Full meeting transcript - February 24, 2026

» good test welcome out tonight everybody let's be called to order we welcome you to this kershaw county council meeting february 24th 2026 thanks everybody for being here we've got a couple of proclamations that i think will clear the room up a little bit earlier on in the meeting but we've been called to order let's go ahead go ahead and have an invocation uh mr cato would you say that prayer for us let us pray every father we just come to you tonight giving you thanks praise honor and glory for everything that we have dear heavenly father we just thank you for giving us opportunity to come out tonight and conduct the business of this county dear father i pray that you'd give us the wisdom the knowledge and the courage to do what's right dear heavenly father make the group the decisions tha

» t we need to make based on how you would have us make them dear heavenly father lord i lift up the ones that are sick the ones that are bereaved the ones that need your your care and your personal attention dear heavenly father i just pray that you'd put your hand upon them lord and you'd bless them heal them and give them guidance dear heavenly father i pray for this nation i pray that you would be with our leaders in washington and abroad dear heavenly father that you'd give them the the mindset to do the things that needs to be done for this nation lead god and direct us throughout this night but most importantly dear heavenly father forgive us when we fail you first in christ's name we pray amen amen if you don't mind standing we'll also have the pledge of allegiance thank you everyone

» and thank you councilman cato that brings us to the next item on the agenda adoption of the agenda do we have a motion make a motion we adopt the agenda and submit it mr chair we have a motion is there a second i'll second we have a second mr kato any discussion on the agenda saying no we'll move it to a vote all in favor of adopting the agenda raise your hand miss hannah it's unanimous for the record the agenda is adopted we have a series of two proclamations next first one was placed on by uh councilman russell brazil proclamation honoring and recognizing betsy gentry greenway is there a motion i'll make the motion for the proclamation is there a second second mr brazil yeah before thank you thank you um chairman i'd like to note that councilman tucker was interested in having his name be

» side mine in uh in offering this this proclamation so i wanted to make mention of that because i think i forgot to do that it's okay um i'd like to make a motion for this proclamation um and is the family here if if y'all like to stand and i'm going to read this proclamation allowed if the family wants to come and stand together and then we'll have a picture yeah make your motion we'll move to it we already made a motion yep yeah we made the motion all in favor of having this proclamation approved raise your hand this unanimous mr brazil go ahead all right tonight like to honor uh years of service uh through uh advertising with with an absolute um wonderful human miss betsy gentry greenway i can remember first getting back from college and anytime i needed to to have something in the paper

» before we had facebook and and all these different sorts of social media you actually had to go down to the paper and and have it listed and um miss greenway's always been there to help us and covering so many things in kershaw county for so many years it's just an honor to present and and read this proclamation whereas it has been proven and demonstrated that dedication leadership and excellent creativity is brought to life through great passions and careers and whereas it has been shown that betsy gentry greenway as she has exemplified exceptional services for 47 years with the chronicle independent the local newspaper for camden and kershaw county and surrounding areas whereas a mother and grandmother to the best a mentor to many a pillar to the chronicle independent promoting excellent

» ethical standards within advertising for businesses churches individuals and building relationships and sharing everlasting memories all over the communities within camden kershaw county south carolina and beyond will always remain memorable now therefore this 24th day of february 2026 kershaw county council presents and honors miss betsy gentry greenway for her hard work commitment and dedication to a local profession which will be one hard act to follow betsy gentry greenway has set standards very high for the next with that i offer the proclamation we've already voted in favor unanimously the proclamation is approved would uh betsy would you like to say anything at all before we come up and have you get a picture just speaking to the mic up here so we can hear you if you don't mind i thi

» nk we owe her a round of applause first uh it has been my honor and pleasure to have worked for 44 years with camden media in the last three years with paxton media um it i never i never ever got up in the morning and said i hated to go to work it was always a pleasure my relationships um the relationships the endorsements um the trust that the advertisers placed with me meant so much um it is um it is it is with great honor and i'm very humbled to have this proclamation thank you all right thank you betsy if you don't mind just waiting at the mic council members might have just a few comments for you i said if you don't mind just waiting at the mic um council members might have just a few comments for you mr jones go ahead i want to go first betsy we go back a long way jammy we have we hav

» e and i tell you remember the great old days i would come in the chronicle independent she tried to sell me an ad i was trying to get one for free and i ended up paying for it betsy you've been you're a pillar of this community and i tell you what i'm very proud of you and i'm very proud to be a part of this and i'm proud to put my signature on your proclamation well deserved job well done thank you very much jamie thank you mr jones council members any other uh discussion come mr tucker yes uh thank you mr chairman mr greenway because i don't know you by betsy because you've been ms greenway all my life um i know you as sammy yes go back a long way we lack cadillac seats we go way back with that being said i want to say thank you too for your hard work dedication and just passion to this c

» ounty to the surrounding community because you did work in jason counties as well when the paper was going out and about um but i also want to say thank you to your family uh for supporting you during these times because um as it was stated earlier there was no i think mr brazil said it there was no social media so there was a lot of traveling a lot of late phone calls that you had to give up time with your family because it just wasn't like it is today where you can reach out and touch people and um you've raised uh tremendous and loving kids i'm seeing one over there standing up against the wall and uh the other one and um you've just had great support by your by your family as well and i want to thank them but i would ask that god continue to bless you and give you the things that your h

» eart desire moving forward and may you enjoy retirement but don't get too retired where you fade away keep busy thank you sammy thank you thank you mr tucker any other comments discussion council members sorry i got ahead of my skis wanting to give you this proclamation i jumped up and was running out front and the chairman had to slow me down um it's a real honor to be able to do this and um cameron couldn't keep a secret i don't think we tried to make it a surprise but he sent me a text the other day he said well the cat's out the bag i said well i guess that's okay but cameron and i've been friends for a long time um just now getting the pleasure of meeting your other sons but we've known one another on and off for a long time and it's just always been a pleasant experience so thank you

» for who you are and what you've done for our community thank you i would i would ask y'all to please support your community newspaper if you don't support it it's going to go away and we need it uh it's accountability um we we have tried the the best we could do it's only three of us now at the chronicle uh and now i just left so tom and martin they do a great job please support your community newspaper i can't believe they do what they do with that small staff that's amazing thank you miss bestie thank you mr browns any other comments or discussion uh miss betsy you've sold me many a ad thank you thank you for that i'm glad to support but i want to hopefully bring one thing full circle on how important you are to the community if you look at the front page at least of the most recent addit

» ion that i've received um stova wrestlers being recognized for their outstanding achievements and so that's right here on the front page and it has a whole story about some of the things we're going to talk about here many of these youth and parents and coaches tonight are with the stova wrestling team and so we thank you for covering that and getting that information out to the community it's very newsworthy thank you so much now we've got to ask martin to make sure that we get this photograph on the front page of the next front page martin miss betsy if your family could come right up front and we'll present you with the proclamation one of her children want to say something y'all welcome say something if you want to y'all can come on up front betsy right through that little door right th

» ere get right in the middle you can still say it i don't think many of her thank you miss betsy and the greenway family very grateful for that council members that brings us to the next item on the agenda it's another proclamation i placed on item number 5b i make a motion that we approve this proclamation honoring the stover middle school wrestling team state champions is there a second i'll second we have a a second i don't really have much discussion i'll just bring it to a vote you've seen it it's in the packet and then i'll talk about it all in favor it passes unanimously miss hannah the proclamation is approved i just want to share before um we have maybe some of the team if they can fit up here come up how impressive it is that they're a multi-time uh team state championship team i'v

» e lived it it is extremely difficult to excel in wrestling we've got some folks who've come through the stover wrestling program that competed at the high school level now will be going on to college they're sitting in this room it's such a great example because it lets younger kids know that they can achieve great things from kershaw county i just want to mention a few of the high points in the proclamation they had a 16-1 dual record some of the individual outstanding recognitions i want to mention are madeline ross girl state champion most outstanding wrestler gavin rush state champion dalton henson state champion and matthew moore is the finalist finishing in second place the coaches coach lorenzo mcgee coach elijah mcgee coach robbie henson and i'm going to individually name the team m

» embers before i have you all stand up to a round of applause the team members matthew moore madeline ross ben mccardle emery green wyatt perry sean dilker jaden pina dalton henson chance lowe matthew garcia gavin rush austin graham jayla gonzalez melissa palo blanco connor moore hunter griggs carter parrot sierra blackman and michael rogers if i could get the coaches and the wrestlers to stand up please let's give them a hand now before y'all come up for a picture i'm not trying to disrespect anybody else's sport at all but the joke we had and we always thought it was true is wrestling uses every other sport to warm up and then we go compete i've kind of found that to be true we also thought it was true that once you compete in spandex in front of large groups of people not much else can bo

» ther you in life that's true i've also found that to be true wrestling reveals so much about you individually and we also have coach ted monroe here tonight who's coached many he's a legend and we'll be we'll be looking at uh these wrestlers coming up into the high school program we beat east side didn't we coach and now we gotta now we gotta overcome fort mill before we have them come up i'll have council members any discussion or commentary mr tucker yeah thank you i'll give you my brief experience with wrestling i'm a baseball player by trade in the family um i went and wrestled for camden high as a freshman the young man pent me and i think my face on the left side came off i was done with wrestling that is a sport that i um i've always admired people that do it and um it takes talent s

» trength commitment and determination uh to do that because it's hard when someone's got you balled up in a knot to fight your way back out and when you're uh when you match um i will say this since you guys and ladies i have to make sure i include that because this was impressive to me to see those names on the list um you're the antidote even though you're going down in class next year to these bigger schools that want to um take on look off elgin high school and wrestling so these championships will not be left at the middle school level as y'all transition up into your classes um i expect to see you back in front of us being awarded more proclamations and congratulations as the years to come but stay grounded keeping your education and know that you've got a bright future thank you thank

» you mr tucker mr shumate yeah so again congratulations i'm also a baseball dad uh but i mean all all of you who compete you'll find as you get older it's going to be invaluable uh as you pursue your adult endeavors i wrestled for approximately three to four weeks yeah i had an opportunity to be a newspaper editor and i told coach wash that i had had this opportunity he asked me if i could write a sentence and when i told him yes he told me i was already a better editor than i will ever be a wrestler that's a true story i confirmed and uh so i went to the newspaper business so uh congratulations guys that's awesome mr chairman thank you councilman uh mr jones first and then mr thompson yield mr thompson please yeah i'd too like to say congratulations that is a huge accomplishment um not only

» for stover but to the individuals um no matter where you place on the mat i had the opportunity to compete for six years um and then coached a few after that it's one of the the life lessons you learn and the struggles on the mat and practice at home getting mentally ready prepared those times when you don't think you can go anymore but you know that you have 45 seconds left in the third period those are the times that you will use when you're not competing on the mat at some point of your life you're going to take those life lessons and let them guide you wrestling's a sport that builds builds heroes and y'all are going to be heroes amen thank you congratulations thank you mr thompson mr jones thank you mr chairman well ted munro we're so proud of you you know my first of all thank you and

» we're very proud of you at stover you guys you have earned this you deserve it my son wrestled for six years i was going to write a book on how to get pinned in five seconds because he got pinned in five seconds but you know what he did he never quit and he ended up using those life skills that uh council shumate just talked about carrying with him you know you were a marine i'm sure being a wrestler helped you get through that marine basic all four hours the bottom line is the the skills that you learn you will carry with you the rest of your life and i'm so proud to be able to put my name on this and mr cannell thank you for putting this on the agenda thank you mr jones any other uh comments or discussion from council members mr brazil surely i don't want to be the only one not to congrat

» ulate you um get my wife actually taught at stover for a year so um we we had a couple of little cookouts and whatnot it's been a decade or so ago but um very proud of you excited for you i too had a very short stint in uh in wrestling mine lasted one practice um and it was coach walsh as well because i was just a year ahead of derrick and he didn't have to tell me that i wasn't gonna like it i crawled up underneath the uh the mats and that was the first day they put us up underneath the mats and this is probably illegal now and cut the temperature up to 90 degrees and i said anybody that wants me to do this i don't think i can handle it so i didn't come back for the second day so yeah you guys are tough and i want the three biggest ones of you to take on chairman connell i think that's fai

» r i'm good for about two minutes if it's we can we can have that display now on a photo session right here and mr chairman on your behalf if i may you know how wonderful is it we have a three what national champion three times i did okay six times i know the number gets larger but we're proud of you too sir thank you thanks i just want to congratulate you all i i'm big on these proclamations for our young people um excelling in whatever it is they do but i never wrestled we didn't have it when i was in school the only wrestling we did was in the backyard with the neighbors and the cousins so but i i thank each and every one of you for for sticking with it and and and you know it takes a lot of commitment and dedication in any sport to excel the way y'all have so congratulations i just want

