Machine transcript of the county's live stream. Each » marks a change of speaker; the captions don't say who is talking, and names are often misspelled. For the readable version see the recap; the official record is the county's minutes.
» hello hello hello Hannah can y'all hear me sound check councilman Jones can you hear us you're live yes I can hear you thank you we've got three minutes okay thank you vice chair can you hear me vice chair can you hear me I'd like to welcome everybody to the Tuesday April the 28th Kershaw County Council meeting officially called an order and I would like to ask Councilman Danny Cato to have our invocation but before I ask him to do that I would like to mention that Ben's father has had a stroke today and has been in surgery and we've we've had reports that everything is going well but we're gonna pray for the Connells specifically like to ask Danny to do that now thank you there and father we come to you tonight with humble hearts first of all the Heavenly Father thank you for all our many
» blessings yes Lord you're such a gracious and good and forgiving God we just thank you for that Lord we come with heavy hearts and minds tonight for the Connell family Lord I just pray dear Heavenly Father for Ben's father Joseph is as he's undergoing these medical procedures this evening Lord I just pray that you would be with him I pray that you'd be with his family his his wife his children his grandchildren Lord he is a great father great and great grandfather and husband and Lord we just lift him up to you tonight and we just ask that your will be done whatever that is Lord that your will be done and it will accept it family father I ask that you be with us tonight as we conduct the business of this county I ask that you would be with us and help us to make the right decisions they wil
» l do it in a way that'd be pleasing unto you Lord Jesus just be with us in the upcoming days leave God and direct us and forgive us of our sins for it's in Christ's name we pray amen amen amen followed by the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all all right we're at the point of adopting the agenda is there a motion to adopt tonight's agenda Mr.
» Vice Chairman I'd like to make a motion that we adopt the agenda as submitted is there a second second all right the motion is on the floor all those in favor we'll start with Councilman Jones Councilman Jones can you hear us give him a minute okay all right so we we've got a yes from Councilman Jones is that correct yes all right all those all those here by show of hands please show that it's unanimous by all those present and voting and Councilman Jones we're going to start with a proclamation stewardship week Derek would you like to read that proclamation in Ben's absence sure happy to whereas the National Association of Conservation Districts is a non-profit organization that represents America's 3,000 conservation districts and the individuals serving on the governing boards of those c
» onservation districts and whereas conservation districts are local units of government established by state law to carry out resource management programs at a local level and whereas the kershaw conservation district serves an important role in putting conservation on the ground through contracts which have brought over 500 000 into kershaw county by cooperating with landowners to manage and protect natural resources on their own land and whereas the nacd has celebrated stewardship week annually since 1955 between the last sunday in april and the first sunday in may to remind us of our individual responsibilities to care for natural resources and whereas nacd's 71st stewardship week will be held april 26th through may 3rd and is focused on soils and whereas fertile soil and clean water is t
» he lifeblood of nutrition and soil conservation is a benefit to everyone and whereas effective conservation practices ensure soil water animals plants and air provide a rich standard of living and whereas kershaw county wishes to support the work of nacd and the kershaw conservation district of south carolina and kershaw county now therefore be it proclaimed by the kershaw county council that april 26 2026 to may 3rd 2026 is designated stewardship week to applaud and promote the work of nacd in providing educational learning experiences for students and adults to increase awareness about the importance of natural resource conservation that is the proclamation mr vice chair and i guess i would move to adopt that proclamation second all right all those um will vote and then is there anyone he
» re that would like to receive the proclamation hey that was a big crowd so sorry would you like to come speak to us prior to our vote yes we'd love to have you up please uh be mindful of the mic it needs to be adjusted typically to to be able to be heard correctly for those of you who don't know me i'm donna douglas the district coordinator with the kershaw conservation district um this week is stewardship week and it's recognized nationally and locally as we celebrate the seams the theme soil where it all begins this campaign is a reminder to all of us that we have the responsibility to care for conserve and protect our natural resources some of the outreach activities we have planned in the schools and community include grocery bags that have been decorated by art students in the county s
» pecifically jackson elementary school students with this year's logo on it and these bags will be used by customers throughout the week we will have an outreach table with soil soil health information at the farmers market on saturday may the ninth also on the ninth we will have a soil health tunnel there for people to walk through and see visuals of all the things healthy soils do for us i will be in the classroom tomorrow and through friday doing presentations on soil health and doing the enviroscape which is a demonstration of a watershed with an emphasis on clean water and storm water runoff we also sponsored a poster contest throughout the district and the posters will be judged at our may board meeting first place winners will go to the state competition and will be judged by south ca
» rolina the south carolina association of conservation districts um some of our recent accomplishments include being recognized as a certified conservation district by our state partner which is the south carolina department of natural resources our board completed 13 training modules developed by the scdnr and upon completion we received this certification we were recognized at the annual partnership conference in january that was held in spartanburg um i think um one way we've really grown a lot is just invisibility because i know nobody's ever heard of the conservation district and we're right across the street but we are partnering with other agencies and just trying to be more visible um we recently awarded seven schools in the county with many grants up to a thousand dollars each and t
» hese funds allow the schools to implement their own conservation projects on their own school grounds and as i said we are focusing on being more visible and i thank you so much for the funding you provide because without your funding we don't get our state funding thank you thank you miss douglas um are there any comments from council does anybody have any questions i'll start with um councilman jones since he's called in remote i have no comments appreciating me okay thank you thank you um any comments well i'll say while while i've got you here um i think it's it's fitting that you're here tonight because there's going to be large conversations regarding development and agronomy and ecologies um all part of development and how we how we live here on earth so appreciate you being here tha
» nk you for uh thank you for your presentation and we do have to vote and then we do have a proclamation to give you if you want to join us and we can have a photo that would be great all right all those in favor councilman jones all right all right all those here all right it's uh it's unanimous miss hannah thank you so much um if we could grab a photo real quick i've got the proclamation all right moving through proclamations uh next we have public comments how many do we have signed up sir 11 speakers all right um math that's a minute 43 so call it a minute 45 first speaker i mean 245 right okay apologies all right so yes sir please have the attorney and anybody speaking their mic okay yeah yeah councilman jones asked that you speaking to your mic mr dubose we want you to be able to hear
» for sure um all right we can have the first speaker come up we've got um please set the clock at two minutes and 45 seconds first speaker is uh linda can answer growth good afternoon excuse me can you reset the clock please uh well sure we'll we'll get it started on the right there we go all right council members last year when kershaw county was working on the update of our comprehensive plan i attended several planning committee meetings during one meeting the committee was discussing the sketch plan for a subdivision trying to decide whether or not to approve it for a building permit after much discussion the chairman asked the former director of planning and zoning how many impact studies have you received on this property the answer was none he was asked how many were sent out answer u
» sually 10 to 12. then how many are usually returned answer from none to maybe one or two is it any wonder that we have a major growth problem why are we even thinking about issuing permits when the zldr required impact studies have not been received if the procedure our staff is using to obtain these this required information isn't working why not change it before moving on in the permit process let's prioritize the required impact studies on all large developments making sure that the infrastructure and services in the area can support the proposed development we put the transportation and traffic study first school capacity second followed by other services these will be done by our kershaw county staff in-house and paid for up front by the applicant once favorable impact studies are done
» to the the satisfaction of the planning committee only then the permit process moves on to the sketch plan and finally our limit on the number of permits before passing the current smart growth plan tonight on the second reading please consider these changes the first ordinance listed should deal with the impact studies as required by our current zldr second ordinance would read permits limited to 350 per year not 350 permits automatically given out on a first serve first come basis this is your opportunity to prove that you are really serious about our growth problem in kershaw county thank you if you'd like to provide a copy of that to our administrator administrator he can have copies for every council member if you'd like all right next speaker is lee reed the topic is liberty hill mr r
» eed good evening council and thank you for your time with a very full agenda tonight to reintroduce myself my name is lee reed my wife and i live on lake watery and liberty hill and along with other all other county residents we pay taxes to kershaw county to cover for services to be provided to all county residents along with our liberty hill neighbors we remain extremely concerned with the as yet unresolved issue of timely first responder services to our area especially ems per the presentation to council on march 24th by executive director of emergency services will glover beaver creek aka liberty hill maintains an average ems response time of almost 27 minutes the longest response time in the county 17.6 percent longer than the next zone baron dekall and more than double the average res
» ponse time to three of the 19 county zones while i'm not sure of the time window on another will slides that evening that graph indicated that ems response time to beaver creek registered second highest only to mount pisgah on call responses greater than 30 minutes with over 15 of the county's plus 30 minute responses overall ranking 18th worst out of 19 county zones those are statistics but we are not we are kershaw county tax paying residents as a reminder of the real and personal nature of this issue i want to quote briefly from comments made by a good friend and liberty hill neighbor at the february 24 council meeting and i quote on january 18th i experienced one of the most terrifying moments of my life my husband was having a medical emergency i called 911 the dispatcher took my infor
» mation and then told me that he had another call to take and hung up i was left alone frightened not knowing if my husband was going to survive first responders did not arrive for approximately 45 minutes the ambulance arrived around 45 minutes after my initial call end quote since our liberty hill community meeting february 18th attended by 75 to 100 concerned residents along with multiple county representatives we have presented county council the current and ongoing need for timely emergency response to our growing area we have shared with you and executive director for emergency services will glover has confirmed this critical issue in our area that our actuality in liberty hill versus ems target response is unacceptable so far though these have been presentations without much dialogue
» and while we have seen a brief show of support with an initial flurry of law enforcement presence and even a qrv parked for a very brief time and the liberty hill fire department mr reed i hate to cut you off we we've come to our end of our time i can give you 30 more seconds i have five minutes two minutes and 45 seconds because of the amount of speakers oh okay all right sorry to cut you short i'll allow 30 more seconds okay options and alternatives exist my request is this approve fund and install a full-time ambulance or full-time qrv in liberty hill best option alternately reposition existing unit resources units resources or finally contract third-party eos services to be stationed liberty hill until and unless we have access to emergency responses services located elsewhere that can
» and will consistently meet stated target responses for kershaw county as determined by will glover thank you thank you so much sir next speaker is emily martin the subject is growth miss martin welcome good evening first and foremost um i think i speak for everyone behind me when we see our thoughts and prayers are with the chairman so horrible news but thank you for letting us know so we can direct our prayers towards him his dad his family thank you for that my name is emily martin and i am here representing the bia an organization of your neighbors and fellow community members and i recognize kershaw county is going through significant growth and the council wants to respond that is not beyond me however i respectfully ask for you to table the building permit allocation system ordinance
» until the next meeting and just to meet with me and bia members just a two-week delay will allow us to collaborate between stakeholders experts decision makers to find better solutions and we are ready to meet at your convenience regarding all of the ordinances under second reading from the smart growth committee i do encourage you to heed um your chosen experts through your planning commission's recommendations and supporting points however i want to especially ask that you follow the non-support of the building permit allocation and i know several members on council have admitted that the cap system is not the best option or ideal and they have to do it because of growth however there are no other options or ideas but i come today bringing ideas and i'm happy to have a further discussion
» on these if table today one option is special tax districts fund infrastructure improvements through additional taxes on properties within the new developments therefore the current residents of kershaw do not have to raise their taxes and they are not burdened with the costs of the increase of population two fiscal impact analysis requirements mandate that the developers demonstrate the tax revenue from the development will exceed service costs for rezoning requests by allowing profitable projects to proceed and scaling back those that are not and third incentivize wanted development implement a points based system for projects based on specific criteria such as density cost design to prioritize the developments that align best with community standards goals and wants when established this
