know, I live 300 yards from that. But anyhow, I found out me and you are probably going to be on television tonight. Do you hear anything about that? Mr. Branham, rotate that microphone down a little bit. There you go. Can you hear me now? Yes, sir. Anyhow, I'm the one that's on a fixed income and my brother is too and we, I do live about close to 300 yards from the Dollar General they're going to put in and that would help us so much. For gas, groceries, anything you buy, Dollar General is going to be cheaper than anywhere else you can get it. But that's about what I got to say.

» People need to think about the ones that's on the fixed incomes because that's all they go get. So anyhow, I appreciate it if we could get that passed. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Mr. Branham. The next speaker is Paul White. Hi. First of all, my condolences to you. Thank you. I'm not sure if this is the right time or not. I'm not here to, I'm not for or against anything except myself tonight. I want everyone to lighten up. I'm not here to complain. There's some positions on the airport commission. Is it okay just to say a little about myself at this point in time or should I wait? Yes, sir. It's your five minutes. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. Okay. I wouldn't be here without our airport. That sounds like a weird statement but I hope it got your attention.

» The airport was built in 1929 and my father was stationed at the airport 13 years later as an Army Air Corps flight instructor where he met my mom and took his one and only job with Hawaiian Airlines in Hawaii where I was born and raised but I spent all my summers growing up here and I've been a part-time resident here since 2008 and moved here full-time a year and a half ago so this is my home and I didn't know there was any openings and I wanted to continue the legacy that my father was involved with the fly-ins and he was behind bringing a lot of them to the airport and he passed away in 2009 and I would like to be part of that legacy through his influence aviation has also been in my blood I worked for Boeing for a number of years in Seattle helped build 747, 757, 767s and was just goin

» g to go ahead on my own regardless of the position and help promote fly-ins my background is marketing and history and I would it'd be an honor to continue his legacy and to be involved with the airport thank you thank you Mr. White all right there's one more speaker is Ms. Vicki Monez here hi Vicki okay good evening I'm here tonight to request once again for our county to put on the brakes and to see how far and fast we have fallen I've had to face hard truths in the past few years in my life and make changes it's not a pleasant experience but it's a must and a blessing from God in the end I pray that each of you will do the same you are not in your positions by coincidence God has placed you there to do his will and this is your test we must clean up our own house and that begins in our R

» epublican Party the party that is overwhelmingly represented by our council I'm going to cut to the chase the election in 2020 was not legally implemented according to our state and federal constitution our state legislators did not pass new legislation to qualify legally the voting procedures that were used for the 2020 selection pandemic protocols do not override established voting law therefore it was illegal from the beginning truth is simple confusion comes from the devil yet in May of 2021 the new selected Republican legislators took the steps to pass that legislation and solidify the illegal voting procedure carried out in 2020 for the 2020 primary and beyond this was the second illegal selection in my opinion our country experienced a soft coup in 2020 that would mean that every sit

» ting politician is participating and enabling this coup either knowingly or unknowingly but ignorance is but ignorance of the law is no excuse we can no longer allow a two-tier justice system in this country one for citizens and one for elected officials and the American people see it every day I challenge each of you to examine the things that I have presented to you there is a simple solution to correct our wrongs and if you our leaders would simply do what's right and correct the illegal and treasonous actions that have taken place in our country since November 3rd of 2020 President Trump is our rightful leader I ask you the selected leaders with the power to step up and do what's right and what's legal we cannot turn the blind eye to one law and then carry on we the people have one vote

» each and we hold the sanctity of that vote in high regard that honor and duty has been stolen from us by a rogue government don't be a part of it any longer do the right thing be a part of the solution not the last it's time to right the ship and we are our brother's keepers God bless and guide you each one thank you thank you Mr. Moniz that concludes public comments for tonight thank you for everyone that signed up and spoke right we're up to item number six approval of the Tuesday July 11th regular meeting minutes Madam Chair I'd like to make a motion that we approve the minutes as submitted okay Mr. Tucker makes a motion to approve as submitted is there a second second by Mr.

» Cato any discussion yes madam chair at the last meeting I think I just need some clarification and I think it should be done publicly we had an email sent in by a gentleman and he sent it to you and I think you had read it out loud in the public comment area I don't think the email was read in this completion part of was left out maybe due to time I don't know why but bottom line as I was going over our rules and it says rules to counsel public comments by electronic equipment as rules to counsel comments for public hearings by electronic equipment are attached to appendix three but if you go to appendix three it says nothing about reading an email as part of from this council as part of a public comment what I would suggest is that if we're going to do that that each council member gets a

» copy of it and if we're going to do that we need to make it a part of our rules and if we're going to do that we need to complete the entire email and it needs to be timed my honest opinion Madam Chair you read the email I think you were trying to do the right thing by giving everybody their voice but I just think we need to look at these factors before we do it again and that's I'd like some clarification if you want to comment on that I'd be glad to hear it okay when I received the email the citizen asked me to read the email so I called Mr.

» DeBose and asked if I could read an email and he said I could as the chair of this meeting so I chose to read it because in the minutes of the last meeting would you like to change the minutes no I don't want to change us so I want to make sure we have clarification on why it was done the way it was done and that it needs to be put in our rules if we're going to do it and I respect your clarification on that I just think that if we're going to do it we really need to read the entire email in its entirety not if it's longer than five minutes I'm just telling you my opinion I think we need to make it a rule so we'll have an understanding as to what's going to happen and I think every councilman should have a copy of that if it's going to be read off in system basis thank you madam chair for y

» our time you're welcome any comments particular to the meeting minutes okay all those in favor of approving these minutes indicate by raising your hand all right the vote is unanimous these minutes are approved all right item number seven discussions the first discussion for tonight is animal control ordinance this was placed on the agenda by councilman shoemake so mr shoemake you have the floor simply flagging there will be no vote i'm not asking i've had a couple of different meetings with some constituents they have expressed to me just some concerns about sort of overpopulation of dogs particularly animals in the county and so i'm just i am just now beginning the process of just looking at our animal control ordinance maybe it's where it needs to be maybe it's not i just wanted to flag

» for my fellow council members that i was doing that i'm sorry brent just text i think he's trying to call in he's in mr tomlinson can you hear us hey good good evening guys can y'all hear me hey welcome to the meeting hey sorry sorry i was late i got caught up in uh on the cooper river in charleston doing events go ahead mr tomlinson if you have your agenda in front of you we're on number seven a animal control ordinances and hannah please indicate that he's in the meeting now thank you i apologize derrick no no no i wish ryan would have said it because miss um hannah needs to record him in as present this is great so um no no no no no worries so again i'm not uh i mean obviously everyone's free to to discuss but i was not i'm not necessarily saying that there needs to be a change or a fix

» but i've had some folks ask me to look at that and so i was just letting you all know that my plan is to talk to some of those folks look at that and i may or may not come to you with something but it has it is something that has been brought to my attention and rather than just start meeting with people i wanted to announce it here publicly so that anybody that's listening or watching that has an opinion or a thought on things that could be done different or maybe nothing needs to be done at all they could just reach out and i was just going to put something together for my fellow council members i will not put any ordinance on the agenda without having discussed it with my fellow council members just because again i'm just now in the fact-finding stage so that's all that's all that i had

» on that thank you mr schumack any other comments yes yes sir for a little bit of history uh i was involved in 1983 on creating the leash law for city camden also writing the public nuisance law that we have for county of kershaw i've been involved in every amendment that's been made to that over the past 15-20 years i've also been uh very instrumental in the judy's law that we have on books everything that we've ever went to to control any population that's going to be by spay neuter you're not going to do it by increasing making ordinances on the book i i when mr schumack notified me of this i got an email handed to me that was sent in by a member of the humane society i think it's pure nonsense don't tell me how i gotta build a dog house with a floor don't tell me if it's 85 degrees out t

» here that i gotta have my dog under a certain shade tree don't tell me if it's 45 degrees that i need to have my dog put over here listen folks our animal control there's we have a good solid public nuisance ordinance on the books and it's not being enforced we have an id caller in the county that you have to have with your name and address and telephone number in the city they used to require a tag we did not do that in the county because we found out that 300 people showed up because we were going to make them register their animals listen nobody loves animals any more than myself and i think when we talk about things like sewer and and and the jail we got some other things that really need addressing and i just think that trying to put more bureaucracy on the table with increasing our an

» imal control ordinance is just at this point in time a waste of time because as i said we're not enforcing what we have now that's no pun intended against staff they just don't have the man power to do it so why are we going to write more laws change more laws get extremely restrict the uh and telling you exactly what you got to do if you have an animal we're having enough problems right now uh working with animal shelter on accepting our animals i'm hoping that's been resolved but i don't know who put that together but it was about five pages in red it wasn't put in the agenda packet uh but it was sent to us and then this discussion was put on the i'm gonna tell you guys now as the most experienced person when it comes to animal laws in this county bar none even our attorney i've got more

» experience in it than he does and uh for us to be taking that up right now i think is a waste of our staff's time let's work on what we can do to we've got abandonment laws we've got running at large laws we got aggressive vicious laws you know we have spay neuter laws with judy's law we've got some good stuff there and i just don't think that it needs to be looked at or revised at this point in time especially when we're not even enforcing half of it i would just like to one brief comment if i can mr chumick no no no you can't give him four still had four um but that and i welcome his comments but bottom line is i just think it's a waste of our time right now and i'm gonna be very straight and blunt about it uh because as i said i've read i've read through our current laws and they're good

» laws and it's solid laws let's quit pounding the public with all this bureaucracy anyway thank you madam chair i just want to add that when you pause in speaking some of the other council members think you're done and that's why they speak up and ask for the floor mr chumick you have the floor may i comment on that mr chumick has the floor i just thank you for your kindness tonight i just wanted to say that i respect what councilman jones has to say respect his experience uh admittedly i don't have 20 years of experience with these animal ordinances and i was at one point a pretty good prosecutor and i understand laws pretty well so i'd like to spend a little time so i can educate myself i may come to the exact same conclusions as councilman uh jones and if that's the case that's the case b

» ut when a bulk of constituents ask me to look at something i'm not going to say no because someone else told me it was good and if i may yes mr dredge and the bottom line is i'm not going to tell anybody no but i'm going to tell them how i feel if they ask me to do something i don't agree with and and let me just say this mr chumick you've been very upfront about this and this is not a any punt handed towards you or any member of this county council i'm just stating my opinion from my what i consider a professional basis and i'm pausing but i'm not through yeah madam chair may i well can i think yes sir you can when i finish if she recognizes but anyway i'm sorry that's that's kind of where i'm at and uh i hope that y'all take that in consideration you know uh at a later date thank you mr t

» omlinson you have the floor thank you madam chair um i i appreciate um mr shoemake for putting us on the agenda i think it you know looking at what we have as far as humane society uh with our current situation that we have going on you know we do have a lot of um dogs who run around the community the county um we have ones who turn into wild dogs the humane society is overrun um you know over regulating is is not the way to fix it but i think having a conversation about it is the way to start it um we can't fix anything unless we have the conversation so i just wanted to add that um i appreciate mr shoemake for putting this on the agenda thank you mr tomlinson mr tucker thank you um madam chair um councilman jones i'm i'm surprised you've been very vocal and transparent and always have ask

» ed for your liberties and freedoms to speak and i'm a little offended that you're telling another council member not to put this on the agenda that may be a high priority in his district um we don't do that as colleagues um what may be important or urgent to you may not be important and urgent to me because we live in two different districts and we represent a different sector of the county um i want you also to make sure that you keep in mind you've got five junior council members up here who probably have not had any dialogue or discussion on the ordinance you're talking about that doesn't make it a bad ordinance but if anything it would give them some insight as councilman shoemake stated when we can have some conversation and discussion and better understanding of it and then if it need

