Industrial site consultant Mark Williams, who has spent 20 years completing highly successful site location projects with major U. W. corporations and multinational corporations based in Europe, Asia and the United States, will share some of that expertise with those attending the Fairfield County Chamber of Commerce annual membership dinner Thursday, June. 22.
The community is invited to hear Williams speak.
“Mr. Williams is someone that I think will bring information to us that will be beneficial to the economic development of our county,” Chamber President Terry Vickers told The Voice. “He is one of a handful of people in the country who have this level of expertise. He is nationally recognized as an expert economic Development consultant and one of the top three industrial site consultants in South Carolina.”
The dinner will be held at Carolina Event Center, 1126 US Hwy 321 Bus S. in Winnsboro, with a Social (beer and wine) at 6:16 p.m. and dinner at 6:45 p.m. The old-fashioned summer dinner will be provided by Can’t Quit Smokin’. The public is invited to attend but must make reservations by June 20. Tickets are $25 per person. For more information, call 635-4242.
Richland County Sheriff’s department announced the arrest of Elizabeth Gati, 48, charged with grand larceny after allegedly stealing approximately $40,000 worth of jewelry and electronics from a residence on Alumni Lane in Blythewood. Gati was taken into custody on Wednesday, June 7, 2017.
On Monday, June 5, 2017, Richland County Sheriff’s Department deputies were notified of a theft that occurred at a residence on Alumni Lane. A diamond necklace, diamond bracelet and several Bluetooth headphones were stolen from the victim’s bedroom. RCSD investigators reported that Gati stole the items while cleaning the victim’s home. Gati is self-employed with TLC Cleaning, and cleans houses throughout the Midlands.
Investigators are currently looking into additional thefts that may have occurred. Additional charges may be forthcoming. Gati was transported to the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center.
WINNSBORO – Shortly after School Board member Willima Frick and Rep. Marygail Douglas made opposing comments regarding Frick’s proposal last month that Board members should be compensated, the Board passed second and final reading on the compensation ordinance with a 5-1-1 vote at their June 6 meeting. Paula Hartman voted against and Annie McDaniels abstained.
With that, Board members will each begin receiving compensation of $700 each month without respect to how many meetings they attend, and the Board Chair will receive $750. Board members currently receive $35 per meeting plus travel expenses.
Frick presented the proposal to the Board at the May meeting saying, “It is simply fair, and because we have not always had the fiscal stability in this district that we do now.”
He said the compensation would be revenue neutral.
“No additional funds are needed for us to do this. It is already in our $38 million budget. It will come out of money already allocated to the board,” he said.
Rep. Marygail Douglas read a statement during public comment period expressing her opinion that the increase from $35 to $700 is excessive.
“It is my belief that a monthly amount of $350/$300 per month is more in line,” Douglas said. “That’s $8,400 per year. It’s difficult to justify this amount just because there is money there to do it,” Douglas said.
Frick disagreed.
“This is in line with other municipalities that have similar budgets to ours,” Frick said. “Also, in comparison to school districts around us – Richland 1 and 2, Newberry and Lexington 5. They pay comparable if not more,” he said.
Although the Board meets only once per month, Frick said members would not be paid more if they meet more often.
“It is important to compensate Board members fairly to ensure we continue to have quality leadership,” Frick said.
“It should be a position fairly compensated,” he said.
“I thnk my friend Mr. Frick made a good point,” Annie McDaniels said. “The compensation should be because we are elected officials, the same as the Fairfield County Council. We’re only asking for half what they get,” McDaniel said.
“In fairness to us as elected officials, we should be compensated for the hard work we do. When it comes to sticking together, one of the things the school boards in South Carolina don’t do is stick together enough,” McDaniel said.
“If anyone on the Board is opposed to it,” Chairman Beth Reid said, “they can turn it down.”
Charged with a felony for torturing a cat over several days’ time and then killing it, Christopher Pauley, 18, of Ridgeway, faced 180 days to five years in jail and a $5,000 fine upon conviction. He was also charged with witness intimidation in connection with the torture charge. The intimidation charge, also a felony, carried a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and/or up to a $10,000 fine upon conviction.
But Pauley was not convicted. In fact, he never went to trial.
Instead, Sixth Circuit Assistant Solicitor Croom Hunter allowed Pauley to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges under the Youthful Offender Act when he appeared before Sixth Judicial Circuit Court Judge Brian Gibbons on June 1. The first of those reduced charges, Ill treatment of animals, A (SC Code 47-1-40), also carries a reduced penalty – a maximum of 90 days in prison or a fine of $100 to $1,000. The other reduced charge – assault and battery, second degree (SC Code 16-9-340) instead of witness intimidation – carries up to three years in prison upon conviction and/or a fine of up to $2,500.