» is seamless creates a clear and defined structure eases staff burden and aligns development with the community goals i strongly urge you to table the ordinance until next meeting so we can discuss a better more appropriate solution to address the county's growth please let the via be a resource thank you thank you so much if you could provide a contact and leave it with our administrator he can give us those resources of course mr boz next speaker is ashley raven the subject is growth this raven welcome hello everyone good afternoon i'm ashley raven and it's no secret my husband and i own a septic company here in this town i'm here to speak about the building allocation ordinance this county has been built on builders of this community builders are not only the person that builds a home but
» every sub they employ the septic guy the hbac company the roofer the landscaper i could go on and on once you hurt the builder you have hurt everyone they employ the triple trickle down effect of this will hurt every business in this town along with the money they will be able to put back into this community such as supporting sports teams through the rec department and other non-profit events such as teacher of the year etc anything you would ask for a donation for will slow down because the building business will slow down i'm also not sure how you tell someone who owns property in this county and has paid taxes that they can't build on it they have to get on a waiting list and you all will decide when and if they can build that will bring numerous lawsuits to this county our tax dollars
» will then go to fight these lawsuits instead of bettering our you all know as well as i do that once we make permits exclusive it will only drive the cost of homes up with the prices of grocery and gas we will drive the long-term residents that have grown up here and wish to live here right out of town just like mount pleasant did as i sat in the planning and zoning meeting three three weeks ago and they voted against the building allocation they understood these concerns they have implemented several changes such as lock sizes and impact fees for instance we haven't given those changes a chance to work before implementing another change planning and zoning has come up with several other options instead of building allocation why are these people appointed by you all if you aren't intereste
» d in listening to them why waste their time why not table this discussion for now until you all go over the new options with the planning and zoning committee which you all appointed what i'm asking is that you give this county time to see if the changes that have been made work before we make more thank you for your time thank you ms raven next speaker is kelly bowers subject is growth ms bowers my name is kelly bowers my husband ryan is a lifelong kershaw county resident and has been a builder here for 25 years we employ four individuals and as ashley said we also employ so to speak 40 plus or so subcontractors in any given year if our ability to pull permits is taken away which is essentially what is on the table here then our ability to work is taken away and it's not just us it's not j
» ust the bowers family who's affected it's all four of our employees and all of our subcontractors while track home builders and subdivision builders have a lot more leeway in their ability to permit pull permits quickly that doesn't necessarily happen for custom home builders like us our clients typically i would say 90 or more are going to go through a bank they have to get a loan to build their home well they have to get approved for that loan that takes time so we can't go pull their permit if we don't know that they're approved for their loan well if by the time their loan is approved there are no more permits to pull they now have a construction loan that they have one year to complete their home and we have to wait six months to get a permit who pays the interest on that loan those in
» dividuals who have put who have gotten a loan now and don't have a house that they can build for at least six months if we can get a permit then and it just depends so i'm asking as someone who has lived in this community for 25 years loves this community and wants to stay here and wants to continue to build here that you reconsider the ordinance for the permit allocation and find something that is going to help keep our builders in this community and help contributing to this community thank you thank you very much miss bowers mr debose next speaker is lynn canto the subject is overgrowth miss canto rampant residential growth with stagnant home sales is one of my biggest concerns i see in the future you have some tough decisions in kershaw county to make and your decisions will impact all
» generations to come if the government doesn't manage growth who will let's be the model for the state and the country you value quality infrastructure and realistic amount of traffic in our community your constituents are counting on you to do what is the best interest of the community as a whole the urgency is clear protect our community's infrastructure approve a permit allocation system for at least one year to assess infrastructure unchecked development is not acceptable common sense it tells us we need to have a logical plan for growth south carolina is the fastest growing states from 2024 to 2025 even the house and senate are clamoring and looking at the concurrency bill to curb growth based on infrastructure we need to pass a local safety net to preserve our community developing prog
» ressive smart growth strategies is a must we have experienced a severe drought just recently from march to april the fifth driest year in 132 years one 100 of kershaw county was impacted by this drought there were burn warnings issued multiple times they even recommended voluntary reduction in water use as we build more this becomes even more serious future threats of water takings have been suggested upstream at the cadaba watery river basin it will happen it's a matter of time are we prepared do we have a plan we had 473 fire calls in 2025 and in 2026 we've had 47 fires on seven buildings seven vehicles and 33 minor fires that's an estimated 1.5 fire calls per day 1 363 ems calls this is a high volume of calls and impact safety in our community growth is coming but we determine how rapidl
» y and if we're ready i'm not against development i just want it to be planned a permit allocation system is a solution it's an excellent tool for growth management to control the pace of development it matches growth with infrastructure capacity some counties have formal permit systems to regulate growth other counties have biannual allocation methods based on a category specification a cap on residential growth is definitely needed and would be applauded by the community county council members would be heroes by the majority who elected them there are top regional approaches and strategies for smart growth enforce growth boundaries infill development a county concurrency plan impact studies completed by the county not by developers but paid by impact fees phase development that's a good th
» ing i think i think i have a lot of ideas and i think i've already allowed some over yes you have so all right thank you next speaker is uh martin brown i believe growth say that name again mrs the bows i think it's martin brown marlin brown okay marlin hey marlin welcome right good evening members of council first i want to say that i do not envy any of you tonight i understand that whatever decision you make is going to leave someone unhappy and i respect the position you're in having to do that with that said i'm here because i believe this bill will have serious consequences for our community especially for the people who make their living in the building and construction industry in this county that's not a small group it's a significant portion around 70 of our local economy depends d
» irectly or indirectly on this industry from where i stand this field bill this bill feels like government overreach it places limits on how people can work and grow their business and it does so in a way that doesn't impact everyone equally for example allocating a third of building permits automatically to large big box builders puts local contractors at an immediate immediate disadvantage these are the small and mid-sized businesses that have built this community people who live here pay taxes here and spend their money here when you cut into their ability to do business it doesn't just affect the contractor it affects their office staff their crews and their subcontractors that they rely on it's a ripple effect that reaches far beyond a single permit at the same time many of the people w
» ho may benefit from this bill are not directly impacted impacted by those losses that imbalance matters and it's worth considering carefully if the goal is to manage growth there are other approaches that could achieve that without placing such a heavy burden on local workers neighboring counties have explored options like increasing minimum lot sizes some to three acres which helps control density while still allowing businesses to operate right now this bill puts a cap on opportunity for local contractors and when you cap their ability to work you're also reducing the flow of money through our local economy economy these are the same people supporting local businesses paying local taxes and contributing to the community every day i urge you to take a step back and consider whether this ap
» proach is the best path forward or if there is a way to address growth concerns without hurting the very people who help this country county run strong thank you for your time thank you mr brown next speaker is david dabney subject is permits i believe mr dabney good evening um man y'all cut me short here there ain't no way um usually come up here and kind of shoot off the hill right i'm gonna do a little bit of that as well but i got a few little stats i wanted to provide um the playbook that y'all chose for this permitting allocation program that y'all have uh tabled once or or passed once already and second reading of the night uh came from mount pleasant and uh it's pretty cut and dried that it's cut and pasted from there um kind of want to look at what we're comparing here uh mount ple
» asant is a city within charleston county uh population of about 96 000 people compared to kershaw county county is 72. uh they have 49 square miles in kershaw county has 730 square at the debt that equates to a density of 1800 people per square mile in mount pleasant as compared to kershaw county a little less than 100 per square mile um mount pleasant is built out uh pretty much about 95 percent they said 75 percent is kind of kind of used up 15 percent is covered by water and about another 10 to 15 percent is covered by weapons so they can't do much else kershaw county um it not being landlocked like mount pleasant is only built out 30 to 40 percent meaning 60 to 70 percent still available of course there's some wetlands there's some water there too but not near as much as what got down t
» here so how are we comparing these two why are we just coming up with this program and putting it out there and voting yeah let's do that when they're they're not even anywhere close to the sun not even not anywhere any close to the sun um and the last thing like i said i did not prepare for cut time um lewgolf elgin corridor represents 40 40 to 50 percent of all growth in kershaw county in 2025.
» um that's not to say it come from all the builders um some of the stats that you guys put up actually made me feel like it was uh local builders that were doing that before we left last year or last time um that's just simply not the case uh so the lewgolf elgin corridor 40 to 50 uh lewgolf and west camden that's from camden this way or that way is tagged unincorporated area and is basically 25 to 30 percent of the growth city of camden five to ten percent which means 65 to 85 percent of all growth is that way um i've kind of tried to come up mr dabney i just allow 30 more seconds to finish i've tried to come up with several analogies but the best way i can come up with it is um we need to address blue golf elgin corridor and kind of leave the rest of the county alone um many different reas
» ons as we don't have 15 seconds more for me to talk about it but hopefully somebody else will get up here and kind of expound on that but i just i just wanted to give you that information as well uh i don't think we're comparing apples to apples here and i think you need to drop back and punt and uh take heed to what your uh your committees are telling you as well thank you mr dabney next speaker is melody harden subject is pecan orchard miss harden welcome good evening as county council already knows my name is melody harden and i am here again speaking about the pecan orchard at the last county council meeting on april 14th the pecan orchard was discussed and unfortunately several untrue statements were made mr tucker and mr temple stated that work was being done on blackberry and tremend
» ous progress has been done that is completely untrue in fact no work has been done on blackberry since the end of march or the beginning of april and during that time the only work that was done was a little bit of trimming on one side of blackberry and a small amount of ditch clearing on blackberry the county simply scrapes some debris out of the ditch and deepen the ditch in a few spots we understand that people need to be consulted for major work but there is plenty that the county can do now on each road to help with storm water and draining we cannot we can't even get the ditches to be re-established on all three roads to help with the storm water also it was stated by a county council member that things take time can be slow and there's other projects we completely understand that let
» me remind you i personally brought this issue to the county's attention two years ago i personally believe i have been patient enough for something to be done if you believe that two years is not enough time many of my neighbors have been dealing with the county on this issue for more years than i have and mr templar admits that he has known about the pecan orchard issue for over 10 years and again nothing has been done to the county council member that have this stance of county can be slow and things can take time let me ask you do you agree that 10 years is way too long to have ignored an issue that is affecting a neighborhood next it was also stated at the last meeting that the county is responsible for the roads not private property and has no control of what happens on private propert
» y i disagree do you have control of what is happening on people's private property you do have control of that when the county is not maintaining their roads and dishes continuing to ignore an issue that they have known about for over 10 years that is not willing to do simple projects to even try to help with stormwater and drainage it is a county issue also it was stated by a county member that we were monday night quarterbacks and becoming overnight engineers and going to ai i promise you we are not we are neighbors i'll allow 30 more seconds we are neighbors that have a major problem that needs to be addressed and are being let down by our county council to use his words we are not beating anyone by the head we have given the county opportunity and time we have been told we will be helpe
» d we have been told that emergency funds will be used we have been told plans will be presented week after week all we hear is excuse after excuse it has been 10 plus years it is time to do what you all agreed to do two years ago thank you miss horton next speaker is linda franklin moore the subject is planning 30 seconds for everybody you just want to start at 3 15.