» to make note that the red-headed young man raised his hand to accept the challenge to wrestle chairman connell he is a dangerous one i know him personally um thank you very much mr cato as a last piece of advice i'll just share that and this is really a shout out to the parents my mom did it with five boys who were multiple times state champions each one of them and i i just my my hat and heart and wallet goes out to you because i know it takes a lot to get these boys to the matches make sure they get all the practices make sure they're hitting weight make sure they're staying healthy but it will pay off in droves with the lessons that they learn in life four o'clock in the morning chairman and their nerves while you're while your kid's wrestling on the mat that's right yeah wrestling moms

» especially but it's really hard to beat somebody if they won't quit and so never quit as we sit here in this room throughout south carolina and throughout the nation there's a lot of athletes out there that got a mama or a daddy that care about them and they try to make sure they go to do the regular amount or the normal and expected amount of practice a lot of kids have a coach that cares about them and wants to be successful what you've got to determine if you're going to excel and rise above is what am i going to do outside of that static amount of preparation and sometimes i felt like i had to be a little bit crazy to work that hard but i did it and every time i stepped on the mat i knew that the person on the other side hadn't prepared as much as i did and they didn't deserve to win an

» d that mental edge sometimes makes all the difference in these matches so never quit and always work hard before we bring the team up coaches coach mcgee or coach mcgee or uh coach henson would you like to share anything before we bring your team up any of the coaches no okay well we're proud of you if you want to bring the team up and the coaches we're going to have you line up the same way let's give give them a hand congratulations congratulations come on through thomas in the back man i think he can take you yeah yeah he's pretty big all right y'all ready i'm about to jump on bench yes if any of y'all ever want to transfer to campus y'all are welcome to we'll get you everything we got a thing going on we got absolutely yes take a handful of hey the season's over with y'all get what you

» want now that was good stuff chairman thank you mr jones everyone you're welcome to stay but obviously feel free to take off and clear out you don't have to stay for the rest of the meeting if you don't want to mr rush good to see you glad to see you wrestling the college take care we're watching you all right gentlemen that puts us back on the agenda give me just a second mr chair so the background noise here let me know when you're ready you gotta get a t right no i just can't hear when he's thank you mr chairman yes sir mr tucker i think we got most everybody that needs to clear out clear it out gentlemen that puts us on the public comments mr dubose do we have anyone signed up yes mr chair five speakers are signed up for public comment all right uh i'll just mention before we get starte

» d public comment is the time for council to hear from the public it's not question and answer we're interested to hear uh what you have tonight and we usually set aside 30 minutes um but we're glad to hear from each person you'll see a little clock ticking down for the time so everybody has a fair amount of time to share who's our first speaker mr vose first speaker is lee reed the subject is ems mr reed i was going to mention often um if if you're all sharing the same message however many people it is it's efficient if one person can share it otherwise i guess we'll hear it four or five times which is okay too okay so who's up first what's your name and we have her signed up mr dubose yes great miss noel uh here's a copy of what i'm gonna be reading they would like a copy okay and good eve

» ning thanks for having us tonight uh before i start everybody from the liberty hill area raise your hand this is how many is here for this subject that we're talking ems ems okay that's i was gonna ask what's the subject ems thank you like i said my name is ann i live on 2490 cottage lane in liberty hill south carolina on january the 18th i experienced one of the most terrifying moments of my life my husband was having a medical emergency and i did what we are all told to do i called 911 the dispatcher took my information and then told me they had to take another call and hung up i was left alone frightened not knowing if my husband was going to survive and when no one on the other end of the end of the line to guide me the first responders first responders did not arrive approximately 40 m

» inutes after the phone call the ambulance arrived 45 minutes after initial phone call 45 minutes may not sound long in a meeting room like this but when you're watching someone you love struggle when you are scared you may lose them 45 minutes feels like a lifetime we trust that when we call for help help help is coming quickly we trust that the system meant to protect us will show up when it is most needed that trust was shaking in me that day this is not just about my family this is about every resident in this community if this happened to us it could happen to anyone what if the outcome had been worse what if the next time is someone's spouse child or parent like what i dealt with i am here asking for accountability i'm asking for transparency i'm asking for a change what went wrong wha

» t is being done to make sure families are not waiting 45 minutes for our medical services because 45 minutes is not acceptable for anywhere thank you thank you for coming out tonight yes ma'am uh mr abode sounds like we have some variation who is speaking next you defer to the next person yes ma'am what's your name miss crimminger same topic right yes okay yes ma'am my husband and i are homeowners and business owners on the camden side of lake watery as both the concern that we have in regards i'm sorry just one minute could we get whatever noises outside could we get them to quiet down so we could hear you better russell i think they can wrestle better than you bud well i i want to be very respectful and intent and my opportunity to hear what she has to say thank you as both business owner

» s and homeowners concern that we have in regard to emergency response times extremely concerns us as it does all of our neighbors while we do not own the most expensive home or as we are just starting our business the most profitable business on the lake we both feel the response times for emergencies are excessive and unnecessarily long therefore loss of life and property loss are at a very high risk of happening if someone to have able to have a stroke or a heart attack they would not survive these response times if they did they would not have a very good chance of resuming their former lives if a fire occurs property loss would be total which is frightening to us on both counts with the interest is interest we have on the lake we were told at our meeting last week that fire and ambulanc

» e stations are set up by the amount of calls that come in this is not a long-sighted view in my opinion the decisions where to put a fire ambulance station should be by population numbers and in the past 10 years the population around the lake both sides has grown this has changed especially since the pandemic most of these homes homes 10 years ago were fish camps or vacation homes the more year-round people on the lake not to mention the people that live in the area not on the lake and as citizens of kershaw county and taxpayers we have the right to enjoy the same services in people that people do in more populated areas as our county council and i know you represent people in your immediate area you should have the best interest of all the kershaw county citizens not just camden blue golf

» or elgin because they have the most people i'm sure you all have heard the phase food desert meaning no grocery store closer than 20 minutes we live in an emergency services desert counties and municipalities try to help people in food deserts we need our emergency services desert help we all step up to the plate and show our end of the county that you care about us as citizens also thank you gentlemen thank you for coming out miss criminger appreciate it mr hubbard on list same topic mr hubbard yes yes sir so in august of 21 i moved to lake watery i live on harbor view road i'm a business owner in lancaster county i live full time at the lake i had an experience myself in 2024 august 17th of 2024 2 a.m in the morning i woke up with a severe case of diverticulitis um the resident at the hos

» pital told me an hour longer i'd probably have a bag on the side of my hip for the rest of my life it took 36 minutes for the ambulance to arrive after my wife made the phone call she was also bedridden because she had had a knee replacement a week prior so we were totally handicapped my household had no mobility whatsoever um i just wanted to get up and share my experience okay thank you guys thank you for for coming out mr hubbard appreciate that that uh was number three i believe who's number four right mr number four would be mr lee reed mr reed yes sir thank you chairman and members of the council my name is lee reed my wife and i live off of singleton creek road and sunset point we are now full-time residents three years in liberty hill before i begin my prepared comments i want to sh

» are some recent research that i feel relevant to my prepared comments on behalf of liberty hill i'm going to skip some of it but i'm going to go down to first of all the kershaw county council fiscal year 2026 budget retreat minutes february 13 2026 priorities in order of listing recreation 10 separate and individual focused bullets number two zoning and land development jail economic development stormwater employee pay homestead exemption boat tax family court grant rider recycle center ems specifically ems station the addition upgrades in baron dekalb and westville drop boxes sheriff's office east airport lake watery in other words ems ranks 12th out of 16 15 or 16 priorities putting us putting ems in the bottom 25 of priority items identified at the budget retreat 11 days ago some additi

» onal research from online distance calculator estimates on the ems is in hershaw county bethune ems 22 to 24 miles 30 to 36 minutes camden ems 24 to 27 miles 34 to 40 minutes blue golf ems 28 plus miles 38 to 45 minutes elgin ems 30 to 45 miles 40 to 48 minutes ems 2 and sumter 24 to 27 miles 32 to 36 minutes conclusion of that that makes 30 to 40 minute responses structurally predictable unless resources are staged closer that's my background comments my prepared comments are simple relative to what we're asking of you i'm following up from our recent community meeting in liberty hill last week that was attended by councilman brazil councilman jones the sheriff our head of kershaw county ems and other representatives from kershaw during our meeting attended by 75 plus local residents a sig

» nificant portion of our entire population the primary concern was regarding ems service ems leadership acknowledged the response time to our rural service zone may average 30 plus minutes 30 minutes anecdotal feedback from local residents and with personal experience as they shared tonight confirmed that to be the case i think well ems leadership further indicated last week that kershaw county ems response time goal is 10 to 12 minutes we understand geography presents challenges trust me i do not relish my 20 to 30 minute run to walmart food line or lowe's or to the tax office to be clear my comments this evening are not a criticism of ems or any other county service provider liberty hill residents have a great appreciation for all kershaw county first responders and that was clear clearly

» evident last week at liberty hill community center as well as the polar plunge for special olympics at beaver's den the weekend before our concern is system performance and resource allocation especially during this budget process specifically around ems fire traffic control 97 in and around what i will call the greater liberty hill area but for now i want to return to our primary concern emt as council begins your budget deliberations we respectfully request measurable performance transparency specific to our zone we request clarification on the following four questions in particular what percentage of ems calls in our zone are reached within 15 minutes what is the 90th percentile response time in our zone has a formal ems deployment or coverage study been conducted in our area what fundin

» g operations options exist to improve response times including potential co-location of ems resources at the existing fire substation we also respectfully request that county council direct staff to present a zone level ems performance review along with budget alternatives prior to form final adoption of this year's budget and the council would have the staff present that report prior to the second reading of the budget scheduled for may 26th simply put we're asking for transparency and evaluation not promises this evening so that reasonable access to timely emergency medical care can be properly considered and addressed as a part of the current budgeting process we define and i think it is fair and universally acceptable definition that reasonable access to medical care means access to med

» ical care within a medically survivable window cardiac arrest survival drops drastically after eight to ten minutes stroke treatment windows narrow very rapidly timely trauma treatment is critical for both life and non-life threatening debilitating injuries to conclude we're not proposing a specific operational solution tonight we are requesting data transparency and evaluation of logistics and funding options within the budget process we understand that rural areas are different that is why we're requesting measurable zone specific performance data and evaluation of improvement options we understand that funding is limited that is why we believe this discussion belongs in the current budget process so council can evaluate costs and priorities with clear performance data to appropriately pr

» ioritize our limited resources thank you thank you mr reed and um mr boz i think we had one more signed up is that correct just to show my last the orange are where ems stations are the green is where we are yes sir mr jenry could we get a copy of this comments so we have a copy of your comments one of the council members requested perhaps you could email them over um if you want to send a digital copy okay great if you'd send them to miss hannah at council she'll proliferate it to the council mr dubose final speaker is melody harden uh the subject is pecan orchard miss harden yes ma'am good evening as many of you know my name is melody harden i live at 412 blackberry place in the pecan orchard i'm speaking again tonight about the stormwater drainage issue in our neighborhood after the fina

» nce committee meeting today i wanted to ask county council to come to a solution or compromise to address our issue with the stormwater at this point there aren't enough funds to begin phase one i'm requesting council to help consider all options and grants to fund work that needs to be completed if funds can't be obtained to complete phase one i would like county to consider other options to help with our drainage issues secondly i again would like to get the county to start maintaining our roads this issue came to a head two years ago when many of us brought drainage water and sewage issues to the county's attention at that time we requested this to be done as of today nothing really has been done besides scraping our roads which typically makes the roads worse the ditches of gravel are f

» illed with gravel leaves limbs debris and dirt from the road the maintenance of our roads doesn't solve our problem but it helps with drainage we believe there are many practical solutions that can temporarily help that won't cause more damage and can't make things worse lastly i would like to request another visit to our neighborhood i know many of you walked through our neighborhood about two weeks ago if the neighborhood would have known about it the visit at the time many of us would have been happy to show you our issues in the neighborhood and on our properties again we understand this is not an easy fix and it is an expensive fit but we would again request the help of county council to help with a resolution for our neighborhood thank you yes ma'am thank you for coming out tonight mr

» dubose does that conclude public comment correct thank you everyone for coming out tonight and for those who were asked to provide your comments if you again just email them to miss hannah parlor she's the clerk to council and she'll be able to share those appreciate that mr chairman if i may yes i think we have a presentation by our emergency services director mr will glover and shortly after the approval of minutes we will have a discussion that i think everyone from liberty hill would be encouraged to stay and listen to it'll give it'll give me and others an opportunity to speak on some thoughts and ideas so i wanted to share that with y'all so everybody didn't get up and leave and miss out on it okay thank you mr brazil um gentleman that puts us back on the agenda item number 7a public

» presentations forest fires causes and present prevention as you know we recently had a forest fire which could have been extremely significant we've got mr glover here tonight make a motion that we have this public presentation is there a second we have a second any discussion on the public presentation seeing none we'll move it to a vote all in favor miss hennett on public presentation mr glover yes sir chairman members council thank you for uh inviting us up to talk about uh wildfire wildfire season is coming up the spring typically is is when we have a influx of fires although this year for some reason we've already had an uptick so it's a good presentation that we can put out i want to highlight the the efforts that we had on ivy bush fire on valentine's day a lot of the gentlemen stand

