Full meeting transcript - June 23, 2026

» good evening i'd like to welcome rowan out to this tuesday june 23rd 2026 kershaw county council meeting i hope everybody got the opportunity to vote in the special election today very important part of our community nation and representative republic so glad to have you here tonight we're going to go ahead and get started with the agenda and we have um councilman tomlinson in route from work he should be here tonight we've been called mr chair mr jones my chair is so far down i feel like sammy tucker sitting in there i can't get you go up so that's a good feeling mr administrator can we get the special chair operator to assist mr johns switch my chair switch with brant he won't notice all right we'll just we'll just have a complaint from brant later all right now that we've got jimmy's cha

» ir situated um we'll have an invocation and prayer from mr tucker maybe you could pray for the chair and then in all seriousness let's have a pledge of allegiance as well mr tucker will we stand please let us bow our heads and open our hearts lord father god almighty we come to you as humbly as we know how thanking you for all the great blessings and all the uh things that you've given us that we don't deserve but as being your children you always take care of us we ask lord now father that you bless the citizens that have come here in person and the ones that's watching online the employees and uh this dice up here that you give us uh the wisdom and understanding and the courage to make good decisions that you will be pleasing with continue to watch of our men and women that is fighting fo

» r our freedoms and liberties overseas and lord father we thank you for our democracy and uh being able to uh vote and go out and make this world this county this state a better place we ask these things in your precious son jesus name amen amen amen i pledge 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 very much mr tucker you're welcome uh next up we have adoption of the agenda do we have a motion on the agenda make a motion we adopt the agenda okay and then i would seek uh is there a second on that i'll second we got a second i would seek a motion to remove items number 9a 11a and 15a is no longer necessary or relevant is there such a motion to amend i'll make that

» motion we have a motion to amend is there a second second we have a second any discussion on the motion to amend and just for the public's benefit that is first reading uh extending clean community commission uh term limits that is 9a 11a is clean community commission appointments and then 15a is an executive session matter that's no longer needed any discussion yeah one more time which is 9a yeah one more time item number 9a is i got it the uh clean community clean community commission term i mentioned you got mr jones yes the next one is 11a which is appointments related to the same commission clean community commission and then the third one is 15a for removal um executive session and it's no longer needed for particular matter any discussion on the motion to amend by mr shoemake seeing

» none we'll move the motion to amend uh to a vote all in favor raise your hand miss hannah it's unanimous in favor on the amendment that puts us back on the original motion any further discussion on the agenda on the original motion to approve seeing none we'll move to a vote all in favor raise your hand it's unanimous miss hannah and the agenda is amended as stated all right um i've got a few things that i'm used chairman's prerogative to move first up for budgetary purposes we have to do this generally each year in your agenda items number 10d and 10e are going to be moved up prior to the third reading of the budget which is item number 9i those are related to budgetary matters and they have to be discussed and potentially voted on before council before the budget can be approved and then

» we're also going to move up item number 10f which i think a majority of the room might be here tonight uh with interest in item number 10f is a second excuse me second reading related to project ballast on economic development it'll be the first item in the ordinances section so it'll be right before uh 9b new 9b okay and we'll proceed in that way gentlemen next up we have public comments do we have anyone signed up mr dubose yeah there are nine speakers for public comments okay the first speaker is denise rawlings the subject is bethune plant okay and as you're coming up um i'll just let you know they'll have a clock that'll let you know how much time you have divided amongst the speakers there's a half an hour for uh public comments it's a time for council to hear from the public it's not

» a q a we're interested to hear what you have to say yes ma'am yes good evening council members my name is denise rollins and i'm here tonight on behalf of my family who live on timrod road james and sue gainey dale and pam gainey robbie rollins and myself we are asking you to reject the proposed natural gas plant that's planned less than two miles from our homes our family has lived in this area for generations this land is not simply a place on a map it is our home our history and our legacy i have spent more than 60 years here and i hope future generations of our family will have the opportunity to enjoy the same clean water healthy environment and rural way of life that we have we are deeply concerned about the potential impacts this facility could have on our groundwater our air quality

» and our local ecosystem my husband and i depend on a private well for all of our drinking water we also grow much of our own food relying on clean soil clean water and a healthy environment to sustain us we currently have an organic elderberry grove that we use to make elderberry syrup for our family and friends once groundwater is contaminated the damage can last for decades and in some cases may never be fully reversed even a small risk is too great when the health of families farms and future generations is at stake we should not be asked to bear that burden so close to our homes this rural community has long been defined by its quiet farmland a large industrial facility does not fit with the character of the area or the values of people who live here we urge you to place the protection

» of our water our land and our community above the interest of this project some decisions can be corrected the loss of clean groundwater and environmental quality cannot please protect the families who already live here and preserve this land and community for the generations that will follow thank you thank you ma'am for coming out tonight mr dubose next speaker is pam gainey yes ma'am miss gainey good afternoon i also live on timrod road and have lived there for over 45 years my husband haven't lived there his whole entire life and i just have a few questions i would like to present to you as you consider the possibility of building this facility out so closely to our homes and i also have copies of the questions if you'd be interested has a full environmental impact statement or equivale

» nt environmental review been completed if so where can residents view the completed report what alternatives were considered and why was the location so near existing homes selected what cumulative impacts were evaluated including air emissions noise traffic and water use were impacts to local agriculture and home food production evaluated what pollutants will be emitted during this construction and the normal operations of this plant what are the projected annual emissions of nitrogen oxides particulate matter carbon monoxide and greenhouse gases how will the emissions be monitored and will monitoring data be publicly accessible what health impact assessment has been conducted for residents who live from one to three or even five miles away from this facility have any permits been issued a

» nd which are public or current which permits are currently open for public comment what is your emergency response plan in case of fires explosion chemical releases or gas leaks has the local fire department reviewed and approved the emergency response plan what additional training or equipment will local first responders need and who would pay for it what are the projected noise levels for nearby homes during the construction operation when noise levels be monitored after the plant begins operating what recourse do residents have if noise exceeds permitted levels has an independent property value impact study been completed if nearby property values decline because of the project how will the affected homeowners be compensated what baseline groundwater testing will be conducted before cons

» truction ever begins who will pay for independent testing of nearby private wells before during and after construction if this facility is safe enough to be located one mile from my family's well the food we grow and the homes of our neighbors what specific evidence can you provide tonight that demonstrates that there is no meaningful risk to our groundwater or our quality of life thank you yes ma'am thank you for coming out tonight can i can i request that we get a copy of those questions to be turned over mr dubose who's up next next speaker is tommy ganey fune plant you said mr ganey yes tommy be careful tom you getting older jimmy's got a comfortable chair up here for you this one mr gainy jimmy hey councilman how y'all doing my name is tom again i live at 33 35 tim rod sir if you could

» pull the mic up so folks can hear you just a little bit better i i live at 33 35 tim rod road this facility is probably going to be built about 1800 foot behind my house the noise that it will have from it it's going to be possibly unbearable they can put all the trees up they want you still going to hear it my property value is going to drop there is no doubt about it it's going to plummet we wouldn't be able to sell our house for pennies on the dollar the one thing i wanted to ask y'all is how many of y'all would like to step out your backyard with a plant 1800 feet behind your house 1800 feet that's not very far and i know it's going to be terrible like i said i probably would never move anyway i love where i live i love my community but it's going to be rough so i hope y'all take into c

» onsideration overseeing what the kershaw county's gonna make and think about the poor people that live on tim rod road we've lived there all our lives and i never thought this would happen so please take into account the distance it is from my property because no barrier is going to stop it it's not going to bring any economic development to between maybe two years when the construction workers are there after that they're gone none of their people's going to live in our area they don't want to hear it so please when y'all make your decision you take into consideration the people that's going to be close to this thing that's where we live that's where we retired and that's it thank you thank you for coming out mr ganey mr dubose who's up next lee reed the subject is ems yes sir mr reed i'm

» here tonight because of the proposed fiscal year 26 27 budget excludes any funding for ems ambulatory or even qrv coverage stationed in our area that being liberty hill beaver creek baron dekalb and the upper highway of 97 corridor that is troubling because the lack of timely ems response to our area is not new county council has been aware of the issue for some time ems management has openly acknowledged the coverage issues in recent meetings it has publicly confirmed in this room that the average response time to our area does not come close to meeting their standard target response time or to average response times in other zones as a matter of fact liberty hill ranks dead last in overall response average response time as presented by ems earlier this year and a full 17 and a half percen

» t longer than the second longest average response time baron dekalb residents have complete have repeatedly raised this concern these concerns yet despite the documentation long-standing awareness the proposed budget once again does not contain funding to address the problem and what makes this year's preliminary budget particularly troubling is that the county will receive substantial additional revenue as a result of the recent property assessments residents are paying more yet those additional revenues will not result in expanded ems coverage into liberty hill or other rural areas where documented needs exist the proposed budget does but it does however provide funding for a new ambulance and eight ftes in camden budgets reflect priorities budgets reflect priorities while every budget in

» volves difficult decisions the absence of funding for adequate efs coverage in liberty hill and other underserved areas of the county sends a clear message about where this issue ranks among your priorities council members this is not camden county this is not lugoff county this is kershaw county county where over 70 of the population does not live in either camden or lugoff public safety and ems services are among the most fundamental responsibilities of local government adequate ems coverage is a core public safety service and expectation every resident of this county deserves emergency medical services it's simply a matter of priorities not a question of whether something can be done it is a question of whether or not it will be done i respectfully ask kershaw county council to reconside

» r its priorities and make local ems coverage for the liberty hill area a priority in this year's budget the citizens affected by our coverage gaps deserve more than acknowledgement of the problem they deserve action thank you thank you for coming out mr mr reed mr dubose who's up next next speaker is joel hubbard ems mr hubbard good evening uh my name is joel hubbard as everybody is aware of i am not only a resident a resident of this area i'm also a business owner in this area i own the uh up and coming opening of doc 97's old place it's going to be dock and dine so i'm not only worried about the coverage for my personal health and my wife my daughter and son-in-law also live in this area and everybody that patronizes my place of business i have a concern for if we have emergency at my my

» place of business on average it takes 35 to 40 minutes for response time and be recruiting it's unacceptable we can do better guys we voted for you guys to sit in these chairs we need a response to show the reason why we put you in the place you're at we need a response time that is i mean anybody in this in this room besides the ones that live out there can you actually say that you have seen that in your lives i know you haven't i had an emergency last year it took 39 minutes for him to get to me only time i've ever been carried out of my house in an ambulance before if i'd had a stroke or a heart attack probably wouldn't be standing here talking to you you know we can do better we've got funds we've got people that are willing to donate including myself i own hubbard heating and cooling

» in lancaster south carolina i am willing to donate the materials and the labor to put hvac in a structure to house somebody to take care of our area okay that's all i got to say guys thank you thank you for coming out tonight mr dubose buster beckham vietnam vets yes sir mr beckham thank you sir appreciate it appreciate the tough job you elected officials have it's uh being stewards of the public trust and and the public wallet it's tough it really is haven't been there before i know understand i'm the semi uh official speaker for the vietnam veterans we have over a hundred names plus names of vietnam veterans in the county we've also accumulated over 200 names of world war ii veterans and a couple dozen korean veterans that live here what we're asking for is that is some type of joint comm

» ission between our group and your group okay some type of committee where we can study some type of monument or award award assist or whatever uh bishop has a veterans museum he springs has a display for all the veterans who've been in the wars there we don't have an answer we don't have a solution we're just asking that we can work with you in some capacity so we can come up and you know and have some recognition on a personal level for the people who would serve you know who served our country all right thank you sir thank you mr beckham for coming out today i appreciate that mr dubose who's up next jim curley the subject is the theme plant yes sir mr curley good evening my name is jim curley my family and i stay on timrod road we'll be a close neighbor to this plant i teach physics and a

» stronomy at winthrop university and york technical college we moved here about 22 years two years ago for peace quiet and rural living in a small community and that that plan is about to be ruptured by the natural gas fired power plant if it comes i'm most concerned about the health issues that's why i talk about this evening but i'd be lying to say if i wasn't worried about environmental issues the decline of my property value and the fact that the plan is to purchase 800 acres but the footprint of the plant is only 100 acres so what about the other 700 acres it's not all going to be a buffer forever in five or ten years is there going to be a solar panel farm is there going to be a data center is there going to be more power plant there you know something we don't know um so um sort of br