Gibbons said he couldn’t believe what he was hearing when he presided over Pauley’s bond hearing earlier this spring. He gave Pauley a suspended three-year sentence with three years’ probation to cover both charges. Because Pauley had already served a combined 142 days on both charges before being released on bail, he was neither jailed nor fined.
During the sentencing phase of the plea, Gibbons said he wanted Pauley to finish his GED, cooperate with substance abuse counseling and undergo drug and alcohol testing and mental health testing as necessary. Gibbons also restricted Pauley from owning an animal during his probation.
The case unfolded on Dec. 23, 2016 when a witness contacted the Fairfield County Sheriff’s office in reference to the mistreatment of a cat, Hunter said. The witness said Pauley had told her that he likes to torture and kill animals and that he recently ‘worked’ on a black cat, Hunter said. The witness stated that Pauley told her that over the course of several days, he had beat the cat, set it on fire and hung it from a tree, Hunter said, adding that the witness said she accompanied Pauley to the back yard of his residence where he cut down a garbage bag from a tree and that the bag had the cat’s body in it.
An officer responded, searched Pauley’s backyard and found items the witness had described as Pauley’s ‘tools,’ verifying the witness’s statement, according to the responding officer’s incident report.
“To be accurate, the officer found a black trash bag with maggots and fur inside. She also found a lighter and an ax with fur on the blade,” Hunter told the Court. “The dead cat was sent for a necropsy which was inclusive as to whether the cat was dead before all this happened to it. It’s been Mr. Pauley’s position that the cat was already dead.”
Pauley was arrested on Dec. 24, 2016. Bond was set at $5,000 and Pauley remained in jail until March 8, 2017, when he appeared for a preliminary hearing on the ill treatment charge.
“It was then that Mr. Pauley learned the name of the primary witness,” Hunter told the Court. “He rode his bicycle up to the Dollar General in Ridgeway where the witness was shopping.”
The witness stated that an altercation ensued and that Pauley approached her angrily, grabbing her arms at one point. Pauley was arrested two days later on the witness intimidation charge and jailed at the Fairfield County Detention Center under a $20,000 bond that was later reduced to $10,000. He remained jailed until his June 1 Court appearance.
“He was a 17-year-old kid who did something stupid,” Public Defender William Frick told the Court in Pauley’s defense. “He (Pauley) is not the person he has portrayed himself to be with these acts.”
However, the responding officer reported that Pauley’s parents, who were cooperative in the investigation, said Pauley, “has been having an issue with taking out aggression on animals since he was a young child.”
The report also states that the witness said Pauley confided in her that he had been taking animals from the area near his residence into the woods behind his residence, torturing and killing them.
“We maintain the position and have witnesses that the cat was deceased before Mr. Pauley had anything to do with it,” Frick told the Court. He did not, however, produce those witnesses.
Gibbons allowed, a representative of Hoof and Paw Benevolent Society to address the Court on behalf of the victims which, she said, included both the animals and the citizens in the community. She called for more arrests, tougher charges and tougher sentencing for animal abuse.
“Light charges prompt light sentencing, offering the opportunity to repeat these crimes,” the representative told the Court. She asked Gibbons to sentence Pauley to the fullest extent of the law to help end animal abuse, cruelty and torture.
“I agree,” Gibbons responded to the comments.
“I am truly worried about you,” Gibbons said, addressing Pauley. “I hope I’m not looking at the next Jeffrey Dahmer. I’ve read your evaluation. I’ve listened to this case, and I truly hope my gut feeling is wrong, I hope that for your sake.”
WINNSBORO – “I think we’re finally there! It’s taken quite a while,” Georgianna Graham, Vice President of HPG Engineering Consultants, announced at the Town Council meeting Monday evening.
She was referring to the construction of a water line that will bring an abundant supply of water to Winnsboro from the Broad River – a supply that will also serve to sustain Blythewood customers.
Winnsboro Town Manager Don Wood told The Voice after the Council meeting that the new lines are permitted to bring up to 10 million gallons of water a day to the County.
“We won’t use it all, though. The purpose is to bring that water in to help keep our reservoirs full so we can serve our customers,” Wood said
“This is great for us,” Blythewood Mayor J. Michael Ross told The Voice earlier this week. “From an economic development standpoint, this is what we were looking for. We need to know that we will have a good water supply for everyone who wants to come here.”