» ing behind me from the fire service helped you know make sure that fire didn't grow more than what it did so they put in a lot of work so i want to make sure that they're recognized for the work that they did so this was valentine's day we'll go through a fire and then we'll talk about how to prevent fires in in just a minute so yes sir oh the just to highlight the responding units i'm not going to read every single one of them but you can see we we dumped a large amount of resources on this fire from kershaw county fire service our automatic aid agreement with camden fire of course provided us with with some units lugaw fire sent something a brush truck over kershaw ems provided medical standby in case something happened to one of our firefighters or a resident in the area and then also th

» e sheriff's department sent a lot of deputies in case we had to start evacuating homes and also to shut the road down because smoke was blown so so far over it so a lot of units responded to this fire from inside the county and then our partnerships outside of the county lee county sumter county of course black river electric was there lancaster fire department sent assets alligator fire department in chesterfield and then south carolina forestry commission our regional supervisors here tonight mr colby blizzard so you know want to give them recognition they had three bulldozers a plane and three command officers from their area to work in hand in hand with our people so a huge response uh when you get this many people coming to a fire and operating on a fire it's a logistical nightmare of

» trying to keep up with everybody and make sure we're sending them to the right place so kudos to our people who uh who did that just to hash out the call real quick um one of our volunteers actually lives right next to this place so he stepped out of his door and he was on scene really fast so one of the quickest response times that we can have to the fire but um call was received at 1320 he was there he estimated the fire at five acres at 1328 1329 multiple homes on bluff road started calling about the fire getting close to their resident first engine was on scene 1332 another phone call about a house threatened on holland another phone call about a house threatened on shiraw and then it jumped holland road at 1404 so it expanded very quickly wind conditions pushed this fire humidity level

» s were low so it allowed the fire to burn very quickly and very fast in a certain direction where the wind was blowing uh at 14 14 we started notifying residents around park and holland to evacuate in certain areas in case we couldn't uh get ahead of it and stop it and then you know three hours later it was 100 contained so something that started from you know an outside burning that quickly jumped to five acres to 10 to 20 to 30 to 40 uh all the units working together hand in hand was able to get the fire under control you know in a couple hours which i think speaks to the our team so overall 55 acres burned we did lose seven structures they were all classified as abandoned abandoned mobile homes or our sheds in the woods there was one house that was burned but it had been abandoned and ov

» ergrown with vegetation but we saved 14 structures that people lived in i think that's the thing to highlight we were able to to get our resources in place and save those and i got a map later on of where those houses were we called extra resources immediately we're able to communicate with all the agencies that came in to this fire simply because of our radio system that we bought into that that y'all helped provide funding for we we've established a drone operation here recently and that we can get it up in the air and see where the fire is running a whole lot faster than we can by foot or by vehicle so that helped us out tremendously and and dispatch was calling all the resources uh they turned the call over quickly um so they did a really good job of keeping everybody up to date of wher

» e everybody was so just a couple pictures i'm sure y'all saw some stuff on facebook i sent a text message out to some of the firefighters and i was like hey did y'all have any fire or any pictures of this fire and they're like no we didn't have time so i had to go steal pictures from other other places to try to try to put them on here but just a couple quick pictures we'll run through really quick we were able to save some of the cows in the community um and you can see that that car on the left hand side it's a it's a sheriff's deputy from another county the fire was running up on them and the bulldozer actually just cut a break around the house and the car to keep the the car from burning so quick quick uh actions on the bulldozer save the say the vehicle also sure appreciate that yeah e

» xactly uh on the right hand side is kind of a map of the area after we got it under control they walked it with a with an app to to lay it out to show us exactly how many acres it was at one point the the airplane from forestry was showing that it was 75 acres but then we were able to fine tune that down a little bit to 55.

» this is drone pictures after the fact you can see where it jumped one road it jumped the power lines of course and it was it was moving pretty quick there so it got a little hairy for some of our people you know for a little while but they were able to get it under control this is the picture i really want to highlight somewhere around you know in between 13 12 and 14 that was kind of the origin of the fire correct me if i'm wrong but we count the houses that we were able to to protect and save from this so you know 14 homes that people lived in you can kind of see the cluster in between four and nine in that area that's where a lot of abandoned mobile homes were and we just weren't able to save those but the other ones occupiable houses able to to save on those not to mention i want to thr

» ow this in here at the same time this fire was going on we had already been toned out to a fire on timber creek road so we had units operating there this fire came out then we got toned automatic aid to camden for a fire in a fireplace that was toned out as a structure fire to start with then we had a three acre woods fire on bishopville highway then we had an eight to ten acre woods fire on jones road then we were dispatched to a woods fire on salem acres road and another fire on gary golf which is across the river so all at the same time we had these other calls coming out our mutual aid partners helped us with several of these fires because we had all our units tied up on on the one big fire so it wasn't just this one on that day typically when we have one big fire and the humidity's low

» when the wind's high we start getting them all over the county uh in 2025 kershaw county fire service responded to 94 outside fires with 79 threatened as of 2020 when we uh started this present making this presentation we had already responded to 72 outside fires with 24 threatening structures three of which actually damaged structures so we had 95 total under 94 total in 2025 we've already gone to 72 right now so and and technically grass fire woods fire season hadn't started yet so just the temperature the humidity and the wind has has been brewing so this is a really good presentation to put out and and maybe some quick tips on how to how to prevent some of these and uh south carolina outdoor burning this is all from the south carolina forestry website debris burning uh any planned fire

» that escapes falls into this category it accounts for 50 percent of the fires that we go to across the state um actually uh 25 to 30 30 percent classified as uh arson woods arson meaning somebody else lit the fire and it crossed onto somebody else's property or they maliciously you know started the fire themselves equipment use five percent smoking three to four percent and then children is three to five percent so some quick statistics of of why these fires happen so outdoor burning tips and i've got some pamphlets that forestry brought up here think before you burn we can give these out if you need more i'm sure colby we'll get us some more but state law requires that citizens notify the forestry commission before any outdoor burning so you can do that online at the website listed here sc

» ffs scfc.gov notify or by phone 1-800-705-8609 you simply give them your address what you're planning on doing today and and it counts as your burn permit and it lets us know that somebody's doing a control burn in the area the other thing the forestry commission and we push is think burn so be prepared understand the laws about burning respect the weather and never leave your fire unattended and we'll go into this a little bit more so what does being prepared mean keep hand tools and water supply close do you have enough time to remain with the fire a lot of the fires that we go to that get away from people they they simply say look i stepped inside for a minute i came back out and the whole world was on fire so you know you can't run to walmart you can't run to the store to grab something

» you got to stay with the fire the whole time if you have one large pile can you divide it up into smaller piles to make it more manageable for yourself make sure you create a good break around the pile and don't burn near homes or other structures you would think that would be a given but a lot of times we have a you know somebody sets a pile of leaves on fire 10 15 feet from a house the wind changes it goes towards the house and they have it they have an issue so quick tips there on being prepared the laws about burning i'm not going to read the section number but it's on there starting fires in woodlands grasslands and other places shall be unlawful unless certain precautions are taken those precautions include notifying the forestry commission we already talked about that clearing the ar

» ea around the site assuring adequate personnel and equipment are available to keep the fire from spreading and making sure the fire is under control before leaving so fires out no hot spots no anything another section of code states that negligently allowing fire to spread to lands of other or other property if your fire escapes you will be fined if any damaged property you will be liable it is also against the law to burn household garbage and trash tires chemicals plastics and other building materials anywhere in south carolina so just yard debris is all that's supposed to be burned we go to a lot of homes where they're burning household trash in the in the yard that's a that's not what we want it's just outside yard debris and and forestry commission tries to stay on top of it to the bes

» t of their ability weather's a huge thing you heard me say wind speed and humidity a couple times already check the daily weather forecast how long has it been since the last rainfall we had a decent amount of rain but then the humidity dropped and the wind speed came up that dries things out very quickly and and makes it for a very volatile fire environment whenever we're burning outside it's safer to burn a few days after a soaking rain or when the humidity is higher than 30.

» i would like to see the humidity higher than that you know anything anytime the wind speed and humidity gets close together that's when you start having a bad day are there going to be any higher gusty winds wind causes branches leaves pine needles to dry out quick a debris fire will burn more intensely when it's windy of course and gusty winds can blow sparks into other areas even past your break so make sure that we we pay attention to how fast the wind is going to be blowing and also what the wind direction is think about where the smoke will blow technically you're responsible for your smoke so if it blows over a road and causes a blackout situation then you're kind of responsible for that don't burn as smoke will blow into roads airports or other occupied buildings and then lastly neve

» r leave your fire watch for any flying embers or sparks pay attention to any kind of smoke drift going into other property notice changes in weather and if you're concerned about safety just go ahead and put the fire out that's that's the safest thing to do and make sure it is out before you leave so once again hammer in that home don't run to walmart and leave a fire burning in your backyard a couple things just to think about moving forward i know as we we go to look at some of our zoning code defensible space and new subdivisions if anybody heard about the ory county fires last year we actually deployed resources down there they have very little defensible space defensible space means you know short grass either either dirt rock sections or anything else a lot of those homes are built ri

» ght up against the forest are the bays in that area and it doesn't give much area for us to use as defensible space so always we got to think about that moving forward limited water sources in remote areas most of the county on the eastern side very limited water points so we have to think about that and then a lot of other counties in in the past have looked at county ordinances forestry can only do so much of enforcing and trying to keep up with the laws of burning outside burning dhek also regulates outside burning depending on what's being burned so some counties have put in ordinances to try to help you know some of these uh outside debris burning kind of kind of push that down a little bit and save some property so stuff that we can look at in the future real quick this is not a wildl

» and fire but i wanted to highlight something has anybody heard about close before you doze so close your bedroom door before you go to sleep so we had a structure fire over in elgin a couple days ago on barfield road came in just as any other structure fire our units received responded arrived on scene and they confirmed that there was a victim there the victim was rescued identified where they were pulled out of the structure within three minutes of figuring out that there was a victim there and then we were able to control the fire so kudos to our people being able to make a rescue a 14 year old individual on this one but uh the thing that i wanted to highlight is this close before your doze the left picture is uh outside of the bedroom heavy heat conditions heavy smoke conditions on the

» right side you can see a little bit of smoke stain that i think that was after the door was open you know once we got the kid or the individual out but that room is almost untouched for the most part if you close that door it gives you an extended amount of time to to get out of a residence if the house is on fire so we want to hammer that home we do social media releases and press releases but please if we can push the close before you doze uh message it it could save somebody's life so um and i wanted to highlight the the the owner of the the property said that we could use those pictures for first off and then um you know know she was thankful uh the the sun and then um i think four cats and a dog were pulled out of this this fire so just a quick um good job to our people and then also p

» ushing the the close before you doze message director glover thank you so much for the presentation and i congratulate you and thank you for the service you've done particularly with the recent wildfire that we had but yeah i wasn't aware of this one just a couple days ago um perhaps saving someone's life in elgin it sounds like along with their pets um just eyeballing the clock i'm sure we're going to have some discussion from council members i'd take a motion to extend our public presentation uh time period is there a second second yeah a second any discussion on that motion seeing none all in favor we've extended it unanimously as needed miss hannah council members any comments questions very quickly mr jones good job i was a fire for nine months it sounds like some of the wrestling back

» ground thank you mr jones it's it's all our team nine months was a lot longer than the other short stints in wrestling thank you mr jones uh any other comments questions discussion mr mr tucker um this is actually towards the administrator is there um any way that we can possibly um put some of the uh information about website and the phone number on our website so people can be able to access it a little quicker we do have it on the kershaw county fire service page right website but i can work and help them yeah we can if people like me you know who's not internet savvy or anything it savvy we might struggle to get to the fire one but if we can get up on the kershaw county one um that might be a little quicker to access and people will use it as well i'll show you how to do it you're the r

» ight teacher sending smoke signals to send a message is kind of the opposite of the idea we got we need you to modernize sammy i know and i want to say well thanks thanks for all that you and your team do and i know you probably have already done this but i'm gonna i'm gonna say it um because um if they happen to be listening to know that council appreciates the surrounding counties lancaster um lee um sumter i don't know if anybody came from richland or not but chesterfield chesterfield did they come uh for all the surrounding counties that did respond to our our emergency i want to say thanks to them and their leadership administration because that's what it takes um these fires get out of control very fast as you well know and um you know we've had this year already that i am familiar wi

» th you know one house fire we were not able to save someone which happens to be one of my church members um different circumstances but still that's the life and um you know that's a horrible way to go is in a fire wherever you awake or sleep it's just a horrible way to go but thank you and to the group thank you mr tucker council members mr chairman if i may mr brazil to uh to uh to every fireman in the room thank you thank you for your hard work your dedication your service um i had the pleasure of being at the town hall with uh with will just a what a week ago now it's probably been longer than that it seems like it was two days ago um the the amount of leadership that you exhibit and in the way you present to us and the way you respond to us is second to none will um you and i started h

