Full meeting transcript - May 28, 2024

» Go ahead, call this meeting to order please. If we could, could Dr. Regina Moore come down at least in an invocation. How are you tonight? Well, thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, members of the Kershaw County Council, esteemed guests, and community members, we gather here today in the spirit of unity and mutual respect, recognizing the diverse tapestry of faiths and beliefs that enrich our community. So let us take a moment to reflect and offer our collective hopes and prayers. We turn our hearts and minds to those who are experiencing homelessness in this county. May they find shelter, comfort, and hope. Let us work together to provide the resources and support they need to rebuild their lives with dignity and security.

» May our compassion guide us to actions that make a tangible difference in their lives. And tonight, we celebrate the achievements of our recent high school graduates who have reached a significant milestone in their lives. May they be blessed with opportunities, wisdom, and the courage to pursue their dreams. We pray for their safety, success, and the fulfillment of their highest potential as they embark on new journeys. And tonight, we offer our prayers and support for the leaders of our local government. May you be granted wisdom, patience, and integrity in your decision making. May you always serve with humility, keeping the well-being of all citizens at the forefront of your efforts. We ask that you be guided to create policies that promote justice, equity, and the common good.

» In these times, let us foster a spirit of goodwill among our neighbors. May we build bridges of understanding and kindness across our differences. Let our actions be rooted in empathy and respect, working together to create a community where every person feels valued and included. As we proceed with today's meeting, let us keep these intentions in our hearts and minds. May our discussions and decisions be guided by the principles of fairness, compassion, and a deep commitment to the welfare of all residents of Kershaw County. While I offer this prayer in the name of Jesus and to the one who loves wide enough and deep enough to encompass all who believe in goodwill. Amen. Thank you.

» Doctor, would you mind leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please? I invite you to stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation. Thank you, doctor, so much. Welcome, everybody. Okay. Adoption of the agenda. We have a motion to adopt the agenda. Make a motion to adopt the agenda. Okay, we have Mr. Cato. Second. Okay, we have Mr. Tucker. Discussion? No discussion. Okay, all in favor, please raise your hand. Let the director show this unanimous. All right, I'm going to, we have moved the Lugoff Fire Department, which was under new business, we've moved it down to number five. And the reason we did that is our public safety personnel, they need to get back out on the road.

» So we're going to do that at this point in time. So number five, if we could, Mr. Tucker. Public comments. First, let's get a motion to get on. Oh. No, we're going to do the Lugoff Fire first. Okay. Do I have a motion? Make a motion for the Lugoff Fire annual budget for 24-25 to be approved. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. All right. Discussion? Do we have that? You got a resolution. Would you mind reading it, Mr. Tucker? Well, I want to look at the numbers. Yes. That's what I'm looking for. Chief Spitzer, welcome. You're coming down to the mic. Thank you. And anybody you want to bring, sir. Glad to have you here. And we really appreciate the job y'all do as well. Thank you. Should have been a packet distributed to council members last week. We got it. We got it.

» If you would go ahead and give us a quick overall. Overall, we saw an increase in the millage, which I think a lot of, almost the county saw that. And it did help us offset some cost, obviously. We've got a really good collection rate within the county. I usually base it around 96 to 98 percent. And that's what I've been seeing for the past, I don't know, since I started writing the budget. So we're pretty fortunate in that area. Of course, some issues we're always going to have is fee, the fee in lieu. When we don't get invited to the table, we lose out. And that hurts us. I have negotiated in the past with InVista to create our own contract. And that's something we've had to do. That was even before myself, the previous administration, I did have to up it.

» One of the things we have to look at is we're no different from anybody else. Public safety, we're being annihilated. I mean, there's just no other way to say it. We're not different. We see inflation just like everybody else does. I was given a quick example just a little while ago of somebody who lives in my district. Cost of a fire truck has went up 120 percent since 2011. A fire truck will roughly run you around 10 years, if you're lucky. So we get 10 years out of a fire apparatus. 2011, a $500,000 fire apparatus is costing us $1.2 million now. That's bare naked without any equipment. So what we did is, of course, just kind of went bare bones. And you have wages there in front of you. And that should be a line item, number one.

» One of the things that really, really does affect us is the wages. I know that number has increased. And you'll see, because we were able to give 2 and 3 percent increases. It still does not change the fact that I have a 15-year lieutenant making $12 an hour to put his life on the line, work endlessly, make sure he has a part-time job to supplement his income. But the other thing that is really hurting us is South Carolina retirement. We can't get away from it. We've got to have it. We see a 21.5 percent increase. We had a halt the COVID year. We were at 18.5. We're at 21.5 now. That's employer contribution. By the time it's all said and done, you're about 30, 32 percent, including the employee for retirement.

» Retirement is great, but we went from fighting a battle and being told that our public safety would possibly be able to retire at 20 years. Not only did they annihilate the 20 years, but they jumped us from 25 to 28 years. One of the things that we really have to look at is our fleet maintenance. If you go to number seven there, I've got a very small number for fleet maintenance. New trucks these days are very expensive to run. That's how I had to balance the budget. I mean, that's nothing. Now, of course, I don't count fuel, so there's a lot of different things. Overall, everything pretty much is in line with a lot of what we did last year. I didn't make a whole lot of changes because we simply couldn't. We really couldn't. There was nothing we could do.

» The fee that we implemented back in 2022 was very helpful. It's been extremely helpful. It allowed us to hire more personnel. It allowed us to get to an area where we could manage to give our folks a little bit more money. At the end of the day, we are struggling. I mean, it's as simple as that. I do the best I can. I can tell you for seven years we kept the position open just so we could balance the budget. I don't know if we'll be able to continue to do that. We have combined job titles. We've done everything we can possibly do. It's unfortunate that we are facing the issues we're facing as a public safety entity. We have now become the lowest paid department in this county. We've worked extremely hard. Outside of the budget, I am going to make a small comment here.

» It's not small for me. It may be small for other individuals. But as I stand here before you, I can make a promise to the people that work with me at Lugaw Fire Department, I can make a promise to the community we serve, which we go out of our way 100% to make sure we serve that community beyond any means that a normal fire department would operate at, is that I will do everything in my power, and I mean everything, in the next year to make sure the folks that I work with are compensated adequately. That has not happened. It is embarrassing. And that don't have anything to do with this council. But it's my time to speak and I'm going to speak. So in the next year, I will figure out a way to make sure my folks get what they deserve. I can guarantee you I will figure out a way.

» But Chief, you do a good job. And I appreciate that. You really do. And I tell you, you're always accessible. You've always been willing to help Kershaw County. When we weren't where we are in fire, you were there for us, you know, many years. And I really appreciate that. And I tell you one thing too, you've never come to us, Dennis Ray never come to us and wanted something that had totally documented and where we could understand what you were asking for. There was nothing hidden in your budget. You're very transparent about it. And I just appreciate that over the years. Well, I appreciate that. And again, the budget, it is what it is. We, like I said, we pretty much stayed on par where we were last year. And the biggest increases are salary and insurance.

» Insurance, we're looking at a 9 to 11% increase every single year. Insurance is absolutely annihilating us. It's just tough. It's just tough. And before I finish up is one of the things that we that we're really struggling with every agency in this county is struggling with is federal money has disappeared. The federal grants are no longer there. But our vendors do not recognize that. Our vendors have made their increases anywhere from 35 to 40%. And with that increase, that has absolutely killed us because that federal money is just not there anymore. What most people don't understand is when you see that fireman get off the truck fully equipped, that fireman is equipped with roughly $26,000 of equipment on. It's made for one thermal event to survive one thermal event. That's $26,000.

» That's really hard to swallow. That's not counting the knowledge and the money we have to pay them. Insurance, workman's comp. That is what it costs to equip one fireman, is about $26,000. So we have to we have to find ways to make sure we can continue to do that. End of the year is when our budget year is when we kind of try to make our decisions on what we can and can't afford. It's kind of last minute spending. You know, you're where you've saved up all year, where you struggled all year. But I know I tangent a little bit there. You know, again, we balance the budget. I'm not asking for anything. It sounds like you put us on notice for next year. I am. I'm putting I'm putting everybody on notice, not everyone. And it may not affect county council at all.

» I'm pretty good with finding ways to skin a cat. And if I have to do so, then then I'll do so. And that's that's what I got to look forward to. Thank you. Are there any questions for the chief? I'd like to tell him he does a great job for the Lugoff community. And I know I know that's not the extent of it. At times you work with other departments in the county and different cities and that sort of thing. But I appreciate the job you do, Chief. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. You've been there for us and others and always always been fantastic. So whenever you get ready next year, as you look ahead, if we could get some knowledge of what you're looking for ahead of time, that'd be greatly appreciated. Yeah, I'm not going to surprise you. Sounds great. Thanks so much. Thank you.

» Any other questions? Okay, we have a resolution to read. Okay. Okay. Adopting and operating a budget for the Lugoff Fire Department Protection District, South Carolina, for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2024 and ending June 30, 2025, whereas Section 6-11, 260 of the Code of Laws of South Carolina, 1976, as amended, provides that the Lugoff Fire Protection District, Lugoff Fire Department, the Lugoff, acting through its board of commissioners, the commission, the governing body of Lugoff, shall adopt an annual budget.

» Whereas the Fire Chief of Lugoff has prepared an estimate of revenues and expenditures for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2024 and ending June 30, 2025, whereas Section 6-180 of the Code of Laws of South Carolina, 1976, as amended, requires that Lugoff Fire provide notice and hold a public hearing prior to the adoption of their budget. And whereas the commission has reviewed the proposed operating budget and is accordance with Section 6-180, held a public hearing on the proposed budget on May 20, 2024.

» Now, therefore, be it resolved by the members of the commission duly assembled that the fiscal year 2025 budget, a copy of which is attached here to as Exhibit A is hereby adopted as the official operating budget for Lugoff during the said fiscal year adopted the 20th day of May 2024 and signed by your Commissioner, Chair, and also Secretary. All right, any questions on that, guys? Okay, we've already done a motion and a second. Correct. So let's, no more questions. I'll make sure you. Who was the second, Ms. Hammack? Thank you. All right, no questions. All right, all in favor? Good job, Chief. Thank you very much, and I appreciate every member up here. Thank you for allowing me to come up and even speak. I didn't think I'd get a chance.

