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Council: Mayor Overstepped Boundaries

RIDGEWAY – Town Council voted 6-0 at their Dec. 11 meeting to discuss entering into a formal lease with Norfolk-Southern for the Cotton Yard Market in the center of town. Council will hold first reading of the $300 a year lease at their January meeting, but how the town came to be staring down the barrel of a lease for property that it had utilized for free for decades was the topic of some considerably heavy discussion. That discussion was prefaced by a review, offered by Councilman Russ Brown, of exactly what form of government Ridgeway operates under and how things appeared to have strayed from that format.

“We are a council form of government,” Brown said. “I want to make sure we’re all on the same page and that we understand how our form of government works.”

Referring to documents he said he acquired from the S.C. Municipal Association, Brown noted that “the mayor presides over meetings by tradition, performs ceremonial duties, calls special meetings . . . and acts and votes as a member of council. The mayor has no additional statutory authority beyond that of other council members.”

Brown said Mayor Charlene Herring had, on at least one occasion, sent out official correspondence without notifying Council. That point became paramount when talk turned to the Cotton Yard.

“This (the pending lease) all came about from contacting Norfolk-Southern,” Brown said, and while Herring countered that contact was made with the railroad company after she had received questions from members of the community, Brown added, “but there were also citizens who were against contacting Norfolk-Southern, and Council members here were against contacting Norfolk-Southern.”

Councilman Heath Cookendorfer said Council had indeed agreed to break off discussions with the railroad at Council’s last meeting.

“We were done with it,” Cookendorfer said, “but we did contact them and that’s kind of what woke the sleeping giant to where we’re at today with basically the demand to take on the lease, and I was kind of a little upset about that. That’s something we should have discussed as a council.”

Herring said she made initial contact with Norfolk-Southern several months ago after citizens had come to her with concerns about cars for sale being parked on the property for as long as six months at a time, while other citizens had questions about a company parking trucks on the lot.

“If citizens contacted you, under protocol you should have brought that to the Council and Council would say if we were going to contact Norfolk-Southern,” Councilman Donald Prioleau said.

Herring said that in the future, she would adhere to protocol, but followed that by asking, “As a right of a citizen or a mayor, why can’t you contact the railroad? This is in the heart of our town.”

“September it was brought up and in this room we said ‘do not bother Norfolk-Southern anymore, because they will put up a fence’,” Brown said. “They’ve threatened to do it before, and they’ll still do it if you bother them. Don’t toy with the railroad.”

Herring said she told Council at the September meeting that she would be pursuing questions about leasing the property from the railroad and no one objected.

“In September you didn’t have the lease,” Brown said. “The lease was presented in October. In October . . . but that had already got to the point where Norfolk-Southern sent a lease because there was communications back and forth.”

Herring said the Town had to have a copy of the proposed lease in order for the document to be reviewed by an attorney.

“Again, in the capacity of mayor you went to an attorney without Council (knowing about it),” Brown said.

But Herring said she also informed Council that an attorney would be reviewing the lease, and no one had objected to that either.

“But this conversation came from you, in the capacity of mayor, (talking) to Norfolk-Southern, which led to them providing a lease,” Brown said. “We, at every single meeting when Norfolk-Southern was brought up, we all said don’t bother Norfolk-Southern.”

Brown said the proposed lease had sat idle with the Town for a month. Then, during Council’s October meeting, Council reviewed the document and opted to let it stay that way. The day after the meeting, Brown said, Herring contacted Norfolk-Southern via email.

“Telling them we were not going to pursue a lease,” she said.

“After we said not to communicate,” Brown said. “And then they sent their email back, basically giving the Town the ultimatum that if we do not lease the property, accept responsibility for the lot, accept liability for the property, then they will have the lot fenced off and the buildings removed.”

