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  • Planning Commission, Town Begin Work on Comprehensive Plan

    BLYTHEWOOD – Last week, Wayne Schuler with the Midlands Council of Governments presented the Planning Commission with a review of representative data that will be used to update the Town’s Comprehensive Plan. That Plan sets land use policy and guidance for the Town Council for the purpose of establishing zoning. The data collected by Schuler is designed to help the Town plan for future needs and consists of such basic information as average personal income, home prices, employment, housing (types and prices), growth, commuter data, etc.

    “With this data the Town government can more accurately look at goals and priorities for the Town,” Town Planner Michael Criss explained.

    For instance, some of the data Schuler presented pointed to a lack of affordable housing in Blythewood. A contributing factor is that Blythewood’s average personal income is second only to Arcadia Lakes in a four county area. With a median family income of $109,423 and low (3 percent) unemployment rate, there has been little demand for affordable housing.

    Commissioner Ernestine Middleton asked Schuler if the Town should take into account affordable housing needed with any industry coming to the area such as the 500 jobs coming to Fairfield County.

    “If there are housing needs for people that are low income,” Middleton asked, “should we provide low income housing for them in our area?”

    While Schuler said affordable housing is one area that the government will have to look at in the future, he said the Town has taken some initial steps toward a partial solution by creating higher density zoning in the new Town Center District. Schuler said this type of zoning would lend itself to a greater variety of housing that could include apartments. He said this could address the Town’s deficiency in low income housing.

    According to Schuler’s data, Blythewood is clearly on the wealthy side, with almost half the homes in the town ranging in price from $300,000 to $500,000 and another quarter of them in the $200,000 to $300,000 range. Based on the 2010 census data, 25 percent of the single family housing units fell within the range for low income families in the town. But only 8 percent fell within the range of low income families in the Columbia Metro Statistical Area (MSA.)

    Schuler said the priority investment areas of the town are in the Town Center District and include the I-77/Blythewood Road exchange, Blythewood Town Hall and the northwest corner of Main Street and McNulty Avenue.

    But Schuler said the Town’s goals in its Comprehensive Plan remain unchanged. He pointed out that the complimentary policies from the Master Plan have been added to matching goals to link the Master Plan with the Comprehensive Plan. He said to implement these goals the Town must pay close attention to its revenue stream.

    The Comprehensive Plan, Schuler explained, presents the broad picture for future planning. The Town’s Master Plan, he said, focuses on specifics — such as specific projects on specific parcels, where buildings are placed and how they should look, etc.

    “Now, in 2013,” Criss told The Voice, “we’re going to start fusing these two plans together, cross referencing between the two.”

    The state requires that if a government adopts planning and zoning, it must also adopt a Comprehensive Plan that is reviewed and updated every five years by the Town’s Planning Commission. Blythewood’s Town government last updated its Plan in 2008 and made significant tweaks to the Plan with the adoption of its Master Plan for the Town in 2010.

  • Seven File for November Council Elections

    Bryan Franklin
    Ed Garrison

    Paul Moscati
    Bob Massa
    Ernestine Middleton
    Tom Utroska

    BLYTHEWOOD – Seven residents have filed as candidates for three seats on Town Council as of noon on Friday, the deadline for filling according to Town Clerk Martha Weaver. Last to file was Bob Massa of Oakhurst subdivision, who is seeking a four-year term and Ernestine Middleton who lives in the Lake Stevens area and filed to run for a two-year term.

    Others filing for four-year terms are Tom Utroska of Cobblestone Park, Bryan Franklin of Ashley Oaks and incumbents Ed Garrison and Paul Moscati, both of Lake Ashley. Bob Mangone of Cobblestone filed for a two-year term. All candidates must be residents within the Town of Blythewood.

    Franklin has served as Mayor Pro Tempore in Whitakers, N.C. and currently serves as an Army Reserve Lt. Colonel in the Third US Army at Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter.

    Garrison, a realtor and developer is seeking a third term. He previously served on the Town’s Planning Commission.

    Mangone is a member of the Town’s Architectural Review Board and is Chairman of the Town’s Athletic Fields Committee. He is a retired sales manager of Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.

