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  • Need 200?

    Complete The Voice’s fillable March Madness bracket on page 12 of our March 8 edition for your chance to win $200 from Road Runner Cafe! Only one entry per person, and entries must be postmarked by March 14.

  • Scottie’s Cafe and Grill holds fundraiser for Talbert

    BLYTHEWOOD – Scottie Opolyn, owner of Scottie’s Café and Grill, presents a check for over $9,000 to Cindy Talbert to help fund her battle with cancer. Opolyn opened his doors with a free buffet for the community as a fundraiser for Cindy and her husband, Ricky, right. Pastor Ken Cole, left, is the Talbert’s pastor at Rockton Baptist Church in Winnsboro. Anyone wishing to make a donation to the Talberts can contact 1-980-329-1296.

  • New 4H youth shooting team in Blythewood

    BLYTHEWOOD – Clemson Extension’s 4-H Youth Development Program is starting a sporting clays team in Blythewood for youth, ages 9 to 18.

    The team will begin statewide competition Fall 2018 in tournaments sponsored by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, Scholastic Clay Target Program, SC 4-H and the SC Youth Shooting Foundation.  Youth members will be coached by 4-H Shooting Sports-certified shotgun instructors. The 4-H Shooting Sports Shotgun Discipline is a youth development program that uses the shotgun sports of trap, skeet, and sporting clays to instill life skills such as discipline, safety, teamwork, ethics, self-confidence and other life values.

    If interested in participating or for additional information, contact Richland County 4-H Youth Development Agent, Weatherly Thomas, at (803)865-1216 marjort@clemson.edu.

  • FC Rec offers free youth camp at Drawdy Park

    Coleman and Burroughs

    WINNSBORO – Fairfield County Parks & Recreation will offer a free baseball and softball camp to kids ages 4-12. The camp, led by former high school coaches and Fairfield County residents Jonathan Burroughs and Roe Coleman, will be held March 12 and 13 from 6 – 7:30 p.m. at Drawdy Park, 702 Eighth Street, Winnsboro.

    Burroughs is the former head coach at Westwood High School in Blythewood and Coleman is the former head coach at Ridge View in Columbia.

    For information about the free camp, contact Lucas Vance at 803-815-2487 or lucas.vance@fairfield.sc.gov.

  • The Proclaimers

    WINNSBORO – The month of March was proclaimed Disability Awareness Month by the Fairfield County Disabilities and Special Needs Board members and Winnsboro and Fairfield County elected officials. Signing the proclamation are, seated: Randy Jones, resident and artist, Ridgeway Mayor Charlene Herring, Winnsboro Mayor Roger Gaddy, Carol Martig, and Etta Jennings. Standing, from left: Shirley Kennedy (Day Program Manager) and DSN Executive Director Laura Collins.

  • Sheriff searches for information on Wilson Chevrolet theft

    WINNSBORO – The Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office is searching for information on suspects involved with stealing tires and rims from Wilson Chevrolet, 798 U.S. Hwy 321 Business North, Winnsboro.

    On Feb. 24, between the hours of 5:15 a.m. and 6:00 a.m., a black Ford 4-door pickup truck towing a dual-axle U-Haul enclosed trailer arrived at the business. Multiple suspects exited the truck with tools and began removing the rims and tires from a 2018 Chevrolet Silverado truck parked at the location. The Ford truck was then observed conducting counter-surveillance in the area, along with a gray 4-door mid-sized vehicle.

    Shortly thereafter, the truck went back to the location and picked up the suspects that were previously dropped off, along with the tires and rims which they loaded into the U-Haul trailer, leaving the Chevrolet truck sitting on its brake rotors.

    If you have information about this case, you can provide information anonymously. Your tip could earn you a cash reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to the arrest of the person or persons responsible for this crime. Call toll-free, 888-CRIME-SC, log onto: www.midlandscrimestoppers.com, or download the new P3 Tips App.

    Images provided by Fairfield County Sheriff’s Department.

  • RW Admin stirs CD controversy

    RIDGEWAY – After Ridgeway Town Council went on a spending spree in June, 2017, spending more than $113,000 from a capital expenditure fund that did not exist, interim Town Administrator David Hudspeth suggested Council amend the budget to accommodate that spending. As part of that amendment, Hudspeth suggested the Town cash in all its CDs, worth about $409,000, and deposit the cash into the Town’s general fund to go toward creating a capital expenditure account and beefing up the water fund.

    Since the $409,000 included a little over $80,000 in CDs commonly referred to as the POR CDs and purchased with funds raised by the Pig on the Ridge festival, Hudspeth’s plan to cash in the CDs didn’t sit well with the four POR steering committee members, three of whom are also founders of the town’s popular annual barbecue festival.