» ere at kershaw county about the same time i was sworn in in january and i think you came to work in march is that right of 20 may 2021 and somewhere between the time i was sworn in and the time you were hired i had a phone call from one in particular person telling me that i needed to find out who will glover was and i said okay and this person was very adamant that you come back to kershaw county i'm so thankful that you're here um just really impressed with the way you've you're able to assist at the town hall i was impressed at your ability to communicate effectively with people in a positive manner and tonight this presentation i really appreciate what you've what you've shown us and um very familiar with the forestry service my education was in forestry and i know there's different tec

» hniques that could have been a big fire 55 acres is a big fire um but it looked like it was a lot of it was kept low and um we uh we got lucky a couple places um first of all i want to say it's not me it's the team behind me absolutely it's not here um without them i couldn't do anything so you know all the kudos goes to them i'm just i'm just here so colby and his team uh from from forestry the working relationship that we have with so many agencies now uh is is second to none uh the eight agreements that we've been able to put in place mutual and automatic aid i mean it's just it's great the way that we've been able to network and and chief bullard and his team they're continuing to move that that automatic aid and mutual aid agreement forward uh chief edge on the ems side has also been d

» oing that so it it's not me it's the team below me someone who defers to their team and gives them the recognition is a leader thank you thank you so much mr chairman thank you mr bros mr thomason yes sir thank you director um just a quick question you mentioned in the presentation um other counties have have local ordinances um could you give some examples of the type of ordinances that that they have and is there any of the surrounding counties that have ordinances yeah um richland county sumter county darlington a lot of the surrounding ones do most of them just look at the state law you know and they set a minimum requirement of you can't burn within a certain amount of feet from a house uh to just put that in in place they they re-up the um only burning yard debris and not household ga

» s uh uh household trash um so really simple things that's kind of in state law that we can we can put into an ordinance and enforce it at a local level instead of you know having to rely on on you know forestry or or des to uh to enforce it we can handle it ourselves in other words correct yeah thank you mr thompson any other comments or discussion mr kato we'll thank you again i've spent a good bit of time as a volunteer up in bethune but i i just want to i want to put this out there that y'all really need volunteers volunteers aren't as popular as they were back in the 70s 80s and 90s in the rural departments and and i know that slacked off and a lot of it has to do with so many different things families have to do at this particular day and time but you know anybody that's interested in

» volunteering i i would ask you to reach out to will and his staff i want to thank them for the job they do they they are they are amazing and they really work hard at what they do i've got a brother-in-law that's part of the forestry team and i i thank them for what they do they have saved many lives in many houses so so thank you again i just wanted to put that out there if someone wants to volunteer or is interested in helping please reach out to them because they need all the help they can get and i'll say too the volunteer system now we've tried to tailor it to where you don't have to be a interior firefighter you don't have to put an air pack on and go inside we can train you to pick up a truck drive the truck and other people will you know put the air packs on and go inside we can tra

» in you to you know emergency medical response so there's there's different avenues so if you don't want to go inside of a burning fire we may have a different option for you how long how long would that training be if you were going to be a support um depending on which way you go uh driver operator training you're looking at you know 60 hours probably of of training to get to the point of driving a truck where you can pump effectively draft water um that that sort of thing emr training is about 40 hours now i believe yep 40 hours so uh and interior firefighting is up about 150 hours of training the initial training and then you have to do annual certifications even if you're a volunteer yes yep how long does those um certifications last the the certifications are good as long as you contin

» ue to do training uh annual training requirements for for volunteers um there is somewhere per iso it's a whole lot higher we hold them to a certain standard and i believe it's changed to about four months four hours a month now or what i'm looking at the training the new training officer back right annual training for a volunteer now requirements four four to ten hours a month so councilman uh thomas and thank you for bringing that up that was going to be a point that i wanted to make that was part of our discussion i think you said it was roughly six weeks of training per year for interior firefighter you have to go about 150 hours to get the initial certification okay um i think that the to bolster our volunteer base that's probably the best suggestion right now is to find people who can

» help that wouldn't be an interior firefighter but we we need to look to our friends at the state for um ways to to bring young people in that doesn't take three and four and five weeks of training uh they can be trained at wtc is that right yeah we've got that program um that that is definitely something that we need to encourage our young people to to get involved with and kind of bolster that because it used to be when i was growing up such an honor to to be a part of something like this and um it still is it's it's just tapered off so anything that we can do to make that easier on you please let us know thank you thank you mr brows any other comments or discussion director clever you're doing an excellent job we look forward to uh doing our best to support you in the future let us know i

» f you have any ideas or what you need and it's completely appropriate to bring up something like defensible space because we're in the middle of a zero dr rewrite and smart growth committee is going to bring recommendations in thank you so much thank y'all all right gentlemen we're back on the agenda that brings us to item number 8a we have two uh sessions of minutes to approve we'll take them as two separate motions is there a motion on item number 8a this is the council regular mr chairman i'm meeting february 10 we have a motion is there a second second we have a motion and a second any discussion on the minutes for 8a seeing no discussion we'll move to a vote for approval all in favor raise your hand ms henna 8a the minutes are approved unanimously now seek a motion on item number 8b th

» is is regarding the budget retreat mr chairman i'll make a motion we have a motion is there a second thank you we have a second from mr cato any discussion on 8b mr chairman if i may yes sir um i was looking through here and um the gentleman that got up at mr reed i believe and um spoke about the minutes i just want to say for for just um clarity that there's no numbers beside those um topics intentionally because they're not in any priority so just fyi that there are things that are important to council but council has not prioritized any of that yet correct yes sir okay any other discussion on the minutes for 8b ums be number one sir no i'm good okay we'll move it to a vote then with mr jones being good all in favor raise your hand on 8b miss hannah it passes unanimously for the record ne

» xt up we have item number 9a placed on by councilman brazil emergency services is there a motion yeah i'd like to make a motion to discuss uh options for emergency services is there a second second we have a second mr brazil we have the floor thank you um i'd like to point out the fact that this was um danny kato brought this up uh during our retreat is a is a point of keen interest for him so danny thank you thank you for for for pointing out the the fact that we do have a desert a gap and we we have had things change post-covid people have uh been able to work remotely others have retired and uh these more rural communities are experiencing these issues with longer lead times and in the lake geographically divides our county and it creates these long points um everything can't can't be ju

» st lugolf just elgin just camden we have to find a way to to get these response times to will said you know the ultimate response time is 10 to 12 minutes will we get there i'm not sure does it need to be 45 minutes absolutely not it's um it's unacceptable and that town hall left me with a lot to think about and um director will glover and i have talked um through this he has ideas i have ideas and um as i was on the way home and and councilman jones attended with me and he actually rode with me and i dropped him off and we i don't know we live about 12 minutes apart and halfway back to my house i called him i said i've got an idea and i think this is going to work so i'd like to present that to everyone tonight and um i've already reached out to some of our partners um musc health resource

» s district and actually spoke councilman tucker to um the cog and there are opportunities beyond those three for partnerships in kershaw county for rural services and that certainly qualifies and and one of them is is a state level partnership and and being having served at the state house can certainly um better educate the rest of council so with all that being said i'm going to read through a letter that that will be issued uh to some of our partners and um and talk about the rural response times as soon as i put on my glasses thank you time it's already past my bedtime now this is this is something that has not come from will this is something that was that was just thoughts in my head after a town hall kershaw county rural response team so rrt for short a rural response team is a speci

» alized unit designed to address the unique challenges of low density areas that have long travel distances and limited infrastructure a reliance on volunteers and it will have to have full staffing in the case of kershaw county those areas would be beaver creek pine grove liberty hill of course all the areas around the lake casset and bethune as well although they they currently have um more stations and um ems than than these other areas i've mentioned establishing a rural response team for ems and ambulance and emergency services in kershaw county will require a structured approach that integrates with the infrastructure that we have while addressing the the challenges of the unique rural geography our mission is to align with the executive director will glover and continue to adhere to t

» he rules and regulations already in place while trying to foster better relationships through all the partners that we have to work with i'm going to ask for i think will's going to ask for two ems vehicles this year i'm going to ask for an additional four and i'm going to reach out to our partners including the cog including musc including the health resource districts and the one that i have not had time to reach out to would be a grant through the south carolina office of rural health i think that we would certainly qualify for any of these opportunities had some great conversations already um and and i've got a letter here i'm going to read it and then i'd like david are you here still we've got david adams with musc i'd like to hear from david if if he would like to speak on this subje

» ct um but here's a letter that that i've formed and i would like for it to come from council if if everyone agrees and supports uh these opportunities to to work together with state agencies i'm writing to propose a strategic collaboration between kershaw county the medical university of south carolina known as musc and the health resource district to establish three rural ems ambulance stations supported by rural response teams this initiative directly supports providing the right care in the right place at the right time by expanding physical medical presence in underserved areas specifically off highway 97 longtown road and 521 at baron dekab in order to reduce response times to the lake community as well as one of the most remote and medically sensitive areas in our county despite south

» carolina's health care advancements rural populations continue to face significant disparities in access to timely medical care the proposed ems ambulance stations staffed and supported through dedicated rrt units will serve as critical access points reducing traffic barriers while strengthening emergency response capacity and stabilizing local health care and community these rural response teams will enhance patient outcomes through faster stabilization improve community accessibility and delivery of timely treatment to individuals in need i respectfully request a preliminary meeting with the organization to further discuss the demonstrated need and urgency surrounding placement of these rural ems ambulance stations and accompanying accompanying rrt deployments throughout rural kershaw cou

» nty i look forward to your response and the opportunity to work together towards improving health care and access for our residents with kind regards i am russell brazil kershaw county council now what we've done is we've started a conversation you engaged with me and now it's my turn to engage with others and get us all to a table and work through these issues together um i certainly know that everybody here on this council supports safety and health care in our community our chairman's been a tremendous advocate and worked with musc for years um i can't say enough about each and every one that's i mean some of you guys been law enforcement these are the things i've never done i probably have the least amount of of knowledge regarding emergency services and or fire but i do know how to bui

» ld a team i do know how to put put a group together that can solve a problem and that's how i look at this is is we have a problem and we need to solve it we're going to have a funding issue the ambulances are probably a half a million dollars each more than to rehab the old structures to find temporary structures if it's nothing more than a small office and a uh in the shed for an ambulance um will where you at could i ask you back up you've got so much knowledge that i i need to borrow no i do don't be shy other than a than a full-blown ambulance what are what are the other opportunities uh as far as improving services in areas well yeah i think there was a smaller truck a medic truck or something would you call it you have qrv vehicles qrvs medic units that you know they can provide als

» advanced life care support until an ambulance arrives can they transport somebody they cannot can they can they administer life-saving medicines if someone's having a heart attack they can okay well my my short term goal is to establish those just as fast as possible um i think there at one point there was one at beaver creek years back i believe so um i don't know when that uh was pulled i think actually the late water reassociation helped fund um part of that salary so well can we find out when it went away and what we need to do to refund it i want to do that now we can do the research on that yes um and let me let me say this to everybody in the audience these men with their badges on they're doing their job this is on us this is on me i'm your representative and i'm going to take full

» responsibility and ownership uh will and i had a very deep conversation in which he says you know i really just i appreciate my guys so much i want them to feel loved and i said well this is not your fault this is my fault and i want you to know that but we're going to fix it we're going to fix it correctly and i don't say that i'm not a people pleaser i'm going to tell you the truth whether you like it or not um and the truth is is we're going to fix it i heard you loud and clear that was a tremendous crowd and there were so many people let down and that just should not be the case um i'm going to lean on our partners i'm going to lean on the people that have had the expertise in these matters to help us so um does anybody will do you want to provide any more information i'm sorry as admin

» istrator can i be right into this yeah of course because i'm i'm flat-footed here i don't know anything about you can well this is this is council this is council and it's me bringing an opportunity and an idea to fix this but i just hear one of my staff being tasked with something that i'm not anything aware of i hear um yeah and in in particular i'll just mention as a point of order uh this was placed on the agenda as a discussion item only so literally unless it's moved or we create a new item the agenda's we're not voting on anything tonight and if well no no action item can be taken i don't think we can even refer something to um to the finance committee mr dubose is that correct he can have no action can be taken yeah from a discussion session yes strictly speaking you know discussion

» items they're not those aren't action items all right so i just want to comply with what the rules are well to your point options exist to create uh action items but uh in addition to the agenda would be a two-thirds finding exigent or emergency circumstances to take any action on something not already we're having a discussion mr we're not i'm not i didn't ask for a vote and danny i didn't if i offended you in any way i certainly apologize because um let me say something i didn't know it i haven't seen it i haven't seen this before tonight did y'all know about it no but but he told me he had something he was bringing for that might resolve a lot of our issues so i think you know i mean if it's a bad idea i'm happy to be told that it's a bad idea mr chairman has a question sure to danny and

