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WINNSBORO – When a bill passed by the State Legislature last month failed to fully correct the lines of District 5, State Sen. Creighton Coleman (D-17) said only County Council could undo the confusion wrought by the 2011 reapportionment. Council Chairman David Ferguson (District 5) said last month he would have done so in the first place had he received even a phone call from Coleman or State Rep. MaryGail Douglas (D-41), who introduced the legislation in their respective chambers, or from School Board member Bobby Cunningham, who was affected by the debacle.

Last week, Coleman sent a letter to Interim County Administrator Milton Pope, asking Council to consider amending the district lines in order to make the School Board District 5 consistent with the County Council District 5. After Monday night’s County Council meeting, Ferguson said Council would indeed do just that.

“Yes, we are going to address it,” Ferguson said. “It was kind of indicated that it was our fault that it was like that. That’s done in Columbia.”

Cunningham was elected to the Fairfield County School Board in 2010. Following the 2010 census that showed a shift in racial demographics in areas of the county, County Council initiated a redistricting process, which it completed in 2011. At that time, Cunningham was inexplicably drawn out of District 5 and into District 6. Cunningham said he was not made aware of the change until he showed up to vote in the 2012 elections. The legislation was designed to place Cunningham, as well as five others, back into District 5 for both the School Board and County Council, whose lines have traditionally followed one another. After Gov. Nikki Haley signed the bill into law on March 4 and Cunningham received his new voter registration card, however, it became apparent that the bill had not fully achieved its goal.

“I am in District 5 for the School Board,” Cunningham said two weeks ago, “and District 6 for County Council.”

Ferguson was not explicit as to when Council would be taking the matter up, but said it would be addressed well before two months had passed.

WINNSBORO – In a split decision Monday night, County Councilman David Brown’s motion to return to a seven-committee structure of government failed to carry. Councilwoman Mary Lynn Kinley (District 6) was absent from Monday’s regular meeting and Brown (District 7) saw his motion cut right down the middle, dying 3-3.

Brown, Carolyn Robinson (District 2) and Dwayne Perry (District 1) voted in favor, while Kamau Marcharia (District 4), Mikel Trapp (District 3) and Chairman David Ferguson (District 5) voted against. Currently, Council operates with three standing committees as well as an ad hoc committee to take up miscellaneous issues.

Prior to the vote, District 7 resident Billy Smith, speaking during the first public comment portion of the meeting, said three committees were not enough and encouraged Council to adopt the seven committee standard and improve upon its structure.

“We can’t give you input if we don’t know what’s going on,” Smith said.

District 2 resident Pat Williams also encouraged Council to adopt a seven-committee system and suggested an improved structure would be selection of committee members by majority vote of full Council, as opposed to appointment by the Chairman.

As Robinson seconded Brown’s motion, Perry said he had served on committees under the old structure and felt they did not work as well as the three Council works with now. Perry asked Interim Administrator Milton Pope, who reestablished the committee system utilizing just three committees, for his opinion.

“The point, as I understood, of reestablishing the committee process was to create a sense of transparency, so that items would be reviewed by a committee prior to that matter coming to County Council,” Pope said. “If that is the case, then I feel very comfortable in saying that the committee process that has been accepted by this Council, the three committees, I think that structure is fine.

“If there’s a desire to create additional committees, then I guess that’s fine, but it’s nothing that the three could not handle,” Pope added.

But when Brown asked Pope for a list of committees and their members, Pope and staff struggled to produce a definitive list. After some awkward hesitation, Pope said that Trapp, Robinson and Perry serve on the Administration & Finance Committee; Ferguson, Perry and Brown on the Economic Development Committee; and Robinson, Ferguson and Perry currently serve on the Ad Hoc Committee that is tasked with shepherding the County Courthouse through its upcoming relocation and renovation. The full list of members of the Development & Policy Committee was never disclosed, although Marcharia and Kinley were later counted among its membership.

Brown then asked how personnel matters were being routed, if not through a personnel committee.

“Not as far as who you hire,” Brown said, “but if the recreation commission or somebody needs a new employee, at one time the way we used to do that, we used to meet and look at the description of the position and it would go through the personnel committee and then it would go through the finance committee to see if we have the money to do it.”

Pope said that under Fairfield County’s Council-Administrator form of government, the administrator had the authority over personnel. The administrator could not create new positions, which Pope said was the purview of Council, but could fill existing positions through the budgeting process. Council, he said, has only two employees – the administrator and the clerk to council.

“I don’t want to hire,” Brown said. “I want to set policy to create and then let you do your job. I’ll go back to my motion: I truly believe our old committee structure was very detailed and covered every item that came up. In some cases it would have to go through more than one committee to let everybody know what’s going on.”