» iefly on health issues there's a plant going up in colton county uh it's bigger than the plant plant for bethune but presumably it has new technology the cleanest the cleanest uh emissions around and yet the harvard university school of public health issued a report in 2025 uh saying in part i quote emissions modeling revealed that more than 2 million people would be impacted by additional particulate matter exposure from the gas plant um especially the particulate matter is a harmful form of air pollution unsafe at any level of exposure um and they go on and talk talk about the increase in health care costs for that community uh the epa in fall of 2025 said this about natural gas fire power plants they can have significant effects on the health of members of the close community nitrogen ox

» ide sulfur dioxide particulate matter uh all contribute to respiratory problems and heart disease so this plant in bethune it's gonna in some ways destroy our way our life if not take our very lives ourselves or our health i understand there's financial benefits for the county and the community for for a project like this but when you talk about even if it's just a minority of the residents that are going to suffer uh various ways environmentally health-wise it's not a bargain there's nothing that balances this scale so i oppose i oppose i oppose this construction of the plant i oppose oppose any tax incentives philo's offered to um to facilitate the construction this plant and just on that note i'm wondering how much money the county's going to lose in tax revenue by awarding the philo bec

» ause um i couldn't really see that in the in the reading that was uh included on the agenda online anyway thank you very much have a good evening thank you for coming out mr curly mr dubose who do we have next uh chris crimminger ems service yes ma'am miss crimminger good evening gentlemen thank you for letting me speak this evening my name is chris crimminger i'm a resident and a business owner on lake watery we have talked about the lack of emergency services we are still facing lack of emergency services in the beaver creek liberty hill area which also affects all the way to the county line the northern end of the county first let me emphasize that this is not a criticism of our emt and firefighters they do the toughest job in the world and they are our heroes i'm aware that there this h

» as been a problem for years this has been a problem for at least 20 to 25 years i've talked to the oldest older people that have lived in the beaver creek area and they say that there has been no emergency services what they're up there whatsoever it just seems like the past councils have just kicked it down the road every time the subject has come up we need y'all meaning all of you to stop this kicking it down the road we need y'all to fund an ems service to upgrade one of the fire stations either baron dekalb or beaver creek and you've had the offer from mr hubbard to help so that we can have the services that the rest of the county enjoys we've heard there's no money in the budget our tax assessments have just come through we know there's going to be more money in that budget because y'

» all are going to well i say y'all but the county is going to be bringing in more money with the higher assessments i do not understand how with these assessments and with this money coming in you cannot allocate funds to cover our area with emts and firemen i know there was a talk of having some kind of truck at either beaver creek or baron dekalb but i understood that it was only supposed to be stationed there during the day emergencies don't just happen between 8 and 5.

» most emergencies happen between 12 a.m and 4 a.m the deadest time of night so we're still going to have a problem getting service it's up to y'all to find the funding this is your job this is what we elected you to be our representatives for please find this funding keep this funding in the budget for all the coming years because that end of the county is not going to lose people it's going to gain people people are moving further out please do the right thing before somebody dies because there's no ambulance service or because the ambulance took 45 minutes to get there thank you gentlemen thank you for coming out tonight mr dubose who do we have next joan holland deal is the next speaker i didn't catch the name helen neal joan deal joan neal miss neal please deal deal yes excuse me yes ma'

» am miss deal pair but i knew if i didn't come that i would probably back out i've been dealing with this problem for years and i've had uh the highway departments to uh people coming out to observe my land you're doing fine if you could just talk into the mic a little bit more they're not they're not they're not taking me seriously but we've taken up petitions to the farm across the street your brother we uh because the fertilizer was causing flies and all to come in our yard but i have a runoff pipe under my yard under in my yard and it's washing away my land it's terrible i've already had one tree come out of the ground that was huge roots and all hit my house and then now it's running down and it's my yard is washing away i've asked for help and i've said i had clemson come out they're d

» oing evaluation they came last week the county came out three or four weeks ago and they were supposed to give me they said environmental engineers did this put this pipe in here we had nothing to do with it and i said well when was this done he said oh way before because i said why would they put a pipe in the middle of somebody's yard that yard was undeveloped over there i'm 70 i've had i've been on disability i've had so many surgeries but i work for my yard it's my therapy but now it's not therapy it's work and i plant i have planted trees along the highway i have planted shrubbery i have planted put rocks slate rocks to river rocks to stones everything to try to do it and they said you have really worked hard to try to stop it by yourself but now it's getting worse and even the fertile

» soil on the left side of my house that was just i left it natural it's not even flat now i went to walk on it today and it's you saw again the roots on the tree it's a tree like this the roots are shining like this they're shining like this i ain't it's just and it's running to the neighbor's yard and they just have ignored me i've asked them to kind of repave where the driveway comes in it's never been done they said they couldn't do it even where the mailman comes there's a dip and right beside the driveways i've gone out there and poured bags of cement myself look at my lowe's bill it'll tell you how much i've worked to do this i moved off pebble lane and let my daughter move up there because i thought i'll move in the smaller house of my mama's and i've almost regretted it because it's

» been so hard and i just want y'all to please see about this because it's there's no i'm losing all my worms all my dirt that i used to take over to the other place i've been always doing i have blackberries pears uh peaches i have uh raspberries blueberries and i have lots of roses i have i work hard i have to dig the dirt out from underneath my shed because i've had to pull cement blocks myself because i have to pull it out because i don't want my wood to rot and it's just i i've i've tried to work with y'all for for them with them for years and years and they keep avoiding me and they they come and they look i i even called timmy and i said who who you know anybody how i how i so i went down there and they just ignore me but i would really appreciate it i usually try to give folks an addi

» tional 20 or 30 seconds they need it to conclude their remarks i don't want to assume too much i assume that you've left your contact information along with all the other folks tonight so i appreciate staff has your contact information but thank you thank you for coming out tonight very big on the environment and i agree i'm so glad all these people are speaking yes ma'am thank you thank you ma'am mr bose any other comments no sir that concludes public comment thank you everyone for coming out tonight that brings us to a series of public hearings we've got two public hearings on the agenda for tonight the first one is item number six a this is a public hearing in relation to the issuance of kershaw county uh council authorizing general obligation bonds two million dollars related to acquiri

» ng constructing equipping rehabilitating and improving the county's wastewater infrastructure and other capital projects and matters related there too i'm going to go ahead and open up the public hearing no votes can be required the public hearing is open do we have anyone signed up mr vose no speakers no speakers on item number six a anyone present uh wishing to speak on item number six a for public hearing seeing none we'll go ahead and close the public hearing and move on to item number six b this is a public hearing on item number six b to provide budget appropriations for county purposes in the county of kershaw for the fiscal year beginning july 1 2026 and ending june 30 2027 also setting the millage rate for kershaw county for the fiscal year beginning july 1 2026 and to adopt and im

» plement uh charges and collections of services user rates and fees and for other tax purposes and county appropriation purposes and matters related there too we'll go ahead and open up the public hearing mr dubose do we have anyone signed up for six b on the budget this year no sir no one signed up for the budget anybody present wanting to speak on the budget for the public hearing seeing none we'll close item number six b no votes required we'll move on to public presentations placed on the agenda for item number seven a this is by councilman jimmy jones clay young regarding book of south carolina courthouses do we have a motion i so move we have a motion is there a second second any discussion before we have the uh presentation just like i say we i'm very proud to have clay here he's a fo

» rmer county administrator here as well he's got bridges his son who's now grown up and clay has put 10 years into this book on courthouses he's going to issue us and i think he put one on your desk for us to have here but job well done he just wanted to share that with us about five minutes he knows we've got a lot of important things to do but it's just be about five minutes all right let's move to a vote on having the public presentation all in favor who are present and voting i'm saying it's unanimous for those who are present and voting mr brazil had to step out for a moment yes sir thank you uh jimmy for all his kind words to you and um appreciate i'd like to thank kershaw county councilman may come tonight too uh sammy if you can pull the mic up just a little bit it feels a little bit

» different being on this side the uh yes sir microphone being back there for the number of years that i did spend here all the time but uh i do appreciate kershaw county council i do want to recognize my son bridges young over here when uh when i was in kershaw county sammy y'all remember he was probably this tall so he's a little taller now and he also lives in lugoff he knows a great house he lives in lugoff so i'm we're excited about that so hopefully uh you'll see more of me in the future whenever i come see him too on that too but uh yeah i appreciate y'all letting me come tonight i'll be brief um i won't get into too much detail on this too but uh we did a we did a book we started about 10 or 15 years ago writing a book on the courthouse of south carolina and the book is basically as t

» he title says it's south carolina's county courthouses you know it's also a book that also has the court of appeals and the supreme court in it too because that's as we got into doing the courthouses uh around the state we found out that the court of appeals and supreme court were also played a very important role too how they were constructed and how they became a part of the state of south carolina but uh this book here like i said started a number of years ago probably 10 plus years ago and we basically did it by county so i not being a historian but reed lives and who also helped me write the book is really a story we did it by county so we went to every county in south carolina and we researched every courthouse ever built it by county so it's uh it's uh as you can tell it's a coffee t

» able book it's uh it's it represents about we have about 396 pages in the book it's about 700 um i guess pictures or images in the book so it does give you a wide variety of information in there uh it has the picture everybody asked what is the picture of the court of the courthouse on the front of the book everybody always asks that question of course this is the charleston county courthouse the one at four quarters of the law down in downtown charleston charleston county also has a judicial center in north charleston but this is the actual courthouse that's located there i did start my career there in county government so i started my career actually in the back part of the charleston county courthouse so uh it does bring back memories but the reason we one reason we chose this courthouse

» here too was that it's the oldest courthouse in south carolina and it also is the site where the former state house used to be at that particular time too but uh we also have a bunch of courthouses on the back of the court on the back of the cover of the book too but uh we uh got this book here and we started putting it together and do um we decided as we plow through the through the materials and went to every county taking pictures and getting pictures i did find out that the only time that you could take a picture of a courthouse was either on a saturday or sunday you couldn't take them any other time because people were moving around and you never could get a good picture on that too and on that part of there too but one of the things we did find out as we were doing the research on the

» different courthouses um it by by county and um we did find out that before we did anything we needed to write a little history about every county because you just didn't want to start out talking about a particular courthouse or in a particular county we'll talk most people wanted to know how did the county get started so we put that information in there and i'm glad we did now looking back on it is that now it's turned out to be a history book for the state of south carolina it's not only south carolina's county courthouses but it's also a history book for the uh for the state of south carolina dealing with all 46 counties and in supreme court court appeals uh been very lucky the schools have bought a number of copies throughout south carolina the state libraries bought numbers of copies

» the usc law school to charleston law school have all purchased copies the supreme court court of appeals has got that too but uh it's been a uh it's been a long process it's been a process that uh we finally got it done uh as you can see it's uh hopefully uh y'all will take a look at it read the book and so you see the importance of the book here too but uh i wrote the section on kershaw county i'm the one that took the picture of the court the current courthouse on kershaw county um i'm the one here also worked with uh the county for tommy cooper to have a court session in the old courthouse uh the robert mills courthouse uh you're very lucky in kershaw county to have to still have a robert mills courthouse a lot of robert mills courthouses were torn down over the years and so you're very

» lucky to for kershaw county to still have to have maintain a a courthouse of robert mills courthouses but uh like i said i could go on and on and on about different aspects of the book but i hope you will take an option and i'm very privileged to come here and present a copy to you um i'm very happy that uh i can make this copy available to kershaw county and county council for their thank you very much danny would you hand it to the chair please and i can't promote uh your sales from up here but i am personally curious it's just available online yes it's available online because a few of us up here have probably been in just about every courthouse that you'll have listed in there so that's that's a very unique project that you've done and i'm glad that you're able to feature kershaw county

» yeah i don't know if i tell everybody that ben yeah it's uh you can we've got i've left uh the the clerk with some information on the courthouse it's uh sc courthouses.com is the website so if you want to go on the website you can go sc courthouses.com and you can pull up more information about the information i've got some flyers here too bridge got some and i'm gonna leave some right here in case anybody's interested thank you for that information uh councilman any discussion any comments mr jones just want to say thank you clay appreciate it i just want mr jones i just want our chairman to clarify why he was in all those courthouses was it for work i was defending russell brazel numerous legal matters but due to attorney-client privilege i'm not able to disclose exact nature of those mat

