Category: Business

Manor Tweaks Fees, Chamber OK’d for Grant

BLYTHEWOOD (Aug. 25, 2016) – Town Council Monday night kicked around the possibility of enacting a special license for peddlers doing business inside the Town limits. Jim Meggs, the Town’s attorney, said the license would actually cover what he called “itinerate merchants” rather than peddlers. Peddlers, he said, refers more to door-to-door sales and solicitations, whereas an itinerate merchant was a temporary, mobile business.

“We were concerned with folks who come to town, set up shop on a piece of property, in a trailer or some other kind of a setting, and offer goods and services for sale,” Meggs said, “but not from a fixed place of business and a permanent attached building with all of the required facilities that you would normally see in a qualified fixed place of business.”

As an example, Meggs provided Council with the regulations followed by Midvale, Utah. The Midvale regulations are extensive, Meggs said, requiring everything from background checks to off-street parking and access to rest rooms. The simplest approach, he suggested, would be for Council to regulate the Town’s zoning districts and allow temporary, mobile businesses to conduct trade there.

Michael Criss, Town Planning Consultant, suggested that Council also consider including food trucks in the regulations.

According to documents provided by the Town, Council is considering a two-tiered licensing structure. For regular activities (more than two sale periods of more than three days each per year), Council is considering a $40 fee for the first $2,000 of sales, plus $1.45 per each $1,000 in sales over $2,000.

For seasonal activities (not more than two sale periods of not more than three days each year, with a separate license required for each sale period), Council is considering a $40 license for the first $2,000 in sales, plus 40 cents per each $1,000 in sales over $2,000.

But tracking sales of peddlers and itinerate merchants, Mayor J. Michael Ross said, is a trick unto itself.

“A lot of those places come in and I don’t know if they ever report any sales,” Ross said, “whether it be to the state government or us.”

Council took the material as information to be discussed in depth at a future meeting.

Chamber Grant

Council also agreed to partner with the Chamber of Commerce in applying for a grant from the S.C. Municipal Association to convert the space currently being used by the Chamber in McNulty Plaza to a shared work space for small businesses that cannot afford to rent an entire space of their own.

Mike Switzer, Executive Director of the Chamber, said the Town’s $12,500 economic development grant already provided to the Chamber, would more than cover the 5 percent match required by the Municipal Association grant.

Manor Report

Steve Hasterok, Director of Doko Manor, told Council that the first quarter of fiscal year 2016-2017 was about $1,000 shy of projections, mainly because of several cancellations of events.

Saturdays are still strong, he said, and are almost entirely sold out for the next year. Fridays and Sundays, however, were weak. In an effort to drive Friday and Sunday bookings, Hasterok said he had cut rates for those days by 20 percent.

“Even with this 20 percent price cut I can still make a profit,” Hasterok said. “I can make a good profit.”

To combat late cancellations, he said, he has raised the security deposit from $300 to $500. Hasterok said the Manor had employed a two-tiered security deposit structure – $300 for 100 people or less and $500 for 101 people or more – which he said was causing problems.

“What I found with the $300 security deposit is people play games,” Hasterok said. “They would pay the $300 deposit and then all of a sudden they’d have 170 people show up.”

People would also pay the $300 deposit to reserve the space, he said, then go out shopping for a better deal. Three weeks later, they would cancel.

“By raising the security deposit to $500, they have to be a little more committed,” Hasterok said.

Board Appointments

Council also approved the appointments of Pamela Dukes to the Board of Architectural Review, and Cynthia Shull to the Planning Commission.

 

RIDGEWAY (Aug. 18, 2016) – There was a motion. There was a second. And there was a 3-2 vote by Town Council on Aug. 11 to approve Russ Brown’s request to rezone .82 acres at the fork of Highway 21 and Highway 34 from residential to commercial.

But as of press time, it was unclear whether or not Brown’s request actually passed.

Just in case, Herbert Robertson and Robert E. Johnson, who live near the property, sent the Town a letter protesting the rezoning that may or may not have passed on Aug. 11.

“Opposite side of the tracks. That’s the only thing that’s different between Russ Brown here and the rest of us in attendance,” Sara Robertson, another nearby resident, told Council during the public comment segment of the Aug. 11 meeting. “We, just like Mr. Brown, are hardworking individuals, and we’re trying to protect and maximize our return on our investment, just like he is. However, to have our own Town Council to once again entertain this request to rezone this small parcel of land for one individual at the expense of a whole neighborhood is very disturbing.”

Robertson presented Council with a petition that she said contained the signatures of 50 people who were opposed to Brown’s rezoning request. But Brown, during his turn at the podium, said the time for opposition to his request was during the Planning and Zoning Commission’s July 12 public hearing. The Commission voted to recommend Brown’s request for C-2 zoning on a 5-2 vote.