Perry, however, said the old structure was flawed.

“For the first seven years on Council I don’t think our committee structure was effective at all and we rarely if ever met at all about anything,” Perry said. “I think we’ve covered more meaningful information in the Finance Committee just this year alone than I ever covered in any committee meeting in the last seven years I had.”

Robinson said that was because Council, until last summer, had an administrator who did not believe in committees.

“When I first came on Council, we had a fabulous seven-committee (system) and we had an administrator that believed in putting everything into a committee,” Robinson said. “After he left, I’m sorry to say, every year it began to wane as to how much information the administrator fed to you. That’s the reason the committees did not meet for the first seven years you were here. . . . It works, if you put it in place and everybody buys into it and does their homework and works it.”

After the motion failed, Smith, speaking during the second public comment portion, wanted to know why.

“This is really an embarrassment that we can’t do things in a structure that allows for transparency,” Smith said. “It’s obvious that there are things that come to this floor and are voted on without any discussion prior to that, and it seems the citizenry does not know about and we are making an appeal to you that we want to know about things. We are not getting good representation when we don’t know what’s going on. Those of you who voted against this, I seriously want to know why.”

BLYTHEWOOD – During a 5-hour work session on Tuesday, Blythewood Town Council presented an update on where the Town stands with construction costs associated with Doko Meadows (the park) and Doko Manor. The bottom line, Councilman Tom Utroska told Council members, is that there is still work to be completed on the Manor and the park, and at least $157,967 is still owed to the two construction companies (Condor Construction Company and Monroe Construction Company) for work both completed and yet to be completed.

“The Blythewood Facilities Corporation (the BFC, which disperses construction payments for the park and manor) owes Monroe a total of $51,871.71, including $27,400 for work still to be completed on the two restrooms in the park and $24,471, which has been retained by the BFC as an incentive until all the work is completed,” Utroska said.

Utroska said the BFC owes Condor a total of $106,095.45, including $67,066.10, most of which is for landscaping work yet to be completed by Pony Hill Nursery who Utroska said was subcontracted by Condor. That work includes sod and irrigation on the athletic field and grassing of the park and Town Hall, which is almost complete. Construction work yet to be completed by Condor includes the clock tower base and all dumpster enclosures. In addition, BFC is still holding $44,029.35 in retainage due Condor. The total owed both companies is $157,967.16.

According to a report presented to Council by former Councilman Paul Moscati on Sept. 17, 2013, there should be a remaining funds balance of $18,754.96.

“But the problem with this balance,” Utroska told Council, “is that there is a lot of money (from the original $5.5 million bond) that was spent not for construction but for things such as revised estimates, new plans drawn up by Land Plan South or the architect (Ralph Walden) that were not included in the construction contracts. So (Moscati’s) original construction fund numbers and the actual money spent will never match.

“We’ve had to pay additional money out of the general fund for these things and I don’t know if we’re going to have to come up with more to pay for the $157,967.16 we still owe,” Utroska said. “I really don’t know what’s left in the BFC pot of money. Much of the $157,967.16 is for work that is actually still to be done under contract.”

Plus, Utroska said, there are going to be additional costs including $2,412 for a security system for the Manor, the second layer of paving for the roads in the park, paving repair on the walking trail and a reserve fund.

“We don’t have the funds for this,” Utroska said.

“I think Paul (Moscati) did a good job keeping up with what had and had not been done on the overall project,” Utroska said, “but I don’t think it was managed well fiscally. We ended up spending a lot of money that wasn’t included in the budget. It wasn’t necessarily on construction, but it was money the Town had to spend on the park.”

Reimbursing the General Fund

Looking at the financial losses at the Manor, Councilman Bob Massa suggested establishing a formal payment plan to reimburse the general fund for a $162,000 deficit that ran up at the Manor during its first year of operation. He proposed making monthly reimbursements to the Doko Manor cash account only after the unrestricted part of the account (consisting of such items as deposits on rentals) exceeds $10,000.

“At month end for balances from $10,000 – $19,999, 10 percent will be returned to the general fund cash account until the entire payable is reimbursed,” Massa said.

For all month end balances in excess of $19,999, Massa suggested the general fund cash account be reimbursed $5,000 plus 10 percent of the remaining balance in excess of $10,000. He asked that Council pass a resolution for the payment plan at the April 28 Council meeting.

Other Business

Council also discussed goals for 2014-15 and it received a technology briefing from VC3 about their Cloud-based technology and other offerings that would facilitate the Town’s computer technology. Council discussed a Resolution in executive session pertaining to the Winnsboro water franchise agreement (see related story, page 1) and voted unanimously in favor of it.

