WINNSBORO – Next year’s proposed budget includes pay raises for all school district employees, but some Fairfield County Board of Education members want to spend more.
The board held a lively discussion Tuesday evening before unanimously passing first reading on the $41.2 million budget.
Among the most vocal was board member Annie McDaniel, who took issue with comparatively high supplements she says some coaches are paid versus salaries of classified employees, such as cafeteria workers and bus drivers.
“Before we give another supplement, we need to look at it on the table what we’re paying classified people,” McDaniel said. “It was sad looking at the supplements compared to what we were paying employees who work 180 or 190 days a year.”
The proposed $41.2 million budget is about $2.5 million higher than the one approved last year. Millage would remain at 203.1 mills. Fairfield County Schools hasn’t raised millage since 2010, said Kevin Robinson, the district’s finance director.
Robinson said the district is anticipating an increase in non-residential property tax revenue. Because of that, the draft budget recommends step increases as well as a 2 percent across the board raise for all employees.
District Superintendent Dr. J.R. Green said there’s been talk at the state level about budgeting higher pay for educators, but nothing definite.
“We recognize the state probably won’t mandate 2 percent and they probably won’t mandate the classified employees,” Green said. “We’re doing 2 percent across the board to make salary increases effective for all employees.”
While board members were happy to increase pay, some took issue with implementing a percentage increase, saying it disproportionately favors higher paying employees.
“When you’re looking at 2 percent on $20,000 versus 2 percent on $110,000, that’s a big difference,” McDaniel said.
Board member Paula Hartman agreed.
“We should do straight amounts. That’s more fair to me,” Hartman said. “The people working in the cafeterias and cleaning up don’t make as much so they don’t get as much.”
Green said he favored raises by percentages.
“To suggest we use a specific number instead of a percentage doesn’t seem to be very realistic, in my opinion,” he said.
Robinson said the budget also includes $325,000 for five new school resource officers, which works to about $65,000 per officer. Green said the funding covers the officers’ salaries and benefits, while Fairfield County would cover vehicle, equipment and training costs.
“We wanted to have enough money to cover the additional cost of five officers,” Green said.
Gov. Henry McMaster has said he wants to invest millions of dollars statewide on SROs, a request that comes in the wake of recent school shootings elsewhere in the country, but no bills have been passed.
“As much as people have talked about that at the state level, the funding of resource officers have filtered down to the local level,” Green said. “It doesn’t look like the state will be providing any money.”
Board members also reopened debate on an old topic – a 2010 law that allows students in the Mitford community of northeast Fairfield County to attend Chester County schools at Fairfield County school district’s expense. The proposed budget for 2018-2019 estimates student transfer costs at $626,436, a nearly $75,000 increase over this year, according to Fairfield County School District budget figures.
Some board members said they want more accountability of the money it sends to Chester County. Others want an attorney to take a second look at the Chester ruling.
“I don’t think they intended for it to go on and on forever,” McDaniel said. “We need to look at that, we’re sending a lot of money over there.”
RIDGEWAY – Two new town councilmen and a new mayor held their first council meeting last week, four days after being elected to office. The first order of business was to elect a new Mayor Pro Tem to replace Mayor Pro Tem Doug Porter who did not seek re-election for his council seat.
Longtime Councilman Don Prioleau was nominated, and Mayor Heath Cookendorfer and the two new Councilmen, Rufus Jones and Dan Martin, voted 3-0 to approve Prioleau. Councilwoman Angela Harrison did not vote but looked down at her desk with no acknowledgement of the vote taking place.
Water Tower Bids
Council voted 5-0 to accept the lower of two bids submitted for construction of an elevated water tank near the Geiger Elementary School. That bid, for $549,153 was submitted by Phoenix Erectors and Fabricators, Inc. A second bid in the amount of $572,930 was submitted by Caldwell Tanks, Inc.
Matching Sidewalk Grant
Council also voted 5-0 to accept the Fairfield County Ordinance match requirement for a grant for $57,000 to help pay for an extensive sidewalk project in Ridgeway. The County grant requires a 20 percent match of $11,400 from the Town.
The Town is seeking a total of $500,000 for the sidewalk project. Council plans to apply for a $400,000 grant from the South Carolina Department of Transportation’s (SCDOT) Transportation Alternative Program (TAP) which requires matching funds from Ridgeway in the amount of $100,000 or 20 percent of the project’s total cost ($500,000).
To come up with that $100,000, the Town has applied for $43,000 from the Fairfield County Transportation Committee (CTC) and hopes to receive $45,600 ($57,000 less $11,400) from Fairfield County.
