Full meeting transcript - January 23, 2024

» hey gentlemen how are you good evening kershaw county citizens that are here with us in the audience and at home online thank you for being here this is the regularly scheduled meeting for tuesday january 23rd and i call this meeting to order tonight we're going to start with our invocation delivered by bishop gary revis did i say your last name right okay how do you say it rivas rivas um pastor or bishop right so good evening everyone let us pray king of glory we thank you for how you taught the story of the good samaritan to show us that we are all brothers and sisters we thank you lord god for teaching us to love others and to love each other regardless of our backgrounds our cultures our languages our economic differences our developmental differences or any other differences we pray lo

» rd god that our community our county would be known for love and fairness not for discrimination we pray god individually that you would eradicate any form prejudice from our hearts from our words and from our actions help us lord god to love as you have loved or one who lifts our heads we pray for continuous healing of our county and our community so many people lord god are suffering not only across the world but in our communities we pray for healing and justice for those who have been treated unkindly throughout their lives we pray for healing and prosperity for businesses especially lord god for those who are struggling through many challenges we pray for the families that own these businesses we pray for the employees we pray for healing and wisdom for our leaders as they strive to ac

» hieve prosperity for all oh god we pray that unity may prevail in our community help us lord god to be an instrument of your peace help us in this county to come together to resolve issues that affect all of us help us lord god to cooperate in whatever way we can may we each bring our own experiences and our gifts to the table and work out solutions together god help us to listen well help us lord god to love well and then lord god we bring you our children the children of this community of this county to you oh lord god many of our children struggle on a daily basis show us what is the best way to lead our children help us to provide their basic needs and point us lord god in the way that would keep our children safe and help us lord god to give them hope we pray for all the parents of our

» community may what we do here tonight support them well and so lord god we thank you for who you are in our lives we pray god that your love and compassion would flow through us and to those around us give us compassion and empathy and give it to us so that we may understand what those in our community are going through and help us to love well and so god we then pray for your blessings to come down upon us upon this meeting guide us as we speak in love and truth and may we always remember oh god that you are present here tonight we pray these prayers in the mighty name of jesus who is our savior amen amen thank you bishop ravis please stand for the pledge of allegiance adoption of tonight's agenda item number four is there a motion to adopt tonight's agenda okay mr shoemakes makes the moti

» on is there a second second by mr cato yes mr jones agenda where it says executive session i'd like to discuss that in open session please and at any point we feel like that there is a legal issue we need to go to the next session we can do it at that that point in time but i just i don't like this being executive session i appreciate that mr jones can you make a motion to amend it i make the motion that we amend the agenda to just have open discussion about the issue that we're talking about here uh where we have number five executive session discussing the contractual matter second okay second by mr tucker and discussion on the amendment to make number five discussion of a proposed contractual matter an open session discussion correct stand this if we start getting into territory that we

» need to go into executive session we can do that at that point in time can i get some clarification i know it's not i just don't know what i mean can we get any more clarification on what it is it's a contractual matter i have no trouble with that appreciate it very much thank you mr jones i originally put this on the agenda as a agenda item under old business um and there were some legalities that came up about the contract so it was advised to do it in executive session but i have no problem having an open discussion i never would okay um so all those in favor of the amendment motion to take item number five out of executive session and have a public discussion indicate by raising your hand all right mr jones mr tomlinson mr kato myself mr shoemaker mr tucker and all those opposed mr bras

» il did you vote in favor okay okay okay open session um any other motions pertaining to the agenda okay i have a motion to strike item number 16 executive session receipt of attorney client privilege legal briefing by advice of the administration we don't need to receive that brief tonight okay second by mr shoemaker any discussion on that right all those in favor of striking item number 16 executive session indicate by raising your hand all right that vote is unanimous we'll strike 16 and to the rest of the agenda any other discussions okay all those in favor of adopting this agenda as amended number five and number 16 indicate by raising your hand okay the vote is unanimous this is our adopted agenda as amended so the very next item um open discussion about a contractual matter so the con

» tractual matter was dealing with solid waste um mr templar do you want to lead or you want me to start the discussion uh either way okay um i'll let you have the floor and then i'll chime in uh madam chair members of council what we had here was a um set to be a discussion uh which will now be done in open session about contracting with services uh potential services to um compact our uh open tops at our our um convenience centers and what we're dealing with now is uh volume issues we are hauling inefficient loads so there's a means out there uh we could go either in-house or we can contract out with um services that will come in and compact our open tops and basically smash the contents down further so we're not hauling as much air if you will in-between material um some of these services

» can take a full open top that is kind of bulging over the top of the the container and smash it down to about a third of um it it create that much more space um within the uh open top of the uh open top of the uh uh open top so we had looked at this uh years ago um probably about three years ago we just thought that at that particular time with that particular pricing model it was not effective for us to go out and contract this out we we thought this would probably be better in-house um since then other other services have come on board with with a different pricing model so we we kind of come to here tonight to see um what is the the best approach we we staff has done its homework we've met um with again three years ago with the uh the original contractor we've reached back out to them fo

» r their pricing and we've uh spoke several times with this this newest contractor just to better understand their pricing models and and how we could save and where the efficiencies would be within our operation so that's that's kind of where we are tonight okay members council madam chair if i may yes mr dunn something that uh in the agenda review meeting when we were discussing when this was being discussed uh i think there's some advantage to trying to use this company for maybe 90 days just or not this company but after we go through procurement obviously and we'll have to do that but go through procurement find a company that will do this for us for 90 days and have a trial run and then let's see if it's working or not because if we don't if we wait to buy the the equipment it could be

» eight months before we even get started on this mr templar can you speak to the timeline how quickly could we do compaction services in-house in-house uh just because of uh where we sit right now and and the work we've done we we have uh capital reserve money available to make a purchase the oh we could probably have that up and running in 30 days we have the full-time employee on site because this truck is not much different than what we have already with rolloff so it's no cdl required um we're pretty much set up to go in-house if we were to look to contract outside um there's a couple different options we could go with an rfp or just a the full-out um process of taking bids that would be the first one would be about 90 days the second if we go with two bids would be about 60 days and the

» n it would have to be approved by council madam chair for me yes mr jent you know i don't care who it is i have a problem going back into the budget during mid-year i mean you know we set a budget we try and forecast but i just have a problem doing it period uh it's a if you do it for one we need to do it for all that's my position on that madam chair if i may yes let's get clarity so you say you do have a problem going back in the budget or you don't really do and and he's miss temperate me if i'm wrong stated it was not an emergency either well that last meeting question that i had that and if we decide to do a trial run with whoever is that money budgeted because you're talking about two different pots of money with the capital reserves and what's actually in the general fund to run the

» county until july 1 am i correct by saying that correct we would have to um so it wouldn't necessarily be going into 23 24 budget if we were to purchase this vehicle we would just be um essentially pre-approving or or taking money from capital reserve that we would look to purchase this vehicle from in 24 25 fiscal year so we would just pull that money ahead of time understanding that we were going to buy this um and it may the potential fallout from that would be that it would reprioritize or categorize some of the capital purchases that we have um identified for this year moving them in into 24 25 if we were we we currently do not have the line items or the any funding in any line items currently in the uh solid waste budget so um for for example uh contracted maintenance what's this woul

» d fall under has about sixteen hundred dollars in there and we're looking at about seventeen thousand per month um so we either way we're going to have to move funds around so so that's my point though can you take those capital funds expenditures out of reserve and put into the contractor services no you cannot i can't right well i know your answer but i just want to make sure the public understands yes sir madam chair if i may yes mr actually i don't like any of this i mean i would just be honest with you i don't i'd like to wait till first of the year this and uh put it in our budget new budget put it in our budget and move forward uh mr templar so and for council so i have that we have five roll-off trucks at end of life you'll have a plan for next budget cycle to replace those this tru

» ck for compaction though is an additional truck correct correct okay so they're completely different just one clarification on the five um we have made some purchases over the last couple years we started so there's probably one or two we've replaced one i know for sure within the last two years um so um and i think it came on board maybe within the last year just because of the lead time for these trucks it it takes a while to get them on okay site and what's the approximate cost of the truck for compaction uh 249 000 okay okay um so this council needs to determine um how we want to handle the services either contract it out or bring it in-house i say we wait to the first of the year i mean to the new budget not right now mr jones just in general for the discussion that's something we need

» to decide what we're going to do contract i want to try contracting for about 90 days that's just me i think you i think it would be an advantage to the point that you know we wouldn't have to hire additional employees and if someone was sick we wouldn't have to pull somebody else off to do it or maybe not even have that service now i may be totally wrong but but the bottom line is we can try it and you know i mean all right that's the private sector we're talking about working with okay somebody thought i wrote this but i didn't since when do we all think government could do a better job than private industry i didn't that's not original quote i got that from ronnie he called me and told me bottom line is i believe in that i really do and i i would like to see us look at contracting at the

» first of the year and but go through our budget process and put it in there thank you thank you mr jones um i thought of something when he said if the employee gets sick what are our maintenance what does maintenance look like on that truck and do we have adequate maintenance yes ma'am we um within the last two years i've made moves to hire a our maintenance technician that can handle a lot of the preventive maintenance just because we have five roll-offs that need to stay on the road and this vehicle is no different with the hydraulics and powertrain okay all right any other questions yes yes sir um so um we're meeting the finance committee um next week is this something that we need to add to our uh list to look at um to come back uh before council in the budget process yes but not but no

» t something outside the budget no no i'm not coming outside the budget so what are you talking i said i'm not talking about outside i'm talking about what during the budget process or the first of the but yeah for july one july one yeah i mean i'm okay with that just have to identify the monies and that's what i have to do for everything procurement make sure we go through procurement i think the finance committee should look at it at their next meeting and administration i don't know how if july one will put us in an emergency situation i know it's not an emergency right now but um this is something that's been discussed for two years now so at one at some point in time we've got to make a decision yeah just for this is you know we we have backhoes at our sites and we are compacting now ju

» st not the most effective and efficient way and a lot of those backhoes are just hand-me-downs from public so they're they're very um maintenance intensive um it was completely my plan as administrator to include this vehicle this year in our um capital reserve it's it's not been put in for the last couple years because we had to buy a five hundred thousand dollar compactor for the landfill site itself um just to create efficiency there we were destroying um other half million dollar bulldozers out there and just creating maintenance nightmares because they were not designed to drive through bed springs and and debris um so we prioritize but i i feel like now this this would be 24 25 fiscal year would be the time to look at this okay is it emergency no we've been getting by is it something

» we seriously need to look at through the um through the um our capital reserve purchases this year absolutely because with growth with with the volume we're seeing at our our convenience centers um with all of the material we take in there it just behooves us to to find every piece of efficiency we can yes well that said it all we can move on okay um the use of the backhoes though this would eliminate that because i don't think that that's a good use of our sites correct um so obviously with this piece of equipment we would focus on the lugov the elgin and airport sites okay but some of our outer sites that are not as as heavy um in terms of use um and volume we probably could still get away with backhoes okay all right thank you mr templar any other questions the administration or good of

» the discussion okay we'll move on to item number six public comments mr dubose if you'll hand me that we have a full house tonight so i will ask the public when someone is speaking to be as quiet as possible if you leave the room please leave quietly also so that um everyone can hear all right we have 18 people signed up for public comments tonight yes 17 someone changed their mind okay the first speaker tonight is mr rob brown hi rob how are you good stand at the podium and then make sure the microphone is close to your mouth so that um the audio picks up okay thank you mr brazil can you repeat that name please rob brown in the public comment section you have five minutes for your public comment you don't have to go five minutes okay you know what let's just um time on time yeah do a phone

» timer thank okay miss reader has it go ahead mr brown you have the floor okay talk about the 521 potential expansion to four lanes um uh this would be a massively expensive project costing hundreds of millions of dollars and is not needed i don't see any benefit at all to kershaw county sumter might want this um but we don't see any need for the expansion sumter actually right now has six lanes to get to i-20 if you 521 261 and 15 i live on 521 i drive it every day i do not see any problems with the traffic the only issue i see is the folks that don't want to obey the traffic laws um there are many more pressing issues that i think the department of transportation should be paying attention to i wouldn't mention the bridges that are falling down that need to be repaired i would also mention

» the bypass on the north side of camden that is in terrible shape and finally the other issue that i think the department of transportation might want to look at is all the trash that's on the side of the roads in our great state and that just detracts and you never see them doing anything to correct that issue thank you for your time thank you mr brown the next speaker is wayne belger hi wayne how are you madam chair members of council thank y'all for your time tonight mr belger can you move the mic a little closer that better a little bit more thank you you have to go directly into these mics for for the people that are watching to hear thank you just too loud good so as a landowner and a farmer in the boy community um i move heavy equipment every day up and down 521 number one into across

» the river into watery area the farm bethune move this equipment up and down 521 daily and i can tell you folks it's not a problem is it is there a safety issue yes but that's a traffic issue that needs to be dealt with by the highway patrol and sheriff's department for the county to look at spending money on a project 200 million 300 million whatever that price may be i can tell you folks there's a lot of infrastructure work that needs to be done in kershaw county all we have to do is look right over in the west watery area we have elgin laney and west watery i mean those folks need road improvement they need infrastructure we don't need a new road in boykin or 521 a two-lane road is sufficient for what we have as rob brown mentioned there's actually more roads than that leading out of sump

» tor county there's 378 261 521 black river road highway 441 and highway 15 i might also note that black river road is fixing to be four-laned at the intersection of 521 and black river road the reason i know that is because we own the property there and i'm very familiar with that project if we're going to four lane 521 why are we four-lane in black river road makes no sense i ask you all to take consideration in the way you're spending tax dollars monies everybody wants kershaw county to get their share but try to appropriate that money to where it's best used and other parts of the county there we have people in the county that are still driving on dirt roads and we're talking about four lane in a row it's not necessary thank you for your time and if anybody wants to get out and ride on a

» tractor i'll be happy to ride you all around have a good night thank you mr belger next speaker is hank her foot hi hank how are you good evening thank you madam chairman uh and the rest of the county council thank you for this opportunity my name is hank kerfoot i'm a property owner and uh of a farm in sumter county and kershaw counties that has approximately one mile of frontage on highway 521 farmers large and small would suffer adverse economic impact if the proposed 521 expansion were enacted as acres of farmland were paved arable land would be lost forever many local farmers rely on crossing highway 521 as part of their daily practices they not only cross but they make left and right hand turns out of and into multiple properties if 521 were four lanes with a medium these farmers and

» their equipment would be constantly exposed to not only more traffic but more aggressive traffic while being forced to make multiple turns and u-turns to access their farms kershaw and sumter county 521 farmers many of whom operate generational and historic properties are far from beneficiaries of this proposal and stand opposed to a four-lane highway as a 521 property owner of land in both sumter and kershaw counties and as a resident of camden kershaw county i can't help but to believe that this proposed project would be bring more traffic into our town while these monies could be better spent as wayne suggested on roads and bridges throughout the region that are currently in disrepair thank you for your time and consideration on this issue thank you mr kerfett the next speaker is marty d

» aniels hi marty thank you very much i live on highway 521 on a 200 year old farm 521 runs 2.9 miles right through the middle of our farm as it also divides other farms my first memory of this farm was 80 years ago when my father was fighting in world war ii and i spent the year there we're a community black white hispanic people neighbors who care deeply about saving our homes and property from rembert to i-20 saving it from needless harm a four-lane highway would have a terrible environmental impact upon this entire area the wetlands and the river valley system based on historical environmental and religious importance of these lands there will undoubtedly be federal oversight based on the national historic preservation act of 1966 the environmental protection act of 1969 known as nepa u.s

