Blythewood Online 691

Tag: politics

  • Council Rethinks Poe Hire

    Hospital Negotiations Land in County’s Lap

    WINNSBORO (Sept. 15, 2016) – During Monday’s County Council meeting, County Administrator Jason Taylor called members’ attention to a request for action to engage the services of Parker Poe Consulting, LLC for assistance with legal matters relating to Fairfield Memorial Hospital. The issue had been sent forward to Council by the Administration and Finance Committee on Sept. 7.

    At that meeting, attended by Parker Poe attorney Ray Jones and Milton Pope who is on retainer to the County, Taylor reviewed with Committee members Marion Robinson and Carolyn Robinson (Mary Lynn Kinley was not present) the situation – that the hospital is looking to partner with someone who would come in and take over Fairfield Memorial’s services.

    “It appears that the hospital is leaning on us to work up and develop a contract with this third party partner,” Taylor said. “Initially, we had the concept that they were going to take the lead on this, but they asked us where we were in the process. In order for us to move forward, and even if we continue to work with the hospital, which obviously we have to do, I think we need to know what we expect for the millions of dollars the County may contribute toward this new plan.”

    Taylor said that since Council members are not health care experts, they might need to make sure they get this right, legally. He suggested that Council probably does need to hire someone to assist in the legal process.

    “There are things we think we know, but there are probably a lot of questions that we aren’t going to know to ask because, again, we are not experts in health care,” Taylor said.

    Turning to the County Association for guidance, Taylor said they advised looking at how this same kind of thing has unfolded in other areas – Barnwell being an example.

    “I talked to Pickens Williams in Barnwell about their situation,” Taylor said, “and I talked to several legal firms besides Parker Poe.”

    Marion Robinson (District 5) had questions.

    “I guess I’m a little confused. Why, all of a sudden, is this a County contract deal instead of a hospital contract deal,” Robinson asked.

    “I don’t know,” Carolyn Robinson (District 2) said. “It is just the perception of what came down and the information that was passed to us last week when we met. Regardless of what they’re (hospital) doing, we still have to be totally responsible for protecting the interest of the citizens and protecting their funds and going forward and doing the best we can.”

    The committee voted 2-0 to send the issue forward to Council for discussion.

    But a sticking point with some Council members is the fact that Parker Poe’s legal and consultation services will come to more than $25,000, above what is allowed to be approved by the Administrator. According to the County’s Procurement Code, any amount above $25,000 must be subject to sealed bid.

    When the item came up for discussion on Council’s agenda Monday evening, Taylor said new information had come to light. He suggested that before taking action to engage the services of Parker Poe, that Council discuss it further in executive session.

    While Council did not take a vote on the issue following executive session, Councilman Billy Smith (District 7) said after the meeting he was glad Council held off and discussed the issue further.

    “I do think we need to procure legal services in regard to the hospital and continuing to provide health care in Fairfield County,” Smith said. “And we need to go through proper procurement procedures in doing that.”

     

  • Questions Raised Over County-Pope Contract

    WINNSBORO (Sept. 15, 2016) – A contract signed by the County last June to retain former interim County Administrator J. Milton Pope as a consultant may have skipped a step on its way to execution, according to some members of County Council.

    According to the minutes from the May 23 meeting, Council came out of executive session and voted unanimously “to extend an agreement of retainer to Parker Poe Consulting, LLC for six months, pending approval of terms.”

    The motion was put forward by Mary Lynn Kinley (District 6) and seconded by Dan Ruff (District 1).

    While Ruff said this week that he did not recall the exact details of the motion, Kinley initially told The Voice that it was her impression that once the terms had been hammered out, the contract would come back to Council for a final vote.

    But that did not happen.

    On June 3, Chairwoman Carolyn Robinson (District 2) signed the deal on behalf of the County.

    “Who was supposed to ‘approve the terms’ is my question,” Kinley said.

    Noting that more than three months have passed since the vote and that her memory was not entirely clear, Kinley later added that it was possible that the terms had in fact been approved by Council by the time the deal was signed.

    The memory of Councilman Billy Smith (District 7), meanwhile, is crystal clear.

    “The phrase ‘pending terms’ is not confusing,” Smith said this week. “It means we would be bringing those back to look at them and approve them. That’s why it was put in the minutes that way – we would send it (the contract) out to them (Pope and Parker Poe), we would look at the terms and see if they were amenable. My understanding was Council would look at those terms and approve them, revise them, negotiate them, send them back – whatever. We never did that.”