» ters yeah i will i will say well i'll end with this too is like i said south carolina has has got a very diversified group of courthouses around south carolina and they are very uh interesting to go if you've got some time to look at so look at this book and look at some of the courthouse because they would be very interesting to go and see some of the old courthouse because we we're very blessed to have some brand new courthouse along with some old historical courthouses if i may mr jones i see steven smokes out there of course clay worked for stevens as well too one thing that clay said to me and it meant a lot i said what do you miss most about kursher county he said jimmy jones thank you appreciate it he was close yeah he's very close to my neighbor yes sir one of the things i wanted to

» point out mr young was the kershaw county part of this book myself and mr jones talked about this before before the meeting tonight and it has a picture mr albert kirkland kirkland does and for us old timers in law enforcement we can remember him being the court crier and if any of you has ever heard a court crier he would call the session in the order you could always hear him out front going hear ye hear ye i mean he would shout the last one he was the last one he was the last one here in kershaw county and he would shout it to the top of his lungs yes and i can still remember hearing him and it's a very it's very special if you've ever heard it and it's very unique but i just wanted to point that out i'm glad you brought that up too because he was the last one mr jones was right he was t

» he last last crier that they had in the state jim yes sir mr tucker uh thank you uh mr clay young i can't say thank you enough um it was uh great working with you when you were here uh we know that two things about you your financial wizard and your historian buff so those are the things that you carry dear and near to you um this uh book uh on the courthouses uh i need you we need you to write one more on how do you finance a new courthouse i do not want to repeat lancaster county's way of getting one i don't think that people will be proud of us but um we do need to be able to uh to fund and look at the future uh and they're so expensive to do now and they keep the historical value of uh what the original courthouse is but thank you for all you have done for kershaw county and for the oth

» er 45 counties uh on your tour here gathering all this information and um you know the door is always open here this is home even though your son will still be living here you know you always got an um an invite to come up here and visit the administration council whatever you need but thank you for all your hard work thank you mr chuckerman mr shoemake yeah i just want to echo everyone's thanks um the book is amazing we all got a chance to look at it and i actually bought two copies so um it's pretty cool they'll be uh it's really amazing too because it's not like you pointed out not just the courthouse information but the history stuff uh for 46 counties i can't imagine the undertaking so thank you i mean we don't get enough of that south carolina specific history so thank you so much tha

» nk you mr shoemake uh council members any other comments or discussion clay i'd like to say thanks to you we talked about this previously i think it's real interesting and i wanted to answer sammy's question i don't know how to finance it but i know when to finance it it will be right after we fully fund ems thank you for coming out thank y'all thank y'all appreciate you very much uh no further votes required that concludes public presentations again thank you so much thank you gentlemen next up on the agenda is item number 8a approval of the minutes do we have a motion make a motion we approve the minutes mr cato has a motion is there a second second we have a second from mr uh tucker any discussion on the minutes thank you mr hannah yes thank you staff for putting that together thank you

» very much i'm seeing no discussion we'll move to a vote all in favor on the minutes raise your hand it is abstaining uh that's right mr brazil was absent so he's abstaining otherwise it's unanimous in favor for those who are present and voting minutes are approved all right um on to ordinances so the first one that we're going to have is item number 9f this is a second reading first reading occurred on may 12 2026 this is a second reading for an ordinance authorizing um a fee in lieu of ad valorem taxes agreement between kershaw county south carolina company identified as project ballast and related to one more sponsor affiliates um and special ss this also includes uh i'm just getting past the summaries that i usually use ssrc credits it's special source revenue credits for the benefit of

» project in the county do we have a motion on second reading i'll make a motion mr shoemake has a motion do we have a second on second reading second we have a second from mr tucker mr shoemake you have four um i'll yield uh no from one explanation from the uh county attorney otherwise i yield so uh this fee low has a um anticipated investment of 900 million a minimum investment of uh mr boz if you grab the mic so people hear a little better this has a um approximate intended investment of 900 million uh believe the floor investment for filo qualification here is the super filo for 400 million um anticipates 15 uh new full-time uh jobs and of course uh locks a uh millage rate and four percent um assessment ratio um the fees based on um ultimate uh payment for uh megawatt hours um further det

» ails uh would defer to um economic uh development and uh mr burgess could you also explain the ssrc correct so the special source revenue credit will allow um basically a credit against investments in the site facility property acquisition um property development essentially allows a um industry to um back out and get credit for those land development costs that went into the project and it's typically assigned again you sign it as a percentage of the um what would have been the normalized tax amount okay thank you mr shoemake you still have the floor no i just you know i know there's been some talk of this tonight there's been some talk on on social media i think you know i've personally met with the folks doing this and done some of my research i'm going to be supportive of this tonight t

» his would be as i understand it the largest economic development project kershaw county has ever done and you know i think it's important to note that the use that is being done here is an allowed use this is not a use that is not allowed or prohibited at that site uh what we're doing voting here solely is in a tax package which are very common for these sizes of business again this does not authorize the business nor does it prohibit it it is a permitted use and so again i think this you know given the economic revenue my own research about the risk and benefits of these types of projects i'm i'm for this for kershaw county mr shumake thank you um mr took you have the second uh yes i would just like to ask and i know we have um copies i think miss hannah may have them or they're floating a

» round on um these questions that was given to us um can we get those and then i would like to sit down either with staff you mean in public presentation tonight right in public comments public comment i mean public comment tonight yeah uh and get with staff and mr burgess and just i've heard a lot about the project malice but um those were some legitimate questions that i would like to know the answer to uh before third reading please so that's the that's the only question or comment i have thank you mr tucker council members any other comments or discussion any questions i'd like to ask uh either the county attorney or mr burgess i've got a question that i want well not a question i want something explained to the people here i want the explanation of what is the reason for the first title

» the title first reading of title only and the disclosure um law that we have because a lot of people don't understand that and i'd like for that to be explained so uh two things um first readings and title only um can occur they're allowed in state law um often utilized by counties to advance matters um second part of the question regarding uh project code names um mr burgess could probably be way further in the weeds than me but um it's generally to protect the privacy of the industry that's going to come in and i say privacy in that um a lot of industries might be first to a certain market or might face other competitors trying to locate um if they catch wind of it um further um a businesses expansion plans or location plans um can again also impact competitors but also land and market sp

» eculation um around the project so again it is a privacy mechanism uh routinely used for philo ssrc projects um and again it is to more or less protect the business interest in the early stages of the project sponsor public hearing notices and will often reveal again the exact industry name and typically the industry name is placed in the third reading version of of any economic incentive thank you and if you could share how just real quick how many days in advance did the public um hearing notices go out uh 15 days in advance uh due to the unique timing of the chronicle independence publication schedule and y'all's meeting schedule uh the notices in fact end up being um it's a 15-day notice but because of the publication ends up being basically a um 21 day notice 20 day notice that's fine

» thank you thank you for clarifying that uh i got several things that i want to say say tonight in reference to this project i know that it is a huge economic impact to kershaw county and i recognize that it could bring a lot of good stuff make it help fund ems but and and i want to say this before i get to my butt i have talked numerous times from mr casey and i appreciate your time that you've spent with me and he's been very attentive if someone wanted to talk to him i know he's called him he's talked with him and i appreciate that more than he knows and he'll probably have more phone calls and more questions a lot more questions i i grew up in this area for many years i lived in that community family friends and loved ones that i care for deeply live in that area i can't sit here and dis

» credit this company because the company's done everything that so far that i've asked them to do and i've got a few more things if this goes forward tonight i've got more things i want them to do because there's a lot of things that i feel like maybe some of the property owners especially adjacent to this needs to needs to have their answers if if it goes forward but i cannot with a clear heart and a clear conscience vote for this tonight i cannot turn my back on the people that i was raised around in the community that i was raised around when i ran for this office my motto my motto was to be the voice of the people i may not agree with everything that was said tonight but i'm going to be the voice for the people up there and tonight i'm sorry but i cannot support this tonight thank you co

» uncilman kato mr jones well i i want to start by there's no wrong or right here it's just what your priorities are how you feel i'm very proud of you mr kato i really am that was well said and and i will tell you tommy and susan and the rest of you miss gainy you know i've known a lot of y'all's families for many years and uh i have a lot of friends over there but i always said when i ran for this office 20 years ago that i would always put people before money let me tell you something this is a lot of money i mean it's it's a big operation and you know of course i i listen to it and it sounds really good and everybody's done their due diligence in their job but when you talk about uh how much 900 900 what million 900 million and 15 jobs something worries me there a little bit but that's ju

» st that's just me that's just me and i but i tell you these are good people up here i know they're doing what they think is right but i have to side with mr cato tonight there's no way i can look you folks in the eye and uh vote for something like this that might affect your your your livelihood or your where you live so having said that that's i've been that way for 20 years i'm not going to change now i got six months left but uh i i would hope that we could have a little more clarification and understanding as to what's going on and you know i might could support it but i but let me tell you this i always said this and steven smoke he's probably gone into you he knows how i am i always said if property owners vote again don't want to protest against it i'm not going to support it because

» they go back to putting the people over the money we'll be okay with or without this okay but anyway that's just my position and i mean no ill intent to my colleagues up here okay i i really don't they're doing what they think is right i'm doing what i think is right but i'm not going to change my mind that's just the way i feel so thank you thank you mr jones any other council members who haven't any other council members who have not spoken yet wish to speak i'd like to say i'd like to say one thing do i see uh mr rollins good to see you sir it's been a long time an old friend it's good to see you tonight um bethune i'm standing with you tonight okay thank you mr brazil mr chairman just wanted to to clarify by having second reading of this philo there's no agreement going forward that a p

» ower plant is going to come right this is just a an agreement that we have put in place um setting some parameters it could eventually not come is that correct uh i would defer to legal counsel and administrator but as i understand it yes uh hypothetically anything is possible yeah so we're not by passing this second reading there's no set in stone no but by second reading it's just saying on second reading prior to third reading it is moved on to the next step so it could be voted on and researched further uh one last question so if it say we were to go third reading and a couple years down the road we are coming and facing um having a gas powered plant coming in bethune we would then have the ability to look at setbacks and measures in place decommissioning um to make sure that all the en

» vironmental aspects will be taken care of is that that correct so yeah the i believe this use type is allowed within the zldr and it would prescribe the development standards that would apply to any any um gas plant that is placed in the service or developed yes and to the earlier question um these economic incentive agreements um certainly make the projects feasible from an economic standpoint but there's uh no guarantee um it often happens but there's no guarantee that a project will proceed um point in fact this county's approved some solar projects that um the economics and the relationship with santee cooper just didn't work out and um solar projects uh did not proceed that were approved through philo's and whatnot so one of them potentially was on this property or one right near there

» that didn't pan out right that we did an agreement similar to this um i just wanted to kind of have that stated for the record and for everybody's knowledge but thank you thank you mr thomason so i never beat around the bush i'll go ahead and say for second reading tonight i can support it and i want to explain my rationale i'm open to hearing from everyone else that would like to contact me my cell phone's available publicly online or i'll share it with you tonight whoever's interested um i have received a few calls i've heard uh i got a couple emails and i've gone through the data and researched as best as i can also relying on staff and other professionals about some of the objections that were raised first off i even heard reference tonight a colleton county location which i think would

» be in the town of canadies or i'm not sure if i'm pronouncing that right um that's a little bit apples and oranges because that project would be roughly or i think a little over 2300 megawatts the one that we're considering tonight would be approximately 500 megawatts that project would be approximately five times larger than the one that we're talking about here and in some ways that's governed by the utilities that are accessible potentially at the site for those folks that live in the area there is a large gas line that goes through your area historically and there's a large electric transfer lines that go through your area historically and it is zoned appropriately for this type of use so somebody come in and and do this it's appropriate for the land as the zoning code goes so i respect

» property rights and there are particular property rights involved in this piece of property the next thing i would mention is the canadies project the one that was 2300 that's the only one i've heard referenced right now as a possible issue for 2300 megawatts it was being proposed on a brownfield site which is as i understand it is a designated hazardous waste location it was previously a coal fire plant that did not have significant epa restrictions didn't have des or dhec prior to des breathing down their throat to make sure they did the right thing and as i understand it disturbance on that site would even cause potential issues maybe health-wise or environmentally and so we are not looking at a project of that size or on a designated brownfield hazardous waste site this is a location th

» at is generally timber and the property owner has apparently desired to sell the property which um of course i'm not involved with and no one up here is involved with the property owner felt like it's the right time in their lives to do that i've done the research to determine roughly there are 22 natural gas power plants in south carolina we've got 46 counties there's roughly 22 of them some of them are rolling on rolling off and of those i wasn't able to identify any reportable issues on significant health concerns or any clusters related to local natural gas sites all of them appear to be less than half a mile excuse me over 50 of them appear to be less than half a mile from a the closest primary residence and so i'm still researching these issues i'm trying to understand fully what migh

» t be in the best interest of kershaw county overall um but those who have my email and have already emailed please email me again if i've missed anything or there's other things we need to consider prior to third reading or again please feel free to call my cell phone always the best way to reach me any other comments or questions from council members seeing none we'll move it to a vote on uh second reading again this is 9f all in favor raise your hand that is shoemake tucker connell and tomlinson in favor all opposed on 9f raise your hand that is brazel kato and jones opposed it passes second reading miss hannah for the record all right thank you gentlemen that moves us to the next item on the agenda which is item number 9b another economic development project this is an ordinance authoriz

» ing the execution delivery of a special source revenue credit agreement again that's that ssrc we talked about under the prior one um between kershaw county and a company known as project gemstone with respect to certain certain economic development uh property in the county the property will receive under this agreement a special source revenue credit agreement and benefit in other matters related to their their two first reading as reflected in the agenda was on june 9 2026.