    Massa has served as Chairman of the Planning Commission and is currently a member of the Town’s Board of Zoning Appeals. He is a Certified Public Accountant and is employed as the Director of Finance for another municipality.

    Middleton is a member of the Planning Commission and was formerly employed for two years as vice president of administration of the Arkansas State Lottery before moving back to Blythewood two years ago.

    Moscati, a project manager for a construction firm, has largely overseen the construction of the town park. He is seeking a third term.

    Utroska has served as Chairman of the Planning Commission and is retired.

    The non-partisan election is for Tuesday, Nov. 5.

  • Jury Trial in Animal Cruelty Case

    WINNSBORO – The Aug. 30 hearing for a Winnsboro horse owner, charged with animal cruelty, was postponed last week after the defendant in the case requested a jury trial. Calvin D. Carter, 52, of Hungry Hollow Road, will now have his case heard on Oct. 4 at 2 p.m. in Magistrate’s Court.

    Carter was charged July 19 on six counts of ill treatment to animals after investigators with the Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office and Fairfield Animal Control discovered a half dozen horses that “were not being taken care of properly and needed to be fed,” according to a Sheriff’s report. Photographs of the horses were examined by a Columbia veterinarian who told investigators that, “on a scale of 1 to 10, these horses were at a 5 or below” because of lack of adequate food and nourishment.

    The Sheriff’s Office was originally called to the Hungry Hollow pasture on July 16 after receiving an anonymous complaint about Carver’s horses. Lt. Roger L. Haney and David Brown, Director of Fairfield Animal Control, were initially shown about 10 horses by Carver and each of them appeared in good health, according to the report. The report states that Carver did tell Haney and Brown that he recently put one horse down after it had been bitten by a snake. Carver reportedly told Haney that the snake-bit horse had been treated by a veterinarian out of McConnells, in York County, but the horse would not eat and could not stand on the leg that had been bitten, Carver said in the report, and had to be euthanized. But Brown said that Carver had not properly disposed of the carcass until after Brown and Haney had visited the property.

    After examining the 10 horses, Haney asked Carver if he had any others, according to the report. Carver said he did not.

    The next day, Haney received a second anonymous call about Carver’s horses at the address. The caller said there were at least four horses, less than a year old, that were all “in real bad shape,” the report states. When Brown and Haney returned to Hungry Hollow Road on July 18, the emaciated horses were discovered and Carver was hit with the animal cruelty charges. On July 30, Haney contacted the McConnells veterinarian whom Carver had said treated the snake-bit horse, but that vet said he had not treated any of Carver’s horses since 2010.

  • Town OK’s Water Taps for Blythewood Development

    WINNSBORO – Town Council approved eight new water taps Tuesday night for a residential development in Blythewood. The taps will go to a development currently known as Holly Bluffs, off Blythewood and Muller roads just over the Richland County line, and must be paid for in advance, Council said, to the tune of $1,350 each.

    Council also voted to change the billing information for Holly Bluffs to reflect the development’s new owner, S.C. Pillon Homes, Inc. John Fantry, special counsel to the Town of Winnsboro, said S.C. Pillon Homes is seeking approval from the Town of Blythewood for design changes to the development to increase the number of lots from the original 54 to include the eight additional lots. The sale of the development from Holly Bluffs to S.C. Pillon Homes has not yet closed, Fantry added. Winnsboro Mayor Roger Gaddy said the taps would provide an average of 450 gallons per day for each household.

    On other water-related fronts, Gaddy said no date has yet been set for the next meeting of the steering committee for the proposed Fairfield regional water authority, a matter Council discussed during Tuesday night’s executive session. If the process for forming the authority doesn’t move forward soon, Gaddy indicated it might be time to pull the plug.

    “The different members are being canvased to get some of their ideas of what kind of governing structure they’d like to have, plus the indication of their desire to see the project move forward,” Gaddy said. “If we don’t have clear evidence that people are on board and dedicated to it, we’re not going to try to pound a square peg in a round hole. We’ll table it until we have some further interest, if we can’t get enough support from all the members.”

    Gaddy has said in previous meetings, including the most recent intergovernmental meeting earlier this summer, that failure to form the water authority would mean the costs for maintaining and expanding the Winnsboro system would be passed along to distributors who purchase their water from the Town.