» no no it's okay well i'm gonna we're almost at the end i'm gonna keep things consistent i've got a system but thank you yes ma'am i just want to make sure you guys got to finish your thought um good evening i want to thank council for its hard work and effort on the comprehensive land use plan and a smart growth plan i support permit application system as a start to promote smart growth obviously this will have to be tweaked over time and you're not going to have a plan that's set in stone for years to come it will have to be moving and growing remember we have limited infrastructure tied to economic development you have homes versus industry and hopefully we can have a good mix of that but we do have limited infrastructure as i have stated in the past just call me the sewer breacher um i'm
» greatly concerned too that the planning and zoning commission has the monopoly of real estate agents on the commission this should never happen we need a variety of professionals on the planning and zoning commission i urge council to rectify this as soon as possible is a conflict of interest and a monopoly voting block thank you thank you miss moore next speaker is stan beckley the subject is growth and that is the final speaker mr beckley welcome yeah my name is stan beckley i reside at 506a delmar and lugov i'll come back to that 506a in a minute i know some of you some of you know me or you know my children who are counting uh residents as well i'm proud to say that i have served over 50 years in the building supply business it's a it's an honorable profession and i'm proud to be a part
» of it kind of feels like some of these new resolutions are trying to run us out of business i know that's not the intent but i can tell you that that's how a lot of us feel and you need to know that the um i asked the building industry association which i'm an active member some of you may know it as a home builders association i asked them to do a study on kershaw county and the impact of housing don't have that we have that available to you i think members of the plan commission have copies of it but it's pretty interesting information that uh it kind of states that i know everybody thinks this is going to be a burden on taxpayers but actually we pretty much pay our own way as an industry um mark growth i don't know to me it seems like mark growth people think of it as no growth i like th
» e word responsible growth better um you know i've been dealing with this my entire career um how do we know where we're at and yet we're considering nine resolutions to slow down growth i may have the time frame a little bit wrong but what we went from a third acre minimum size to a half acre minimum size to a moratorium within 18 months or so and yet we don't really know the impact of where we're at and we're trying to figure out more ways to stop growth doesn't make sense to me we need to stop and wait and see where we're at with all these actions that we've already taken let alone trying to pile on top of them um i think the impact of these actions are going to have a negative impact on the county we want economic growth but how do you have economic growth if you don't have housing think
» of this story factory wants to come to the county 250 jobs really going to want to know mr beckley uh we've gotten to the end of time i'll allow 30 more seconds sir so they um they want to know about housing so yeah we got it we got a moratorium on and if you get half acre lot and getting a waiting list yeah we got it well how's that going to wear think about the economic growth think about all the businesses that are impacted by what we're talking about here let's not shoot ourselves in the foot one last comment if we would take the energy in this room from the pro growth and the non-growth side and work on infrastructure and we can handle all this growth going forward if we combine our efforts and work on our legislature thank you mr beckley all right i think does that conclude public com
» ments that does mr vice chair thank you okay i want to thank everybody for coming we've heard both sides and um i want to just say that i appreciate everybody's perspective we're moving now into a public hearing i'm going to open a public hearing it's an ordinance to amend kershaw county south carolina unified code of zoning and land development regulations the zl dr section 3.3 conditional uses rural country club requirements i now open the hearing do we have any no mr vice chair there is no one signed up to speak on the sign-in sheet okay i'd like to offer the opportunity for anyone to speak on this subject with nobody coming forward i'll close this public hearing thank you i'm gonna say you'll knock a hole in that thing there buddy i'm used to using a hammer i see that jump over every ti
» me okay um no vote being needed for a public hearing we'll move to the approval of minutes i'll lean on john dubose to keep me in check or sammy mr vice chair i make a motion that we approve the minutes as submitted and i'd like to thank miss hannah for doing such a great job in keeping our records all right i'm gonna go to um well we need a second i'll second thank you councilman kato i'll go to uh councilman jones first how do you vote sir in favor okay councilman jones is in favor of the approval of minutes everyone here please by show of hands here's to be unanimous by all of those here present and voting moving on to 9a this is something that i put on the agenda i'd like to uh have a just open discussion amongst council about the possibility of a parade honoring our 250th year of exist
» ence as uh united states of america would anybody like to put the motion on the floor yeah i so moved last year okay well councilman jones and second from councilman kato so this is just a very pleasant and general conversation i'd personally like to see a county-wide parade um i'd like to hear y'all's thoughts on a parade for the fourth of july anybody brant danny any thoughts any thoughts on the parade i will not be here well let me say that i've been approached by i'm not leaving america but i won't be in kershaw county for for us a lot of us do take vacations as as i typically do i i'd just like to put the idea out there that i think kershaw county um deserves a parade for 250 year celebration um i know there are going to be lots of things going on i just want to keep an open dialogue a
» nd everybody here this president i'd like to hear from everybody we'd love to see a parade it could it could start in lugoff and ending camden or councilman shoemade if you'd like for it to start in elgin we can make it a long haul that'd be a long parade anyhow a very general a very general uh discussion and i just wanted to put that thought in everybody's mind so with that we can move forward no votes needed thank you um i'm going to move i'm actually going to strike the discussion for homestead exemption because it's it's on the agenda later as a resolution under 11a so i'm just going to take chairman's prerogative to strike that and move into uh ordinances ordinance 10a we've got a first reading in title only in ordinance to provide our budget appropriations for county purposes in the c
» ounty of kershaw for the fiscal year beginning july 1st 2026 and ending june 30th 2027 and setting the millage rate for kershaw county for the fiscal year beginning july 1st 2026 and adopt and implement the change that i'm sorry the the charge and collection of service and user rates and fees and other tax purposes in county appropriated appropriation purposes and matters related there too um so is there a motion mr vice chair if i may um i would like to at this time make a motion to have first reading and title only for our 26 27 budget for kershaw county okay so is there a second second all right um any discussion councilman jones any discussion on uh title only budget no discussion okay so i i do first reading first reading first reading yes sir i i've got a few remarks um spoke to our a
» dministrator danny templar and he says it looks like we're going to be pretty neutral this year he has not seen any millage increases um or need for any i think the natural growth is is taking care of that he'll have a more precise look at our next meeting on second reading is that sound about right i don't want to put words in your mouth i just want to repeat what we've discussed yeah as we sit right here now what our approach has been is to um absorb the inflationary costs and cost of doing business with any organic growth of the mill and that's where we sit right now in title only first reading good thank you thank you danny thank you very much okay with that we'll go to a vote uh first councilman jones how do you vote yes okay i say yay um all those present okay it passes first reading
» 10a moving down the list um this is a bit of a housekeeping item this is first reading and title only as well an ordinance to approve a lease of kershaw county owned real property located at 632 west dekab street camden south carolina to the clemson university cooperative extension service for the purposes of operating an extension branch office and to approve certain obligations and responsibilities by and between kershaw county and clemson university cooperative extension service is fully set forth in the lease agreement so basically we're we're working through our lease agreements and making sure they're up to date and this is just a bit of housekeeping so um is there any discussion on this item mr mr sorry make it make the motion yes thank you getting ahead of myself that's okay all rig
» ht we've got we've got a motion from councilman tucker and a second from councilman shoemate any discussion on this item councilman jones any discussion okay no questions okay seeing there's none uh i'll go to councilman jones first how do you vote yes okay that's a yay from councilman jones all those in person how do we vote it looks like it is unanimous by those here in person all right moving on now the fun begins everybody this is what y'all all came for i think everybody in the audience just about is here for item c the second reading an ordinance to implement a building permit allocation system first reading was march 31st um is there a motion to put this on the floor uh yes mr chair i'd like to i'd like to make a motion to put this on the floor with an amendment so my motion would be
» to adopt the permit allocation system on second let's make a let's make a motion and get a second first for this and then we can add the amendment we can do that i'd check this with legal just so we can avoid doing it twice but if you want to do that it's up to you you're going to throw me off there you know i'll make a motion to adopt the the uh permit allocation system thank you do we have a second i yield i didn't hear but i'll second okay all right so we've got a motion and a second um now yes sir councilman jones i have an amendment okay i think well let me let me hit my amendment first uh councilman jones uh derrick was was moving straight into his amendment if i may let him go first and then come to you normally we would go to the the one absolutely okay absolutely i just please guys
» talk directly into your mic it's hard to hear okay i didn't hear that okay okay councilman shumate your amendment sir so i would make a motion to amend uh the permit allocation system after some discussion with chairman connell obviously he cannot be here tonight uh but i did discuss this with him so that i'm you know speaking after some compromise discussions with him and some others i would make a motion to adopt the permit allocation system on second reading with the following amendments um it would be that the first six months of the permit allocation system would have a zero percent decrease with the 500 cap that we've discussed so it'd be a 500 cap which is our historical average for the first six months there would be zero percent reduction the second six month period of the two-year
» window would have a 15 reduction and then the third and fourth periods which is the entire second year would move to a 20 reduction and these numbers may be adjusted by council at the end of each six month interval that is my amendment right do we have a that that's your amendment with a motion do we have a second for the shoemate all right so we have a second i have an amendment okay let's uh councilman jones let's take a vote on the first amendment and then i can i can address your amendment um all those in favor of councilman shoemate's amendment i need to get jimmy's vote first go ahead councilman jones how do you vote no okay a nay from councilman jones all those present on the amendment how do you vote those in favor are shoemate tucker kato tomlinson so the amendment passes i i'm als
» o voting no on the amendment so it passes four to two um now uh councilman jones i can hear from you and your amendment i'd like to make a motion to table further consideration of this motion until first meeting of council in february 2027 that's the motion and the amendment okay so um about a 10-month table process um so yes that's your motion i'll i'll second your motion to table it um i don't know that it needs to be quite that long but i'll i'll table i'll i'll agree to i'll agree to make a motion to second second your motion so um discussion mr jones i got a quick question for you uh are you trying to do this so it can be after you get off of council that is absolutely incorrect mr i was i was just wondering who is that i'm talking to this is that is absolutely nonsense i've been here
» 20 years i've never died i never dodged the vote in my life and i'm not dodging this one i'm just going to i'm going to give you guys an explanation this is why i'm making this motion if i make it time to go first with everybody else though that they make a motion go ahead sir okay thank you okay guys this is the first i've heard of this the amendment tonight and we have not communicated effectively with the public obviously because they're coming in they're probably hearing all this for the first time tonight uh the planning commission voted not to recommend it we need to refer it back to the planning commission for further study and to present a recommendation that manages growth without imposing a hardship on hard-working citizens provide time for people to adjust to any possible propose
» d drastic changes this would allow time to consider the needs of the citizens the county including the livelihood of citizens which is well excuse me which this ordinance would adversely impact and hurts which we've heard that tonight folks growth is an issue but so is the livelihood of working people and businesses i want to protect families we need to consider people jobs and families you know i don't understand how we can come in and in one night make a motion and pass something that's going to drastically affect so many people and uh but that that's what we've done yeah i feel that uh this ordinance is a uh wolf addressed the sheep's clothing i really did i don't ask what it said in my opinion it's a here's something that i've always said and i've always thought about and i hope everybo
» dy's listening what i say but they've been right about 99 percent of the time i do not understand how council councils invest as well there's millions of dollars on economic development to attract new jobs and new people and then at the same time wants to pass what is in effect a partial moratorium on economic development you know that that that just confused me but you know for me to be asked if i'm postponing this 10 months because i'm dodging a vote i think i've made some pretty bold statements here tonight i'm not intimidated by anybody on council i'm not dodging votes all right my wife just gave me something so listen let me just say this guys give the people in this county let's take 10 months let's study it let's work it let's don't go shoot from the hip decision let's let's be able