» do we have a motion i'll make that motion all right we have a motion in favor mr kato is there a second i'll second mr shoemake has a second mr kato you have the floor i'll turn it over to our county attorney and let him explain the details of this motion so this is special source revenue credit of 50 percent during the credit term for the project so essentially 50 percent reduction of avalorum at a six percent assessment radio ratio sets millage minimum investment is 100 million within 10 years 150 ftes within 10 years for minimum job creation there's a 10-year investment period 30-year credit term and the nature of the project is commercial resort development um more granular details i believe project representatives are here um for again any any more granular details but those are the hi

» gh points of the ssrc thank you mr kato anything further nothing mr mr she make a second can you can he repeat those numbers right quick on just the highlights mr debose could you uh hit the numbers and then the ssrc reduction for mr tucker please so the um summary agreement page uh has minimum investment of 100 million within 10 years 150 full-time jobs within 10 years sets a six percent assessment point three four one three millage there is a annual escalator on that um you've got a 50 percent uh ssrc credit during a credit term of 30 years and again those job creation investment um periods are uh 10 years thank you mr chair um one second mr uh she make you have the second do you yield yes sir mr jones you know i think it's if mr smoke's representing the company could he come just give us

» some clarification okay mr smoke yes sir i've got uh mr jones and if i may ask the our attorney a question quickly just to clarify absolute something the 50 ssrc credits um in addition to the fixed millage rate um would that be the equivalent of a three percent rate or how does that affect the avalarum tax so it really the tax is impacted by um the investments received are you asking um total dollar amounts i mean no no no no just the it it said the philo is set at six percent is that correct correct with an additional 50 percent in ssrc credits is that correct yeah i think a gross way of looking at it is yes it's essentially a 50 reduction in the taxes owed is that for how many years um that is for the 30-year term it's got a 30-year credit term 10-year investment term is it a renewable te

» rm or a year 31 does it change these investment terms are just set yes it's a 30-year uh sorry a 30-year credit term set year 31 no more ssrc so and it'd be set the millage rate would be the 2027 millage rate is that correct i believe so versus 2026 well i just wanted to clarify that the millage rate for the next seven eight um is not known the 67 i believe was utilized uh in this agreement so present millage rate so 2026 millage rate is utilized well good there's a buzzer beater mr smoke you know i'll just note historically mr jones we'll get back to you because you have the floor i'll just know historically the highest ssrc in kershaw county ever issued was 70 and so this is uh significantly below that mr jones but you know i'd like to say thank you for allowing mr smoke come speak having

» worked eight years within here i do have a trust in him i've learned a lot from him over the years and i thank you for being here and i seriously i'm going to look at your your your your advice is going to be a big part of my decision tonight thank you thank you councilman i mean it may not be 100 but i mean it's gonna be mr smoke gave me permission to share but we'll go ahead and have him share could you let the public know beyond mr dubose kind of uh entertainment uh description what is the project going to be certainly uh thank you mr chairman council it's always an honor to to be in front of you and and that's no different this evening so on behalf of my client i am here to reveal that project gemstone is uh candy root lodge golf okay i've been here in front of you before so i don't thi

» nk that's a big secret uh but on a really high level i want to go over just very briefly a few of the important aspects of the project uh there will be four golf courses built once it's fully built out along with an additional par three course uh there will be a wellness element um walking trails at least one restaurant uh eventually accommodations uh but most importantly uh my client is really anticipating just being a part of the community here in kershaw county and um you know we look forward to working with y'all uh it's going to be a project that will take a number of years to to build as you heard the details it's a it's a 10 year build out uh those job numbers we feel very confident about 150 jobs the investment 100 million dollars it's a significant investment and um happy to answer

» any other questions that that you guys might have about the project i have gary morris is here as well uh with uh hainsworth that's what's going on um i think that's going to be a part of the project i know that that's going to be a part of the project i think that's going to be a part of the project i think that's going to be a part of the project that's going to be a part of the project i think that's going to be a part of the project i think that's going to be a part of the project i think that's going to be a part of the project how are you sir very good thank you yes good to see you hope you you've sat here and approved some of these uh deals on these ordinates and saw where um the timetables has actually increased where you know you're in year 10 or 12 of the 30 years and we need rene

» gotiated because things are going so well before it ever gets to the uh 30 year or the 20 year mark is that a fair statement from what i recall yes they all varied right um there were certainly some like that from what i recall and and this this has that potential too as it grows we don't know what the crystal ball that we don't have what it tells but i i feel that it's going to blossom and have a great positive effect on the area up there and so for these reasons i will be supporting it tonight thank you thank you mr chucker any other comments questions mr shumick yeah i just want to say thank you uh for coming and obviously anytime i see a former uh councilman up here i always want to say thanks for your service because i know it's a substantial amount and the work you've done you know yo

» u've been here as part of the smart growth group so you understand sort of the pains we've had with growth and i think this sort of applies across the board to this project and the last project which is and i've said this before you know we've we've done a lot to limit some of this residential explosion we've seen but a county grows or it dies it's about how it grows if there's not a single person in here that wouldn't want to look out of their backyard and see 100 acres of farmland as their view every day we would all want that but unless you own that hundred acres your ability to demand that it stay farmland is only so constricted or is quite constricted and you know in both of these examples we're talking about people that had farmland that tried to create something for themselves that a

» lso will benefit the county and if we say no to residential growth and if we say no to industrial growth and we say no to the other types of growth then we're going to die and we have to move forward and you cannot tell someone who owns 100 acres that you can not sell your land you have to sit on it your family doesn't get to make money off of it so people and that's a balance and i think we've created that balance in the last vote and i'm extremely supportive of this because by opening the door to industry and projects you get things that create huge economic development and things that i think people can really get behind like a golf course but you have to be attractive to businesses and so i appreciate you being here for the business because i think it's critical i think it's a great use

» of this uh this land and i think that people are going to benefit greatly from and creating jobs so again thank you i'm obviously extremely supportive of this project as i was with the last one thank you mr shoemake mr kato mr smoke i just want to clarify and again thank you you we've spent many hours on the phone uh talking and discussing this project but i want to clarify it tonight and i want you to say it again this involves absolutely zero residential development that is correct thank you mr kato any other uh questions mr jones i just say miss smoke you just genuinely earned my vote tonight i'm gonna vote because i had some questions but that was important what you just said too about zero residential growth and some other things thank you so much thank you councilman i need to pay you

» double you can't get the owner to move now what's that you can't get the owner to move to kershaw gown well we're working on that we're working on that thank you mr smoke thank you all the discussion and questions we have uh seeing no further discussion or questions we'll move it to a vote this is uh 9b on second reading all in favor raise your hand on gemstone ms hannah is unanimous in favor and it passes on second reading that's 9b this brings us to item number 9c on the agenda it's an ordinance to amend the agreement for the development of a joint industrial park between kershaw county and fairfield county it increases the boundaries of park of the park by adding certain real property associated with economic development and the project known as gemstone this is generally a state law req

» uirement for adding and making projects eligible for philo's or ssrc's first reading on june 9 2026 do we have a motion on second reading on gemstone make a motion mr tucker has the motion is there a second i'll second we have a second mr cato any further discussion on second reading 9c seeing none we'll move to a vote all in favor on 9c raise your hand miss hannah it is unanimous and passes on 9c second reading item number 9d is a second reading related to a lease of real property that the county has at 632 west dekab street and it's in relation to the department of natural resources first reading on june 9th 26.

» do we have a motion on second reading i'll make that motion mr cato has emotions or a second second we have a second for mr tucker any discussion this is a bit of a housekeeping thing thank you so much seeing no discussion we'll move to a vote all in favor on 9d raise your hand it is unanimous in favor miss hannah 9d passes i would like to briefly say thank you mr dubose for taking care of these leases next up is another lease item number 9e second reading it's a lease of property at 632 west dekab street owned by kershaw county related to the forestry commission commission first reading was also on june 9th do we have a motion on second reading i'll make that motion mr mr cato has the motion is there a second second mr tucker has a second any discussion on 9e second reading mr chair it's t

» he same thing just uh clearing up some housekeeping on the lease of a property yes sir thank you sir seeing no further discussion or questions and nothing from staff will move it to a vote all in favor on 9e raise your hand miss hannah is unanimous and pass the second reading that's 9e we've already addressed item number 9f so we can move uh to the next item this is a series of third readings that we have up next so this will be the third and final reading first one is 9g this is an ordinance to amend the code of ordinances in kershaw county amending article 4 related to building codes and the board of adjustments and appeals so that it conforms more naturally with the administrative appeals procedure set forth in the ibc or international building code we had first and second reading as ind

» icated in the agenda do we have a motion i'll make the motion mr shumake has the motion is there a second second mr tucker has a second any discussion on third reading for 9g it's just to clean up ordinance like the other ones so that we our stuff comports with state law that's it any further discussion from council members and we have nothing from staff so we'll move it to a vote on third reading 9g all in favor raise your hand it is unanimous on 9g third reading and it passes fully miss hannah item number 9h is the next one up third reading related to an ordinance by kershaw county council authorizing the issuance of go bonds or general obligation bonds it's two million dollars this is the same matter that we had the public hearing on earlier related to acquiring constructing and equippin

» g rehabilitating and improving the county's wastewater infrastructure and other capital projects we have first and second reading are already occurring as indicated in the agenda and we have a motion on third reading 9h i'll make that motion mr shoemake has the motion is there a second i will second it mr tucker has a second any discussion questions or comments on third reading seeing none we'll move it to a vote all in favor on third reading for 9h raise your hand that is shoemake tucker connell cato and tomlinson in favor all opposed on 9h that is brazel and jones opposed it passes on third reading miss hannah for the record and then we have two other items i mentioned we're going to move up prior to third reading of the budget this is so that they can be considered appropriately in the b

» udget so before we get to 9i we will have item numbers 10d and 10e in that order so first we'll take the finance committee update and related budget amendment did you say d and then e correct okay yeah first item number 10d do we have a motion to get the finance committee update from mr tucker mr chairman i make a motion that we get an update we got a motion is there a second i'll second mr cato has a second you have the floor thank you mr chairman uh thank you my colleagues um just wanted to brief you on some things that um the finance committee met last thursday um morning approximately about 9 30 the three of us and um we did have a um request that we heard on the uh probate judge request so um that motion is in your packet um it is uh proposed as uh revenue neutral um it is recommended