    Council approved an additional $12,650.65 Tuesday night to cover just such system upgrades. The request came from Jesse Douglas, Director of the Town’s Gas, Water and Sewer Department, and covers a portion of the Town’s transition from Chlorine to Chloramine to treat potable water. The Town had originally budgeted $22,000 to purchase equipment at the water plant necessary to monitor the chemicals involved in water treatment, as well as equipment to be used in field testing water. The cost of that equipment has gone up, Douglas said, to $34,650. 65.

    Town Manager Don Wood said that brings the Town’s investment in the Chloramine transition to approximately $200,000.

    In other business, Council approved a request from Carl McIntosh for a one-time cleaning of the cemetery located at the end of Cemetery Street in Winnsboro. Wood was unclear on what it will cost the Town to mow and clear the lot, but said it would only involve the cost of hourly labor and should take no more than a few hours to complete.

    Council also held first reading on an ordinance to revise the Town’s zoning code to include farmers markets under C-1 and C-2 of the Town’s existing zoning districts. Second reading and a public hearing on the ordinance will be held at Council’s next meeting, Sept. 17.

  • Industrial Buffer Could Shrink

    BLYTHEWOOD – Town Planner Michael Criss suggested to the Planning Commission on Tuesday evening a number of changes to the Town’s Landscape & Tree Preservation ordinance. While most of Criss’s suggestions were for technical clarifications or modifications to help the ordinance comply with the new Town Center District, others were more substantive, such as reducing the buffer between the Light Industrial Research Park (LIRP) zoning district and Rural or Residential zoning districts from 200 feet to perhaps as little as 20 feet, which is the buffer requirement between most of the Town’s Industrial and Commercial districts.

    As it is written, the ordinance governing buffer space between an LIRP zoning district and Rural and Residential zoning districts also calls for the first 20 feet from the residential zoning district line to be densely planted with evergreens, which will reach a height of not less than 20 feet at maturity to create an opaque screen. The current planting requirement for the remaining 180 feet consist of intermittent plantings of deciduous and evergreen trees, which would reach a height of no less than 40 feet at maturity. Town Administrator John Perry nodded, agreeing that he thought these current buffering requirements on LIRP zoned districts were excessive and called on the Planning Commissioners to consider reducing them.

    These buffer requirements were established several years ago as a result of neighborhoods in the town objecting to an LIRP district being zoned in proximity to their homes. In 2003, the Ballow Administration had established LIRP zoning on almost 900 acres adjacent to Ashley Oaks. As a result of input from homeowners in the Ashley Oaks neighborhood and others in the town, the next administration under Mayor Pete Amoth changed the zoning of the 900 acres from LIRP to D-1 (Development.)

    Perry told the Commissioners that, currently, the only property zoned LIRP is the Google property on Highway 21 near the intersection of Rimer Pond Road. However, Perry recently presented information for consideration by the Commission regarding the possibility of rezoning the 900 acres formerly zoned LIRP to a zoning designation that would accommodate Advanced Manufacturing, which consist primarily of high tech manufacturing.

    The next Planning Commission meeting is scheduled for Oct. 7.

  • Council Moves Meeting to Magnet School; No Discussion on LOST

    FAIRFIELD – County Council announced this week that they will hold their regularly scheduled Sept. 9 meeting at the Fairfield Magnet School, 1647 Highway 321 Bypass N., at 6 p.m. According to the agenda, released Sept. 6, Sen. Creighton Coleman (D-17) will give a 30-minute presentation on a solid waste flow control bill pending in the Senate, and interim County Administrator Milton Pope will update Council on the proposed purchase of 1 acre of land off Road 99 in Blair to serve as a mini park.

    There is no discussion slated for the Local Options Sales Tax (LOST) funds.

    Council has consistently struggled in recent months to accommodate overflowing crowds during their meetings, with Council chambers and an adjacent anteroom both packed to capacity. While a motion to move all of Council’s meetings to a larger venue on a three-month trial basis was defeated at their Aug. 26 meeting, Council did approve relocating meetings on an as-needed basis. Council also voted Aug. 26 to hold their review of the LOST funds at a larger venue.

  • Monarch of the Lowcountry

    Angel Oak on John’s Island, the envy of any Tolkien Ent.

