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RIDGEWAY (March 25, 2016) – Town Council’s Feb. 27 target date for relocating the police station to a front office in the Century House at 170 S. Dogwood Ave. came and went with the police station still in its traditional spot at 160 S. Palmer St. and the front office of the Century House still being used, as of Tuesday night, as Council chambers.

During Tuesday night’s meeting, rescheduled from March 10 when Council was unable to muster a quorum, Council avoided answering questions about the delay with a reluctance that bordered on downright recalcitrance.

“For one thing, we need to put out bids on a contractor to move this glass-top table out of here (Council chambers),” Councilman Heath Cookendorfer quipped Tuesday.

Cookendorfer said Council needed to discuss the police station move in executive session; however, when pressed, he could not provide The Voice with a specific exemption in the state’s open meetings laws that allowed for such a discussion behind closed doors.

Councilman Doug Porter said Council had run up against some “logistical” challenges with the move that had to be worked through, although like Cookendorfer he would not specify what those challenges were.

When Council at their Feb. 11 meeting set the Feb. 27 date for the move, certain challenges remained even then. Securing the room, as well as evidence were key issues last month, and Cookendorfer then suggested installing cipher locks on the doors, while officer Christopher Culp suggested the purchase of a new evidence locker for $130.

Tuesday night, however, it was clear that the installation of the locks had failed. And, Cookendorfer noted, the Town was on the hook for the cost.

“The locks didn’t work. I get that,” Cookendorfer said. “But we had to eat the cost of the locks. I’m trying to find out why we had to eat the cost of those locks.”

Herring said the packaging on the locks had been opened and were therefore not returnable, costing the Town $140. The locks were ordered, she said, through Ruff Hardware. Cookendorfer asked Council to find out from whom the locks were actually purchased and explore contacting them directly to determine if they could be returned and what the actual costs were.

Porter said the move was still going to happen, although when appears to be a mystery.

Council hopes to rent out the S. Palmer Street location for $600 a month once it is available. Ridgeway will have to obtain permission from Norfolk-Southern Railway, which owns the property on which the police station still sits, to lease the building. Half of the rent would also have to be paid to the railway, as well as a one-time fee of $750.

McLean: I Felt Like We Were ‘Had’

BLYTHEWOOD (March 24, 2016) – After unanimously approving a Certificate of Appropriateness (COA) on Jan. 19 for The Pointe, a controversial 56-unit, government-subsidized apartment complex proposed for construction by Prestwick Development LLC on Main Street in downtown Blythewood, members of the Board of Architectural Review (BAR) sorely lamented that approval during Monday evening’s regular monthly meeting.

“I felt we were ‘had’,” board member Jim McLean told his fellow BAR members. Others on the board agreed.

The object of the BAR’s lamentation was their regret after the fact that they had failed to make the developer carry through on an agreement it made with the BAR in December 2015 to install a decorative wrought iron fence on three sides of the apartment site.

“We’d had a discussion up until that time about Prestwick’s proposal to build a chain link fence, which is not permitted,” McLean said. “We asked them (Prestwick) to change the fence material to a wrought iron material and they agreed. But when they came for the COA in January, it (the fence) was not mentioned at all in the discussion until just prior to the vote on the COA.”

When Prestwick agreed to the change in fence materials at the December meeting, the prospects for moving the project forward hinged on the BAR’s approval of 13 variances. After those variances were granted at the January meeting, McLean asked the developer’s representatives about the wrought iron fence. The project’s architect, Robert Byington, said Prestwick Development, because of costs, had decided not to build any fence at all around the property. He also pointed out to the Board that there was no requirement in the ordinance for a fence of any kind to be built.

Without addressing Prestwick’s about-face on the fence, the BAR went ahead and unanimously approved the COA.

“I went home (after the Jan. 19 meeting) and kind of kicked myself from the standpoint of not digging in,” board member Jim McLean told his fellow board members Tuesday evening. “It got away from us. They were wrong and that particular group (of residents) has a need for fencing more than any area in town. Maybe this is just a lesson for us.”