» s a little tweaking or something we can come to that conclusion if that's the case but um let's just be mindful that um you know we have different priorities and we have different issues because we represent different sectors of kershaw county thank you madam chair if i may madam chair yes mr i represent the whole county same people you represent i represent miss tucker and i am in no way shape or form i thought i was i thought i had a pleasant demeanor up here and then let me say this i in no way it intended uh to insinuate he should not put anything on the agenda he wants to put on i'm just telling him how i feel about it and that that i personally think is a waste of time because we've got a solid ordinance right now that's not being enforced to his capacity they don't have enough manpow

» er to do it and and i wish i brought those sheets of paper with me but i did but it's like five sheets of paper with i mean i just couldn't read through it anymore so much but no no no please understand i would never ever try to insinuate that a council member not put something on the agenda i'm just sorry that my demeanor doesn't suit you but i'm not mad i'm not upset i'm just very direct and straightforward about how i feel and that's how i feel with the experience that i have based on the many years of dealing with this thank you and i just want to clarify for the citizens out there um the document that's being referenced um miss wendy satterwhite she did a lot of research with some surrounding counties and she pulled together what she thought was the best of all the counties and submitt

» ed it to us for our review and it's been sent to all of council and i do want to thank her for doing that she cares very deeply and she's just trying to improve the process a little bit i think we found out from the budget cycle that the animal control department um does need to be beefed up and does need an increase in personnel so um i think we'll all take that into consideration when we go over the ordinance i have no problem reviewing it thank you thank you for those kind words let me just say that i have no problem in anybody wanting to review them uh i just thought i would give you some insight on my position on it where that could really help y'all understand the right way to go and i've had people contact me about it as well and it's usually been members of the humane society and i

» worked with humane society for 30 years and and i think the world of each and every one of them i don't agree with some of their policies nobody loves an animal more than i do you don't believe it that's my cat and dog they'll tell you but anyway thank you all right we're going to move on to discussion b mr cato mr tucker anything on the animal control nothing okay we're going to move on to litter control ordinance and mr shoemake you have the floor same thing i've had a number of people reach out to me and i've told those people same with the animals that we had a budget cycle to get through obviously we finished that last month so i'm turning my attention to these issues the two issues several of the issues i hear a lot about obviously growth being the number one which we'll talk about la

» ter but litter is a big one i know that we need more people on the streets and that's something we're gonna have to address as budget cycles come so i'm not blind to the enforcement but one issue the one specific issue i wanted to bring up here that i would like to explore as well again no vote tonight the fine in kershaw county under this local ordinance is only 25 dollars for littering and i'll be honest with you my proposal would be so high that i'd have to compromise to whatever you guys would be okay with um i think litter is awful and i would have no trouble with excommunicating people from the county who routinely litter um but we can't do that under the law as i understand it um so but i would like to explore increasing that fine i think the state maximum fine is 2500 there's also b

» een issues about fines being imposed so for example someone gets a litter ticket they go they get some community service we can mandate mandatory fines and our ordinances and again not proposing anything specific but i'm going to uh talk to our county attorney i'm going to put together something that would beef up our enforcement because if we if if our law enforcement knows that they get can generate revenue that will help their department help the county then they're more likely to pull it we can't be asking the sheriff hey pull over litter violators for 25 dollars a pop but if we can do say three thousand dollars a pop then maybe that becomes something the whole county can get behind so i'd like to talk to the sheriff to code enforcement and i'm going to put something together as well bu

» t i just wanted to flag that for you all thank you comments if i may yes mr judge i want to be very careful about talking about creating an ordinance to generate revenue that's something we don't want to do but i but i do think we need to look at our little laws i don't think we need to be looking at it as a source of generating revenue and i and i'd certainly like to have the sheriff involved in it as well and i am very pleased i want to compliment the county ministry i haven't done it much but i do want to tell you i like what you've done with animal and litter control taking my suggestion and letting them piggyback animal and litter since we don't have a litter officer and uh and i think that's been generating some some activity am i correct on that yes sir that was a good move that was

» a good move and i think that was a step in the in the right direction because i was once again i mean i hate i don't mean to talk about me so much don't say it but i'm gonna have to um once again in 1985 we had a litter control and it was animal litter and we answered all the complaints with three officers and we went through 500 complaints a month so i'm just saying there's things that we can do to really step it up you know but if but i do not want to get into i'm not against maybe raising the fine but i don't want to get into anything that says we're going to generate revenue uh issuing tickets anyway thank you may i just jump into that because i agree with councilman jones i just want to clarify what i was saying i agree with councilman jones legally we don't need to be doing ordinances

» as revenue my point was that when your ordinance is set bluntly from a 1985 standard then it doesn't catch up with the modern needs when it costs more to enforce an ordinance than it does to not enforce it then it should be revisited so i agree with you we don't they should and i want to make clear for the record down the road that i'm not at all advocating a penalty for the sole purposes of raising revenue and i knew that mr you make but what's your going to put us on are you are you but you do thank you madam chair but you do want to make it high enough so it is a deterrent for them not to do it and i think that's where mr kato was going mr kato that's exactly where i was going it's it's not a revenue issue but it's more of a deterrent um you know recently i just dealt with one of these i

» ssues and i and i think we we need to look at the difference between a simple littering case and illegal dumping and and the amount of garbage or trash or i'll tell you from a rural aspect you can ride through the woods and you can find these large areas where shingles and other debris tires and other debris has been dumped on these small country roads and and that's something we really need to work on in this county just here a while back i found a creek somebody came to myself and the resident deputy in my area 14 bags of trash was dumped in a creek within a quarter mile of my house and thanks to the sheriff's office that deputy um waited in the water went out found the name went to that person he took care of it so i thank the sheriff's office for that that's the kind of issues that we'r

» e dealing with in this county right now and the more population we get the worse it's going to get the situation with the with the the trash sites with a lot of the some of the contractors coming in dumping filling up the trash sites there's a lot of issues that we need to address when it comes to litter and i appreciate mr shumake bringing this up tonight yes thank you mr shumake mr jones just to kind of end up on this it's been a big problem for 25 years i mean i pick up trash in my front yard last year i wrote every day mcdonald's hardy's whatever wendy's and the cups and trash are always thrown everywhere and tires have always been thrown in creeks have always been trash bags in creeks we've been dealing with that for 20 years we just need to have a solid enforcement program or the sher

» iff might want to take it over i don't know um but bottom line is it's been a problem for many many years so it's not just something that has just started happening thank you my opinion thank you mr jones from a lot of experience um any council members when is the last time the litter ordinance was updated we know it's best i could tell it's been a long so it needs probably needs to be revisited anyways even if absolutely it's appropriate madam chair yes sir don't forget about brant's on the phone oh mr tomlinson thank you um yeah once again uh council machine may thank you for putting this on the agenda this is as um also the animal control ordinance is a hot topic in my district i get a lot of calls um repeatedly weekly about litter i you know revenue as everyone stated isn't the reason f

» or this i would like to see community service implemented you know you you throw out trash law enforcement gives you a ticket you go to the court and you get x amount of hours of community service if people have to actually do hard work instead of paying for it i think the litter would be less prominent in the county however um you know we we do have have an issue our state hasn't has a huge issue it's just not enforced around the state palmitary pride in the month of july alone i think i've done 15 cleanups across the state of south carolina during the south carolina 7 expedition we were just in in kershaw county doing the watery river um on the 15th of july and i was with the director of um of our parks facility and he we're kayaking together and he said that you know he would go around t

» o our parks and the ones with trash cans there there was just litter everywhere all around the trash can because people didn't care they would just throw it at the trash can that would be on the ground however the parts that didn't have trash cans were clean so people would go and they wouldn't be able to clean out their cars and put it in so i think there's a lot of things we need to look at going forward um and this is a good start thank you for creating the conversation councilman that's a good point mr tomlinson thank you i would certainly be in support of an increased fine for it all right any other comments okay moving on to item number c i'm going to give the floor to the administrator mr danny templer to go over our revised skip grant application and award thank you madam chair memb

» ers of council just wanted to give you all an update on where we stand with this project as you remember a while back we re-engaged the state the issuer of this this grant to in the tune of 10 million dollars um we ran into a problem with our match money so we re-engaged with the state and re-identified a scaled down project that still allows us to have an increased capacity at our wastewater treatment facility that capacity would take us from the original plan or project of two million gallons a day to one million gallons a day which i think is still a huge win um we're still in the running for this grant at 10 million dollars um we revised the application to reflect that we would match at seven million six hundred thousand dollars that funding mechanism or those funding streams would come

» from within the the enterprise fund of sewer itself um the rate increase is a contributing factor reduced construction spending in fiscal year 2023 and you remember the srf loan we secured to reimburse ourself for southern loop phase one where we paid for that out of the sewer budgeted sewer funds so we just asked the uh rural uh rural infrastructure authority at the state to reimburse us for that project that we spent out of our our pockets so that i consider a funding stream at 2.7 million dollars and then the 3.3 million dollars in our unrestricted net position as of 6 20 6 30 20 22 so in in some the excuse me the the sewer uh revenue it has has been strong we've we've done the sewer rate increase and that has allowed us to keep up with with the costs um and this is just a healthy depart

» ment so in terms of revenue so i would i'm very excited to allow us to increase our wastewater treatment facility by one million gallons a day we we need the capacity with the growth um regardless of whether it's residential or industrial um but if we could do this to the tune of 17 million dollars and um and not have to incur any debt and i i think that's a win with the caveat of the srf loan was it a loan to but at a very low interest rate i think around two percent um which is almost um unheard of for that amount of money but um that's what we get with the state revolving fund it's it's it's a unique uh lending mechanism that does not count towards our eight percent uh debt load for a general obligation so um that's where we're at um you have any questions i'd be glad to answer madam cha

» ir yes mr tucker thank you um okay uh mr administrator i kind of lost me on some numbers so i know it's 17 million total for one for one mg upgrade correct correct correct and what was the uh cost in our um that we were going to be taking out of our sewer reserves it's it's well it from reserves would be three million three hundred thousand okay 3.3 million and what is the current balance in that as of you said uh gen 30 of that's we would take that unrestricted okay that's the unrestricted part they write that down okay and you said that this count is very solvent yes okay all right thank you if i may yes mr dents thank you madam chair members of the county council um now the comments made by madam chair she said that you were going to talk about the skip grant that we got some new informa

» tion on and have been awarded we haven't been awarded anything am i correct not yet this is um they have some follow-up questions with us um so but i i feel pretty good about it this this is plan b from plan a where we were given a 10 million dollar skip grant then yes of course we didn't know about it so and i think you signed on the last day so therefore you've gone back and talked with the so beers at the state level and they've worked with you and you've worked with them very well and i'm very pleased with that dan i just want you to know that i don't like the way the first one went down um double double obligating our money and and this council not know anything about it however please keep us aware of what's going on with this one because we have not been awarded this yet but uh and i

» and you said we would be or would not be using a revolving yes that is part of the state revolving that would cost it be an interest rate of two percent right around there how much how much would we be getting from that revolving fund that is 2.7 million dollars to reimburse us for southern loop phase one and where would you be making those payments for that it would be coming out of the sewer out of the sewer yes there would be no increase for any and i think that's important and and and i and i like that um this is still probably get a 10 million dollar match 10 million dollars and would go from 2 mg as we did before because of everything it was in it would go down to because of us not being put in our funds in it would go down to one meal per day one million gallons per day but this this

» project here would give us a grand total of three million gallons per day and and my point i'm trying to say is that and we can do this without having to put any additional funds in it ourself correct just everything from so nothing from our reserves or anything else and with our with our the tax base we get from palmetto which is right two plus whatever million dollars that would also be help that's been paying off a lot of our debt hadn't it yes sir that's been thank you yeah i'd say thank you to palmetto utilities for being such a good neighbor to kershaw county because if it wasn't for them we wouldn't be able to be sitting here talking about doing this without any additional increases to taxpayers i want to be i want to be firstly kept informed on a step-by-step basis about this sewer