    No one would drive 154 miles to see a tree. Right? Wrong. Down on John’s Island you can see a Southern live oak estimated to be between 500 and 1,500 years old, one of the oldest living things east of the Mississippi River. Most expert estimates place Angel Oak’s age at 1,500 years, but precisely determining this monarch’s age is difficult because heart rot prevents coring (counting growth rings just isn’t possible).

    Want to see this Millennium Tree, this 2004 South Carolina Heritage Tree? Then make a day trip to John’s Island. It’s been said this giant tree and its outspread limbs appears angelic, thus its name. Local legends also maintain that ghosts of former slaves appear as angels around the tree; but neither is how it got its name. No, its name comes from its long-ago owners, Martha and Justus Angel.

    To be sure, old Angel Oak is a modern marvel. That the tree exists is a miracle. A visitor from New England, emotionally moved upon seeing the ancient tree, wrote, “It is hard to believe that over the years, man has not found a reason to get rid of this old tree. The fact that it is still around and lovingly tended gives me hope.” Well put.

    When you walk the grounds around Angel Oak you walk in the footsteps of early settlers and ancestors of the Gullah. Over the years, the 65-foot-high tree has grown out more than up. And over the years its 17,000-square-feet of shade surely has shielded a legion of Lowcountry denizens from the blazing Southern sun. Visitors take note: You cannot approach too closely or climb the tree’s graceful arching limbs, many as big as full-grown oaks themselves (the largest limb has a circumference of over 11 feet).

    Angel Oak possesses those iconic images that proclaim, “You’re in the classic Lowcountry.” To see the majestic oak is to conjure up Lowcountry swamps, blackwater rivers and Spanish moss. Angel Oak and the Lowcountry go together like William Faulkner and Mississippi, like Sidney Lanier and the Marshes of Glynn, like shrimp and grits. You won’t find an antebellum movie about South Carolina that doesn’t show live oaks draped with Spanish moss. In fact, the Lowcountry’s image is forever framed by moss-draped oaks and cypress, and Angel Oak, the star of stars, holds court over them all.

    Revered and held sacred, Angel Oak is a tree for the ages. It’ll hold you in a spell. Finally, when your sojourn at Angel Oak is over, Charleston is just 13 miles away. There’s much to see and do down here. Just one favor before you go: The city of Charleston owns and maintains Angel Oak and its park. Buy something at the Angel Oak gift shop or leave a donation to help protect this tree so vital to all.

     If You Go …

    • Angel Oak Park

    Free Admission

    3688 Angel Oak Road

    John’s Island, S.C. 29945

    843-559-3496

    Driving Distance: 154 miles

    Driving Time: 2 hours 44 minutes

    Learn more about Tom Poland, a Southern writer, and his work at www.tompoland.net. Email day-trip ideas to him at tompol@earthlink.net.

  • Carving a Life out of America’s Last Frontier

    Adolf Weitzel of Ridgeway, stands in front of the cabin he is building, by himself, in Alaska. As shown here, he has finished over half the wall height.

    At 74, Adolf Weitzel of Ridgeway is living the dream – he’s building a log cabin on 3 acres of coastal wilderness in Alaska. And he’s building it off the land, by himself. Nine years retired from a career as a custom builder, the native German has just finished his second summer of work on the cabin. This week, he’s packing up and preparing to head home to Ridgeway for the winter. He and his wife, Annarose, immigrated to Ridgeway in 1965 for much the same reason he is building a cabin in Alaska – his love of hunting, fishing and the great outdoors.

    Hunting in Germany was very expensive and not within Weitzel’s means to do so. During a visit to his sister’s home in America, Weitzel learned that in America public lands are available where anyone could hunt, regardless of their wealth. He called Annarose who was back in Germany with their 4-year-old daughter and told her to pack their things and come over. He was staying in America.

    “When I retired, my wife and I got a motorhome and travelled all over America. We visited Alaska several times, and sometimes our kids and grandkids came along with us. The boys and I love to fish – I’ve fished in Valdez, Fairbanks, you name it and I’ve fished there,” he said in a heavy German accent via cell phone from his Alaskan outpost.