“If we want to come up with that TAP grant of $400,000, then we will have to commit $11,400 out of Town funds [toward the $100,000 match],” Harrison said. “It could come out of our capital improvements or we could wait and put it in our budget for next year.”
Harrison said the Town must get all the matching funds together – $43,000 from CTC, $45,600 from the County and $11,400 from Ridgeway – before Council can apply for the $400,000 TAP grant.
Zoning Administrator Resigns
In other business, Council accepted a letter, dated April 6, from Rick Johnson notifying Council that he was resigning his post as Zoning Administrator for Ridgeway, effective immediately.
The next meeting will be held at the Century House, at 6:30 p.m. on May 10.
RIDGEWAY – About five minutes after the Ridgeway Town Council entered into executive session during their regular monthly meeting on April 12, Councilwoman Angela Harrison returned to the public meeting room, briskly gathered her purse and other belongings and announced, “I’m done!” She then walked out of the council chambers and slammed the town hall door loudly as she exited the building. Harrison did not return for the conclusion of the meeting. When asked about the incident, Harrison said, “I left for a very personal reason.”
Council had announced it was entering into executive session to discuss, “a contractual matter regarding audit proposals” and a ”personnel matter,” which newly elected Councilman Rufus Jones said regarded the uncrating of the town clerk’s dog during office hours and the removal of security cameras in the town hall office.
About 10 minutes after Harrison left the building, the other council members returned to the public meeting room and voted to return to public session.
Jones made a motion to uncrate Bella, Town Clerk Vivian Case’s service dog, who had been ordered crated [while in Case’s Town Hall office] by the former administration. Jones’ motion also called for the removal of a security camera that was set by the previous administration to focus on the town clerk’s desk.
“I feel it’s a good thing to have the dog in there. She serves as a deterrent, and she’s not hurting anything being in there. Release Bella,” Jones said. “I also don’t think it’s necessary to have a camera directly over Vivian Case’s desk. I wouldn’t like every move I make to be watched. Vivian is a very trustworthy person. I think we should take that camera down and put it in another location in the Century House,” Jones said.
Council voted 4-0 in favor of both of Jones’ motions. The audience erupted in applause.
The Voice reported last year that Bella had been accompanying Case to work for four years when Herring’s administration tried unsuccessfully to evict the dog in January 2017. Herring claimed that she had received anonymous complaints about the dog and that the dog’s presence in Town Hall was not in compliance with the town’s dangerous breed ordinance.
However, The Voice discovered, after submitting a Freedom of Information request for the town’s dangerous breed ordinance, that the ordinance was specific to the pit bull breed, and that Bella was not incompliant with the ordinance since she is a Rottweiler.
Herring also sought to establish that Bella did not meet the requirements of a service dog.
To that end, council and the mayor spent more than $8,000 with attorneys last year trying, unsuccessfully, to prove, among other things, that the dog was not a service dog and that Rottweilers are a vicious breed. Council and the attorney did eventually make the concession that Bella could be uncrated for short periods of time inside the office if she was on a leash.
WINNSBORO – Despite setbacks this year, including the abandonment of two V.C. Summer nuclear units and the loss of that expected future revenue, the fiscal state of the County remains solid, County Administrator Jason Taylor reported Tuesday evening during Council’s second budget workshop for fiscal year 2018-19.
Taylor presented a total budget of $39,748,964, an increase of $991,779 (3%) over last year’s budget of $38,757,185.
While Taylor stated in his budget letter to Council that the County still has great potential, to maintain a strong fiscal position and realize future growth, it must focus its budgetary resources on its core function of public safety and on critical infrastructure needs – water and sewer – quality of life services and public facilities.
“These are all things that are necessary to reverse population loss and recruit new industry,” Taylor said.
Taylor reported that the County’s revenues exceeded expenditures by $2 million this fiscal year and that he is not recommending a millage increase in the 2018-19 budget.
BLYTHEWOOD – Town Council voted during a special called meeting last week to refinance the 2010 $5M Blythewood Facilities Corporation (BFC) bonds for a savings of $51,000 the first year and $25,000 annually, thereafter, for a total savings of $470,000 over the life of the bonds.
The Town’s payments on the bonds currently run about $350,000 annually. The refinancing is through BB&T bank, which is offering a 3.65 percent interest rate that is 8.7 percent lower than the bond’s current interest rate of 4.33 percent.
The more favorable refinancing is predicated by the release (refunding) of a $358,475 debt service reserve fund or escrow that the Town had to set aside for security at the time of the bond’s issuance in 2010. That $358,475 will now go toward reducing the loan.