Herring said Norfolk-Southern is currently reviewing all of their properties, and eventually Ridgeway would have been forced into an official lease. Several buildings, including the world’s smallest police station and the fire station, had been constructed on the property without permission from the railroad, and Herring said it simply was not right for the Town to continue to use the property without the blessing of Norfolk-Southern.

“Eventually this would have happened,” Herring said. “And this came sooner because I did ask some questions. But eventually it would have happened.”

Herring said the railroad company needed an answer as to the Town’s choice of direction on the lease, and she was only doing the courteous thing by letting them know Ridgeway was not interested in signing a lease.

“Again, back to the form of government discussion we just had,” Brown said, “we’re not a strong mayor form of government, and as a council we chose to let it lie.”

Cookendorfer said it would have been preferable to let the railroad force the issue, instead of the Town taking the lead.

“I think ya’ll are making the issue at the wrong point,” Herring said. “You made an issue about the form of government and I understand that, and I will tell you sometimes Charlene Herring errs because she is very compassionate about this town and wants to get things done. And I agree, we are a council and we will act as council. I think you’re pulling at straws now and you’re trying to blame (me) instead of doing the right thing. I’ve got the point and I think we need to move on. If you don’t want to sign the lease, don’t sign the lease.”

“You call it compassion, I call it total disregard for Council,” Brown said. “It’s not the end of the world that we’re going to have to lease the lot, but how it was handled. . . .”

Herring reiterated her point that had she not received questions from citizens about the lot she never would have contacted Norfolk-Southern in the first place. But Brown once more pointed out that an entirely different group of citizens had urged the Town to keep mum on its use of the property. At that point, Roger Herring had heard as much as he could stand from his seat in the audience.

“The Rufus Joneses of the community!” Roger Herring, a former Council member and husband of the mayor, erupted. Brown told Roger he was speaking out of order, but Herring continued his defense of the mayor.

“You don’t do the community organization she does,” Roger Herring said, even as the mayor brought down the gavel. “You (Council) don’t do what you’ve already agreed to do!”

As the mayor attempted to restore order to the small Council chambers, Roger Herring stormed out, slamming the door of the Century House behind him.

“Now, do we need any further discussion on it?” the mayor asked.

“I just wanted to bring it up now,” Brown said, “so the people who are going to be paying for that insurance and paying for that lease when they pay their taxes and their water bills, they know where their money is going and why.”

BLYTHEWOOD – After adding a couple of items to the agenda at the beginning of the meeting, including a discussion of the proposed designation of the interior of the Blythewood Academy (the former Blythewood High School) gym as an historic property in the town, the Board of Architectural Review (BAR) considered a request by Mayor J. Michael Ross for a recommendation on the hotly debated sign ordinance.

BAR Chairman Michael Langston said Ross had asked the Board to make a recommendation to Town Council about the sign ordinance, which calls for all signs in the town, except the high-rise signs on the interstate, to conform to the code by January 2016. Langston told the board he was unsure exactly what the mayor was expecting of the Board in the way of a recommendation since the Board is charged primarily with the review of new construction and major renovations to signs.

“We’ve had at least four years of warning that the new (sign regulations) are coming (in 2016),” Langston said. “And, so, here we are and Gary (Parker, Town Administrator) wants to let these folks know (in a letter) a year out.”

Jim McLean, Chairman of the park committee and a member of the BAR, said that while there is a movement in the government to relax the sign ordinance restrictions, some of the signs are only slightly out of conformity. He said he didn’t understand how some signs in the town are out of conformity when they were reviewed by the BAR. In previous discussions at town meetings concerning non-conformity of signs, there was criticism that the town hall had allowed non-conforming signs to be erected after they had been denied by the Board of Zoning Appeal.

McLean reviewed for the Board that the mayor had called a public meeting to address whether the sign ordinance is too restrictive. At the meeting, two or three members from each of the town’s boards, commissions and the Chamber of Commerce were asked to sit on the panel. While virtually all of the hand-picked members of the mayor’s panel favored relaxing the sign ordinance or extended the deadline for up to several years, McLean said those members, including himself, were not speaking for the boards they sat on, but were giving their personal opinions, and suggested it would be a good idea for the boards to make recommendations.

