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WINNSORO – County Council members dispensed with a lengthy agenda in less than an hour Monday evening. A highlight of the session was a unanimous vote to upgrade the County’s aged economic development website to the tune of $29,000 with a $695/month maintenance contract.

“This was not a budgeted item,” County Administrator Jason Taylor told Council, stressing, however, that it was urgent the site be updated. “We have $7,000 in the current economic development budget and we can use that to start with and then, with Council’s approval, budget the remainder in the upcoming fiscal year.”

Created in 2010, the site is out of date and no longer communicates an accurate perception of Fairfield County, Taylor said. Compared to other counties’ economic development websites, it is obsolete, he wrote in the County’s request for bids.

Earlier this month, County resident Randy Bright reminded Council of the inadequacies of the County’s languishing website that had not been updated in more than six years. However, Taylor had already put out a request for bids to have a new website built that will specifically target economic development for the County.

“We had six companies respond to our request for qualifications,” Taylor said. “DuBose Web Design, a local company, submitted the winning bid. We looked at their work and thoroughly vetted them. They came highly recommended for this kind of website.”

Chairman Billy Smith (District 7) also pointed out that DuBose had built and maintains the economic development website for the Central South Carolina Alliance, with which the County is affiliated.

Council unanimously approved the bid.

More Purchases

In response to a request from the County’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Department, Council voted unanimously to purchase four sets of Hurst battery-powered Jaws of Life for $36,276.21

“It was the lowest of two quotes,” Taylor said. “The purchase was budgeted at $36,537, so we saved $260.79.”

Council also approved the purchase of 15 Dell Rugged laptop computers for the Sheriff’s Office at a cost of $34,587. One other bid came in at $34,775. Taylor said the laptops were already budgeted under the current fiscal year and are under state contract.

“We issue about 52 laptops to the deputies and try to replace about 13 of them each year which comes out to a laptop lasting about four years,” Deputy Terry Smith told the Administrative and Finance Committee earlier in the evening. She said the old laptops are turned over to the IT department where the hard drives are destroyed and the laptops are sold at auction.

Tweaking Ordinances

After unanimously passing first reading of two ordinances by title only – one to reclassify the zoning on four parcels in the County’s new industrial site at I-77 and Highway 34 from RD-1 (Rural Residential District) to I-1 (Industrial District) and another to increase the terms of office on the Fairfield County Library Board from three-year terms to four-year terms – Council passed second reading to revise Sec. 1-20-C of the Roads, Highways and Bridges ordinance to allow road crews to pave short roads when paving longer roads that are connected to the short roads, even if the short roads are not yet scheduled for paving.

Bill Coleman, engineer for the Fairfield County Transportation Commission (CTC) told members of the Administrative and Finance Committee last month that the changes would result in a cost savings for the CTC.

Taylor told Council that Coleman would be present at third reading to answer questions and discuss the proposed changes to the ordinance.

Happy Ending

The happy ending to the evening came with Taylor’s announcement that he had met with Town of Winnsboro officials who had requested a meeting between the Town Council and County Council.

“They want to explore with us how we might work together to more efficiently provide services to our citizens,” Taylor said.

During County Council time, Councilman Neil Robinson (District 6) said he would look forward to working with the Town.

“A lot of my constituents live in the town and I think we could both benefit from working together on some things,” Robinson said.

“We’ll be glad to get with the town,” Smith responded. “I’ll work with Ms. Locklair on this to set something up soon.”

JENKINSVILLE – After voting 5-1 on Feb. 6 to pass a water rate increase without specifying the amount of the increase or when it would go into effect, Jenkinsville Water Company’s board of directors enclosed a note in water bills last week announcing a rate hike of 26 percent ($23 to $29) for residential customers on the first 2,000 gallons. The rate increase for commercial customers is set at 41 percent ($27 to $38) on the first 2,000 gallons and 67 percent (from $6 to 10) on each additional 1,000 gallons. Residential customers will continue to pay $5 for each additional $1,000 gallons used, and all customers will continue to pay a $1 monthly impact fee.

While the new rates have not been discussed or voted on during a public meeting, Board President Gregery Ginyard told The Voice on Tuesday that the board discussed it in executive session at the March 6 meeting and voted for the increase following executive session during that meeting. However, the agenda listed only “contractural, personnel and legal matters” for the executive session, and a recording of the meeting reveals no vote was taken by the board on a rate increase following executive session and no mention of the new rates was made during the meeting.

“I don’t know when the vote was taken,” board member Preston Peach told The Voice Tuesday. “I was not at the meeting in February.”

While Peach did attend the March 6 meeting, he was vague on Tuesday about how he learned about the amount of the rate increase or when and by whom it was decided.