» to work with folks on both sides and let me tell you something i live flashcock road and i can tell you now i feel it but i don't live in pigeon orchard i live here it but i can i feel the growth i see the growth every county in this state is feeling the same growth you know we got to do something but i would be more than happy to sit down and have some citizens involved have the planning commission involved smart growth committee but also expand out to some of these folks here who it's going to affect their pocketbooks and you know they have a right to be upset because i'm not going to say it's been i know the guys on this council just happened in the past back door agreements but i'm not saying that with this group i truly feel you guys to do what y'all think is best but it's not but uh t
» his is my reasons for making this is not to escape anything i care less what anybody thinks of me at this moment what i care about is the citizens and i'm not asking for anybody's vote i don't need anybody's vote i'm doing now what i've always done for 20 years i'm asking you guys i'll work with you if you don't want to go 10 months let's go six months but i want 10 months i think that's the right thing to do so that we don't jump just just jump into something because it's like we're coming up every night or every meeting now with a new amendment and uh too much too fast uh so once again i hope we'll put the large majority of people first or even the less majority of people first and let's just have open discussion just sunshine on this i think that's very important okay councilman jones th
» ank you mr chair yes sir thank you thank you for your comments thank you um i've got a few comments of my own i grew up in a house that was my mother was a nurse and my father was a carpenter so we work for local builders i think we're at a unique crossroads here in kershaw county we've been ripe for a long time and now we're being targeted as is a developable county in a way that we've never seen before in no way shape or form will i ever vote to restrict someone's ability to make a living however i do like the idea of keeping the integrity of kershaw county whole and frankly i think we've done that we did that two years ago when we rezoned and redefined r6 r10 and r15 as a half acre uh frankly i'm that was a bit of a bold move and i was happy to to support that along with councilman shoem
» ate and and others here i think it was by and large popular and i think that's going to help with quality and in a way of life that we've enjoyed here in kershaw county we we like to be able to stretch our arms just a bit right when we walk outside we don't want to bump into our neighbor's house we certainly don't want to hold hands through windows and you can you can drive just across the county line in the richland county and you can see the difference it's quite evident and i think we've really addressed that in itself the the permanent allocation system i agree has some issues and we can dive into that in another discussion in a moment but in accordance with the jones amendment i'd like to say three things everybody in this house in this room lives in a house unless you're homeless and
» i would i would hope that everyone here lives in a home so we can't be terribly hypocritical of someone else who wants to live in a house or home so while hearing both sides of the discussion frankly i think we cannot restrict someone from being able to build a house in a period of time it reminds me of this may sound a bit extreme china's one child rule in the 80s people are going to reproduce and we're going to want our children to move home i have a son who's moving back to south carolina after being in school in virginia for four years i welcome him home with open arms and i'm very excited about that and i hope that he'll choose kershaw county to live i hope he's able to find a house and i hope i'm able to aid in that process i too am in the building industry uniquely probably less than
» five percent of my product maybe less than three percent of my product stays in kershaw county so i've got i've got a a position of really being able to see both sides but i see my friends and my neighbors people i do business with in this audience tonight and it really takes me back just a few years to covid when the federal government and the state government said well you're going to have to close your business and you can no longer work but wait we're going to give you a loan and you may or may not have to pay it back all the banks got terribly excited they really wanted to loan that money every business in the nation was approached by their banker to make a loan that didn't help the federal deficit all it did was put us in a position to be frankly scared and uncertain about how we were
» to to do business that was a other than the 08 recession that was the largest uncertainty i've ever had in my business and i just i can't cap someone's ability to work now i will say there are other options and avenues and the lady from the bia i'd love to hear her comments um and everybody's frustrated hearing both sides i'm frustrated my family i hear my father and my mother talk about the traffic i think we lack infrastructure and we lack the ability to receive proper infrastructure at a state level we need infrastructure in our community and and i'm willing to join with my colleagues to fight for that with all of that being said i would support a three month councilman jones could we could we say it's a three month time frame to hear from the bia and others and build a better a better p
» lan that involves the community councilman can you hear me yeah i can hear you i'm thinking about that okay well i i think 90 days let me tell you no let me say this all right if this council we agree if the majority will agree tonight i'll take anything stop it right now we need to we need to talk we all need to get involved and we need to get the citizens involved who are there tonight on both sides you know and uh so if we do that absolutely i i support that tonight well i think it's don't like it i don't like it i don't think it's long enough but i would support that tonight well that that can give you the ability to be here and and i i think that's important and you know with all due respect to my colleagues especially councilman shoemate i think he's done a he's committed an extraordi
» nary amount of time to trying to find a solution but i think we need more input we need to to have some meetings as a group and i would love to be able to do that with you all we we've all got very busy lives he and i've tried to connect multiple times over the last two weeks and have not been able to do that so with that you have my second for a 90-day moratorium or a 90-day table then you have to you have to make an amendment to my amendment well okay he can revise his amendment you can revise your you can revise yours quickly okay okay okay okay let me do that okay i'm gonna change my motion i make the motion to table further consideration for discussion of the uh motion until within for 90 days how's that okay and that would affect um just item c is that correct right okay all right so
» you have a second you have a second would anybody like to discuss this question yes sir i guess this would be a legal question um mr dubose so if we pass the second reading tonight how much time do we have legally before we have to bring the third reading back into play there's really no set um time period i mean bodies typically consider uh things consecutively but there's no legal impediment um to deferring something or tabling something to a set time at a later meeting um i think if the will of council was to one more time and set a definitive um timeline again there's no there's no hard and fast issue with that so we could pass this second reading tonight keep it keep it open and hear from the building association and others and come back at a another time that we deem necessary to have
» a vote on the third reading yes i mean the one thing i would caution against um just procedurally for anybody would be an indefinite um tabling or deferral and i only say that because i know this council wouldn't do it but someone could um that could lead to cynical delays of things that never get put back on the table essentially um so again i think the preference procedurally and just for um notice to the public would always be if there is a desire to delay something for further consideration to delay it to a set time which i understand is the motion before y'all to delay for 90 days and my understanding of that would be that the first regularly scheduled meeting after 90 days would be when the matter would reappear it would be july 28th so i i would i would support uh passing second read
» ing with with the third reading not being prior to july 28th so and and just to clarify i believe the motion before council right now is for a um deferral for 90 days of this reading um just as articulated by mr jones if if the um mr jones motion is in fact uh to allow second reading for to proceed but to defer third reading no i didn't say that i did not okay i just i was seeking clarity that's all right you know what john you know i didn't i made a motion to table for any consideration for 90 days since we come back and we start to talk this over with our vote right so we councilman jones if i may um we're just i think we're trying to find something that we can um agree to i think councilman kato's seems to be amenable to that um i don't know if i wanted to thank you but i was that's not
» what it'd be 90 days yeah my my question was if we could put it off say at least a couple of meetings something of that nature to we could at least hear from them from the building well i'm gonna stay with my 90 days yeah councilman jones to be clear up i definitely understand that your motion is very confused with that comp that that scenario you gave us i mean okay so motion is very clear on what i said all right i'm gonna get here and i can i finish yeah go ahead go ahead councilman i was at 10 months and i i in good faith went back to three months and then we come up second reading or third reading what i don't know we stop it we table it for further discussion for 90 days and then we come back and we take our vote three votes okay uh councilman understood i will call i will call the vo
» te on your amendment um gentlemen i'm gonna call the vote on the amendment uh councilman jones i will support your your vote all those in favor councilman jones how do you vote yes okay uh i'll vote yes as well all those in favor it's just two of us councilman thank you all those opposed shoemate tucker kato tomlinson oppose uh the 90-day delay now i was gonna say i have some comments as we move to voting on it as amended yes now i would um i need to move the second reading as amended by shoemates amendment to discussion yeah so i have a uh a couple comments i just want to address a few things um first off i appreciate everyone in this room i appreciate everyone in this body i know everyone's given a lot of thought to this uh nobody's coming at this with a sort of ill kind of ill temper no
» one's coming to this with sort of bad intentions regardless of the side you're on obviously i'm supportive of this um i was instrument you know i was instrumental in working on this with councilman tomlinson and our smart growth committee so i admittedly have a dog in this fight and that i've been working on this for a long time i want to address just a couple things if you give me just a few minutes because there's been a lot of questions and issues raised and i want to make a clear record for those people who've had questions as i've said to many people who've called me and i've either taken the calls or tried to call those folks back you know the first answer is do we have the first question is do we have a growth problem in kershaw county i haven't heard anyone say no um that's the easy
» question the second question is well what is the answer i think that this is the best answer for this time i don't think we and to address a couple of the issues that were brought up you know we could wait we could defer a third reading but here's the problem the growth is happening now we were under an eight-month moratorium so that we could do something to get a handle on growth this is the mechanism the smart growth committee pushed out to do that it's a two-year program so some of these ideas we have talked about may work to replace this certainly they may and those things may take time i'm certainly not against any of the meetings we've discussed but those should happen as a parallel track while we're doing this to manage our growth there were some comments about the planning commissio
» n and some of their votes i think it's important to note that the planning commission is not a policy making body the planning commission is there to you know take our policies and our ordinances and vote based on whether something comports with them the smart growth committee however was a policy recommendation by it and the smart growth committee which consisted of planning commission members and council members and members of the public voted all of these ordinances out so i do think it's important to note how that came about i also think that when we talked about some of the other ideas that were mentioned some of them were decent ideas but here's the problem i just kind of go through each one real quick special tax district fiscal impact on residences and incentives incentives for sort
» of wanted development that's great for major subdivisions but it doesn't address growth as a an inherent concept because it doesn't address growth outside of major subdivisions we have a growth problem we don't have a we have a major subdivision problem that's what these other aid ordinances address certainly have that but we have an overall growth problem and so the special tax districts and those things may work for major subdivisions they also take time and those are things that we can discuss while we have the system and our moratorium is only eight months long i don't think the will of this council is to do another two-year moratorium while we talk through these issues we have to do something while we decide if there is in fact a better issue out there people mentioned impact fees and
» lot sizes as to impact fees which we do have impact fees are very limited how they can be used our impact fees are limited to only solid waste and recreation because the impact fee ordinance with all due respect to bia was written in large part with the bia at the helm and so it's written in a way that is fairly restrictive it's not an unlimited hey you can throw impact fees and do whatever you want it's written in a way that says you can only use impact fee money to address growth perfect example i wanted to use impact fee money to improve the elgin recycle center which is in need some help we couldn't do that we could use the impact fee money to make it larger because it is literally directly addressing growth can't use it to improve what's there so we can't we can use an impact fee to bu