» program to make sure and i know we're not going to drop the ball on it but i just want to make sure where things are moving forward and then i'm i've been made aware of it yes okay thank you madam chair members of council thank you mr templar was there a minimum match requirement for the skip grant there was it was a 15 but this more than exceeds that okay they also asked for contingency and and things like that but again we're able to meet all those thresholds okay so you don't anticipate the award changing we're just changing our part of it okay what about time how long do you think take before you get an answer it's it's hard to say i i wouldn't even know how to put a time ask them well and and it's got to be soon i would say because these funds have a shelf life so the approach there wo

» uld be to of course our funding does not so we would front load the spending of the 10 million dollars to beat the clock if you will front load it from our reserves but we would take all of the project costs and then submit for reimbursement from the 10 million dollar grant so we can spend that down and not leave anything on the table thank you thank you all right any other questions for mr templar i appreciate your hard work on that coming back with a what i think is a solid positive plan i just hope it works yes thank you mr tomlinson do you have any questions for mr templar no madam chair i do not have any questions okay thank you all right that concludes our discussions for this evening moving on to agenda item number eight ordinances madam chair yes mr tucker i would like to ask to uh

» be excused i will accuse myself on um ordinance number eight underneath uh alpha the first one thank you you are welcome we'll make wait for mr tucker to leave okay the first ordinance this is the third reading an ordinance to amend the official zoning map of kershaw county to rezone approximately 2.58 acres of property tms number 299-000060 owned by terry coleman and located on the south side of tickle hill road approximately one quarter mile north of black river road camden south carolina from r15 low density residential district to gd general development is there a motion at this time for this ordinance this ordinance okay mr shoemake makes the motion is there a second i'll second okay mr cato seconds is there any discussion or any additional questions that have come up there's no change

» s that i see from the second reading okay with that all those in favor in rezoning the property tms number 299-000060 from r15 2dd indicate by raising your hand and mr cato mr jones myself and mr shoemake and this rezoning is adopted i'm sorry mr tomlinson right mr tomlinson how do you vote i am in favor okay mr tomlinson in favor so mr cato mr jones myself mr shoemake and mr tomlinson and mr tucker has been recused thank you we'll move on to bravo another third reading we'll wait for mr tucker to get back mr coleman are you out there i hope you can retire eventually thank you pleasure working with you all right second ordinance of the night on tab bravo third reading an ordinance to amend the official zoning map of kershaw county to rezone approximately 6.3 acres of property tms 264 000000

» 9 owned by irving branham and marshall branham and located on the south side of ridgeway road approximately one quarter mile west of smearna road ridgeway south carolina from rd2 rural resource district to b2 general business district is there a motion at this time regarding this ordinance my chair make a motion that we pass uh this ordinance for the third reading for uh the rezoning okay mr tucker makes a motion to approve is there a second a second okay mr jones seconds and into discussion any discussion or questions for the property owner yes sir thank you um i just want to say that um you know i know this is a touchy topic and we're not all in a an agreeance and um i'm gonna put my experience and my due diligence that i've taken to do and um the history of dollar general doing right by

» this community um you know i i can't say what other counties have done but um the running joke in my family is there's a dollar general you know you can go up number one and you can count 15 of them from elgin back to bethune um they're they're all over but uh they're clean and um they keep them up and they have been a very very uh good asset for the citizens in kershaw county and no i don't have one by my house but there's one built in the area where i live um it's not 300 yards or 3 000 yards or feet or miles whatever mr branham had said but um i think that the ones that may have some reservations that they will find themselves pleasantly pleased once you open it if it happens to pass tonight and that you may find yourself using it now you won't first because you're going to be rebellious

» and that's okay um but let mom how she needs something and then you're going to take off to the store and you're going to get it at the most convenient spot um so i um i wish both sides uh the best outcome as possible but um i will be supporting this madam chair tonight thank you mr tucker yes mr chubick so i mean i've in prior meetings you know address my concerns you know i'd be curious for those of you who are here tonight supporting this on this body you know the one concern i have is you know you look at the history of this it was an 06 vote at the initial board so it was unanimously well i think there was a person missing but everyone that was the planning commission correct the planning commission unanimously said not to do this and so i just i have hesitancy now look the planning co

» mmission gets it wrong we're the ultimate last body i get that uh the planning commission can sometimes get it wrong but i just i'm just a little bit what has what gives me pause is we have a planning commission who unanimously unanimously unanimously said that this is not something they would support and i just i'm just a little bit concerned about that that that's what gives me pause i don't want to belabor it i i think i know where everyone stands but i just wanted to share my concern i'd be curious to hear your think on that madam chair i already had a term but i need another one on that comment so you want to go before i go no go ahead no i don't i'm you you go ahead you were curious of his well obviously you know and i know that you know with councilman jones i know we represent the w

» hole county but obviously we live in our district so councilman jones obviously this is your district you've got you know better knowledge of of these areas than i do and i'm just i honestly am curious i'm not trying to put you on the spot but i'm honestly curious what the you know what your thought is on that i'm gonna give it to you and i gave it wtx today too let me say this we've been through this before as mr tucker and some of you know with the dollar general up in another area but uh i've never seen any evidence where dollar general has devalued anybody's property i haven't seen this dollar general is going to be a dg market it's going to have produce it's going to have meat markets i have been i know i know a large group of the people up in that area all of you i've known some of yo

» u all my life i think this would be very good you got some folks up there there's a 20 mile turnaround for them to go to town or i call it off town because it's always been a town to me to purchase something to go back and i do not follow the guidelines of the planning and zoning commission because they don't get it right every time that's their opinion based on information that they they have looked at but i'm gonna tell you something um i think it's three to one in favor i think this would be a good thing for the community and uh i'm going to vote yes on tonight and i haven't asked any of y'all in here to vote for it but i hope y'all will consider it because it is something that is needed there they're not going to ever get a harris teeter a food line or publics but the the dg folks they'

» re they're willing to go up there and invest in this community you know we say we're pro business um i think this is a pro business vote and uh as i said i'm going to support it and i have no regrets about that and and i don't just work for my district i hate it when someone says well this is your district don't minimize me by telling me i represent a district i represent campaign funds that i've got came from more of this side of the river than did the lugos side of the river i have signs up everywhere all over the county you know i mean just kind of a fact so it may be my elected district that's fine but i mean i think the people that are here on both sides enforce their opinion but bottom line is that to me there's a large majority of people mr shumate that want this that versus don't wa

» nt it and i think it'd be a mistake if we didn't take this opportunity tonight to give these folks something that's going to be really nice and really decent where they can go without having drive 20 miles round trip in some cases and they're getting older you know well i can say that because i'm getting older too and uh but thank you for your time mr cato or mr tomlinson you know i look at this and just like any other vote that i believe we've taken um since i came on council is you never make everybody happy there's never a hundred percent of the county that says this is what i want and we have those decisions to make now i'll speak from somebody that lives just as rural as any other councilman up here i live nine miles from the nearest dollar general that's about as rural as you can get

» um and it would be nice to have a dollar general closer you know you never know when somebody's gonna get sick you're gonna be out of Tylenol or you just want to run down and get a popcorn that you run out of just the simple things but i do understand having one built within a few hundred yards of your house or you know i understand the concerns but i agree i agree with with councilman jones and councilman tucker uh you know uh i've never seen in the county i've never seen the dollar general that the grounds was littered or wasn't kept up and and and they do a good job and i hope they'll continue to do a good job with that um and i believe that this would be a great asset to the community i really do um so tonight i'm i'm gonna have to support this and um i believe in the future we'll see t

» hat this will benefit to that area thank you mr tomlinson thank you madam chair um yes i i will also be in support of this i've i've done much research about it and there's actually some mixed research regarding the effects of dollar generals in rural communities um you know it kind of goes both ways i think you know everybody was scared of walmart popping up also and walmart was the savior of america so everybody could go get a single thing at one place instead of having to go to the grocery store to um they can the old hardware store you could get everything in one location i think dollar general and the type of dollar general that is proposed will be a benefit to the community um i do see both sides i think and you know the effects are you're going to have more traffic people's property

» right next to it i'm sure that they don't want to have the increased traffic but there's also the you know gas station right there um so they're already seeing that um i think um from the comments that i've received and the people i've talked to i'm gonna have to support this tonight thank you madam chair thank you mr tomlinson i am in receipt of the petition mr minds and um i know that miss green has left um also from mr freddy ortiz on 2703 ridgeway road um who does not he's a neighbor that does not want it built i did get a legal opinion um as you said mr minds it's like cherry picking individual properties we are not allowed to do that that's called spot zoning so i did get a legal opinion on that um and the legal opinion was that this is not considered spot zoning um so i was concerned

» about that so i looked into it so we have two petitions opposing and going against i want to bring everybody back to some of the key issues our comprehensive plan um so here are the comprehensive plan considerations that we should all be asking ourselves sitting up here um enable and promote a variety of commercial uses and development in locations that are appropriate and compatible with surrounding land uses that provide employment opportunities and serve the needs of the residents so when i read that i do feel like this development in this project meets that requirement um encourage the location of new and expanded residential commercial and industrial development in areas where existing water and sewer facilities roads and other infrastructure or planned facility upgrades can accommodat

» e the development um we do have that here as well so this is really just a matter of um the council and what they believe is best for that area and there's more support in that area than not so i do have to support it tonight and i did hear your concerns everyone that came out to um speak against it um i believe strongly in property rights so um the owner of the property i do want to let them do what they want to do with it as well it's near an intersection um so that is conducive for other commercial property as well so as we grow different areas are going to look different as we go through the growth process so i just wanted to make those comments um thank you to everyone that came out though supporting it or not supporting it so your voices can be heard anything else mr tucker yes madam

» chair started interjected earlier um you touched on one thing that i spoke about the last two times i read about spot zoning and of course um like you say it's that's not what this is actually there's a business across the street that's on b2 as well um and so to answer your question councilman she made my personal opinion on what the commission was thinking was this was a feel-good vote because talking to our director mr joey and talking to the commissioners which i spoke to uh several of them um there's no rational rhyme reason other than they were concerned about the homes in the area there's nothing legal that this zoning is illegal that this zoning is doing so you know i can't answer for them but it won't be my first vote against the commission if i may yes mr jones i voted against the

» more than you have the thank you you vote against everybody more than i have all right so bringing it back to the rezoning um this request does follow the future land use map and it does correlate with our current comprehensive plan all right mr tomlinson anything else to add no madam chair all right with that all those in favor of rezoning tms 264 000 0009 from rd2 to b2 indicate by raising your hand mr k2 mr jones myself mr shumake and mr tucker and mr tomlinson how do you vote i vote in support okay the vote is unanimous and that rezoning request is approved it was a unanimous vote yes yes thank you all right moving on to next ordinance a third reading an ordinance to amend the official zoning map of kershaw county to rezone approximately 46 acres of property tms 063 000 000104 113 114 1

» 15 116 and 117 owned by james f kelly the fourth and located on the east side of kershaw highway just north of carolina motorsports kershaw south carolina from rd2 rural resource district to gd general development district is there a motion at this time regarding this ordinance i'll make a motion that we approve this ordinance okay motion to approve by mr cato is there a second second second by mr tucker and any discussion is this d on the agenda yes okay i just want to share it it's charlie madam chair if i may yes mr cato i just want to say that uh and i said this before um carolina motorsports park is uh if you go up there you'll see just how well taken care of this park is they have a great staff it's great for kershaw county i look forward to what they're going to do um they they provi