“They took us off guard,” Chairman Michael Langston said in defense. “When they said they weren’t going to do the fence, we were getting ready to vote (on the COA) and I just didn’t press the issue. I feel we missed an opportunity, but I didn’t feel like challenging them at that point.”

“I worry about reports of considerable amounts of liter around these types of buildings and I just feel like we need to go back to the scene of the crime,” board member Gale Coston said.

“We can’t now,” Langston noted. “We’ve already voted (for approval of the COA) which is legally binding. I can almost guarantee you that if we go back with anything else it would be challenged and brought in to legal proceedings.”
Residents in the vicinity of the proposed apartment project had been vocal early on against the apartments, saying the proposed project would increase traffic and could lower property values of surrounding homes. Opponents of the project were publicly chastised by members of the Town Council for speaking out against the project.

Councilman Bob Mangone, a Cobblestone Park resident who, during the previous year, had voiced the same concerns about a developer building less expensive homes in his gated Cobblestone Park neighborhood, accused those speaking out against the apartments of veiled bigotry, bias and racism, even though those speaking out included both African-Americans and whites.

After the Planning Commission sided with residents in October and recommended that the project be denied based on the “will of the people,” Prestwick filed a lawsuit against the Town that resulted in the Commission’s decision being overturned.

In a move to further stem citizen dissent over The Pointe, at the December BAR meeting Langston announced to those residents who had come to the meeting to address the BAR that citizen testimony at that meeting would not be allowed on agenda items slated for discussion which included The Pointe. While Langston said he was adhering to the BAR’s rules of procedure, it was a departure from how the BAR had conducted meetings in the past when no specific limitations were placed on citizens who wished to address issues before the Board.

Thereafter, citizens no longer attended any of the town’s government meetings dealing with the issue and none were present at Tuesday evening’s BAR meeting.

At the conclusion of the meeting, the Board decided to ask Mayor J. Michael Ross to join with Langston in writing a letter to the Prestwick Development in an effort to persuade them to reconsider installing the decorative wrought iron fencing as they had agreed to do in December.

WINNSBORO (March 18, 2016) – County Council Monday night passed second reading on an ordinance to amend their 2015-2016 budget to provide additional funding for Fairfield Memorial Hospital, although for less than half of what the hospital requested, and not without taking some criticism from the public over their methods.

Ordinance 661 reads as a basic nuts-and-bolts budget amendment, and includes no specifics of how the funds are to be spent. First reading, during Council’s Feb. 15 meeting, did not even include a fixed amount. Monday night, Council gave the OK to $200,000 in second reading.

District 7 resident Bob Carrison, speaking during the night’s first public comment session, asked Council for a full explanation of the need for the funds, and on what they would be spent. Furthermore, he said, his review of the County’s monthly budget performance report indicated a windfall of more than $400,000 in gas and diesel expenditures.

“The ordinance you’re having a second reading on tonight proposes to add $200,000 to the budget,” Carrison said. “Does this mean the Council and administration have already spent the fuel savings windfall? Has departmental spending exceeded their budgeted amount? What is it administration wants that is in excess of budgeted allocation. I believe taxpayers deserve a full explanation what and why we are being asked for additional tax dollars. Vote no and find that $200,000 savings elsewhere in the budget.”

Interim County Administrator Milton Pope later said that, “Any time County Council decides to consider additional funding outside its adopted budget, you have to perform a budget amendment to that.”

“This request came about per the request from Fairfield Memorial Hospital to the Council,” Pope said. “This is not a request because the County has overspent any line item in its budget.”

The $200,000 approved in second reading Monday is well short of the hospital’s Feb. 15 request. Fairfield Memorial is seeking $305,523.46 to pay off outstanding maintenance contract costs for their CT scan and MRI machines, as well as $146,250 to implement the new WellnessWorks program – a program for which the hospital was already under contract, Fairfield Memorial CEO Suzanne Doscher said last week.

“The $200,000 is not all of the dollars that the hospital has requested from the Council,” Pope said Monday, “but the Council is in communication with the hospital board to consider funding opportunities for the hospital and if it wants to provide funding for the hospital.”