    “A few years ago we found a campground in Anchor Point, on the Kenai Pennisula, that we kept coming back to,” Weitzel recalled. “The peninsula has a  beautiful view of glaciers, the ocean and mountains – and the fishing is fantastic. There are three great salmon rivers here – the Anchor River, the Ninilchik and Deep Creek.  People from all over Alaska come here to fish for Halibut. I mean, if you want to be in a place where the fishing is great, this is where you want to be!”

    It was in 2011, after he was diagnosed and treated in nearby Homer, Alaska for colon cancer, which is now in remission, that Weitzel decided to take the plunge and buy acreage in the area. But with serious knee problems, for which he’s had surgery, Weitzel knew that building a cabin would be hard work.

    Still, he clearly relished the challenge.

    He spent last summer cutting in a road and lining it with gravel, clearing the home site and felling and curing more than 40 logs off the land. It often took over seven hours to get a tree down, de-limb it and then move it to the site.

    This summer, he started building the cabin and has completed five rungs, over half the wall height he’ll need before putting on a roof.

    “I’m very particular about fitting the logs together,” he said, “and that’s one heck of a job. Some of these logs are 18 inches in diameter and 29 feet long. The easy part is lifting them. I have an electric hoist that can lift 2,000 pounds. I just put a strap around the log and hit a button. But before that, I have to set up two sets of scaffolding so that when I have the log up in the air, it will set down correctly onto the wall. Every time I move a log up, I have to move two sets of scaffolding. I climb the ladder, boost it up, lower it down, unhook it. I must be making two hundred trips a day up and down that ladder. It takes hours.”

    Because he can only work during the summer months while the weather is good, he stays from mid-May to mid-September. Weitzel said he loves for family and friends to visit and especially enjoys working with his grandsons on the cabin. But he isn’t interested in help from other builders or workers.

    “I’d rather work by myself,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not easy to work with – I don’t like to explain how to do things. I’ve had some offers to help, but I just say, ‘Nope – I’m building this log cabin by myself.’ That’s it.”

    During construction, Weitzel lives in a tarp-wrapped frame shelter with a wood floor. The 10×20 structure has a large freezer, a Coleman stove, wood stove,  TV and a 10,000-gallon freshwater tank that is filled by a truck delivery service at 5 cents per gallon, a common Alaskan utility. He uses a generator and doesn’t plan on hooking up to electricity when the cabin is finished.

    “Most people living out here in the woods have an outhouse, but my wife wouldn’t put up with that!” he laughed. “As soon as I get the bathroom finished she’ll come up here and spend the summer with me. She won’t come up until I get the shower hooked up.”

    A permit and inspection are necessary for the septic system, but no permits are required for the building. The finished cabin will measure 27×22 feet, with a combined kitchen and living room, a bedroom, closet and loft.

    “Next year, I should by all means get the roof done,” he said, “but right now I have to go home. My oldest granddaughter is getting married in September.”

    As he plans the last busy days of securing the site against a quickly approaching winter, he looks forward to returning next summer.

    “I love it up here,” he said. “I’m a happy person up here. Sometimes it gets frustrating with my work, and I don’t get as much done as I want to, but that’s life – it can’t be everyday a happy day. But I like the people, the environment, the fishing – just the whole thing. It’s fantastic. If I’m alive next summer,” he said, “then I’ll be in Alaska!”

    To follow Adolf’s cabin-building adventures on facebook, go to Adolfsalaska.

  • Three More File for Council Races

    BLYTHEWOOD – Three more residents have filed to run for three open seats on the Town Council. Tom Utroska of Cobblestone Park has filed for one of the four-year seats and Bob Mangone, also of Cobblestone Park, has filed for the two-year term vacated in June by Jeff Branham. Another resident from Cobblestone Park has also filed but his application was not completed at press time, according to Town Clerk Martha Weaver. She said she could not release the name until the application was completed.

    Three other candidates had already filed: current Councilmen Paul Moscati and Ed Garrison, both of Lake Ashley, and Bryan Franklin of Ashley Oaks. The last day to file is Friday, Sept. 6 at noon. Candidates must file at the Town Hall, 171 Langford Road in downtown Blythewood. The Town’s general election will be held Tuesday, Nov. 5.

    Citizens who want to run for one of the vacant Council seats must be registered voters within the town limits of Blythewood. The filing fee is $5. For filing information, contact Weaver at 754-0501.