» de multiple employment opportunities up there for people around kershaw county and i thank them for what they do they they provide a little bit of entertainment up there for them um from time to time and and um i've had an opportunity to visit the park and to to look at the area that it sits on and and it's a beautiful place and i just i thank them for what they do up there and i look forward um to see what comes next thank you thank you mr cato any other comments you know mr tomlinson no madam chair bless you all right well i can't wait to see what um carolina motorsports park does next um they have been great partners in the community so all those in favor of rezoning tms 0 6 3 0 0 0 0 1 0 4 113 114 114 114 114 114 and 117 from rd2 to gd indicate by raising your hand mr tomlinson how do y

» ou vote i vote in favor of the ordinance okay and the vote is unanimous okay moving on this is a first reading an ordinance to amend the official zoning map of kershaw county to rezone approximately 60 acres of property tms 3 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 4 excluding one acre future utility parcel for an existing cell tower on parcel 0 8 4 owned by donald e taylor and located on the north side of wildwood lane approximately one quarter mile west of watts hill road elgin south carolina from rd2 rural resource district to r15 low density residential district is there a motion at this time okay i'll make a motion to approve this rezoning is there a second i'll second for discussion mr shoemake second for discussion okay discussion any questions mr taylor is here if there's any questions from him i do ha

» ve a question mr taylor can you come up please mr taylor what's your plan with this property okay what the reason i'm here in one sense our family doesn't want to be here and i know that sounds weird about four years ago we realized the area to the top left watts hill road uh is so infested with narcotics um derelicts i we've had two deaths on my property uh i live at the bottom on the pond looks like a coffin shape for lack of better description but uh but uh uh we my children and i 10 and 7 we use the property recreationally and three or four years ago it became evident the sheriff's department just can't stop the people uh it was funny as people say what about no trespassing signs or fences not only have they taken down the barbed wire and recycled it they took the gates with them so um

» the children's grandfather don taylor who owns the property um has decided that uh uh we need to move on we are only gonna i'm gonna remain on the property we are only selling to the left side where you see the gas line uh cutting through and then i'll remain on the bottom right joey and i have talked extensively about the ponds they'll of course be given to a uh homeowners association naturally uh we're real estate developers out of columbia but i i have moved up here i'm fourth generation my children represent fifth generation so that's why i say i i had looked forward to them growing up here like i did but uh we got to be realistic i think a little bit of low density developments the only chance we have to slow it down and my neighbors i've met with them they wholeheartedly support it un

» less some i don't think anybody's gonna show up to oppose it but the ones i've met with uh who live in beautiful homes on wildwood want to see that continue that's our plan so i i did get and it was today so i've had a chance to look at it to be fair i did get an email from someone that owns i don't know where i don't want to say his name because he sent me an email today and but uh he said he's one of the neighbors and is concerned about this sort of losing its sort of rural character development i just i was just going to kind of get your and again i don't have enough information to support or deny that i'm just telling you what i heard today well i i agree i and i hate um george is here but i hate the sheriff left he and i have emailed back and forth the last two and a half years or so y

» ou know and the promise of i'm gonna send a narcotics that's not our sheriff that's the reality of people who for instance i got hit in the face with a flashlight by derelict recently um i called him walking the gas line they stay off the roads they don't want to be on wildwood or what's it so i confronted him and i said hey man you can't be on the property he came after me i'm not armed i don't my lawyer took my gun um because he doesn't want me to get shot he said but uh i you just can't explain to your children anymore why people are on you uh and your your thinking is developing or having it developed would reduce that because well there just there'd be more eyes out there's that kind of a thought yeah yeah i'm glad you asked that uh the the other thing um i tried an experiment we we ha

» ve rental houses there that we're going to tear down now because we can't find tenants who want to live in that area who quite frankly have good jobs and it's frustrating uh i live at the magistrate's office uh i think i'm gonna get a christmas card from them this year but um it it like i said it's frustrating to come here my dad learned how to hunt as a boy there um it i don't like it but that's the wishes of the family and uh so if you don't mind i'd like i'm i'm i'm gonna be in favor of it tonight there's two more readings um but i would like to maybe grab lunch or something and talk i hope you will any of you that have questions i hope you you and i'll show you firsthand that they're living in tents you'll run them off they come back and i think the only way is to low density develop so

» me of it i we're gonna keep uh 18 acres i believe joey and i figured out my chair yes mr tucker uh mr taylor is that the part where the pond is on because i was going to ask why the pond was not included in these 60 acres he told me to remove it um because it will go into a homeowners association that i'll be a part of and be a part of the deed restrictions my neighbor he's not here tonight but he was at planting commission he lives straight across the pond on watts hill he can tell you if you leave a bicycle outside it's gone the next morning i mean it's so he and i are going to be a part of the deed restrictions with anybody who uh i i'll be honest i've got five developers all over us that are very interested but i'm gonna i'm gonna help do the deed restrictions we're not gonna as you see

» on the large part off the water now those will probably be two thousand square foot homes typically the larger ones will be of course around the water features you see the ones top right that's sessions ridge they're one acre lots and they will bring probably forty to fifty thousand dollars each and we have heavy deed restrictions on those that are already recorded mr taylor will every lot be one half acre at least well yes at least but typically three quarter to two acres because you you have a little as everybody knows you have a little bit of wetlands around the ponds okay so when we asked for the r for joey said you got to have that to uh if this point six robbie lackey's already done a survey so how many houses 69 in theory but realistically 45 50 maybe um i'm hoping to like i said i'm

» gonna live there we we ride motorcycles and four wheelers and i mean it i'm so emotional tonight i'm wrapped like a taco i mean i'm you know it i do rezonings all over the state and uh i'm never emotional about it but this one is it's hard to look at your children and say hey the pond we swim in is getting ready to have you know 35 people and paddle boats um i hope that's not that bad any other comments or questions mr tomlinson i do not have any confidence manager okay thank you mr taylor thank you for being here um it's your property so i do want to help you um do what you want to do with it thank you all right at this time we'll take a vote all those in favor of the first reading to rezone tms three zero eight zero zero zero zero zero zero four eight from rd2 to r15 indicate by raising y

» our hand mr cato myself mr shoemake and mr tucker mr tomlinson how do you vote i vote in favor and mr tomlinson and all those opposed and mr jones opposed right this ordinate passes first reading it will be on the agenda for a second reading at the next meeting all right moving on item echo okay we're getting into um our zldr changes okay this is the first reading of case 23-09 in ordinance to amend the kershaw county south carolina unified code of zoning and land development regulations section 3 1.3 table 3-4 to require minimum lot sizes of 15 000 square feet for residential development is there a motion at this time pertaining to this ordinance chains madam chair i would move to adopt this ordinance okay motion made by mr shoemake is there a second second second by mr tucker and discussi

» on mr shoemake i'll give you the floor you made the motion sure so obviously it's a little bit this would have the net effect of making minimum lot sizes approximately 0.34 acres um i think this is important um i mean for example just look at what mr taylor is doing obviously he is making larger lot sizes because the wetlands required and he's choosing to do that but there are areas in our county i mean i'll just be blunt for those of you who've been on number one by the ice machines there are these four houses and i'm not commenting on the quality of those homes or the desirability of living in those homes but if you've seen those homes on number one it's four homes nearly pushing against each other and that's the sort of thing that i think as prudent as prudent to zoning we don't want to

» have homes that smushed in together i think that you've got some very rural areas in our county out in casset and some of those areas but as you get into elgin and lugoff i mean you know the neighborhoods are coming fast and i think we have to be i agree with you madam chair that we need to respect people's property rights and i think you would agree with me that we have to find a balance between that and making sure we don't overextend our police our fire and put too much taxes on our roads because i know we've talked about this and so i think this is a good balance honestly most most feedback i've gotten has been make them larger uh but again i think we start here i've gotten some feedback from some folks about possibly looking at you know maybe expanding if there's water sewer i mean i'l

» l take a look at that between now and second and and third reading i'm not sure if we can do that county-wide the problem with doing it county-wide is it allows that to it allows those smaller lot sizes in um in that elgin and lugoff area and we really can't say only this area is zoned because we just talked about spot zoning so it's at least for tonight for first reading i think this is a good ordinance i'm going to look at that issue to see if i might want to make an amendment but um i think it's a good ordinance and i appreciate your help on that councilman jones i know you and i've talked a lot about this um you put me in touch with fiona martin who's been wonderful um to talk about these issues i've talked with joey so this is not to be clear something i just sort of came up with on an

» act you know i've met with our attorney our county administrator our planning and zoning director i've talked to councilman jones extensively with you extensively and really everyone on this council extensively uh before i put it on the agenda with yourself madam chair so that's all i have thank you mr shoemaker any other comments yes discussion mr jones thank you madam chair uh actually the one two three four the next four ordinances i just want to say something right quickly the zoning code of amendments to the land development regulations before county council are i think good amendments and at first it's a small step in the right direction in february 2022 i made a motion to completely redo the comprehensive plan in the zoning code which was long overdue the plan and the code were in ex

» treme need of revision i want to see a timeline as to when comprehensive plan in the new zoning code will be recommended to council by the planning commission also i would like the administrator to look at our planning and zoning department to make sure that they have enough staff to address the processing matters and providing answers to the citizens i get numerous complaints on at least a weekly basis from citizens that complain about the wait time not being able to get answers from our planning and zoning department and before i criticize the planning and zoning department i want to make sure that the department is adequately staffed and equipped mr templar so i have three things about planning and zoning dealing with what we're doing here tonight we are long overdue in rewriting a zonin

» g ordinance and a comprehensive plan really council is way behind on this so as i said mr she made this a great first first uh step and uh before i make before i made my motion excuse i mean when i made my motion in february 2022 the former council was spending all of its time on a vision 2030 plan of which had no value and i commend and applaud our madam chair for putting it where it belonged in the wastebasket uh we need to make sure that this council and the administration does not continue to make the same mistake and provide leadership and adequate resources to adequately staff planning and zoning and that we enact a good comprehensive plan and code that works but finally today we are talking about a small step in the right direction i want to thank you for that mr shumay you've taken

» a leadership role in it and uh i think it's been good and madam chair members of council that concludes my reports mr temple you did understand what i want to see about the the assessment of the planning zoning department yes sir and to your point through this this budget year um at third breeding if i'm not mistaken we took and rearranged some positions um some salary in that department and we've created another uh permit tech position to help with the flow on the front side there well i think planning zoning and joy are working very hard it's just sometimes not going in the right direction because of our leadership and and i i take personal responsibility for that because they're operating under a lot of rules from the old council this council really had nothing to do with and i appreciat

» e madam chair and uh derrick's uh comments on this and their support and trying to get this in the right direction thank you mr cato mr tomlinson um i really appreciate i know that councilman shoemake and and madam chair um and councilman jones among others have been working really really hard on this this has been one of the passions of of madam chair and councilman shoemake since they've gotten on council i think this is a start in the right direction and um this is you know the first penny in the glass how you know there are some other things that i think we still need to look at um before we become you know pop-up cookie cutter lexington county which they're trying to regret right now so thank you all for your hard work on this and i will be in support of this thank you mr tomlinson so

» this um kind of started from a discussion and then as the next three items that are all changing changing the cldr were born from this initial initiative to increase the lot sizes to lower um density that is just something that we can do immediately i mean with three readings and a hearing um to slow down the high density growth in kershaw county so instead of waiting for the comprehensive plan i really commend my colleagues um planning and zoning and mr templar for working on this and continuing to get it onto the agenda in my absence so we've been at this for a while so i'm glad to see it's finally here we will have a hearing for this planning and zoning change on august 8th and that will be for all four of these zoning changes do you have the anybody have the hearing paper in front of th

» em okay we have it on a slide so we'll we'll remind everybody when we get there so we will have a public hearing again this is just something we can do now to try to um help minimize the high density developments in kershaw county can i say something yes sir oh thank you madam chair you know i was going to in my talking points i said it's one small step in the right direction i really want to use one small step for mankind right direction but i found out somebody used that when they stepped on the moon so i made that clear thank you all right all those in favor of the first reading of case 2309 an ordinance to amend the kershaw county south carolina unified code of the zoning and land development regulations section 3 1.3 table 3-4 to require a minimum lot size of 15 000 square feet for res

