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Tag: Town of Winnsboro

  • TOW election set for Sept. 30

    WINNSBORO – A special election to fill Winnsboro Town Council’s district 3 seat will be held Tuesday, Sept. 30. The election is being held to fill the seat vacated last April when Councilman Demetrius Chatman was elected Mayor.

    Early voting hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday thru Friday, ending Friday, Sept. 26.

    At 10 a.m. on the day of the special election, the County Board of Voter Registration and Elections will begin its examination of the absentee ballot return envelopes at the Fairfield County Voter Registration and Elections Office at 315 S. Congress Street in Winnsboro

    On Thursday, Oct. 2, at 10 a.m., the County Board of Canvassers will hold a hearing to determine the validity of the provisional ballots cast in the special election. These hearings will be held at the Fairfield County Voter Registration and Elections office, 315 S. Congress Street in Winnsboro.

    Precincts and polling places will be open during the special election from 7 a.m. – 7 p.m.

  • Winnsboro bringing gas line to Ridgeway

    RIDGEWAY – A quarter-million-dollar gas line project being undertaken by the Town of Winnsboro will bring natural gas to Ridgeway – and Winnsboro town hall wants to hear from residents and business owners who are interested in connecting to the new gas line.

    “This is a request that the town council of Ridgeway has made, the mayor of Ridgeway has made, business owners and some of the residents have made,” says Winnsboro Town Administrator Jason Taylor, “and we’re glad to finally be able to move forward with this project to meet those requests that have been made.”

    The work will be completed over the next year by Winnsboro town employees, Taylor says, starting with the main line, which will run roughly 5 miles along existing road right-of-way, and then continuing with the addition of smaller lines to connect homes, neighborhoods, and businesses where the is the most demand. 

    “If you want gas service, please contact the Winnsboro town hall, and we would be glad to put you on the list to try to get you hooked up in the first phase,” Taylor says. “The most customers we have, that will dictate where we put lines, so if we have a neighborhood where a lot of people call, that’s where we’ll put a line; it’s very customer driven.”

    For connections close to the road, it will be possible to run a line and install a meter at the home or structure, he says. For connections far from the road, such as down a long driveway, landowners may need to run additional pipe from the meter to connect their buildings.

    Taylor says Winnsboro is one of few towns in South Carolina that have full-service utilities: water, sewer, gas, and electricity. Due to a gas allocation contract acquired years ago from a nearby pipeline, the town has a locked-in quantity of gas at a very low rate – and currently pays for storage of a lot more gas than its current utility customers use.

    He expects that, with new customers added to the system, the investment in this gas line project will pay for itself in 4-5 years – and potentially in half that time if the availability of natural gas also prompts business growth in the area.

    “We have a crematorium over there that wants the gas,” Taylor says, “and I think Ridgeway, with all the growth that’s coming – that should come associated with Scout [Motors] – they’re ground zero for growth, and so we want to try to get ahead of that growth.”

    He says it’s often easier to put in utilities before large tracts of land are subdivided into lots – and adding more customers to the system can also help bring down rates because it spreads out the cost of operating the system among more customers.

    “Gas is… the easiest of the utilities for us to expand. Water and sewer are, as far as DHEC regulations, very permit-intensive, and very engineering-intensive,” Taylor says. “To expand gas, for the most part my crews can go with a backhoe or a trencher, dig a hole, and start laying pipe.”

    And, while providing an additional utility service to existing residents and businesses, he says it also opens opportunity for future development, which can generate revenue for the town in a variety of ways. “We’re always looking to try to grow our budget in a way that we can have more revenue to improve service,” Taylor says, “and the only way that you can grow and become more prosperous is not from higher fees or taxes or cutting services, but from growing – and so we’re

  • Soil boring pierces Winnsboro gas lines

    FAIRFIELD COUNTY – A contractor for the County’s engineer, American Engineering, pierced a Winnsboro gas line that provides natural gas to industries in the Walter Brown Industrial Park on Cook road, according to Tripp Peak, Director of the Town’s Gas/Water/Sewer Department.

    Peak said the contractor was drilling test bores for soil assessments for the interconnector line proposed to reach from the Winnsboro water treatment plant to the Commerce Industrial Park on Peach Road.

    The line was drilled into around 2 p.m. Saturday on Peach Road, about half way between Syrup Mill and McCorkle Roads. Peak reported that two holes were made in the line – one in a small line and the other in a 6-inch diameter line.

    The road was closed in the area by the Fairfield County fire service until repairs could be made about two hours later, Peak said.