“There was zero opposition at that meeting. It was posted in the paper and a sign was on site,” Brown told Council. “The opportunity to come to the meeting was there.”

But Robertson pointed out that the Commission had strayed from the Town’s zoning ordinances by recommending the C-2 classification. Indeed, according to Article 10, Section 1007, only the Council or the Commission – not an individual – can initiate a zoning change of a lot less than 2 acres. The exceptions being for the extension of existing district boundaries or the addition of C-1 zoning contiguous to existing I-1 zones.

Patty Cookendorfer, Zoning Administrator, told Council the oversight was discovered during a Planning and Zoning workshop held two weeks after the public hearing.

Mayor Charlene Herring said “several missteps” had occurred during the process. Those included, she said, an error on the sign posted on Brown’s property. The sign, she said, reflected a request for C-1, not C-2 zoning.

“I know there’s been a little bit of question about the sign itself, being C-1 or whether it was C-2,” Brown said during his comments, “but at the same time, the zoning change was posted as commercial. Obviously, you knew it wasn’t a request to keep it residential.”

Herring also noted the minimum lot size requirement of a C-2 request, as well as the petition in protest of the zoning change, both of which caused some confusion.

According to Article 10, Section 1005, “In case of a protest against any proposed zoning change signed by the owners of 20 percent or more of the area of (a) the lots included in such proposed change, and (b) those lots contiguous to the area in question, such amendment shall not become effective except by the favorable vote of three-fourths of all the members of town council.”

“What does this mean?” Herring asked Council. “Is it (contiguous) something that is right next to (a property)?”

Councilwoman Angela Harrison said the Town’s ordinances indicated that the meaning of “contiguous” was “properties in the area;” however, a review of the Town’s zoning ordinances reveals no such definition. In fact, while the ordinances define many terms included within, there is no definition at all for “contiguous.”

The ordinances do say that “Where words have not been defined, the standard dictionary definition shall prevail.”

The standard dictionary definition for “contiguous” is “touching; in contact.” The second listed definition, meanwhile, is “in close proximity without actually touching; near.”

“I’m a little bit confused by our own zoning ordinances,” Herring admitted. “I thought I understood them, but I don’t know that I really do.”

Herring suggested that Council table the request until a lawyer could interpret the ordinances for them.

Councilman Heath Cookendorfer reminded Council that the Commission’s role was only an advisory one, and he moved to approve a C-1 zoning for Brown, which he said would still fit Brown’s needs but would get around the 2-acre minimum lot size that a C-2 would require.

Doug Porter seconded the motion, which carried 3-2. Harrison and Herring voted against the request.

But Harrison said because there was a protest, the request needed a three-fourths vote to carry.

“What is three-fourths of the (five-member) Council?” Herring asked.

According to the S.C. Municipal Association, three-fourths of a five-member council is four.

“That’s the reason I wanted to have a lawyer look at this,” Herring said.

The protest letter sent to the Town on Aug. 12 called Council’s decision “unlawful” and said the 3-2 vote was invalid. According to the Town’s zoning ordinances, the appeal must first go to the Board of Zoning Appeals within 30 days. The Board must then hold a hearing. The appeal may also go directly to Circuit Court.

“If they can’t see past getting this lot rezoned they might as well put a wall up around town,” Brown said this week. “Growth is coming to Ridgeway.”

 

BLYTHEWOOD (Aug. 11, 2016) – The latest housing boom is on. In Blythewood, at least, where Town officials say building permits for single-family homes are at a five year high.

“The whole calendar year is higher than in prior years,” Town Administrator Gary Parker told The Voice last week. “The economy has improved. We’ve finally gotten over the real estate crash. And this particular town and this particular area is attractive to people. A lot of people are interested in relocating to a community that is right outside a major metropolitan area.”

And, Parker added, the school system doesn’t hurt either.

So, how fast is Blythewood growing?

“Per capita, Blythewood is growing at a faster rate than Fort Mill,” Kirk Wilson, Director of Permits and Licenses for the Town of Blythewood, said. “We’re one of the fastest, if not the fastest, growing municipalities in the state.”

The numbers tell the tale.

Just six years ago, in 2010, Blythewood issued a modest 19 building permits for single-family homes. Since then, the growth has been steady and largely consistent. In 2011, the Town issued 34 building permits. A year later, that figure nearly doubled, to 58 permits. In 2013, permits more than doubled, with Blythewood stamping 123 for approval. There was a small dip in 2014, as the number of building permits decreased to 120. But last year, they were up again, to 175.

Through July of this year, the Town has already issued 93 permits.

“It’s not going to be slowing down anytime soon,” Wilson said.

The growth is mainly west of I-77, Parker said, with the expansion of Cobblestone Park and the Oakhurst subdivisions. Ashley Oaks, phases 8 and 9, and Abney Hills, phase 2, are also likely to add to the number of building permits before the year’s end, Wilson said.