» idential development indicate by raising your hand mr tomlinson how do you vote i vote in favor of the ordinance okay and the vote is unanimous it passes first reading all right next first reading case 2311 an ordinance to amend the kershaw county south carolina unified code of zoning and land development regulations to amend article 2 to delete conservation design as a defined term to amend section 3 1.3 by repealing table 3-5 to amend section section 3 1.3 table 3-6 by removing references to non-residential conservation design developments to amend section 3 5.4-4 by repealing provisions related to conservation design subdivisions and group development projects to amend section 3 5.4-5 by repealing provisions related to open space in a conservation design subdivision and group development

» design project to amend section 5 2.1-2 table 5.4 to remove reference to conservation design projects to repeal section 5 3.3 to remove all provisions provisions related to conservation subdivision and group development designs and to amend the table of content contents for articles 3 and 5 by removing all references to ordinance provisions repealed by this ordinance is there a motion at this time i would move okay mr shoemake makes the motion to adopt and a second and second by mr fecker all right any discussion mr it seems very long it's actually pretty straightforward we have a section in our zoning code that has these conference conservation design areas and they've really never been used and so it's part of this comprehensive plan that we're undergoing we're going to try to find a diff

» erent way or they're going to try to find a different way that we can have these conservation districts but this just hasn't worked for us nobody's done them so they're just just a bunch of extra verbiage in the code and we're just taking it all out thank you good explanation and the planning and zoning director is here if we need any detailed information but on the types of common open space and required maintenance we have natural areas recreational areas greenways landscaped areas lawns and required buffer areas and item e conservation design subdivision and group development projects and again through this process of reviewing our zldr we found out that we don't use this so we are deleting it all right mr tomlinson any questions no madam chair i do not have any questions thank you okay

» all those in favor of approving or all those in favor of this motion first reading case 23-11 to amend the kershaw county south carolina unified code of zoning and land development to delete conservation design as a defined term indicate by raising your hand motion and mr tomlinson how do you vote vote in favor okay the vote is unanimous this first reading passes next case 23-12 this is the first reading an ordinance to amend the kershaw county south carolina unified code of zoning and land development regulations to amend section 3 1.3 table 3-8 to correct the site bill housing categories involving triplex and quadruplex housing is there a motion to regarding this ordinance at this time i would move that we adopt this ordinance okay motion to adopt is there a second second second by mr tuc

» ker and any questions or discussion mr shumate can you sure put this one in layman's terms for us so this basically fixes the ordinance um to correct what we call these site build categories where triplexes and i believe it's triplexes and quadplexes yeah are listed so basically it's doing what we've been doing but they were just put basically wrong on the chart so this is cleaning up that as we went through these ordinances we're going to fix these little typos and these errors that again it doesn't impact anyone's property rights it simply just changes and fixes something that was inadvertently written down wrong thank you any questions or comments i think everybody has the chart in their packet you can see that triplex and quadruplex are listed twice so we need to delete them from that f

» irst section mr tomlinson do you have any questions no madam chair i didn't have any questions thank you okay all right all those in favor of this first reading of 23-12 to correct the site build housing categories involving triplex and quadruplex housing indicate by raising your hand mr tomlinson how do you vote i vote in favor okay the vote is unanimous this passes first reading all right next item h first reading case 23-10 an ordinance to amend the kershaw county south carolina unified code of the zoning and land development regulations to amend section 3.3.8 juliet from an allowed density of six manufactured homes per acre to an allowed density of three manufactured homes per acre and to amend section 3 1.3 table 3-3 to correct the status of manufactured housing parks in our sixth and

» gd districts from permitted use to conditional use is there a motion at this time no stop now i would move that we accept this motion okay mr shoemake makes the motion to approve second and mr tucker with the second all right into discussion mr shoemake do you want to take the floor sure so this is uh obviously is one of the things you also want to address is uh manufacturer mobile homes so this certainly still allows them but kind of in keeping with the other types of uses we have rather than having a six allowed per acre brings that down to three it also we have in certain areas particularly a general development district we had initially listed as a permitted use meaning you could just do it uh it's now a conditional use so you have to meet certain requirements you can't just buy land an

» d you know throw trailers on it in those two areas so that's basically what it does thank you no madam chair mr tucker and um with these changes everybody who is um this is more for mr joey back there or the administrator um everybody's grandfathered in who has more than three now now um how does this work because mr jones and i have run into this before if you have a hardship someone home catches a fire um is that where they would have to come in to replace that mobile home um and ask for a variance or whatever the process is they have one year don't they i'm not sure exactly on the time frame but but we actually had that to happen and it it was real it was a real hardship on the family before we finally got it straight hey joey good evening council members i think the question we still al

» low variances and take those up as we do now yes i just want to make sure that family can have that home replaced within whatever time frames that we have structured and that they're you know um they're still on their property because they were there before we changed this ordinance absolutely the current code actually has that provision in it today uh where if as long as it's replaced within 365 days or one year correct mr jones yes so they can continue i appreciate that okay you're welcome i wasn't talking to you but thank you we're done mr tomlinson do you have any questions or comments comments no madam chair no comments or questions okay anything else all right all those in favor of the first reading of case 23-10 to amend section 3 1.3 table 3-3 to correct the status of manufactured h

» ousing parks in our six and gd districts from permitted use to conditional use indicate by raising your hand mr tomlinson how do you vote i vote in favor okay the vote is unanimous in favor that passes first reading thank you everyone we got through that that was a lot of reading um and ryan can you here's the public notice okay so the public notice went out already and the public hearing for all four of these zldr changes will be tuesday august 8th at 6 p.m that's our next meeting yes yes it is okay moving into old business first first item under old business boat ramp progress and plan this was placed on the agenda by myself and councilman brazil um i'm going to give the floor to you mr tembler if you can give us just a brief progress the progress you've made um and then we'll go to see i

» f there's a motion on the floor for a plan forward yes madam chair members of council so a while back we were um in need of better understanding than what we needed to do out at this boat ramp there were some questions back and forth of ownership but i think we've since put those questions to bed um we've even went as far as looking at possibly installing a boat ramp at the veterans park just as a potential plan b but with the state budget passing down five hundred thousand dollars to go into the current boat ramp over at patriots point and our hundred thousand dollars we offered as a match for that project we will move forward with the patriots landing improvement over there one thing we're going to be careful to do and intentional is have some public input for those that use the boat ramp

» we don't want to design something that is doesn't make sense or is not usable one of the things i do know we need is an additional boat ramp and obviously from our lessons learned hard lessons learned is to place the any kind of structure be it appear or um a dock certainly we're going to place that downstream from the uh from the boat ramps so i know there's some parking concerns over there we'll try to address that um and just have it a um understanding that we have a six hundred thousand dollar budget we will try to get as much out of that as we can the the good news is is that it's an existing recreational area permitting will be at a minimum we'll just submit some basic permits to the army corps of engineer to let them know that we're going to expand on that project again we have a boa

» t ramp there so it's an expansion as opposed to starting with a a blank slate so we um again we'll look for public engagement on that public input um and we plan to advertise those well in advance uh at least three of those public input meetings so we can make sure we capture as many um of the end users as we can for that that project okay thank you i have one question when we do the notice you know because sometimes it's so hard to you never know what channels do they notice is there any way like you do when you do rezoning that whenever you have the public meeting scheduled you could do those yellow signs down at the boat ramp yes that was that's yes okay yeah all right perfect because i feel like that's people use the ramp are likely to see them right right perfect madam chair yes mr den

» ns mr templar can you spend their money before you spend hours on the 500 i mean 600 000 yes and i um so from conversations with the state the money will be given to us so with the prior project was a dnr project they had dnr engineers involved so this will be ours um we will spend their money first you know why is is they did that because they own the land it's not our land right right but veterans park is and i appreciate you yeah you're looking at that but uh you know what's so ironic is that and i go by there um and actually check it more since i found out she did because she had given me some valuable information on vehicles out there talking some other people so i've started going through there back and forth to uh from camden to lugaw what i've noticed is that i have received no comp

» laints since we tore the ramp i mean excuse you know the pier down you know now the boat landing i've had no complaints on that they had no one say somebody's about to get hurt but boy we had you know we had about every week with people getting trapped under there whatever so i appreciate you looking at that downstream and i really appreciate more than that you're going to talk to members of the community from camden lugaw all over who use that who probably know it better than any of us but please no more studies on building a boat ramp so to your point what we were looking at um most recently were renderings and what it would look like um so we will have renderings necessary for that so we can come up with a plan and so it's something that is um has the ability to go out for bid and inspec

» t out so we will have to engage with an engineering firm to come up with it um so but that just allows the engineers to convert this project into language that allows uh well and place it in the right right direction or place no question about that all right because i've actually seen somebody get sucked up under that pier i didn't um it was very dangerous you know when it was there and i commend you and mr carpenter for taking it down as quick as y'all did even though we don't own the land and it's not ours at least this council stepping up and and mr connell getting i guess work i guess working to get that money along with mr shoemaker whoever it was the delegation delegation that was that was chairwoman gwen the congressional delegation that got that okay then chairwoman i'll just give h

» er all the credit madam chair thank you but please let's move as fast as we can on that and in the right direction okay um mr templar how long is it going to take you to engage the public and get the plans how much time do you need um with the the blessing of council tonight i would like to move forward as quick as possible i would like to have something back within 60 days okay um and so a pretty aggressive timeline um but with with ample opportunity for advertisement um i like mr it's not um mr um she makes idea there of actually placing notifications where it's down there at the uh the boat ramp so 60 days max okay have something back okay and the engineering plans will come out of that yes funding from for the project correct so the goal would be to let the public input be the driver of

» what the engineers come up with okay okay all right well i'm ready to support whatever you need to move that forward um is there a motion at this time regarding the boat ramp plan yes mr tucker if i may yes thank you ma'am i would like to make a motion that the kershaw county government engages the citizens of kershaw county through public meetings to gain input on what citizens wish to see happen at patriots landing and bring back a plan to council no later than october the 10th uh with no more than ten thousand dollars be spent on engineering plans and uh the total project not to exceed the remaining allocation in the budget of 590 000 so do not exceed 600 000 you can come up a little shorter that is my motion manager okay um motion that the kershaw county engage the citizens of kershaw c

» ounty through public meetings and come back to council with a plan no later than october 10th no more than ten thousand dollars spent on the engineering plans and the total project project not to exceed the allocation of 600 000 total is there a second for the motion second okay mr jones second um any discussion on the motion or yes ma'am i would just like to state the funding source because i don't want that people think this is new money this was budgeting our budget already uh of course the 500 000 came as the madam chair just said from the uh kershaw county delegation or prt um and then the 100 000 was what council did from opera put it in the budget thank you welcome all right any other comments or questions mr tomlinson no madam chair i don't have any comments okay all right i'll call

» for the vote all those in favor of the motion to engage the citizens of kershaw county through public meetings to gain input and get the engineering plans not to exceed ten thousand dollars and bring plans back to council no later than october 10th with the entire project not to exceed 600 000 indicate by raising your hand and mr tomlinson how do you vote i vote in favor okay and the vote is in favor unanimously all right so mr templar will have the plans at the october 10th meeting or before as as soon as you can and please um let us know when the public meetings are going to be so we can get people there all right next item of old business the kershaw county detention center plan they've been patiently waiting so we have um mr todd davis from mosley here and mr kevin jones the director uh

» mr templar i'm going to give you the floor give us an update on where we are with the detention center and where we need to go madam chair members of council engaged with mosley architects to perform a a study of our jail to see where we stand to see what the future holds for our jail in terms of expansion and or replacement um and just to give us a complete assessment this was one of my high priorities is coming in as administrator was the jail and um its future needs as it relates to capacity we experienced some difficulties throughout covid but we were able to make make do of it with with the the population in our jail with isolation and things like that so i credit the jail staff for for making that happen but um so the current we again just trying to anticipate our needs um well beyond