» department of transportation act section 4f as well as the u.s department of interior designation for national historic landmarks a proposed four-lane project will undoubtedly lead to federal involvement with an environmental impact statement that is likely to take many years these lands along the watery river have been inhabited by 4500 generations of people going back 16 000 years including some of the most important native american archaeological sites in the southeastern united states we stand opposed to a four-lane destructive highway i would also like to submit a proposal a petition of 37 pages here we only had a few days uh several hundred signatures um i don't think i need to read the whole thing but it essentially says the first paragraph we the undersigned kershaw county citizens

» ask that the kershaw county council pass a resolution to oppose expansion and widening of highway 521 into a four-lane highway from the sumter kershaw county line to interstate highway 20 is there someone i yes miss hannah can you make a copy of that for us please have this one i made a copy oh okay thank you thank you very much thank you miss daniels all right the next speaker is renee castro did i say your name right you're welcome good evening ladies and gentlemen of the council my name is renee castro i live in rembert in kershaw county just north of swift creek road and my driveway comes out to 521 and i drive that road all the time um i can say that i have not experienced any significant traffic issues driving up and down that road i've not been impacted trying to get in a timely mann

» er up to camden or down to rembert or down to sumter as a matter of fact as i reflect on it i can't think of a single time i've been on 521 and i haven't been going roughly the speed limit unless somebody in front of me is going slow for for no apparent reason but not because of traffic issues or not because the highway isn't wide enough or anything else like that so i can't imagine why a project like this is being considered and certainly why it would be helpful to the county um i took it upon myself to contact dennis ciphers at the cog and asked him about why this is happening and he said that this was simply a feasibility study triggered by the dot but we're hearing from others that there are politicians in sumter and maybe at the state level that want this to happen regardless of what t

» he feasibility study reads out or what the facts are so as you can imagine we're concerned about the different things that we're hearing um ultimately we don't see this as a benefit to kershaw county uh and we would definitely look to challenge the cog on this issue uh understand what's going on uh and definitely uh pros oppose this project thank you very much for your time thank you mr castro the next speaker is connie davis roos miss connie did i say your name right it's rouse rouse yes um how are you thank you so much for allowing me to speak today um i work at the house of representatives and i'm on the city zoning and planning commission so i kind of understand why this is happening but i'm here to just speak as a citizen about my church it's the property that's on 521 it's wesley chap

» el united methodist church it's now a cemetery it has historic relevance because it was a part of the mulberry plantation but it was given to slaves but the slaves decided that they never ever ever not in 2024 wanted that property taken back from them so they wouldn't let it be a gift they purchased it can you imagine six slaves a hundred dollars it is equivalent i think today twenty three thousand five hundred dollars but twenty three thousand dollars six slaves raising that because they did not want the property taken it was given though as a sacred trust it's irrevocable so i guess unless someone's going to stop and bow or pray when they come in front of the church it's not a divine place of worship only a church can be on any of that property the other thing is we have had great pastors

» there senator id quincey newman who is the first black senator since reconstruction i'm asking you to please not pass this it would be so good for sumter i know but we live in kershaw county and we vote in kershaw county and we are asking you please look out for us here in kershaw county don't we don't need this right now and guess what you can take that money give it to mr templar and buy his truck thank you all thank you ma'am all right the next speaker is john daniels jr we'll talk about a hard act to follow madam chairman the honorable members of the kershaw county council i'm john daniels i should say john daniels jr my wife lisa and i have a home at 892 sumter highway in kershaw county it's near the junction of 521 and 261.

» my brother and two sisters have homes near me you've heard from my sister marty daniels already this evening i'm one of the owners of the farm we call mulberry which has farmed in this area for more than 100 years we are a timber farm we have approximately 3 000 acres in our timber cultivation cultivation requires constant work and attention and we are always moving on and across 521 as we go about our operation the expansion of 521 from interstate 20 south through rembert poses a serious threat and challenge to our area including our front family farming operation there are no intersections along our corridor of 521 other than the farm roads and cars travel in unimpeded 65 miles an hour or more and i can't imagine that a four-lane would in any way shorten the time that it takes to travel a

» cross our three-mile sec stretch that bisects our farm it will make things far more dangerous for our for us and for our neighbors now i've been actively involved in our farming operation for more than 20 years i can tell you that a four-lane expansion would be disruptive to the farming operation to wildlife and to the scenic corridor through which the 521 route passes you should know that we have approximately 3 000 acres protected by conservation easements these would be affected by the expansion the conservation easements are held by ducks unlimited we're proud of that the idea is to protect the land and its scenic natural corridor in perpetuity the expansion of 521 challenges that there are wetlands on both sides of 521 conservation easements run on both sides of the highway ancient wet

» lands run along both sides of the highway there's a heron rookery that is only a few yards from 521 that i understand is part of a national migratory pattern i'm concerned about the impact of any expansion or widening of 521 south of i-20 and on to sumter county on our beautiful environment and our farming operation i'm particularly concerned about the impact on our neighbors and we will join them to oppose the expansion of 521.

» a final point population explosion in kershaw county and south carolina is fast becoming a threat to our community a four-lane highway would likely encourage unplanned growth and could forever change the nature and character of southern kershaw county proper planning for population density is a key issue for this county that must be considered by this board and i know you'll do that proper planning can make or break kershaw county and the neighbors in our county thank you thank you mr daniels the next speaker is rick detweiler hi rick be careful thank you madam chair this is uh i'm rick detweiler i live on tombfield road i've spent the last 37 years with my wife janice the microphone closer to your mouth is that better yes thank you i'm sorry um rick detweiler my wife and i jan my wife jane

» t and i have spent the last 37 years cobbling together a piece of property on tombfield road it is everything to us um and i am vehemently opposed to the expansion and the four-lanning of of 521 i am very concerned about the lack of transparency we've seen from the santee lynchens council of governments uh we've asked for information about this we want to know who's pushing this this expansion when we have such enormous needs elsewhere in the state and particularly in kershaw county i drive 521 every day i go out of my driveway i drive less than a mile to the end of tombfield road and i turn right on 521 to go to columbia six days a week i drive up and down that road every day just except for sunday and and i do not see a need to expand 521 in the least there's not a problem that expansion

» will fix now um we believe it's an enormous and unnecessary expense there are too many other needs in this county all you need to do is go down i-20 toward columbia and cross over the watery bridge if you don't think there's a need in kershaw county that bridge i am convinced that one day i'm going to be driving to my office in columbia and that bridge is going to fall in and that's how i'm going to die i mean that is that that bridge is crumbling to pieces and the right lane of i-20 all the way to richland county is crumbling why because we're not getting our roads fixed we're not getting our bridges fixed we've got the same problem going on with with the watery bridge over 601 the 601 bridge over watery and so you know i can't imagine spending 250 300 million dollars widening a road that

» doesn't need to be widened when we have these needs that are so critical to our county and we ask you please please pass this this resolution this resolution we know is non-binding but it needs to be an expression of the citizens of this county that we don't want it we don't need it and nobody has so far has has explained to us as the citizens who live down there why this is even necessary and why we need it what is the need who's pushing this it's not going to do anything for the citizens of kershaw county is it tell me what it's supposed to do for the citizens of kershaw county i ask you that explain to me what what good the the more growth fueled by a four-lane highway is going to do for our county that can't even handle the growth it's got now we've got the the the our infrastructure is

» stressed our schools are stressed our roads are crumbling uh we we can't take care of what we have and we're going to expand the road and invite more people from sumter county to come in i'll tell you what is going on what what camden is going to become is is richland county and sumter county sprawl that's what we are that's what we're becoming it's we we are we are fueling growth for growth's sake and i gotta tell you it's gotta stop somewhere growth is not all good and when did we accept that as a fact so i would ask you please uh um pass this ordinance or pass excuse me the past this resolution show your support for the people in not only the lower part of kershaw county where we live south of i-20 but all of kershaw county because this affects everybody in the county not just these folk

» s folks like me that live south of i-20 thank you i think my time's up thank you sir all right the next speaker is jessica coulter hi jessica good evening thank you so much for the opportunity to speak and hopefully be heard so i am here i live on beverly hills road and so i'm not here to talk about the expansion i'm actually here to talk about something else i'm here to talk about 579 highway one it's over 300 acres in east camden it's across the street from my home and i know the public comment guidelines i don't expect a q a or comments from the council but i will be asking questions for the members to consider in decision making and policy discussions as kershaw county considers who we want to be in 10 years we need to consider who we are and who helped us become this some of my neighbo

» rs have lived in their homes for more than 50 years some including my family for more than a decade we've been in our homes and have made neighbors and relationships many chose kershaw county because of our small town rural community with a sense of togetherness my neighbors hand me tomatoes over our fence from their garden i grew up in the midwest farm country and kershaw county my kershaw county community has this feeling of togetherness we look at the stars we listen to the whippoorwills and we watch the deer i have spoken with several of my neighbors and all have expressed concern and want to know how the county will assess the impact on all of us and the environment according to the zoning 579 highway 1 is considered general development which requires multi-use without negative impact

» on surrounding land use and environmental resources this land is general development even though most of the surrounding land is residential has an assessment been completed has an assessment been completed about my neighbors and the impact of the surrounding landowners and the environmental resources in what way does the submitted plan for 579 highway 1 support kershaw county's comprehensive plan we are here tonight because there are obvious plans in motion what are they there are land surveyors there are trees being marked this morning today there's constant activity so when will the assessment about the negative impact be done and by whom how will the 579 highway 1 updates be paused until the impact assessment is completed for example what buffers will be considered to uphold our way of

» life how will we ensure they're saving trees and the whippoorwills and the wildlife how will you ensure that our proper vet property values are up upheld thank you again for your time and your consideration thank you miss coulter the next speaker is lynn canto hi lynn how are you i'm good thank you how about you good thank you i'm also changing the topic and you have to speak very close to the microphone sorry no no problem good evening i want to thank you for letting me speak um you you work very hard at what you're doing and i appreciate you taking the time to talk to people in the community my name is lynn canto i'm a homeowner a farm owner a school counselor a horse owner an equine event manager i help with the camden equine circuit and i'm a retired coach for the central carolina eques

» trian team why am i here i've lived in camden for 27 years and i've been attending horse events in camden south carolina for 45 years my husband is a race horse trainer my parents also lived in camden were members of the camden hunt the first race horse that we bought i sent to the camden training center i do not get involved in council meetings very often but when something involves potential irresponsible town growth i become concerned and that impacts the county that is why i'm here why am i speaking today i'm concerned of some of the proposed projects in kershaw county especially the camden training center this is a flat race horse training facility and i know many of you think it might not be important because of the springdale training center and race course but the camden training ce

» nter is a historic flat racing training track and springdale is a historic steeplechase training facility there is actually a difference steeplechase is jump racing while flat racing is a different type of training flat racing is shorter distance without jumps the camden training center is historic and we can't just build over history and once it's gone there's no replacing it especially if we get paramutual wagering in south carolina then all the work will be out the window what makes camden special camden is known for revolution war here revolutionary war history horses and antiques this includes the description on the camden online informationals for tourists and travelers sadly in the past flat training facilities have disappeared in kershaw county and other places in south carolina if

» you think of pacoma and it's turning to to a different venue but the history of the camden training center is special it's brought some of the top owners outfits horses and trainers to camden i know that there is a proposal that has been sent to the zoning and planning committee to annex the camden training center into the city in order to access city camden utilities i do not feel this should happen this project was originally proposed for 800 houses which is ludicrous now i understand it will be just shy of 300 houses for the first phase i say phase note this property was bought by carlisle development instead of stuart grant his racing group not his training stable which means that they have been intending potentially to develop this for the entire time this is for profit profit not for

» camden for them this property was never sold to be developed each owner intentionally sought out racehorse people to purchase this property marion dupont scott would be rolling over in her grave if she knew what was happening so the big question is why didn't he give racehorse owners or groups the opportunity to purchase this property and maintain it as a training facility why so quick to develop the property and change the face of camden i will like to express my concerns about this project this property was built as an equine property i own a equine property i can't just change it three people have sold this property altering this historic property has there is a bridal path that stretches from camden training center to springdale race course this would be changed if it's developed mary d

» upont scott donated the springdale race course to the horse community which brought so much to camden it would be an insult if camden and kershaw county did not maintain her intended plan for this area if the estate of mary dupont scott wanted to develop it it would have been sold back in 1985 to developers instead it was sold to will farish and that property was developed was not sold to developers and he in turn sold it to someone else who was an equine owner if i charged people exorbitant stall fees for a year instead of providing fair stall cost and bedding then i would also not have people in my facility the second am i out of time i'm so sorry to interrupt you yes ma'am you are my my final request is i do have a presentation that i'd like to share that's on a powerpoint and i'd like t

» o do that at the next meeting thank you miss conto you can um send that to miss hannah parlor our clerk and and she'll get it to us or she'll arrange um something the next speaker is anna lock hi anna how are you i'm doing okay thank you madam chairwoman and council thank you for this opportunity for public comment um i am fairly new to the city of camden and to kershaw county as a resident and i am thoroughly enjoying listening and i've been attending as many meetings of planning commission city council county council so i can continue to learn tonight i wanted to make you aware that as you've heard there are multiple developments in the works there are multiple changes going on in kershaw county and there certainly are a lot of citizens who are concerned about that so there's a fairly new

» group with a reference to responsible growth for kershaw county now responsible sustainable there's buzzwords in the business community and it can mean a lot of different things to different people tonight i just want you to know that we are working with you and we appreciate your work towards the growth that will come south carolina is very popular and other cities and municipalities are having these discussions so if you will permit me to ask anyone in the audience who has been following the discussions of responsible growth for kershaw county and or now would like to join a newly formed organization please raise your hand thank you to everyone for your attendance tonight and we do look forward to staying in touch in future agendas and future focus areas that concern the growth and the im

» pact either positive or negative to all of our residents of kershaw county thank you thank you miss lock the next speaker is ashley huff hi ashley how are you i am doing well how are you hi my name is ashley huff and as mentioned in the previous meeting i am a member of district six i want to thank you all for allowing me to speak tonight last or two weeks ago i wasn't able to mention my background because i didn't want to run out of time but i am a civil engineer before moving back to kershaw county with my now husband i worked for a land development development company including one that specialized in solar development i worked alongside the same pe that signed the decommissioning plan for the latest project sandy i want to give you this information because i do understand what goes into

» these projects other than the fact that i am a landowner i wasn't planning on speaking tonight but this week i have been doing some research most of our surrounding counties that allow solar panels the areas where they are going to be need to be rezoned into a light industrial or something of the sorts so i reached out to joey at planning and zoning regarding the process so that i can fully understand this in depth it doesn't seem like this land would need to be rezoned so one question i do have are we allowing other types of developers to not go through the rezoning process while also looking through the ordinance i came across this listed in the background summary and this is from kershaw county planning commission june 8 2020 meeting which also went through um three readings here at coun

» cil it says there are no there are currently no zoning regulations in place to address development standards for large-scale commercial standalone solar farms in order to mitigate potential impacts these facilities may have on surrounding properties okay i want to read that again there are currently no zoning regulations in place to address development standards for large-scale commercial standalone solar energy farms in order to mitigate potential impacts these facilities have on surrounding properties how can we approve these sorts of projects with this clause and the ldo so we are are we looking at these property owners especially people who reside on these properties and tell them that their properties aren't protected protected this could fall under a range of things from decreased pro