    Councilmen Don Prioleau, a member of the POR steering committee, and Heath Cookendorfer pushed back.

    “I don’t agree with cashing in the CDs,” Cookendorfer told Hudspeth. “Once we cash them in, they’re gone. I would like to see the Pig on the Ridge funds restricted. Being in the general fund, it can be borrowed [by the Town] if we run short on things. I don’t like that,” Cookendorfer said.

    Hudspeth assured Cookendorfer, during the Dec. 14 public meeting, that the CDs would not be cashed in until they matured.

    “I think if you wait until they mature you may not need to liquidate all of them,” Hudspeth said during the meeting, which was digitally recorded by The Voice. “…this is not something we’ve got to do immediately,” Hudspeth assured Cookendorfer, ‘but as they come due we’ll look at the money we have if we still need cash, then I think that as those CD’s mature, we’ll try to move them around where they need to be. But I wouldn’t suggest, unless there’s some reason we really had to, to cash them in advance,” Hudspeth said. “…we’ll wait till they mature to move things around. We’ll look at this sometime between now and the end of the fiscal year, you’ve still got six months. You’ve got that amount of time to do it,” Hudspeth again assured Cookendorfer.

    Mayor Charlene Herring and Council members Angela Harrison and Doug Porter voted for the budget amendment, Don Prioleau was not present and Cookendorfer voted against.

    But, to the surprise of both Cookendofer and Prioleau, on Jan. 12, 2018, the day after the amended budget was passed by the second and final vote, Mayor Charlene Herring forwarded an email from Hudspeth to Town Clerk Vivian Case that instructed Case to, among other things, “Close all Pig on the Ridge CDs and deposit funds into the new POR checking account.”

    Cookendorfer said that after he learned the CDs had been cashed, he asked the town clerk for the maturity dates.

    “None of them were even close to maturity,” Cookendorfer said.

    At the Feb. 22 meeting, Cookendorfer challenged Hudspeth for breaking his word and misleading Cookendorf into thinking that the CDs would not be cashed until they matured.

    Hudspeth quickly changed the subject to the importance of getting a higher interest rate by moving the cash from the CDs, where they earned a little less than one percent, to the state government’s investment pool where they will earn one percent.

    While Hudspeth admitted at the Feb. 26 meeting that the Town lost as much as $600 in penalties on one CD by cashing it early, he said the penalties on others were as small as $6 and $14.

    In his own defense, Hudspeth placed the blame on the budget amendment ordinance that was passed by Council on Jan. 11.

    “It didn’t say, we couldn’t or wouldn’t” [cash the CDs prior to their maturity.]

    Asked about his change in position from stating in the public meeting that the CDs would not be cashed in until they matured, Hudspeth told The Voice that he couldn’t recall exactly what he said two months earlier at the Dec. 14 meeting.

    Information on the 10 CDs that the RW admin cashed in early in January.

    Article updated 11:10, 3/2/18 to show CD information. 

     

  • FMH asks Council for $4 M until end of 2018

    WINNSBORO – It was the request County Council members had been expecting from Fairfield Memorial Hospital (FMH) for almost a month – $4,000,801 to keep the hospital open until Dec. 31, 2018.

    During Council meeting Monday evening, the hospital’s Chief Financial Officer, Tim Mitchell, broke the numbers down this way.

    “Included in that number is $1,043,000 for the hospital’s emergency room services,  $154,130 to replace heating/air conditioning unit, $50,000 to paint the exterior of the building and over $1 million for accounts payable 60 days past due. The balance of the request would be potential cash losses through Dec. 31, 2018. Because Mitchell did not always speak into the microphone, other numbers were not audible and Mitchell could not be reached for comment before press time. (A more complete breakdown of the funding request will appear in the March 8 edition of The Voice.)

    Before Council went into executive session to discuss the hospital’s funding request, Council chairman Billy Smith said it is his feeling that the citizens of the County need to get something tangible in return for the funding that’s been requested and that has been paid over the years.

    Smith suggested the County purchase the hospital property and have a tangible return on the County’s investment. As for the timetable for that to happen, Smith said he could not be specific.

    “Providence has a 90-day right of first refusal on the hospital property, so we would need a letter from them saying they are not interested in purchasing it,” Smith said. “There are a couple of leans that would need to be taken care of and we’d need an appraisal of the property which will take some time. I think the hospital [FMH] has expressed that they have enough money to get by until we can work these things out,” Smith said. “But if for some reason we can’t purchase the property, then we’ll have to have an entirely different discussion.

  • BW man arrested for grand larceny in Ridgeway

    RIDGEWAY – A Blythewood man has been charged with grand larceny, theft of alcohol valued at more than $60,000 from a beverage distributor on Highway 34 in Ridgeway.