» i would say 20 35 20 45 and and how this community is growing as it relates to our needs for a larger jail so the current location has the ability for an expansion over there and or replacement with about eight additional unused acres over there with i think some opportunity to purchase any additional land if we needed it i don't think we will based on that seven acres this year we budgeted 600 000 out of capital projects to go in and make improvements and necessary repairs to equipment washing machines and the roof and some other structural things that just are in need of maintenance over at the jail there's some painting that needs to go on and some plumbing issues that need to be addressed um our population our average daily population is increasing and it's holding relatively steady whi

» ch is concerning and it is really pushing um us to really have to look at this study as being truly an actionable study and not something we shelve as as government tends to do uh the number of inmates held in our facility right now the vast majority of them are either violent crimes or general session charges and those cases move relatively slow compared to summary court cases there's also a fair amount of family court cases with that that's a rather complex case as well so we're just not moving inmates in and out of our facility uh through adjudication like we have in the past we've looked at things like um ankle monitors and some other creative opportunities but that's that's just not going to be sufficient to be able to do what we need to do and meet minimum care standards set forth by

» the state so um we will continue to budget uh money in future budgets to make these improvements and to catch up on some maintenance over there but ultimately um and i'll have mr davis come up and speak to this uh we we are really looking down a a jail expansion is what we're looking at i wouldn't say a replacement based on cost but what i'm needing tonight is uh much like the boat ramp is the ability to press forward to find out exactly what that facility would look like or potentially we have 89 beds now we're over capacity and we're looking at probably needing around 250 beds combined so that is going to be a rather large project so i need to understand as the administrator what that price tag looks like what the timeline looks like is it feasible what are other options um the logistics

» involved in something like that a project where you're already housing inmates um that these this will be an incredibly complex undertaking so um i'll have mr davis come up and answer any questions that y'all may have of him and of course i'm certainly willing to answer any questions you may have of me thank you mr templar yes he's coming out can i get you one from the administrator please i have a question for the administrator so uh mr templar um with you um getting some preliminary um numbers on expansion um if that comes in relatively high which i think it will with the age of our jail um is there any additional costs or uh time delay on a new facility i just want to know what that looks like as well because um i know that's an easy trans easier transition from trying to build onto a ja

» il that's got inmates versus building new facility and and that way we can have that discussion as well up here on council and is the property back there uh is it enough for purchase let me ask that or would you have to relocate for a new facility you know i can answer those questions too the um i went and looked at the property the other day and and just looking at the the tms mapping there are some housing developments that purchase property right adjacent to our property and of course towards the river we have the city of camden the wastewater treatment facility with a rather large buffer there so i think i see that as an opportunity if we had to make a land purchase maybe engage with the city but this again this is just putting you know the cart way above the way in front of the horse b

» ut um i think um it would be sufficient but i just i don't know what that facility would look like and that's where i just kind of need um the help of mosley to help me understand one thing i do worry about is is the uh the monetary side as it relates to our eight percent uh general obligation bond limit um so bond capacity this is not something i would like to kind of max out our our bond capacity for but it it is pressing enough to really consider you know an expansion you know as as just just to have more room over there so it's it's a lot to think about and it's probably going to be one of the harder decisions we have to make as an as a group because it's it's number one it's not going to be cheap and it's not going to be easy if i may yes mr jones thank you mr templar for all the hard

» work and you've always said this is a top priority of yours correct yes sir well and and i appreciate that and of course i like the fact that we're taking it up now i mean we have no resources other than probably have to go out and but maybe a fee millage or a bond or something i don't know but it's going to cost us a lot but let me is it 23 acres i always thought it was 23 acres we had there it is and um you're right it but there's some on the other side yeah because i think you told me 20 acres earlier but i was thinking that was 23 acres here i go again a lot my a lot of my valuable experience um i was the project manager when we built that jail it was too small when we built it and it was an indirect supervision and i liked direct supervision based on numbers mr jones and i think you kn

» ow what i'm talking about however the jail wasn't adequate when we built it 20 years ago and it's been 89 populations since 20 years ago one thing we did do though and i'm concerned about something you said about not being able to get you know we're a type two housing facility correct mr jones therefore we can only hold someone up to 90 days however when they're awaiting court and when the judicial system is not working we get backlogged whether there's mental health evaluations or there's no court time i don't know there's got to be something that mr jones and mr bone to share somebody needs to get with whether it's the solicitor's officer whoever have some docket meetings and let's try to get some pleas in some sentences in and get these folks out i think we're holding some of these folks

» too too long and mr jones when you have a moment i can speak a little bit to that okay thank you and and and i appreciate that too but but it's a big concern of mine because we now have any extra money we have we put it on something else and i'm not going to go right there but bottom line is we got to find the money and we need to do it right and i think an expansion might be the best way to look at it on first hand you know because if you tear it down trying to build a new facility you're going to look at double triple the cost i would think to an expansion i like the expansion idea i just want this council to tell me where we're going to get the millions of dollars to to do the expansion and we're talking about it now after we have no other resources but to go to the people to do it and i

» t should have been talked about a year ago so thank you so excuse me one second so another thing too and and i'd like for this to be understood and maybe looked at i like it's a lot of work on staff a heck of a lot on work with staff with work release because you got them going out in day coming back in tonight and i know it's a miserable thing for staff but it also generates you know savings for the detention plus house arrest generate of course if it's what you said with the population if there's more medium and and and and your uh major violators in there you can't put them on house arrest you can only put the minimum minimum uh violations on that the uh so i understand that but i'd i'd like to see a breakdown on what we have on the uh the medium security the high security versus the uh

» the ones that are on there for for low crimes like check writing family court i mean family court will lock them up in a minute and then the jail minister says sit there and he has to take care of them um i know things change in 20 years population breakdown okay i know things change in the 20 years that i've been since i've been there but bottom line is we're still ready for 89 bottom line we're still overcrowded and now we're taking it up at a time that we have no extra resources other than going to the people so i'll be interested to see how this council plans to fund this and how quick y'all come back on it because we are in violation of minimum standards and it's just uh accident away from a big lawsuit and i'm as concerned believe me i'm concerned about the inmates and they are employ

» ees and uh i've been in that situation mr jones i understand what you're doing thank you mr templar mr shoemaker sure just one on something councilman jones uh mentioned i've uh spoken with the chief administrative judge and he is doing everything he can to push the solicitor's office to move these cases faster scheduling as much court as he can you know one issue and it's worth talking about our ability to impact it is somewhat minimal but we should leverage everything we can you know from a legal perspective we're in what's called the fifth judicial circuit and that means richland and kershaw are put together so our solicitor's office is run out of richland county and i think we should probably next year when budget time comes ask some hard questions of our solicitor as to why you know fo

» r example how much you know there's a population difference there's more people in richland than here but the percentage difference in population is nothing compared to the percentage difference in spending so they're spending a lot more money on the richland side of the border and so i think you know those are questions you know the solicitor comes in here and ask us for certain budgetary resources and i think it's pretty fair for us to maybe start thinking about pegging that to jail populations or things like that or productivity which should then decrease jail populations but i do know that the judges in the fifth circuit um are working really hard to try to keep pushing cases because i had that conversation with them probably two weeks ago because of this issue thank you mr schumach mr

» davis welcome thank you for being here i have your conclusions and recommendations from the study thank you probably my main question and colleagues as well is preliminary can you give us any kind of insight building new verse expansion one of the issues i see is that expanding is an option but what will not be expanded it says experiencing an abundance of system end of life issues code violations and requiring everyday maintenance um so i just want to hear from you i guess your recommendation thank you we met i guess it's probably been a month ago i'm sorry about a month ago with the committee can you bring it up a little bit more usually my mouth is so big hear me but um i i guess it's been about a month ago or so and one of our biggest concerns is you're exactly right a lot of into life

» systems there a lot of inadequately sized to accommodate what you've got but we have started looking at if an addition is viable redoing your core spaces and core spaces being new booking intake because it's way too small for what you've got what you've got now uh even at the 89 it was inadequate your your kitchen your laundry your inmate property storage all of those core spaces if we do an addition our recommendation recommendation would be put most of those core services in that addition and beds so then we started looking at well can we repurpose some so we may take we looked at a possibility of maybe taking your booking and intake or possibly your current kitchen turning it into taking the kitchen turn it into booking taking booking turning the laundry to try to repurpose as much as po

» ssible um again the biggest concern that we we we had all of our engineers came our structural mechanical electrical plumbing um your roof needs replacing yesterday that could be a big expense the slope on that roof if you saw our report the slope the pitch on that roof doesn't get the water to the gutter it's several foot short so when it when it comes off on that slope it stops and so you can see in that in the study where we took pictures of rust areas about a foot before it ever gets off the roof so it's things like that that's it's going to cost it's going to cost quite a bit of money okay madam chair would you would you consider that before you consider more beds because what we're in violation of is really the amount of inmates we have in there oh it would be more beds too i'm sorry

» if i wouldn't clear on that it definitely would be more beds but those spaces need to be redone because you can't expand them where they are it's not enough building to expand but absolutely i'm sorry if i wouldn't clear on that yes beds would i mean right now even though you're rated for 89 in order to house 89 inmates it's got to be like a perfect world the right type of offenders you got a housing unit for 24 females and you've only got 10 that's 14 empty beds that you can't put anything else in co-defendants so even the national institute of correction says when you're 80 percent of your rated capacity you're technically full so rather than look at 89 beds that you're rated for you're really operating on 71 so it's 71 in order to properly classify and separate offenders so what your you

» r bed need is it's great i mean you you've been as high as 150 160 since 17 i would like to also talk about the expediting cases through the court system um we look at an average length of stay and in typically in south carolina anything from if it's over 24 25 days average length of stay that kind of raises a flag for us we've done the majority of the jails and stuff in south carolina uh that tells us that there's a slowdown in your criminal justice system you have consistently gone up since 2017 and it's deflected in that report uh 2022 you were 22.48 days per inmate average length of stay that's that's going to increase greatly with the new bond reform law that just passed i've already been tracking some counties in south carolina since that that went into play what that is if you don't

» know if somebody's out on bond and they commit another crime then they go back to jail without being able to post that bond again so they're there so trying to get them out that's going to have i mean i think the first 30 days we were seeing an increase of like 14 to 15 in the first 30 days in some of the jails that we looked at so that can't help but make that number go up even higher is there any way with your experience and i know mr jones could certainly insist and he may not be in favor of this what would it take to make that facility a direct supervision and is it still one per 56 one also for it from a from a design perspective your building as old as it is we could we could go in and make it direct supervision the problem is it's not making it direct supervision the problem is hirin

» g the staff because when you go from indirect to direct it's a 35 increase in required staff and right now how many inmates in direct supervision how many one officer per how many inmates one for 56 so that hasn't changed that's what they allow but an indirect supervision is how many officers per inmates you can do one for 64 the indirect indirect what the issue is within is officer safety i mean do you put one officer in there with 64 a lot of times on a staffing plan they're going to recommend two officers to be in there with that many so your your efficiencies go down a little bit i don't think it could be any more dangerous than what we're in right now and and if you monitor correctly and and you don't let them all out at one time you kind of have a good system that you're using i think

» direct supervision would be a good way to go i'm a huge fan of direct supervision it's just we are converting direct supervision indirect now well that's what my question was because i just wasn't sure if that would be able to even be done with an indirect supervision i oversaw the building of that building against my will i did not like then direct supervision 25 years ago and i don't like it now um i like direct better but anyway this which would be more expensive direct super would be a lot more expensive operationally construction is probably not probably be a little bit lesser but you're going to pay more than that in the long run for that increase of staff well i'd also want mr jones's opinion on that too i've been i mean he is the current jail administrator and current with updated l