Ross said he also hopes to have a better seat at the table when it comes time to renegotiate the next water contract with the Town of Winnsboro.
“I think we would like to have more input this time. But we are really happy about the construction beginning. I know they had to jump through a lot of hoops to get that line approved.”
Final approvals for construction came in April and Graham told Council they have 90 days from approval to advertise for bids
“So we’re ready to advertise for bids in a couple of weeks,” Graham said. She said the Town could reasonably expect to have bids in by the end of July.
Construction on the $15 million project is expected to be completed about this time next year, Graham said.
“The project should have been approved sooner, but there were several unforeseeable delays. You had everything approved last July,” she said, then the Department of Archives and History required an archeological survey, and then the state changed the application form. Then for whatever reason, the permits were not issued until April,” Graham said.
The Town’s attorney, Creighton Coleman reported to Council that the issue of easements had been resolved and that a judge would be signing off on the last of them this week.
Asked about a ground breaking, Mayor Roger Gaddy said he expected to have one after the construction contract is signed.
“We will include both the old and new Council members as well as the construction personnel,” Gaddy said.
The Town’s Economic Development Consultant, Ed Parler, addressed Council during it’s workshop on Tuesday to move toward relaxing some of the building regulations in the Town Center District (TCD), an area that constitutes the center of town between Main Street and I-77.
Many of those regulations became standards several years ago when John Perry was Town Administrator. They primarily involved new builds and called for innovations such as settng commercial buildings closer to the street with parking lots in the rear of the buildings and requiring buildings in certain areas to build two stories that could either have living quarters in the upper floor or to have that appearance. The quest was for a more pedestrian/biker friendly town.
“But,” Parler told Council, “we have been exposed to several coorporations that could have brought economic development to the town that said those regulatons increase the cost of construction. Reality is,” Parler said, “that Blythewood Road has 18,000 cars a day and we’re going to see more as the town grows.”
Parler said the pedestrian friendly side of the regulations is not an invitation to commercial development.
“The heart of the economy of Blythewoood is taking a right or a left off the Interstate, spending a little money and getting back on the road,” Parler told Council.
“Looking at the entities on Blythewood Road, almost nothing conforms to our standards. Consequently, of course, if there is any damage, they can’t replace. It makes sense,” Parler said, “to look at the TCD language and see if there’s a text amendment that would make what is here be in conformity, to allow other businesses similar to what we are. That’s probably the highest, best use from an economic standpoint.”
Mayor J. Michael Ross agreed.
“We’ve lowered our standards for regulating height of buildings. But we’re still up against businesses who want to come and put in a franchize or a strip mall with business that we would use and not have to travel outside of Blythewood,” Ross said. “Though, we don’t want to relax standards for lighting, landscapting and signage. We’re trying to stimulate economic growth.”
Ross said he has asked town attorney Jim Meggs to start pulling something together regarding text amendments.
Meggs said he thought he could have something by the end of the month.
“Economic development is our number one priority,” Councilman Malcolm Gordge said. “We need to seriously accommodate the businesses coming to the town.”
“But we don’t want Blythewood Road to become a Killian Road, a thoroughfare,” Councilman Tom Utroska said.”
Ross directed Meggs and Town Planning Consultant Michael Criss to move forward with a plan to relax the building regulations in the TCD.
FMH receives $450,000 grant to improve health of County residents
WINNSBORO – Fairfield Memorial Hospital has been awarded a $450,000 grant from The Duke Endowment to help improve health in Fairfield County over three years. Fairfield Memorial Hospital working with Fairfield Community Coordinating Council, is now one of 15 coalitions across the Carolinas participating in The Duke Endowment’s initiative, Healthy People, Healthy Carolinas.
The program addresses chronic health issues such as unhealthy weight, diabetes and heart disease. Local coalitions will involve leaders from a wide spectrum of community organizations in developing ways to involve residents in improving their health.
South Carolina ranks 42nd among all states when it comes to the overall health of its residents, earning poor rankings for its obesity and physical inactivity rates. Healthy People, Healthy Carolinas recognizes that health and well-being are created and sustained not just through individual and clinical efforts, but through the cooperation and support of the extended local community.
“This grant allows us to focus locally by offering programs that are proven to contribute to our health and well-being,” said Suzanne Doscher, Chief Executive Officer of Fairfield Memorial Hospital. “To truly improve health within our community, we have to expand our view of what affects our health. If we can improve health for even a subset of our community, we will have learned a lot about how to increase quality of life for all people.”