Reached for comment Tuesday afternoon, Doscher said since the ordinance had only passed its second of three readings, it was too soon to tell how the hospital would prioritize the $200,000.

District 4 Councilman Kamau Marcharia, who last week was critical of the hospital’s initiation of a program without funding, said Monday night, “This is second reading. We will have more time to contemplate that (providing funding) for the third reading.”

WINNSBORO (March 18, 2016) – A draft animal control ordinance was sent back to committee by County Council Monday night after members of a local animal rescue group took Council to task over recent amendments to the ordinance that would have loosed restrictions on shelter and tethering.

“Life at the end of a chain is not a very happy life,” Minge Wiseman, a member of the Hoof & Paw Benevolent Society, told Council during the evening’s first public comment session. If tethering were against county ordinance, punishable by a stiff fine, I would imagine there would be fewer dog owners in Fairfield County, fewer dogs at the animal shelter, fewer personnel needed to care for those dogs and therefore fewer dollars spent.”

Dogs that are permanently chained become aggressive, Hoof & Paw member Paula Spinali said, and Doris Macomson, a member of a York County animal rescue group that worked to get a no-tether law passed there, said funding was available from other non-profit organizations to make the transition from chain to fence.

“If you pass it (a no-tether law) in your county,” Macomson said, “we can help you get dogs off these chains and put them in fences where they’re not aggressive.”

During Council’s Feb. 15 meeting, Interim Administrator Milton Pope told Council that the animal control ordinance had been modified to include definitions of restraint. Those included, he said, the “immediate control (by) a person” by means of a collar and leash, restraining an animal inside a fence, kennel or other area, or keeping the animal tethered with a “chain, rope, leash, cable or other device.”

Monday night, Pope read from the York County ordinance, which states that an owner or keeper must be outdoors with a tethered animal, and that tether “must be at least 10-feet in length, have swivels on both ends and allow the animal to utilize the entire 360-degree circular area designated by the tether. The tether must allow the animal free access to food, water and shelter. Any tether must be attached to a properly fitting collar or harness and weigh no more than 10 percent of the dog’s estimated body weight,” Pope read.

Pope said language in Fairfield County’s ordinance had not included length of tether, but that staff could include that before the final draft of the ordinance gets the first of its three readings.

“I would love to do away with the chain,” Councilwoman Mary Lynn Kinley (District 6) said. “To me it would help a lot with the education of owners in the county and it would force them to use a fence.”

A dog, Kinley said, “is not an ornament to put in your yard for people to just look at and see that you have a dog. I would love to see us go to a no-chain law. I do think it’s doable. If we are going to start turning this county around, we could easily start with our animals.”

Deborah Rochelle, president of Hoof & Paw, also addressed Council’s Feb. 14 revisions to the definition of “adequate shelter.”

“A district Councilman sitting on this Council tonight had concerns and proposed removing the requirement to raise the structure (dog house) off the ground,” Rochelle said. “As a result of removing this one item from the animal control ordinance, all the examples of what constitutes inadequate shelter have been removed.”

Pope, during the Feb. 15 discussions, said the law had also been revised to define “adequate shelter” as an enclosed, weatherproof area, or a shelter manufactured or constructed “expressly for housing a dog or cat” that protects the animal from the elements. The shelter must be accessible to the animal and of sufficient size, Pope said. It also must be elevated off the ground to keep water, snow or ice from entering.

Examples of unacceptable shelter, Pope said then, included but were not limited to: underneath or inside motor vehicles, garbage cans, cardboard boxes, animal transport crates, carriers, under houses, structures, decks or outside steps or stoops.

But Councilman Dan Ruff (District 1) said the clause mandating accessibility and size to provide protection from weather was sufficient, and elevating the dog houses was stricken. Ruff also moved to strike including ‘under houses’ from the list of unacceptable shelters.

Monday night, after hearing from Hoof & Paw, Ruff backtracked on those revisions.

“Since I made some of these recommended changes,” Ruff said, “and hearing what they (Hoof & Paw) said, I would suggest maybe we table this and refer it back to committee for further discussion.”

Ruff also suggested inviting members of Hoof & Paw to the committee meeting for their additional input.