» director glover i know that last year in our budget process we we worked really hard to bolster fire ems and even supplement shares department do we have a number i can't trying to remember through all the budget means do we have a number about what what we budgeted um for each one of those you don't have to answer that right now but that'd be something for for all of council to look at i can i can put together the increases and where those increases went yes i can put that together and and i agree i i think every year we should bolster emergency response and i know that a few of us up here have have done that every year um and i appreciate everybody coming on board what would be so if we do have three new stations four vehicles what does that impact reoccurring budget line item if you have

» four ftes councilman i don't think we can get that granular tonight that's why as a discussion item and will and i specifically spoke about the fact that we didn't want to get into the weeds and the details because this is like a 30 000 foot discussion well mr thompson has a floor i mean well actually i had the actually actually i had the floor and i was interrupted and i didn't get to finish my first thought i would have appeared i had a question that i yielded to danny because he seemed um like he wanted wanted to speak i was but but i wasn't yielded back to me browser massive one quick thing sure but i was i was a county employer for 25 years the department had 15 years and our county administrator always told county council they could talk talk to the staff and danny's been very good ab

» out that along with it carpenters but also the county administrators required their staff to make sure he let they let him know that they're going to be working with a county councilman or getting some information for that county councilman so i would recommend that maybe you ask your staff from this point on make sure you do know you know what's coming before us i think that's a great idea and i will have a memo go out yes sir and that's the way we counsel and staff because i think that's a two-way sword but thank you you okay mr brazil retaining the floor i would like to go ahead yes sir so as an elected official i'm tasked with listening to the people as an elected official i don't need anybody's permission to try to solve a problem danny respectfully i'm happy to read you into every con

» versation if that's what i need to do um will and i had a great conversation i told him what was on my mind if this council decides it's not the avenue we want to go then that's we won't we won't go that avenue but i think will has ideas that he's probably worked with you on that we can all find happy meetings in and none of this is about me this is about everybody sitting in this audience our families and our loved ones this has zero to do with me this has everything to do with the people in kershaw county and making sure we're doing the right job um david adams is here tonight with musc if if others have questions for will i've expressed what i'd like to see i'd like to utilize buildings that we have the buildings that are existing i'm willing to donate materials to get them up to code if

» necessary if if there's a bedroom that needs to be redone i'm willing to help i'm here to help nothing about this conversation is anything other than i want to find a solution and i want to do it with you i want to do it danny i want to do it with you okay sir i welcome that good we'll save your neck and tell you administrator so at this point i will yield um any further comments yep i have read the letter i have read my thoughts that god gave me that i fear not being uh deterred from ever using in the future because i will continue to and i welcome anyone else to speak to mr glover please and i would after mr glover's done i would like to invite mr adams from musc to share the conversation that he and i had together and the absolutely unbelievable ideas that he had to share with me about t

» he liberty hill and the upper kershaw county and lower lancaster county options that could be a longer to make russell had floor then i intervened he took it and you got it well you can have it after i make this last statement but i'm gonna yield to you because i'm a nice guy yeah it'll just be really quick go ahead mr tomlinson um i russell i appreciate all your hard work on this and i know that chief glover and all of our emergency response staff would love to have additional funding i know that our our county administration would love to have additional funding and we can sit up here all day and have great ideas to put out but if we're not willing to vote to put taxpayer money on paper in a budget these ideas are all i'll speak and and that's that's the hard part we we've got to be willi

» ng to get up here and take that responsibility to make those votes in the process that's the last statement i have to make great state mr thompson mr jones that's very good mr thompson you know uh you got to talk about it before you can put money on it and uh one thing that i will say is that i've always been in favor for my 20 years i've always from the very first day i was on council i had an argument first night i was on county council and it was about public private funding and mr tucker knows what i'm talking about we had a lot of fun with that one he voted against me i voted against him we're asking him 6-1 but the thing about is what i'm hearing and i need more understanding russell because some may think i know but i don't know i'm i'm very interested in and i'm i'm very proud that

» we have a council member that will go out and ask questions and try to find funding for certain issues to try to do a private uh public partnership that's the tech that takes the burden off the taxpayers for the whole hundred percent if i'm not mistaken that's that's what you sound like you're talking about i don't i don't know i'd like to hear from mr adams about what how musc you know or the health resources i'd like to hear how they are going to be involved or would be involved but i'm certainly thinking that it's to save money and and and to my colleagues and i know y'all probably didn't know about it but that was a very passion driven town hall meeting with a huge crowd almost 100 people and in my 20 years i've never seen the town hall that big in other words i've seen town halls with

» more politicians and bureaucrats than people uh but that was a that was probably one of the biggest i've ever been to and i'll tell you when i hear this lady over here and ma'am i don't need you vote don't want your vote i'm saying this because it's come from heart it broke my heart to hear what you said about your husband of course we can't run off of emotions in here but it's just the good sense right thing for us to do so i'd say to my colleagues mr brazil thank you for bringing this before us and to have a conversation to get it started but i can assure my colleagues they know that because finance committee certainly has to go through them first but bottom line is nobody would ever intend to just go throw money at something without having a conversation first so i thank you i thank you

» folks for sitting out here tonight i thank you folks for being up there the other night it was my honor to be there will i thank you and and i just tell you uh mr brazil continue to fight continue to good work because this was this was really i'm just i'm just excited to hear the rest of it i'm ready to hear from mr adams does anybody else have anything mr jones thank you so much any other comments discussion you're quite welcome sir i'm a little bit perplexed but i'll save that for later mr adams please you always do well mr adams you see what you're walking into a great we had a great conversation i apologize am i go ahead yes sir okay i'll do my best to be brief um yeah yesterday councilman and uh he gave me a call and uh asked me to look into a few items um we talked about um the fact t

» hat musc does not do emergency services we don't have funds that do emergency services um i am looking into some other items that we had discussed about um some other grant funding possibilities i know there's some items uh there's some funds from the federal government that have come to the state i know that we are applying for them for other purposes um through the department of health and human services the governor has designated them as the place to apply for grants for rural transformation funds and i do not know if this fits within that yet i have not gotten an answer yet um i do know that there is a model around the state right now for service holes where um and the example that i gave you yesterday is one i'll share with the rest of you um there is a model um that we have tried to

» use in places where there are emergency services holes uh that is happening in eastern richland county right now there is a place in richland county where it takes about 35 minutes for an ambulance to get two people and then about 35 to 40 minutes to get back to the closest emergency room um and we are um doing uh we are working with a group that is putting together an emergency department um closer so in eastern richland county so that when the ems does arrive there they have a shorter drive to get somebody to their um their critical care and to be triaged um that is something that is out there that um that i will be happy to talk to our leadership about that now that particular project took about four years to put in place this has been this has been something that we had uh the the local

» legislators had discussed with the musc leadership over four years before it was actually able to be something that became a reality but we do not do emergency services and so i'm digging into some more questions right now and haven't gotten a lot of answers since our talk yesterday but those were the things that we had discussed so if we were to overlay that idea in richland county to kershaw county the hypothetical would be a smaller version of what you have at the elgin campus off i-20 as a satellite location further north of your main hospital that would serve as a a smaller er or something like that it is an emergency triage department and that would be in northern kershaw county we're saying we'll be could be yes sir yes i'm i'm a terrible politician i know listen i used to have to bu

» y fire trucks and ambulances for a living i understand how much it costs i am i am an absolute terrible politician but i can tell you what i'm good at i'm good at pushing initiatives okay so let me rephrase the idea that you brought up to me could potentially be in northern kershaw county and would service southern lancaster and northern kershaw county these are things that we would yes sir that we would look at with you that's what you and i talked about model yes that's what we talked about very very comfortably on the phone absolutely yeah and you don't have to say serve me you know me what what i want to do is is provide these services to these rural areas um and i wish daryl augerman could have been here tonight because he's from that northern kershaw county kind of mount pisgah jeffer

» son area and he said this has been a problem for years russell and um i'm very thankful for for his phone call as well but are there any other highlights that that you have that um all right i okay i've not gotten any answers back no no no no answers just about yesterday i'm not sure if there was something that i might have said that struck you that i don't recall well i mean the first thing that struck me was that there could be a small hospital built in a rural area that blew me away it's an emergency room or a very small emergency room yes again my words are wrong but that's okay i'm just trying to make sure i'm being clear but my intentions are are pure so thank you so much for being here tonight i mean what a what a tremendous potential opportunity okay but but the framework for for do

» ing something now is is there and um that's that's what i wanted you fine folks to hear tonight um everyone that came from liberty hill thanks for being here and thanks for having me at the town hall i guess i don't want to say when you finish i'm done thank you um mr brows i need to give every other opportunity of councilman to before mr i was the second was not a second you were the second but you've already spoke and under robert's rules i just need to let everybody else i'm just trying to follow the rules i'm supposed to let everybody else have a chance to speak before someone speaks i don't think you're following the rules yes thank you mr chair i just wanted before mr adams sit down because when you speak of richland county i i do know certain things are a little different on the scal

» es but in your research can you find out are they leveraging this particular opportunity with the penny sales tax because they have a penny for progress they're not levering that with that not have to do with the local government this has to do with um as i understand it this has to do with the musc leadership's determination to serve south carolina okay and they were asked by several legislators to come in and do an evaluation in certain areas there are a number of areas that they have looked at this was one that they had begun the process with thank you understand it's fantastic thank you mr tucker any other council member who has not been heard wishes to be heard mr jones please thank you mr chairman i want to just say one thing to you i want to thank you for coming here tonight i really

» appreciate it you didn't have to do that but you took time to talk with mr brazil and i didn't know the particulars what y'all talked about but i i appreciate that and uh i think that speaks volume thank you mr jones i don't have anything for you mr adams thank you for coming out tonight we'll catch up later um any other comments discussion questions from council members yes mr jones i guess i'm i'm i'm a little bit i would use device chairmen's word perplexed or just confused why i i would think everybody should be smiling up here be real happy that we're trying to find a solution to provide some enos services to the you know the livid hill area but i feel like it's almost like a hostile and i'm not used to being hostile it's like i mean but it seems like there's just a lot of i read look

» i can do body language and i can read faces okay i read the book three times um and i just got the impression that this wasn't a popular subject tonight and i don't i just don't understand why y'all know i'm right you know i'm right on what i'm saying so don't sit there and say i'm wrong i'm 100 right but guys we got to come together we got to do something for liberty hill when it comes to we got to do something for bethune you know when it comes to uh pisgah ambulance services we just have to figure something out and and you know i find this community i think has done a great job on working on things and uh you know great leadership on that but that's just what i want to say guys we need to pull together on this thank you mr jones mr cato you know i don't use the word i very well i don't d

» o it you know why because there ain't an i in team it isn't me budget retreat and i'm gonna use i brought this before the budget retreat with a small short presentation mr jones the reason i'm sitting here the way i am is because i feel like i've been left completely out of the loop until today well wait a minute you were invited to the town hall i got the floor you i got it you were invited to the town hall i got the floor for the record you are for the record i got the floor go ahead mr brazil please suspend mr kato i was invited to liberty hill about six hours before the event was the first time i knew about it in which i had a church obligation and i wanted to explain that to each and every one of you that's the first time i heard of it six hours before the event the rest of this stuff

» i knew about at one o'clock today but i'm the one that brought it up mr jones that might not matter to you don't might not matter to you well i'm gonna come back at you if you come at me and i'm just gonna tell you that right now i'm trying to be nice no i'm trying to be nice but you're trying to sit over there and be all bullish my problem my problem with this is there's a lot that can get accomplished if we would all get on the same sheet of music okay but it's like everybody wants to take credit i don't want credit for anything i want us to come together as a body and figure out how we can financially support ems services in that area listen that area between porter road and i showed it in the retreat and lake water re is a huge geographical area huge we had an ems station at the end of

» block art that had to be destroyed okay for two reasons one it had problems with the building two was the line of sight for the emergency vehicles to come out of when i first come on council that had already been taken care of that had already been eliminated i asked last year that we re that we visit it was a little bit too late but i asked that we visit putting another ems station somewhere in the baron dekalb area so that it would serve both highway 97 liberty hill area westville area and it could even get over back towards north central if the unit on porter road was tied up because the one on porter road services casset and mount pisgah and all the way over to the lee county line and you know so there's there's a large geographical area i don't want anybody here and you get upset with

» me if you want to i don't want anybody here to misunderstand why i'm upset it's not about this i'm behind it i'm behind doing what we need to do for the people up there and i always have been mr brazel said that he talked to mr augburn listen i'm from that area i know what it's like i've lived there my whole life okay i know what the response was fortunately during my time we had two rescue squads one in mount pisgah and one in bethune that serviced those areas that were strictly made up by emt and paramedics that were volunteered that volunteered their time had had remotes in their house to dispatch volunteers to go out to emergency medical events and fires it didn't come through 9-1-1 but now we don't have that and it's time that we catch up but we've got to do it as a team we can't go ou