» I didn't really ask for a public presentation, but you gave me an opportunity. Thank you for lending your ear to me, and I look forward to working with every one of you. Well, we want to hear from you. You've been there for us through the years. And so, Dennis, thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Chief. Okay, moving right along, public comments. It's the attached rules for public comments. Mr. Brazel, would you mind reading the rules out for us real quickly, please? I'd be happy to. Public comment is an opportunity for members of the public to share information with council. Public comment is not a time for debate with or questions and answers from council. Public comment is a time for council to receive input. Public comment is not a time for council to respond.

» In short, during public comment, council will listen to public comment, but not comment on public comment. Individuals requesting to speak must sign up with their name, topic, and phone number. Offensive and inappropriate comments will not be tolerated. If a group would like to speak to council, we request that a spokesperson be selected and that this person indicate the group he slash she is representing on the sign up sheet in his or her comments. Public comment period is limited to five minutes maximum allowed per individual speaker with a maximum time of 30 minutes as the agenda item. If more than six people sign up, the total time of 30 minutes shall be divided by the number of persons who signed up and each person shall be allotted the resulting time.

» 30 minutes divided by the number of people equals allocated time per speaker. Public comments to council as agenda items shall continue uninterrupted to be live streamed by audio and video where available until public comments agenda items are finished and concluded. That's all. Okay thank you. How many people do we have sign up Mr. DeBose? Six. Okay it's six people so that gives them. Now let me explain the way we will handle this. We you've got the clock, the time clock. We don't have power for the time clock. I believe IT can run the typical clock or I can run my phone. You have uh well run run a clock for and if you would Mr. Tucker would you give a 30 second notice? Yes sir. No one be caught off guard exactly. All right you got the list? Yes sir. First speaker.

» First time to speak is Linda Franklin Moore subject to this public comment. Welcome. Thank you. Back in 1995 or 96 I was told it was illegal for the public to speak during county council meetings. I spearheaded an effort to have public comment as an agenda item. This has been my greatest gift to the community. This has allowed me to step back and for others to step forward. I'm concerned that council wants to limit public comment time. I would really love it for five minutes per person. It is vital that all citizens be able to have their comments on the record providing that those comments are germane to Kershaw county business. Ms. Franklin would you pull the mic closer? I want to make sure people that are listening on the YouTube where they can hear you as well. Absolutely. Thank you.

» Thank you. And what I mean by that is it doesn't have to be an agenda item but it does need to be germane to Kershaw county and how it affects Kershaw county. I want to thank my councilman Mr. Tomlinson for saying that he wanted to stand up for public comment and just let let people be able to speak and I do appreciate that. Council members in the past have railed against backroom meetings, straw poles and business in the shadows. Limiting public comment does just that. Say some members are you know your members are saying that the meetings are getting too long but just remember you did run for office. You spent your money to run for office and you get paid to be here.

» Staying a little longer at the meeting will cost less time than your phone ringing off the hook with those backroom conversations that I mentioned. I ask you to please reconsider and allow each speaker to speak five minutes. Thank you very much. Thank you Ms. Franklin. Yes you have been a champion for those rights. I remember that. All right next speaker. Tom Webb the third, litter ordinance. Tom Webb the third, come on up. Good evening Mr. Webb. I'm going to turn in my can this time. Your litter ordinance sticks in my crawl. I can't let it go. I've looked at it very hard and I keep coming up with the same conclusion. It's a bad litter ordinance. The law signed by Governor McMaster is a litter law and it's a protective of private property somewhat and punishment fits the crime.

» A little bit of a little bit of stuff like cigarette butts and they get twenty five hundred twenty five dollars for a hundred dollar fine but more gives you a bigger fine all the way up to illegal dumping of more than 500 pounds can get you a thousand dollar fine and that's seems to be reasonable but the little new litter ordinance mentions private property twice in a careless way and tells us what we can have or not have ordinary materials you might find on any rural homestead cardboard cardboard boxes glassware crockery crockery that's an earthenware pot it's a flower pot we can't have that and cans and it's a 250 dollar fine one size fits all so it's illegal according to your litter ordinance to place debris on private property debris equals litter equals refuse McMaster's law says I can

» put debris on private property if I have permission so I need to get into definitions for this ordinance definition litter means refuse refuse means collapsed cardboard boxes excluding barrels wood tree branches yard trimmings wood furniture and bedding what an interesting thing to put in a litter ordinance bedding we are allowed to have bedding it's a good thing if you weren't if I weren't allowed to have bedding I'd have to bring a bed in here to give in cans tin cans we we're not supposed to have cans glassware or flower pots out in the boondocks out in the unincorporated area out in the country I think it's giving us bedding is really a lot more dangerous than it seems it's given us something we already have we have unalienable rights from the creator it can't be taken or given you can'

» t trade it it's yours whether you want it or not you might not be able to use them under a totalitarian regime but it's yours just the same I think it's unwise for to accept gifts from the government it's government play in god and it brings to mind the gatehouse ordinance that was passed here some years ago a gatehouse ordinance somebody wanted to build a gatehouse I don't know what for I'm not sure exactly what it is but they came to county council about it and so they said well you can't build it because we don't have an ordinance for it if you don't have an ordinance for something you can do anything you want it's america it's free but no you had to go and pass an ordinance to give us the right to have a gatehouse so I guess that's about as much as I wanted to say on on the litter ordin

» ance other than you have to be kind of careful what you do because if you don't read it well enough you're setting the stage for somebody else to play on when they come along later and I keep advising people to buy beans even though I'm going to be turning in a can of beans because the supply chain may fail and we're going to be really hungry uh covid was a sample you could see what what happened when the supply chain is in danger so what I'm doing is kind of symbolic I'm turning in a can of pork and beans the beans are good but I supposedly cannot have the can so I can't get to the beans so I'm going to turn that in and also have a crushed can it's aluminum can but tin cans and aluminum cans would probably all be in the same category people out in the boondocks will have a pile of these th

» ey they crush them their own can 30 seconds their their friends cans cans that they pick up and when they have enough they fill up a big sack with it take it somewhere and sell it it brings money these cans are not scrap well they are scrap they're not trash and Danny Klein I think has only given 12 cents a pound but there was a time when I think it was 70 something cents shortage of aluminum anyway here are your cans do what you want with it thank you Mr.

» Webb for those comforting words um on number six we got a public hearing oh I'm sorry he was the next speaker is Linda Kanitzer on overdevelopment thank you welcome can you repeat the name please sir Linda Kanitzer all right thank you welcome may begin vice chairman Jones council council members I'm not going to start my comments until every single one of you looks at me when I'm speaking to you I'm respectful to you I don't even have my cell phone on me it's out in the car turned off when you're talking I look at you I watched you all last week here on the live stream I didn't like what I saw with a lot of the public speakers whether you liked what they said or not you owe them your attention and respect now Lexington County has been dealing with major excuse me excuse me councilmen Lexing

» ton County has been dealing with major overdevelopment problems for some time recently a group calling themselves protect Lexington's future has been formed to replace the entire Lexington County council excuse me things have gotten so bad that wistv aired a press conference two times this past Saturday called fireworks erupts at county council press conference showing some of the current council members confrontation with a gentleman running for one of the council seats each side accusing the other of support from outside groups such as developers making campaign donations let's never let it get to that point here I think you will agree that most of us who live in Kershaw County have been somewhat perplexed and very unhappy about the over development here in the last eight to ten years ask

» ing how is this allowed to happen and not knowing what or if we could do anything about it as a result of the proposed plan to develop the Camden training center many of us are getting involved and working together to find solutions by being proactive rather than reactive we can better address our problems when they arise I am asking that council members vote to approve the increase in minimum lot sizes on these mega developments that are threatening our quality of life last Tuesday after I spoke at the planning committee meeting I was enlightened by the discussion between committee member town and the planning and zoning director regarding the process involved in approving or denying the permits that come before their committee it looks to me like there are loopholes that applicants are aw

» are of that are getting permits approved without the committee itself making the final decision please look at into the current process so we aren't missing something let's work together I do have faith in the people serving on our Kershaw County council and planning committee and I do believe we all have a common purpose 30 seconds to keep Kershaw County a great place to live thank you great job well said next speaker is Lynn Canto ordinance one half acre welcome welcome my name is Lynn Canto and I'm here to talk to you about increasing the lot size for for building homes I want to thank you for considering the change of this ordinance to allow the increase of minimum lot size to half acre for single family homes visually speaking this is about a half of a football field this is an ideal f

» or home builders and providing living space with privacy and less noise it allows for a large house spacious yard and even allows for small gardens and animals this option preserves the traditional small town charm and community that Camden's familiar with however let's take a trip back in time did you know on March 28th 1786 Senator John Lewis Gervais introduced a bill to create a new state capital Columbia as we know it today won its name an 11 to 7 vote the commissioners in Columbia wisely designed their town of 400 blocks and a two mile square along the river the blocks during that time were divided into half lots acre lots for prospective residents buyers had to build their houses and at least 30 feet long and 18 feet wide within three years or face an annual five percent penalty I poi

» nted this out because they had a plan to encourage responsible growth for their community let us take note of this well thought out plan we can see other areas of Columbia have deviated from that plan and has led to overcrowding high traffic and congestion increased noise and a city that's lost its charm let's learn from this thank you for your time appreciate it thank you very much next speaker is Melissa Rice on the half acre ordinance Miss Rice welcome thank you for allowing me to speak again this evening and it's a good thing that I'm following Lynn I moved to to northeast Columbia in 1982 as I stated the last time I spoke I worked at Wildwood stables and lived there until 1993 while working and living there I watched the changes in the subdivision of Wildwood as well as the area to the

» Kershaw county line Wildwood was developed as an equestrian golf neighborhood with a nine hole golf course two polo fields in a 15 acre stable area with a riding school and two rings and a lesson program there from the 1970s until 1993 I was there when Bell Camp University of South Carolina's retreat was a large area between Mallet Hill Road and I-20 we had an equestrian trails through Bell Camp to the number five neighborhood around Crystal Lake which is near Clemson Road at the corner of Mallet Hill Road we could ride from the stables to there and swim our horses in Crystal Lake and return I watched the Wildwood Smallwood Road area between I-20 and Mallet Hill Road be developed into town homes patio homes and that was a small cabin there where Heath Manning Jr resided for quite a while in