The note in customers’ bills said the rate hike is scheduled to go into effect next month due to “the need to offset increased operating costs, meet the growing demand for water and to make investments needed to increase production.” The note did not specify any particular increases in operating costs or water demand that had been experienced by the company.

The rate hike has evolved mysteriously following questions from customers during public comment at the annual meeting about whether the company is in trouble financially.

In discussing the rate hike but without any numbers during the February meeting, Ginyard said the company was passing on Mid-County’s rate increases. Board member the Rev. Leon Thompson voted against the rate hike.

“Mid-County has passed it, but we just didn’t have the paperwork in front of us to actually call out a certain number,” Ginyard said after the meeting. “We’re going to look at the number from Mid-County and it will come out. So we voted to actually look at what the numbers are with Mid-County and stuff to try to keep pace of them.”

However, the board did not vote to “look at what the numbers are.” The board voted “that the rate increase be accepted as discussed,” Ginyard said, reading out the motion before the Feb. 6 vote.

After the meeting, Ginyard said the rate increase had been discussed at previous meetings. But Mid-County Water has not passed along a rate increase to the Jenkinsville Water Company since July of 2016. That increase – of just 1.4 percent – reflects the increase passed to Mid-County from Winnsboro when Winnsboro’s 2016-2017 budget was adopted.

JENKINSVILLE – In February, James Green, Jenkinsville Water Company’s licensed water operator, began including in his monthly well production reports, the number of gallons of water billed to customers each month, a number he had not previously reported during the water company’s monthly board meetings. Water production in recent years, has hovered consistently around 3.5 million gallons per month, but there has been sketchy or no reporting on total gallons of leaks and gallons.

Green reported at the Feb. 6, 2017 meeting that the company had produced 3,459,070 gallons of water from local wells and purchased 1,840,000 gallons from Mid-County. Green said customers were billed for 5,041,801 gallons. He reported 265,269 gallons were leaked. At the March 6, 2017 meeting, Green reported that the JWC produced 3,210,260 gallons of water locally and purchased 817,000 gallons from Mid-County, billing customers for 5,106,022 gallons – over a million gallons more than the company produced that month.

Following the Feb. 6 meeting, Peach offered to explain the inconsistency in those numbers to The Voice.

“That might seem like we charged the customers for more water than we produced,” Peach said, “but we had more than a million gallons in storage.”

Asked why that million gallons of stored water had not been accounted for in previous water reports, Peach told The Voice that he didn’t know.

According to a sanitary survey on Jenkinsville Water Company conducted on Aug. 1, 2007 by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC), and obtained by The Voice, JWC’s total storage capacity at that time was 655,000 gallons, far below the million gallon storage capacity.

Asked on Tuesday by The Voice in a phone interview if the company had increased its storage capacity since that time, Ginyard said it had not. Asked how the company could store a million gallons of water, Ginyard said he didn’t know.

“Mr. Green would have that information. You’ll have to ask him at the next meeting,” Ginyard said, ending the interview.

RIDGEWAY- The town of Ridgeway’s proposed new water tower officially has a home now, but it does not yet officially have a name.

Following executive session Thursday evening, Council unanimously passed a motion to approve a one-acre plot of land behind Geiger Elementary school as the site for the new tower. The Fairfield County School District Board of Trustees voted last month to deed the acre of land to the Town for the tower. The Board’s agenda packet included a graphic rendering of the new tower emblazoned with the name, ‘Geiger Elementary.’ While the name on the tower was not discussed during the public session of Ridgeway’s meeting Thursday evening, Mayor Charlene Herring told The Voice following the meeting that ‘Geiger Elementary’ is a suggestion that has been floated, but that some people in the town would like to see ‘Ridgeway’ on the tower. She said Council would vote definitively on a name for the tower at a future meeting.

Council also voted to award Civil Engineering of Columbia (CEC) the contract to build the structure. The cost will be $510,753, with about $39,800 of that amount going towards engineering costs. While bids were sought from eight firms, only two responded, Herring said. The other bid, for $851,000 was submitted by Hanna Engineering of Florence.

Funds for the tower comes from the town’s $500,000 Rural Infrastructure Authority grant, but the city must cover the additional $10,573, including the service road to the tower. However, there are hopes Fairfield County will assist in the payment of funds that exceed the original $500,000 RIA grant.

More Fencing

After voting in February to fence separately the new Ridgeway playground and the old Ridgeway School arch at a total cost of $13,457, Council changed course at its March 9 meeting, voting to enclose the entire park and arch area with a single fence at an additional cost of $14,792, bringing the total cost for fencing to $28,249.

“Citizens expressed some concern about closing the areas rather than making them open,”Mayor Charlene Herring said. “The purpose was you don’t have to a fence for the playground, but you want to eventually just for protection, especially our playground backs up to a road that’s an access road.”