The next Town Council meeting is April 28 and another workshop is scheduled for May 13, from 8 a.m. until noon.

WINNSBORO – Town Council was shocked to discover Tuesday night that Blythewood Town Council had, during their meeting earlier the same day, voted unanimously to pass a resolution to terminate the water franchise agreement between the two municipalities. Council said they were completely unaware that Blythewood had even been considering such a move, hearing about it for the first time, Council said, when questioned after Tuesday’s meeting by a reporter from The Voice.

The resolution may, in fact, have been somewhat premature, Winnsboro officials noted, as the contract is binding for another six years – until 2020. And with Winnsboro still owning the existing infrastructure in place beneath the streets of Blythewood, any new provider of water would have to work out a deal with Winnsboro in order to pipe in the supply, or else make an enormous investment to put their own infrastructure in the ground. The one thing the resolution would do for certain, were it legally found to be able to sever the agreement prior to 2020, would be to end the payments made by the Town of Winnsboro to Blythewood for the use of Blythewood’s streets and right-of-ways necessary for Winnsboro to access, service and maintain its infrastructure.

The resolution would not prevent Winnsboro from selling water to Blythewood customers in the future, according to John Fantry, Winnsboro’s legal counsel on water and utility issues. If the resolution was implemented and the agreement canceled, Fantry said Winnsboro could easily bypass the Blythewood right-of-ways to continue to serve customers.

“I don’t know why they would want to cancel that,” Winnsboro Town Manager Don Wood said Tuesday night after learning of the passage of the resolution. “It’s for their benefit. That’s money we collect for them and we turn over to them.”

Currently, Winnsboro has approximately 750 taps in and around Blythewood. Wood said Winnsboro collects 1.5 percent on each water bill and transfers that money to Blythewood annually. Blythewood Mayor J. Michael Ross, however, said the fee only amounted to around $13,000 a year, and the resolution was less about money and more about ensuring future development for Blythewood.

“This is about an economic development issue – Doko Village – that came to us and was dead in the water because the developer went to Winnsboro and couldn’t get water,” Ross said. “We can’t grow, and there’s plenty of water available from Columbia. They’re supplying us already.”

Blythewood is indeed supplied by the Capital City, thanks to a deal two summers ago between Winnsboro and Columbia that brought up to 400,000 gallons a day through Winnsboro’s meters and into Blythewood homes and businesses. The deal was revised last year to bring the amount up to as much as 1 million gallons a day. That revision was put in place largely to help supply Fairfield County’s new Commerce Center on Peach Road. The Doko Village project, Ross said, would have been a tremendous boon for Blythewood, bringing homes and businesses into the community.

But as large a part as future growth played in Tuesday’s resolution, Ross said another factor instilled fear in Blythewood. When word leaked out earlier this month that a private corporation was interested in purchasing Winnsboro’s Blythewood infrastructure, Ross said Blythewood “hit the panic button.”

“I think it sent up a red flag that that infrastructure could be sold out from under us,” Ross said. “It scares me a little when private enterprise gets involved with public utilities.”

That private enterprise, Ni America, LLC, which owns Palmetto Utilities in Elgin, recently approached the Town of Winnsboro, according to a source close to the situation, and threw down an $800,000 offer. But Tuesday night, Winnsboro Mayor Roger Gaddy said the Town was not, in fact, in negotiations.

“We’re not anywhere with it,” Gaddy said. “We haven’t set a price on anything. We’re not in the process of negotiating anything.”

Councilman Stan Klaus agreed, and said after the meeting that Ni America had come to Winnsboro “to talk,” but that there were no negotiations to sell. The Voice’s source also said the rumored “negotiations” barely even qualified as “talks,” and that he felt it was very unlikely Winnsboro would be interested in selling.

“That’s real easy to say,” Ross said. “We’re just trying to look out for the future of the Town of Blythewood.”

RIDGEWAY – Although a number of his votes were whittled away by the Fairfield County Election Commission Friday morning, write-in candidate Heath Cookendorfer’s surprise victory in Ridgeway’s April 8 municipal election was upheld by a final tally of 43 votes to 41 over incumbent Town Councilwoman Belva Bush.

The two-vote margin put Cookendorfer just beyond the mandatory recount threshold and the 42-year-old native of Alexandria, Ky. was sworn into office Friday evening.

Debbie Stidham, Director of Fairfield County Voter Registration & Elections, said the Commission discounted some votes that did not clearly indicate voter intent, per state guidelines, such as ballots that simply read “Heath,” or incorrectly read “Heath M.”

Other vote finals remained unchanged, with incumbent Charlene Herring easily beating out Bush for mayor, 91-27, and Councilman Russ Brown earning a second term with 98 votes. Herring and Brown also renewed their oaths Friday.