» by the finance committee that we approve that it's like a holding place if something falls through we've had conversation and i'm pretty sure most of y'all have already talked to the probate judge as well miss debbie branham um we have to get a mou uh discussed written and signed uh we'll be working on that immediately after we get this uh approved in the budget if we so do tonight um and i'm gonna ask the finance committee is gonna ask for your support on that um and then staff will dive into a mou that has to come back before us to be approved so it'll outline a lot of the a lot of the details on where the money's spent what the duties are when you're going to be paid those type things so with that that's pretty much the update on it uh we had another uh trying to think we talked about se

» veral other things um in the finance committee that is not brought before your favor but we were um we're going to be looking at those for the 27 28 year um the finance committee will be meeting after the 4th of july on a regular basis just to get a head start on some cleanup stuff that we got to do financially and uh reports and then give staff time to close out so we can um get those numbers to report back to you and at this time i'm just going to ask my colleagues is there anything they'd like to say councilman thompson i'm all good mr tucker okay just on the probate judge thing just to be very clear what this does is all the vote that we're doing tonight the amendment just creates an account it does not fund the account the funding is going to come from judge branham working with the st

» ate to develop a contract so these funds will come in uh be dispersed through this contract and so this will be a revenue addition a revenue stimulus to the county it will be very little to no cost up front beyond just a tiny amount of personnel time to do the initial contract so this is a way to treat some mental health folks throughout the state allow judge branham to do that while also increasing uh some income into the probate court system so it's something that judge branham's on board with her staff's on board with and it's a revenue positive for the county mr chair yes sir mr jones well yeah i'm really appreciative mr shumaker of your involvement in this and mr tucker yours as well too because i uh was supporting her in the very beginning on the first proposal i think she brought to

» you but um you recognize some things that needed to be addressed i appreciate that i think you did a good job and i certainly support this memorandum of understanding thank you thank you mr jones any other comments for discussion well and i'll just state for the record so the finance committee um has before us three appropriate potential motions when we get to item number i and they will be have to have to be made in the form of a motion first one is the probate judges uh finance committee um presented record recommendation and then there is a properly submitted a tax amendment which the administrator is about to take us through in item number 9e and then there's a grants amendment which is properly submitted um related to a proviso in the budget beyond that any further discussion comments

» or questions okay seeing none explain thanks mr chairman in the budget that's gonna be the next part yeah the budget's up next and just for clarification belt and suspenders mr dubose we were just receiving a finance committee update no votes required correct these these finance uh reports and recommendations would be more properly motions within um item 9i the budget itself correct thank you correct all right no votes required that concludes item item number 9d next up we have item number uh excuse me that was 10d item number 10e a tax recommendations placed on the agenda by um the administrator mr templar do we have a motion make a motion that we hear from the a tax okay we have a second second all right all in favor on this presentation go ahead uh thank you mr chair members council we h

» ave uh casey brazel here from the a tax commission to give the presentation and um make her case so if i can give her make her case you don't have to do it in all 46 counties that were just mentioned in that book miss brazel yes ma'am hello council and administration and all everybody here um my name is casey brazel i'm here on behalf of the a tax committee and i'm here to present the f27 um budget for you guys and it i do believe that it's in your packet um it's we didn't have as much as as last year but we've allotted as best as we could to everybody and i think that you'll be pleased with the outcome that we've given to the grants we also wanted to mention that um last year and the previous years you had to submit grants on paper but this year there'll also be a website and so you'll be

» able to go to the website and submit grants there as well and one last thing that i would like to mention is that our new chair that we elected is monica frazier so if you have any questions she would probably know more than i would but i will be glad to look into anything that you need i've really taken this seriously and i've researched and written down lots of things so if you have any questions you know where to find me and do y'all have any questions now any questions or comments from council no flirting mr brazil right mr jones i want to go first i have some comments thank you for being here and thank you for the work you do and you present that so well i will say this i didn't know that you i thought you were here just to be staring at russell all night but you did a good job on that

» presentation she got better things to do councilman thank you thank you thank you mr jones council members any other oh sorry go ahead mr tucker i just want to say to mr brazil thank you for your willingness to serve um that is huge in our county and people like you which makes the county so much better when you're able to take your family time and your professional time and give back to uh the uh citizens of kershaw county and i saw your recommendations uh last week and i uh i'm wholeheartedly in support i thought you'd been fair to everybody but y'all had an incredible amount of requests that you couldn't fund if you wanted to yes we we were kind of surprised at some of the numbers we saw but i really appreciate that and and i love to learn and i'm just learning more and more about the co

» unty every day so thank you guys thank you mr tucker any other ladies just thank you again that's awesome work i know it was a tough year for a tax so thanks mr brazil no i've confirmed that this is not a conflict of interest for you you can vote on this one but it doesn't mean i need to speak right no you don't have to thank you this will solve things at home i'm sure thank you all right thank you so much we appreciate your service very much thank you all right no votes required but it should be presented as a motion when we get to item number i uh that concludes that matter and now we will move to item number nine i this is third reading of the budget do we have a motion on third reading of the budget first reading and second reading occurred as indicated in the agenda go ahead um i would

» like to uh make the motion okay i'll find it but uh to um okay i would like to okay i would like to adopt the 26 27 uh budget for kershaw county uh all right let's get to um a second think we have a motion we have a second and then i'm open to entertaining um as a slate i want to make sure one thing mr dubose we're not required to have lugaw fire present at all they're okay we just adopt theirs i just want to make sure we adopt the the presentation that happens under 10a correct okay i just want to make sure all right i'm open to entertaining the uh the three amendments that could be appropriately before the body as a slate if the body is open to that okay um well you want to do them as a slate all three at once if there's a motion to amend yeah we could take them as a slate if there's no o

» bjection with with uh good explanation as to what you're talking about we can break them down you want to do it yeah um i would like first to address the probate judge that we um we approve 120 000 for revenue neutral um funding to the probate judge office for mental health meaning that um we'll be able to um uh approve the 120 or thereabouts whatever comes in because this is new to us and then um uh the expense should be that or less of what we take in that that is my motion a second you're doing as a slave okay are you doing nominations no no um i've got one more that i'm gonna i'll put onto this motion all right so that's the first part of the motion and then under your finance presentation we would technically have a tax and the grants amendment so um let's do the a tax if you have that

» sheet in front of you well uh ask that we approve the 175 563 dollars for the um a tax recommendations from our committee you've heard from one of our a tax committee members um they request was um 244 200 but um we only have 75 563. and then my last one is find it somebody the grants let's see we have that and that written yeah so let me um i'll jump it up let me make the motion to for uh grants and those with new personnel requests and um consider approved as a presentation with the budget of adoption to available budget match dollars all other grants will require individual council approval prior to award acceptance so that is my motion okay thank you mr tucker again to summarize mr jones um and for any other council members interested the motion would amend expenditures and revenue neut

» ral related to the probate court the a tax amendment that we just had presented um by miss brazel and then the grants amendment and so that is the slate on the budget amendment it is on the floor as an amendment and so we will discuss and then vote second okay you got a second we have a second any discussion on the amendment before we get back to the original motion on the budget i can support all of these i'll just say that frankly there's not a lot of rhyme or reason to them one of them is revenue neutral the other one uh approves a amount of expenditures and a tax that specifically are designated for tourism related purposes and so we have to spend those monies in that way and then the grants amendment um frees us up to take advantage of grant opportunities so we're applying for funds an

» d we want to be able to receive those funds from granting entities whoever they might be and this budget proviso allows us to do that for the relevant fiscal year mr chair yes sir if i just made a share i just want to make sure that um everyone watching as well and who's out in the audience that uh these were all written out with the income and the expense into our budget um prior to uh the budget being published so we followed our rules and policies ordinance that we said okay any other discussion or questions mr jones yeah i do have some concerns just get some clarification um it i know i won't be here probably but is there money in this budget mr templar to where like if someone like miss jones who came home spoke to us about her property and damage if we deemed it was something that we

» were responsible for you could find the money to make sure that was fixed so mr jones these would be more of like federal grants and grant matches but with with that particular issue um i wouldn't if we were liable for something or if we had to fix something then okay there would be funds and i'm sorry i wasn't clear i wasn't referring to the grants i was referring to the budget overall as far as what's there um what about the uh the ems or uh liberty hill uh you want me to address that please um so the ems um through our growth and uh reassessment has received a little over a million dollars and mr uh templar can talk more in detail if he likes but i've got some um information um we're gonna um stand up another ambulance this year um we're doing um trying to finish up battleship road uh tr

» ansition um we uh hired on the other four ftes so there's a lot of good things ems actually got out of the budget from the natural growth and what about liberty hill um right now we got a qrv up there so we stand up another ambulance that's just going to give the county-wide more services in whatever areas are needed and these uh recommendations came from staff now um i'm happy to let mr um k k tell us mr uh templar explain any further in detail or his staff member if he likes but can i just do a quick point of order it feels like i'm not i think this discussion is important but right now we're discussing the amendment so it seems more clear to get the amendments voted on just a thought um i agree excuse me you okay so you yield yeah okay i can only rule on points of order that um are a con

» troverted issue it sounds like there's been a yield perfect all right any other discussion on the budget amendment that has been submitted by uh mr tucker again that's on the amendment and then we'll have to get back to the original motion to approve all right any other discussion comments questions then i give my chance to you can talk generally about the uh the budget after we get through the amendment yes exactly before we vote on it yes okay seeing no further discussion we'll vote on the amendment all in favor of the amendment raise your hand this is the tucker amendment that is everyone so it's unanimous miss hannah the amendment passes and now we're back on to the budget as amended uh amended any further discussion on the budget as amended any other any council member wishing to speak

» that has not spoken yet i would like to mr brazil go ahead um so being that i represent liberty hill and had requested ems services in that area we had discussed bearing the cab i was highly disappointed to learn that after especially after realizing the the amount of revenue increase that we're having this year that there was no allocation um i'll say thank you to chairman connell for a wonderful meeting yesterday with administration and i'll say thank you to danny as well as is our ems leaders um they did provide some light on on the subject but i can't enunciate that as well as they could is will glover here tonight yes sir he's standing by i'm happy to go through it i would um i would like to for the record hear from mr glover as to how we're going to address these issues in phases movi

» ng forward as we discussed them yesterday and as i found it to be a very positive conversation and i would i would like to i would like to hear from him how that is going to be a positive influence for those areas because we heard loud and clear together at a town hall and we also heard loud and clear a couple of months ago from the community and tonight yet again we heard loud and clear from that community so thank you mr glover for being here i appreciate the job that you do and um i i really think you do kershaw county a great job so with that being said i'm gonna yield to you sir chairman members county council uh what i'll do is is kind of go back to how this all started uh fy 26 and just kind of go go forward of what we discussed yesterday fy 26 ems initiated a phased staffing approac

» h to scale our fleet from f5 ambulances and two qrvs to an optimal resource out allotment of eight ambulances and three qrvs expansion directly targeted three regions of the county the greater camden area addressing high call volume we were looking at the highway 5 corridor and lugoff enhancing high growth and coverage over in that area and then also the northern camden region including beaver creek baron de cab and westville fy 26 council was able to to pass as a body ems billing rate increases which were able to stand up that first four ftes towards our six ambulance um because of the economic uh uncertainties because the government shut down and different things we we waited to hire those employees to make sure our revenue projections were going to meet actuals so moving into fy 27 we we

» re able to complete the four more ftes to stand up to six ambulance moving into next year's budget to to help out the call volume in the greater camden area that call volume pulls other units into that area a lot so we have to address that high call volume also in fy 27 we were looking at our battleship road infrastructure which actually helps out the highway 5 corridor issue so it taught then we start looking more at that northern camden issue uh also in fy 27 we've allocated 300 000 for uh land purchase or innovations to support future expansions such as northern camden um you can say that one more time there's a there's a capital allotment for future future station allocations and that was you referred to that as north camden yeah but that's bearing the cab to be clear correct yeah okay

» i i just i this is going to be reported in the papers and i want for the people who live in those areas to understand that we are working towards the goal of having a station at bearing the cab is that that's the target right now northern camden bearing the cab would be the location right now yes okay so i i just wanted to clarify for anyone who would confuse northern camden with bearing the cab that that is the the area in which we've we have a facility um i also want to highlight while working towards full station coverage in in certain areas we've initiated a a roaming qrv program to where one of the two qrvs tries to roam to remote areas we've logged 300 hours of that that time so far in rural zones that is including beaver creek bearing the cab westville buffalo mount pisgah so we're t