Ridgeway received grant funds totaling $20,135 from the Municipal Association to stabilize the arch and fence both the arch and the proposed playground nearby. After spending $15,135 on the arch, it only had $5,000 left for fencing. Council agreed to make up the difference in grant funds with money taken from one of the Town’s CDs. Some, if not all, of the Town’s contribution could be

reimbursed with phase two of a Parks and Recreation (PARD) grant in two years.

“We have about $28,061.61 left in the PARD grant,” Herring said. “And it could be more than that after we finish phase one.”

COLUMBIA – When Rimer Pond Road and LongCreek Plantation area residents spoke at a County Council public hearing last month, Council listened. But apparently more than just Council was listening. In response to a long simmering resistance by residents to commercial zoning on Rimer Pond Road as well as zoning issues in other areas of the County, including Lower Richland, the County has announced that it is going to rewrite its Land Development (zoning) Code to better suit the citizens who already live In those areas, Ashley Powell, Manager of Richland County Planning Services told The Voice on Tuesday.

“This will be the first time in recent history, and maybe ever, that the land development code in Richland County has been completely scrapped and rewritten from ground zero,” Powell said.

In a press release on Tuesday, Tommy DeLage, Assistant Zoning Administrator for Richland County, invited County residents to a series of upcoming workshops that will be aimed at gathering information from citizens to start shaping the framework for the code rewrite.

“We want as many citizens as we can get to be involved in the rewrite process,” DeLage wrote.

The first set of three workshops over a two-year span will cover the same information, but will be held in different areas to accommodate more residents. The meeting closest to Blythewood will be held on Monday, March 27, from 6 – 8 p.m., at Longleaf Middle School, 1160 Longreen Pkwy, just south of LongCreek Plantation.

The meetings will be attended by County planning staff and under the direction of the County’s Development Services Department with assistance from McBride Dale Clarion of Clarion Associates, the planning group that helped update the County’s comprehensive land use plan in 2015.

The first half of the meeting will consist of a presentation explaining the rewrite and what to expect, Powell said, “In the second half, we’ll break out into group work sessions, spread out maps, look at the different areas of the county and hear feedback from the citizens. They may say, ‘You know, this is an area where we feel like the proposed zoning doesn’t work well and we feel you really need to pay close attention here,’” Powell said. “And we’ll be furiously taking copious notes to guide the process so that when we’re doing the rewrite, we’ll know we’re coming up with something that’s really functional and what the people who live there want.”

In terminology, Powell explained the comprehensive land use (comp) plan has in it the County’s future land use element.

“It’s a vision of how we see growth trending. The Land Development Code is the zoning law regulating how land can be used. It’s what punches that comp plan (vision) into action (law). But right now in some areas, like Rimer Pond Road, the people who live there are not liking what the county has planned for their area in terms of zoning, Powell said.

The land along Rimer Pond Road and vicinity is zoned mostly Rural (RU) and Low Density Residential (LD-RS.) But the comp plan, which calls for surburban growth in that area, all the way to Langford Road, doesn’t mesh with what’s on the ground –  primarily farms and large acre, wooded home sites.

At Council last month, and for the last 25 years that Rimer Pond road residents have been fighting commercial zoning on the road, the citizens cry has been, “But we don’t want it.” “We don’t’ need it.” That’s not how we want to live.” Yet the requested zoning was in the County officials’ plan and approved and defended by the County’s planning staff as being in concert with the comp plan guidelines. But it was not the zoning desired by the residents who lived in the area. They felt it didn’t meet their needs.

“So when the residents are saying, “We don’t want that. We like it like it is,” Powell said. “We want to find out what’s working and what’s not working. The purpose of the rewrite is not to amend the comp plan, but what we are hearing resoundingly from the community is that something we proposed in the comp plan, we got it wrong. We’re a little off base. So we have to go back and amend and I think Rimer Pond Road is a perfect example of that, because we have called it one thing in the comp plan and every time a rezoning comes up, staff has approved it base on the comp plan. But the neighborhood has said resoundingly, “No, this is not what we want. This is not what we see our neighborhood becoming.

“We want to protect the character of the neighborhood that the people moved out there for,” Powell said. “We need to amend based on the feedback we get from the people.”

Powell said Rimer Pond Road has been a learning experience for the County.

“I sat in on the Rimer Pond Road case recently and am familiar with what some of the complaints are there. We are looking for a land development code that speaks directly to informed citizens so that it reflects the character of what is actually there and what the community envisions will be there in the future,” Powell said. “We’re looking for community input. We want people to come to the meetings and say, ‘This is how I want my area to grow. This is what I want it to look like.”

For more information, go to weplantogether.org