  • Smart meter installation complete for Blythewood, now coming to Winnsboro

    BLYTHEWOOD – Blythewood’s Winnsboro water customers should soon have few complaints about their water bills and low water pressure.

    Their meter readers have now been replaced with 1,600 smart (electronic) meters which should make billing consistent beginning with the next water bill…or at least the one after.

    And because Winnsboro no longer purchases Columbia water, the water customers in Blythewood are seeing higher water pressure from their faucets.

    Winnsboro Town Manager Jason Taylor was invited to meet with Cobblestone Park residents (Winnsboro water customers) Wednesday evening to update them on the changes they can expect from the new smart meters.

    The smart meters will eliminate the need for traditional meter readers who, both Blythewood and Winnsboro residents have complained for years, didn’t regularly read the meters. Sporadic reading of meters and erstwhile billing led to water bills that were sometimes as high as $1,200 for a small home with only two occupants.

    “It was critical for us to install a new system for reading and reporting water usage in a timely manner,” said Taylor, who became manager of the Town of Winnsboro last year.

    “We’ve had a tough time keeping enough people on staff to read 300 meters a day. So we had complaint after complaint after complaint about our utility service and billing. We knew we had a problem,” Taylor said. “Now we have a solution.”

    That solution is an AMI (Automatic Metering Infrastructure) system which consists of a new compact smart meter installed at the residence and another small piece of equipment attached to the smart meter that will transmit the meter reading every hour to antennas on the town’s water tower which in turn will send the data to the Town of Winnsboro’s billing office.

    “Now that the $2 million system is installed and in use in Blythewood,” Taylor said, “we’re starting to move toward Winnsboro, where the meters will be installed not only for water customers but for 2,300 gas customers, sewer customers and, eventually, the 3,500 electric customers as we get into the town.”

    The cost to install the smart meters in Winnsboro will be around $3.8 million, Taylor said.

    “Because many of the Winnsboro customers have four meters, the project to replace all the meters with smart meters will take longer, perhaps as long as 18 months and be more expensive,” Taylor said.

    “Initially we’ll have to identify all the meters, as we did in Blythewood,” he said. “We’ll count them all and see exactly what we have. We have them on our billing register but, still, we need to go out and physically locate everything.

    “In Blythewood, we hired a company to do that for us,” he said. “There are fewer meters in Blythewood, and Blythewood is more compact, so it was quicker and easier to hire a company to do it. In Winnsboro we’ll do most of the locating of meters ourselves because, again, there are more meters in Winnsboro and they are more scattered, so it’s just more cost effective for us to do the location work in-house.”

    Taylor also explained that as Winnsboro no longer purchases water from Columbia for its customers’ use, its water now all comes from Winnsboro tanks, which have a higher level of pressure. While the high pressure is nice, Taylor said it also produces more water through the faucet and can cause water bills to be slightly higher than a water service with low pressure.

    “The Cobblestone community has also had concerns about some of their fire hydrant locations and things like that,” Taylor said. “I think we’ve had one fire hydrant there that has been hit a number of times, and we’re going to move it as they’ve requested. So it’s just a whole host of things like that – just kind of question and answer to address some of their concerns and bring them up to speed on the improvements we’ve made,” Taylor said.

  • Town of Winnsboro files lawsuit against County over solid waste fee

    WINNSBORO – Winnsboro is taking Fairfield County to court.

    On March 30, the Town of Winnsboro formally filed suit against the county, claiming in court papers that the county’s solid waste fee shouldn’t apply to Winnsboro town residents.

    The suit seeks a declaratory judgment that the $63 per ton fee is “invalid and illegal”, according to court documents.

    Winnsboro also seeks a refund of any solid waste fees it has paid or will pay. The town agreed, under protest, to temporarily pay the fee on the condition that payments are held in trust pending disposition of the case, the suit states.

    Fairfield County was served with the suit on April 4, and a deadline of October 26 has been set to complete mediation.

    Reached by telephone Tuesday evening, Fairfield Council Chairman Moses Bell kept interrupting as a reporter for The Voice tried to seek comment about the Winnsboro suit.

    “I can’t believe you called me with all the lies you tell on me,” Bell said. “That’s all you do, is tell lies. That’s all you do. All you do is lie. Why do you lie so much?”

    Once The Voice mentioned the lawsuit, the call suddenly disconnected.

    Winnsboro Town Manager Jason Taylor could not be reached.

    In prior interviews, Taylor has said the county fee amounts to double billing. The litigation makes the same argument.

    Fairfield County has enacted a commercial solid waste fee for years.

    In its 2021-2022 budget, the county expanded the fee’s applicability to the town and the Fairfield County School District. Neither had previously been charged the $63 per ton fee.