That debt service reserve fund, which represented principle and interest on the loan for one year, was initially required for security on the loan for two reasons, Parker Poe representative Brent Robertson said.
“The assets being financed by the bond were not essential for governmental purposes such as an administration building or jail, but for Doko Manner and Doko Meadows. Plus, it was a brand new credit for a public offering. So investors were looking for additional security,” Robertson said. “We’re now in an environment with a private placement where an individual purchaser (BB&T) is buying the bonds. Now that it has a history of repayment, the Town is able to negotiate the release of that debt service reserve fund.”
By moving forward with the refunding (release) of the reserve fund, it can be used to downsize the amount of bonds that the Town has outstanding.
“With that reduction, the cash flow savings benefit runs about $25,000 a year with the initial year estimated at $51,000,” Robertson said.
Council authorized the refunding last fall when it decided, ultimately, not to go ahead with the refinancing at that time, so from now forward, Council will not have to take any additional action to authorize the release of the debt service reserve funds.
JENKINSVILLE – An annexation vote scheduled for May 1 could literally quadruple the size of Jenkinsville town limits. And chances are most of the affected property owners don’t even know the vote is taking place.
That’s because Jenkinsville is utilizing the “25 percent petition and election method” in state law to annex 143 properties into the town of 46 residents.
Passed in 1988 and enacted in 2000, the 25 percent method would allow annexation of the 143 properties to move forward with only 25 percent of those 143 properties’ owners petitioning the town government. It requires the least amount of public support to pass.
Jenkinsville Mayor Gregrey Ginyard deferred comment about why the 25 percent method was selected to Columbia attorney Christopher Archer, who’s representing the town.Archer couldn’t say why the 25 percent method was chosen, nor could he say exactly how many people signed the petition, only that there was a door-to-door effort to solicit signatures.
“I can’t really speak to the history that much. All I can tell you is that the 25 percent of the names are considered qualified electors,” Archer said. “There was an effort to go door to door to ask them if they were in agreement with the petition.”
Debby Stidham, director of Fairfield County Voter Registration and Elections, said state law doesn’t require Jenkinsville to submit the list of names signing the petition.
“He does not have to give that to me,” Stidham said.
All that’s required is a letter stating the town met the 25 percent threshold. That letter was written March 21. According to the letter, obtained by The Voice, the Jenkinsville Town Council on March 15 adopted a resolution “certifying that a proper petition has been received for annexation of the area described in the resolution,” the document states.
Archer said state law generally doesn’t require notification of individual property owners that they might be annexed into the town. He said that’s accomplished through public notices or media coverage. That notice has appeared twice in The Voice.
“You would be notified by local media,” Archer said.
Exceptions exist for properties greater than 10 acres or if a property exceeds 25 percent of the territory to be annexed. In those cases, qualifying property owners would be notified via certified mail that they could opt out.
Polling will occur at the new Jenkinsville Fire Department at 7104 Highway 215, and polls will remain open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Only registered voters within the territory proposed for annexation are eligible to cast ballots May 1. Stidham estimated there are at only about 53 eligible voters in the annexation territory, meaning annexation of the 143 properties could pass with as few as 27 votes in favor.
Massive growth
If the annexation is adopted, the town’s geographic boundaries would grow at least fourfold, and its taxable property value would surge by a factor of five, according to Fairfield County property records.
A review by The Voice of the 143 properties on the annexation ballot found they have a cumulative fair market value of $12.3 million. Parcels currently making up the Town of Jenkinsville have a total fair market value of $2,467,200, nearly five times less, land records show.
Ginyard said the annexation effort is not a money grab. Rather, he said growing the town’s population would make it easier for Jenkinsville to attract new businesses.
“We’d like to be able to have a Dollar General and things like that,” Ginyard said. “We’re not trying to be a Columbia, we’re trying to be a community that has a few amenities.”
Jeff Shacker, field services manager for the Municipal Association of South Carolina, said municipalities usually spend new tax revenue from annexation on operations, such as police or parks and recreation. Some towns, however, choose to apply the money toward matching grants, Shacker said.
“Jenkinsville has been pretty successful with that,” Shacker said, citing streetscaping and adding sidewalks as examples. “I’ve talked with Mayor Ginyard about interest in building a new town hall.
“I’m not sure what all the motives are,” Shacker added. “But Fairfield County is a local option sales tax county. That is distributed by and large by population, so any population growth would mean more tax revenue for them.”
Ginyard said there are no specific plans to seek grants, though he didn’t rule out funding more town services.