» t on our own we've got to do it as a team and if we do it as a team we can get this done and i look forward to working with that and seeing that we can get something accomplished it's going to take money it's going to take money and it can't be done in just a few months but we've got to get the money first but it can be done thank you now y'all can bash me however you want i don't want to bash you i do want to say something mr jones you yield oh i guess i definitely got something to say could could councilman jones tell you jones could i respond first yes go ahead mr brazel councilman kato i think i initiated the conversation with with the statement that he absolutely championed this um at the retreat it was maybe i was just a lucky one who got to to hear from you last wednesday and danny i

» f if you felt left out or blindsided or anything like that that next thursday morning after getting home late my wife and i took a much needed trip to florida we drove 10 hours went to destine florida it's really nice if you ever want to go and we returned yesterday i have a business i have a family that i spend most of my time operating i don't have time to call and ask everybody's permission if it's okay for me to call somebody else so if i rubbed anybody wrong don't think it was that i meant to i i did i did my very best to to include i did my very best to um to be kind and genteel and and point out the fact that this wasn't my idea it was their idea because they're the ones who are suffering and and yet what i left out was the fact that the community that i was born and raised in pine g

» rove and lake water re on the lugol side has the same exact issues you have you guys are just a little further so um it's funny we had brush fires tonight the worst call i ever took from a constituent was from a brush fire and i got my tail chewed because it took 40 minutes for a truck to get there something happened with the way it was dispatched nobody came from pine grove fire which was like two miles up the road at the time we didn't have a full-time uh fire person the the closest responding and this was years ago the closest responding uh fire truck came from elgin and my mother lit me up because my dad called our field on fire and she said y'all got to do better and when i'm telling you that you ever met my mother she'll tell you what what's on her mind and i was like wow i've never h

» ad to deal with my mom being upset at me because i'm on council but i did that night and we were able to make some changes for the better but danny i'm 100 with you his team it ain't me um i'm here to work with you i'm here to work with ben i'm here to work with sammy i'm here to work with derrick i'm here to work with brant i'm here to work with jimmy and i'm certainly here to work with our administrator so sometimes i'm a little bullish and that's just who i am with that i will shut my mouth thank you mr brazil mr jones well i was going to say something um very well put i do want to say this you know i didn't know about it you know i know you invited me to go there i was ready to get out of the house the wife was working late and i went over there and really enjoyed myself and i was glad

» i could be a part of it that night um i don't think anybody was intentionally left out but i do want to say to you danny i look forward to working with you and i do want you know that i for one and i know mr brazil nobody was trying to leave anybody out because i didn't know anything about it either but i did go and i would normally sit up here and tell you to relax take a deep breath but that might sound like i'm agitating my wife told me not to agitate people up here but we do need to take a deep breath and we do need to relax and we do need to just calm down i can't believe i'm talking about this because this is not what i was really going to say i know isn't it wonderful well it's okay but uh but but the thing is i have much respect for mr cato i have respect for each one of you up here

» but guys we just can't take it personal and uh but i but i'll say this i look forward to working with each one of you to try to resolve it and here's what i will leave everybody with okay mr brazil thank you you've brought some ideas to the table so if we don't go to mr brazil's ideas let's see where council wants to go with ideas i'm willing to change my thought on the ideas but i'm willing to see now okay we got one person soon he had these thoughts if that's not going to prove over if we're not going to do that then let's let me hear y'all's ideas what we're going to do thank you thank you mr jones council members any further discussion um i haven't been hurling this item yet and i just want to share a few things i'm sorry i didn't know about your meeting but i do have a few things to sh

» are tonight that i think will be relevant and show that there's some path forward for addressing some of your concerns and others in various parts of the county that have concerns um this started i want to say eight ish years ago when we were primarily volunteer based and we discovered that so many people were working outside so many of the volunteers were working outside of kershaw county that we were having extremely delayed response times god bless the volunteers but we had to figure out a way to fund full-time fire service so that we could reduce response times in very densely populated areas if you had somebody in lexington that was a volunteer they got to check with their boss make sure they can leave and then try to drive 30 40 minutes over here to then get their gear on and try to u

» nless they have it in their vehicle and then respond to a fire in a particular area so we knew we had to do something at the time folks we had handwritten uh data entries and faxed in reports and then another human has to collate all that and try to enter it in and get into the system we were very um we were aged at the time we'll say we need a technological update that's what the fire professionals who work for kershaw county and the administrators were telling us we need to do and so we did that we conducted a fire study which tied in ems as well and determined where we needed to spend the money to put stations first that's a capital expense and i know i'm preaching to the choir but then we got to worry about the personnel expense because that's recurring right so that study came back and

» said doby's mill and elgin you got to put your first fire and ems station we couldn't afford to do both initially we did a fire station first it took us a while to fund it and i'll talk about the mechanism for funding personnel or an operating cost and then we did ems after that and just recently we completed the casset uh fire station as part of a hub and spoke system that's been part of this emergency response plan for for years and so those two got done the next rankings and priorities i understand them and i had to had to check my notes in memory and i believe some of your concerns are already in the queue so buffalo mount pisgah is in the queue for a fire station that's one of our next top goals if you were to ask the fire professionals in the room as i understand it if director glover

» was here he'd say buffalo mount pisgah fire station and that's database from the fire study and then also the new technology allows us to get uh counts more accurately and quickly has confirmed that and then next up number two would be a highway 5 ems station so that's part of the fire plan and ems plan somewhere up highway 5 maybe past the old allen's market but not real far up highway 5 because they still have to hit lug off some but that addresses some of the late concerns in that area at any rate and then the third one and the most expensive one would be a baron de cab combo ems fire station so something like what you have at w's mill in elgin but at baron de cab which would be on that side i'm not sure how far north yet and the county hasn't identified the property yet so some of these

» concerns are already in the queue they're already part of the plan and we're working on funding them but building them as a capital expense a one-time expense is one thing funding them because you have to have safety standards for firemen that go into a building you got to have like is it two people for everyone that goes in in case you have to pull that person out and there's all these ratios that they have for safety to make sure the county can stay uh insurable with workers comp and keep the firemen safe as well with that said i think the just on our best numbers today an ems fire station to fully staff it so that you could have the shifts you would need to cover the calls around the clock it'd be at least 2.2 million dollars at least the personnel cost for each ambulance so each ambulan

» ce i heard um earlier tonight was about five hundred thousand dollars they're expensive the personnel cost to run the shifts that would operate that ambulance so it just doesn't sit there so you can actually respond i think would be about eight hundred fifty thousand dollars per ambulance so if we had another four ambulances how many people however many shifts they run yeah so eight people per ambulance running on shifts what if we went back to a 12-hour shift mr brazil please if i can just complete my thoughts go ahead so if if you had another four ambulances just my rough math would be 3.4 million dollars in personnel costs now that's significant because how we fund personnel versus or operating costs versus capital costs and i'm sorry to get on the weeds but i think it it's just merited

» here capital cost is one thing we have a fire mill or fire millage that we are capped by there's a law state law we have to live by called act 388 we can't just jack the fire mill up to cover all these operating costs we are capped at is it a 3.5 or 5 percent increase mr dubose per year i believe it's three and a half three and a half okay i have to check my math but that's the cap we're allowed one fire mill is worth a hundred and ninety thousand dollars point of order yes sir you told us not to get into the weeds and you're getting into the weeds no sir i didn't say that at all yeah we were chastised for getting into weeds no sir i didn't say that well i sure felt like it no sir i believe mr brazil asked that we keep it a high level conversation no it was said up here by everybody talking

» you know about us having a conversation to to finish my thought on the discussion and so the point is even if we wanted to we can't increase the fire mill legally to pay for the personnel that would be required to occupy these stations if we could build you one tomorrow we can't increase the fire mill to pay for the environment that would occupy it so that's a real problem advocacy at the state house would be very helpful you could do a one-time reset smaller counties have to deal with this issue greenville richland county charleston don't have this problem because they already had full-time fire service whenever they set their fire mill when we set it we had a bunch of volunteers and not full-time employees and so our fire mill got set low and all of a sudden our population started to grow

» and we needed full time when you're looking at a 1.2 to 2.5 million dollar increase in one year it was a real struggle so the way we tried to address it is a fire fee which in some ways is inequitable you could have a improved parcel that has a shack on it and it's a quarter acre if it has a structure on it it's paying the same fire fee as a two million dollar house somewhere else they pay the same amount because that's what the law requires and so i think advocacy at the state house would be very helpful to allow the rural counties to reset their fire mill to fund fire service the way we need to we're hamstrung by that and then that's the operating cost side of it hiring people to actually do what we'd want them to do and respond to the calls the second part is ems is supposed to be an ent

» erprise fund so it pulls from the general fund some but it's supposed to kind of stand on its own and so in order to hire that number of ems i mean it would require a significant tax increase which i don't see how we could do at this point but we do have goals and as i understand them from the professionals who know better than me the goals are fire station at buffalo mount pisgah highway 5 ems station and then baron de cab a combo ems fire station and we want to try to tackle those uh those goals as we can i think we get 100 and mr templar is it 120 or something million dollar requests each year and we just as an example have an operating budget of 30 to 40 million depending on how it goes and so we get those requests for expenditures each year and we're unable to spend the money for the r

» equest that we want to and so we've got to make the tough decisions i agree that this is a worthy project it's already in the queue based on the heat maps and population density and calls i think the professionals are telling us that that we have these goals if we can get recurring funds from some of these entities that were mentioned tonight i'm all for it if there's grant that will cover recurring costs that's awesome or capital costs for building purchasing vehicles trucks or ambulances or building the actual structures that's great i'm not aware of many grants that are recurring for personnel it's usually one or two years and then you still have to figure out how to fund it and either deal with that act 388 fire mill cap or the enterprise fund issue with ems and so those are some of the

» thoughts i would have shared earlier or you know i thought were appropriate to share now to see the the framework that we're working with on emergency services that's all i wanted to share any other comments or discussion well i've got a question yes sir um so i was talking about ems services are they are they capped at all or or can we can we relocate monies out of the general fund to support something like a happy median um proposal because what what i proposed was a short-term proposal and what you've gladly shared is our longer term goal which is probably a four to six year reality um we're not hindered are we with ems when it comes to funding so i i would generally say and then i'll see the administrator wants to sit up um it's an enterprise fund think of it like the airport fund which

» we dealt with recently we dealt with that budget a whole bunch it's an enterprise fund so it's supposed to stand on its own which means yes there is some base millage that can be taken from the general fund which that millage i think we'd have to look at the most recent um reassessment but i think it's three hundred forty thousand dollars per mill and so you know funding three million dollars worth of personnel if we even tried to do that if we could do it it was legal would require a nine to ten mil increase in a year to fund the personnel which is is that is that the same fund that we fund every other agency with including um the recreation department if i could just finish the last thought was on the enterprise fund since it's supposed to stand alone the fees generated from the service a

» re supposed to fund it and so you'd look at a some significant increase in ems fees related to the service that's provided to cover that cost as enterprise so just on that just a point of interest the uh you know last year we cut out half of the general fund millage to the sheriff's office's dedicated millage with him being able to capture the organic growth in that village so really hindered my ability to of course we're funding the sheriff he needs every dime um but what that did is that that cut down the ability for the capital to grow on what the my half of the pie if you will well we still it's only a percentage of isn't it it's 50 percent almost so the sheriff's office is getting 50 of the general fund well the school district's getting 67 aren't they but of what i typically had to de

» al with in years past building a budget we just dedicated the millage he had we we converted into mills what his cost was for operating every year and took that over there so we had uh it was 24 25 mills just for example and then just say he got 12. so i'm left with 12. here here's you know we could we could talk about how we structure things i don't i don't think we're hindered by the state house to to move around millage for ems i'm not looking for a four or five million dollar increase at all i'm looking for some paramedics or medics to staff something to help our rural communities that that's what i'm looking for and whatever that looks like if we can all generally agree that this is a problem i think we can all generally agree that we can find a solution and that was the kind of the le

» vel i wanted to leave this i didn't want to get into a debate i just wanted to enter a discussion um frankly i thought it would have been much more well received but um then again i'm not a good politician so um let's let's close this as we've got other issues thank you all for being here we care about you we care about your your families and your lives um if i haven't exhibited that personally i apologize if you feel that way i can assure you i do and i think others do but let's uh let's try to keep this conversation going and get something get something going in the right direction thank you mr brazil mr kato one last thing we have really went far and beyond i think what we should have tonight but i think this this is a something we should have been talking about with finance and everythi

» ng else i think we kind of got way off but maybe this question would be and maybe will could answer this question if he would we need something we need something now to help those residents is there any way now i know mr edge with ems is in here too thank you danny is there is there any way that we may could put a qrv in that area maybe i know you talk about the hot the hot uh hot map and stuff of that nature i'm sure that there's a hot time so to speak that most of the calls come in is there is there some way that we could at least get a qrv that would be in that area until we can get this problem resolved so we currently run two qrvs most of the time if they have to chase a truck and when i say chase a truck if we're running ambulance that's not als they may have to respond with it depend