    McGoogan

    Neil Daniel McGoogan III was arrested on Feb. 15, 2018 after the management of the beverage distributor where McGoogan worked began looking into a large inventory loss, according to sheriff’s deputies.

    After multiple system checks, the company’s management observed McGoogan’s gate used at unauthorized times. The video system showed the suspect exiting and re-entering the gated facility on a golf cart and then in later videos, after other employees had left work, the suspect’s truck showed up on the video, the incident report stated.

    The report stated that an inside video captured the suspect loading a pallet with cases of Ciroc and Crown Royal liquor and then entering the ‘cool’ room and exiting with the pallet wrapped in foil blankets that the company uses to wrap temperature sensitive products.

    The suspect then placed the pallet on the shrink wrap stand, wrapped the pallet, and moved the pallet outside the building, the report stated.

    According to the report, the suspect is then seen exiting the facility with the pallet in the back of his truck. Deputies reported that these events occurred between Nov. 8, 2017 and January 16, 2018.

    The sheriff’s department is still investigating whether additional dates are involved in the heists. McGoogan was released on a $500 bond.

  • County sides with Rimer Pond residents

    BLYTHEWOOD – Rimer Pond Road and LongCreek Plantation area residents sat stunned for several seconds Tuesday evening after Richland County Council voted quickly and unanimously, 10-0, to deny a commercial zoning request the residents have fought for the last four years.

    The residents had anticipated this would be their most difficult fight. Their own council representative, Gwendolyn Kennedy, wasn’t backing them. She was the only council member to vote against them last year.  Worrisome, too, this was the first time the residents would not be allowed to address council about their concerns prior to the vote.

    The Rimer Pond Road case was first on the docket and things moved quickly once the residents arrived and took their seats, almost filling the 140-seat chamber.

    As Council Chairwoman Joyce Dickerson gaveled the meeting to order Tuesday evening, there was an elephant in the room – Kennedy’s seat at the dias was empty. The residents were puzzled what that would mean for them.

    But the palpable clue that the night would be theirs came soon from Councilman Chip Jackson, a Councilman who had come to Blythewood to hear their concerns prior to the December meeting.

    “In the absence of the District 7 representative, I’d be willing to make a motion for the purpose of discussion,” Jackson said. He followed the second of his motion with words that hung in the air, savored by the residents.

    “My motion is to deny,” Jackson said, referring to Hugh Palmer’s request to rezone 5.23 acres at the intersection of Rimer Pond Road and Longtown Road West from Medium Density Zoning (MD-RS) to Neighborhood Commercial (NC).

    “I feel strongly about this situation and how the process is working. I believe that the process for approving zoning changes is flawed and needs to have its guidelines reworked. I shared these comments with Ms. Hegler (Director of Richland County Planning and Development Services) and she’s indicated that in the code rewrite, they are going to do that, but in the interim, I want to state my views and concerns.”

    Of the several concerns Jackson addressed about the zoning process, he said it does not accommodate and weigh community support and non-support for any zoning requests. He also said the process does not accommodate support or nonsupport by the school district if properties are affected by a zoning request.

    Because these and other processes are not in place, Jackson said, “we have situations like this one tonight in which Council is being asked to make difficult decisions without the kind of input that I believe is critical and fair. Because of that, I cannot make a decision without those levels of involvement and participation,” Jackson said.

    Councilman Jim Manning became eloquent in his comments.

    “I hate to vote against business development in this county.”

    “I hate to vote against someone selling their property to make money.”

    “I hate to vote against businesses opening because somebody may rob them.”

    “I hate to think a county council would get in to the area of determining if certain businesses are needed.”

    “I hate to think we would do things to stifle growth that helps to financially support our school districts.”

    “I hate to think our staff spent so much time and energy to create a comprehensive plan and we would disregard it.”

    “I hate to think that the owner has adjusted the request based on what they have heard at public hearings previously in chambers in the past.”

    “However, when I saw the number of people that showed up the Tuesday night before Christmas and have continued in their efforts to communicate with me as a council member through 100s of emails over the course of a couple of months and repeated that again, I have to go with the power of the people,” Manning said.

    Councilman Bill Melanowiski weighed in on whether the Richland County Planning Commission’s tie vote (as in the Rimer Pond Road case) should be interpreted as no recommendation at all or as a recommendation of denial of the zoning request.

    “In commenting on [Richland County Planning Director] Tracy Hegler’s response regarding the tie vote of the Planning Commission, if we have a tie vote on Council, it is a denial of the request. So why wouldn’t the same rules apply to the Planning Commission’s tie votes?” Melanowski asked.

    Dickerson then called for the vote on the motion to deny. Except for the absent Kennedy, the vote was unanimous for the residents.

    According to the rules of Richland County Council, Palmer cannot bring a new Neighborhood Commercial zoning request for the property to Council for a year.