    Anyone wishing to vote in the election must be a registered voter in the Town by Oct. 5.

  • ‘Bound to Fail’

    Dawson’s Dam Substandard, Neighboring Dam at Risk

    BLYTHEWOOD – Residents of the Dawson’s Creek community gathered at Doko Manor last week, seeking answers to what caused a 92-year-old dam to breach on the night of Aug. 6, sending a 6-acre pond washing out onto Highway 21. Carol Peeples and 10 of her neighbors in the community sat down with representative of the Town of Blythewood, as well as Richland County Councilman Torrey Rush (District 7), Stacey Culbreath, assistant engineer with the Richland County Department of Public Works, and Brice McCoy, with the Army Corps of Engineers Aug. 28 to rehash the chain of events leading up to the disaster. James Cooper, a general contractor with Cutting Edge Design and Contracting, was also on hand as a consultant brought in by Peeples to inspect the remains of the dam.

    Peeples has asserted from the moment the dam failed that an infestation of beavers prevented the drainage system from dispersing water runoff from a pond at Blythewood High School, just to the north of Dawson’s Creek. Removing the beavers, she said, is Richland County’s responsibility, one it has failed to carry out. While Cooper said he agreed with the assessment that poor drainage triggered the Aug. 6 breach, he said such an event was inevitable.

    “It was bound to fail,” Cooper said. “Quite frankly, I don’t understand how this thing hasn’t failed already. Beavers or no beavers. This dam was built sub-standardly.”

    Cooper said the dam, which was built in 1929, was constructed primarily of sand and is saturated with water.

    “I have no clue why they used the materials they did,” Cooper said. “It was set up for a perfect event.”

    Cooper estimated the cost for filling in the breach at $25,000, but even then, the likelihood of another breach was “100 percent,” he said.

    McCoy said the entire dam area was built on a wetland, presenting challenges to proper drainage.

    “It’s never going to drain out,” McCoy said. “The dam doesn’t have any emergency spillways. It’s not designed according to current standards. If you’re going to fix it, it will definitely behoove you to fix it right, or there’s going to be another event that’s going to blow this thing out.”

    The cost to totally rebuild the dam, or to refit the dam to reduce the likelihood of another breach, would be many times higher, although Cooper was unprepared to put even a general dollar figure on such an undertaking.

    To make matters worse, Cooper said the dam holding back the smaller pond that sits above the now empty Dawson’s Creek pond bed is now teetering on collapse.

    “Because the bigger pond is no longer there, it may breach,” Cooper said. “If it’s spilling over now, it’s probably eroding and eventually it will breach. There’s no hydraulic pressure holding it back.”

    In a matter of 30 minutes, Cooper said, Highway 21 could flood again as water from the smaller pond could breach its dam, flow into the empty Dawson’s Creek pond basin and out over the existing breach.

    “If we don’t take care of the beaver problem, Highway 21 will one day wash (away),” David Shanes, a Dawson’s Creek resident said. “I don’t know how Highway 21 didn’t wash out (during the Aug. 6 breach).”

    The beaver problem is one Peeples said she has been trying to get Richland County to address for years. Culbreath said he would take Peeples’ concerns back to his department.

    “If we have the easement (on the drainage creek below the dam), we will come out and remove the beavers,” Culbreath said.

    “You have an easement, because I gave it to you,” Peeples said.

    But Cooper warned that the only way to thwart the beavers would be to pipe the drainage creek.

    “You’re never going to be able to keep up with these beavers,” Cooper said. “They’ll just keep coming back. It’s a perfect spot for them. But if you were to pipe it, you eliminate their desire to dam it up. There’ll be nothing for them to dam up.”

    Peeples has also expressed concerns that a work crew spotted in the area just weeks before the breach may have contributed to the disaster. While both the Department of Transportation and Richland County have denied having any crews in the area at that time, Cooper said it was unlikely any such activity could have contributed to the breach. The problem, he said, was beavers and a 25-year rain event.

    Facing a minimum price tag of $25,000 for repairing the dam, Peeples and other homeowners who live around the empty pond are looking to Richland County to help them foot the bill. Peeples is expecting to hear back from Culbreath and the County this week before determining what steps to take next.