But while growth is a promising sign for the economy, it can also put a strain on services, particularly in a small town like Blythewood.

“We’re experiencing that,” Parker said. “We’ve taken a couple of steps to meet the demands. We’ve added additional personnel to our Town staff, and that will only increase if it continues to grow.”

The first area to feel the strain of increased growth, Parker said, is in parks and recreation.

“When you have more children, there’s a greater need for parks and recreational programs,” Parker said. “We have to think about it (growth) coming here and think about developing services, particularly in parks and recreation.”

The local streets and roads, Parker said, will also feel the first symptoms of rapid growth.

While proposed streetscaping projects will certainly make Blythewood’s roadways more attractive, to keep the traffic moving more practical and ambitious projects are going to have to get under way. The planned widening of Blythewood Road, Parker said, as well as the installation of traffic circles – particularly near the entrance to the Food Lion shopping center – should help alleviate some of the traffic headaches that often come hand-in-hand with rapid residential growth.

“The Master and Comprehensive plans address some aspects of growth, foremost of which is traffic,” Parker said. “We’re working with the County and working with the Penny Tax folks to address that.”

 

WINNSBORO (Aug. 11, 2016) – If County Council passes by Sept. 9 an ordinance allowing the Sunday sale of alcoholic beverages in Fairfield County, that will put it on the Nov. 8 ballot as a referendum for the people to decide if they want Sunday alcohol sales, County Administrator Jason Taylor told members of the Public Affairs and Policy Committee Monday evening.

And with that, the Committee fast-tracked Ordinance 672, sending it to Council where members passed first reading by title only at their regular meeting less than an hour later.

For the ordinance to be passed by Sept. 9, Taylor said Council would have to call some special meetings. Second reading is scheduled for Aug. 22, a Public Hearing on Aug. 25 and third and final reading on Aug. 29.

The issue came to Council’s attention last month when Lake Wateree resident David Waters brought before Council a petition with about 1,000 signatures calling for Sunday alcohol sales in Fairfield County.

The petition outlined the following reasons for Sunday sales – that Fairfield County businesses are losing sales to neighboring counties and that the increased sales tax would lower property taxes and provide funds for road paving in the County. But Committee member Carolyn Robinson said the sales tax from alcoholic beverages does not go to property tax or road repairs and that neighboring Kershaw and Lancaster counties do not have Sunday alcohol sales. She said only Newberry County currently has Sunday sales and that Chester County will have it on the Nov. 8 ballot.

“I would also like to make it clear that this ordinance is only going to apply to the unincorporated areas in the County, not the towns like Ridgeway and Winnsboro,” Committee Chairwoman Mary Lynn Kinley told the Committee. She said the towns would have to pass similar ordinances if they want Sunday sales.

“I’m not concerned with what folks around us are doing,” Committee member Billy Smith said. “As far as Council is concerned, we’re just offering citizens the opportunity to choose. It’s not about us (Council) choosing when it’s a referendum.”

Taylor noted that the ordinance, as it reads currently, is a model ordinance that will need some tweaking for clarification before second reading.

The ordinance also provides for the issuance of temporary permits for the Sunday sale of alcoholic beverages for non-profit events and for on-premises consumption, as well as beer and wine at permitted off-premises locations.

Smith said the particulars of the ordinance will be spelled out in the posted referendum.

 

BLYTHEWOOD (Aug. 11, 2016) – The Town’s A-Tax Committee was publicly chided by Mayor J. Michael Ross at a special called meeting of the Committee on Aug. 3 for tabling last month a $10,000 funding request from Band Director James Barnes for Blythewood High School’s Band Tournament and for voting against recommending $3,000 for what the A-Tax meeting minutes referred to as salaries for the staff (Executive Director Mike Switzer and his assistant Kitty Kelly) of the Blythewood Chamber of Commerce for their work with the upcoming Big Grab yard sale.

At its July 6 meeting, the A-Tax Committee took into consideration several reasons for tabling the Tournament’s request – the $31,000 profit from last year’s event, that half of the $31,000 goes to Ridge View High School, which is outside the Blythewood community and that the profits went to fund operations in the school’s band program to pay for such things as private lessons for students rather than being plowed back into the event.

As for the vote against recommending the Chamber’s $3,000 funding request, the Committee questioned whether it should be funding salaries at all.

In his remarks, the Mayor pressed the Committee to disregard profits when making recommendations. He also offered revised information, that the $3,000 for the Chamber would go to outside advertising for the Big Grab, not salaries for Switzer and Kelly. Following Ross’s remarks, Barnes and Switzer again made pleas to the Committee for funds.

This time, the Committee, without discussion, voted to reverse both votes, recommending the full funding requested by the two applicants.