» perty value to environmental impact as so many people have mentioned here tonight we are passionate about our land i think there should be some revisions made to this amendment not only because in because of this particular clause but also the council members listed at this time are no longer present anymore we need a change and it starts here thank you for your time tonight thank you miss huff the next speaker is sandy berry hi sandy how are you my name is sandy berry and i live on edder's lane between robertson town and lockhart for the same area ashley's talking about the tulsota farm but the main reason i'm here is edder's lane itself daddy knows about it he talked to my wife the other day lisa for a while but we have a lot of traffic when i moved here in 2004 we were the only people on

» edder's lane between robertson town and lockhart it's only a mile and a half you know but now there are 19 houses on this road and a lot of horses on this road a lot of farms on this road like just like ours but we need and the new school that has opened up up by north central the new elementary school we are getting a lot of new traffic cutting across edder's lane because this edder's lane is paved from georgetown to robertson town and there's probably not as many houses on that section and it is on our section that's not paved we have a problem with water on edder's lane you know my neighbor for instance drilled 13 wells unless we can get edder's lane paved we'll never get county water and it's desperately needed out there but the main thing is just the traffic itself the road stays in su

» ch bad shape it just needs we just really need to get you guys to think about you know and especially danny he's a he's a councilman for our our area to look into getting this thing paved and and what else do i need to do to move on with this getting this thing paved what do you know what are my options could you know but you're not going to answer that but that's okay that's what that's what you're you're not here there you're not here i'm sorry mr berry you're not here to answer questions so we don't do a dialogue during public comments um that's right i'm taking notes and we have your phone number so i will have the administrator um or one of us but we play with you yeah um get with you on that so that we can give you some other recommendations as well okay but i'm sorry to just um sit t

» here and not speak traffic and you know and the road the road is wide enough already to where they probably don't need a whole lot of easement other than what they've already got anybody can look into it we would definitely appreciate that if you would just have had to get his name and number and he can contact the county administrator or me and we'll help you go before the proper committee to talk about that okay my name's on the on the yes sir we have it thank you and mr berry thank you for your service miss temple you got all the contact information yes sir i spoke to sandy in the past so got it right the next speaker is tom webb the third hi tom how are you i tended to speak about one thing and i'll speak about another i'll get two things in briefly uh i'm against the widening also it's

» a symbol of so-called forced modern modern modernization it's so-called modernization it's a gradual loss of private property i think has to be um contended with where you find it going on and um on the agenda here ordinances be first reading an ordinance of kershaw county council to establish litter control ordinance which shall prohibit the unlawful disposal of litter or solid waste in kershaw county and provide enforcement and penalty provisions for violations i wonder if there isn't something behind that that's like forced modernization gradual loss of private property world economic forum has been meeting in davos recently it's a big shots there they're trying to figure out what to do with us they consider us a rats we're rats in their house and they want to get rid of us and so klaus

» schwab whose daddy was a nazi has said that by 2030 there'll be no private property no private property i don't know how they're going to do that but they're they're going to try what i want to speak about was the texas crisis of 2021 it was extremely cold windmill stopped solar panels failed and the remaining fossil fuel plants were not allowed to boost their output because of the environment they couldn't couldn't burn more fossil fuel so it was an experiment i think to see what people would put up with people died it was a cold hell let loose on the people i think on purpose i know it sounds like a conspiracy theory but the the truth is the fossil fuel plants were kept from ramping up their output so fast forward a bit uh we just had a couple of weeks of really cold weather here in this

» country what if in the not too distant future the uh fossil fuel uh that is the uh um proliferation of the solar plants should occur and the fossil fuel plants would be shut down gradually so uh we're dependent then on on the uh solar panels um this two weeks of coal we've had kills 60 something people has been reported that how many would have died if they had no heat and that would be the case if we were dependent on solar output uh the solar panels would be frozen over so um um these um chinese solar cells are really expensive and i wonder where the money is coming from through what circuitous path is it getting to where we have it somebody has it to spend on these chinese solar cells that's it thank you thank you mr webb the next speaker is william robinson hi william how are you good t

» hank you i'm here in two capacities this evening my name is william robinson and most of you all know me as the executive director of the kershaw excuse me the knights hill historic preservation board and uh we've been if you've been following us we've been updating the park that we own there uh for the last couple of years um one of the things that i wanted to talk about is the maintenance of the park as we are listed although we own the park we are listed as a part of the kershaw county park group so we've been working out with parks and recreation to do maintenance and to be honest it's been lacking um especially with our our grounds and around our playgrounds one of the things that happens twice last year is when they came out to cut the grass they knocked two blocks um out of the i don

» 't even know what you call them like blocks around the children's playground um and they were never replaced um and um we continue to have to call uh in order to get the lawns cut if we're having an event at the park uh we give a heads up to uh uh uh park and then they they come out so we'd like to be a regular part of the maintenance program from the county um my second capacity is i was just elected the chair of the kershaw county democratic party um and as one of my first official duties we wanted to deliver a sympathy card to brother tucker um on the loss of his mom and um let you all know that we intend to work with the county um although we we may be from different uh political persuasions um that we intend to work with with the county to improve in any way that we can so i wanted to

» just make that announcement this evening and uh and if anybody needs any biden and harris he'll bring it over the next speaker is ted brunson thank you hi ted how are you my name is ted brunson um live over off of springdale uh back where a lot of people knew me originally was when i had a small business up in the dusty bin area but i was involved in the downtown development and uh part of the also the historical society we like to call it the hysterical society had a lot of fun there learned a lot of things uh part of the things that we did with the downtown development was to issue grants for the facades on the buildings to bring them back more towards uh what they looked like back then so you know even though i'm not from camden because there's not a road named after me i still enjoy a l

» ot of the things that that camden brought we actually came back after uh being out for almost 20 years so this is where i'll raise my grandkids now with that being said this is going to be broken into two areas one of course with the 521 which is on the uh the agenda mainly but um i always kind of ask a question there's two of them i always ask us i said well first off you know where's the money coming from and where's the money going to you always want to follow the money even when we had covid and college football my wife was all upset that they were going to shut it down i said no they're not going to shut it down all you got to do is follow the money and that'll tell you where everything goes and then the other thing that i always look at we've got a lot of people here and what we're ta

» lking about and what we're asking about what we're concerned about is what we're presenting to y'all and will this make any difference well what we have to say you know these people that that live on 521 that are going to be directly impacted and and watch their way of life actually change so what they're asking for is again you know it's what we say tonight going to make a difference so that's something that i always worry about sometimes when i approach government and even small government and even worse large government so you know we hope that that the people that are going to be most affected is going to be most heard the other part and i'm glad somebody else brought it up not me because i would have done it anyway was the camden training center and we talk about what 521 is going to b

» e doing and the impact we could easily take that money and put it over on springdale which granted you know several years ago they did i think a 34 million upgrade to move trucks around camden and get them out of the center of the town less accidents less noise less impact on the businesses i think it's a good thing you know we we go uh north you know down york street we take the aaron clue uh bypass and we because the gold mine i'm seeing large trucks go down springdale every day so i know the impact but they they bring but it's good business and it's it's the only way that they can go but we could also take that money and turn around and and put it to to repave uh make a better median better crossing points uh to to improve that area and that's going to dovetail into what you know people

» are talking about putting close to 800 houses into the camden training center and um that is really just going to impact that area uh you know tremendously uh somebody said about uncontrolled growth well uncontrolled growth to me is what we call cancer and when a cancer spreads it starts to impact everything it just might not impact that direct area between carter street and battles battleship and how many people know what battleship why the road is called battleship how many know anybody on council know tell me it's named after a horse battleship mrs scott's horse so there is history that goes there but that impact again is going to stick its tentacles out into the community and i'm sure there's going to be some positive things but i'm also fear that the thing that makes camden what it is

» is going to be lost and once that is lost it's gone forever so that's the concern and i'm just a visitor we're only here for a short time so thank you for your time uh i hope everybody here does make a difference thank you thank you mr brunson speaker is matthew hutchinson hi matt how are you i'm here to speak on the proposed changes to the public comic guidelines which i believe were triggered by a um anarchist group i think was harassing one of the council members so i gathered some say some writings of an anarchist i want to read them tonight hope it doesn't disturb anybody uh some writers have so confounded society with government as to leave little or no distinction between them whereas they are not only different but have different origins society is produced by our wants and governme

» nt by our wickedness the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections the latter negatively by restraining our vices the one encourages intercourse the other creates distinctions the first is a patron the last is a punisher society in every state is a blessing but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government which we might expect in a country without government our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer government like dress is the badge of lost innocence the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the borrowers of paradise for where the impulses of conscience clear uniform and irresistibly obeyed man wo

» uld need no other lawgiver but that not being the case he funds he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least wherefore security being the true design and end of government it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to insure it to us with the least expense and greatest benefit is preferable to all others here's another one when i contemplate the natural dignity of man when i feel the honor and happiness of its character i become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud as if they were all knaves and fools and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus

» imposed upon man is not the enemy of man but through the medium of a false system of government there's another one government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man instead of which it has been monopolized from age to age by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race this anarchist his name is thomas paine you may know him one of our founding fathers he refused to sign the constitution by the way was thomas paine an anarchist he probably would be labeled as one today i know what i said tonight is either falling on deaf ears going over some people's heads it's okay i've resigned myself to the that's the way it goes um if only we would give liberty a chance here listen to the people i'm so glad to see the room full of people redressed redressing thei

» r grievances with their government while they still can that's great i'll leave you with these final words from a true patriot and anarchist by the way lysander spooner a man's natural rights are his own against the whole world and any infringement of them is equally a crime whether committed by one man or by millions whether committed by one man calling himself a robber or by any other name indicating his true character or by millions calling themselves a government i want to say god bless tom webb god bless jeff maddox and god bless the few remaining patriots in this country thank you mr hutchinson that concludes public comments for this evening um if you were here and and from the training center can you raise your hand if you're here for the cano training center um next on this agenda w

» e did remove a discussion item on flex zoning and an equine overlay and i put it on next the next meetings agenda february 13th so i hope you'll join us then um it's a topic that i'm still getting information from and meeting with planning and zoning and our legal team so that council can have the best possible discussion so that will be on the february 13th agenda i just wanted to let you guys know that all right item number seven public presentations our first presentation tonight is mr brian mays the director of the boys and girls club of kershaw county hi brian how are you doing thank you for being here tonight quiet so i'm going to be very brief okay uh thank you all against sam and my sympathies mr ms mama too so i just wanted to give you an update of what's going on at the uh jackson

» teen center oh by the way hey just watch i can't see behind me so keep an eye all right i just wanted to make sure y'all still can laugh in this county because i'm glad you know like i told you i went to washington dc and i i'm i'm one i'm glad to call kershaw county my home uh but at the jackson teen center we still serve about two to three hundred children per day and um and you can move on to the next slide um but i just wanted to kind of give you an update i want to say something i don't know if you can get to that bottom screen that's a play but before um when we started uh the jackson teen center um our first program is called making a conversation we had a room full of 30 young african-american men young men and we asked them if you see law enforcement what would you do and how many

» would run every hand went in the air and we created this program called to make it a conversation so that in this window that they understand law enforcement and law enforcement get to know them in the community and understand that they just want to go home just like you so we did an original song um if i can bore you for a couple of minutes um that um that you let you see from our children's standpoint the first part of it is what they the way they saw the world and the next part of you'll see what we believe the world can be we envision a future where police and citizens are working together as one community to address root causes of crime and promote safety and thriving forever future is possible where police and citizens are working together as one community to address causes of crime a

» nd promote safety so that everyone can thrive we believe that what we all want is more the same than it is different and that when we work together we can create a better future for us all and that is an original song that we wrote at the jackson team center and if any of you you know our officer i mean sergeant carl smith let him know that we are working on it i don't know if y'all paid attention but they never threw the ball to sergeant smith he just went up and down but we're working on that we don't want any problems we don't want any problems but i also want to shout out senator penry and um congressman ralph norman uh for providing out those students the chance to go to capitol hill and talk about what we believe because we still believe it we believe that it is so that we can get alo

» ng we believe it is so that kershaw county can show the rest of the world how it's done we can get along we'll fix all this stuff you're talking about tonight we believe that and i believe if um my children thought any other way that it wasn't possible they wouldn't believe in this program so um of course that's us standing there now you know i don't know y'all that listen to old old negro spirituals the five blind boys of alabama do not laugh at my glasses you know i do look like one of them with my shades on up there but um yeah i didn't know that we're going to do that but you can go and that's us with ralph norman up there and the kids had an amazing time they were treated like royalty so we thank them for that um we also part of the boy scouts you know our explorers program boy scouts

» is not very popular in our community but these young people have taken it on they enjoy it um from everything to the outdoors we go to waterfowl twice a year and all this is happening right here in kershaw county we had the panthers come down though nobody say nothing about the one in 18 record not tonight but they did come down and we were able to talk to our kids about um on keep pounding day we were able to talk to our kids about athletes and education you know on our side of the fence we're up to over 600 kids that we've assisted in this county to go to college one's gone to the nba so if you're a gambler i gamble on the side of college so we we we thank the panthers for coming in and helping us with that you can go to the net i'm trying to go fast but they're still quiet so sunday any

» sunday you want to come by we pull it we we invite anybody that's homeless on the streets anybody in the community we have sunday dinner and our kids help us to serve we thank um unity and the community for providing some of those dinners and we're able to be a family in that same building again our kids still believe so you see what's happening if you drive by there we finally got that back torn off we're going to get us some bathrooms so they don't have to run up to the top you hadn't you hadn't lived to you seen a kid try to shoot the very last shot and then decide he's got to use the bathroom and running up to the top trying to get there so we hope to fix that problem here real soon and some of this is what you see what we get to see every day top right up there i think that harvey wasn

» 't very excited about college we was helping her get in her room but uh she was just frustrated for the day but we send uh we have a few kids now out fighting on foreign soil they believe in this country we believe in this country we believe we're going to come together and uh the first year was the middle picture where seven students went to the stem program at benedict college so this month naya green who was about to leave college and we thank god for community members like mr hank and a lot of people we jumped in there she's actually going to leave college because she ran out of money but um we got together and she graduated college and guess what now if you have a kid that's going to uh coastal carolina university they'll be running into the new admissions person which is naya green uh

» she's full-time at coastal carolina university uh kavon brown came over with his bald head he left he's gone to the united states navy who doesn't know george edwards george edwards was a was a tutor uh she's been with us since seventh grade and now you know of course she's big time she's going to the university of south carolina and we're proud of her but the big thing that i'm proud of is that bottom number of 5.1 gpa you know i had a 5.1 it took me about three semesters to get there but if you add all of them up i had a 5.1 um and so we have four students i believe are just that's working at the detention center and one fireman so we are still pushing students out in this county so they're becoming great students um so we have several teams at the recreation department um um we are still

» trying to work on getting the bus to serve some more children down in um in the lugoff area but this is the one i'll close with this because i'm most proud of this because most people don't pay attention to this our maps program has been uh with us since 2014 and yet today we have yet to experience one teen pregnancy because of that program and so yeah you should clap because 200 and 300 kids a day that's a big thing with that being said i'm going to be done i thank you all for allowing me to speak i hope i didn't keep you all too long and i'm glad you all smile please follow us go to make it a conversation.org jackson teen center.org and grind out sports and education but it's grind out.org and we literally mean this correct hank come by anytime just pop up we love to have you and god bles