» y a new ambulance but we can't staff the ambulance we can't use an impact fee to improve a station we can enlarge it impact fees go directly to address growth so it doesn't really impact the sort of lag that we're seeing um and it's also a small amount of money uh relative to what we need lot size growth has been possibly somewhat helpful but we haven't seen it quell our demand we saw our demand uh really not peter off at all i mean we're still we are still averaging 500 homes building permits a year even with the lot size increase i think you're driving the demand different places which is a good thing but you're still not addressing that core growth issue um in terms of uh waiting uh the six months one of the issues was was mentioned about having to wait six months to be on a list with lo
» ans and obviously i know that banks will work with folks and contingent type loans where it'd be contingent on the permit but also no one would be waiting six months unless we saw a thousand permits come in a cycle which we shouldn't see if we see what we see historically you might be in month four or month five and told you have to wait till the next period begins you might be waiting three four months i have two children that are well one's about to be in college one is now i want them to come back to kershaw county as well if the price of not growing into something i don't recognize is that my son has to wait six months to buy to build a house i can live with that and you know so uh some of the other things that were mentioned is um property rights that's a big one um i get it but here's
» the here's the just stark reality we've adjusted property rights when we expand minimum lot sizes all the stuff against major subdivisions impacts someone's property rights unless you're building a house with subdiv with uh solar panels on well water that never gets the police called has no ability to use ems and doesn't drive on the road and doesn't send their kids to school when you build a home you are taking advantage of public services and those public services are used by all of us and when we start seeing taxes on those public services we have an ability and i would argue a right as a governing body to step in and say we have to allocate these public resources in a manageable meaningful way our litigation was mentioned it's possible new things tend to get sued on if we sit here and g
» overn out of fear of litigation then you will get nothing from this council but what you've had before i'm not afraid to be sued i'm a litigator so obviously it's a little different for me but i'm not afraid to be sued if the worst thing i have to do is stand up in front of my constituents and say we did our best to address growth and a judge said otherwise i can live with that and i think most of our constituents can someone mentioned about unfairly targeting kind of local builders this doesn't do that what this says is most of our growth has been in the outside of subdivision category that's just a numerical fact but the flip side of that is the vast majority of our permits are going to the little guys most of our permits are going to be allocated for those people building outside of subd
» ivisions if we start picking and choosing those people that is where we get into legal trouble and create an ordinance that can't be sustained there were some comments about mount pleasant mount pleasant is a substantially different place totally own that i was using the ordinance because it's an ordinance that has been around the actual fundamentals of mount pleasant are very different which is why we have a categorization that is completely different from mount pleasant and the way we handle our percentages and our buckets are very very different than mount pleasant ever did there are places around the country that do what we're doing there just haven't been a lot in south carolina because this growth is a relatively new concept that we're all addressing economic development was mentioned
» about if a factory comes uh as part of the smart growth committee which had the benefit of the of talking to folks uh jeff burgess our economic development director actually breathed the smart growth on that exact issue and told us that housing supply is not a problem getting there's a lot of other problems with economic development and he's working on those but he's never had housing supply be an issue in bringing uh industry to south carolina so that's not an issue we've noted that housing availability both here and in contiguous counties in fact let me tell you what housing availability can do it can continue to turn kershaw county into a bedroom community because that allows people like fairfield and sumter and richland to say hey build your factory here and put all your people in kersh
» aw county it's right across the border i'd rather build the factory in kershaw and put all the houses in lee fairfield or richland so in terms of time to adjust um this does give us time right this gives us time to adjust because we've had you know this was put on the agenda for first reading the smart growth committee had it for several months there's been a new story about it our third reading won't be for another two weeks so there is time to adjust and it is a two-year program unless this council affirmatively extends it at the end of that two years it is a two-year program so this is a chance for us to do something while we look at some of these other options which may be which may be very valid um every county does see growth but not every county sees it like us we may be the we the s
» eventh fastest growing county in the state of south carolina the fastest growing state in the country we are the fastest growing inland county if you are not on the coast or bordering a state you are sitting in the fastest growing county in south carolina our problems are unique and this isn't shooting from the hill um i have personally spoken to every single council member directly about this at least as the latest would be maybe a month ago i've spoken to every person who's called me i've put his million facebook posts up i wish we had a local tv station that could advertise this stuff more uh but i i can't think of another way we could have convened this the fact we have so many people here today shows that the word was getting out and we'll have two years through this program to refine
» it to come up with a better replacement i have no problem with a better replacement what i do have a problem with is just hitting a pause button or taking a wait and see approach so for those reasons and many others are already talked too long but for those reasons and many others agree indeed i'm supportive of this i do want to say the last thing to my friends and neighbors who are out here um i get it and you know when you elect somebody to to do this job sometimes you have to give hard answers councilman i'd like to address one thing okay can i go next let's share yes sir i've got one major point i'd like to make but go ahead all right well you know kershaw county is not the same you go to bishopville excuse me to bethune you go to antioch you go to elgin you go to tukidoo it's not the s
» ame everywhere and i love this whole county i have always said that i i am not a counselor district for i'm a councilman for kershaw county i think i'll look at they feel that way i really do but guys what we did tonight will affect areas that there is no how the explosion we know the problems are in west watery we know that with the elgin and in blue golf but what we've done is taken a vast huge area that doesn't have this problem we put them under the same ruling with this i just i just go once you don't fit all sizes then i just think that we should have done a little bit more discussing conversation and taking things like that in consideration and and and i realized somebody say well there's a legal issue no this is we could do it we set the law we're not afraid of getting sued i though
» t we made that clear i've been sued five times and when i was in the county before i got on the county account um but anyway mr chair thank you so much for yielding to me i know you hit something you want to say thank you so much for doing that and members of council thank you for listening thank you of course thank you councilman jones um i do have a legal question um as i read the ordinance i'm going to read it and i'm going to ask john dubose to clarify something for me um this ordinance is the second reading an ordinance to amend the kershaw county unified code of zoning and land development regulations by revising section 5.2 land development submittal requirements and approval processes what this is um i'm sorry i've pulled this out of the wrong ordinance um but the concern is this i
» see in this ordinance which we'll be getting to which is directly tied to this that plan development districts are exempt is that correct as drafted there is a provision that it is not an automatic exemption but that county council could consider exempting or accepting to be fair it's uh stated as an exception um development projects submitted in conjunction with development agreements the section of the ordinance sets forth the rationale for it but basically in enacting the local government development agreement act um the general assembly um made findings that that legal mechanism where developers can negotiate with local governments okay it was a good idea to offset um development impacts okay so before we get too far down that road i just want to stop and pause and i want to make this p
» oint of clarification i jumped ahead to tie this in we're going to potentially allow major developers to not have to abide by the same rules that we're applying to the general public is that what i'm hearing i can answer that from a policy perspective because i'd like to hear his answer first well well to be fair i do think it's ultimately a policy um question but the development agreement act again was explicitly passed so that um developers and local governments could discuss and negotiate for developers to offset their expected impacts on public services um and that they can provide property donations rooftop fees any number of mechanisms to offset expected impacts um development agreements um okay provide for a schedule of buildings so there's predictability when lots appear but again i
» t's it's purely a policy call so i i think i've i've seen this in in in lancaster county in indian land i've seen it here in kershaw county in elgin particularly councilman shoemates area where these large developers with a lot of money get special treatment and they get a key to unlock the door to kershaw county when everybody else doesn't and i think that's unfair i think it's unjust and i think it's unconstitutional we've never had a pdd in kershaw county for the record this would allow it well it already is allowed yeah well as we're furthering restrict people who've grown up here that's the point i'm trying to make if we could if we could exclude that is when we get to it but all that ties together all that ties to to what we're voting on tonight and to take a 90-day moratorium which w
» e didn't i think we could have talked about this a little more i think we could have gotten the community involved and let me tell you something politicians are bought cheap that's why i'm not a politician well first off hold on i'm speaking all right well i want to speak next because the implication that we can be bought cheap i'm not talking about you specifically i was about to make my point what we do today you're not going to be here in four years probably you're you're probably going to be done sammy i am you might be here another 20 years i don't know i'm done in 40 i can promise you that my point is if you get some young gullible council member in the future that's persuaded by finance contributions i was not targeted toward you derrick please so i needed to finish my but i've seen
» it i've seen it happen and while our intentions may be good tonight we're setting policy for the next 20 30 40 years and i just want to be real cautious when we do this this is this is unique and i get that it's everybody wants a solution to the traffic that's infrastructure nobody wants to see 150 000 people in kershaw county in 10 years we've made some changes everybody would like to see quality development and and fair housing those are constituted what those are congressional laws those are federal laws fair housing so as we as we move forward through this vote i want everybody to be very careful to think about how it would affect your family if this was your industry okay and the thought of of the future councils not us i'm not implementing anybody here at all a ton of respect for ever
» ybody here um but it can happen okay so with that being said that's all i'm going to say and i'm going to call the vote because the discussion has gone too long i'm sorry you did want to say something else i'm good i'm good i'm good i'm good call for it okay i think mr thompson had something councilman yeah i think um mr shoemake hit a lot of my my talking points i was going to do and um i i see where you were going with your comments mr brazil and those are those are noted and over the past couple weeks i've received quite a few phone calls especially from a lot of the local guys um and your concerns are heard they are um sitting up here i look at kershaw county for the character that it is the reason we all live here the reason you have the jobs that you do and raise your family here and
» build homes which is one reason we put in the 60 of those allocations out of 500 permits annually over the past five years the 60 mark goes to single family non-subdivision that's your majority of it when you look at kershaw county all the way from the hills the sand hills the watery river i don't want camden and and our side of the river to be blue golf and elgin i want to keep its rural character i love i love the horse community i love our farms we got a small farm in antioch however i do want to keep this a place that my kids can come back to and have the same opportunity to go out on a four-wheeler and ride i don't want to be lexington county i have no no want to have indian land here i remember when i was in college riding through indian land it had one stoplight now it takes you an h
» our and a half to get from one side to the other and rush hour traffic in a place that's what eight square miles that's crazy that's not kershaw county we're not trying to hurt little guys at all that's not my intent and i can probably speak for every single council member up here it's not their intent we want you all to thrive this two-year sunset calls with the amendments and i know there are some people locally that have some money on the line right now pretty much build ready and i do think that zero percent cap for the first six months is fair um and we're going to be looking at this every every six months and readjusting is this the right answer i don't know but i'm willing to give it a shot because while i'm sitting up here i will never allow kershaw county to be lexington county you
» know when dupont came here in the 40s there was 33 000 people here they employed 5 000. think about that percentage you know i know the bia sent stuff out and a lot of people spoke tonight about a house equals a job dupont came here without employees here i mean heck that's a huge percent of the population we live in a metropolitan area the reason people are moving here is because there's nowhere else to move the cost of buildings more expensive richland county lexington county we have lancaster county right there you have sumter everybody's coming here because it's cheaper to build and we're put in a situation to put regulations in place to keep our history our environment our natural resources the reason that our families moved here and i will be supporting this and i will not be voting t