“Annexation is good for the town because it puts more people into the town. It’s a good thing for everybody,” Ginyard said. “It’s not something that’s going to boost Greg Ginyard. It’s going to boost the town.”
By the numbers
Because a majority of the 143 properties included on the annexation ballot are owned by residents living outside Fairfield County, they will not be eligible to have a vote as to whether their property is annexed into the town.
Only 56 of the parcels, or 39.1 percent, are taxed at the 4 percent assessment that primary property owners pay, property records show. With few exceptions, the rest are taxed at 6 percent, which is what non-residents and residents owning second properties pay.
One parcel on the list is owned by Whitehall AME Church, which has a zero percent assessment. Four other property owners are also assessed at zero percent – Jenkinsville Water Company, Blue Valley Masonic Lodge, Eau Claire Cooperative Health and a fourth parcel whose owner couldn’t be identified.
It’s unclear how much of a windfall annexation would generate for the Town of Jenkinsville. Using other Fairfield County towns as a guide, the financial gain would be substantial. Jenkinsville would reap $25,251 (for properties taxed at 4 percent) and $37,877 (6 percent) in tax revenue if it adopted Ridgeway’s millage rate of 51.3 mills, according to Fairfield County tax formulas. Winnsboro’s millage rate of 38.9 mills would generate between $19,148 and $28,722.
Challenging the vote
Ginyard said the upcoming vote is actually the second attempt to annex the properties that are listed on the May 1 ballot. He said it has always been the intent to annex these properties since the town incorporated in 2008.
If the vote passes, Ginyard hopes to organize a third annexation vote in the future to bring in even more properties.
“What we’re trying to do is to grow the town,” he said. “Once that happens, that opens more doors to do things.”
Only a handful of S.C. towns have used the 25 percent election method, Shacker said, noting Pelzer in Anderson County used it in 2015.
Despite community objections, the Pelzer annexation vote passed 122-106, according to media reports. As a result, the town of Pelzer tripled in size, with several hundred properties added to the tax rolls.
Regardless of how the Jenkinsville vote unfolds, the town council must first conduct a public vote to adopt the annexation election results. That vote, though, can be delayed or halted altogether by petition. For that to happen, the petition would need signatures from only 5 percent of registered voters within the town limits, according to state law.
According to Fairfield County election records, there are 54 registered voters currently in the Town of Jenkinsville, meaning any petition contesting the annexation vote would need only three signature.
State law says that petition must then be submitted within 30 days of the town government publishing the annexation election results. Jenkinsville would then have 30 days to publish a public notice for a second annexation election. But, for a second election, only the 54 registered voters within the Jenkinsville town limits would be voting on the annexation of the 143 properties.
If a second election were held, stopping annexation at that point would likely face an uphill battle.
WINNSBORO – The Fairfield County Family Court computer system crashed last week, wiping out all data for February, March and early April. The computer’s data had not been backed up since Jan. 31, 2018, according to the County’s Information Technology (IT) Director Marvin Allen. More than $400,000 of Fairfield County child support payments to hundreds of families are being delayed as a result.
That delay could extend for as many as eight weeks since two-and-a-half months of data for 800 – 1,200 cases must now be re-entered into the system manually, Deputy Administrator Davis Anderson told The Voice.
During Monday night’s County Council meeting, Administrator Jason Taylor asked Allen to explain, “what happened, what we’re doing to fix it and what we’re doing to keep that from happening again.”
“First, the Family Court staff is not to blame for the crash,” Allen said. “The blame is on several entities, including me.”
Allen explained in technical terms a complex sequence of events in which he said the County’s IT staff had been manually backing up the server as it waited six months for a cost estimate for regular backup service from QS1, the company that has managed the Family Court server for 25 years. Allen said the last manual backup was performed by the County staff on Jan. 31, 2018.
Since Jan. 31, Allen said he had placed his trust in faulty information from the Department of Social Services (DSS) that the Family Court’s data was being copied directly to the DSS server. Allen said he stopped backing up the server manually because he understood ‘copied’ to mean the data was being backed up by DSS.
“Apparently, that was not the case,” Allen told Council. “Although we depend on vendors, it’s still, ultimately, me who’s responsible for the county’s data, regardless. And I take full responsibility,” Allen said, apologizing to all the people the crash affected.
Allen assured Council that, from here out, his department will do a daily manual backup of the QS1 server.
“That’s all we can do with this server,” Allen said.
Taylor said the County took immediate steps after the crash to find a solution to restore the lost data.