» aws and regulations so now nic is really pushing uh strategic inmate management which has to do with hybrid jails like supervision linear style but he's absolutely right it's going to be a 35 increase on staff i ran lexington county and now they just gave their folks across the board seven percent i think it was like seven last year and they still can't staff it they had 50 staffing so and todd also did the study there as well so how many openings do you have right now mr jones i've got uh 31 openings no i've got one open oh i got you i got one full time 31 he he watching the jail yes oh the other counties in this state i'm hearing numbers as high as 140 vacancies had you met mr jones before i've known mr jones for yeah yeah he's awesome i couldn't hear you i said you're awesome that's why

» you have one opening she said you remind her of me yeah i gotta give siobhan all the credit though i'm sorry she set you up for success um mr davis how quickly can you get to us like if this council gives mr templar the go ahead to take the next step um can you just give me a roundabout plan um what would be our next step to take and then how quickly can we get it done we've looked at that okay we could uh i would think the next step would be to kind of kind of look at what an addition would look like give an opinion of probable cost and then what a total replacement would look like an opinion of probable cost it's going to be much more expensive as you know to do a total replacement but your renovations are going to be astronomical to get that that i mean you've got so many issues as you s

» ee in that that thing you're gonna spend a lot of money so i would say the next step is to give you both options both opinion of probable cost so you can make an educated decision on just how much money you spend okay mr jones we should have been talking to you a year ago and i apologize for that that madam chair yes mr tucker um so mr todd um what what does that look like in cost i know we're going to take it uh mr templar out of our capital projects uh monies but what we thinking that would cost to get this study that we're talking about it yes minimal because i've got all the data pretty much that i need now a few thousand dollars it's just all i got to do is some of my architectural time okay per plan yes total replacement and expansion okay okay so we do have that in the capital projec

» ts for the detention and i just wanted to know that so well because i know we still know especially if we're going to do expansion we still need to do those other repairs that they're talking about and i don't want to you know squeeze all the juice out of that money and we come up short on that plan if we're if we're expanding we're building new it won't matter i want to commit in this county council picking this up now madam madam madam or i'm yes mr tomlinson go ahead and so a complete new rebuild with the current property of 20 so odd acres if it was a complete rebuild tear down rebuild would it be able to be on that 20 acre property um or we have to also purchase another property no i understand that we have enough property without more purchase to do a complete rebuild okay on on the c

» urrent correct property thank you madam chair mr davis has something to add from looking at it from the number of acreage you have i would i would say you need to do some you know phase one geotech to make sure that the land is billable you know build i don't see any reason why it's not but okay never know what they find in under the soils mr tomlinson did you hear that i i did and i i know that we have some some floodplain areas it's really close to the environmental training park owned by the city plus the watery river um however you know development it just looks like where it's currently housed and the property lines with the road being in it would be a pretty tight squeeze without tearing down the current facility to have complete open access to the 20 acres to be able to build so it w

» ill be strategic and where you put it on that property based upon the limited amount acres and the jail currently taking up at least a quarter of the acreage but that was just the question i appreciate y'all's yes comments thank you and some of our preliminary views i'm sorry no go ahead i was just gonna say some of our just preliminary views if we were to build new you would lose a lot of parking during the construction and then when the the current one is tore down then you would replace that parking okay so it may be an inconvenience during the 18 to 24 months that is being constructed but but it's gonna be an inconvenience trying to house inmates and expand too i i don't know where you're gonna find around you that's got available beds right to send them to that's a problem i i think mr

» jones can speak to that and very expensive from what i understand if they want them if we find a spot at the same time mr cato i'm sorry mr jones i've got preliminary agreement with the county sheriff's office it was i think it was what was it siobhan 70 72 dollars okay per day per day per unit great good job we were looking at 30 to 40.

» so something's pretty much promised we're working with you on that's great madam chair yes mr gator just a thought is there if we went with a total new build would they be anything of the old facility that we may could use or with very little funds maybe fix up to use in addition to make our facility bigger does that make sense what i'm asking i mean if it was maybe the medical facility and you had a a walkway if you made if you made the old facility into the medical facility and you had a a walkway coming from the new facility to you see what i'm saying is there anything that we could do there to expand and make it make it better i guess you'd say it is it's possible you would need to bring it up to the current life safety codes of what they are now so you don't set yourself up if you've g

» ot some inmates that are in a part of the building that don't meet the current life safety and some that right they're in a new part how do you distinguish which one gets the life safety features and which one don't so you would need to spend that money to bring those up that could be smoke purge systems sprinkler systems anything that affect the life safety but yes sir it it can be done well i look forward to you bringing us answers back because what we're doing here is just asking a lot of questions that i think you'll probably be ready to answer when you come back to us the next time yes all right um at this time is there a motion that to authorize the administrator to proceed yes mr tucker i'm changed up just a little bit so be ready miss anna do we need a motion to ask him to proceed i

» mean we do i think it'll it'll be pretty direct what we want and giving him instructions moving forward yes sir well you've got a motion written down yes sir i've scribbled on hope it's what we want oh well gee thanks for having faith in me um well nobody said anything to me about it it was at your desk um here tonight yes thank you that's what i said i need nothing about it i came in here tonight all right um i'd like to make a motion madam chair to authorize the administrator to proceed in preliminary planning for an expansion of the current detention center and a cost for a new building by obtaining engineering and architectural architectural i can't even say the word plans and that funding will come out of the current capital projects of the detention center that is my motion okay mr tu

» cker with a motion is there a second i would second that okay mr shoemake second um any discussion on this motion specifically yes sir how much money are you talking about well that's what i was just asking a few thousand dollars on each you know on the um a expansion and then on the new facility that's what i was questioning because i wasn't for sure because i hadn't heard that number yet so that way it wouldn't strip we should have had that number he said a few thousand he said a few thousand i can give you i can say a not you give us a high range so that we can just put a limit not to exceed 10 000 for both options okay i would like to amend my motion to put not to exceed 10 000 and i would second miss start second the amendment okay any discussion on the amendment all this will come out

» of reserves miss tucker out of the capital reserves for detention center uh six hundred and something thousand we put aside thank you yes not new money okay oh i know all about that money in favor of the amendment to add a not to exceed dollar amount of ten thousand dollars to the motion indicate by raising your hand and mr tomlinson how do you vote i vote in favor of the amendment okay the amendment passes now to the original the original motion motion to authorize the administrator to proceed in preliminary planning for expansion of the current detention center and a cost for a new building by get by obtaining engineering and architectural plans not to exceed ten thousand dollars indicate by raising your hand same ten thousand the first was an amendment now we're back to the original mr t

» omlinson how do you vote um madam chair i have a question is there a timeline on that um motion or is it just strictly no there's no timeline why don't we give them a time yeah well would it be um we need to since we're currently 161 beds from the proposed difference to what we have currently and um okay mr tomlinson how do you vote on this motion um i vote in favor of this motion okay so this motion passes um and would you like to make a motion could we ask yes oh yeah i could do a not to exceed 120 days i think within 120 days i can get okay mr tomlinson not to exceed 120 days um mr davis says that's not part of our motion but that's what he's verbally committing to okay okay should we make an amendment to the current so we can't amend it because we can't amend it because that motion is o

» ver it passed so we can make a new amendment or we can make a new motion right i'm fine with the verbal agreement okay chair yes sir i will put that language in our contract okay that's even better yeah yeah thank you thank you mr davis yeah mr davis it's been a pleasure working with you thank you and we look forward to continuing thank you mr davis thank you have you sat down and worked with any of these council members through this yes sir yes sir who have you sat with finance committee he came to the finance committee before this yeah i'm sorry i didn't i didn't i thought you said would i not that i i'm sorry so you were before the finals i worked with uh mr jones and his staff over there getting all the data we went back and forth and then we met with the finance committee and presented

» what i believe you got a copy of thank you yes sir mr jones mr kevin jones do you have anything okay thank you for being here tonight and miss workman thank you for being here thank you for everybody that's moving this forward all right moving on to item 10 on our agenda new business um so as i stated in the beginning when we adopted the agenda a tax applicants we aren't going to take any vote tonight but per our rules all applicants have to be announced at the meeting prior before or at a meeting prior before the nomination is given this is the tourism advisor advisory committee applications also known as a tax there are two vacancies um one vacancy needs to be filled by someone from the lodging industry yes sir do we know which ones of these are from which districts i mean i know i notice

» d none of these have the thing i just didn't know if we knew what the the districts were represented so we don't know right now miss hannah's working on making this chart in front of you complete and getting all the information which we will the statutory requirements um are the appointments from a geographical area where the majority of the taxes are derived so there is no requirement per district you guys know that i like to have representation in each district though so we'll try to meet that as we can yeah i'm just gonna say thank you because i know you sort of shot when madam chair told me how much we didn't have sort of in any one document where all our commissions were and who appointed them so thank you and madam chair for putting this together yeah that's not a problem um yeah so t

» he the chart in front of you every single committee will look like that and have the same exact chart with the same information just to make things more standardized and uniform all right here are the applicants for the tourism advisory committee dr caitlin margaret jones may she's from district six mrs sissy griffin baloo from district five mr david williams jr from district three and that's it we have three applicants so council members i just urge you to reach out to them and get to know them and any one of those three can be nominated for the committee at any future meeting two vacancies one has to be in the lodging industry i don't know okay next item is the airport commission okay the airport commission we have three vacancies is one of those a district three person because i noticed

» that's not listed on this chart i'm not sure mr shoemake miss hannah do you know if the um appointments under the names on this current list is who appointed them or who should appoint them okay miss hannah said was my appointment yeah so but there is no appointment either way there's no one appointed by district three or just like from district three okay make that district four appointment that's vacant either way i was just pointing i was just what here's the applicants mr jeffrey murphy from district four mr scott chambers from district one retired brigadier general terry bullard from district one mr ray den from district five mr cheryl johns mr miles bancroft mr paul white and mr david williams jr from district three right so same thing please reach out to these applicants any of them

» are eligible to be nominated at any future meeting for the airport commission and we heard from mr white today thank you for being here yes you have been a lot you coming and introducing yourself and speaking to us i will support you and stay for the home exactly yeah i suspect whoever nominates you won't have trouble getting that one through um next i just want to go through all um so those are it for the applicants that have come in um we have to announce them at a meeting prior to their nomination now i'm just going to go through the vacancies on other boards so airport commission we just stated there's three vacancies board of zoning and appeals board of zoning appeals can i ask a question on this one yes so i don't see benji strickland listed here but i know that he's on the board of z

» one is he the one that was coming off correct okay so the panel might have taken him off yeah he's the one that now is that is that the vacancy listed here okay so that's benji yeah so um yeah okay um okay two vacancies clean community commission one vacancy the kershaw health district we have three vacancies no vacancies on the library board the planning commission the recreation advisory commission and two vacancies on the tourism advisory committee which we read those applicants tonight this helps a lot manager thank you miss hannah you're welcome and um again hannah's continuing to improve it and get us all squared away so that we know who is nominated by who and when another thing that we are going to start doing is giving a certificate of appreciation to anyone that comes off a board

» and also a welcome letter for anyone that is nominated and voted on to a commissioner aboard this is going to help hannah keep track of the dates when they were nominated and when people came off for historical records but also we want to acknowledge anyone that serves on a board because it is a public service yes mr jones just just some clarification madam chair because i'm not sure i quite understand it takes me a little bit longer sometimes um we're going to recognize all the applicants before we we once we appoint them you remember how we used to do would send them a letter welcome to the board once they're appointed um once they're appointed by council announcing names prior to putting them on the agenda to vote and so so like if i was going on the planning and zoning on board and you