» a nice quiet small pond I watched the summit and take over the Legion Lake and the bombing range area that was recreational area for ponds and swimming and other activities I watched the summit neighborhood I watched sand hills and all the take over the Clemson agricultural station extension service finally in 1993 the closing of the stable and the area where the stables and polo fields were became Wildwood Downs retirement community I also watched Wood Creek Farms vanish that was also a riding school it's now a development all the way to I-20 I ask you do we want Kershaw County to become an extension of this I believe as Lynn does that and a lot of us here all of you do that we do not want Camden and Kershaw County to become that and I hope that with this half acre ordinance we can begin m

» oving forward and changing the direction and promoting responsible growth going forward thank you for your time thank you so much well said enjoyed that next Chuck Moser fentanyl drugs I think he he took his he he wanted his name taken off I believe all right that's it for public comments time all right thank you so much everyone who spoke we really appreciate it and I agree we should be looking at a speaker if they're up there talking we need to be looking them in I agree with that and thank you so much for your strong words all right in order to amend the Kershaw County second on unified code of zoning and land development regulations to add gun club and skeet shooting ranges as a conditional use in the rd1 rd2 and mrd-1 zoning districts to have a motion to put that on the floor this is a

» public hearing I'm sorry to have we did it as a poker let me get us in there public hearing is open is there a list of anybody and if there's not a list we want to welcome anybody yeah mr vice chair um one person to sign to speak mr tom webb third okay if I could say two folks if anybody else wants to speak please sign up we'll be glad to have you up here mr webb before we get too far away from um all these new people coming in I wonder what they're going to eat if the supply chain fails they're going to be hungry and you're going to have chaos we need corn I don't understand some things about bureaucracy maybe that's good about the shooting range ordinance again I think it's unwise to accept gifts from the government there are all kinds of rights we have already like water drinking rights

» you're going to look at me water drinking rights the right to park your pickup truck in your front yard right to go out and shoot a gun all kind of rights for freedom loving Americans call unalienable rights from god and government doesn't need to give us these rights so the shooting range ordinance um it's there shouldn't be any kind of an ordinance if I want to go out and shoot a gun even though it's nothing in it it's um it's a step in the wrong direction to have any kind of regulation it'll become something of a gun restriction eventually something else will be added and something else we don't need government pretending to give us these rights because eventually it'll pretend to take them away we've just had memorial day celebrating the um the efforts and sacrifice of so many people pr

» otecting our freedom but those who whittle away at our system whittling whittling whittling it's called progressivism and that's a bad word progressivism is a bad word the whittling at our freedom that's been going on and it happens it's been happening it's getting worse and worse and you know it you know it so uh we don't need a shooting range ordinance even if it's nothing it's a part of the whittling away at gun rights little by little and if somebody has a problem with somebody shooting a gun maybe next door there is a way to deal with that and it's called a civil suit you can bring suit against them if you can show that you're suffering that there are damages you can bring civil suit it costs you something to begin with but if you win your case it doesn't cost you anything the uh the t

» he other party pays for it so we don't need a shooting ordinance we don't need any ordinance at all concerning guns i think so please vote against this shooting range ordinance thank you thank you mr webb okay number seven approval of the minutes you're going to close the public yeah okay does anybody else want to speak last call nobody else will speak to pertain to the gun orders public hearing is closed thank you sir you're welcome quit speeding me along okay um let's go to uh approval of the minutes tuesday may 14th 2024 regular meeting have a motion i miss vice chair make a motion that we'll approve the minutes from our last meeting um from may 14 2024 is there a second i'll second this token makes motion mr shumay seconds any discussion just want to say thank you miss hannah anybody el

» se mr shumake nothing all those in favor did the record show that it is unanimous with brasil tucker shumake kato and uh thomason and myself voting in favor thank you gentlemen so much if we could all right we have we're at a second reading of an ordinance to provide budget appropriations for county purposes in the county of kershaw for the fiscal year beginning july 1 2024 and ending june 30 2025 and adopt and implement the charge and collection of service and user rates and fees and for other tax purposes and county appropriation purposes and matters related there too mr vice chair what can we do alpha first yeah that's what we're gonna do okay you on bravo no i'm on a a alpha or a bravo okay my agenda sheet okay how did i get that his agenda did have just his credit bravo was listed as a

» lpha on his agenda that he has printed okay yeah we got a change right here thank you this okay thank you thank you thank you i think i shuffled around his papers earlier but but it was a misprint in my paper but yeah but don't get that close all right a first reading bless you first reading your title only fiscal year 2024 2025 millage an order setting the millage rate for kershaw county for the fiscal year beginning july 1 2024 to have a motion i make a motion that we approve the millage in title only for physical year 24 25 mr tucker makes a motion to have a second second all right mr tucker yes sir speak if you wish uh i just want uh it's in title only but um even with the title only there's a no increase in this uh millage uh rate as of now uh that we're reading in title only and the r

» eason why we're doing this no millage increase correct and the reason why we're doing this is because we adopted an ordinance not just a resolution an ordinance saying that we will set the millage as we set the budget so they could all end by june 30th of the uh in of the end of that physical year we're working in so this has to be done in accordance to our ordinance uh by the time the budget is read on its third reading and they will meet together in june thank you mr chumake nothing where mr brazo go um there he is do you have anything you want to say pertaining to the uh millage ordinance um the millage that we have the rate the new rate sorry this doesn't include oh you want to do value rate yes okay yeah there's a village increase in this whatsoever no but the the rate the value of of

» the mill group it's three ten four seventeen three hundred and ten thousand four hundred and seventeen what was it what was it last year 302 302 all right does he get an idea of how it changed from last year to this year thank you this title only i was telling them doesn't have any okay guys any other discussion any other questions no sir thank you okay all those in favor first reading the title only the millage raise your hand let the record show that brazo tucker chumake and uh kato and thompson all voted in favor of jimmy jones as well so therefore it's unanimous thank you gentlemen so much you're welcome okay we'll go to the next reading that's second reading of an ordinance to provide a budget appropriations for purposes of kershaw county for the fiscal year beginning july 1 2024 and e

» nding june 30 2025 and adopted and implemented the charge and collection of service and users rates and fees for the other tax purposes and county appropriations purposes and matters related thereof to have a motion put on the floor um mr vice chair make a motion that we approve the second reading of our budget for the physical year 24 25 is there a second i'll make a second there's a second that's on the floor for discussion mr tucker uh yes sir um so as it stands right now um i would like to open up the floor and ask the administrator to give his request to council and um and then i can go from there so very good let me just say a couple words quickly before we go to the ministry i want to thank you in the finance committee i've done a hard a great job you've worked very hard i may not ag

» ree i may agree i don't know we're gonna get into it a little bit but bottom line is you guys put a lot of work into it and i appreciate that all right mr templer thank you sir members council um i just want to first point out to your attention the uh the packet you received and that was advertised uh in in compliance with um our 24-hour rule um has had slight modifications there's an update to it in front of you it's it's very nominal modifications but i just wanted to as we leave here today y'all will have the most up-to-date working copy of the budget as you know this is a living breathing document we try to get things locked down as much as we can but um you know there are some kind of late minute or last minute rather adjustments and as it relates to revenue and it's it's not any chang

» e that would reflect an increase it's just shuffling uh some numbers and some money around from line item to line item so mr mr templer would you do me a favor yes sir give me an example of shuffling some monies around so in non-departmental we we shifted um we took from our capital reserve we there's a fuel line there we took um a hundred thousand dollars and and put it back into the fuel line item there and the fuel line item allows us to be more resilient throughout the year as it relates to fuel prices this has been a tough year um for geopolitical events so fuel has been up um and we have relied on this few this line item in the past for our departments that are heavy consumers of fuel so it's i think our last large transfer was i think the year before or i'm sorry last year and it was

» in excess of a hundred thousand dollars to make that line item at the sheriff's office whole again it's um just responding to the market of fuel this is an important line item we drew it down a little bit through this this process of you know funding other line items some last minute costs so um you know and i just want to point out it's no fault of the sheriff he has a large a large fleet they run 24 seven and fuel costs go up so it's it's not anything they did wrong it was just a they were underfunded for that particular year we've made some corrections this year but we again this is a um a fund we draw from periodically any questions yeah so i'd like to i'd like to make sure the information i'm looking at is correct um i didn't print the entire budget but i brought the last page and it s

» hows that the budget that's proposed the recommended budget for 2025 is 39 million two hundred and thirty one thousand four hundred and twenty seven dollars is that correct it's 39 i don't know let me get to the page but and while we're waiting could we have tyler come up to talk to us a little bit about the the guts of the budget sure yes if he's in a room he's oh yeah he's he's excited to talk about it he's he loves numbers let it be forewarned that if a department head is ever in this room council does have the right to bring them up to speak thank you i'm mr chair members of council i'm tyler kirk your budget manager uh and i'm happy to answer any questions you might have in regards to the budget you have in front of you okay i'd like to um give mr templar the opportunity um to answer t

» he question last year we we had a budget of thirty four million seven hundred and forty six thousand three hundred and seven dollars and the proposed change is four million four hundred and eighty five thousand one hundred and twenty dollars according to the the budget that i received in my packet um that's roughly a thirteen percent increase in spending and according to all the knowledge i have that is uh that is a budget that has no tax increase is that correct look at that smile i love that yeah there's a no mail increase with the budget proposed by our administrator i love that smile you lit up because you knew you did your job thank you mr mr uh russell roussell sorry did you ask you if this could carry through to third reading oh well i don't think he has any control over that i think

» that's the administrator's budget won't change without a council motion so the budget as it stands is the administrator's recommended budget that recommended budget uh can't be changed by administration without further action from council right so tyler tell us tell us how um kershaw county has four and a half million dollars to spend um more than we did last year with no increase in in the millage so our mill value has gone up roughly six percent uh over the course of the last year and we also kind of estimated slightly lower uh last year than what the mill value actually was because we prepare these documents so far ahead of time so um that that delta uh mr templer mentioned 310 000 being the sorry 302 000 being the value of the mill last year right our estimates when we were creating the