» rying to get our qrvs when they're not tied up on calls or other duties we're trying to push them further out into some of the remote remote areas of the county we will continue to try to do that and enhance that program as we move forward um also you know with uh the direction of you know admin and council we put together a package to where every year we're going to ask for four more ftes so the goal would be every year if we could fund four more ftes we would stand up a qrv one year and then an ambulance the next a qrv one year and then an ambulance the next to try to reach that optimal eight ambulance three qrv goals uh those if we got to eight ambulances one more would go to the west water area highway five corridor and then that one would be the northern camden area baron dekab as it s

» its right now so to be clear those would serve both sides of the lake in those far-reaching areas yes yeah yeah we we've we're we're fixing the critical core of our call volume right now if we were to push ambulances further out into the county without addressing high call volume areas those ambulances further out in the remote areas we get sucked into the the town all the time reducing the effectiveness so you know this this phased approach we can do it with staffing uh timelines uh you know as far as getting new stations or renovating stations or everything else getting ambulances in hiring staff the phased approach will get us there if you had the money today for those eight new staff members along with what you you've already been allocated what would be the timeline for getting somethi

» ng implemented uh it would be well into probably 27 um to do anything i mean as as far as getting staff in training them hiring medics or doing a emt recruit class like we're we're starting to look at doing uh ordering ambulances getting them in station renovations the timeline expands is is there any part of that that we can start now without the allocations knowing that we're going to have the allocations in the future that's what that capital projects line item would be for as far as um looking at the renovations or additional station locations and then also ems has already started running in-house emt classes then we took our emts and made them advance you know a certain amount uh starting in september we're actually doing an advance to paramedic program so we're training in-house alrea

» dy we're trying to build our own in-house instead of trying to steal from other people so the training process has already started and some of the programs that we would be looking at if we did do a big hire that those processes are started with our training office and division and ems so do you think we're losing months or years by waiting to fund it or do you think that that we're going to still be able to streamline this process and and getting people to that liberty hill area in a reasonable amount of time because you know that's very important to me as it is to you as well i've got to bring up a point of order so to the extent we're getting outside of fiscal year 27 ending june 30 27 expenditures or recommendations or budget items we have to keep it at least the council's only giving m

» e permission to allow us all to talk about third reading of the budget 2026 to june 30 2027 and so we can state the recommendations within that window for spending to the extent we go outside of that we can put it on for another council meeting or talk about it in uh council briefings for public presentation or some other form mr chair mr jones i would like to ask what point of order that i think this is all in the realm of where we're going with ems and it's it's about because we were talking about funding it this time but i don't think it's there so you know i don't see really how it's outside the border of course i mean you're the chair and i respect your decision well y'all can appeal the uh the rule point that's okay i i've heard a lot of positive and i feel like that we're going to be

» moving in that direction regardless so thank you um any other uh comments or questions from from mr glover council members mr glover i just want to thank you for for your hard work as well i know um we've talked about this many years back and and trying to work towards this and russell's kind of picked up the ball and and ran with it and thank you russell for for what you're doing but uh i just want to thank you i know that y'all work hard and i know that y'all want to do what's best for the communities and i i too think that we're headed in the positive direction so i just want to thank you for that all right thank you mr glover no other comments or questions for you it takes money it takes money for it sir i said in it all oh it takes money to fund it as well okay thank you mr jones all r

» ight so we're back on the original motion uh any other discussion comments or questions on the original motion to approve the budget it's nine i on third reading if i may mr jones i had i want to make a comment about the budget something that was that bothered me but i sat down mr temper and we got it straight out one the pecan orchard money is still in the budget yes sir it's it's held over gotcha and you guys almost councilman-elect jonathan gonna make sure that gets taken care of aren't we thank you so much also also um i was when i read about the recycling centers closing on sundays yeah i said oh my goodness we're losing a full day there but you informed me that you're also going to be opening up a full day on saturday where we've been open up on a half day on saturday correct correct

» for the landfill and it would be a big savings correct there are savings yeah but you know and that that made me feel better you know when i when you and i said i talked about that so actually i mean that really helped me in the direction i was going as far as my support yes phony i appreciate so you so what the new hours will be saturday mr mr jones i'll just mention that i knew you were going to do that well it's height of number 10 c um on the agenda i know i mean i can't argue with because i know which we will have a motion in a second on i anticipate soon but anyway thank you danny thank you mr jones i have no argument you're right thank you mr jones um i didn't see anything else from uh account oh mr tucker hit your hand up no no no okay staff anything else on the budget before we mov

» e to a vote no sir i appreciate everybody's hard work okay can i ask one more thing mr jones this is pertaining to the budget now this is a balanced budget with no current tax increase correct no millage increase now however i want to make sure there's clarification so everybody will know this with the reassessment and of course because there are five years there will be a millage increase because of the reassessment which is mandated by the state to do but this council has not increased the millage one bit as far as the operations of this budget and you know the parts of this budget core correct correct correct the middle rate is the same from last year to this year okay because it seems to be just a misunderstanding i think with some of the citizens well i thought you were raising taxes b

» ut i got a tax increase well the reassessment is what's causing an increase in revenue correct and it's it's natural growth every year gotcha gotcha i would thank and mr chairman thank you for not calling the point of order on me and thank you mr that was very relevant to the budget thank you mr john appreciate it mr tucker um i i just want to tell staff how much we appreciate them um from miss brown on down mr templar um your two right hand and left hand folks mr branham and um she's a reader now uh and uh mr blanchard uh i want to thank my two colleagues that sit on finance with me um i know um how much time you've taken out of your schedules and stuff uh it's been a um a year of a lot of meetings up here uh and we're not complaining but we just want you to know that we do put in the time

» and the effort to make sure that we uh get best information from staff to move this budget along and um i know some of my colleagues have a hang up on a few things in the budget but i'm going to ask all of you to sit on this the eyes that if uh if you can in your heart uh please support the budget tonight thank you mr chairman thank mr tucker any comments or discussion on the original motion to approve the agenda as amended one last mr brazil i'm very encouraged by what i heard from mr glover and mr tucker your words that you just spoke were heard and i would like for everyone to hear mine please help us follow through with the ems plan about my words and and will will glover has earned that tonight from me well he's earned it before he he uh he's great done some great he and staff done som

» e great presentation to the finance committee and um all of the uh finance committee recommendations came straight from staff and his leadership and mr templars and and all of the books so any other comments or discussion i'll just summarize before we uh call it for a vote overall there was about a three million dollar plus um revenue increase based on the reassessment a lot of that went to various issues in the county due to inflation or otherwise or competitive salaries or otherwise or cost of living increased or otherwise but ems received um the largest sing largest single department increase of roughly 1.1 million dollars i think was what was reported tonight and the priorities um as a plan was mentioned the priorities are being followed uh they want to take care of the battleship road

» station being increased or uh renovated and improved the capital money's there for that and then the highway 5 corridor which will be addressed some and then um getting to funding for the baron de cab station which again is not for discussion it's it's in a future budget cycle and some of the comments uh in public comment just made reflect on the the stuff just takes time unfortunately whenever we had the fire study it's been eight years we could still be doing a a fully volunteer fire service uh in kershaw county with very few professional people at the administrative level and then all volunteers imagine doing that um and then having the type of population growth and additional calls that we've had without professional fire service and that's brought us to this point where we're kind of k

» eep keeping up it's the same for ems and we're following a plan as recommended by staff they could have used that money and spend it on something else but that their top priority was full-time employees um and then any council member up here could have made a motion to spend it in some different way if they wanted to but this is the budget that we have before us and so if there's no further comments discussions or questions we'll move it to a vote on the budget as amended this is 9i on third reading all in favor raise your hand on the budget that is shoemake tucker brazel connell it's unanimous miss hannah all in favor uh raise your hands take my breath away that's the first time in over 10 years thank you mr jones all right miss hannah it passes it's unanimous the budget is approved i know

» staff can breathe easy and thanks for your help on that next up uh chief spitzer you've been sitting patiently let's get a motion in a second for a presentation and um acceptance from lugaw fire do we have a motion make a motion that we approve lugaw fire or um have its presentation i'm sorry okay then we have a second second all right uh it's on the table and so we'll bring you up chief for your presentation and then we'll have a motion on accepting and approving the budget where's he at right here sitting there behind the mayor he is too big to be hidden out there shrinking good evening thank you for having me up i appreciate it thank you mr templar for getting me in here and especially miss hannah she takes very good care of us and uh she does a fantastic job with keeping up with my jibb

» er jabber when i sent her a lot of emails um so i'm here and willing to take any questions i think you should have received your uh resolution and budget proposal i think may 26 that sound about right miss hannah it should have been before you at that time um not asking for an increase we got our increase last year uh we did not ask for a tax increase for roughly 12 13 years something like that so we used our millage uh last year and our rollback millage which helped us tremendously um we're no different than anybody else um we saw a difference in the reassessment kind of took advantage of it um and i hate to say it in that nature but it did help us in some areas and it has allowed us if you remember um last year i spoke about possibly laying off um some part-time firefighters uh through th

» e county and of course my my board of uh commissioners which we have a fantastic board of commissioners and they have strong support for us and also through county council we were able to retain those part-time firefighters and uh hire a few more we are in the process now of doing a hiring stage to um fill some gaps that we have on a particular shift it's not due to um turnover it's due to we're just growing and we're just trying to keep up um by raising the millage for us last year that allowed us to cautiously approach um being able to hire that additional firefighter plans are in the future to be able to hire a few more firemen and staff our station 2 area out on whitehead road that's a really hot area for us that that area is just it's kind of growing and we're seeing a lot of a lot of

» different issues out there and you know when they have to leave um for my headquarters it's it's quite a ride so um that is our initial um goal um i will tell you that we do um have in um in our plans in the future and i have spoke to director glover and both uh ems uh supervisor and coordinator jim edge we are fully intending at lugol fire department to put a medic unit in our facility within the next two years um that could affect how the response is given we are we have met a couple times with um with our county resources initially our plan was to be able to put that medic unit on by 2027 that's not going to be obtainable we want to do what's best for our community and kind of ease the burden a little bit on the kershaw county ems side of things but talking with director glover and mr ed

» ge jim edge we also know that that would possibly put a deficit into the kershaw county's ems revenue so we're going to kind of work through those things and figure that out but we do intend on um in putting that unit in we have many emts in our organizations we have paramedics we just finished a class which we do teach in-house as well we have nine emts coming out of just our organization on um they just finished actually so they'll be testing for national registry um i kind of got off the budget a little bit but i do want that to um kind of take into consideration of i don't know what the exact plans are of the corridor on highway 5 but that could uh could help alleviate those issues but again that's something that i feel like i have to work through with uh director glover and jim edge so

» again the millage didn't uh we did not increase our millage we got a balanced budget uh we're comfortable this year and um you know we put a lot of effort into being extremely um transparent uh and being extremely fiscally responsible for everything that we do forward um in our fire department and with our um with our uh citizens um other than that i think you should have that in front of you i don't want to sit up here and take up any of your time by breaking down every line item by line item by line item i know you'll have a lot on your plate so yes sir it's been submitted everybody's got it everybody's got it um just to clarify i understood the motion is uh having the presentation and accepting the budget is presented and then we had a second on that correct yes okay so we can't say anyt

» hing huh again yes we're in the discussion period now mr jones you can go ahead that's why he wasn't voting to bring him up okay listen chief i want to tell you something this is going to be my last budget with you and i'm going to tell you uh going back to dennis ray you know four or five years six years before you were the chief we had a community was just us we'd sit down the fire department had to fight for their support y'all had to fight and i'm very proud to say that i was with you every time you did and uh now you got a council that's with you almost i would think unanimously everybody up here sees it they care for you you go second to none uh when it comes to professionalism and i'm very proud of my fire department i just want to let you know that and i'm also very excited about th

» e fact to what you're talking about when you talk about you know expanding that might help our ambulance service when you talk about that because you know we used to do that years ago when chief hammond was at camden he had the same similar same thing yes with the rescue squad yes sir but but thank you so much for all you do and i mean and it's been a joy and a pleasure to work with you you've been a great source of information and help to me throughout the last 20 years or 15 whenever long you were there and i appreciate that i just wanted you to know that so thank you very much uh thank you councilman jones and you know that we have a very um particularly great relationship um there's many years that we would not have accomplished remotely where we are now without you um you have been a d