» s you and god bless you for allowing us to serve the children of this county thank you brian thank you thank you for being here um council do you have any questions for brian thank you brian if you don't mind you've done a great job i remember the first time i saw you you walked in subway was it subway talking about the boys and girls club you had a vision and uh look where you're at now great job proud of you proud of the kids and you know we talk about this country yes there's a lot of evil in this country but i have to believe in my heart that there's more good and there's more love than evil yes and you're an example of that thank you appreciate it and our kids believe that we we have a saying at the teen center it's more of us than you so you keep up with your hate but eventually all o

» f us that love each other and want to live love and let live we're going to get together and we might be coming after you so thank you brian all right the next public presentation will be our new certified building official for kershaw county mr adam redkowski is going to introduce him and give us a little background on the new building official and his name is samuel goss good evening madam chair members of the board good to see you all i first would like to start off by saying that it's been a tumultuous 12 months for our department when it comes to building inspections we lost our long-term certified building official in december of 2022 these positions are very very difficult to fill in the state of south carolina there's not a lot of people that are interested or certified to do these

» types of jobs and a certified building official is someone that is required of us to have on staff they serve a very critical function for building inspections and ensuring the life and safety of our residents as they live in their homes dine in the restaurants and recreate so he's going to hate me for this but i want to recognize will branham in the back he's in the back corner he is our long-term residential building inspector and he kept us going through these 12 months i'm very proud of him and i'm glad that he now has a new uh mentor to to look towards and we also had to use the services of a third-party contractor during that time which was um that was less than ideal because they you don't see the same people every day and our certified building official was only here for three days

» a week so public service suffered as well but we've rounded a corner uh i'd like to introduce sam goss he comes to us from greenwood county and uh actually it's he came to us or to me through one of our uh staff in the engineering department they were like hey i know somebody so sam applied on and sam is here with us he's been with us for uh two months now so without further ado sam it's all yours madam chair uh councilman thank you for having me here tonight i want to make this pretty brief um i was gonna speak a little bit about myself and my qualifications but i don't see that i'd like to skip right to what we can do for uh kershaw county uh i want to bring kershaw county up to date with building codes and what's going to be required what i enforce is state law i do help joey with some o

» f the ordinances but uh anything that i'm going to ask your constituents to do is state law if there are any questions about it i'll be glad to answer them i can also bring you the codes that you'll need to help your constituent understand i'm also more than happy to sit down and talk with them one-on-one to get them exactly where they need to be uh unfortunately it may cost a little more money than what they wanted to but safety does come to cost um i want to offer consistency to our program i do look at every individual case one by one but in the end everyone will be judged consistently with the looking at everything the same way right now we're kind of in an education process with uh with staff as well as with builders in the county the state of south carolina doesn't offer or require an

» y continuing education for builders in the county or in the state um i'm more than happy to help our builders and our and our folks here in the county learn everything they can we're actually considering uh offering some classes and there is a meet the building official luncheon on the first being meet and greet with questions if you guys got questions i'll do what i can to answer those questions uh finally i'd just like to say that our department will and i we're not allowed to dictate how you build your house or your business or anything else we're simply here to judge it based on our reference books or based on a set of plans that were offered plans are done by design professionals as architects and engineers depending on the complexity you may just have an architect or you may have a co

» mbination of the two we're going to look at your plans and we're going to determine that what you have done is up to the plans or in some circumstances our reference books do reference special and particular ways in which to do things that's the ways we're going to look at people and their projects now we're going to judge you guys have any questions council well i'm certainly glad that you're here and um i just want to share from my perspective what has been challenging in position you hold now there's been inconsistency um builders have told me that citizens have told me that so um i would just ask that you're gentle on our citizens through this transition process um and show them a lot of grace because not all the citizens and some of the smaller builders have heard the things that you'r

» e going to start enforcing before because of lack of consistency and um the same person inspecting over and over again so i i do want us to follow the state law and our own ordinances if there's something local that um you see as a pinch point i hope that you'll let us know so that we can consider updating that or um send it to joey to update us but from my perspective that's where i'm at with it we do get a lot of complaints about um building inspecting madam chair how to respect i'm not going to ask any questions concerns but i'm going to appreciate you being here and i'm not going to put you on the spot in front of everybody your first week or whatever but i have some very hard questions that i will be talking with you about absolutely okay thank you also there's a uh packet that gerald

» has for you guys we'll hand out later on this evening um if you'll just look through it it covers a lot of what we do in our department if you got any questions please i'll be glad to answer thank you i'd like hey i'd like to actually ask you a question sorry jimmy i'm not going to be as easy as you um so at this point there's no contracted services is that correct we do have one sam speaking to the microphone we uh we do have one building inspector that is contracted we uh we don't have the staff to cover all the inspections that we do we do probably 30 inspections a day um the we spend more time behind the windshield than we do doing actually actual inspections all right so is it a goal absolutely yes to have all of our staff in-house that is a goal yes okay um i'll be happy to state this

» publicly if it takes a little more money to get somebody in house i'll support that because we're losing money um with inconsistencies we're losing money and we're causing um homeowners we're causing builders we're causing tradesmen to lose money because of inconsistencies and i've even had complaints that an official was is holding a grudge or something over someone's head um i've been in the home building industry all my life uh since since i can well all my life and um it's hard you know it's the biggest investment of our lives typically for for most middle class america our homes are our biggest investment and when you get towards the end of a project usually you're running out of money and it can be stressful and we don't need the government imposing uh any kind of any kind of flex or

» leverage or holding anything over anybody's head when they're simply trying to to get in their home so i look forward to having you here i'm glad you're here um look forward to seeing what you can do but um i'll second what uh chairwoman gwen said is trying to be gentle and supportive and um understanding well thank you so much thank you i've never been called easy mr cato mr galls i appreciate you coming out tonight i really do i want to kind of piggyback off what chairwoman gwen said about being easy on the citizens and just i'd like to see some kind of something that we're not just the contractors but the general public would have some kind of checklist so they could go by to make their process easier so they would know everything that they need to do at one time sure because a lot of ou

» r citizens that's doing smaller projects don't know all the rules and all the things they need to do like some of the contractors do so i'd like to see this made a lot easier for our for our citizens here in kershaw county there are lists available i'll make those available to the public they do reference sections of code books some of those code books can be found online i find it odd that uh we adopt these specific reference books into state law but i'm unable to find them free online as a just a general public i'm unable to do that i'm not sure i'm not sure there's some copyright laws that go with that but uh if anyone needs a reference book we have some in the office i'm unable to loan them out i apologize but i'll be more than happy to make copies of things if people need help all they

» 've got to do is ask for it i'll be glad to do what i can thank you sam and i understand you're doing a lunch and learn at the economic development building to educate the public about who you are and your expectations and some changes that people will see is that correct okay thank you for doing that i think anytime we have a big change education is a big piece of that so i appreciate you doing that one more thing real quick um mr templar do you still have the literature that i gave you that was a checklist kind of like what danny's talking about that i do and i found in charleston county we've expanded upon that significantly we're working with um our professional that is designing stuff we purposely paused that because we knew sam was coming on board we wanted him to have his input in it

» um instead of putting out a product um with a final uh the final piece that is just not reflective of what we want to do so to mr cato's point we will have a handout whether you're commercial whether you're residential building a deck or just whatever that there will be a checklist and it's it's not that you have to be a certified building inspector to read it right we want it to be digestible for the common public yep so thank you yeah that's what we're looking for thank you and one more note these these lunch and learns will continue they'll be quarterly oh that's awesome we're going to take advantage of that platform to be able to put out any changes you know things change constantly with with um uh regulations and things like that so i feel like we can either um put out new information

» or address areas that we feel like is is maybe um kind of murky you know with floodplain water quality buffer things like that up at the lake i feel like that these will be great opportunities to share information and expectations with um our local builders and this will to me be instrumental in forging good relationships with planning and zoning and our local builders um and uh from what i understand the the public can come you don't have to be a builder you may just have you know a project or something like that that you're working on so you don't have to have a general contractor's license or be in the business you can come as a citizen to these as well so madam chair if i may yes mr got a couple of texted some folks out there watching us by uh cameras cannot hear us unless we talk direc

» tly into the mic okay okay and uh nothing too maybe you can ask them to give us a report back in about three months on how the lunch and learns are going the communication with the uh folks yes absolutely complain to us all the time thank you thank you and welcome again sam and thank you for being here to formally introduce yourself welcome mr golf right back to the agenda item number eight approval of minutes of the tuesday january 9th regular meeting is there a motion pertaining to these minutes madam chair i make a motion we approve the minutes okay mr commonson makes the motion is there a second second by mr cato any discussion madam chair i will be abstaining due to my absence mr tucker abstaining due to absence thank you okay with no discussion or correction all those in favor of appr

» oving the tuesday january 9th regular meeting minutes indicate by raising your hand mr jones mr tomlinson mr cato myself mr shoemake and mr brazel right those minutes will go into the record of two ordinances first ordinance tonight alpha this is the first reading of an ordinance to amend the official zoning map of kershaw county to rezone approximately 0.92 acres of property owned by richard and janice dow and located on the north side of bradley road with an address of 1523 bradley road camden south carolina from r10 medium density residential district to gd general development district you have the ordinance in your packet is there a motion at this time pertaining to this first reading madam chair i make a motion that we approve first reading of the ordinance okay mr tomlinson makes a mo

» tion to approve is there a second second second by mr tucker into discussion mr tomlinson you have the floor uh yes i would like to get staff to kind of give us a brief on the proposed ordinance and zoning designation change okay no problem welcome back joey thank you again so what you have before you tonight um is a request to basically extend an existing general development district back in 2007 uh there is a old sewing manufacturing facility as well as a warehousing facility and they were rezoned in 2007 to remove their non-conforming status because they were commercial buildings in a residential district so uh the applicant owns a vacant lot it used to have a manufactured home on it but he owns a vacant lot next to it and that's a lot that is subject to the rezoning tonight that 0.92 ac

» res and he would like to reason that to general development and he's indicated some specific uses such as warehousing uh specifically but again of course this is a general use uh rezoning request so any and all uses within the general development district would be allowed if this is approved and planning and zoning commission approved it unanimously um for our recommendation correct they did yes sir okay i have a question yes uh mr tomlinson are you done i'm done okay mr on page five joey i just want to make sure those are the old uh zoning numbers right for density just want to make sure that i'm not missing something let me make sure um i did update those but i'm not wrong right those are the those are the old numbers no uh these are the the current four um yeah for single families 15 000

» square feet uh and then multi-family is 15 000 plus each additional unit right when we get to the bottom it should be 0.34 right and on a lot size and gd public sewer public water be 0.34 so we did oh okay so i'm off a number that's all right i just want to make sure yes i just wanted to make sure that i wasn't missing something but i got you with the rezoning that it was somehow getting okay you're you're right you're i apologize for that error no no i don't think it's not in the ordinance it's just in the description so i just want to make sure i wasn't missing it in the ordinance yeah it's just a scrivener's error okay and you can update that joey thank you um any plans does the owner you said they don't they don't have any specific plans for this correct i would have to defer that to th

» e owner uh if you don't mind because um i look at it i have to look at it from the general general use perspective so yes absolutely if i could madam chair before we start mr schubank why don't you make an amendment to amend that error well it's only in the description it's not in the ordinance itself but it's still in the description i mean we need a motion that's what i'm saying it's just joe's report so on second reading joey can just fix his report hi richard how are you i'm good thank you and what are your plans with the rezoning uh i don't have any current plans i may eventually build another warehouse there um i own the property next door we cleaned it up refurbished the sewing factories that were there and uh put them up release had a lot of demand there's really no space here in ca

» mden so in the future like i said i don't have any current plans i would possibly build another warehouse there okay thank you members do you have any questions for the property owner and is it mr dial is that how you say deal deal deal mr deal um i have a concern about doing this kind of speculative rezoning um especially to a zone that does allow more density because um you might not always be there and you might sell it and then the zoning will stay there so i would like to see when you are ready for your warehouse or when you're ready for a specific project request the rezoning then that's where i stand on this issue right now any other comments or discussion questions yeah yeah i believe the staff reports uh just support material and is not included in any action or ordinance that uh c

» ouncil would be approving um i understand that but the fact that it's in there incorrectly correct but um i believe given that it is first reading and again it is driven and um mr uh adams raskowski noted on the record the correct information it is simply just a matter of him amending his support uh report which i don't think would require uh council action if we're an error in the actual ordinance of course it would um certainly need to be corrected to to reflect that thank you thank you mr jones anything else for discussion okay thank you mr dow so what what what is just come to the next meeting for the next reading um yes sir you can come to any meeting for any readings we're going to take a vote now on this first reading and if it passes it will go to second it needs three readings to u

» m be a past ordinance thank you and you are more than welcome to reach out to any of us individually not at a meeting too thank you all right all those in favor of the ordinance first reading ordinance to amend the official zoning map of kershaw county to rezone 0.92 acres of property tms 2720500162 indicate by raising your hand mr tomlinson mr cato mr shoemake mr tucker mr brazil and all those opposed mr jones and myself right this passes first reading and it will be on the february 13th meeting for a second reading right next ordinance first reading of an ordinance of the kershaw county council to establish a litter control ordinance which shall prohibit the unlawful disposal of litter or solid waste in kershaw county and provide enforcement and penalty provisions for violations i would m

» ake first reading of this ordinance okay mr shoemake with the motion is there a second second second mr tomlinson and mr shoemake you have the floor so this is an ordinance that for as we sit here now the um the local order there's a state law that controls litter but it's for whatever reason never really enforced that's a different issue for a different day but our local ordinance uh has a maximum fine of 25 it's maximum right yeah maximum fine of 25 dollars so this sets a new scheme and this is kind of the beginning of us trying to you know someone earlier mentioned the litter which we all see i mean it's it's abysmal it's a blight and there's a lot we have to do fundamentally at the end of the day the most important thing we have to do is get the people of this community to understand th

» at you know throwing trash in your community is you know it's about i mean it's completely self-sabotage but that's a whole different issue that's probably beyond the scope of this body but what we can do is give our code enforcement partners some tools that they can use uh to make this a little more punitive uh for those that do choose to do it so it does two things that i want to point out that we begin this this basically replaces our old one uh it does two major things i want to point out one is that um it requires people to cover their loads and their trucks you know so that they're going to the yes people that they don't have um uh and and ken you can talk a little more about uh i mean john you talk a little more about that uh and then the other thing that it does is create a statutor

» y scheme where if you violate the litter ordinance it's a fine of 250 for the first offense and a mandatory four hours of community service for a second offense 250 and a mandatory eight hours of community service and for a third conviction 512 hours of community service we could go higher on these if we wanted to i i sort of wanted to start moderate and see how the body felt about changing it um the maximum we could go to would be a thousand is that right john that's correct yeah so we could go up to a thousand so we could go you know 250 500 a thousand 500 500 a thousand or keep it as is it's obviously first reading i just again i think this is a good start um but i'm obviously open to any discussion mr shoemake or madam um i know you mentioned the monetary part of it being able to go up

» what about the community service hours is that able to go up and what would be the maximum amount because i think you know people can give money to anything any kind of fine you really don't know how to serve the fine until you're there picking up the trash on the side of the road and in my opinion i think that that should be the primary part of this uh ordinance i'm not sure if what is is there a so the um maximum penalty for this class of misdemeanors a thousand dollar fine or up to a year in jail um given that there's up to a year in jail as the maximum and penalty um service of community service um specifically directed to the litter pickup would broadly be within the discretion of council um other municipalities and local governments counties are all over the board in the amount of com