» budget somewhere around 292 so that means we collected a bit more than we intended to spend so some of that money has been used for capital projects this year you'll see that in the um on the revenue side of your budget as transfer from reserves you'll notice it's about 1.7 million dollars more than last year uh and that's because of that that difference between the estimates versus the reality so we don't just spend more money than was appropriated and if we ever do something like that then that's what happens uh you see it a lot there's rapid inflation um housing prices might go up a bit quicker than we expect so with the 1.7 million in additional revenue that that came from an underestimate underestimating delta is that right yeah so it's just um we keep a reserve requirement as set by c

» ouncil ordinance how much is it um i would have to double check that for you but by my recollection it's something like 21 of operating for the general fund oh we're standing in it at a moment well i can check that afterwards but i don't have it in front of me right now but basically everything that isn't in that reserve requirement we don't like to hold the people's money so our administration plans to use that for the capital improvements that we have uh needed so um that goes straight from reserves to to use immediately you know we don't sit on it if there are projects and right now that that difference was 4.8 million this year instead of 3.1 last year so we've got a million seven in underestimated uh expenditures and right and that could be from a variety of things just not just the em

» ail value it could be say um if a position in a department stays open all year that we hoped to keep full oh you don't spend the money that way and our ordinance doesn't allow um personnel lines to be used for anything but personnel so if we're unable to spend those funds even though during the budgetary process we intended to we end up using it for capital the next year so that we're not sitting on that money all right so so tell me where the other i don't know what is it 2.8 million dollars came from of course so um a little bit over 1.2 to 1.4 million dollars are increased tax revenue um as a result of that mail value increase there's also a 1 million dollar increase in the expected interest revenue that we're going to collect over the course of the year through the local government inve

» stment pool uh that interest rate that we've been getting has been particularly robust over the last few years we're currently getting like a daily rate of something like 5.8 percent over the last month um and our treasurer's department manages that pretty aggressively to make sure that we can try to limit the money that we need through other sources so uh there's and one million more dollars there than last year so it's about 18 million dollars in that investment i can't tell you that off the top of my head sir i'll have to look it up for you but i can do so after the meeting okay so point a is there was 1.7 million in underestimated income do you think the potential for for this time next year for us to hear hey we've got an extra million because we underestimate it again because i know y

» ou like to keep things safe for kershaw county we believe strongly and also making corrections if we're not exactly where we want to be so i don't think you're going to see the same margin in the next year we like to be safe but you don't want to be excessive because then tax rates would be higher than what we would actually need so the intent is to get safe but close right not safe but 1.7 million left for capital sure yeah yeah so we're always working to get closer so um when are we required to do another assessment um i would have to speak with the assessor about that one i'm sorry sir i don't have that ready you talking about the reassessment yeah 2025 yeah so next year there'll be a reassessment property values will go up and then that'll be another source of income we'll see a another

» increase because i know that we i think my first year is every four years is that right every five years it happened on the floor because we went you can extend out for a year and we chose to do that so when that's why it came up within so early on you because well next year will be my fifth year so that makes sense because i remember my first year we had just had a reassessment i think in 2020 i can't remember exact date but i know we went over one year we extended because we had some issues of software and transferring information and all that stuff so we extend it out which by law we can do yes we have to be careful with that also because in 22 we went backwards so there was a a rollback in taxes and we lost value of the mill really it yes sir it's not always typically it's going to tren

» d upwards more often than not but you just have to be careful that was what was that for that was first time mr brazil too i think that that ever happened yeah yeah i i didn't recall that but it's 0.4 we went backwards okay yes sir what was the reason um just the way the assessment came in our assessment yeah so and i know we're capped at what like 2.9 percent or something um i'm not sure on that i have a different cap of mine i could be wrong but i know that if a property goes way up or say it doubles in value yes you can't you can't assess it right it's about three percent a year 15 and five years okay that's how it works okay so so it could be a 15 increase not one time i'm saying it's 15 over five years three percent each year so the property can grow okay all right so when act 38 388 c

» ame in my property at that time was only increasing between nine and ten percent um it actually was a property tax increase to me the people that saved money was the homeowners on the lakes and not the beaches on the coast because it dropped their taxes significantly and spread it out across the folks throughout the state that property didn't grow in value that much yeah so if your property grows in value your tax grows in value so i'm just looking at the different ways that the county has income and the way that income changes so there's also um not as significant but you know if we expect more fee use for example you can look through there and you can see small adjustments either way some departments are expecting fees to go down some are expecting them to go up it can vary based on the s

» ervice and based on expected demand so we usually have to rely a lot on historical data for that uh and our population growth for when we make those projections but you can see kind of the smaller numbers if you scroll down that change good tower thank you so much of course mr vice chair yes so tell me let me interject on councilman browser's conversation so um not being conservative and being uh more aggressive or um on our numbers i'm talking about the mill value can not talk about what mr templer is talking about on the rollback but if let's say we say we budget off uh 315 315 000 per mill and we only collect 212 we're going to be sending out tax notices to collect the payout bills am i correct by saying that anything involving tax notices i do like to leave to the assessor uh so i'd fre

» e that if you let me well if you don't have it in reserves you don't have it in the bank you've got to collect it somehow i do think it's probably more likely that we would try to cut back on the spending if it's at all possible first um but it is a possibility if we over or underestimate dramatically that uh our elected officials might take some action yes mr toke if i may miss you make any comments i'm good right now mr keita so can i get back to the administrator i'm sorry i thought you threw i'm no sir um i want the administrator to uh finish presenting thank you tyler um so we can move forward i may have a question for you to see go ahead so all right i'm sorry um with that i just wanted to call your attention to the uh that that change there um also in this budget this has been a very

» employee centric budget so when you talk about um costs these are very much reoccurring costs and i i am very careful to identify revenue sources when it comes to reoccurring costs uh this budget was built on the cornerstones of what uh what was taken away from the council retreat um and a lot of that a lot of that feedback was in terms of goals and objectives that included high medium and low priorities so i would we i'm proud of the work we did what we were able to put together here um in terms of having a uh a uh a respectable cost of living adjustment for the employees um at four percent and then also making not and or but making these market adjustments for positions that were significantly underfunded we're talking individuals making 26 000 a year so just trying to remain competitive

» keep the talent we have and um and again offer a fair living wage so we were able to do um that there was a lot of work that went into that uh again if you received a market adjustment you did not receive a cola so we were able to parse out those employees we went essentially department by department to look at what these individuals made we looked at what a fair market value was for that um position um and we also kind of balanced it with what that position would pay in the private side we always have to look at private side as a a what i would say is a threat to our pulling our employees away so um there was a lot of a lot of good work done there um there's inflational values that are in there cost of uh even contracted services we are just looking at the sheriff's office they are a heavy

» consumer of contracted services they have data stores these are all the things we want those deputies to have in terms of equipment with tasers and body cams and and in-car cams these are just simply things you cannot do without in a modern law enforcement agency we would be fools to even cut away any of that and and take away their ability to um really operate in the appropriate manner so there's there's capital in this budget there's capital reserve uh that has allowed us to really look at equipment needs but we focused more on people in this budget and not on things so we do have things included in this budget um to include uh we we didn't quite get the the number of sheriff's office cars we needed to last year so we but that fleet is in very good condition um i don't want to continue th

» at so i there's uh we've got a chunk of sheriff's office vehicles in there that we need to get him back to where he is whole there that again that's another hole i don't want to dig with reoccurring costs those cars run 24 7 they build up miles quickly and you know sheriff's office vehicle used to be 25 k back in the day when we were riding around in those cars not the case anymore um depending on availability you're looking at 60 000 upfitted so a lot of inflational pressures in this budget that would have had to be dealt with um and the reoccurring costs again with personnel making adjustments trying to um fund positions um you know being creative in terms of taking part-time positions and turning them into full-time it's not necessarily a 50 percent discount but you know then now you hav

» e fringe but just identifying those kind of um efficiencies within the budget so i have really you know stressed and strained over this budget um i i take a uh a very serious approach to um the fiscal responsibility of this of this county um i never want to have council caught flat foot on anything so we have essentially generated a budget that is um it achieves a lot of things but to achieve what i wanted to achieve i would ask for three more mills in this year's budget so just three more mills and what i would do there is i would push one mill over to the sheriff yes to address a lot of those they are historically it is those inflational increases have essentially consumed about the value of a mill historically i would put two more mills towards the general fund that would allow me to go

» back in and fund some uh some items that i was unable to fund without an increase i think this is a again this is something i don't take lightly yes um because i'm a taxpayer as well i you know i have a 86 year old mother that lives around the corner from me and i think about her um but as your administrator i i am asking for three mil increase to this budget to allow me to do the things i need to do this is in line with what we have done historically we typically have when we have not increased uh millage we we skip a year and then pick back up and it is a nominal increase um i i don't think the load on the individual taxpayer homeowner vehicle owner is going to be earth-shattering matter of fact for a hundred thousand dollar home you're looking at thirteen dollars and twenty cents and you

» can do the math based on less than forty five dollars for the year yes um and then for a thirty thousand dollar car i think it's around seven dollars so um i am just respectfully asking council to consider that request um for three mils to allow us to operate and move forward through this year mr templer is that also the finance committee's recommendation i have asked the finance committee this the same so yes and we and and we do support that yes we do support that um we we appreciate mr templers and staff uh due diligence and hard work on this budget and um jerry may not like this uh this saying that i normally say but it was like pulling chicken teeth from the administrator to try to get him to uh uh tell us because as he stayed he takes this budget serious and he had done a wonderful jo

» b on trying to balance it but according to our goals from um our retreat that council set what he's doing is in line with what council gave him the guidelines to do and i am as an individual council member very proud that he's putting um funds back into the people because i can tell you now that um this organization called county will not be able to run if you don't have good people to give you services and um the market right now is not real friendly to employers people are able to pick up jobs and go and leave almost like when they want to and we need to learn to recruit better and retain better and the only way we can do that is try to compete we won't be able to compete with the private sector but we can't fall so far behind to what no one considers us can ask a question yes sir so just

» to clarify mr templar you're asking for a three mill increase at two mills would go back to the general fund one mill would go to the sheriff to enable him to spin off into his own into his own millage and i believe historically when we've spun major departments off we've done so with some type of increase for that department so because correct me if wrong but this is a forever decision unless we undo it the sheriff goes on millage now he's on millage forever unless we claw that back short of council action okay um and if i may just speak to that a little bit this is something uh you know vick carpenter when he was here and myself have wanted to do we just this is the opportunity i think for us to do for this body and myself to perhaps move towards uh this direction is to it's it's so the s