» ing on the call so they can provide advanced care so if we did put a qrv out there it would get pulled quite often uh to respond to other areas um on the fire side uh we have looked at you know we have part-time staffing trying to move some part-time staffing up there we already do that during seasonal times but we can continue to research other areas to to try to do something as quick as we can based on what resources we have now okay yeah and maybe that'd be something we can just look into as to what it would cost the county to at least get another qrv that would be particularly for that area so that we would have a paramedic that could respond and get there and administer medical attention until the unit truck could actually get there just just a thought i think i think that's a great id

» ea danny i do too that's very good thank you mr cato council members any further discussion on 9a no danny answering my question i was going to talk to you for a minute go ahead i was just going to say i had a question but danny took care about what he just said i appreciate that you're welcome okay uh no action is needed no votes needed on 9a so the matter is concluded with discussion ending item number 10a mr administrator any background for us on this one chairman members of council this just allows us to move forward with the replacement of the office up at the pithuma recycle center this is a bid okay thank you mr do we have a motion on the bid i'll make a motion you put it up on the do we have staff able to put it up on the screen just for public's benefit we have a slide for this so

» um yeah mr chairman is there a second yeah second and i can summarize go ahead mr shumake you got the floor yeah just since there isn't a slide up and for people listening at home just so everyone knows what we're talking about there is a uh bid to uh rebuild or uh construct the bethune recycle center building we received four bids ranging from 91 000 to 142 000 um the lowest bid was 91 000 and that was the lowest by eight thousand dollars to the next lowest so staff is recommending that we award the contract to michael jordan construction uh out of south carolina jefferson south carolina that it's 91 000 594.80 and um the uh anyway that's that's that's the summary of what this document says in front of me yes thank you mr shumake mr tucker you have the second i have no further to add counc

» il members any discussion i'd like to uh defer this until we can find better solutions for emergency response times we just got through talking about the money we didn't have to help these people and now we're about to spend 100 grand i'm not going to support it tonight mr mr mr tucker yeah you had the second i'm coming back with a comment was that the form of a motion or is you just speak in general i'll make that in the form of a motion i want to hear what finest you have all right there's a motion to defer on the table uh parliamentally i got to address that first is there a second on the motion to defer i'll second and specifically the motion was to defer it until uh i don't want to misstate until you find funds to would you restate the motion please i make a motion to defer purchasing

» anything such as this which is probably a worthy cause until we can find a solution to these people's needs uh that are more life and death in regards to ems yes that is my motion there's motions there a second it's already seconded okay you've got a second of the restated motion mr brazil you have the floor on your motion i don't need to say anything else okay any further discussion on mr brazil's motion mr tucker yes sir um gentlemen i got a little heartburn with this motion and the reason i'll tell you is because we're almost in fourth quarter 25 26 budget season this money is already obligated to go to certain places in this budget we're moving into fourth quarter we got five more weeks we'll be in fourth quarter am i correct mr ministrator by saying that fourth quarter and now we're go

» ing to hold up funds on things that we've already voted on and said that we're going to do for 25 26. i understand the urgency and the concern about the situation that's going up on the northern end of the county and i support it with the right information and process i cannot support it on the back of another project that's already been put in the budget so for this reason i cannot support that amendment tonight on that motion thank you mr mr jones i believe you deferred to mr tucker i want to make sure you're heard sure you have a second can you give me a little bit more information as to when y'all decided and let us know about that know about what what we're doing tonight this this was already in the um waste management budget to do the um recycle center so that was done when you voted

» on or voted against the um budget back in 2025. i don't remember specifically seeing this but yeah it doesn't mean that i'm against the the overall thought of it i'm sure it needs to be rebuilt i just think what mr brazil was doing is looking at the overall picture and i think all of us are i think all of you are and i know all of you care guys i know that i get it we just got some misunderstandings that i know we can all work out i do and i'm not doing this for any other reason than one i have respect for our finance chair i have respect for council brazil but he makes a good point there chair finance chair as far as let's just look maybe look at the whole picture we can defer it in just two weeks now did you read the um what it said in there they're going to reconstruct the recycle center

» in the bethune area and make sure it have bathrooms we asked some people to stay out there 12 hours and they either do something that's not decent or they have to leave the facility and lock the facility to go use things that we take for granted um this day has come and gone and this facility needs to be upgraded if nothing else for the citizens and the people they work out there well we can put a portage on there and then save some lives otherwise you're not going to persuade me tonight i'm not trying to persuade you i'm making a point i'm making a point i'm not trying to persuade you i stand i stand on mr chairman can i thank you mr tucker um mr cater you defer to the the administrator yeah i mean yeah i'll defer mr templar you know gentlemen i have a lot of plates to spin um ems fire she

» riff's office i mean i've made a living for 18 years answering the radio i understand calls i understand call times i also understand when calls back up and response times there's just been a lot of discussion that i think gets pulled out of proportion um if you're in a murder scene you're not going to get to that that broke into car right away and it's it's prioritizing and dispatch helps us with that and so i have a ton of plates to spend and this happens to be one of them this this facility here and i somebody said 91 000 bathroom it is but it's also a shelter we have adult elderly people that work at these are retired and this is a storm shelter this is a restroom this is an office and this is a basic workspace and i'm just a little bit passionate about where we ask our people to work t

» hey work in a garbage dump and if i could just give them some semblance of a decent place to huddle during a storm inclement weather rain snow shine we ask them to be open every time and when we close them for the snow we make them make it up on other days and it's unacceptable to not give them a working place to be in unacceptable relax danny relax sir mr kato thank you mr templar i think you answered my question but i this money and i want to i want to make sure for my benefit this money was is already budgeted from this year's budget to go to to go to this sort of project is that correct i don't know if that's a sammy question or if that's a danny question this is part of our capital budget for 25 26 it was i do remember in the retreat at some point last year you mentioning that you were

» gonna have to replace the bethune building because it was in such bad shape but this was in like this was in last year's budget okay correct any other discussion council members on the brazil a motion to defer seeing none we'll move it to a vote all in favor of the brazil motion to defer raise your hand mr brazil mr jones in favor all opposed raise your hand shumake tucker connell excuse me i meant to oppose i'm voting for you're you're changing my vote you're voting you're voting let me i think you just did i'm voting he's changing his vote from not against to for the bitch it'd be okay well we have to address the first the first vote is on the brazil motion to defer and so we i just called for the votes in favor mr brazil and mr jones raise their hand do you wish to retain your vote i wan

» t you to do it again sir if you don't mind i just okay on the motion to defer made by mr brazil vote in favor by raising your hand all right mr brazil votes in favor all opposed raise your hand shoemake tucker connell cato tomlinson and jones vote against the motion you saw my answer we're we're back on the original motion uh to approve the bid any further discussion on the original motion to approve the bid saying none we'll move it to a vote all in favor raise your hand shoemake tucker brazil connell it's unanimous miss hannah it passes and the bid is approved thank you all right thank you gentlemen that takes care of item number 10 a that moves us to council member briefings mr cato oh you're just getting started sir i've been in worse jimmy i've been in worse i know i know who you used

» to work for i've been in worse uh listen i i'm i don't even have have a whole lot to say but i better say this if i don't say anything else i want to wish my wife a happy anniversary this weekend 34 years of living in marital bliss with me so that's a true statement okay i'm gonna close with that well no i'm not i want people out there to understand we get heated up here sometimes but i want you to understand that i i have always said since i i set my tail up here the very first day that i'd always be open-minded and i'll continue to be open-minded i get passionate sometimes and if i get too passionate i apologize but a lot of hard decisions to be made up here sometimes and uh if i get out of line sometimes i'll apologize for that too but other than that i hope everybody has a good night wa

» s that an apology or not to who me i don't have an apology no okay thank you mr cato mr tomlinson thank you mr chairman um i'd like to say i i enjoyed all the the citizens here even from the proclamations we did to um the talks regarding emergency services for the rural areas um hearing the citizens come and talk is a huge help to us as decision makers and policy makers standing up here um next i'd like to thank staff not just our executive leadership but every one of our kershaw county employees that they have a lot of times a very thankless job do the work and i have no doubt that if we put the funds in their budget it's gonna get done we have subject subject matter experts that we are blessed to keep here in the county they could easily go another county over and make more money but they

» don't because they love this place just as we do which is why we're sitting up here we all have a passion and thirdly i'd like to thank my colleagues you know what the meeting tonight goes to show exactly why we are sitting up here just because we all have passion and it wouldn't be it wouldn't be right for us to sit up here and agree on anything and not have heated discussions because we all care about kershaw county and the best for it and i appreciate every single one of you and i look forward to continue to work with you you too thank you mr chairman thank you mr thompson mr jones thank you i have just a couple things i want to say would you have ever believed in my 20 years that i would be the calming factor on county council no i mean i'm literally the one who kept everybody calm toni

» ght and uh i don't know what i want to talk about something very important i want to talk about myself for just a minute and that was a joke no seriously guys we got to be light-hearted look we got some serious business to discuss up here we can get heated each other but don't walk out of that room mad with your lips stuck out because we don't agree with each other you know you know god tells us to love each other and i mean i love you guys in a manly way manly way but i think that's what's wrong with the world now enough people don't tell them they love each other we love you too councilman but uh but seriously guys we have some serious business up here and we may disagree but we need to leave it at that and and danny i appreciate what you said and chairman i appreciate your recognition an

» d me being right tonight thank you so much i i would fail if i didn't recognize you being right thank you mr jones and i'm done thank you mr shoemake yeah there was uh the quietest you've ever been yeah yeah he sure is my wife wanted me to point out that uh she had texted me earlier that the uh district honor roll teachers have come out and so i want to congratulate all the the teachers that have our finest teacher of the year i'm just gonna there's only a few abby bates suzanna hall marianna vanader marsh daniels and flo jackson those are our uh those are representing the finalists for teacher of the year for kershaw county i want to congratulate them and also want to thank you know our uh yeah um you know so i i was trying to look at the exact numbers and you know our general fund budget'

» s about 30 million danny give or take is that fair probably a little bit more a little more about 34 does that include what we give the sheriff that's after the sheriff cut so it's it's probably more towards uh a little more towards 40 but it's half of that as goes to the sheriff yeah so that's after what goes to the sheriff this was yeah so you know you talk about what's seeming like a i mean that's a lot of money to any human being and certainly a lot of money to me but but when we talk about that in terms of funding i mean we hear it in the finance committee you know to give you an example you know last year we only had a little under 1.5 million dollars in organic growth if we have the same sort of thing this year the uh boat tax which is likely to pass is going to eat 600 000 of that w

» e were briefed by the auditor just two weeks ago that even assuming the estimates are right that it will come back and added revenue which i have my doubts that's a different issue that's still a five-year gap is it 600 000 total that the revenue is hurt no no the revenue is 1.2 million we will lose 600 000 but you know it stepped down over the course of three years right but i'm telling the auditor briefed us on two weeks ago was that we would lose 600 000 upon passage of the boat in the first year so what he briefed it stepped down over three years so just to be clear it might not be quite as bad as we think it may not be but that's what we were briefed and even if it's 300 000 you have you know inflationary adjustments um you know some of the stuff we heard today with pecan orchard if wi

» th the overruns there i can already tell you we have we've only gotten what two finance committee briefings and with those two even if the boat tax stepped up and you take it at a third of what i just said at 300 000 we've already heard enough to completely eat up the natural growth just in what we've heard we haven't even heard from all the big departments so we have to make a lot of tough decisions and you know it's a you know there's about being creative and finding money i say this all the time to folks i talk to out in uh the community our budgets are posted online and if you think there's wasteful spending in there let's talk about what we think is wasteful nine times out of ten when people do point things out to me the relatively small budget items that even eliminated still leave yo

» u with the how do you fund the sheriff's department's 20 plus million dollars or you know how do you fund these you know these large departments with their capital overlay so it's a lot of hard work that we do up here and i think it's important that we're very straightforward that these things take time a great plan i mean we we just made some of the biggest improvements in recreation those steps started five six seven years ago so it takes time to get anything worthwhile accomplished under the wheels of government it shouldn't but it does the other thing i just want to say to close out is i just want to thank the staff uh we have an amazing staff but i think just about any almost everyone that's left in this room uh is staff um you know our senior staff the administrator w administrator mr

» s lauren i mean she they do a great job uh director glover does a great job uh shout out to zach hoover who's temporarily running our planning and zoning department who's been working on the smart growth overlay and a bunch of other stuff we put a lot of stuff on them and you know i just want to say bottom of my heart that this county could function without anybody up here on this little table except for you two um but it uh could not function without uh the staff that's in this room and it makes this county work every day so uh that's all i have thank you mr shumake mr tucker uh thank you mr chair um i'll try to be as quick as i possibly can let me start off by saying because i see miss melanie is still here we had a finance um committee meeting on pecan orchards orchards today at 4 30 ove

» r there about 4 30 to almost 5 30 and so what uh the uh committee has asked is that um staff has to do some due diligence on uh the survey land acquisition and some additional cost on some piping um to have all that available for council by next meeting so we can bring it before you guys and uh of course have a um a conversation and um and move forward from there but what i can tell you is that we're looking at additional costs that we have not budgeted for on this budget cycle so with that being said it's going to have to be some hard conversations on how do we move forward and what that time frame looked like so without those answers from staff um we didn't come to any conclusion tonight but we did ask the residents miss melanie as i said is still out here and there was probably four or f

» ive six other people to be patient we would get them answers and try to figure out what moving forward looks like are we do we have the money to complete phase one it's already been well we had the money from the original scope of work that money's already been voted on and set aside 380 um yes sir so 350. so we're not we're not short on money for phase one no that's not true okay all right tell me what's true i'm i'm asking so so with the unforeseen uh problems we've had in phase one trying to do it we have developed more costs what were they what were the unforeseen um you you're talking excuse me about having to uh deal with the water pipe being removed and then re um resubmitted or re um put down by county which can be as much as 126 000.