» o table it thank you all right we already know that that's true all right councilman kato please i just uh i just got a few comments um i had quite a few phone calls some of you may be here tonight that i've talked to um i tried to i don't think i missed a one if you call me i tried my best to either answer or return your call um and i told each and every one of you that i talked to that after the first reading i voted for the first reading so that it would can continue the discussion but i was not in favor of 30 percent i thought the 30 percent was too drastic and i still believe that way especially to start off with it was just too much um i asked uh chairman connell and i and i respectfully have had some pretty um intense conversations with with mr shoemate i mean we don't see eye to eye
» on some of this stuff and that was one of them but we we um we just had to agree to disagree on stuff and it that's the way it's been but i want to thank them for looking into this and and us putting our heads together a little bit and i think that this zero percent for the first six months and a gradual increase if we see necessary i i feel that that's a fair um way to do things i i would never have supported 30 off the bat in the in the third reading it would not have happened um but i feel that this at least gives people time to adjust and i don't think it's that big a hit i don't even think 15 percent that big a hit but it's starting somewhere and with the growth in this county and just like mr tomlinson um stated i mean i agree with everything he said i mean we we've got to do somethin
» g and so i wanted to explain my position on this and this is nothing against uh i've got family members that make their living off this kind of stuff also i understand i do understand and as you can tell tonight there's no win for nobody up here on this board nobody everybody's split on it that's all i have to say thank you councilman mr vice chair yes sir councilman tucker i think i have sit very quietly you have yes i have i've been impressed um first and foremost i want to say thank you to all of you builders contractors developers real estate agents and all that who have reached out to me um i received your concerns and had conversation with you the ones that didn't have conversation with me is because we played phone tag but i've returned every call that has been um that i have receive
» d with that being said um there's there's other issues out there that i'm concerned about um that i do want to put on the table so you know that we will be thinking about them between now and third reading um i know people are very tricky all it takes you is a 75 and a no good lawyer you can file suit on anything you want right mr shubay it's 150 dollars okay all right inflation i'll give you that um i'm saying that because i know there's tricks of the trades of the game where the big boxers come in and you know they llc up and start going into your parts of the allotment there that is that's there um we're going to be in conversation with our county attorney and others and also anybody else that i can get their opinion on along with my colleagues and administration uh to see what what type
» of defense we can put in there without creating a lawsuit as legal as possible um i would say too uh councilman kato spoke on it uh zeroing out the allotment for the next six months give you some surety to get started on your projects that some of y'all is what i call got uh shovel ready you actually moving dirt and got curbs and gutters is the word i'm looking for continue to work i mean you shouldn't have to worry about that and and your investment there's nothing up here that would hurt me more is for us to make a decision that will destroy local builders that's i've never taken a vote up here in 20 something years i've sat here to hurt any of the citizens of kershaw county and their business and it's not going to start now but i also know this room wouldn't be filled if this did not hav
» e a little bit of substance and we're going to have to rethink how we do things and replan i use this example all the time um since we've gone into this new phone sale uh cell phone ordinance they passed the law last year we started enforcing it this year there was a grace period there so let's all sit down conversate figure out what we need to do to continue to be successful and share that back with your representatives or myself so we can make sure that we're not leaving a donut hole that's the part that i'm afraid of a donut hole that will be able to hurt you so for those reasons i'm going to support tonight but i will continue to work on this ordinance and fine-tune it and let me say this to to all of you we county council has the power to recall adjust or change any ordinance that's in
» our venue or um right so when six months come up and there's something that's gone awry and we see that we've made a bad decision from zero we can make that adjustment and and so on and so on there's nothing that prevents us from recalling something or um adjusting or um whatever we need to do so i don't want you to think that this is sunset and life is over because it's not it's not gloom and doom thank you mr vice chair thank you councilman tucker yes yes one more comment and i'm gonna call the vote this is my comment this is my comment i want to thank everybody on council we're not personally taking a jab at anybody except for one person jabbing me tonight thank you so much because i have a jab anybody on council tonight i appreciate that you've been a gentleman thank you sir i'll get yo
» u when you get back home listen we got we got a lot to go guys we got a lot to go these people are here waiting on you the contrary i'm going to make one more suggestion prior to calling this vote i would like to make an amendment that all subdivisions that have been started in kershaw county be exempt and grandfathered in um as prior to this because there are people who invested millions of dollars into infrastructure that won't be able to build their their homes and they won't they'll they may even lose their builders completely because if they're only allowed to pull eight to ten permits uh per year they won't put a um they won't they won't put a foreman on site to oversee the house building so there's people that could lose entire subdivisions that have already been started so i make an
» amendment to grandfather in existing projects that's my moment i second that okay we've got a second it's on the floor i have no further discussion it's pretty cut and dry gentlemen how do you vote jimmy you first i mean i think it'd be interesting i'd like to see the numbers i'd like to see the you know kind of like you did with the nurses and stuff i'd kind of like to see the numbers of how many existing projects and how many permits and i mean what you know how long these permits some of the permits have been out the existing permits i mean i don't think that it's right for somebody to hold on to a permit for five or six years i can address some of that if you go ahead yep so um let me just pull up uh so right now we have so i i will just say at the front end i'm opposed to the grandfath
» ering provision because we've got it built in already one of the things we i've talked about doing on third reading with chairman connell and i but obviously he's been indisposed was taking in the major subdivision category and making the vast majority of those um for existing projects so that only about 10 or 20 percent of those permits can go to new subdivisions and if you look at that that the it should only slow the rate of growth the reason for that is there's 1485 lots inside of approved subdivisions if you were to grandfather all those in you pretty much have the permit allocation system written out of existence the other thing is well only for 1485 laws though correct but what i'm saying is you would you would you could in theory grow 800 lots next year it wouldn't actually limit gr
» owth is my point it wouldn't do what it says about limiting growth but i will say that of the 1485 lots all but 117 received approval more than two years ago so we're dealing with lots that have been approved for more than two years that have not been built so we're not talking about you know with the exception of 117 which again and under this thing no single sub development can get more than 25 so those recently approved subdivisions would still be competitive they'd still be able to do that with a rollback so that's that's kind of the short version i wasn't anticipating talking about this i can talk about it more if we need to but that's that's kind of a base some of the basics on those numbers all right so before we take that vote i just want to do one thing if you're in this if you're
» here tonight and you feel like that this could push you into potential bankruptcy raise your hand there are two people that feel like they could be pushed into potential bankruptcy if we pass this tonight that's because they have borrowed money at a bank they have invested a lot and we could take their livelihood from them i want you all to think about that that's a real question that's a real question guys let's grandfather what's existing and be fair to these people can i say something mr chair my share yes sir this is second reading and if council would support this they would have more time to look over and come back on third reading jimmy are you suggesting so i support that so i'm no no no i'm supporting secondly as i'm just explaining that we still have another reading to go things c
» an be changed then but i think that's the first i've heard i think that's a very good uh motion just last year i just wish our colleagues would give it some thought and vote in favor for this and then we got a third reading coming up do you suggest we hold off until third reading is that what you're suggesting no no i'm saying we move forward we move forward you're making an amendment aren't you making an amendment third okay so are you all right so i've made is that a separate is your emotion a separate amendment from anything else yes my my motion to amend with grandfather existing projects and i'm in favor i'm in favor of your motion okay thank you um guys i want y'all to consider this because these people plan these projects before these laws were implemented if we can do that then i th
» ink it's a win and i think it's a happy median i really need you to consider this amendment so with that i'll call the vote councilman jones how do you vote on my amendment in favor okay all those present and voting in favor raise your hand that's some strong nose two yeses all those opposed all right well i'll have to lean on someone else to make that motion on third and maybe we can have some positive conversations between now and then all right calling the the vote on the second reading of an ordinance to implemented a building permit allocation system as amended by councilman shoemate all those in favor jimmy i'm not in favor nay from councilman jones nay from councilman brazel all those in favor councilman shoemate councilman tucker councilman cato councilman tomlinson all in favor it
» passes four two all right we will have to see how that plays out y'all we've got one more reading maybe we can have some conversations between now and then i must move on to the second reading of an ordinance to amend the kershaw county south carolina unified code of zoning and land development regulations just a second mr vice chair let the room quiet down please what's the matter mr tucker i can't i didn't hear you we just we're taking a break i'll tell you what i'll tell you what we're gonna do i'm gonna put us into recess for five minutes to allow everyone to break this has been we're two hours in we're back in session all right just finishing c um we are going to i'm gonna take a chairman's prerogative if i can find it in this mega packet we have hmm mercy where is the golf course amen
» dment okay mr vice chair well i'm trying to find the one i was gonna jump to john debose yes sir um can we have steven smoke approach oh he likes that he popped up come on steven we're gonna we're gonna get you out of here right that's what he wants we are in the weeds guys all right let's i'm sorry i had that associated with two others as a slate i apologize um i'm gonna jump ahead to m and then we're gonna back up um so that you and your clients can get out of here appreciate the consideration yeah of course so i think they love us i'd like to make a motion for third reading an ordinance to amend kershaw county's south carolina unified code of zoning and land development regulations section 3.3 conditional uses rural country club requirements we've had two readings um i'm excited about th
» is project i think it's very positive for kershaw county um does anybody have any questions i'll make a motion second we've got a second so this is um tell us tell us all the fun facts yes thank you mr vice chairman um this comes at a request from handy root which um they have a large presence on social media um many of you have seen but it is a uh golf course development in in a rural part of the county uh councilman cato's district in mount pisgah jefferson almost jefferson area and um it's it's exciting my clients are prepared to invest a significant amount of money in the county we'll also create some jobs uh and while at the same time provide recreational opportunities for both tourists and our own citizenry so uh all in all we think it's a very positive thing for the county and someth
» ing that that everyone can look forward to enjoying in the future uh and these are some changes as you well know uh to the zldr which will you know help the project along and uh help it be successful and we don't have any other changes to the zldr since second reading just appreciate your consideration of the changes tonight so as i've understood it they just want to build a nice clubhouse not to exceed 8 000 square feet that would be lodging for a guest at the golf course is that correct that's correct yeah not not for residential lodging uh for long term not not a subdivision not a subdivision not at all not a zoning change this is just to allow it's just to allow folks to have a place to sleep when they're here and um i'm excited about the golf course um i asked one thing prior to the vo
» te would you promise me that you'll come back with a presentation from from the golf course and let them show us how wonderful it's going to be i have a few of the representatives who are here tonight uh candy root folks and and they would be excited to do that sometime here in the very very near future because the first course uh the plan is for it to be uh open and playable this fall great fantastic and we frankly i think we'd like a tour um we'd like to see the project great steven could you coordinate that i'm happy to with uh with ben and myself and we could we could have everybody out for a tour real excited thank you for investing in kershaw county um very appreciative and um hopefully we can continue to support you guys in any way possible with that um any other comments discussion