» ear dear friend to me for many many years way before i ever became chief and we have a great past and i appreciate your support you have stood up here and fought for me on many occasions and that's not to say that uh council was not along with you but you have been a voice for us and we have certainly certainly taken advantage of that and we want you to understand how much you mean to us and we really appreciate you especially when you live in our district and you have taken care of us for many many years appreciate you thank you thank you councilman any other discussion mr tucker yes sir i just have one slight request there chief spitzer um and we we talked about this as well um can you pencil us in next year on the finance committee before we get to third reading uh to sit down just with

» us before so we can tie you into the budget we we missed a few folks we didn't send you out an invite or call you so that's on us but i just want to give you a heads up we will want you to bless us with your presence next year before we get to this point in the third reading if you can put us in your schedule yeah usually i try to get um i try to get this budget into you in the first week of june uh it was unfortunate that i was not able to do that this year um i had a lot of things going on had a couple surgeries and some other things and i have a very very competent assistant chief that could do the same but there was a few things that we wanted to make sure we were found alone make sure we were sitting in the right place um looking at the calculated millage is a guess and dennis arlis do

» es such a great job i'm telling you he is such an asset to this county he is absolutely unbelievable he is a great friend a great mentor and somebody i can call on whenever i need him um and i do again i'm usually done with our budget by april the beginning of may but everything is just a guesstimate you know i'm guesstimating what our financials are going to be our health insurance i don't get final numbers until august we feel your pain workman's comp august everything is in august and you know we're just kind of basically doing a guesstimate and doing doing the best we can so um i'm making a note here uh to get with um to get with y'all okay uh during that uh that time frame and that way we can have some dialogue so if you foresee some things coming up we can we can be brainstorming with

» you and trying to figure things out and uh and then we can go from there but no no problem no issues all right i appreciate it thank you thank you you're welcome thank you mr tucker any other comments or discussion we're going to have more money i'd like to say thank you chief um you guys do a great job in lu golf helped us out on many occasions and uh many other businesses and homes so we appreciate your service we value what you do for our community and we appreciate you appreciate you all very much i appreciate that and our folks um are my co-workers do as well absolutely we thank all of them thank you thank you very much mr brazil any other comments or discussion thanks again chief appreciate appreciate you very much and again i understood the motion is to have the presentation and acce

» pt the budget as presented we had a second um let's just re-record the votes for miss hannah and mr jones i'm not sure if i saw you raise your hand initially um everybody in favor of accepting the budget as presented raise your hand and it's unanimous in favor thank you miss hannah so it is adopted and including all right thank you thank you thank you thank you very much you and your staff man all right that moves us on to item number 10b uh kershaw county human resources policies placed on the agenda by the administrator mr templar any background before we have a um or do we need a motion is it just informational it's just more information i won't be long at all i just wanted to point out that there's a link in your packet that is going to point to a pretty healthy sized document but it's

» just for your consumption over the next few meetings or the several weeks um if any of y'all have any questions on it please let me know um if you want a paper copy of it be glad to create one but it's um pretty thick probably thicker than more most of our agenda packets so uh but it is addressing and bringing us up to date on some of the more current hr policies so it's going to be rather important in some areas um but just wanted to put that on your radar and um can you and i set a meeting up so i can absolutely if any rest would join with me of the three that's a great point um so if anyone wants to sit down and and kind of get a 10 000 foot view or just whatever um please let us know we'll have hr staff standing by as well as myself all right well the summary took care of it didn't even

» motion a second we're good thank you very much mr templar and no vote required on 10b um 10c solid waste convenience centers standardized hours um do we have a motion to hear from the administrator on this i'll make a motion that um we have the administrator present us the new solid waste convenience center hours please all right we have a second we got a second are you going to anticipate any voters just for background information it's it's more for background and just the initiative and to let you all know what we're doing while we're doing it and what we expect to get out of it will we be looking at a vote potentially in some future meeting or is a policy change or it's just a unilateral policy change you can make yes sir this is uh under the administrator okay thank you so mr chair so i

» t's already in the budget what he's talking about oh i think we're about to get the update now yes sir so i have chris thomas from solid waste he's our solid waste director to come in and give us a short presentation um and this is just what we intend to do to uh clean up the hours of our recycle centers um uh namely on sundays and mondays and um so i'll let chris do his presentation and then we'll continue to discuss yes sir okay uh again my name is chris thomas i'm the director of the solid waste department for kershaw county uh been here since about may of 2025 a little over a year uh i would first like to thank county council and county administration for the opportunity to discuss the improvements we want to make in the solid waste department uh before i get started because i am new to

» everybody uh just a brief background on myself uh i was born and raised in in columbia south carolina i'm sorry i am graduate of the university of south carolina in finance uh for the past 30 years i've been in the interstate transportation industry uh but before coming to kershaw county i was the assistant director of solid waste for richland county but enough about me i believe the goal of government leadership is to accomplish three objectives uh one provide great service for the residents to provide the service in the most cost-efficient manner and three provide that service in a moral fashion and i believe the improvements that we're going to discuss will accomplish all three of those objectives any comments or you okay just started i'm sorry i didn't see it pop up now it's right in my

» face great president all right go ahead all right um first of all as we get into the nuts and bolts of kind of uh the improvements we want to make just wanted to show everybody that the net result of of the improvements we want to make it's going to lead to about 167 thousand dollars of yearly savings uh what's great about this savings is that most savings programs are most savings initiatives that usually has to be a big initial investment and you've got to get a return on your savings um we can accomplish these savings starting day one um just with doing things in a more logistical manner just in the way we we do business uh first of all um currently we uh we have 10 10 convenience centers with six different hours of operation so we want to uh firstly standardize the hours of operation fo

» r all centers uh change it to tuesday through saturday 6 a.m to 6 p.m closed on sunday and monday uh this is really the foundation of the improvements that we want to make to permanently reduce expenses uh working five days a week with two consecutive days off will produce the following savings uh demanding of sites uh we won't need as many employees to man the sites that's about a 70 000 savings um vehicle fuel savings um by being closed two consecutive days that allows us one off day which would be sunday so we wouldn't have to run any equipment no trucks and we would save about 35 000 in fuel over a year along with that maintenance maintenance runs about 15 cents per mile we save about seven thousand dollars and then the driver savings would be about eight thousand dollars so that comes

» to about 120 000 of the savings um again some positives um studies show that a healthier we have a a healthier safer workforce with two continuous rest days as opposed to one that we have now um i think uh everybody can attest to that i think most people in this room work with five two schedules so i think everybody can kind of attest to that um we'll also have a greater pool of applicants due to a better work better work life balance and hopefully get some people that want to come in and start a career with solid waste all right the the biggest point of the um having the two days off would be the sunday closure um we would get less outside county waste uh based on the amount of cars we get outside of the county uh we estimate about a 15 percent reduction in out-of-county waste uh just for

» elgin that would be about twelve thousand dollars a year for the other centers about six thousand dollars uh that counts to a total savings of about eighteen thousand dollars uh we pay you know at 15 percent we pay pay thirty five dollars a ton uh to dispose of the waste that that um at northeast landfill and not counting the cost of transportation um you know we're looking at about eighteen thousand dollars um again uh the fifteen percent we feel that that's that's um you know we wanted to stay within uh you know a conservative number uh we really feel like that's probably would be more like 25 to 30 percent but um but no stayed at 15 percent um as you see four of our neighboring counties are closed on sunday richland lancaster chesterfield and darlington those residents come to kershop co

» unty on sundays and in an effort of full disclosure i have to say that probably most of the richland county waste we getting is probably my fault because when i was with richland county you said i spearheaded the to change their uh to change the schedule and for them to be off on sunday so that's that's probably some of my fault but uh i'm here to fall on the sword and and correct my mistakes this uh the next improvement uh large load has been routed to the landfill we're currently you know we pay about twice as much to transport the waste if we have to uh transport it from the center to the landfill now this does not include include household garbage what we're talking about is just construction demolition and yard waste and really this is just a clarification of the current convenience ce

» nter requirements if you go on the website it says now that large loads are supposed to go to the landfill but the problem is that we never specified what's considered a large load and what's not so it's hard to enforce it when you don't have the clarification of what's a large load so to spell it out uh no motor vehicle is larger than three-quarter ton pickup trucks and no trailers longer than eight feet and or more than one access that covers when you get larger than that you're pretty much looking at commercial businesses um and that's really what we're trying to avoid um the convenience centers were never set up for commercial business it's supposed to be for the residents and uh and their waste but we get a lot of commercial um commercial businesses with these big 20 000 trailers sayin

» g it's personal business so um again we figured that would be about 15 less loads transported um again that number is conservative um i think it's probably higher than that but um just at 15 percent less loads we save 26 000 in fuel about 5 000 in vehicle maintenance which comes to about 31 000. um again the um the last um improvement would be to extend extend landfill hours to monday through saturday 7 a.m to 5 p.m again since we're going to be uh restricting the large levels from the from the uh centers we need to have more hours at the landfill to accommodate uh for the heavier traffic now uh extending those landfill hours we'll raise payroll about 3 500 for the year but we felt like it was worth it given the other savings that that we would have uh so again um uh in conclusion we're loo

» king at about 167 166 000 in savings um we really think it's a win-win for the county for the residents and for the employees and i hope you all will look favorably upon our recommendations thank you for the presentation mr templar any other summary before we have discussion from council members uh just one point is that uh currently we have half our sites closed on sunday we have 10 sites in total wednesday seven of them are closed and thursday one of them are closed this just consolidates and makes it more streamlined with sunday monday being the reset days that's it all right thank you uh discussion from council members questions comments mr jones yes um welcome glad to have you i've heard some good things about you and uh glad to have you with us this almost seems too good to be true to

» some degree 166 000 in savings but i have to say the administrator is exactly right when he said nobody really knows what the hours are at the moment of the recycling says i don't i mean i've been here 47 years not not i mean working wise i've been here for seven not nothing but um i think i like this i was against it when i first heard about it but i think i like this how in columbia richland county where you where you come from how was the response when you first closed two days you know consecutive i'll tell you the the most contentious part was the trailer um requirement yes that was my next question a lot of people have bigger trailers but um you know to be to be fair consistent you have to stick with the letter yeah of what you and that concerns me the the the the the single wheel tra

» iler that that concerns me but you know you're the expert and uh yeah it's uh it's uh it's gonna be a rough couple months but we're okay so you're gonna start this january one uh a rough couple of months looking about july 18th to kind of give you know you'll be gone that's why that's exactly what i mean no i i think you got a great uh plan it sounds good and you know change is inevitable and it sounds like you you got to plan for it you got to plan for the resistance as well i'm sure yeah because you've been there yeah i yeah i've done it so i'm familiar with because you know we're gonna get the phone calls okay thank you thank you thank you mr thank you very much mr johns any other comments discussion mr tucker yes sir um mr thomas i want to say thank you uh thank you danny this is gonna

» create some conversations which is fine and i'll appreciate too that you guys took in consideration with the finance committee when we were presented this presentation our concerns on uh what um was probably gonna be a hard pill with swallows so thank you for that and um i'm sitting here because when i was talking to a few of my um friends and relatives um about the single axle trailers um that was a sticking point uh as mr jones said um i've got a car trailer and i want to do a little bit of bush work but it's more than a pickup load but it's not a car trailer load and it's got two axles because it carries you know eight thousand five thousand six thousand pounds on it i'm not going to be able to use the only trailer because i don't have a single axle utility trailer and that's some of the

» i guess you don't get too mad at me about having to come out to the landfill yeah yeah it's going to start with my darn brother i'm just going to tell you just like it yeah and he don't live too far he lives in luga off of a wildwood he wildwood he's not too far from that recycle center he'll tell you what he thinks and but you know what yes he will that's right uh if my colleague to my right councilman's you may can bite the bullet with his dance which i have yes right on closing the recycle centers on sunday i can handle my brother thank you thank you very much council members any other discussion comments questions mr brazil if i may um really nice presentation and thank you um i do hate to be the one but i'm going to be the one tonight to state that i don't think this is a good idea um