“After the crash, we quickly contacted a company in Charlotte and took the server to them to see if they could recover the data or at least some of it,” Taylor said. “They said they could not recover from what we have on the server. We talked to DSS to find out what data could be recovered from them. We found out that wouldn’t work because the way their system inputs data is different than ours. So we’re having to re-enter all the data back to Jan. 31, more than two months. It’s a lot of data so it’s going to take some time,” Tailor said.
“We don’t know just yet when we will be able to resume mailing child support checks,” Fairfield County Clerk of Court Judy Bonds told The Voice. “The Family Court staff is manually re-entering all the data back into the system, but they have to enter the oldest data first to make everything balance. It’s very time consuming.”
“We’re going to get the problem resolved as soon as possible,” Taylor said. “But it’s going to take some time.”
WINNSBORO – During the first of three planned budget work sessions, Council took a conservative look at allocations it provides for agencies in the county.
“We’ve got to start taking a little closer look at funding given the situation we’ve had with V.C. Summer and the fact that we’re now looking at less revenue in the future than we had expected,” County Council Chairman Billy Smith told The Voice before the meeting.
Behavioral Health was the first to feel the pencil, with council suggesting reducing the agency’s usual annual allocation of $67,438 to $52,288. While the County has covered the agency’s cost for its annual audit in the past, Council Chairman Billy Smith expressed reluctance to continue paying for audits for this or any other agency.
The Council on Aging requested and administration recommended $104,912, an increase of $11,501 over last year’s funding of $93,411. Smith, again, pointed out that $11,000 of that increase is to pay for the agency’s annual audit, which he said he wants to stay away from. Smith also noted that he saw no explanation for the $501 increase and would want to see that before funding it.
Fairfield Memorial Hospital saw the largest recommendation for reduction in funding, from $1,043,000 to $0.
“We do need to change this to reflect zero funding until further decisions are made regarding the hospital,” Smith said.
Council questioned a recommended $6,352 increase in funding for Midlands Technical College over last year’s approved budget of $158,810. Council members also had some discussion about reducing the $25,000 it gives each year to the railroad museum.
Council also suggested reducing the amount it gives Palmetto Citizens Against Sexual Assault ($9,285) by $1,285 and recommended reducing Sistercare’s funding from last year’s $10,000 to $8,000 this year.
Council let stand the administration’s recommendation of a $10,000 increase for Eau Claire Cooperative Health Center, bringing that agency’s funding from council to $60,000.
Heads of agencies considered for cuts will be invited to make their case to Council at the next budget work session which is scheduled for next Tuesday, April 17 at 6 p.m. in council chambers.
BLYTHEWOOD – In a special called Town Council meeting Monday evening, it was announced that the owners of the Old Mill Brew Pub in Lexington will be leasing half of the Doko Depot building for a similar restaurant to open under the name of Doko Station.
“I’m very excited about the restaurant,” the Town’s economic development consultant said. “It will offer a full menu including salads, sandwiches, steaks and a number of craft beers.”
The other half of the building will house Don Russo’s Freeway Music, Jeff Wheeler of Wheeler & Wheeler, LLC, a Columbia development company, told Council. It was also announced that Russo will now be purchasing the building, not Wheeler & Wheeler, who signed a contract with the Town last December to purchase the building for $325,000.
By late January 2018, Wheeler asked for and was granted a more favorable earnest money arrangement and an extension on the purchase contract. At the same time, Freeway Music owner, Don Russo, told The Voice in an exclusive interview that he planned to lease the building from Wheeler and Wheeler. That extension ended last month without a closing.
On Monday night Wheeler appeared before Council to ask for an additional 90-day extension of the contract and for Council’s approval of an assignment of Wheeler & Wheeler’s interest in the contract to Russo’s company, Blythewood Depot Property, LLC.
Council voted unanimously to approve the assignment and to extend the inspection period of the contract for 90 days.
“I don’t expect it to take nearly that long,” Mayor J. Michael Ross told council members. “But I don’t want to have to come back and approve another extension.”
The Doko Station restaurant is expected to open in about three months, Wheeler said.
BLYTHEWOOD – Blythewood Town Council has scheduled a town hall meeting concerning a traffic circle proposed for Blythewood Road to be constructed through the Richland Penny Tax program. Controversy has picked up over the proposed traffic circle that would impact the Blythewood Road entrances to Cobblestone Park, Palmetto Citizens Bank, the Food Lion shopping complex and two properties owned by Blythewood businessman Larry Sharpe.
“Council is going to be discussing the circle and proposing some solutions to possible traffic problems associated with the circle, and we hope residents will attend the meeting and provide their input,” Mayor J. Michael Ross said.
The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, April 24, at 6 p.m. at the Manor. For more information, call Town Hall at 754-0501.