» heriff would not necessarily be a special revenue fund but he would be on dedicated millage much like central carolina has two mills of the general fund so we would cut out the millage he needs to operate so it would be both expenses and revenue plus one more that allows him to be cut out of our general fund so it he didn't what's the benefit of that mr tucker i mean mr uh template what's the benefit of that so because with the sheriff's office being such a large portion and just by design of our our budget again it's a large organization a lot a lot of turning parts there um it would have better equipped them for future growth as they are able to capture the organic growth in the mill um someday sometimes just like in 22 he may may tick back a little bit but you know what that's that's par

» t of budgeting you got to figure it out if if we tick back next year then it's going to be my job to figure out how how we absorb that that um rollback but the sheriff will be able to uh plan his budget similar to the fact the the manner that we we plan the general fund budget as a whole he will now have to become more interested in the value of the mill and things like that and he's certainly capable of that but i just think this this dedication towards his organization cutting that out plus the one more mill sets him up for future success total millage sir total millage on that um he is at well revenue wise it would be 19 point i think he's 19.1 now i have to go back and look i don't want to get anything confused but he would just plus one more 20 mils revenue side but then there's also u

» h i'm sorry expenditure side is what he would be eligible to spend but it just essentially gives him an infusion of three hundred and ten thousand dollars into his okay mr shumate said look talking let me listen mr shumate go next i think he's been well i just want to comment on um what mr templer said so um a couple things there one is that um we're not prepared to move forward because we don't know the exact millage yet uh for the sheriff so that's going to be on third reading so just so you can be clear on that that's not on the agenda tonight but we're working that way we've got to get the exact numbers from tyler and the other with the sheriff being on the mills is let's say um we um crime ticks up and you know they're under man and the sheriff says he wants to put his own campaign on

» for council to increase his millage because he needs more manpower you don't have to increase the whole budget you can come in here we have the authority to do just the millage on the sheriff's department and then he has to wear the shield of armor to the public and answer for his increases so it's a lot of flexibility along with growth so i yield to i like the sheriff have mr shumake mr i'm prepared to make an amendment i can do that now i can i mean we'll still be discussing the same thing uh so i would like to make a motion to amend based on the administrator's comments i'd like to make a motion to amend uh to adjust the budget by three mills i would also as part of that motion like to direct the administrator to put together what it looks like to spin the sheriff off on his own millage

» with a mill to that so obviously we'll need to see those numbers on third reading so to recap um based on the administrator's request i would move that we upward adjust the budget by three mills and uh direct the administrator to take one of those mills and spin off the sheriff onto his own millage is there a second second discussion you're going to need some discussion well i think i mean i'll just say what i mean i again i've i've said this a lot up here i mean i tend to support our administrator um i agree with pretty much everything he said i mean i don't know that i could say it better i also think that as to the specific mill going to the sheriff i think it's important if you look at the number he gave about 19 or so you add one that's 2021 that's still i don't want to speak out of tu

» rn here but if you look at the if you look at the kershaw fire mill is there 25.8 mills for the lugoff fire department i understand we talk about different departments but you're talking about a mills of 25.8 the sheriff it looks like would still be even a little bit under that so i think that you know that puts the sheriff in a place where he can be competitive going forward and as mr tucker mentioned the sheriff can make a direct appeal from this point forward people getting their tax bills will know exactly what mills are going to the sheriff's department um but again i don't know that i could say it better than mr templar did but like the fire department we said excuse me like the fire department we said we have to approve that millage if they were an increase oh great we're going to go

» to body correct we'd have to i guess what i'm saying is we'd be able to say like now if we increase the sheriff's budget we do so by putting all the mills together then we'd be able to say we'd be able to define exactly what we're increasing in future thank you i get it um mr templar um would you mind giving me the so what a three mill increase would be on a hundred thousand dollar home and for a three hundred you know 40 40 thousand dollar car 50 thousand dollar car um what would that be annual for the three mills for the three mills on a hundred thousand dollar home that'd be 30 40 43 dollars 44 dollars 43 44 dollars and then uh for that vehicle it's it's going to be less than 10 dollars okay so 40 000 because just projecting there so around fifty dollar increase on a hundred thousand dol

» lar so you just tripled that for three hundred thousand dollar yes is that is that right i thought it was like i thought you said just a minute ago it's like 13 well he added a car in there and that's why he said 50 he added a car in there no no no no no no he i think danny may have may have tripled it on accident what yeah i thought it was i thought it was 13 20 per 100 000 yeah guys let me say this way he's looking first excuse let me just say this way he's looking mr brows i want to say this makes it perfectly clear while they're looking for that i have a big problem where we can find a million dollars but yet we're raising taxes on citizens that really that's always bothered me anybody who's known me the last 18 years i haven't changed that's just the way i am i'm not against the depart

» ment's moving forward and getting growth but i have a problem we come around so we found a million and a half or we found a million we found a half million and mr tuck you know i've thought this i've said this many times forward 18 years because it's happened but i do want to commend you mr temple on having the all with all to come before us and present a budget as you did i think it's the first i've heard any ministry do in the past 15 years at least you did come and stand up i don't agree with it but you just stand up what you thought was right for the county but i'm gonna tell you something guys this finding half a million dollars this finding a million dollars something's not right we gotta get straightened out this mr chairman go ahead if i may please call me jones please mr jones my f

» riend councilman shoemake i wanted to point something out i do agree with you on separating the sheriff's department and allowing them to have their own millage now their millage rate will be the same as the county's is that right correct so their their mill value is going to be three hundred and eight three hundred and ten thousand looking at the lugoff elgin or the lugoff fire department rather their mill is only valued at fifty three thousand five hundred dollars so i think that's why they've got more mills yeah so so this year it's valued at 53.5 so i think there's a there's a correlating value there between the mills but i'm not sure i'm not sure why it's it's so different but that's the sheriff's office budget definitely much larger than than lugoff fire just just to be have that clea

» r on the record i think uh sheriff's budget is going to be eight million this year yes sir it's pushing that and um that was with no increase i think it might go a little south of eight million with no increase just a little under and yes to your point that takes a lot of millage to cover that and that's that's a herculean piece of our budget as a whole yeah it is it is a large piece of the county's budget right and i'm all for i can i can recall my first year um of being on council sheriff he's in the back how you doing tonight sheriff good good to see you um always referring to um the budget as a pie and he just liked for his piece of pie to grow along with the rest of the budget right he just in other words he wanted his percentage to to grow organically and naturally and i that's what i

» think the the beauty of of county government is is we do have a natural growth here in kershaw county and we our property values have gone up we're in a in a good county people want to be here um some of us feel maybe a little too many people want to be here all at once but it's okay we're working through those problems but um i'm all for separating the sheriff's millage and um want to let that be known i don't know that tonight i'd be able to support three mills but i'd be happy to talk about it if if councilman my fellow councilman would like to to talk about um how we can find happy medians and that sort of thing i don't know how hard heels are dug in tonight but i want to be someone who who can find a budget that he can support that's my goal um if i may just kind of further probably wo

» ndering why three mills why two mills for the general fund why one mill for the sheriff okay and i think we talked a little bit about the sheriff's piece is it just it gives him what i would consider some bridge money to go into next year and have a little bit of a tailwind with some already having some organic growth from this year i don't know what next year is going to going to hold um we could have a rollback we i just don't know um but i know everything's getting more expensive so that again gives him a little bit of a fiscal tailwind um but two mills on the general fund that is just in my mind enormous um it's just enough it it is enough it's not enough you gave us a request of 740 740 thousand dollars i'm saying the two mills for the general fund is what i need and that is enough bec

» ause i could either we could legally ask for seven to nine mills but we don't need seven to nine mills this covers the costs of what our or our shortfall based on where i think this organization needs to be 12 months from now not just 10 years from now or or tomorrow we're looking at the budget setting us up for success into the coming fiscal year so two mills it it covers what i needed to do and it is it is it's well below the cpi if you look at the just from the um the the percentage of our general fund budget i think i don't even think it tops 2.8 percent while the cpi or our consumer price index which measures inflation is trending at about 4.12 percent right now so we're but we're able to do a lot with a little all i'm asking for tonight is just a tad bit more and trust me i understand

» the the weight and gravity of adding millage thank you simply if i can pick it back up one more time and i know this is what you want but i also want to know that when you spoke with the finance company finance company finance committee talk to them too yeah it was uh it was approximately 700 according to my notes 740 thousand 200 dollars that doesn't equals two mills so you're making some sacrifices and still some hard decisions on on some department heads i'm sure there's about 120 thousand short but you're okay you can figure it out for me is that is that fair to say or is that yes sir we will have unfunded needs going forward but the ones i think are critical and key um we will we will go back and fund those the ones that i think we can um you know maybe kick down the road a little bit

» all right we'll look at those this time thank you i'll remove on go ahead mr kato so collar i'm gonna put you on the spot first of all i want to say thank you to the administration and to you for for the hard work and as mr brousel brought out raising the millage you was you was very you was uh very happy to be able to present a budget that um kind of equaled out so to speak but you know some of the issues that mr templars brought up here tonight would you would your professional opinion say that that's going to be best for kershaw county if we go the route and i know that's your boss but i'm gonna put you on the spot would you think that that's that's best for kershaw county going forward to make sure that we are able to fund the needs of the county the the way we need to fund them so full

» disclosure as staff i'm not allowed to tell you what would be best in terms of tax rates uh there are elected officials that have to make those judgments so i can't say best good comment very well said but what i can tell you is that there are over two million dollars in requests that had to be rejected in order to make that no mail increase budget it's a lot of very long hours in a reasonably nice conference room thankfully uh shipping away at things and then starting from the top and shipping away at things and going back to department heads and saying how critical is this and being told oh incredibly critical absolutely essential and still having to say well we can't do that so i know that our administration team has fought really hard to to cut those numbers down because i i take in all