» yeah i would just like to say this this is being built within probably a mile and a quarter of my residence and it look the landscape that's up there is just unbelievable um this first course looks like it's going to be a remarkable course just from what i've seen from the road and for the most part especially after we knew that there was no no housing developments and that was the that was the false narrative that was put out there but after we found out really what they're wanting to do we're looking forward to some growth some responsible growth in that area that's going to provide some jobs and and some great recreation and very excited to see what's yet to come looking forward to it all right all those in favor it is unanimous by those here and voting i'd really like to hear councilman
» jones i think councilman jones dropped off oh yeah yeah all right i was just my old colleague right right i think you'd have enough uh mr mr vice chair if i can um mr smoke make sure that the um owners and developers have a special tea time for the tucker brothers it won't be a course until myself and my two brothers get on the course and play and destroy it listen i've seen your brother clayton play we'll have fun right thanks and have a good night mr uh vice chair point of order sure yes um mr jones is not feeling well he said y'all tired him out after two hours and um he's kind of rest so understandable understandable thank you for sharing that councilman jones thank you for calling in tonight um all right so now we reset to letter d second reading of an ordinance to amend kershaw county
» south carolina unified code of zoning and land development regulations to add section 5.3.3 major subdivision design standards uh do i have a motion for this reading bless you i was gonna say mr chair i do have a motion that would consolidate some of these but i'll defer to you if you want to take them one by one well i i've actually got i've studied this some and i've got an amendment i would like to propose okay that i think would be more than helpful to um further enhance some of what you've worked on okay um so for d okay then i would make a motion to adopt d on second reading okay perfect so we've got a motion and a second shoemate and tomlinson um it's on the floor um i'll defer to your amendment okay any discussion needed before i make an amendment okay seeing none i would like to ma
» ke an amendment i would move that we amend item 10d to limit on grade slabs to 25 of the total homes in a subdivision in section 5.3.3-5 section a page three mr debose is that clear enough of a motion for i think you've precisely identified the the section yes and i think what we would do is enhance the developments that we see by limiting that does anybody think that's a good idea and would like to second that motion they were you're at again okay okay we're yeah we're i know we had a we had a lot going on so it's d everybody is d second reading yep and and all i'm suggesting is that there there be a section added to limit the amount of own grade slabs so in in traditional home building you have you have a crawl space you have a stem slab or ray slab which is like 18 inches in elevation an
» d then you have an on-grade slab which is useful especially in townhouses and in particular um it's it's a style of building but i i think to to many of the points that you made earlier um being a very special place it would further enhance quality construction it would promote um a type of home that that people could cherish and really enjoy living in and so i think that would enhance what we're doing what what um percentage are we looking at well my proposal is 25 but i'm happy to hear from you 25 has to be on crawl space no 25 would be the maximum amount allowed of slabs all all type on grade no just on great slab on grade not not elevated raised yep not not elevated or raised right um no because the barn dominium would be a one-off yeah but you could well they wouldn't be a major subdiv
» ision it wouldn't be a major subdivision this is just in a major subdivision um yeah i mean i i'm fine with limiting um or at least did it give a variety in a in a subdivision we had we did have i think it would i think it would lend itself to variety this is something that um mr dubose and i as we were reviewing this at 4 30 um kind of came up there's a lot going on today so my apologies for not this is limited just to be clear limited to subdivision yes sir major or minor yeah so this is this is just major it it only it only it only it just it prohibits so if it's 100 houses 25 of them can be can be an own grade site 70 the rest of them can be race race labs but i think that townhomes would be your own grade slabs if if i were the developer i would build my townhomes which are also limite
» d on an own grade slab so if someone is is a maybe an elderly couple in a wheelchair and they need that on grade slab without a ramp that that would be available to them or home house so didn't want to eliminate i know the city of camden eliminated it completely it did do we have a second i i have comments i got no we we frankly hadn't done it correctly we hadn't put it on the floor so i need a second i'll say thank you so so i i originally was in supportive of the concept of maybe even elimination we had some comments in the smart growth committee meeting that sort of went the other way i'm definitely not against it um we're on second reading i could vote for tonight with a really big caveat that i could change my mind i don't want to kind of mislead people i have no trouble i almost maybe
» i would almost maybe invert the percentages i'd like to i'd like to think about it a little bit but i don't want i don't want your amendment to fail and then you can't raise it again so i would vote for it with the understanding that i may sure vote against it because i do think because we did talk about it we go back with some of those materials we we did we did um before i commit to it but for purposes of second reading i can support it just so we can not have it be you know against any other discussion yeah all right all those in favor all right those voting in person and uh well those voting it's unanimous the amendment passes and now we need to vote on the ordinance as amended so um to to reiterate uh we're going to vote on the second reading say uh letter d with amendment all those in
» favor of the ordinance as amended are you raising your hand yes it's uh it's it's unanimous thank you what y'all confused about thank you gentlemen i know that was um needed some discussion uh moving on we are at e second reading an ordinance to amend kershaw county south carolina unified code of zoning and land regulations zldr section 3.5.4 buffering screening open space and landscaping regulations is there a motion to put it on the floor so mr chair i'll go back to what i said before i guess what i'd ask is if on e through k if there are no amendments proposed i would move them as a packet if there is i would ask that we can go to the ones that council members may have amendments on but if not i'd like to move them as a packet but i'll defer to how you want to do it so i and i promise i
» think this is the last one i actually have an amendment for this as well okay that that could be friendlier um i would like to well i'll make a motion that it be adopted on second reading okay second we got a second make your amendment all right so we've got a motion from councilman shoemate a second from councilman tucker correct and i'd like to propose an amendment the part of this regulation i think that maybe stuck in some of the crawl of the developers was the fact that none of the wetlands had credit so if if you were to develop 100 acres 20 acres was a river bottom which was a beautiful river bottom which rarely flooded they didn't get any credit for that 20 acres as a um as part of their open space when if it were on the watery river it drops off into a flood zone you actually could
» still build in that flood zone uh legally but that wouldn't if it were left open it wouldn't be considered um green space so what i wanted to do is split the difference and give a 50 credit for any wetland area for the green space that is my amendment is that taking into account like actual water acreage no say if you have have a swamp or something no no i don't think it would take dubose help me clarify that it wouldn't take into account a pond it would have to be open land yeah i don't believe that our zldr classifies bodies of water as is either a wetland or a floodplain um certainly between now and third reading i'll make very sure that there's not an unintended consequence on that okay and um to be clear is your uh this regulation currently um does not provide credit for i believe wetl
» ands or floodplains is your amendment a 50 credit for wetlands and and floodplain acreage yes okay i just want to make sure i understood it yes because frankly there's it depends on where you're at it depends on the type of soil it depends goes back to the lady that was here earlier what what kind of soils on the property is it is it black dirt is it a swamp or is it a river bottom along the watery river that's frankly just like our veterans park that would be a qualifying area so that's my amendment do we have the definitions of wetland and floodplain they're in the larger order what's our definition of wetland you'll give me a minute and i have the reason i'm asking that question yeah right um yeah i have with the floodplain i mean the similar to the river park right that can be usable sp
» ace in my mind a wetland is is a is a swamp that's unusable um and for that aspect of it i would not like to include that piece in there okay i wouldn't mind the floodplain okay strictly because just like we have issues um with pecan orchard right and in areas that have wetland has the ability to flood and more open space near those wetlands allow space for that water to go um so i would like that not to be included in that percentage however the floodplain i would be happy to have included yeah it's our definition okay yeah that's a fair point um councilman i i think that's a very fair point and um i i frankly don't have any problem with that okay so i believe our definition more or less paraphrases the um wetlands classifications um army corps and um scientific testing but it's areas that
» are inundated saturated by surface and groundwater to frequency and duration sufficient to support and that under normal circumstances do support a prevalence of vegetation typically adapt adapted for life and saturated soils the key indicator for wetlands is the presence of hydric soils wetlands generally include swamps marshes bogs and similar areas so directly to your point i'm giving you the long lawyer answer the precise definition but it would not include ponds or bodies of water okay so i'll i'll retract mine and i'll let you make an amendment if you like yeah you can you can make your amendment as long as you take out wetlands okay so so then i'll rephrase my amendment to include 50 of floodplain not wetlands and um i think that's a very fair uh discussion so thank you i appreciate
» that lord help i can't remember mr shoemaker i think who was the second on that miss hannah on the amendment russell amendment or i second it you did okay yeah thank you there you go all right all those in favor of the amendment you guys you don't like the idea i thought brandon i did a good job you did we played nice and everything come on guys one more you're going to make me call jimmy back you got your five yeah you got your majority yeah it passes oh that's true we're down i had never had a three vote pass we got at that time we squeezed it we squeezed it down you want our official no votes yeah please it passes three in favor and two two against odd things are happening tonight miss hannah you got us covered on that doing your best as am i so we're going to pass it as amended we are p
» assing it as amended it has passed as amended no that was the amendment no one more yes all right all those in favor as amended okay you're going to vote for the whole thing there yeah okay all right all right as amended second reading has passed e moving on to section to f second reading of an ordinance to amend the kershaw county south carolina unified code of zoning land regulations to amend sidewalks pass and required sidewalks councilman shoemate i can adopt this as a slate f through hey hey so uh yeah mr chairman i would make a motion that we adopt as a slate the ordinances for second reading and f through k these ordinances were approved these ordinances were approved unanimously on first reading so i would recommend that we adopt these ordinances as they were approved on first readi
» ng by this body second okay any discussion thank you mr post as i see no discussion um voting on the slate f through k um all of these are at second reading all those in favor please raise your hand councilman shoemake councilman tucker councilman brazel councilman kato councilman thomason it passes unanimously all right thank you very much we are now at l third reading an ordinance to amend the official zoning map of kershaw county to rezone 32 acres pax map number 062-00-00-00-025 located at 41 youngs ben road kershaw south carolina from rd2 rural development district to general development and this is carolina motorsports racetrack am i correct yes adjacent property yeah it's that great head fell out there so um i think we've talked about this we've discussed any further discussion he's
» he's basically protecting his property and um any potential expansion and and i'm okay with it i think it's available we get a motion yep so who made the motion i'll make a motion okay all right i'll make a second and all those in favor councilman shoemake councilman tucker brazel kato and tomlinson it passes third reading and final we've addressed m on to n third reading of an ordinance to amend the codes of ordinances kershaw county south carolina chapter 24 offenses to add article 3 solicitation and panhandling establishing regulations governing solicitation and hand-handling within the unincorporated areas of kershaw county south carolina and establishing penalties for violations um this past the first two readings do i have a motion i would make the motion that we adopt on third readin
» g second councilman shoemake councilman tucker with a second um any discussion i've noticed that this has increased and has been a increasing problem in our community so um all those in favor please raise your hand councilman shoemake councilman tucker councilman brazel councilman kato and councilman thomason all vote in favor it's unanimous all right now to a fun item um i have a resolution for a homestead exemption where is it here's a resolution proposing an amendment to local state code to increase the homestead exemption amounts um do i have a motion to put this on the floor you're making the motion i'll make the motion i'll make the motion is there a second i'll second your motion thank you i'm going to read this and then i'm going to have some discussion just so everybody kind of und
» erstands a resolution proposing an amendment to local and state code to increase the south carolina homestead exemption amounts whereas kershaw county council recognizes that rising property values has significantly increased the tax burden on homeowners and whereas the homestead exemption is a vital tool for maintaining housing affordability by reducing the taxable value of primary residences and whereas current economic conditions necessitate an adjustment to existing exemption levels to provide meaningful relief to seniors disabled veterans and other qualified recipients whereas increasing the exemption to a fixed dollar amount such as a plan below provides more impactful relief for individuals as age hinders the ability to earn income as they enter their golden years of retirement now t