» munity service they require um we could certainly bring back some some metrics to y'all on the inside and outside bounds of those but um we've seen uh community service uh hours um exceeding what is in in this where we have these four eight etc i mean 20 hours is i've certainly seen i mean they're again if the alternate punishment um in theory is a year in jail i think in position of ftd community service is not a an issue so if i can we could do 10 25 and 50 yeah we absolutely could one thing i want to point out fellow council members is when we were working on this it doesn't have any jail penalties and let me tell you why if you start putting jail penalties in it could possibly trigger the need for us to give them a public defender if they get charged with it as opposed to them represent

» ing themselves and so you do that you start costing the county more money than you're getting madam chair yes mr jones here's here's where i have i'm trying to gather all this great information in my head you know 30 years ago we had a little program and we were writing tickets that you know there's a state law out there as you know our constables do have state citation books of course no enforcement is really being done per se um but i can remember a day 30 years ago that we would write tickets if you had an uncovered load or whatever you know something flush your car i mean there were folks out there to write the tickets you know we've had no enforcement i think we're creating another law which i have no problems with but it's a duplicate uh somewhat similar to a state law but however um

» we're not enforcing what we got now and and that's my concern if we're going to put this effort into doing this i don't want it to be a dog and pony show i mean i want to be guaranteed there's going to be some enforcement on it because if there's not i'm not going to just continue to create more bureaucracy and laws that aren't being forced if i am all for litter i am all for cleaning up i've been on saturday highways as well myself i played dodge car when i couldn't see so well one morning you know there's just no enforcement now so what help me understand how this is going to be enforced so so and i'd ask uh mr templar to jump in after me if he wouldn't mind but one thing i will tell you is right now with the 25 fine because there's no shall language like with community service you get on

» e of these tickets you pay 25 bucks it's sort of it's ineffectual and so i think part of the issue is there there's two parts i think that if we do this i think it sends the message that we're serious about it which obviously we are but the second thing is i think it it code enforcement officers and our deputies are i think more likely to do it if they know it's not going to be some 25 fine and then the courts just sort of do nothing else with it and there's no you can never guarantee anything until you have to put it in place but i think this is a first step and that's why i i count and mr templar your thoughts on enforcement well but but we have we have uh laws on the books by the same well the problem the problem we have a state and they carry state citation books yeah the problem with t

» hose state citation laws is what i just said they can they carry jail time and so people are entitled to a public defender so a lot of times it becomes i don't know why they're not writing them but i know that it would cost the county way more money to write a citation and give someone a public defender than it would to do a citation with community service we wrote many many many many little violations and we never had to provide a problem well it's changed a lot i mean i mean that sincerely like i think that's part of the issue i get it mr shumake have you looked at other counties um and their witnesses talking mr jones has the floor uh but listen madam chair members of council all i want to know is are we going to enforce this or is it just considering the books because we have the tools

» to enforce it but it hasn't been been it has been enforced mr templar can you shed some light on the enforcement piece and um the citations that code enforcement can do and what their focus is sure and and we've had litter enforcement what with um most of our enforcement has been focused on illegal dumping in the past and that's where we have enacted the state statute because it it uh delineates the offense by weight i think it's 15 pounds or less or so there's a threshold there um so but what i like about this is just this is just pure littering and uh the the 25 fine is certainly not a deterrent um so this gives us yet another tool in our in our toolbox to to address this issue it um with with the tarping and things of that nature we see a lot of that that's where a vast majority of our l

» itter comes from people hauling to one of our 10 convenience centers with an untarped load and stuff just i mean you see it all the time there's full household trash bags that roll off and then they get hit and then it's just a it's a disaster so looking for this to have yet another tool in our toolbox to allow us to address litter on its face and not and and use the state statute to allow us to address some of the heavier uh the dump sites that we do see on the side of the uh certain roads um near or in the vicinity of our 10 uh convenience centers when they are closed because people will just haul a whole load there they don't understand the hours and then all of a sudden they end up you know you've got a refrigerator or something on the side of a dirt road somewhere and we're gonna pick

» that up so um yeah okay thank you mr jones quick question mr bose do we not have the capacity with state law to enforce those laws now yes um the county can enforce the state law um to uh i believe the um again the issue with the state law is it's a de minimis uh fine uh fine i think uh mr shoemake's concern at least he expressed to me with that fine is there's uh no real deterrent effect uh if you wanted to litter quite brazenly you just pay 25 and that's all you have to do state laws more than that well i think it has a range of uh 25 to 100 but still uh relatively de minimis um fines and um this uh this proposed ordinance incorporates heftier fines and again some litter gathering labor um as a penalty so that people see the end result of um that negative behavior and that negative are yo

» u are you sure are you sure that this state you can't charge more than that are you sure about that the illegal dumping i know uh or like mr templar referenced is uh kind of by weight metric um and that deals with kind of mass dumping yeah i believe the state law is this 25 to 100 range um thank you and uh speaking to other counties um this was uh the structure of this ordinance is is um somewhat modeled on um charleston county's ordinance and that they have this stepped um fee uh or um fine penalty as well as an increasing um labor component uh for litter pickup all right good job derrick do you want to amend it yes if uh i was just waiting for everybody to get their discussion out madam chair i'd like to make it please ma'am on the penalties and fines section six penalties and fines uh un

» derneath a uh to be uh 250 as stated in your handout but go from four hours to eight hours okay uh item b from 250 to 500 with 16 hours which should be somebody to be two days worth of work them is 516 hours okay okay and section c from 500 to 750 with 24 hours great motion that is my motion i'll second that mr tomlinson with a second okay motion to amend this ordinance section six alpha well we've got the second in issue discussion yes yeah i like it yeah i've got i've got some discussion okay everybody hates the amendment yes that's on the amendment um everybody hates litter myself included um we do have young people that make mistakes and i feel like going from 25 to 250 um with four hours is probably enough of a jump initially i wouldn't be able to support um the more stringent and high

» er fines um i'd like to see how it goes with with where it's at respectfully i just i i think people are entitled to an opportunity to correct their wrongs now no one likes litter again and it doesn't seem like the laws have been enforced as well as they could as mr jones has stated i'll agree with that um but i think a step in the right direction but but let's not let's not let's not take everything they have you know a lot of people 250 or 500 is is a tremendous amount of money and i know as a 16 year old driver or 17 year old driver well you you know all about teaching kids how to drive um sometimes mistakes are made and i don't want to start out too steep i understand that madam chair for me yes mr joker i think and correct me mr dubose uh you would know more so with this ordinance does

» n't the judge still have discretion and um suspending fines or yeah reducing fines so in theory um judges are granted fairly broad discretion right i would not like to take that out of their hands dealing with our young people who are you know making first offenses um but at the same time if i pay 250 um for the first offense the same i'm gonna pay as the second defense where's the deterrent for not offending again and um and i heard what our colleague said to my left mr thompson that some people don't have a problem paying their way out of things but it's a little bit more different when you got to give up a day two days or three days to pick up trash you got a right yeah or madam cheer yes and that you know it and i get having strict offenses and the judge having the opportunity to do it

» um my two children aren't driving yet i can go ahead and tell you have an eight and a six year old but when they do start driving if they come home with this that's going to be the least of their problems because they're going to be having many more hours of picking up trash than what is required by law um this is something that is egregious that we have this much trash across our state and for someone who spends a month every summer hiking the state and picking up trash i mean it makes me blood red in the face so i i think we should go even more stringent me personally um but i like your amendment mr i call her the question okay thank you mr dones so i also think there will be discretion with the county personnel also to give a warning just like just like they do now with other things that

» happen um mr shumake thank you for working on this um i'm happy to support it i do have a concern about enforcement creating something new to be enforced when the current thing's not being enforced but i do i would like to give it a try and see how it goes and see if it helps the situation but that will vote all those in favor of the ordinance of kershaw county council to establish a litter control ordinance which shall prohibit the unlawful disposal of litter or solid waste in kershaw county and provide enforcement and penalty provisions for violations as amend as amended section 6a to increase four to eight hours 6b to 500 dollars in 16 hours and sections 6c to 750 dollars in 24 hours indicate by raising your hand mr tomlinson mr cato myself mr shoemake mr tucker and that's it all those o

» pposed mr brazel and mr jones all right all right we'll see that on february 13th for the second reading all right next item resolutions we have two tonight the first resolution a resolution opposing any plan or project to widen us highway 521 i'll read it first and then if there's a motion pertaining to it please speak up whereas us highway highway 521 south of interstate highway 20 in kershaw county is presently adequate whereas us highway 521 south of interstate 20 in kershaw county does not need to be widened into a divided highway or widened to four traffic lanes whereas the widening of us highway 521 south of interstate 20 in kershaw county is unnecessary and would constitute a misuse and waste of public funds whereas the unnecessary widening of us highway 521 in kershaw county south

» of interstate 20 would adversely affect and unnecessarily have a negative impact on kershaw county now therefore be it resolved by kershaw county council that kershaw county council oppose any unnecessary wasteful and detrimental project to widen us highway 521 in kershaw county south of interstate highway 20 to four lanes and request that any such project not be pursued and request that its representatives officially oppose any such project in kershaw county resolved by kershaw county council this what's the date 23rd day of january 2024 right is there a motion for this resolution i make the motion that we uh approve okay mr jones with the motion to approve or adopt and i'll second and into discussion mr jones to have the floor first thank you very much bear with me this is a petition what

» did you say they got 37 pages full it's gotta be what 300 300 plus 200 250 still that's outstanding 200 you have 250 signatures on here you have folks out here who live in that area and uh i will support this resolution and i will support you folks because you live there and we're here to listen to you we're here to represent let me tell you the way i feel about this i feel that a vote against this resolution is a vote for the politicians and bureaucrats in sumter and i feel that of a vote against it is against these citizens but a vote for this resolution is a vote supporting the citizens who put us up here who we work for i hear you loud and clear you can't vote for me i don't care i'm still your county councilman i'm still going to represent you and i'm going to stand by you on this and

» i would urge this county council to do that based on that fact just remember what i said it's my opinion if you don't vote for this resolution colleagues you're voting to support the politicians bureaucrats and software okay thank you thank you mr jones um any other comments discussion okay um i would like to make a couple points of concerns um first of all i do want to share with my colleagues and the public that i was asked to take this off the agenda um and then threatened if i did not so i'm not that doesn't intimidate me and i'm not going to pull things from the agenda or put things on the agenda um based on that so moving forward i hope that whatever stance council members take on this um that we will respect each other's agenda items because i put this on the agenda on behalf of the

» people of kershaw county um just as every other member put stuff on the agenda when they believe in something so i started talking to citizens in october about this um and there's an overwhelming concern about safety on 521 i've used to work in sumter at the national guard armory and yes there are people that drive too fast and there are people that drive reckless and that is a huge concern that is a law enforcement issue um i have noticed that highway patrol in kershaw county have been out and about more i'm happy about that we have the same issue with highway 601 highway 97 521 north and highway 1 going east to bethune same issue two-lane roads um where people are ran off the road or people don't have a lot of distance to pull over safety concerns it's law enforcement and we need to be ad

» vocating through our law enforcement channels for um more accounting accountability there i personally think four lanes will encourage more speed um in that respect the second concern that citizens brought to me was land encroachment so there's agricultural land that's going to be disturbed there's federally protected land there's wetlands there's cemeteries there's historic land um so that's a concern that's and we have to take that into consideration the third issue we are encouraging growth it's been well researched that two to four lane highways especially boost economic development um they promote economic growth and residential growth this is widely studied and i brought one with me tonight the proximity to major highways is one of the first questions asked by companies when they're m

» oving so i think that it encourages companies industries and residential development in that area which is not what that part that's not what the boykin area and other members that live there want in a majority council historically has not been forward thinking in their project approval and now we're playing catch up and we're reacting to a growth problem that we helped create and i see this the same way looking into the future this project will promote growth so if we're already challenged with the growth problem we have i don't want to encourage more of it in an area that clearly doesn't want it um i want to tell you about population so in sumter county the population in 1990 was 101 000 the population now is 104 000 okay that's a three percent growth rate in kershaw county in 1990 it was

» 43 000 and now it's 67 000 that's a 55 growth rate so i understand completely why sumter residents um would want this sumter superhighway to encourage economic development and growth for them but i don't represent them so um the majority of support for this project is in sumter county so um that's part of the reason for writing this and having county council take a stance number four priorities in kershaw county so this council state legislators and congress worked very hard to get all of kershaw county into one council of government the elgin area was competing for dot dollars with richland county when they were in the central midlands cog and a lot of man hours and conversations and work was put into moving them so that they would have a more equal opportunity at dot dollars under the sam

» e cog um so now that all of kershaw county is in the santi lich's called i have to as a sitting member on the cog and in this position prioritize what kershaw county needs and 521 is not the people's priority um we have everyone knows we're trying to handle the growth in the elgin lugoff and at your town hall i made a commitment that i would advocate for dot dollars on highway one um so that to me is a better use of any dot funds that would be coming to kershaw county improving widening making turning lanes roundabouts for highway one that because it's so heavily congested um a perfect example is white pond road um if you if you're over in that area it's terribly congested um so if there's any lanes needed in kershaw county that would be first um next item the feasibility report um some of

» the citizens talked about it and i've talked about it with them i want to read this is straight from the scdot's website the feasibility report process was developed to define the purpose and need of the scope of a project prior to nepa and with the aim of more accurately estimating the cost and schedule of the project in order to manage expectations of stakeholders and to document planning decisions for proper development um i know that the feasibility report will have a lot of valuable information i don't think we need it i i don't think that the people of kershaw county need the government to do a feasibility report to tell them what they want to see in their own community or on their own road um so we can make up our own minds without having that report i do not feel that i'm ill-inform

» ed or um moving to this too quickly so i am going to ask this council to support this resolution tonight um there's overwhelming opposition to the project and i would like to take their voice um to the cog in a form of a resolution manager yes mr tucker thank you as i sit here tonight i um i represent the cog board as the car boat board chairperson um i got elected to this position in july of 2023 uh i've sat on the cog board for over 15 years and um that's the regional council of governments which has clareton sumter clarenton and kershaw in it um it doesn't quite work the way madam chair appears to seem to think it worked when it comes down to monies that could be put to the west of watery versus other projects in the region there's a thing called a tip that you have to go through and you

» plan and you uh prepare for these projects um back in april um we took that up with the projects and planning commission it came out unanimous for the cause and then for the whole board which means all of us here in kershaw county approve the feasibility study this is what the records show um i'm asking tonight for my colleagues to support let the feasibility study comes out so it can tell you all the things that you may have questions on some things that you may know that doesn't hurt anything and that's not a dime to kershaw county that is federal and state monies that are being spent and it will identify a lot of your concerns um maybe some things that you haven't thought of and it will recognize traffic flow flow patterns it will uncover a lot of things that's what they're for so with t

» hat being said i think we are moving prematurely tonight with this resolution because when that study comes back i can't tell you what it's going to say so therefore i don't know what to support i'm relying on the study so for those reasons tonight i will not be supporting this resolution madam thank you mr tucker the citizens don't need the study though because they live there so like they can experience the congestion and the traffic on 521 um madam chair yes mr jones thank you i'd like to go next okay okay i think they've already made the mind of i mean i'm just being true to myself i think that uh everybody knows it's going to i mean it's going to pass and they're going to do what they want to do i think it's already been decided over there the colleague mr tucker and with the and with