» elect y'all um make a motion to appoint me then the she'll send a letter saying welcome to the planning and zoning commission mr ducker you were nominated by councilman jones say they have to be in the packet prior to correct right so this is something separate so when we call their names prior to or we're just they got to be in the packet prior to then we'll do it the next you keep doing business as usual madam chair is saying there's going to be a letter after we take the vote we've always done that well it got dropped yes so nothing's changing on the process i'm just going to send people a letter to congratulate them and let them know when the next meeting is madam clerk without doing this for all those years is that whoever nominated that person she would send a letter to them on their

» behalf the council person on their behalf who nominated them okay we can do that i mean i think it's not being done though so we're going to start doing it again why did you stop i'm not sure i started in january you stopped in january i started in january i'm not sure miss anna says she started after that so all right up to item number 11 council briefings mr tucker we're going to start with you because we started with mr brazel last time just one quick thing um we spoke with staff madam chair and the finance committee is definitely going to set up for august the 11th at 3 p.m for a meeting this meeting is going to consist of a couple things one is we want to get with staff and lay out our quarterly um dates moving forward because you remember we made a recommendation back to um council th

» at we would get quarterly reports uh about our finances so um that's going to be a part of that meeting for the future dates we also are going to uh meet with staff and the sheriff about some concerns on his budget to try to answer any questions and address those concerns we will do a report back to council and then uh from there um you can have them on the agenda if you like um but being next best step we don't know that until after we talk to him but that is what we have tentatively planned and if anything changes we'll let you know that concludes my report mr schumack yes just a few quick things i got a chance to go this weekend to uh potter's community park there in elgin and they were doing a school supply giveaway it was blanketing families but a number of other uh radiate church look

» off first baptist um i mean there's just uh the south kind of foster agency just tons of groups out there and i wish i had the picture to show you but the line for those you know what potter's park looks like the line was from the flags all the way back to the end of the park past the picnic shelter um people waited in line for hours but they had book bags shoes school supplies all kinds of stuff so it was a really really wonderful example of the communities and churches coming together and groups and it was just it was fantastic so i want to thank the organizers for that and thanks for inviting me out to help um tomorrow that same group blanketing families at 2 p.m in elgin is going to be doing a food giveaway they do it every little while at the town hall so if anybody's not doing anythin

» g at 2 p.m tomorrow they can always use help out there i've been there a few times and they give food to families in need you literally and if you're a family in need or know a family in need you literally just come to the town hall get there a little early 145 at elgin town hall they'll show you where to park they'll drive you through you don't even have to leave your car so what blanketing families is a wonderful group that operates a lot of good stuff in elgin um i'm going to be hosting a town hall on august 10th at blaney baptist church i believe madam chair is going to join me um we're going to be talking about whatever the public wants to talk about but specifically i'm going to uh give some updates on some of the growth issues the ordinance we've talked about tonight uh mr tabney i k

» now you mentioned that i mean so that might be something you could come it'd be a little more of a back and forth forum uh talking about impact fees and some other things at that meeting to get some public input on that um i also got to go and i'll let i know brand will talk about this but the south kind of seven event that came through uh the park here was absolutely wonderful so thanks for the mulligan law firm for putting that on um and that's all that i have thank you madam chair thank you mr jentz thank you madam madam chair members of council um mr borowski thank you for being here you sit here all night of course you introduced us to paul head and that that meant a lot i also want to thank you for what you folks did for lauren webb that was really nice it was a class act and uh i app

» reciate your dedication to the airport commission did you not receive a letter when i had when i nominated you did you receive a letter when was that a year ago okay thank you um i made a lot of notes here it's a lot of writing but i can't read it so anyway that is my report thank you mr tomlinson thank you madam chair um i'll be brief i would like to um extend my apology for not being present in the meeting i am currently out of town um i really appreciate staff for making this so accessible for me to call in um this has been a seamless but i've missed it being there in person and getting to to interact with everyone um as councilman shoemagg mentioned we had a wonderful event on the 15th and camden um where we kite the watery river and hiked the chotty trail and had a community event at t

» he revolutionary war center um we really appreciate everybody who came out our parks and rec really staff really played a huge role in that along with our county staff um to help put that together it was part of yakking the river um and the sc7 expedition it was a really wonderful day besides the liquid sunshine that we experienced during the hike when it was raining sideways i think that was on the forest goat movie but it was true on that hike as well um i will be done with the sc7 expedition coming up on the 30th and and looking forward to getting back in town um i appreciate the staff's input and and and help really during this process i've called a few few staffers um in kershaw county as i've been gone for 30 or what 24 days 25 days now and they have been most helpful in my absence so

» thank you again and i appreciate everybody and looking forward to seeing my colleagues again at the next meeting thank you mr tomlinson mr cato just a few things tonight um first of all i want to remind everybody that on august the 11th we'll have the um shrine club jamboree uh football match up at north central this year is where it'll be held and that'll start at 6 p.m i know we'll have a meeting between now and then but um all three of our county high school football teams will be participating in this event so we look forward to seeing everybody out at that and secondly with school starting next week i just want everybody to make sure they monday morning the kids and the parents and uh school buses and everything else will be out on the roadways and uh sheriff's offices will be directin

» g traffic so i just want to urge everybody to take extra care and caution with school starting back and and give yourself a little bit of extra time but other than that i hope everybody has a great great week and great weekend thank you mr cato all right um okay first i want to um ryan if you'll put the slideshow up i want to show everybody the slideshow from the civil air patrol that was at woodward field um this past weekend it was from july 15th to july 23rd um thank you mr borowski for sending these in and also i want to um extend a thank you to dale and gary who took care of the civil air patrol made sure the runways um were safe kept an eye on the weather made sure there was room for all the planes um even got the cadets and the instructors cake and food while they were there so thank

» you thank you to the airport commission um that just goes above and beyond and understand it was a really great turnout and a really great flying show so um 24 cadets 13 civil air patrol planes 18 cadets did their first solo flight um that really makes me smile 12 instructors and four staff members so thank you everybody that was involved in that second item um mr tucker briefly touched on it so we did receive uh 2023 2024 proposed salary adjustment from the sheriff for the kershaw county sheriff's office the finance committee is going to meet and go over exactly what that would entail um i want to support a salary adjustment just as much as i do for anyone else in this county um i will not support opening up the budget though so um i look forward to hearing what the finance committee's rec

» ommendation is um but i just wanted to let everybody know that that request came in and it will involve opening the budget reopening the budget and there's a lot of um effects of that so please get back to us as soon as possible mr tucker with y'all's recommendations thank you for reminding everybody about the quarterly budget updates yes ma'am okay a reminder for admin as well um i have been gone for a while so i'm going to get back on my town hall rotation the next one will be thursday august 24th at 6 p.m and it will be in the liberty hill area um so i will have more details on that i don't have any kind of planned theme or um proposed topic i just want to meet in a different area of the county that i haven't been yet and talk to people in the community i want to give a shout out to mr t

» im kennedy so he is working very hard and meeting with several levels of legislator all the way to our u.s congress on getting a veterans clinic here in kershaw county so that our veterans do not have to drive all the way to sumter or drive all the way columbia for simple checkups or blood draws or small things that they might need so we've been working on that and i just want to thank him for his time and his efforts congratulations to kirkland community center for their summer camps miss minnie smith and they just had their final camp this week it ended and here it was a huge success they've been working with the alpha center for the programs and the topics there and i'm very very proud of them so good job miss minnie good job to everybody that put that together for that community from ma

» yor emmons the town of elgin send their appreciation for the funding of the community center in elgin so they are finally ready to approve their final plans they're very grateful for that also very great for the council's efforts um and the state legislators efforts for getting elgin out of the central midlands cog um from mayor holly um the bethune community center will host a town hall on tuesday august 1st at 6 30 pm and she wanted me to put that out and that's all i have for chair report uh mr templar administration yes ma'am just two things uh operationally um just with the rain event we had the other day where public works is working through over 20 roads with washouts of different levels so if you all get anything um certainly forwarded to staff we'll work on them some are more sever

» e than others but just wanted to let everybody know where we are aware of them and we're getting to them as quick as we can also something else that that um is a little concerning to me is republic waste who we haul to in lee county and um i think it's screaming eagle is they take our municipal solid waste our household garbage they are going to be permanently closing on saturdays um waste management is also considering this um so if this happens this is going to really impact our ability to run our convenience centers as we currently do so we'll stand by on that so the republic is a done deal minute um waste management is looking at and probably will because of the cost effectiveness or lack thereof um so we're scenarioing some things some some alternative schedules and hours so i will cer

» tainly keep you all abreast of that and um but just wanted to put that on your radar okay thank you nothing we can do about it and that is all can i i need i need to ask you a question i had asked for two things to be brought back up at this county council one was the gentleman who gave the presentation on the veterans park but we're supposed to have an update on that tonight yeah um and and also um personnel issue that we should be having an executive session on yes both of those are ready oh okay but the veterans part i mean that's you did the part with that that wouldn't be an executive session would it no mr dubose is going to give us that in the legal briefing okay good thank you uh mr templar one question about the washouts um who do citizens need to call they could call public works

» okay or they can call us of course or administration public works okay but we're working through it pretty pretty quickly but it's just going to take a little okay thank you okay legal briefing uh madam chair uh as you referenced earlier uh and i'm basically giving this briefing because i've been the point of contact with uh mr ooten who presented the what he titled project picnic regarding those shelters uh for the armed service branches at veterans park um i met with staff to review the permitting considerations and um just areas where planning staff and engineering needed more information summarize that information and sent it to mr ooten in a letter and also called him on the phone to talk about some of the higher level um issues i won't even call them issues uh just steps that need to

» be taken for the project see uh fruition uh mr ooten in that letter was invited to uh contact mr adams or skowski to set up a meeting where staff members can gain the information they need from mr ooten to steer them in the right direction and also just present him with forms and and options to consider uh in the project again um staff wants to give him all the information he he needs to uh come back with a successful proposal um to council so um i do not know if mr ooten has reached out to staff but i did speak to him late last week and provided him that information okay thank you for doing that and thank you for contacting him yes mr i did speak with mr ooten this evening and he has not received the letter yet okay so i thought i didn't sit to him i will double check that okay okay thank

» you thank you mr debose would you let us know if you sent it out will do yes thank you so it sounds like there are some um legalities we have to get taken care of but if if those items can be met then we can move to the planning phase of the project okay the project's uh principal concern are just the permitting requirements because it is in a fema flood way not even a flood zone an actual flood way um fema won't allow you to have quote permanent structures okay but um well we have them well there may be we put them there yeah well the definition of permanence for femas um maybe not what the common usage of that term would be um but yeah that's one of the primary concerns is that aspect thank you that's interesting great um no future agenda items to discuss um up to number 15 executive sess

» ion um i do need to go into executive session to discuss a personnel matter okay yeah session um the administrator and deputy administrator and deputy administrator this would be to discuss a personal matter but yes is there a second sounds like y'all got it all together second second by mr tucker all right and all those in favor of going into executive session did kate by raising your hand mr tomlinson how do you vote i vote in favor in favor madam chair okay why would you not want the uh attorney in there um the attorney is welcome to be there we just don't need him okay we're in executive session what was unanimous right okay give me just twist this me up one yes sir okay got it i'll do that thank you too good to see you yes sir back on thank you and do we have mr tomlinson okay yes i'm

» here madam okay there we go okay great um is there a motion to come out of a motion to come out of executive session okay mr tucker makes the motion mr cato makes the motion um just for the record executive session was held on a personnel matter and no vote will be taken no action will be taken all right all those in favor of exiting executive session indicate by raising your hand mr tomlinson how do you vote in favor okay and we are out of executive session we are now to adjournment is there a motion to adjourn tonight please madam chair can we adjourn okay mr tucker makes the motion is there a second second okay mr cato seconds all those in favor of adjourning indicate by raising your hand mr tomlinson how do you vote i vote in favor of adjournment okay and this motion passes this meeting is adjourned okay and this motion passes this meeting is adjourned thank you