Immediately following adjournment of the meeting, long-time Committee member George Sensor announced his resignation from the Committee.

“It’s a long drive over here for me,” Sensor told the Committee and Town officials.

The A-Tax Committee is only a recommending body and Town Council makes the final decision on awarding A-Tax funds. Council is not required to vote in favor of the A-Tax Committee’s recommendations. But instead of Council voting on the two issues at its regular meeting on July 25, Council asked the applicants, Switzer and Barnes, to resubmit their requests to the A-Tax Committee.

“I think we need the A-Tax Committee to understand they need to reconvene and look at what is being resubmitted,” Ross said at the July 25 meeting.

Opening that special called A-Tax Committee meeting on Aug. 3, Events and Conference Center Director Steve Hasterok, who facilitates the A-Tax Committee meetings, announced that there would be changes to the Committee’s meeting format, specifically that the meetings should be open to the public. While the meetings were never closed to the public, applicants frequently waited outside in a hallway while the Committee discussed and voted on funding. Hasterok was more specific in an interview with The Voice, saying that all applicants should know they are allowed to stay in the meetings throughout the Committee’s decision-making process.

In a related issue, The Country Chronicle newspaper in a recent article appeared to take issue with the Committee addressing questions to a representative of The Voice who was sitting in the room during the July 10 meeting. However, Hasterok told The Voice that the Committee is welcome to direct questions to anyone in the audience, but said he would like for the person answering the questions to do so from the podium.

At the Aug. 3 meeting, Ross emphasized his objection to the A-Tax Committee basing funding on whether an event made large profits or if it was used to pay salaries.

“We have guidelines,” Ross told the Committee. “The Architectural Review Board, the Planning Commission all work under guidelines from ordinances, regulations and standards. Looking at the last (A-Tax Committee) minutes, I see there’s a lot of discussion revolving around profits an event might make, and a concern that if they make $31,000, why do they need our money.”

While Ross later insisted that, “I’m not here to tell you what to do,” he added, “I just want to warn you that I don’t think anywhere in our guidelines – and it’s never been a concern of Council – what the profit margin might be. If the event brings people to eat at our restaurants, puts heads on pillows and buys gas at Larry Sharpe’s stations, then that’s what we want. But I don’t want to not have a function or event that might have been beneficial to not come because they made a profit, because they did real good, because they have other means or used their money. They still might need the seed money to have that event and be successful,” Ross said, warning the Committee a second time about funding an event based on its profit margin.

At the July 25 Council meeting Ross said he didn’t care how much profit the rodeo makes if those people have a good time and spend money in the town.

While there are no guidelines in the state statute to suggest the Committee should consider profits or salaries, there are also no guidelines to suggest that they should not.

In later comments to the Committee, Town Administrator Gary Parker said, “There’s nothing in the state statute that requires (the Committee) to consider profit of an event they are asked to fund,” but he also allowed that consideration of profit, “could be a factor that the Committee wants to consider.”

Parker said the statute basically just outlines the fact that when the community receives a certain level of funds from accommodation and hospitality tax revenues, that a committee be formed to represent the hospitality industry – hotels and restaurants. But Parker said the statute does not address terms. He said if the Committee wants to have bylaws, policies and procedures to follow, he would be happy to have the town attorney review them and send them to Council for approval.

Supporting the notion that there are few guidelines to tell the Committee specifically what it should and should not consider when making decisions regarding funding, Damita Jeter, Director of the Tourism Expenditure Review Committee (TERC) at the S.C. Department of Revenue, wrote in an email to The Voice that, “Until funds are spent and reported to TERC we have no authority to comment on these expenditures. Our role is simply oversight; therefore, (until) funds are spent and the report is remitted to us (October of each fiscal year) and the public has (raised) questions/complaints regarding the expenditures, we cannot really say whether or not certain applications should (or should not) be considered.”

Switzer has, since his original funding request, said both publicly and in an email to The Voice that the $3,000 the Chamber staff receives for salaries for their work on the Big Grab will be covered by the sale of $50 sponsorships, not A-Tax funds. An email storm subsequently erupted between Switzer and some business owners who said they oppose selling sponsorships to pay salaries to Switzer and Kelly who are the only two members of the Big Grab committee in Blythewood, Ridgeway and Winnsboro who receive salaries for their work.

In an email to Big Grab Committee members that was provided to The Voice, Switzer said, “The Blythewood Chamber is a professional business support organization whose revenues (from all sources) go to cover the costs of the organization which understandably includes staff.”

In addition to funds raised through sponsorships, the Blythewood Chamber is collecting revenue from Big Grab vendor rentals at the Blythewood Community Center where it is renting 10×10-foot indoor spaces for $80.12 and 15×30-foot outdoor spaces for $43.19.