“We got the cart before the horse there in terms of what this board ends up doing,” McLean said.

Langston said some businesses in the town have spent money and effort on newly erected signs to comply with the ordinance.

“I think we want to look very hard at where we want to be five to 10 years from now in terms of our master plan and what we we’re trying to accomplish with our signage,” Langston said. “Now we have an opportunity to address it and at least make a recommendation to the people who are going to make the decisions.”

After a power point presentation by Michael Criss, the Town’s Planner, showing some of the non-conforming signs in the town, BAR member Cynthia Nord suggested the Board’s input could bolster the aesthetics of the town’s signs, some of which she said were “really awful.” Nord praised the new things going on with the town and said she felt the maintenance of the signs is important, too.

“I think it’s really important that while we have this opportunity, we do make some recommendations,” Nord said. “There are towns where this is really important to them and they really stick with it. How our town looks is how people feel about us, how they feel coming here and how we feel living here.”

McLean added that making the community attractive, “is the single most important thing we can do to bring people to the town.”

Langston said he feels the town has been making tremendous strides and has done a good job to improve its appearance, and hopes the board members will come to the Jan. 20 meeting with some suggestions to be discussed regarding the sign code.

Band Shell

Earlier in the meeting, the Board reviewed and approved the appropriateness of the scale and aesthetics of an amphitheater band shell the park committee has been considering for the last year or so. The BAR recommended forwarding the proposal to an architect for a full scale drawing that would come back to the BAR along with lighting and sound suggestions before the package is eventually sent to Town Council for approval.

McLean said the shell measures approximately 48×40-feet and will be supported by three columns on each side, as opposed to the four corner posts as shown in the initial photo presented to the board. The concrete stage will rise a couple of feet above ground level across the front. A set of moveable screening walls are suggested as a backdrop for concerts and that can be removed for an open view of the pond and Manor, which sits directly behind the proposed shell. Mclean said the BAR’s approval virtually sets the design in stone, though there might be minor changes made during the final drawings.

“The shell itself will cost about $100,000,” McLean said. “Everything, including lighting and sound, should be completed for less than $200,000.”

McLean said the Park Committee will look to the Park Foundation to raise the funds to pay for the shell.

Election of Officers

Since only four of the seven board members were in attendance at the meeting, those members voted to delay the election of new officers until the Jan. 20 meeting.

WINNSBORO – Mayor Roger Gaddy told The Voice after Monday’s Council meeting that he plans to attend the Blythewood Town Council meeting at their next regular meeting on Dec. 22, with the intention of opening up the lines of communication not just with Blythewood’s Mayor J. Michael Ross, but with Council as well.

“Mike (Ross) and I have talked, but I have not talked with the Blythewood Council members to explain Winnsboro’s decisions regarding the water issue between the towns,” Gaddy said.

He said he plans to not only talk with them, but to ask for their support in Winnsboro’s endeavors to continue to provide water service to Blythewood.

“I think it’s important for us to talk, and I want to explain why Winnsboro can’t and doesn’t want to be dependent on Columbia water in the future. We want to be able to negotiate with industry as it comes to our area. We want to be in control of our own destiny,” Gaddy said. “And I think it will be good for our Town governments to have an open dialogue.”

The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at The Manor.

Administrator: No Conflict of Interest

WINNSBORO – With the close of the Department of Health and Environmental Control’s (DHEC’s) public comment period on Dec. 4, the mining application for a company with designs on quarrying granite out of 405 acres of a more than 900-acre tract of land near Rockton Thruway hangs on the precipice of approval. Last week, County Council asked DHEC to delay their decision until additional information could be provided to the public. Monday night, Council once again heard from concerned residents of the community, one of whom suggested that the relationship between mining consultants and the County Administrator might be a little too cozy.