» the elected officials over there and with the uh feasibility study has been but nothing else i'm just saying that's my opinion i think the decision has already been made that's just a dog and pony show to go through to you know people no one's communicated with these folks who's no one has communicated with these folks well i have i i get i understand that but bottom line is um i just think we need to support this resolution and and move on and mr schumack yeah a real very brief i've uh when i saw this on the agenda i spoke to uh folks uh a business owner and lugov and an elgin council member who are both uh with the cog they both said the feasibility study is something they'd like to see uh so for that reason i'm going to support those folks and the other the other particular the specific

» problem i also have just to be very specific is i can't vote for anything that has misuse of public funds when i haven't done my own independent research because the reality is that's a crime and i'm not going to accuse the cog of committing a crime so um for those two reasons i will be voting against this resolution madam chair yes mr thompson um and i too have spoken actually two people who spoke tonight um in opposition of this are two dear friends of mine mr hank kerfoot who i greatly respect and i've spoken personally to on this and expressed my concerns and miss connie rouse is one of my dear dear friends um and we talked earlier regarding this i too um with the misuse of public funds i think it's a very very strong statement i'm not saying that i support the expansion of 521 as a mat

» ter of fact i think the citizens should have a say in it but even talking to mr kerfoot a couple weeks ago he expressed full you know full support of being a part of the process of this study he said he wanted to be a part of that study and look at that i too think that this this this resolution isn't this is a statement that we don't have any control over i'd like to see that study and then we can get involved in it madam chair um well just a second mr jones um at this time i make an amendment to the third sentence whereas the widening of us highway 521 south of interstate 20 in kershaw county is unnecessary period strike and would constitute a misuse and waste of public funds amen and i second second by mr jones any discussion on that update now there's no concerns well my one my one conc

» ern is still there okay let me make sure what you're striking can you say that yes i'm striking in the third paragraph whether or not really paragraphs or sentences after county is unnecessary put a period and then strike and would constitute a misuse of waste of waste of public funds okay thank you so that it does not include that good good job madam clerk maybe even matter of chair excuse me madam clerk and mr shoemake again i just for discussion purposes the people you talk to um are not the people sitting out there that have come to us with this concern um we don't i'm going to support the cog if they move forward with this because i'm a member and that's once something's resolved and voted on it's done but i'm not going to go to the cog and vote for something that the call wants to do

» when kershaw county doesn't want to do it well and that's that's fair like i say my issue is i've had people in my district that represent the areas you mentioned that's the only reason i brought it up as you mentioned the area that are affiliated with both that town and the cog who have asked to see the feasibility study so i don't want to vote for a resolution at this point that basically i mean again it's it's a resolution that doesn't have the force of law but i'm not going to agree to something that basically says they shouldn't be allowed to see the thing they've specifically asked me to see so in that way i'm responding to the constituents do they want to see a feasibility study on highway one again but i also know that cog funding doesn't work like that they can't just it's going to

» take years for that to happen and i mean you know we can we can hope for the best and we can we can hope for these things that won't actually come to fruition but the reality is elgin and lugov were just put in the cog and i absolutely want to see funding over there but it's going to take time and it's not like if we don't do this elgin oh i understand that so that's we haven't talked about because they know that's a project that's unfortunately down the pipeline if this goes away then it's just the next project in sumter or wherever else not necessarily here but i disagree that we should do the project because we might miss out on doing a project no no i didn't say do the project i just said do the feasibility study madam chair yes mr if i may i'm i'm concerned about how we win and all get

» ting uh wide and certainly i am but but that's not what i'm concerned about tonight these folks live there they don't want it so that's good enough for me they don't want it and uh if they don't want it i don't want it and uh you know the resolution if the resolution is so useless why do some of my colleagues up here who said resolution so useless useless have uh voted for resolutions throughout the past you know i was the biggest one saying resolutions are useless but i mean bottom line is we fixed it everybody was concerned about that one little sentence you had in there those few little words you took that out that's gonna be taken out so i feel like the uh i feel like he's ready to go we we should have no concerns over it and i truly believe and i'm gonna say it again my opinion you don

» 't support this resolution you're not supporting these folks out here who have lived there all their lives some of them and um i wouldn't want that happening to me and i'm not going to stand by and let having them and i will not support the cog on this period i don't care if we get voted down if they started i'm still against it and i'll tell them that thank you madam chair yes mr brazil so i i had a call from a member of the cog that his words were me or that he did not want us telling him how to vote and i can respect that um he's a dear friend of ours mr jones i know exactly who he is but i'm still standing with these folks a resolution doesn't and and i'm asking and i'm gonna ask if you would be willing to strike the very last um part of this resolution that says and requests that its r

» epresentatives officially oppose any such project i don't want to be told how to vote and i'm not going to tell them how to vote um they have a lot more information than i do but would you be willing to strike that from this i need to hear how it reads um yes you want to make a motion to well i'll make a motion that we amend the last paragraph now therefore be it resolved by kershaw county council that kershaw county council oppose any unnecessary wasteful strike wasteful is part of my amendment and detrimental project to widen us highway 521 in kershaw county south of interstate highway 20 to four lanes and request that any such project not be pursued period strike and request that its representatives officially oppose any such project in kershaw county strike that entire statement period

» is there a second second and do we have a safe place for some of us to sit into i'm sorry i was with nothing it just i know colleges have a safe place for the students to go to mr jones with a second um you mr brazil for discussion on that strike thank you for bringing that up i don't want to tell people how to vote either i just want to have the people of kershaw county mr jones please don't interrupt the people of kershaw county have their voice at the cog meeting i mean they had they do because they have representatives but this would be a collective voice that to take there now what i could get behind is is what these people are asking for but i do think at some point if we keep reproducing at some point that road's going to become congested at some point whether it be five years or ten

» years or 50 years from now something's got to give i traveled that road to thomas umpner academy from 1993 to 1996 i got a flat tire in rember because of a pothole it's narrow it's dangerous i have family members that if i have also traveled that road they got in a car accident because someone parked on the road no brake lights there are some concerns i hear you i love boykin in those years that i spent traveling to to thomas umpner academy i made a lot of good friends in boykin um classmates that were still dear friends i definitely want to keep the charm that that your community has it's beautiful i couldn't afford property where you live so i live in pine grove community out in lugoff where we had some family property but for many many years i wanted to live in boykin but at some point w

» e've got to make some improvements because if we don't the same crumbling bridges that you brought up the same crumbling infrastructure that you brought up will be present in your home so how do we thread the needle how do we hear you and how do we let the council of governments do its job properly without alienating ourselves for the next 30 to 50 years because if we tonight tell them how they can do and how they cannot do their job we won't get a red penny out of them for the rest of kershaw county for a long long time and that's gonna hurt us in elgin that'll cheer so what i would like to do is ask for revision that we can support their bypasses i hear that rembert may be bypassed can boy can be bypassed how do we fix the problem without dropping a gauntlet thank you mr church i rode pas

» t the cemetery the other day it doesn't need to be impeded on agreed but how do we fix that how does that how do we work through these channels properly and respectfully and achieve the goals that we need to achieve he's a bill of study madam clerk thank you mr brother madam chairs what i heard the people of kershaw county say is that there isn't something to fix there are there are safety concerns and there are challenges but there's not a huge problem that needs to be fixed there's not a bypass that's needed i had phone calls from people that that weren't on the cog and that travel that road and they said it's needed i'm hearing both things but if it were my home i would be here and i applaud you for being here i know a lot of you and i respect you but how do we solve a problem that's wha

» t's wrong with the government that's what's wrong with politicians we can't work together let's work together and solve the problem see i'm not a politician somebody called me a politician today and it struck me as odd it really kind of rubbed me wrong because i'm not i'm a resident of of this county and i've been here since i was born 1978 we face the same issues we can't get our own out of our own way at times i have a question let's fix i understand but i have let's not in a minute let's apologize i apologize let stay calm mr john walker let's fix the problem let's work together but if we draw a line in the sand whether it's you or whether it's us we don't fix a darn thing look at congress what a mess we're in more debt than we've ever been in mr brazil can you stay on topic please this

» is the topic the topic of getting along and working together and coming up with a solution i can support a resolution that solves an issue without a bunch of wasteful spending but we've got to be able to work together as americans we can't we can't say every day not in my backyard we've got to come up with a way to solve problems in america without just stalemating now mr jones it's actually mr kato's turn mr kato has the floor okay mr jones i appreciate that i'll take that you know when you're talking about working together we are working together we have difference of different opinions up here we have different ideas and and uh you know telling somebody how to do their job are we saying that the cog does not want to hear from these folks who are going to be directly slammed with this pro

» ject so that's what i'm hearing sounds like they they don't want y'all's input they don't want to hear from you they certainly don't hear from us because we'll be telling them what to do i've never heard such nonsense in my life um we i have people telling me how they want me to vote all the time they tell me what their concerns are we all do um and and every one of them here said this this uh resolution doesn't mean anything if it doesn't mean anything we need to go ahead and pass it and push it on through but bottom line is we are working together we have differences of opinions i and i hate that i'm right all the time i hate that but i am right most of the time and you know it miss tucker you've been here 18 years with me and you know that and uh bottom line is we need to we need to move

» on to support these folks because they've put a lot of effort and time coming here tonight to tell us their representative we work for them they don't work for us well there's also the petition so it's not just a petition with 250 signatures on it guys i i just can't understand i don't understand you folks i mean i respect each and every one of you but i certainly don't understand y'all and uh i know most of you a lot smarter than me but bottom line is i just i don't understand it this is a no-brainer and yes one of my best friends like a brother to me is is absolutely he sits on the cog and he is absolutely against this resolution but i'm standing with these people mr cato you have the floor you know i sit here and as i do a lot of times and i try to listen to what everybody has to say som

» etimes i come in here undecided on a lot of issues and i sympathize with each and every one of you i really do um i'm not gonna say i don't agree with you because i think i do but i also agree with what councilman brazel says there's some issues on 521 that needs to be addressed do i think it's widening it to four lanes no do i think that it deals with encroachment of people's land not necessarily no but i believe that we owe it to the cog to at least give them the opportunity to come back with something to tell us something listen i've heard people say we could kershaw county can take this money and we could buy this trash truck or we could fix this road it's not our money this is not kershaw county's money if you really want to get down to it anything we do in here today other than to say

» hey we don't want it doesn't mean anything because it's left up to our state legislators and it's left up to the cock it's not kershaw county's money so i think it's premature in a way for us to jump out there and to slap a cog in the face that has contributed a good bit of money to kershaw county through the years to include recently purchasing a fire truck for kershaw county and slapped him in the face and say listen now this is something just forget it don't come with no ideas don't come with anything just forget it and i promise you what's going to happen in the future when we want to widen number one between look off and l general when we need a road fixed in east camden or when we need another fire truck most of them is going to look at us and say no you want to treat us like that we'

» re not going to give you nothing nothing and then we're going to be left in the back so again i'm not saying if this resolution was to have come out after a feasibility study more than likely i could support it but i think it's really premature of us to jump out and put our names on something that hasn't properly been evaluated yet it's more than just it's just simply a discussion it's almost starting out in kindergarten we hadn't even gotten we haven't even got to elementary school yet so at least let the cog tell us or the feasibility study to tell us what they think and that's going to hurt nothing because nothing no land's going to be harmed nothing's going to be done for them to come back and just tell us that and then if you know if if doing a resolution would help then i would be all

» for it but but that that's my way of looking at it and and i will say this you know this is where you live so i take into account what you say more than the others but there's also i've had only one person in opposition to this call me all week i've had approximately 12 call me saying that this shouldn't happen this way thank you thank you mr kato i'm mr jens i have the floor i am very surprised as a representative of a rural district that you don't understand where rural people are coming from but we are not preventing the cog from doing the feasibility study the resolution nor did i ever say i don't want to see the feasibility study i said the people that live there don't need it to know how they feel about a project the government doesn't need to tell people how they should think or what

» they should feel about a said project that's i this got this is getting a little twisted and i'm really confused um there there is more opposition than support on the kershaw county side i do believe it will benefit sumter i don't represent sumter um i don't let the the cog is it's not a slap in the face to the cog but i also don't represent the cog um i sit on the cog to represent kershaw county so um i just i'm having a lot of trouble with some of your points mr cato but it's okay um we just disagree on it well you can't be on both sides mr jones and then we're gonna vote let me let me say this madam chair i think i see where this is going if this gets voted down tonight i want you and i to sign the resolution or have no we will send it over there to them if this doesn't pass tonight i wa

» nt you and i to sign something and send it over to the uh i'm gonna be there so i'll just vote but i still would like to sign something thank you all right all those in favor of a resolution of kershaw county council opposing any plan or project to widen us highway 521 to a divided highway or a four traffic lanes in kershaw county south of interstate highway 20 indicate by raising your hand madam chair never took the votes on thank you thank you let me find my notebook thank you mr tucker all right um call for a vote on the second amendment to paragraph five striking the last sentence putting a period after pursued and striking the last sentence also striking wasteful in the very first sentence all those in favor of the second amendment in paragraph five with those strikes indicate by raisi

» ng your hand mr jones mr tomlinson myself and mr brazil okay that amendment passes those words are stricken now to the first amendment which is a strike in paragraph three the last sentence this would put a period after unnecessary and strike the rest of the paragraph indicate by raising your hand if you support that up in mr jones mr tomlinson myself and mr brazil those words are stricken now for mr quinn may i may i say one thing yes mr brazil there's a version of this that i can support but i need i need a little more time to to read over it with striking these two things that we just did with that being said and with everybody in the room there's a version that i can get behind that doesn't alienate us in the cog and that that still allows us to have a study i would like to make a motio

» n to table this until we can come up with a version that we can all support because i can tell you one thing i live in rural usa and i hear you it i hear you loud and clear but there's there's a little bit of language that that needs to be changed madam chair point of order point of order you second and he he made the motion but point of order if they table it it's done it's dead that you need to defer it um into discussion for the motion to table in the second so just as i said if we can vote to table it and i could have some input and mr cato could have some input and every everybody on this council if we could find a version of this that suits i could get behind it madam clerk did you get your agenda packet on friday or get it emailed to you i read this sunday morning yes okay um so we d

» id have time to kind of mr jones what is your point of order oh he's wanting to table it mr bose give everybody the opinion of table we're in discussion of the tabling i know but if you table it it's dead we can't okay i don't need it i don't need that information yet i'm having a conversation with mr brazil about his motion do you you have a legal question about what tabling means okay mr brazil meant to table it that's what i'm saying i guess i wanted a legal opinion from john uh mr debose mr bose legal opinion on what tabling something means so placed on the table has to be affirmatively removed at the next taken off the table for consideration if something's deferred it is automatically on whatever the next agenda would be so to mr jones's point unless taken off the table and renewed at

» a subsequent meeting uh matter could die on the vine as a tabled matter i believe it will die on the vine i mean i i agree with you mr jones i just wanted to talk to him about it um i don't even know what i was saying yes if we defer it could we defer it not just to the next meeting but maybe to the next to give extra time could it could it could it go further down the line could we appoint it a certain date matters can be deferred to um certain dates um i mean a matter could be deferred to a specific meeting it could be deferred 60 or 90 days like whatever the closest council meeting to that is so again a deferred matter can be uh deferred to a very set future date i would support deferred okay thank you all right motion motion to table and there's a second discussion on tabling so you hav

» e my word that i will bring it would you would you amend it just to say defer and take table off because table is dead okay i'll defer it for a period of one month month okay i like that not two weeks because it's going to take a little bit of work it's okay i think one month okay mr brazil i'll restate the motions i would like to defer it for 30 days mr brazil has amended his motion to motion to defer for 30 days mr cato still seconds to be clear mr brazil i mean 30 days again again as i stated earlier it can be a period of time like that um that might not fall on a council day of course so i'm assuming it's the council date closest to 30 days that's why that's why you're here thank you for keeping us straight okay any other discussion on the motion to defer thank you mr brazil um madam ch