» while you're addressing parts of the county that maybe are close to richland county you have rural areas that are that are being punished that are it's it's very unequal um if say you had a place at lake watery and you were going to stay for the weekend whether or not you are a resident or not you pay taxes on that house as a is if it's a second residence you may be paying six to ten thousand dollars a year for your place at the lake but when you come to enjoy your your house thursday through sunday and and then you go home um there's nowhere to take the trash off i think that this is going to be a major issue in kershaw county and not just for lake watery but other areas i would hope that you would reconsider being open on sunday um i think it'll tell on itself okay i mean i don't think yo

» u'll need me to and you've been through this so you know what's coming is everybody got a cell phone with them y'all look forward to start ringing that's a good point it's it's it's i think people are going to end up littering i think people are going to be upset and don't be surprised if there's bags of garbage sitting at a closed gate i mean i'm not condoning that i'm not encouraging that but frankly i'm just i'm giving you my my raw thoughts and um if if we see this kind of pushback i'd really like to see uh us work together as to that solution so um thank you for everything so professional thank you for trying to save us money um i just think that with well a working class people on top of people enjoying a vacation home sunday's been trash day all my life and um i just think it's gonna

» be a really tough habit to break for 70 000 people that live in kershaw county and and people that visit lake watery i mean they're on the lugoff side of the lake there is a recycling center just as you turn off of uh lake road and again it's just gonna be a major major problem so um with that being said respectfully i thank you for your your time and your efforts i do um but but those are real concerns for me thank you thank you mr brazil i am curious did you have a mutiny or anything like that in richland county when y'all did this we kind of had the same words uh we originally counted but it it didn't uh it didn't it didn't we had just more people upset about not being able to use their larger trailers but as far as people littering and leaving trash all over i mean everybody lives here

» nobody wants you know people have property values they don't want to put trash all over the street and disrupt the property value so we had the same fears but um again it it didn't nothing happened to that effect well i feel comfortable knowing he's got it can you get richland county reverse the hours that we can dump over in there i don't think they'll do it thank you council members and thank you for the presentation mr administrator anything else no sir that's all all right no votes required thank you very much uh that concludes item number was that 10c yes and then we already took care of 10d and 10e we have removed 11a that brings us to uh council member briefings and i was just going to mention it was great to see um our clerk ginger farmer judge branham and uh and i don't know if i c

» an be presumptuous and i think it's councilman-elect proctor because you're unopposed and the councilman will be after november yeah i didn't know if i was being presumptuous by the way it's great to have the primary winner in here who is currently unopposed thanks for attending the meetings and uh checking in on the issues and the details um mr kato any briefing for us i got just a few comments tonight um first of all i want to announce the ribbon cuttings and long-awaited ribbon cuttings on june the 30th uh we will start at 10 a.m in boyd young in westville and we will cut the ribbon for the new ball parks there and then we will travel over to bethune and at 11 15 we will have the ribbon cuttings at the copeland field for those two ball fields as well very proud of these ball fields they

» look awesome it took us a little bit longer than we anticipated but i'm very proud of them and i i ask that you please come out for these ribbon cuttings if you will and if you're available um tonight was a very uh tense night i guess you would say but i appreciate the people coming out to voice their opinion but i also appreciate the way they did it they came up they used their time they spoke properly and and they really handle themselves well and i appreciate that and i'm sure my colleagues do as well um we we all whether the vote goes your way or not we all value your opinion um i have strong opinions um about the project and um i feel very strongly about the area that i live in but um that's why the council's made up a seven and not just one so i i think i want to thank all those peopl

» e that come out tonight and spoke um that ends my briefing thank you mr kato mr tomlinson mr chairman i have nothing this evening thank you mr tomlinson mr jones yes uh have i told y'all that my wife is expecting we will have another no the the stand-up comedy hour will be later i'm joking i'm joking no i just i'd get make sure everybody's awake i'd be swinging from the rafters upside down if that was true um listen i want to welcome soon to be councilman elect um jonathan proctor and i said i want to make sure i said all of y'all and i'm gonna say it to the public as well i invite him i i'm glad to see him sitting out there i want him to be involved in every single thing that we can legally let him do i don't want mr for a while there to get on us like sammy does as well too but seriously

» i i think he needs to be involved in every single thing we can i want this to be jonathan the most smoothest transition that there is positive and uh i'm very proud of you by the way too you bugged me for five years um but uh because unlike myself i know what it was not to be able to get any information until maybe the month before when i was elected 20 years ago but uh but i i'm so appreciative of him being here and i'm so appreciative this council willing to an administrator to work with him to make sure that we keep him involved and in the loop as we move forward and uh let me say this too i don't agree with these guys a lot but i think tonight you know it's talking about the budget the first time in 10 years but you know what though we went through the nuts and bolts of it the finance c

» ommittee did a good job you made me feel secure that the money's there for the pecan orchard you made me feel secure on the other issues that were at hand the ambulance service is important to all of us and i know that and i feel sure that especially with uh councilman cato councilman brazil's leadership as far as that being areas they're concerned about which we all are that that will be resolved in some way fashion or whatever but uh anyway having said that thank you and uh that's all i have mr chair thank you sir and please please that was not true the first part mr shoemake you're recognized indeed um to piggyback on what councilman cato said on july 10th at 10 a.m we'll be doing the ribbon cutting at casey west for the improvements there so again excited to usher in these what have bee

» n the greatest uh recreation improvements in the county's history that has seen i hope which will be soon to followed by the greatest economic development project in the county's history so just want to say that i want to thank the humane society uh we lost our little uh furry friend yesterday and um yeah but um but they do a great job out there so uh we appreciate all that they did um but yeah so um speaking of people that love dogs also uh i think most everyone knows now we lost jeff maddox and you know i don't think jeff and i agreed on anything other than that we both loved kershaw county uh but we would text occasionally and he is a man who is consistent in his principles and i wish his family well through this period of mourning and uh wish him well uh in heaven because i know he was

» uh a faith-based man by and large although you know he'd waffle on that but i i think he found in the end and uh lastly with uh jimmy i just wanted to say you know 20 years of doing this is a a pretty amazing thing i almost resigned during the solid waste presentation five minutes ago so i can't imagine uh what 20 years doing this is like so uh again this is your last budget i know we got several months with you but that's the single most important thing we do every year is clearly the budget so congrats on your 20th budget my friend and again uh and your work and the several months you have here to come so that's all i have thank you mr shoemake mr tucker yes sir mr chairman and colleagues um my my last thank you um i am also uh very grateful for this council uh being a unanimous vote um l

» ike i said it hadn't happened in over a decade so i appreciate uh my our colleagues support can't say enough good things about staff and um i'm looking forward to getting an early start after we get through the holidays and um that way we can be ahead of the curve come january um i'm sorry to hear about jeff maddox death as well and um i um gonna miss the puppets i think he thought i was his number one character uh that guy made a puppet of me yours just stood out thank you councilman like i stand out so with that being said um i'm um deeply saddened about his demise and i hope that his family and loved ones are able to mourn properly and and heal so um thanks this took longer than i thought but good discussion staff i can't tell you thank you enough for uh some of the administrative things

» that you've done in this budget um that that needed to be and i would ask you as um we're dealing with these recycle centers if something's not working don't be afraid to make the adjustments um but i think it's worth a try and you got to uh put yourself out there and see what works and what doesn't work so thank you mr templar but that that concludes my reports thank you mr tucker mr brazel i'll be brief um i really appreciate uh the the conversation and and the forward motion on ems um that was something that was really bugging me for the last few days is how do we how do we fix this how do we how do we keep moving forward in the right direction and i'll be honest with you sunday night i didn't fall asleep at 2 a.m and that's how much it has bothered me so um it's people think we might no

» t take our jobs seriously but i can assure you i think everybody up here does um i was uh i was thankful to be able to agree with my colleagues tonight um on the on the budget um i'm not thrilled with reassessment that's uh something that the state mandates i'd like to see um i'd like to see more work done for seniors in in the homestead exemption area i would continue to advocate for that i'm going to continue to advocate for that wherever i sit or stand on or off council in or out of politics i'm going to continue to advocate for seniors being able to keep their homes and live in their homes without having to pay property taxes on their primary residences um i think that's obtainable i think it's feasible and i think it's something that we need to fight for um i'd like to thank councilman

» jones this is uh our last budget together councilman jones has uh certainly whipped many of us into shape with his black belt politics over the years we've grown to be great friends uh through many adverse nights here on this council and uh jimmy i want to just say man i care about you and i love you and your family same here and uh it's been it's been a pleasure you are a tough guy on this dais and nobody fights harder or loves more uh than than jimmy has over the years so 20 years well done and uh i know we've got a few more meetings but typically after budget it starts to kind of slow down to all of my fellow colleagues i know uh there's always some angst about topics danny just as you mentioned um i'm glad that we're able to get through these things together and uh do it with civility s

» o and uh awful proud of my wife presenting tonight she did a great job so thank you all thank you mr brazil um two primary things i'd like to share first we had a a death up at lake watery this was a member of the armed services a shaw air force baseman airman excuse me 23 year old carlin haley from los angeles uh passed away in a drowning incident up at lake recently and so we pray for his family and share deep condolences and it just reminds us again of the importance of some of the swimming programs we've been talking about i hope the school district or otherwise can incorporate some of that into their curriculum or parents will take it very seriously to have their children i think the most effective data is second and third graders and really learn how to swim that's the age when they'r

» e exposed the most to pools or it's at least the second highest cause of death and once you learn how to swim it's like riding a bike hopefully and you can retain that for the rest of your life and again it's just a sad event uh on a different note i want to say that the the projects that we're doing for ribbon cuttings and have a lot of excitement for those are the same types of things that some of this phyllo money can go to to help in the future and i encourage everyone to get behind and support those projects in the future it makes it much easier to direct funds to various areas if we've got the support there to make these projects happen it's either that or we have to figure out some other way through a fee or increase taxes or maybe grant applications if we get lucky and fortunate whe

» re a grant actually aligns with some of our goals and we can land those funds but phyllo revenue really does make a difference and as you know i've dedicated my life for this past term and the term i anticipate coming up to generating business interest in kershaw county having good relationships with the governor's office with the department of commerce and stakeholders to bring either jobs or significant economic development to kershaw county because it makes a difference it really does these are these are dollars that we do not have to raise taxes on generally that we can spend uh in the county and they also get a lot of other entities that that generally really need them that's all i have from my report mr administrator any briefing for us just one quick note on the up and coming holiday

» as it relates to scheduling um our kershaw county government offices will be open on friday to uh observe july 4th which actually falls on saturday so um the landfills and convenience centers will be open on friday but they will close on the actual holiday so that's all i have thank you will they be open they will be open july 3rd they won't be they won't be close three consecutive days no no and if you would since you're talking about scheduling if for the next um agenda if we could place on uh summer scheduling is a new business item i mean we'll discuss it we may vote on it but like this time and also towards the end of the year we usually see if there's any meetings that we need to either reschedule postpone or just cancel based on some summer travel plans coming up um and that's again

» just this time of year we talk about that if you could place on the agenda miss hannah mr mr chair i had a question for the administrator yes sir um on these new hours have we did any type of campaign publicizing um ahead of time or will that start tomorrow because i think the educational piece is so important moving forward for uh the citizens to uh get adapted and ask questions and you know address their concerns so if we haven't done anything i would highly recommend that we do a hard hit before july 1 if possible mr temper so we can try to eliminate as much um concerns and worries as possible we intend to do a campaign to educate yes sir and even though we're starting in july it probably still needs to continue we're not telling you how you do your job but sure you you you know where i'

» m going with that and mr chair also um i don't know because my ears are getting old but um miss uh susan our former mayor from bethune i don't know if she was included in your recognition of folks i was just thinking the same thing but she has sent through this whole campaign here from council and i think she deserves to be recognized thank you for being i was thinking the same thing susan they'll give him all the credit welcome i've got i've got campaign exhaustion right how about this one yeah the only one thank you mr thank you uh anything else for the administrator that's all i have any non-privileged legal briefing and we've removed item number 15a previously under the agenda seek a motion to adjourn make a motion we're adjourned we have a second we have a second any discussion on adjournment seeing none all in favor of