David Brandenburg, a Rockton Thruway resident and prominent member of the community’s opponents to Winnsboro Crushed Stone, LLC, said during the second public comment portion of Monday night’s Council meeting that he had seen County Administrator Milton Pope chatting it up with one of the mining company’s consultants before the Nov. 20 public hearing at Fairfield Central High School. Brandenburg said that sort of fraternization gave him an uncomfortable feeling, and he asked Pope to disclose any relationship he might have – or that Pope’s parent company, Parker Poe Consulting, might have – with the mining industry. While Brandenburg said he was not making any accusations of a conflict of interests, but said Pope’s behavior toward the consultant (Craig Kennedy of Kennedy Consulting) certainly gave that impression. If Pope would not offer those disclosures, Brandenburg said he would push for an investigation, at the criminal level, if necessary.

“I have absolutely, unequivocally, absolutely no relationship with any mining activity, company or any industry like that,” Pope responded. “I don’t even know why there’s a sense of, and I’ll say this and this is my term, I don’t know why there’s a sense of paranoia about that.”

Pope went on to say that he knew Kennedy from Kennedy’s previous employment with DHEC, “and I was just being courteous to the gentleman by speaking to him,” Pope said.

Were there any existing conflict of interest on his part, Pope said, “I would have divulged that to this Council a long time ago if I did.”

The Major and the Minor

The County’s land use ordinance prohibits mining activity on a minor road, and quarry opponents who live on the mostly gravel Rockton Thruway have been hanging some of their hopes on that point of law since March. But Monday night, Council revealed that at least a portion of Rockton Thruway is out of the County’s bailiwick, which would place the community’s concerns about truck traffic entirely in the hands of the Department of Transportation (DOT).

“I go down 34 a good bit, and if you see a school bus going down Rockton Thruway, especially when its dry, there’s more dust going down Rockton Thruway than any other highway I’ve ever seen,” Councilman David Brown (District 7) said. “I guarantee you it puts up more dust, more than likely, than the mine ever will. If the state’s responsible for it then I think they need to be doing something to it to keep the dust down. I mean it looks like the woods are on fire, from a school bus going up and down the road.”

Chairman David Ferguson (District 5) said the County was responsible for the un-paved portions of Rockton Thruway. The rest, he said, was state-maintained. Pope added that, according to the conceptual plans for the mine, trucks would be crossing Rockton Thruway on the state-maintained portion of the road. But Ferguson said that the conceptual plan was all that the County had thus far seen. A final plan, he said, had not been submitted to DHEC, as far as he knew, prior to the Dec. 4 closing of public comments. That omission was just one of the reasons for the County’s request for a delay.

Request for Delay

“We believe that the applicant’s proposed mining operations fall short in terms of sufficient information available to reasonably assess whether mining operations on the subject property would be harmful or even feasible,” Pope wrote DHEC in a letter dated Dec. 4.

Pope wrote that the Nov. 20 public hearing left unanswered questions about the impact of mining on local water wells, the availability of sufficient water supply, the health impacts of dust generated by the mine, the hours of operation and the impact of truck traffic on Highway 34.

Pope and the County asked DHEC to require Winnsboro Crushed Stone to install a groundwater monitoring system, and requested 100-foot buffers around Horse Creek and its tributaries. Pope also asked that the dust control plan include requiring trucks entering and leaving the site to be covered by tarp; for water used in dust suppression to be silt-free; and for on-site haul roads to be paved.

The County also asked that the company be required to conduct a traffic impact study and to bear the costs of any road improvements; for background noise levels to be monitored and noise impacts on neighboring properties minimized; and for the company to limit hours of operation to week days and within a time frame “most conducive to neighboring property owner’s peaceful use.”

“Therefore, the County respectfully requests that DHEC delay any permitting decision until another public meeting is held to address these legitimate concerns and until DHEC provides written responses to public questions and issues raised in this letter,” Pope wrote.