» of those requests from department heads and all the supporting documentation for those requests and if you look at that change column for each department going down promise you that's not even half of what has been asked for so would you say that's that's growing from year to year from compared to last year to this year as far as the amount of cutbacks we've had to make is it getting larger each year that's a question i can't answer i can promise that the difference between requests that have been please if you talk in the mic oh sorry sir um i can promise you that the number of requests that were not able to be funded is higher this year than last year and and last year due to our estimates as we discussed previously we planned to be relatively lean so as as those inflationary rates keep g

» oing um teller it's just gonna get worse council let me say something for a second here this is every year i mean we never have enough money but we're always able to find 500,000 to a million million and a half but you know the mom and pop businesses in our community which which which are the backbone of our community not industry because we're not textile i don't think you'll ever come back to south california this is my opinion we're a textile state we lost bottom line is we have to look at our mom and pop businesses and you know everybody's fighting for the same dollar there's only so many pennies in a dollar but yet we're sitting here saying okay you know i think it's gonna be a good thing for us to go ahead and raise the millies three mills and make things better for us so we can provi

» de services um i uh local businesses don't have that opportunity to do that they they have to rely on the customers coming in i uh was under the impression and i had heard i'd heard a little bit of a rumor about a three mil but i was under the impression that we will have a balanced budget presented tonight and uh of course we did but we didn't i'm gonna say we did present you with a balanced budget well that's what you do in second reading you make amendments no no no you're not wrong but i just don't like it okay i can live with that i can i can live with it too uh but i want to know more going ahead i want to know more danny about where the money is where you're finding this money because 100 000 500 000 1 million and also i want to be kept up with the reserves how much do we have in our

» reserve fund now where we're at because i know for a fact that gene wise and i came up with a plan he was the ceo of target he was on council chair we got together we did a plan with with that with our reserve funds and funded four officers and by the end of that year we had recruited we had already generated back that 400 000 dollars in the in the reserve fund that's where i'm having my problem but yeah we want to see you ask for a three million increase well i would like to know personally if i may yeah go ahead miss um you know what i commend you for being brave and asking for what you feel like you're you need i commend you for that um i don't think uh i've ever seen that before um i would like to hear more about what those needs are you spoke broadly about what the needs are that you f

» eel so passionately about i'd like to hear that from you and tyler before you leave i'd like to hear you got you smile you just light up when it's my call this is my job right you're a happy individual i like that well i can't smile knowing three meals are going in the budget right now be honest with you tell me tell me how much of the money that that we've seen grow organically the four and a half million dollars increased in the budget that's this pre pre-additional mills tell me how much of that's going towards cost of living adjustments and market value adjustments for employees understood so this is is thankfully pretty cleanly separated off so 1.7 million of that four is capital so before anything else happens that doesn't go towards any of those inflationary needs because you don't u

» se one-time money for those ongoing expenditures that 1.7 million comes from things like if a position isn't filled is a good example or if some non-capital equipment purchases aren't made or if we come in somehow under on a repair budget so those are like the the little leftovers and every other bit of the 34 million or so operating expenditures that don't actually get spent ends up being that so there's not really a way to avoid it the four percent cost of living adjustments specifically for the people that weren't included in those market adjustments was 387 or so thousand total dollars including their fringes we had another I think almost two hundred thousand dollars on increased cost of health insurance for those people which is entirely separate I think the market increases were somet

» hing to the tune of seven hundred thousand dollars so just personnel alone would be a little over half of what's left after you remove that 1.7 million reserve number that we use for those one-time expenses so most of the money at all is just on those those employees but it's not all in their pocket because you have to pay the fringes which are very expensive is what you're saying roughly half of what you do for salaries ends up having to go to the associated fringes like a good example is like a deputy you might pay a deputy somewhere 45 to 50 thousand dollars to go on patrol but he actually costs a hundred thousand yeah I understand that so what was the total number again oh I'm sorry those are rough estimates I don't have the exact ones in front of me for those but somewhere north of 1.1

» million dollars so far being just inflationary increases for existing personnel okay Mr. Brazel yes sir I'm sorry do you have any more questions so I and and I'd like to hear from our administrator we will I feel like we're kind of going in circles a little bit you know we need to kind of you ready to wrap this up sir well let me just say this we're going in circles that's all I'm saying I mean we're doing the same thing over and over we just want to make sure everybody's questions are answered but um I'm ready when you are Danny was going to expand into what those needs were yes sir so and a lot of those are again they go back into some again this is a very heavy personnel budget it's people-centric so that's why we're again cautious to you tell us that 20 minutes ago yeah yes sir I just w

» ant to reiterate a lot of work is going into this budget significant amounts of work when I'm sitting here asking counsel for three mills I think I need to be serious about this and and reiterate and and make sure everybody's understanding again trying to go back into what what this this two mills back into the general fund is going back and and we have our our list here to go back and address positions that are not competitive we have a full-time IT staff that are just not competitive you can go into the private sector or even into another governmental position there and make significantly more money I don't know that we will we've never been this IT heavy in this organization as we are now so huge concerns there unfunded line item requests you know there's there's office supplies supply l

» ocal supplies building and grounds non-capital equipment just there's just a slew of things in here you know mr templer can I say this to mr templer that's been every year it's been every year that we've had a slew of things I haven't ever seen a budget in 40 years in being involved in government 27 years in ten that is department head I've never seen a year is where we had enough money and it was always wanting more and more and more and it just bothers me that we're sitting here we're talking about a three mill increase I think we could have a balanced budget I think we could move forward that well mr Jones you made a great point earlier you say businesses they they you know they they make adjustments and what businesses do for everywhere from a fortune 100 company down to the lowest you

» know hardware store in Kershaw county they were able to cut services they're able to reduce product they're able to you know massage sales and and I feel like in government we don't have that opportunity I can't even reduce hours at our convenience centers where that that is just the solid waste department is is something you're probably going to see next year we've got to figure that out but I don't have the ability to cut services I can't cut hours here and and reduce costs I can't not send the sheriff's office out I just think and I want you guys listen what I'm gonna say I just think you couldn't pick a worse time bless you pick a worse time to raise millage on the citizens of Kershaw county that's my opinion and I think we've talked about it over and over and over this you know does an

» ybody else have anything they will say on this one second reading mr Thompson I would call it for the vote yeah exactly but that what you do yeah yeah vote on the amendment but I just for transparency purposes because I'd asked question earlier and it was a little bit confusing but yes and I on a on a $300,000 house we're looking at about $40 on a $300,000 home will be about a $40 increase and this is something you know we've not taken lightly at all won't everybody here to know $39.60 $39.60 on a $300,000 home that's what three mills we're looking at and if you have a $50,000 vehicle that is $16.90 and it's it's going to be $56 okay so around $56 and that would be on average for about what it would be on the back of a Kershaw county resident and also we have sheriff's you know a sergeant a

» lieutenant and captains at the sheriff's department who are making a little over $50,000 when they could go to Lancaster county and make $74,000 starting out I've you know I've sat up here and since from day one I've always been in support of law enforcement and first responders and our people so I'm ready to vote and we had a motion a second discussion on the amendment is anything else anybody else want to say anything thank you gentlemen the second reading all those in favor of the amendment raise your hand oh excuse me raise your hand Jimmy no no no I didn't record show that uh Mr. Tucker Mr. Shoemake Mr. Cato and Mr.

» Thompson voted in favor all those who vote no your hands no all right it passes second reading passes and then uh right now we vote on the budget on the budget as amended exactly all right any discussion the budget as amended any discussion all right do we take a vote on the budget as amended Mr. DeVos budget as amended do we need to do another motion on that no you just take a vote all right I hadn't been here long enough okay okay all those in favor of the budget as amended care see raise your hand let the record show that Mr. Cato Mr. Shoemake Mr. Tucker and Mr. Thompson voted favor all those who vote no Mr.

» Russell and Jimmy Jones thank you gentlemen for your hard work thank you Tyler all right we got into weeds in that one a little bit we needed to see third reading case 2413 an ordinance to amend the Kershaw County South Carolina code of zoning and land development regulations to amend and increase the mineral lot size required for detached residential housing used to no less than 21 780 square feet and retaining the method of calculation for minimum lot sizes for single family attached use excuse me for minimum lot sizes for single family attached use types in town homes patio homes and multi-family apartment use types by requiring a minimum lot size of 15 000 square feet and the additional 5000 square feet of lot size for each dwelling unit after the first dwelling unit and providing that

» single family attached use types town homes patio homes and multi-purpose family apartments development acreage of a major subdivision do I have a motion to put that on the floor I'll make an emotion that we approve third reading of case 2413 all right second second okay all this had to be said or I wouldn't say it in emotion I had to get all that in there that's a lot like to find a little bit bigger next time please all right okay we had a motion who made the motion put on floor I made the motion Mr.

» Brazel second second I just open any discussion I just we're at third reading and I just want to again thank Councilman Brazel um you know this is a lot of I think we have four or five public comments about this uh this ordinance this will you know pass it at third reading and um again I just want to thank Councilman Braz for his work on this I think the greatest issue facing our county right now ties directly or indirectly to sort of unchecked residential growth so again thank thank you Councilman Brazel for your work on this yeah ditto back to you you've worked on it as much or more than I have so I enjoy working with uh with you on it and um we've had some very passionate speakers tonight about this topic and um some of you I have not met and would love to meet but I can tell you this we

» 've been thinking about this for for a while now it is not just something that popped into our head and it's something that we take very seriously because we see both sides of the coin a lot of jobs depend on uh home building but but we do want certain regulations here in Kershaw county we want to keep the county um special and Kershaw county is special and and it's not a uh Richland Northeast 2.0 it's it's different we we do love our horses and we love the people that love them so thank you all for being here tonight so looking forward to passing this any other discussion Mr. Thompson Kato I think we've shown some strong effort to uh look at the housing development problem and we made some good changes and of course this you make you've been a leader in it so has Mr.

» Brazel and I support this and I support even going more with it um I hope that we can put our heads together and something can be done where the training center's at I think we need to protect that if we can somehow some way I don't know we just we've got to get together and talk about it but anyway this is some good stuff in here and I appreciate it more than you'll ever know um one more thing I want to say my wife told me that if we didn't slow growth down she's she's a I call her blue blood Lou Goff Lou Goffy and she was born there and raised there and never lived anywhere else she said Jim if you don't stop the growth now you're gonna make Lou Goff an Elgin like Lexington excuse like Lexington County and I agree with that and I appreciate y'all's hard work and effort and coming up these

» ideas let's keep it going though let's keep going in that direction okay and I'll tell you these speakers are passionate tonight and I felt your passion I respect that I really do and I thank you so much for being here and talking to us whether we're going or not we have a little bit disagreement it's not personal doesn't matter thank you for all of you being here and we're all we're all in this together we're on your side and we need your help when it comes to decision making all right any other discussion on this no sir all those in favor raise your hand third reading all those opposed well bless you Mr.