    “The County budget failed to set out the factual and legal basis upon which the solid waste fee to be charged the Town was established,” the lawsuit states.

    According to the suit, Fairfield County violated state law by not allowing the town to participate in development of the fee.

    The Town cites sections of state law it says require the inclusion of local governments in developing solid waste plans. Failing to follow that process also explains why the court should invalidate the fee, the litigation states.

    Winnsboro’s suit further notes the town conveyed real estate to the county in the furtherance of providing solid waste services. The County breached that agreement by “unilaterally” imposing the solid waste fee, according to the suit.

    “The County has failed to act in good faith and deal fairly with the Town by failing to attempt to renegotiate any provision of the parties’ cooperative agreement,” the lawsuit states.

    As of March 28, the Town owed nearly $62,000 in unpaid solid waste fees, according to Fairfield County Administrator Malik Whitaker.

    Whitaker has stated without evidence that Taylor “suggested, supported and approved this uniform user fee during his tenure as Fairfield County administrator.”

    Taylor has denied ever creating or lobbying for the fee.

    It was actually Councilman Mikel Trapp who motioned to insert the solid waste fee as a line item into the county budget on April 26, 2021, according to council meeting minutes.

    Councilwoman Shirley Greene seconded that motion, and Bell voted in favor of it.

    The only comment Taylor made in reference to adding the fee into the budget was a request for council members to vote individually on each line item, according to a meeting recording.

    In addition, the recording shows Councilman Neal Robinson also feared the fee amounted to double charging. “A concern was brought to me by a few constituents that we’d possibly be charging county citizens who live in the city almost like double,” Robinson said. “If you kind of think about it, it is true. We typically don’t charge the citizens in the county for trash services.”

  • Whitaker threatens to stop accepting Town’s waste

    Taylor: Town Prepared To Go To Court

    WINNSBORO – During county council’s meeting Monday night, County Administrator Malik Whitaker doubled down on the county’s position that the Town of Winnsboro owes over $60,000 in unpaid solid waste fees.

    In a letter to Winnsboro Town Manager Jason Taylor, dated Nov. 15, 2021, Whitaker wrote, “For the current fiscal year, the County has invoiced your organization approximately $35,612.01 for solid waste delivered to the County transfer station during the time period of July 1, 2021 to October 31, 2021. As of today, we have not received any payment for these waste services. We ask that you remit payment covering the balance of $35,612.01 within thirty (30) days of receipt of this letter.”

    On Monday night, Whitaker said Winnsboro now owes $61,881.75.

    “Fairfield County will be sending notice to the Town of Winnsboro that if they do not pay the fee by the end of March,” Whitaker told council members, “Fairfield County will not accept the Town’s solid waste at county facilities. So that is the county’s current position.”

    “Fairfield County charges solid waste service fees for services provided to all commercial users of the county’s solid waste transfer station,” Whitaker said. “The fees are service fees owed based on the amount of services provided and they are not a tax.”

    Winnsboro Town Council recently adopted a resolution sternly opposing the surcharge the county council had quietly inserted into the county budget.

    According to the resolution, the fee is tantamount to double billing since the county already bills Winnsboro residents for solid waste disposal via property taxes. State grants further augment the county’s solid waste budget, according to the resolution.

    For a small fee, the Town will transport the residents’ solid waste to the landfill. Fairfield County Council members did not comment further on the solid waste fees following Whitaker’s presentation.

  • Winnsboro begins Blythewood metering installations

    WINNSBORO – The Town of Winnsboro is planning to begin installation of an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system in Cobblestone Park on Monday, Nov 29. The system is from Raleigh-based Sensus.

    “This innovative system will replace monthly manual meter reads with a wireless system that collects multiple remote reads per day, allowing for better leak detection, increased billing accuracy and improved customer service,” said Town Manager Jason Taylor. “This system will help the Town with its renewed commitment to improving our timeliness with billing cycles and ensuring accuracy in readings,” he said. 

    During installation, contractors working on behalf of the Town of Winnsboro will interrupt water service. Before leaving the site, crews will test the new meter by running about 10 gallons of water from an exterior hose or faucet. Door hangers will be left at the main entrance to the property informing the resident or business owner of the status of the visit (installation complete, installation pending; water was being used, or unable to access water meter).

    Contractors (US Bronco Services) will be supervised by Winnsboro staff, carry proper identification and have successfully completed a comprehensive background check; contractor vehicles will also be clearly marked.