In an emailed response to The Voice Tuesday, a DHEC spokesperson said his department plans to make a decision on the application in late January.

“We will continue our dialogue with all interested parties throughout the process,” the spokesperson said. “We will answer questions as best we can as we work through the review process. Answers to all questions that we received during the comment period will be answered in writing and will accompany the final decision.”

WINNSBORO – Fairfield County’s multi-million-dollar comprehensive recreation plan, which experienced a minor setback at Council’s Nov. 24 meeting, took a few baby steps forward Monday night with the authorization to purchase a plot of land in Blackstock for the construction of a mini park.

Council voted 6-0 to approve the deal Monday (District 3 Councilman Mikel Trapp was absent) for 2.3 acres on Overlook Road, between Ashford Road and Country Side Drive. According to County tax records, the property is currently owned by Carolyn Boulware and has an assessed value of $5,000. Boulware purchased the land for $2,800 in 1993, the records state. Milton Pope, County Administrator, told The Voice after the meeting that the County was ponying up $7,000 for the lot.

A similar move was scrubbed at Council’s Nov. 24 meeting when residents in the Center Creek community spoke out against the County’s plan to purchase 3.36 acres for a mini park near the intersection of Shoemaker and Center Creek roads. Don Quick, a resident of the Center Creek community, presented Council with a petition during the meeting that he said showed overwhelming opposition to the proposed park. Quick also offered some alternatives for the money the County had planned to spend on the land purchase and park construction.

“Why don’t they get us some fire hydrants on these side roads that don’t have any?” Quick proffered. “Why not pave some of these side roads that aren’t paved?”

Quick also suggested the County could take the $25,000 budgeted for the project, combine that with the County’s profit from last summer’s sale of 405 acres of land in the community, “and use it to pay the next interest payment on the ($24.6 million) bond,” Quick said.

Council voted 5-0 on Nov. 24 to drop the Center Creek park (District 4 Councilman Kamau Marcharia and District 7 Councilman David Brown were both absent from the Nov. 24 meeting).

During his report to Council Monday night, Pope sketched out what he called a “preliminary time line” for the County’s $3.5 million recreation plan. Pope said the County’s recreation consultants (Kenneth B. Simmons Associates and Genesis Consulting) would advertise RFQs (requests for qualifications) for contractors in the S.C. Budget and Control Board’s Business Opportunity publication beginning Dec. 10. Receipt of RFQs and a review of submissions would begin on Jan. 10, 2015, Pope said, while the designs for the plan’s multiple projects would be completed by Feb. 15. Bid packages would be sent to contractors on March 15, and on April 15 the County would begin accepting bids.

Unless those bids come in at significantly lower than anticipated prices, Council could face the task of trimming projects from their master plan. The plan, when it was revealed to the public for the first time last September, came in more than $600,000 over budget. Council last year OK’d $500,000 per district out of the 2013 $24.6 million economic development bond issue for recreation.

Only District 3 came in under budget, at $499,337, with a plan that includes four playgrounds and an outdoor basketball court. District 6, which has already seen approximately $380,000 dumped into the Drawdy Park football field project in the last year and a half, came in at $509,629 with a plan that includes converting the County’s former maintenance facility into a fitness center and adding lighting to the football field.

District 2’s plan for a community center and an EMS/recycling facility came in at $573,333. The remaining four district were between $117,000 and $144,000 over budget, with no existing land on which to construct the proposed facilities.

Pope said the contracts would be awarded on May 15, with construction getting under way by June 15. By Jan. 15, 2016, Pope said, construction on the projects would be “substantially completed.”

No Sale on Blythewood Infrastructure

WINNSBORO – For all the challenges it has presented to the Town of Winnsboro in recent years – installing new pumps, making new connections, negotiating with the City of Columbia for water and then more water – the Blythewood tentacle of Winnsboro’s water company has become a hot commodity of late.