» Tucker all right third reading of an ordinance Kershaw County Council to amend chapter 12 of the Kershaw County Code of Ordinance related to emergency management Kershaw County if I could have a motion put that on the floor make a motion we approve third reading of the emergency manager management for Kershaw County do we have a second second Mr. Tucker thank you Mr.

» Vice Chair I just want to say I don't think anything's changed since the last two readings and I'm in full support of this ordinance for our emergency management team Joe and staff and administrators that you have done a great job on this appreciate it okay any other discussion all in favor let's raise your hand let's show this unanimous all that are here all right executive session um what would it be possible to move um because we have a another reading of an ordinance just move that right above the executive session so we can go ahead and get the ordinances out of the way prior to this executive session you're talking about the second reading orders yes the second reading of it would that be possible to amend the agenda at this point well I talked with the attorney I don't think it's nec

» essary uh the executive session I mean we could we could talk about it but I don't think it's necessary to it'll affect anything because if y'all want an executive session I will put one down if you don't think it's necessary I mean we have another reading coming up yeah I don't know that it's necessary at the spot on the agenda okay I would like to do it in conjunction with the personnel matter at the end it'll be extremely brief but yeah that way we can have the people here well the reason the reason I moved it from middle and I know it was where it needed to be but it was in the middle of the agenda and then we were going to say essentially leave everybody out here waiting for us to come back I think we do at the end of the meeting it's much better and we're not going to be in there that

» long we're going to go there do our business and get out we've been here too long now as it is but we are going to make sure we do the people's business the proper right way all right do I have a motion to put us in executive session I would move that we do not go into executive session you do not want to go into executive session we put it in conjunction with line item number 17 yeah yeah so I would move to the extent necessary that we move executive session number nine into number 17 and Mr.

» DeBose you think we still need to have that executive session yeah that's fine the timing of it's not critical it can go at 17 because now we already got one yep so we move on to line item number 10 yeah okay are y'all ready yes sir so we're going to include both of them at the end yes last year and we talked about earlier today but then there's some confusion about back and forth whatever all right right here I think it's second reading on case two that yeah it is my my sheet is messed up here yeah mine is too yeah I don't know what happened but anyway we'll get it right okay so we're on 10 okay 10a yes right 10a second reading case 24 11 excuse me gentlemen when y'all finish I'll talk well please talk thank you all right second reading case 24 11 an ordinance to amend the Kershaw County S

» outh Carolina Unified Code of Zoning and Land Development Regulations to amend table three dash three to allow for gun club and skeet shooting ranges as well as hunt clubs and other amusements as as a permitted use in all primary zoning districts within the unincorporated areas of Kershaw County orders title edited to conform with amendments at first reading all right Devin we should put that on the floor I would make a motion to put that on the floor to adopt second reading second we have a motion by Mr. Shumake to adopt in a second by Mr. Thomason to put it on the floor all right discussion Mr. Shumake you may go no I just said we had a lot of discussion on this first reading I still support it thank you Mr.

» Shumake who is second I second um same I think I think we hashed just about everything out on first reading and um ready to vote second reading okay great uh no other discussion all in favor of the ordinance raise your hand let the record show that okay let's show that Brazel and Mr. Shumake and Mr. Cato and Mr. Thomas vote in favor all those that vote no and Mr.

» DeBose yes sir this being second reading I want to talk with you about this going in the third reading that's fair what would really benefit and make it easier for the gun owners okay excuse me they'll be prepared for that update because I may vote in favor on third reading it's not sure yet all right thank you gentlemen new business we took care of that we got appointments to the clean community commission I think there's one thing to see for the town of Athen and I also think that Mr. Cato was prepared to make a motion to put someone on tonight do I have a motion to put that on the floor make a motion that we approve a appointment for the clean community commission is there a second second all right is there any discussion Mr. let me go with you Mr. Cato um Mr.

» Vice Chair I have a I have a recommendation trying to get my paperwork straight here I have a recommendation from the town of Bethune this is their spot that they have on the community clean commission Kershaw county clean commission let me get that right so their recommendation they're sent this straight to us and we got this in this week is that we nominate that I nominate Mr.

» Robert Brown he's a resident of Bethune he serves in many different capacities he's a landscaping business or business owner of a landscaping company he actually has a bachelor's degree in horticulture turf grass management and he comes highly recommended and I think he's well qualified wow that sounds great um I make that as a motion I'll second second that was a lot for the motion I discussion I thought we already had a motion what we're doing he made the motion he's seconded do you have anything Mr.

» Thompson I do not I support him great are they here is the gentleman here no no sir I don't think he's here well anyway congratulations on finding somebody so qualified sir on that they needed the clean community commission or whatever the new name is their clean community commission is still on here all right all in favor raise your hand the director showed that he's unanimous for the appointment in Bethune thank you so much gentlemen oh business we're going to feel the ordinance for project white oak field agreement Mr.

» Cato I think we might want to scratch that for tonight um no actually I'd like to have a discussion okay very good is there a motion to put it on the floor I'd like to make a motion we put this on the floor for discussion I will second that for discussion for discussion only okay thank you we second okay all in favor of that we got a motion to say all in favor put on the floor we're ready for it okay go ahead Mr.

» Cato so I think there's a little bit of confusion on some of the solar this is in reference to some of the solar projects that that we've had going on throughout the county it's my understanding there's been some more applicants for solar projects in this county this particular project I have a lot of strength strong language that I could use but this is a project that's located close to Bethune and it's already been approved for a fellow agreement from way back last year but I'm very concerned very upset I feel deceived I feel fooled I feel tricked and I'm fed up and I'm just going to be quite frank I am fed up with the solar projects that's coming to this county and I'm fed up with these companies so I was led to believe and and I can't speak from other colleagues but speaking with a few

» they they do feel the same way so it was my understanding when we approved this agreement that every community neighbor of this project was notified by letter and I don't call people liars but that's a lie because I went to the community and I've asked the people and the only letter that half of them got was a letter saying they want to either lease or buy their property so they can put more panels on it never did they get a letter saying that they intended to put this project there so when they came to us we were under the understanding that the community had no objections and nobody showed up at the public hearing well I guess not they didn't know about it so I hate to be so direct but I'm really upset about this and I'll be honest with you hope the project fails I hope it goes away I rea

» lly do because the people up there don't deserve it they don't deserve to go through this and so I wanted to voice my concern and I wanted to voice my backing for the people up there I've requested the um address or contact information for the people of this particular company and if any of the community leaders would like that as soon as I get it I'll be glad to give it to you y'all are down there laughing talking okay I'm just gonna say that because I don't like that anyway I just want everybody to pay attention when we're talking I mean really guys this is stuff that we need to pay attention because I agree with everything you just said Mr.

» Cato and I called you last night when they were calling me as well and I thank you for your strong stance in this because I feel the same way you felt I felt I was duped as any other discussion anybody want to say anything about this awful project it is Mr. Thompson you have nothing all right I'll say I'll say something Danny it when something's going on in your district and you're unhappy about it you'll always have my support and any help that you need when it comes to a vote we we often take others in consideration as council members and and it's your district is this community you represent and just know that in the future if you have something coming down the down the pipe that worries you call me I'd be happy to meet with folks with you what whatever I can do to help I want to support

» you in your district all right as I will say and just real quick just to kind of reiterate I know that you said it but out of those three fellows that Kershaw County has approved that's just like 10 percent of the entire process of the solar need none of them companies have gotten a PPA or anything so they still have over 80 percent of the process to do before each one of them go through the works odds are one of those three will go through fruition and become a solar project could be none it would not be all three that's just not how those companies work the filo is the very first step of the process and Danny exactly echoing council member Brasel I support you in your district and you have been a voice for the community and listen to the constituents so thank you for doing that anybody el

» se let me say something okay I can't stand districts you know I've been here 18 years and I've always said I work for everybody in the county and y'all do too I know you do guys but I don't give a rat's nest if it's in my district your district whatever it's all Kershaw County and I know you feel the same way it's just that bothers me because the last council administration minimized everybody by saying we were district council members no we're not we're Kershaw County council members we may get elected in district but we work for everybody in this county all right you know any more discussion on this quick this mess okay I don't like it at all all right council member briefings I'll start with you Mr. Thomas I don't have any briefings today thank you Mr.

» Kato uh just one reminder of the mount pittus community resource center they have a a family fun day on June the 8th that's a Saturday they're gonna have a lot of food trucks a lot of activities for the kids all kinds of vendors I think they may even have a car show a lot of different things going on up there I want to thank also the Alpha Center Alpha Center has been reaching out to to this center up in the northern part of the county and I know also in Bethune also so I want to thank them for reaching out we really seem like we're spreading spreading a lot of good stuff from Kershaw County up into the northern part of the county now and and I'm excited about that that's that's something I'm excited about so say it one more time I'm excited about okay can I get amen say amen amen so I'm re

» ally excited about that and uh if you have a a little bit of time that Saturday I ask you come out support the resource center thank you Mr. Kato Mr. Shoemake yes sir three uh three fairly brief things um Miss um Miss uh Canon so I was up here talking about speaking I think you may have been addressing me about the looking and just in terms so everybody else knows you'll see me looking down often and will continue to do so I'm a copious note taker I can tell you everything you spoke about I can tell how many speakers we had um have you seen just by this meeting how many things we get thrown at us if I don't take notes and maybe other people's memories are better then when you call me next week and ask me a question about it I'm not going to remember so I'm a copious note taker so if you eve

» r see me looking down also using my phone like here's the zldr I keep up because you can control f and find things so um I do agree everyone should be paid attention to but you will often see me looking down because um I've learned as an attorney that I try to be uh I try to double check you know measure twice cut once sort of thing so I always want to make sure I'm real clear on an ordinance or a statute when I talk about it um but I do appreciate and I agree with your comments that we should be respectful to folks um the other things that I wanted to mention is to the members up here we've obviously had some you know shifts in the last couple of months and we're going into this crazy you know budget season which is always uh difficult for any number of reasons with everything we have goin

» g on and I just want to say to each of the fellow members up here you know uh chairman jones I mean you've been as always lead these meetings uh tight without any fat um you know obviously you're you're you're a principled man I mean you know for example anytime anything comes up here involving anything you have an interest in you always recuse yourself and that's something that I mean you've been above board on that ever since the two years I've been here um Mr. Tomlinson obviously is uh great with these energy issues uh he's educated me a lot on the solar stuff and obviously brings a passion to his to his district uh Mr.