» herefore be resolved by the kershaw county council that the proposed change the homestead exemption for kershaw county shall be outlined by the following changing the age from current state law to to the age starting at age 60 with increases as the individual homeowners age if the home is owned jointly by a married couple the oldest residence is eligible and qualified applicant phase one age 60 the homestead exemption will be 100 000 phase two at age 65 a homestead exemption of 200 000 phase three age 67 with a homestead exemption of 300 000 phase four age 70 with a homestead exemption of 400 000 phase five age 75 with a homestead exemption of 500 000 the eligible eligibility would would be that the exemption should only apply to an owner occupied primary residence where the owner has held
» title for at least two years the implementation phase one would commence in 2027 starting an onboarding process of all phases until 2031 when phase five is completed the proposed outcome is that we expect that the proposed changes will do the following it would be protection for fixed incomes many seniors live on social security or pension benefits that do not keep pace with rising property taxes increasing the exemption ensures that these residents are not taxed out of their homes that they've worked all their lives for response to rapid appreciation national home prices have risen significantly especially since the pandemic exiting flat dollar exemptions have lost existing flat dollar exemptions have lost their relative value increasing the exemption as as proposed follows inflation and r
» ewards seniors economic stability for seniors lowering the tax burden allows elderly residents to allocate more funds toward essential maintenance health care and preventing neighborhood blight and reducing the need for state government funded social services early retirement support by lowering the age from age 65 to 60 it supports those who retire early due to health in issues or industry shifts providing stability before they reach the full social security age community retention providing tax relief earlier encourages long-term residents to stay in the community rather than relocating to states with more aggressive senior tax breaks revenue offsets we acknowledge that the loss of property tax revenue must be managed through a five-year onboarding process we recognize we can offset a por
» tion of the losses through organic revenue growth as well as working with finance to forecast these losses and offsetting gains by looking at a five-year historical revenue changes from 2020 to 2025 so all that being said i think seniors deserve to own their homes and i think this is something um i spoke to some individuals in finance and the idea isn't as far-fetched as one might think the idea isn't as far-fetched as one might think this is actually something i would like to to pass this resolution and refer it to dennis alridge for his review and i'd like to refer it to finance for finance to review and find out what this looks like and that this is something that we could actually put to a vote tonight it's just a resolution we're not voting on implementing this we're voting on letting
» finance look at it and dennis look at it mr brazel yes sir quick question i i'm glad you put pen the paper and you said you were going to do that last meeting um the only problem i have with this resolution is it kind of is a preemptive um almost looks like a promise from council that implementation is going to start in 2027 phase through 2021 or 2031 right yeah a resolution doesn't mean anything i i would completely strike that out um and then also i'm not i guess it's a legal question is are we even allowed i know that the state like a state law that the county administers are we allowed to change individually the state the homestead exemption there are some provisions um i'd have to go back and study on it but uh applicable to municipalities that i believe allows for some further relief
» but at the the gap has to be bridged i don't know that there's the same latitude for um counties so to answer your question it might be a uh preempted scenario where there is state control over it but it's certainly something that can be explored um in the you know allridge consideration or or any other consideration of it um could certainly also look at it and um get back to council at a later meeting on it well then i can um defer this to the next meeting and we can answer those questions thank you yeah i'm happy to do that yeah yeah and i just want to put like this is passing a resolution on our behalf this is something this is something that's so very important to seniors and frankly i appreciate yeah i like the idea i think i think it's something good for the could be something good fo
» r the community i'd like to know what had the impact on the county and having it to finance we can we can even look at getting the numbers and stuff of what this affects prior to this resolution but just seeing if we even have the ability to do something like this one and then i i would like the 2027 start time taken out completely because i think that gives people false pretenses yes sir um yeah i know you and i had conversation we hadn't had a chance to get together on this i really want to see what this looks like now i do know from other councils especially the ones that represent us over at the association of counties that lobby for us you can always give more relief you can't undercut the state so um there's some possibilities but uh my question as one of the finance members is as i a
» sked you is what's the cost for us locally if we do something um and where does that make up come from yeah so so that's obviously tonight i'm starting conversation right and and that's that's what i'd like for our finance team here at kershaw county to tell us um and and and beyond the finance committee because i don't want to put the burden on you i'd like to have uh county staff oh absolutely have a look at this yeah i think i think it could be a collective effort so what i'd like to do is i'll withdraw this resolution for tonight so that i can place it on the next meeting and mr duvose if you could help me write something that is more in line with councilman tomlinson's thoughts um i think can you share again what you'd like to see stricken sir um yeah just the implementation timeline i
» don't want to give any any false hope to someone in my mind this even though it's a resolution it doesn't mean anything um just just a thought on our behalf however it says we'll commence in 2027 starting onboarding process so i think this is something that um you know can be started with communications at the state level if we we are not allowed to to do this by by state statute or just remove implementation and then we can get the numbers and everything good um to look at it all right and fair fair enough would the finance committee have enough time to look at this in two weeks it's going to be tight but we'll we'll we'll make it happen thank you thank you and i i think that um our county staff can can assist oh they're always at our meetings and and really um some of the earlier conversa
» tions have been more positive than i had hoped so um more just can we run into any block i thought i thought it was gonna i thought it was gonna get squashed a lot quicker and frankly i thank you for your consideration i think i think everybody at these ages i think everybody deserves some relief they've paid all their life and um this is something i'm very passionate about i'll i'll work with council is is however we need to to to get these answers and to find out how to pass this mr mr brasil it would be possible to push it to after we get done with the budget just because i know staff is going to be the budget time this year it's going to put a lot of weight on staff i don't want to push it that far and um the reason why i think the budget process would lend itself to answering some of t
» hese questions frankly yeah i agree but having a two-week window on on the resolution well let's do four weeks then shall we that's good with finance he has a tougher schedule so i respect that of trying to make the meetings because he works in columbia so i'm willing to yield to my colleague if he's if he's wanting more time because i i know how it is to work out of town and try to make these budget meetings and we've had several we'll we'll put this miss hannah not the next meeting but the 26th of may yeah thank you okay no votes needed moving on we've got some appointments uh recreation advisory commission councilman danny kato are you making an appointment tonight i do i would like to make a motion that we reappoint jason bentner to the rec commission second all right we've got the moti
» on on the floor to appoint jason bentner to the recreation advisory commission i've always heard wonderful things about him so any any further discussion mr just just briefly jason served here um since i come on council i've appointed him to direct commission he's done an outstanding job jason um he has our vast knowledge and he has really helped us with the development of these ball fields and that's that's kind of his thing and he provides a lot of feedback for us and i am just very thankful of the work that he's done for us so i ask that y'all support him in reappointment tonight absolutely thank you all right all those in favor it's uh unanimous by those here in voting jason bentner is reappointed um councilman derek shoemate you have a reappointment as well sir yes i would like to appo
» int uh andrea larimore back to the recreation advisory commission she's agreed to continue to serve and has just done the one term and also part of this group that spearheaded all this through rec and as we're driving home i want to make sure we get it done right all right we take that in form of a motion second second from councilman tucker and all those in favor all right it's unanimous um further appointments for the assessment appeals board um if we can who's mr connell's appointment should we should we wait until he's back does it need to be done is she like a term expired or can we wait let's wait for councilman connell so we'll push that and then uh councilman shoemate you have an assessment appeals board appointment you'd like to make i do um i don't have her packet in front of me i
» don't want to mess the name up well who's who's currently serving on my spot all right rosalyn franklin i couldn't remember if it was her or the other one that was my appointment so uh i would move to reappoint rosalyn franklin who's also agreed to continue okay in a second second all right we've got uh the motions on the floor all those in favor and it's unanimous thank you all right we move to council member briefings um start with councilman tomlinson uh mr vice chair no briefing this evening thank you thank you councilman kato i don't really have a whole lot i should after this meeting because there should be a lot to talk about but you know i just want to reiterate and i've said this many many times this is not easy it's not easy and a lot of people that you try to satisfy and a lot of
» people that you can't satisfy and some you should do and it's it's it's nothing it's nothing against people individually i make my decisions based off what i think is best for kershaw county and and that's that's what i do um and that's the only thing i can say about that but um i it's honor and privilege to serve people kershaw county up here and i'll continue to do the best i can that's all i can do i have to agree and my prayers and and i definitely want to send out prayers for ben's family again we're thinking of him absolutely absolutely thank you councilman shumate yep i don't have much again just i thank everybody up here you know one thing i will say about every person on council to include the ones that are not here with us is they're they're all you know stalwart fathers they work
» hard for their family and everybody wants their family to have a kershaw county they can come back to so i appreciate the discussion tonight you know these are issues that are complicated and tough and i just appreciate everybody stepping up and having those discussions in a in a meaningful way um it's tough i mean as councilman kato said um i want to say the thanks i i guess thanks and sort of uh godspeed to the teachers it's testing week across kershaw county so our various teachers are doing all their testing this is the time of year where my wife sends a text in the morning that says do not call me unless it's an emergency call your dad and derek you better be available so um appreciate all the hard work our teachers are doing and um that's really all that i have thanks all right thank
» you councilman councilman tucker thank you vice chairman um thank you for filling in today i just i'm gonna do my mother's um move uh sometimes the less is best so i'm not going to comment on a lot of things from tonight but i do want to say uh to the connell family my prayers and um love is sent to you sincerely and um i hope all goes well with mr joe connell and that uh he's able to have a speedy recovery and turn back to some type of normalcy um that's all i have thank you thank you councilman um our administrator no report sir no report our attorney john debose nothing outside of executive session i'm going to keep the streak alive all right um yeah you are on a streak for sure so um i'll just briefly state that that i certainly appreciate everybody being here tonight we've got a potent
» ial amendment that would grandfather um that would grandfather existing projects into the uh allocation it would exempt it from the allocation system i'd like for everybody to genuinely think about that between now and third reading um respectfully i think there's a lot of people here tonight that are that are actually i didn't ask the question lightly um do you feel like this could bankrupt you because i know that i've heard from people that have borrowed lots of money to be in business that they're in and frankly they're worried that that these projects closing that they're working on uh they'll be in some real trouble so i hope everyone will consider that my prayers go out uh to mr joe connell and his family and ben we're praying for you guys and hope that the surgery was very successful
» and um the recovery goes well that ends my briefing and um need to make a motion to go into executive session um we may have a vote coming out of executive session so with that do i have a motion to go into executive session i would make a motion that we go into executive session on items a b and c okay do i have a second all right all those in favor it's unanimous we are now in executive session um sorry i'd like to make a motion to exit executive session make a motion exit executive session second all right we are now back in regular session take the vote oh all those in favor of exiting executive session it's unanimous thank you um i have a councilman councilman shoemake you have something yeah i would like to make a motion that this council authorized chairman connell along with any cou
» ncilman uh he deemed appropriate to have with him uh authorized chairman connell to negotiate with a uh our current growth contractor on the current contract for rewriting as the ldr that is my motion yeah i'll second that motion okay no discussion okay all right all those in favor and it's unanimous all right with that being said we're still adjourned we're done uh do i have a second all right all those in favor of that's our journey all right