In mid-November, the City of Columbia made what was the second bid this year to purchase the Blythewood water system from Winnsboro, offering up a cool $1.4 million for the infrastructure and its customers. But last week, Winnsboro Mayor Roger Gaddy rejected that offer in a letter to Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin dated Dec. 4.

Gaddy made it perfectly clear after a Town Council meeting in early November that Winnsboro had absolutely no interest in selling off the Blythewood arm of the system, but that was before the $1.4 million offer hit the table. During Council’s Dec. 2 meeting, Council gave Gaddy the authority to discuss the offer with Benjamin. Even so, Gaddy said after the Dec. 2 meeting that there was not an overwhelming desire to sell a portion of the system that Winnsboro may be relying on to secure bonds for a project to expand the system as a whole. In his Dec. 4 letter to Benjamin, Gaddy reiterated that position.

“This portion of the Town of Winnsboro’s system is an integral component of the system and as such will play a significant role in the Town’s ability to obtain a favorable bond issue for the funding of the Broad River raw water line construction project,” Gaddy wrote. “Thank you for your interest, but at this time, it is not available for purchase.”

Winnsboro took its first steps toward drawing as much as 10 million gallons of water a day from the Broad River in September, when Council authorized Town Manager Don Wood to coordinate the project, while also giving the OK to enter into contracts with three separate entities to help begin piecing the project together. The project is estimated to cost between $12 million and $13 million, would require approximately 9 miles of water lines and may not be completed before 2017.

“It’s real easy for them to say they’re not interested and we play a significant role in them getting a favorable bond,” Blythewood Mayor J. Michael Ross told his Council members at a work session Tuesday. “But that’s five years down the road, even at the earliest. We’re talking about what affects us today.”

Last spring, Ni America, LLC, a private utility that also owns Palmetto Utilities in Elgin, waved an $800,000 check in front of Town Council. The overture was quickly brushed aside, but not before it set off a wave of panic within the Blythewood Town Council, prompting Blythewood to light a fuse that has yet to be stamped out.

Before the Ni America offer even became public, Blythewood Town Council executed a resolution to terminate its water franchise agreement with Winnsboro, setting off a controversy that, at press time, is yet unresolved. While Winnsboro maintains that the agreement, which sends approximately $13,000 in fees to Blythewood each year, is binding until 2020, Blythewood and Mayor Ross contend that it expires in 2016.

The resolution came as a shock to Winnsboro when it was passed, without a word of warning, last April. Ross told The Voice shortly afterwards that Blythewood had gotten wind of the Ni America offer and had “hit the panic button,” fearing that they could potentially be at the mercy of private industry and its water rates. Termination of the deal automatically triggers the sale of the system at fair market value, and it was at Blythewood’s behest that Columbia made their $1.4 million offer on Nov. 19.

But the contract also mandates arbitration in the event of a dispute between the two parties, and last summer Winnsboro hired a mediator to make their case. Blythewood, however, did not, and the deadline to do so passed in September.

“(Blythewood) doesn’t like this franchise agreement, we’re not happy with it either, let’s work together to work something out that would be mutually beneficial,” Gaddy said after the Dec. 2 meeting. “But no one has gone to them and sat down and said that.”

Ross has also cited Winnsboro’s perceived inability to provide water to economic development projects in Blythewood as another motive for attempting to bail out of the agreement. Last summer Ross told The Voice that the Doko Village development, as well as Red Gate on Muller and Blythewood roads, were both turned down for water by Winnsboro.

Gaddy, meanwhile, has stated repeatedly that the Broad River project will make all of those concerns disappear, rendering Blythewood’s move to wriggle out of the agreement nothing less than entirely ironic.

“We’ll just sit here and watch what happens with Columbia and Winnsboro,” Blythewood Town Councilman Bob Massa said at Tuesday’s work session, “but at some point in time, it’s affecting us economically. We’ve got to get out from under the auspices of Winnsboro.”