» air yes mr tucker i just want to put this out about the feasibility study that um it will take two to three years to get that report back so just keep that in mind thank you mr tucker all right the question on the table now is motion to defer for 30 days all those in favor of motion of deferring this resolution for 30 days indicate by raising your hand mr jones mr tomlinson mr cato and mr brazil okay this resolution is deferred for 30 days mr debose if you'll help keep us straight that we address it with five oh i'm sorry all those opposed myself mr shoemake and mr tucker yes okay so all those in favor of the deferment of 30 days mr jones mr tomlinson mr cato and mr brazil those opposed miss gwen mr shoemake mr tucker so the matter is deferred and mr debose is going to help us and miss hann

» ah will help us keep track of the 30 days all right next item on the agenda 10b a resolution to ratify and approve a purchase and if you were here for the 521 discussion and you'd like to exit at this time we'll wait a minute so that we can let the door shut all right back on the agenda item 10b a resolution to ratify and approve a purchase and sale agreement for property presently owned by dominion energy south carolina incorporated tax map 29800 0005 containing an aggregate of 1.76 acres more or less located at 205 sumter highway camden south carolina the property and to ratify and authorize all acts and matters related thereto necessary and required to purchase the property is there a motion regarding this resolution madam chair i make the motion okay mr tucker makes a motion to approve

» is there a second and i will second okay into discussion mr tucker we'll go to you first um i just want to um you know an update from the administrator on this property um and if he would please mr templar yes sir um this property is going to allow us to relocate um two sections of our ems and a portion of our one of our battalion chiefs for fire down to what is used to be uh probably most of us knew it as the se and g building down there at aaron clown 521 south um the existing structures down there will facilitate the the storage and the the birthing capacity that we need down there for our staff this is a this has been part of an exhaustive search for existing facilities that would allow us to just kind of go in and refurbish a a particular facility to make it into a an ems station we cu

» rrently have a ems station over there on church street that is terrible conditions and we also have ems uh stationed downstairs in this building we'll be able to pull a vast all of the church street station over to this facility and a vast majority of what we have downstairs as far as crews running out of this building we have a battalion chief located up on flat rock that uh we will also be able to locate that individual down here more centrally located um so with that we we are asking that council approve this and and allow this purchase to go through so we can continue to improve the conditions of our ems facilities and within the uh camden area thank you mr temper madam chair um have a have a question so what does this do for the northern end are we still looking up by uh lockhart 521 o

» r yes sir we we still have that to to deal with so this just kind of allows us to take care of some issues that um been a little more longer standing with the bad conditions over there on church street there's been some um water seeping in and just just nasty deplorable building yeah deplorable living quarters thank you i have no questions for discussion thank you mr templar for finding an adequate spot i know we've been looking for a while and this was all this was in the budget yes sir and the money's all still there yes we'll just make that clear yeah thank you appreciate you doing this good job you and gerald whoever okay and our ms director back there done most of the work on this some of us getting older need you guys a little bit more um and to remind council this is also when we loo

» ked at the correct me if i'm wrong mr templar the chronicle independent building was something we were interested for this station and that didn't work out so we've been looking for a while all right all those in favor of the resolution to ratify and approve a purchase and sale agreement for property presently owned by dominion energy south carolina tax map 298 000 0005 indicate by raising your hand mr jones mr tomlinson mr kato myself mr shoemake mr tucker mr brazel all right up to item number 11 appointments okay for alpha assessment appeals board is miss blizzard who put her resume in here would she be someone we could nominate there's no like thing that says what she applied for that's why i'm asking um she applied for the planning commission okay i think i'm going to defer to danny on

» that yes um and there is that's item i see yeah i see the cover letter i see the cover um you know that's a great question though for her that i mean just because her letter mentioned wanting to just serve on a board and so um i mean i guess we can wait to the next meeting but if she's because i don't have her like sheet but if she checked other boxes we can nominate her now i have a nomination for the planning commission yeah i'm sorry i jumped ahead i apologize well actually no we're on assessment appeals board but i guess we have to wait till next meeting to see what she checked on her form right i'm sorry mr shoemaker are we talking about lynn blizzard yeah okay um hannah is this the citizen that couldn't apply or had different okay okay um so i did let i let hannah know that they do ne

» ed to go to match board they do need to go through the submission process uh just maybe just put her just put assessment appeals board and yes i'll nominate her next meeting if she's interested did we have do we have a sheet on miss huff for the assessment appeals did she fill one out for that okay so we okay and it has to be on the agenda for one meeting before nomination correct madam chair okay so moving to bravo clean community commission we did receive the city of camden's appointment for the clean community commission and that's joanna craig mr debose um as far as process wise since that is their nominee um are we voting on that or we're putting that nominee in the spot i think structurally it is the um county's commission at the end of the day and the county i think y'all would have

» discretion even if someone were proposed by municipality to essentially disagree um but i mean that said um the intent is to kind of nominate those spots for right okay um so i will certainly support this um that's coming from the mayor of camden so um all those in favor of joanna craig serving as the city's appointment for the clean community commission indicate by raising your hand all right vote is unanimous so congratulations to miss joanna craig she does a lot of different things i think she'll be great all right uh charlie planning commission one vacancy okay mr cato has a nomination presently serves on the assessment before he showed interest multiple times about moving over to the planning and zoning commission so i recommend that he moves from um assessment appeals to planning and

» zoning okay is there a second second second by mr brazil sorry i'm thinking uh mr but does the citizen need to resign their current commission to create another vacancy currently um so yeah they would need to resign um you know provided that they say that's effective immediately and communicate that to council um tomorrow i don't know that there's an issue here so um and again y'all could certainly make this appointment effective their resignation from the other board that's probably the cleaner way to do it so it does not trigger any concerns until they they uh send a written notice of resignation so i do know mr gunner and i think he would be great um i think just a point of clarity and process he applied that his he is he was appointed to his second choice because his first choice probab

» ly wasn't available this is dated september so what i wanted i do want to avoid people with multiple choices getting on boards just as like a holding spot until there's another spot and another board and moving around so i kind of have an expectation that um he complete his zoning board of appeals appointment um that's my that's my opinion i if um because he applied in september so this isn't a new application it doesn't seem like a position came available and he reapplied does that make sense is he on the board of appeals now because i spoke to him and he's he's on the board of appeals yeah he was appointed in october right i think mr bill said well we will honor his request upon resignation of the um sort of appeals because that's a direct conflict of interest he said we can't i think i t

» hink y'all's appointment could be made subject to a written resignation from the other board um that way there's no concurrent is god coming i think so yeah and mr kato currently you don't have anybody on the district six on the planning is on the commission correct no do you fulfill the district six can you convey that conversation we're having now to him yes absolutely tonight um mr shoemake i have to miss blizzard did apply through match board so she does have a application so we can do it um yeah let's finish it sorry train of thought okay um so planning commission one vacancy you nominated mr gunner and their second written okay and second for mr shoemake okay any other discussion on that okay all those in favor of appointing larry gunner to the planning and zoning commission in the on

» e vacancy subject to his resignation from zoning appeals indicate by raising your hand mr jones mr tomlinson mr cato mr shoemake mr tucker mr brazel and opposed of myself okay so um yes mr gate if you'll communicate that to him um all right now going back to alpha for miss blizzard i nominate lynn blizzard to serve on the assessment appeals board and one of the three vacancies okay second by mr shoemake any discussion good choice all right all those in favor of lynn blizzard serving on the assessment appeals board indicate by raising your hand and the vote is unanimous miss hannah will reach out to her congratulations to lynn and larry lanny all right 12 old business first matter of old business establishing and altering rules for public comments proposal attached county council rules and o

» rder of business section 2.5 delta this item was deferred to the next meeting however um mr jones was not here in person and requested to go to this meeting correct may i have the floor yes is it you have a motion mr jones or yes you have the floor thank you mr bose should we get a vote so what's on the floor is the previous motion let me do this here's what i'd like to do madam chair i'm going to withdraw my motion okay on december 12 2023 okay i have the right to do so but i also want to make the motion to alter and amend public comment rules uh proposed with the proposed handout that i gave you guys okay withdrawing your motion that was on the table okay and making a new motion the motion i want to make is i hereby make a motion to alter and amend public comment guidelines in accordance

» with the proposal for county council everybody should have have a sheet okay and uh here's where i'm coming from is there a second on mr jones motion okay i second thank you go ahead mr jones okay members of the public and county council members uh my proposal for december 12 2023 meeting was not a limitation of free speech as was put out there uh since then some members have publicly in uh indicated right here in this meeting that they feel the public should have and be more more allowed more and have to have openly engaged in in a public forum bottom line is it's come to my attention that we would like to have more engagement in public forum well since that is what some members have played up on you know i want to clarify that public comments are for public input as to any public concerns

» and interactions with county council is permitted so what am i saying i'm saying that we're allowing the citizens of kershaw county to get up here to speak to us and we can engage with them in conversation not debate but with in conversation um you know what i proposed last time was very legitimate i said let's have a public speaking section and let's limit it to make sure it's that it supports the business at hand what we're discussing well we have to do that on this county council but i was i was slam man i'm against free speech anybody's been around here 18 knows 18 years knows i'm not i'm not against free speech but bottom line is since we all said we enjoy mr webb's comments i enjoy mr webb's comments so why don't we change it as i've got here and allow us to engage with him because wh

» at i proposed last time was nothing but just trying to keep everything in accordance with our our meeting and uh our budget and if you look at our budget that covers a lot of territory that is not stifling free speech but uh my motion tonight is it and i can go through this as well too it would read as this this is the black line is the changes guys public comment is an opportunity for members of the public to share information with council to speak and share information with council and is a public forum to hear the input and concerns from members of the public um it is a time it is not a time for uh debate but with our questions and answers it's not time for debate with questions or answers from council but interactions by a member of the public with council is allowed okay and it is the

» time for council to receive input it is not a time for debate but any questions and answers and dialogue with kershaw county council is permitted okay uh in short during public comment council will listen to the public comment but not comment or public comment concerns and interact with the public um and it goes in here to say offensive or appropriate comments will not be tolerated i think it's disrespectful in in a group that would like to speak to council we request that a spokesperson be selected that this person indicate the group he she is representing be signed up on the sheet but they don't want to go along with it they all all 10 can sign the sheet and we'll sit here all night i don't care okay public comment is the time to discuss issues now here's my changes again and concerns wit

» h members of the public and council and receive input from members of the public public comment is a period of it period is limited to five minutes maximum and it is allowed for individual speak it is allowed per individual speaker the the five minutes also public comments to council as an agenda item shall continue uninterrupted and to be live streamed by audio and video where available until the public comments in the agenda this item is finished and concluded now i'm going to tell you guys you talk about you want you want input from the public you you try to label me as a non-free speech person and tom webber knows i have stood up for him with past county council that tried to shut him down i'd call a point or stand up for him all the time he knows that and and i'll tell you something we

» ought to sit here and indicate that i wasn't free speech that was just that was just heart heartening for me kind of aggravated me to be honest with you kind of irritated me too but but bottom line is my proposal is to be involved with the public let's have some dialogue with them and we because we all say we care about it we enjoy mr webb's comments well let's have some conversation isn't that what uh the the the what brian said about the school start with a conversation so i want to start with a conversation with citizens of kershaw county that is my motion it's been second uh now yield to florida madam chair yes mr thompson go ahead um mr johns i actually kind of like um what you've put together here i think you know let's do it um my only concern as far as conducting the business here t

» oday hat what is your kind of thoughts on five to five minutes when when we talk are we part of their five minutes or does the clock stop and then or is this just going to be an ongoing conversation all day i'm just asking because it public comments is for mr john spin right there no no sir it's not mr johns i have the floor madam chair i i still have more to the question that i was going to ask as soon as i finish my other question to you right this minute's a good example of what's going to happen if we pass yes um so i i agree i i really like that but the we the public comment is for a portion of the public to give us information we as as elected officials are here to have not have dialogue during that time to talk to them throughout our others how many days prior to meetings uh 24 days

» or you know 14 days however many weeks it is prior to meetings but i do i like your your point of this but i just wanted to ask you about the five minutes i can clarify that real easy five minutes mr webb we can talk you can ask this question we can engage i'll use him as an example because y'all use an example when you're slamming me about i went for free speech but let me just say this five minutes the only difference in the five minutes we got now is that we can't interact with the citizens but now we'll be able to interact with the citizens so so hey i'm all for free speech guys we're gonna take up part of their five minutes if they ask us a question it's part of their five minutes i guarantee you the folks does every member get an opportunity to respond because that could be five times

» seven that'd be 35 minutes in response time but i'm going to want to get to talk and i like to talk i'll talk for five minutes you know you guys are a whole lot smarter than me and i can't understand it y'all don't get what i'm trying to say you know everyone up here know that i'm talking about five minutes is nothing's going to change on time five minutes we'll just be able to if he asks us a question we will be able to answer it so i would i would i'd like to point out we've been here so long there's been a deputy shift change i just that was the chair would not count council response as part of their five minutes that is the way i would that's what it says madam chair that's five minutes but the legitimate question in all sincerity and i i'm enjoying the comedic relief trust me i really

» am and i with with all admiration and respect for for everyone on this board mr jones you know how much uh i respect you and i feel the same towards you what what would be the rules for engagement for for council and how will we go about it because i'm afraid you might take up all the time and i don't get to say anything no let me say that's what i'll be jealous nothing's changed councilman brazil let's just use any citizen a citizen gets over here and speaks they got five minutes right now correct they got five minutes correct they will still have five minutes correct the only difference is we now cannot if they ask us a question we can't answer it they would be able to ask us a direct question and it as i said wouldn't be a debate but it'd be a conversation because you folks up here said

» y'all wanted the input from the community y'all wanted you know y'all couldn't believe what i did so what i'm saying is i'm gonna want to say i'm not taking a step further and i would do more than y'all ever have thought so i would have to moderate it to some degree as as the meeting chair um i would ask the citizen to direct their question to a specific person um if they want to hear from all seven i mean we have to handle that as it kind of blanket statement right like we've seen people come up here and and just want to cause trouble and we've seen people uh come up here with some some really deep valuable concerns and do i want to hear at all yes i want to hear every bit of it um but it may not at some point in in some conversations it may not be the best opportunity to respond um i just

» i want to keep things civil and uh in as much as i would like to respond and and and i i have that feeling from time to time gee i'd really like to say hey you should be maybe with the city i'd never want to embarrass anyone but i like to make points of clarification and and make sure that the people are in the right place and that everyone knows what we're capable of doing and and i would do that in a in a response but i'm i'm scared i'd get long-winded i'd talk too much five minutes and i would and i would keep talking to the point to where um mr templar and mr debose would quit listening and it could potentially bore everyone to tears because sometimes when things get out of hand they're just out of hand does that make sense because sometimes i just talk too much well you make sense but

» but bottom line is you guys don't want to do what i'm trying to do and i already read through that i would love to like i'll stay here all night and talk i love to talk it's on the floor five minutes whether they speak to us as it is now five minutes whether we change this and we engage in conversation the only conversation i'm gonna have is if we're gonna have is if they ask us a question and we would we would have the right to answer can we vote um mr jones i appreciate this um so it's it's kind of to support it well no i mean we tried to make public comments a little bit um germane to the meeting to make the meeting they didn't want that madam um and so you took you yep and you went a free speech route which i certainly can support there's often times mr jones can you please stop talking