» Cato of course uh is you know his honor knows no bounds and he fights hard in a way for the north crucial area that I haven't seen anyone uh in a long time on council and in fact I think it's pretty safe to say that the stuff that's been approved has a different sort of it's in a different bubble again it's only shortly short-lived but I can tell you that I think based on Danny's very strong advocacy of I don't think anybody up here would support a solar farm in district six if Danny did not again Councilman Tucker is our institutionalist and he was always a good uh person to lean on for the rules and for the historical sort of record of council and a great finance chairman and Councilman Brazile is one of my favorite people on council to debate with I feel like and I think you would agree

» with me you learn nothing by talking to people that think just like you and we've gotten some really great things done through those discussions so every single one of you gentlemen up here massively appreciative I've learned so much look forward to several more years uh doing this with you and I know that everyone here has Kershaw County's best interest at heart and lastly congratulate congratulations to the high school graduates as we said earlier particularly golfers in high school they got rained out and then had to go back Saturday because they have their auditorium is being repaired so appreciate all the citizens of Lugoff and Elgin sort of being understanding and doing the double they had the rain out and then fortunately didn't get a second rain out so congratulations all those grad

» uates and hopefully we can do some good work up here and give them places and jobs to come back to so that's all I have thank you Mr. Tucker thank you Miss Shewett Miss Tucker thank you Mr. Vice Chair um I want to say too to all the graduates of Kershaw County Schools uh Canada Military Academy North Central Camden High and Lugoff Elgin um congratulations and um as the young lady the Reverend Dr. Renee can't remember last name Brown I think it was I stated that that's one big milestone of achievement that you don't get an opportunity to redo so I can remember mine some couple weeks ago when I walked across no lord forgive me for that lie um but I remember mine when I walked across the stage and it's a very exciting time I want to say to um to Mr.

» Templer and staff thank you thank you for being courageous as Councilman Brausel had stated for fighting for your people and I say that in a very supportive loving way um because I'm gonna tell you right now if you don't fight who's gonna fight we stand behind you but if you don't fight how can we fight so appreciate that um I thank your staff I know we the finance committee has put y'all through some ringers and um Tyler we're gonna tighten you up no vacation next year until budget season's over uh you're a bright young man and you know your stuff Councilman Brausel and I was sitting here talking as he was throwing numbers and talking to you you were rattling off just like you had it all programmed in you and uh that's good to see um I want to ask that um on the third reading that we have

» all the numbers worked out for the sheriff so we can assign his millage and make sure we get those numbers straight and we'll be in discussion sheriff with the finance committee finance committee we'll have a couple more meetings before third reading so we will make that a public announcement date time and place that has to happen Mr. Tucker thank you yes sir so um and all of y'all is always a welcome um I want to thank too um Mr.

» Cato uh for for digging in and finding out um what was the budget all about things you liked and didn't like um that means a lot um and voicing your opinion to the finance committee I want to thank Councilman Russell Brausel because um he was willing to compromise and he came up with some good ideas and he shared them with us um but he was not being um what's the word I'm very forceful tonight on what he felt in his gut the way things were headed and I appreciate that because you don't have to fight every battle or win every battle but you do have to be able to compromise and get along so thank you Councilman Brausel um can we make sure Miss Hannah that the millage is on next um meetings agenda so we can take second reading of the millage and um I want to say to this finance committee these

» two young gentlemen to my left and I can call them young because I'm like Mr. Jones not quite there yet but I'm coming I'm in my prime I know you are and I'm prime plus right um with that um I've couldn't have if I handpicked you choose two more knowledgeable willing committed gentlemen or ladies um you speak your mind you you stand your ground but at the same time you're always willing to listen to other people ideas and work with all of us up here and um having that makes things a lot easier when you're trying to put things together for the citizens so thanks this will be over um at the end of June and I'll look forward to the little break before we get started again for the the next budget because you know you don't get a lot of breaks in between and um that concludes my report thank you

» Mr. Chair thank you Mr. Brausel yeah so I'm just gonna say it once I love all you guys I'm not gonna go one by one but with an abundance of respect for each and every one of you I shared some ideas I didn't feel like they were going anywhere so I left them where they were and that's in my folder um sheriff I want you to know in public estate that I support your sheriff's department um but I promised the people when I ran that I would not raise taxes and I won't stay true to my word to the people that voted for me um had it had it been a a shift in monies to the sheriff's department I had ideas I can show them to you in private if you'd like to see them um I went in to my office last Saturday morning um and and spent about three hours writing an amendment that I did not share tonight that wo

» uld have given you three quarters of a million dollars out of our budget with no no increase you sure did but I wasn't going to waive that in front of my fellow councilman's face tonight because I felt like I knew where the vote was going and and I'm okay with that too and um at the end of the day we're here to do what's best for Kershaw County Danny seriously very proud of you and and being being brave and um asking for what you did sorry I couldn't support it but um I I'm not apologizing for uh standing my ground and staying true to my my word for the taxpayer Kershaw County as well so I'm proud to to to be that person and that was a promise I made so anyhow with all that being said I regretful to to announce that a friend of mine passed away today Mr.

» Harry Barker he was a banker and a good friend to a lot of people out for center in in Camden and Kershaw County he he went on to be with the Lord today so y'all remember his him and his family tonight but um that's all I have thank you thank you so much Mr. Braswell and I just want to echo to Harry Barker was a friend of mine when I visited many times at his house on Littleton and uh he knew he knew he was dying he knew was and he did it with dignity he was a good man he helped my daughter many years ago when she was going through a difficult time he helped her get her head together on her finances and things like that and he had helped some other people as well that um had some addiction problems you know guys this life is short we're not going to five minutes five days five years or what

» ever so I think we need just always keep that in our mind and how we treat people that's I think it's what's made me such a gentle warm kind person let me just say this housing Mr. Shoemake Mr. Braswell all of you guys to stay on let's keep moving I look forward to Mr. Shoemake's next proposal on whatever he brings before us so keep that up you're doing a great job sheriff you're the best sheriff around man you do a great job I said you do a great job and I appreciate it and I publicly support you maybe not financially all the time but as far as an individual I do and I want to say something about some some of the speakers got it I really enjoy this lady here what she got up and said she made me look at her and pay attention and I appreciate that and and I do understand that Shoemake's comi

» c because that does have it now I'm not as advanced as he is so I'll be able to look at you straighten your face and you talk to us okay because I don't write well anyway but uh thank you ma'am thank you so much now have you said that uh I don't have anything else but I do know we do have a administrative briefing and Mr.

» Templer this time I'd like to turn it over to you if you'd be brief with it too please because it's kind of the same well it's kind of same stuff we talk about every meeting sure so I'll put the brief in briefing boat ramp survey completed on site oh I'm sorry the the surveys completed uh the engineers were on site and they were looking at the old dock that we had on the other side of the the bridge to make sure that that can be incorporated in the new design as a cost savings measure sewer system is still in the permitting and design phase um rec commission met for woodward park uh they made some adjustments to the design so I'm going to look over those to make sure it's still maintaining the spirit in which that that project was supposed to evolve through the turn lane that dot is mandati

» ng out there for chestnut ferry on highway one is still going to it's going to be a challenge so I do commend a few members of the rec commission for looking into and coming up with some ideas for some options that will reduce some of the costs there they were savvy enough and had talked about ctc funds and things of that matter I'd also like to just say you know I'm very proud of of staff and finance and administration and throughout the organization for their work on this budget we we take a lot of feedback from department heads is this this process has started a long time ago and it culminates in third reading so a lot goes into it and when I said this budget is a living breathing document until it is finalized in third reading that they're that's very true a lot goes on a lot will conti

» nue to go on and then we end up with the budget that we we can live off of for the next fiscal year so I appreciate everybody's work up on the dais Russell I know where you stand you and I talk often and that's and and several of y'all I know the weight of of your decision because you know we're talking about funding sheriff's office and and doing these things and that that tends to put you in a pickle so I appreciate the weight and gravity of y'all's decision I would never come forward and ask for something that I took lightly that y'all would have to take with with a a great measure of pondering and decision making so but I do truly appreciate regardless of how the votes went all the work that goes in from council members on this budget process because it's not just y'all getting packets

» it's y'all asking questions sitting in on meetings scheduling meetings with department heads and it's just very active and involved and it allows y'all to make these decisions so certainly have to to thank y'all for that so and that's my report thank you Mr. Templer Mr. DeBoe is legal I have no legal briefing other than the privileged one for executive session why why don't you have a legal briefing nobody's suing us okay that's good good stuff all right he didn't say that I know you have do we have an exec do we have a motion to go into executive session Mr. Vice Chair make a motion we're going to executive session for a personnel matter and a legal matter I'll second all right motion by Mr. Tucker second by Mr.

» Gates all in favor raise your hand we're not gonna be there long folks it's unanimous let's go is there a second all right is there any way to say everybody get out okay guys one two three four we got four is there any discussion Mr. DeBose just for the record an executive session of personnel matter was oh whoa whoa take the vote to come out please yeah take a vote to come out of the executive session all in favor to come out of the executive session raise your hand it's unanimous all right now we want to it's for the record an executive session a matter of attorney and client privilege was discussed and a personnel matter no votes for taking no decisions were made very good any other any other discussion or information that being said all in favor of we out I make a motion that we adjourn

» yeah that's what I'm fixing to do I'm fixing to do that wait a minute is there a motion to adjourn is uh make a motion to adjourn Mr. Vice Chair all right that was stated by Mr. Tucker to motion and I'll pick uh Brant go ahead Brant you're gonna second it second it's second all those in favor to adjourn let it be god bless you all right hit that hammer down there Mr. Jones there we go