    Smith said it was approximately three weeks after the May 23 vote that he learned that the contract had been signed, sealed and delivered – without Council approving any ‘terms’.

    Councilman Kamau Marcharia also said he was under the impression that Council would have a final review of the terms before the County officially entered into the deal.

    “I think it should have been brought back,” Marcharia (District 4) said. “Somebody’s got to make a decision on something like that. ‘Approval of terms’ – by who?”

    The minutes do not answer that question, but Smith said Council has a track record of delegating responsibility when it should not be doing so.

    And while Kinley said Council should possibly revisit the matter, Smith said such a thing was not likely.

    “Maybe I’m just resigned to the point that Council has in the past had a Chair who was allowed to do whatever they wanted, unrestricted, without any oversight,” Smith said. “It’s not something I support, but at the end of the day, a Chair can only do as much as Council will allow them to do. This is just one of many different things where the Chair has gone beyond the scope of our bylaws.”

    Phone calls to Robinson were not returned at press time.

    The agreement between the County and Pope (doing business as Parker Poe Consulting, LLC) keeps the former interim Administrator on retainer for six months, terminating on Dec. 31. The County agrees to pay Pope $3,500 a month for, among other things, Pope to “monitor” legislation that may impact the County’s fee-in-lieu of taxes deal with the SCANA Corp., as well as to assist in the “transition process” of new County Administrator Jason Taylor.

    Pope will also, according to the contract, serve as “a resource to County Council regarding past County projects, policies and/or operational questions.”

    The addendum to the contract comprises a list of 38 County projects for which Pope will make his services available, including an Animal Control ordinance, economic development plan/implementation, recreation and public safety projects, the budget process and phase two of Commerce Park. The list also includes Courthouse relocation, the hospital, the County’s proposed commerce mega-site in Ridgeway and water and sewer issues.

    The deal went into effect on July 1.

     

  • Council OK’s Utilities Bond

    WINNSBORO (Sept. 8, 2016) – Town Council gave final reading Tuesday night on an ordinance that will allow the Town to borrow up to $6 million to make improvements to their utility system.

    According to the ordinance, the funds will provide for the rehabilitation of Winnsboro’s wastewater treatment plant and related sewer improvements; construction, replacement and rehabilitation of electric distribution lines and substation breakers; and construction and extension of natural gas lines and “cathodic improvements.”

    “Cathodic improvements,” Town Manager Don Wood explained after a meeting last month, essentially means the grounding of natural gas lines to prevent electrical discharges into the lines. The replacement of some of the Town’s power lines, Wood said, was necessary because some of those lines are undersized by modern standards.

    “They were OK when we put them (the lines) in,” Wood said last month, “but we have more people on the system now and people use more electricity now.”

    “Most small towns our size, their infrastructure – water, sewer – most of the stuff under the ground has been there for quite some time, for years we’ve been doing a lot of patchwork,” Gaddy told colleagues at last June’s intergovernmental meeting. “Hopefully (with the bond) we can do larger stretches of infrastructure and get it to where it’s up to snuff and we don’t have as much problems with it – not that we’re always putting out fires, but as everything else, including me, its aging and wearing out.”

    The infrastructure improvements come ahead of the Town’s other major project – running a raw water line from the Broad River to the reservoir. That project, which is estimated to cost approximately $13 million, is expected to bring between 8 and 10 million gallons of water a day into Winnsboro’s system.

    Margaret Pope, of the Pope Zeigler Law Firm, said one of the objectives of taking on the $6 million debt before tackling the Broad River line project was to get a better rating from the State Revolving Fund (SRF) when it came time to borrow the $13 million.

    “If we get a good rating, then it will help us demonstrably on how much money the SRF requires,” Pope said.

    Typically, Pope said, the Fund requires a borrower to deposit one year’s worth of debt service into a reserve fund.

    “It has to sit there. It’s a rainy day fund in case you can’t pay,” Pope said. “We have convinced (the SRF) that if we get a good enough rating to waive that. That’s a huge savings. This (the Broad River project) is the big issue, so we kind of strategized that.”

    Capital Expenditures

    Council also gave the OK Tuesday to a total of $5,600 in capital expenditures for the Water Department. That total will cover a nitrate/TDS field monitor ($3,800), which Wood said would monitor the breakdown monochloramine in the water system; a computer for the wastewater lab ($1,400); and a leaf blower ($400) for cleaning grounds along pump stations.