RIDGEWAY – After helping Town Council assemble its FY 2017-18 budget, Larry Finney of Green, Finney & Horton Certified Public Accountants pointed out at last week’s Council meeting that the budget didn’t have a lot of wiggle room. To remedy that, Finney suggested Council raise water, sewer and millage rates.
“There’s not a lot of extra room in there by the time you just take what your expenses have been historically, and you increase them a little bit for some of the things we’ve talked about,” Finney told Council members.
Using what he called a reasonably conservative approach, Finney said he came up with this year’s proposed budget after examining the Town’s financial history over the last three years and the year-to-date projections for this fiscal year.
The slated projections as of now, Finney said, would leave Ridgeway with $185,000 left over in unrestricted funds. With $60,000 budgeted for Pig on the Ridge and the Arts Festival, that figure ($185,000) would be trimmed down to $125,000 along with $104,000 in the utility fund.
Finney’s first recommendation was to take the $400,000 that Ridgeway received from an insurance settlement and transfer $175,000 of it into the general fund and $200,000 into the utility fund.
“But taking away the ($400,000) settlement, you would be in a much tighter financial condition,” he said.
Finney suggested the Town build up its excess revenues each year by raising water and sewer rates to bolster the utility fund and increasing both business license fees and millage rates to improve the general fund.
Finney said that while the Town receives its water from Winnsboro, Ridgeway doesn’t charge its customers any more than Winnsboro charges.
“The only rate increases for the Town of Ridgeway come when the Town of Winnsboro increases their rates,” Finney said. “Historically, what y’all have done is simply pass along whatever Winnsboro passes along to you, but nothing more. That doesn’t allow you to build up any reserves. So one of my recommendations is that you need, on a fairly regular basis, to be looking at adding another couple percent or so to your water rates to help you have a little more room in the utility budget.”
Councilman Doug Porter recommended that Council adopt an approach similar to that of Lugoff-Elgin, which charges a $20 minimum for the first 1,000 gallons, and the standard per thousand rate for subsequent gallons.
In Ridgeway, Porter said, “the first per thousand gallon rate is $15. I’m saying we raise that minimum … then leave our rate per each additional thousand gallons at the current rate.”
Winnsboro’s current wholesale rate per thousand gallons is $4.06, but Council is waiting for information on a rate increase from Winnsboro. (who said this?????)
Porter also favored raising the current millage rate of 1.63 percent, which he said has not increased since 2008. According to Finney, Council could raise the millage rate to 1.826 percent this year and retroactively for the two previous years.
“We need to look at increasing [our millage rate] this year,” Porter said. “If we can possibly go back three years, how much that generates, I don’t know.”
Councilman Heath Cookendorfer, however, recommended waiting until Council receives additional information on water rates from the Town of Winnsboro. He said that at this time Council has only assumptions about what the increased costs might be from Winnsboro.
“We really need to contact Winnsboro,” Cookendorfer said, “before we just decide to arbitrarily add one percent, two percent to something we don’t even know what the fee is yet.”
Mayor Charlene Herring agreed that Council should wait, but said that “if we’re ever going to get out of this slump and do the things we need to do, we’re going to have to make some tough decisions.”
BLYTHEWOOD – The Blythewood Youth Baseball and Softball League has been selected to host Dixie Youth Baseball tournaments for a fourth consecutive year.
The Dixie Youth Minor’s All-Star Sub District Baseball Tournament will begin on June 15 and run through June 21 at Blythewood Park with seven teams competing.
The Dixie Youth Ozone All-Star District Baseball kicks on June 17 and will also finished up on June 21, with five teams participating.
Blythewood claimed the 2014 crown in The Coaches Pitch Sub-District Tournament, and in 2015 they earned the top spot in The Minor’s Sub-District Tournament. Blythewood hosted both of those events.
Last year, the Town hosted The Minor’s District Tournament, and continued their streak of home-field advantage with another win. That team pulled off a victory in the State Championship, and then made a third-place run in The Dixie Youth World Series.
The first game for Blythewood is at 8 p.m. on Friday against Dentsville.
Martha Jones, president of Bravo Blythewood, and Jean Bell Baum, present a $1,000 scholarship in the name of the late Blythewood artist William Carl Bell to Blythewood High School senior Brooke Boone, who plans to study art at Anderson College.
Industrial site consultant Mark Williams, who has spent 20 years completing highly successful site location projects with major U. W. corporations and multinational corporations based in Europe, Asia and the United States, will share some of that expertise with those attending the Fairfield County Chamber of Commerce annual membership dinner Thursday, June. 22.