» over me i'm not i'm trying there are often times that people ask questions that are a simple answer and i do want to respond um just like the gentleman that i just sat there and stared at him and he was very confused why i wasn't responding so i'm i'm definitely going to support your change um i'll say this to all of council whatever the rules in appendix three are i'm going to chair this meeting in accordance with them consistently for every single citizen um there will never be inappropriate language cursing personal attacks it's not going to happen so whether we engage with the public or not engage with the public that's not going to happen so um it wasn't censorship before courts have widely supported that fighting words um are a breach of peace and they're not protected in free speech

» so um i'm going to chair public comments the same as i always have and i will support your amendment tonight to the rules any other comments i just have a question for mr john why this wasn't in our packet because i've been working on it all week but you but you had it before you and it's a very simple change all it is is just engaging with the public in five minutes with five minutes that's got a little bit more than that in it five minutes whether you they can ask us a question five minutes whether they can ask us a question it's five minutes okay and matter of fact openly at the last council meeting i made i did make the comment that this is what i was going to do you are here i want here but it's okay i did do that i did an open session kind of council i did make the statement that i wa

» s going to bring this back so we could engage with the public sometimes you did change it in accordance with your colleagues comments well yeah i'll give you that come in it got back to me the couple of my colleagues said oh my god he took it off but we were ready for him tonight ready for me for what okay let's not get off topic um all those in politics all those in favor of updating appendix three public comments guidelines as indicated in your sheet with the stricken words and underlying additions indicate by raising your hand mr jones and myself all those opposed mr tomlinson mr cato mr shoemake mr tucker and mr brazel all right next item under under old business is the watery river recreational access project okay and you should have your motion um the motion in your packet okay so at

» this time i make a motion that we complete a public boat ramp at veterans park in lieu of expanding the existed boat ramp at patriots landing and the funding source is available for you i'd second second by mr shoemake and into discussion yeah so we have talked about this even in the summer we started to talk about this our funding we never this council never said one way or the other which direction we were going to go and where we were going to put said funding um so this is clearly telling the people and direction to it admin we are going to put a boat ramp at veterans park and we're not going to expand patriots landing the main reason is we cannot expand patriots landing right now and it's going to delay access to the river which mr brazel's been working on this for years so i just well

» i will clear up all that the first thing i want to say is thank you thank you thank you you're welcome chair you're welcome and mr jones thank you for for bringing this back up and helping push this through we've been working on it for years you're right and um and now our next hiccup is the bridge so uh i would like this council to just decide where where we're putting it so that danny can make it happen mr templar is the location showed on this map the last time we talked about it we were going to put it at the existing kayak launch so when people have been asking me i've been saying yeah we're going to put it at the existing kayak launch but now on this um alliance consulting and engineers study that i'm sure we paid for it shows it in the northern field which which are we doing so i wan

» t to um make sure that i'm not going off script so i'm going to give you all both this is this is one and hopefully by next council meeting i will have a rendering for the bottom part i don't want to do that i want to make a decision because we've told this thing we'd beat this thing to death well and and if i may the reason there's an issue with the top part is because if you go into the next couple pieces here and you look at those contour lines we will spend every bit of that six hundred thousand dollars on site prep and we will get we'll get nothing so that's why i say moving it down if we're going to do this we need to move it down to the kayak launch because that is uh there's almost no topography there it goes straight in there's less trees that have to be removed and it's going to g

» et us the most bang for our buck does it get us across the finish line i can't sit there and tell you that but right where it is now it is not so it was alliance going to have to go back to the drawing board and work on this for six months and to do that no no because this is this is this design is what i want what i suggest um i just want to cut cost and move it down to where this existing parking is integrated into that integrated into this curve here um that's your recommendation that's my recommendation because if not then we will not with six hundred thousand dollars be able to fund this okay so at this point i'd like to make a motion if i may there's a motion on the floor do you want to amend yes i'd like to amend the motion okay um to clearly state that the boat launch will be two ra

» mps located at the existing kayak kayak launch and that parking and as proposed in this drawing will exist just in a in the location described verbally i second okay mr jones second and mr brazil i'm going to read this and let me know if this meets your intent motion to complete a public a public boat ramp with two boat slips at the existing kayak launch at veterans park in lieu of expanding the existing boat ramp at patriots landing say uh boat launches boat launch okay yep okay supporting two boats okay um and then also just i've for everyone's reference um we have an email um stating that yes the funds will be applicable over at veterans park just if there's any question about that yeah the state funds yes okay any discussion about the amendment to have the boat slips at the current kaya

» k launch and room for two boats okay all in favor of those amendment again the amendment is supporting two boats launched at the kayak at the existing kayak launch indicate that by raising your hand if you support that okay that's unanimous so that is amended now for any other discussion good job okay um now for the final motion motion to complete a public boat ramp at veterans park at the existing kayak launch that will support two boats in lieu of expanding the existing boat ramp at patriots landing indicate by raising your hand right and the vote is unanimous thank you gentlemen and thank you mr brazil i know you've been working on it thank you for years tell our people and we can tell our citizens we will have access to thank you for you man all right item number 13 council briefings um

» mr brazil we started with you last meeting so mr tucker we'll start with you thank you madam care i um just would say uh one is the cog is meeting on february 5th at 1800 hours for civilians that's 6 p.m uh we will be at central carolina down in sumpton i don't have the physical address with me but it's the 400 building uh down there where central carolina is uh which was near the used to be musc sumter campus if that helps anybody um we have two dates that we're meeting next week for a finance committee meeting january the 29th at 3 30 and january the 30th at 3 30 you're invited all council members and the public and that should go out post it via miss lauren here very shortly um i want to say that i have not been the most accessible person over the last few months um and i think all of yo

» u know why um i don't regret any of my time that i've spent with my mother and i have an ailing father to follow up with um so i have not been the most except accessible person but i'm willing to discuss anything when it comes down to this county council or the cog with anybody i'm not afraid to talk to you one-on-one or as a group but it has to be where my conditions will be able to be there i cannot come off the cuff or prematurely plan off an invite so with that being said if you have that desire and that will that you want to speak with me one-on-one or with the group i'm happy to um oblige you i want to tell this council staff all of you thank you for your love and prayers doing my bereavement and my family we appreciate you we love you mom's in a better place uh laughing at all us idi

» ots here at 9 30 on a council meeting um but we're doing the people business she does understand that as well but um i can't thank you enough and i'll deal with my loss and my grievance um my way i'm a different character when it comes out of that because i was very close to my mom but i'm good so with that madam chair that will conclude my report for this evening thank you mr tucker mr shoemaker yeah i'll be pretty brief i have also been a little bit inaccessible this last two weeks if you've tried to reach out i know uh chairwoman you've reached out about uh talking about some zoning stuff um i reached back out in a couple of days i've spent the last uh two uh days in today and yesterday in federal court getting my butt royally kicked um and uh my brain is fried and that's all i have i'll

» be back in i'll be back in and you know i'll be back in fight and shape next week thank you mr student mr cato i just have one thing it's a um i want to send condolences um for the people of elgin most people in elgin knew him his name was john quarter he was a youth pastor at hillcrest baptist church for several years he was the son of terry quarter which is my pastor at mount pisgah baptist church john was 38 years old he was well respected in elgin and he had left elgin hillcrest church and went to montana to start a church plant and he had been there for a year and a half and he he unexpectedly passed away back on the 17th of this month our pastor has been in montana him and his wife and also john's sister mary beth a lot of people may know mary beth she used to work at the sheriff's of

» fice and now she works in the school district but john was well thought of and well respected by a lot of young people he drove a lot of young people around um in the driving instructor um field too um as a side job but um our thoughts and prayers go out to them there'll be a service if anybody from elgin is listening this late hour there will be a service for john at three o'clock thursday evening at mount pisgah baptist church on mackby highway which is highway 903 if anyone's interested in coming thank you thank you thank you mr kato mr jones uh yeah i have about 14 things real quickly um no i want to give a shout out to one of my martial arts buddies bruce brucey he's been watching tonight and uh you know he wanted to see us in action and he said well done anyway um we had good debate t

» onight guys we had good dialogue good discussion we're not going to always agree on everything but we were able to handle some pretty tough situations here tonight and uh not try to personally attack an individual and i i think that is a very good thing and i also want to uh mr tucker i am very sorry about your mom you know i called you i told you it breaks my heart for you you know losing my brother i want to tell you what um you guys were able to attend the phone calls thank you so much yes it made the world to me and he was a good man he was a much better man than i am and that was bobby jones but um thank y'all for that and uh miss hannah i felt like i was sort of enchanted with your music playing over here tonight it was really it was really kind of it was kind of soothing to be honest

» with you but uh but thank y'all and uh i look forward to the next meeting getting right back in the saddle thank y'all santa next time you can use some headphones borrow them from over here let that go let it go thank you mr jones um i wanted to let everybody know that deputy director siobhan workman she received her jail manager certification um that is uh yeah she's not here but we'll get her on a pause um and she was explaining the exam to me and um she's a very hard worker she's a very hard worker and if for no other reason we help the jail out is because she has been working in these conditions for years and always has a smile on her face so um if you see her please congratulate her if you have her number give her a text um february 1st we discussed it when sam was here the lunch and l

» earn with the builders you don't have to be a builder any member of the community can go um so please go to that lunch and learn so you can get to know sam and you can kind of understand what the building inspection process is going to be moving forward um february 1st through 3rd is the council budget retreat will be in this room thursday 1 p.m to 8 p.m friday 1 p.m to 8 p.m and saturday at 8 a.m for the goal setting portion of that will the majority of the briefings will be from administration briefing um internal agencies in the second day we will hear from some elected officials this will kick off our um budget cycle or our budget process um and after that retreat the finance chair mr tucker jr will call his workshops and finance committee meetings as necessary to report back to council

» and members of public are invited yes members of public are invited and encouraged um it can be kind of dry but yes definitely the kershaw county opioid coalition meets next wednesday at 12 um what i want the public to understand if you've been affected um with the opioid crisis personally or you have a desire to serve in that capacity um or have any input on how we can combat this problem in our community please reach out to me um to me so i can take that to the coalition um we have a lot of great ideas a lot of things about to kick off um it it breaks my heart um some of the especially the young people that get caught up in opioids when they never even meant to so um it's a it's a really big problem and you guys know that um it's close to my heart so if you are out there and you want to s

» erve in some capacity or you have any input um please reach out to me um lastly i got a phone call right before the meeting um please be in prayer for jamie robinson he is a kershaw county citizen that was working in casset this morning and he had a very bad injury um a tree fell on him he is in the hospital at prisma health in richland um he's a very dear friend but he i also served with him and served with him in the national guard and he's one of my mentors so just please keep his family and him in your prayers that he recovers from that and that's all i have mr templar go ahead mr tuck i just and and i thought danny was going to get it i truly forgot but i do want to send this council my condolence to john heflin who also lost his father this month i didn't know that i didn't either i d

» idn't know it until mr kato told me he's sunday so i just wanted to make that note that our prayers and i love go with him as well and his family thank you thank you yep and i thought of something else as well um your for council reminder um hannah or our clerk i'm sorry miss farler um clerk evaluations please get them to me as soon as possible so we can um get her scoring matrix together and present her with some feedback feedback okay some some council members will get them all right mr templar i want to give you all an update a while back we had allocated arpa money for the uh the update of our radios almost pretty much throughout the county so um that has been all of the radios 513 are in uh that service touches county fire service lukeoff fire ems public works sheriff's department coro

» ner's office special service and due to interoperability we are working with camden fire with um programming because as you know some of y'all worked in law enforcement these templates allow us to talk to all of the agencies um so there's no agency blindness when it comes to um communications um so i i really would like to thank uh deputy chief matthew bullard and jeremy morrow uh with it uh deputy chief bullard is our fire service representative they have worked incredibly hard at getting this uh this project deployed 513 radios that's a lot that's a lot when you start programming stuff like that that's just they don't it's not like an iphone that comes out of a box and ready to use they have to be programmed and and cataloged in so um great work there also just want to say ahead of the bu

» dget process um kind of say that this one is it's going to be interesting um it's going to be hard um i felt like staff did a lot of work last year for this current budget but this year we're all going to have to work we're all going to have to put our best foot forward um costs are going up um i i feel that um there's especially with solid waste we're going to have to make some changes there um the jail is something that concerns me significantly and um we we just submitted our uh our list of items that we have fixed that as we were inspected by sedc um there was a bunch of things that staff was able to do in house but that that jail project is is looming um and it's just something that we're going to have to really be creative and and figure out how we're going to handle that as part of t

» his uh budget process i have a debt strategy um that we'll look at to figure out uh how we're going to pay for some of these big ticket items and that jail is certainly a big ticket item so they these are just some of the things we'll be talking about and briefing y'all throughout the uh the budget process and namely during the um the budget retreat we have three good days there i think we're going to be able to touch upon a lot of um departments not quite to the effect that we did last year but the departments that i feel are critical ems solid waste fire the jail and dispatch right now we're dispatching probably a record amount of first responders with the same amount of dispatchers that we've had um when i came on board in law enforcement in 1999 and that's three so um it's it's uh for m

» e just personally my soapbox it's it's great to want to add a bunch of other staff but how are we going to dispatch them um so these are just some of the things we're going to have to look at throughout this budget process not saying we're going to uncover all the answers um but it's just something we can put on our on our plate um some of these things are going to take multiple budget cycles to address infinite amount of problems and a finite amount of money so with that good news that is my report i'm looking forward to mr brazil's report uh mr debose some debt no briefing okay and last but certainly not least mr russell brazil i apologize so good i always wanted to go ahead just in case you wanted to respond sorry sorry john we got to get you another one of those um so um councilman jone

» s and i were able to attend a uh a meeting with the tall timbers wasn't that the name of it yes um and they were talking about prescribed fire and quail restoration in kershaw county and we weren't quite sure what the initiative was but they had um they had a couple of a couple of us there i think we were all invited um but i don't know if anybody's familiar with thomasville georgia it's kind of the quail hunting capital of georgia down in south georgia beautiful properties um full of wild quail their initiative um it seems is that they're using prescribed fire to restore quail habitat because bob white quail has been in decline for over 30 years um years and years ago i know my father used to hunt them as a young man all throughout kershaw county but their initiative specifically stated th

» at they want to see camden south carolina kershaw county um become the quail capital of south carolina which i thought was very interesting i enjoyed bird hunting as well and have all my life so i know that the population of the bob white quail is in significant decline but if um if they come to us and present and give us some thoughts and ideas on how we can support them i'd like for everybody to be open-minded um it certainly would would be quite a tourism uh attraction for a lot of folks in the world that love to hunt so uh that was that was something really neat that we got to do um i want to say thank each and every one of you for supporting the boat ramp that is an initiative that we started gosh i guess two years ago i'd like to see that come to fruition and happen and um really appr

» eciate seeing everyone here tonight from boykin like i said boykin's beautiful um i definitely i understand why they're here and uh want to figure out a way to support um support them while dealing with the traffic issues at hand um and and everybody's got an opinion whether or not there is an issue or is not an issue but i think at the end of the day we let the department of transportation uh do a study and tell us what is and what isn't and we gather some some data and go from there so that concludes my report thank you very much thank you mr brazil item number 17 adjournment is there a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn motion by mr tucker and second second by mr brazil and all those in favor of adjournment indicate by raising your hand and vote is unanimous this meeting is adjourned