» you're talking about luga falls and water yes sir you have um you have costs for uh if we decide that we go with a closed system versus an open system that could be 30 35 000. a closed versus tell me tell me what that means um that means that on the discharge end is that system going to be open or closed that's leading down the pipe the pipe you and i looked at right uh you're talking about land acquisition which i don't have numbers on that now but whatever that looks like or or an easement granted one or the other and that's what you're going to be um you know going up against and that's what we need to get back from staff so how much has been allocated and how much has been spent so allocated has been 350 000 spent it's been 126 as of today and what is the approximate need to finish two

» to 250 200 to 250 000 on top of what's remaining like not like we have about 175 remaining has nothing to do with that correct two to 250 on top of what we managed to spend half a million dollars on that one little old road that's what it's going to cost us yes that's absolutely absurd um so with that being said i just want you to know that this is going to be on the agenda for our first meeting in march sammy we got to do something we have voted to do phase one i mean i hear you and you're the chairman you're gonna you're gonna get all the particulars as quick as staff can get them to us and we're gonna we're gonna pin our ears back and we're gonna see uh where everybody's at and i i hope i hope and pray that this falls within the means of people wanting to to to to do the right thing and

» stick what is the right thing i'll tell you when i get it you ask me questions without information i will not answer you can ask it a hundred different ways i'm not going to ask you for one time yeah i'll give you those when i get the information which will be on the second tuesday in november the big i mean in march to be exact march 14th i will have more information and along with my colleagues that said on finance anything you want to add there brandt no sir danny you happen to attend a meeting and we appreciate you anything you want to add okay all right now i want to say um we have a workshop this thursday from three to five gentlemen this is the time if you can make your schedules work and you want to dig in a little better on the topics whether it's fire whether it's ems um call staf

» f uh miss lauren knows what's the topics and see can you set your schedule so you can come have these discussions with us we dig a lot deeper into the budget at these workshops and that's why we voted on the days and that's why we gave you the days and the time i know you can't make them all but things that are important to you come because the conversation we had with this um these citizens this afternoon and and in my i thought the ideas were great and lovely that were recommended but in my thought um is that we can't be knee-jerking reacting to problems that that we see that exists all of a sudden and not planned i have a real problem with that because what i will not and never do is take from one to give to the other you you needing something the government does that every day hold on w

» hoa whoa whoa whoa time out you'll get chance you're right after me sir i promise you so what i want to do is not rob from peter to pay paul i know sometimes you've got to make things work and this is not a quick fix anyway there's we need to figure out exactly what um things look like from putting a qrv to a full-blown ems station there's things that need to be measured by staff the professionals and recommendations brought back by them and i'm not going to go into a whole big spill because i didn't speak when we were having all our passions running about up here but i said i'll address my um thoughts into my council meeting a council briefing so danny i'm gonna say to you have passion have passion for your people we can have passion up here why can't you have passion for your people he di

» d tonight stay stay passionate i was gonna call him councilman templar stay stay stay stay stay passionate and the quicker you do the memo to your staff and to us i think the better off we're going to be because what we cannot do we've had the latitude since mr templar's been our administrator of being able to talk to staff and i'm just going this is just one of seven and i'm just speaking for me i would have been cut y'all off what if i was the administrator i would have been and cut y'all off from from talking direct to department heads and going as far as some of us go you know how that's worked out for the county ministry don't you like you don't they can't win on that my floor mr jones thank you don't put that okay so so no we're putting him in that position by by by not following what

» is supposed to be our home rule we're to deal with the administrator assist of the uh deputy administrator or the assistant administrator on our issues and sometimes in my opinion i'm not talking about your opinion we push them a little too far with staff members and that's not fair that's not fair to staff that's not fair to danny as our administrator so so so just just note and be warned that you have a memo coming from administration and staff has a memo and we need to adhere to it that concludes my report mr chair get you right mr sucker lock me mr brazil please egos boy it's a bunch of egos around here tonight i'm gonna bring mine with me next week i'm not going to address everything that that's going through my mind tonight but but i want to say something i attended a meeting where pe

» ople wanted to be heard i heard them i thought about the situation this is how i'm built i'm built to solve problems that's how god created me so if there's a problem if there's a group of people that bring me a problem i'm gonna try to solve it if it's within my means now i didn't put anything on here for a vote i've done that before recreation put it on for a vote sammy you didn't vote for it but when you walked outside that night you looked at me and you said russell you got four votes tonight for the recreation for the baseball fields and i'm going to support you moving forward tonight all i wanted to do was have a discussion i in no way shape or form meant for it to be unfriendly i hope that i didn't frame it that way and if i did i apologize but you know i like being challenged um ben

» ben and i share something his children go to the school that i went to thomas sumner academy great little school and uh ben do you know what thomas sumner's motto is i wouldn't rob someone who's an alumnus of the glory of sharing it thomas sumner's latin phrase acta non-verba action speaks louder than words and and i've carried that with me my entire life um and you know forgive me if sometimes i'm ahead of my skis if you will i operate a business i don't operate in government i have the distinct pleasure of making my own decisions we don't get to do that here so sometimes that bleeds over but um that's just who i am probably not going to change okay but at our retreat um ben and i were having a good conversation as we always do and um he said something that stuck with me he said yeah we re

» ally hadn't had a whole lot of time to study this this zoning and building and i was kidding around with him i said man i could have written a book and he looked at me and said what'd you say ben you remember you don't remember what you told me why haven't you why haven't you there's your book you already said one right here on my desk i got it here's a framework document that everybody needs to add to from jimmy to danny to brandt to ben me i need to further look into this document my friend sammy derrick these are some thoughts that i had regarding how kershaw county grows and moves forward it's 30 pages it's a short book i didn't color it i didn't put any no pictures probably could have got it around 40 or 50 pages had i had an animator work with me but i like being challenged i'm here t

» o do the work i'm proud to be vice chairman you guys put me in that position and i want to support the work that this county has ahead of it in a positive fashion so with that i'm gonna shut up hope everybody has a wonderful night thank you mr brazil i just want to share a couple things congratulations again to the stover wrestling team i think by the show of supporting those folks coming out tonight with the coaches who were humble enough not to say anything but smiled bigger than i've seen anybody smile recently at the accomplishments of the wrestlers and the student athletes i was very proud of that blue golf elgin wrestling team will come through soon they finished second in the state and had a state champion and had some remarkable achievements miss hannah i've sent you mr ted monroe's

» number he's the head coach and was present tonight let's connect with him and just see when we can get him on the agenda coming up i know we generally have only two proclamations per meeting so wherever we can budget that in at some point in the future i think that's a very worthy cause and achievement to recognize um on ems or fire you know i like practical solutions that follow a plan and there has been a plan in place that's been followed for six plus years one of the nuances maybe recently for a capital expenditure could be liquidating the property of lake water it's an asset we have that we don't use county purchases like 20 25 years however many years ago it was with some aspirations at the time of developing the property into a resort or something i'm not sure but um with this counci

» l support i'm working on an opportunity perhaps in the future to liquidate that property and sell it to the state it makes a lot of sense dnr and others have properties nearby if there's something that we need in the way of the capital expense we can move that towards ems or something else that's that's appropriate and as you guys uh fellow council members or staff have ideas that we can practically uh and actually pursue i'd love to hear them let's try to make them happen we do have some low-hanging fruit that we can achieve in the county that might be one of them there are others but we do need to pull together and i hope ultimately whenever we work on these issues we pull together and get it done it's it seemed to come that way especially as we move towards budget we're going to have our

» work sessions um and just the way my mind works is i like to research and study stuff uh sometimes maybe a little bit too much that requires me to to get things beforehand and have some time to look at them in detail so i can understand the unintended consequences try to divine that if i can and then make an informed decision so i can represent the folks that voted for me and that that have elected me in a reasonable way and so i look forward to hearing y'all's ideas as we get to that point that concludes my report excuse me one other thing i was going to mention go ahead yeah i'm just going to say um i was reminded that we need to uh honor statewide commander jimmy raven um and the american legion with post 17 they had an event yesterday it was well attended and uh a large function that re

» ally put that on the map so we're grateful to him and the american legion for hosting that in kershaw county can i ask for a point of order from mr vice chair where he left out the um battle of the wrigley or mail wrigley's mail yeah um this is briefly briefly briefly something please this is actually something that uh sammy and danny i had talked about has everybody had that photo and this is the second time you've seen it the battle of wrigley's mill everybody this is an animated drawing everybody got it the battle of wrigley's mill in kershaw county um as we talked about before is a historical battle and it was um it was william washington who led the charge in which they took a cannon made out of a pine tree and and duped 100 british loyalists into um into surrendering so it was it was

» a battle that was won here in kershaw county just about 12 miles north um the creek intersection of um i think it's granny's quarter creek and flat rock creek so just off of flat rock road if you're headed towards heath springs um i spoke to an artist that made this digital image and um requested a quote i may have done this the right way i brought it to our finance chair and i brought it to our administrator and and i'm bringing it to council and with our conversations that we had um we talked about fundraising to have a 30 by 40 original oil painting painted for kershaw county and display it somewhere here in the uh in the government center you know wherever you know we can decide we can move it around um we can take pictures beside it for goodness sakes whatever we like but i think it'd

» be really cool to have that battle picture done and and everybody's got the photograph um the cost is nine thousand eight hundred dollars that would be paid for by donations to uh to the cause and we've got bronze levels at a hundred dollars silver silver levels at 250 dollars a gold level of giving at five hundred dollars and a platinum level of a thousand and i would love for if we could all just chip in i'd be willing to even give up um any of my travel expense and i would i would give up going to um the association of counties if necessary to make this happen i think this will be so good for kershaw county um as a whole but tonight i think the best way to do is to fundraise it so everybody does everybody have a paper with the fundraising opportunities we'll make copies but tonight i'll

» pledge a thousand dollars to to get it started and my family and our business will do we'll do a thousand so that leaves us with eighty eight hundred i hope that's something that everybody would like to see happen and um i think it'd be a neat project thank you thank you thank you um administrators briefing do you have anything mr templar uh two quick things really really quick yes sir monday i was lucky enough to go speak to a class at north central it was dr tom perry's honors u.s government class and those kids are just so impressive they ask better questions than uh a lot of the uh the adults i'm around sometimes just so meaningful and thoughtful and just excellent questions so i just like to share that experience with you all and everyone else and just uh congratulate them on their suc

» cesses and uh especially the job that uh dr perry does with those kids so well behaved um one more piece casey west would would be pleaded but for the uh vandalism over there is about six thousand dollars worth so that we got some seed germination going on in there just as you would imagine from people doing donuts on the grass so unfortunate but we're on our way to fixing that and we'll be looking for a ribbon cutting coming up soon we'll keep you all posted that's all i have thank you mr chempler mr bose any non-privileged legal briefing yeah no legal briefing um we have three executive session items on the agenda don't forget to mention that to us okay well before we move to that potential vote miss hannah has updated us again on applications and boards and those seats where we have resp

» ective responsibilities i know need to act on mine is mr brazil did he go to the restroom yes he did okay right well then then we'll go ahead and move into uh executions after you have a quorum um seek an executive session we have three items um i think it's a a and b but it's really a b and c this is under sc code 30-4-70 a2 and a1 regarding a matter related to attorney-client privilege and legal advice a briefing related to contractual arrangements and a personnel and employment matter is there a motion mr chairman i make a motion we enter executive session there is a motion is there a second second there is a second any discussion seeing none we'll move to a vote on executive session all in favor raise your hand miss hannah it's unanimous by those who are present and voting we're in exec

» utive session and for the public's benefit i do not anticipate any vote uh concluding after uh occurring after executive session give me one more is that he about to get this real quick as soon as they walk out here he goes right there seek a motion to make a motion to come out of executive session motion come out of executive session you got a second we've got a second discussion on that seeing none move to a vote are we exiting executive session is unanimous by those who are present and voting this executive session seek a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn mr chairman second got a second any discussion or motion to adjourn seeing none we'll move to a vote all in favor of adjournment raise your hand it's unanimous by those who are present and voting ms hannah mr razzle and mr jones are absent at the moment so that's 5-0 we are adjourned at 20