    For information or questions about the installation, call one of the following:

    Roy Cuthbertson, Project Manager Ferguson: (252) 343-0762

    US Bronco Services, Inc.: (844) 529-5913

    Town of Winnsboro

    Trip Peak, Water, Sewer & Gas Department: (803) 815-7022

    William Medlin, Electric Department / Meter Reader Supervisor: (803) 815-2342

    Jason Taylor, Town Manager: (803) 815-2949

    Chris Clauson, Assistant Town Manager: (803) 635-6364

  • Winnsboro annexes 10 more properties

    McMeekin: Bringing More People In Will Lower Utility Rates

    WINNSBORO – Winnsboro Town Council voted unanimously Monday night to approve 10 properties for annexation into the town, bringing the total annexations to 16 since Oct. 5. Three more were on the agenda Monday night for first reading, and as many as 30 are waiting in the wings, according to Asst. Town Manager Chris Clausen

    With the elimination of the $500 fee for annexation into the town, Winnsboro is seeing a surge in interest from property owners, says Town Manager Jason Taylor.

    “In the past [the town was charging $500 for an annexation petition request. We’re not doing that anymore,” Taylor says. “There are no fees associated with an annexation petition, and we are accepting them without any cost to the applicant.”

    Plus, because of Taylor’s experience with annexation in a previous job, he is able to handle these requests in-house without the kind of expensive legal review that used to be required.

    After a story on the front page of the Oct. 14 edition of The Voice about the elimination of the $500 annexation fee, Taylor said he received about 50 inquiries about how citizens could annex into the town. Some of those, he said, were not contiguous with the town’s border, therefore were not eligible to annex.

    As word has begun to get out about the benefits of annexing into the town, people have begun filing petitions to join the town so they can access trash pickup and lower utility rates. Ultimately, Taylor says, this will also make it easier for the town to deliver services.

    “I think it makes sense from a service delivery perspective to have rational territories,” he says. “Right now our town’s border… it’s very erratic. You can really go down a street and this house is in, the next house is out, the next house is in, the next house is out, so you can imagine, for providing trash collection services… it would just make a lot more sense if we had consolidated communities.”

    Another reason annexation is sometimes sought by landowners, Taylor says, is so they can develop their property more densely than is allowed by county zoning rules.

    Mayor John McMeekin says opening up the door to annexation is aimed at promoting local business, scaling up services, and ultimately creating a better-run town.

    He says those who are annexed into the town will not be charged property tax; the town’s small tax rate is more than offset by local sales tax collected by the state on Winnsboro’s behalf.

    “There’s no city tax at this time,” McMeekin says, “and I don’t expect for there to be any.”

    Winnsboro is uniquely situated as one of just a handful of towns in the state that provide all of the utility services for its residents; in that regard, the town runs a revenue-generating business that puts it in a unique position.

    While Taylor says the town is gearing up to do some “strategic annexations” by reaching out to the owners of parcels with growth potential, the way state annexation law is written in South Carolina makes it challenging for a town to initiate the process – a fact that often leads to these irregular boundaries.

    While the town is just accepting petitions for annexation right now, Taylor says, town leaders will soon be looking at the map and reaching out to landowners based on neighbors who want to be annexed and utility maps that show unclaimed electric power territories and good areas for water and sewer service expansion.

    “If we can bring more people in, we can spread the cost across more customers and potentially provide services at a cheaper rate,” Taylor says.

    “We would just welcome people. If they want to consider annexing into the town, we would be glad to consider their annexation petition.”

    For information call (803) 635-4041.

  • New meter system aims to make Winnsboro’s billing headache go away

    Ferguson Waterworks representative Rob Watson, left. explains to Winnsboro Mayor John McMeekin at the Tuesday evening town council meeting how the data from new smart meters, which Watson is holding, is transmitted every hour via a transmitter, held by McMeekin, to an antenna on a water tower and then to the town’s billing office. | Barbara Ball

    WINNSBORO – Winnsboro water customers should soon have fewer headaches over their water bills.

    Their meter readers will soon be replaced with smart meters and consistent billing.

    The town is installing the smart meters in two phases. The first phase is being installed for Blythewood’s 1,600 customers beginning later this month. Phase two will bring about 3,500 smart meters to Winnsboro.

    The smart meters will eliminate the need for traditional meter readers who, residents have complained for years, didn’t regularly read their meters. Sporadic reading of meters and billing led to water bills that were sometimes as high as $1,200 for a small home with only two occupants.

    “It was critical that we got a new system for reading and reporting water usage in a timely manner,” Winnsboro’s new Town Manager Jason Taylor said. “We’ve had a tough time keeping enough people on staff to read 300 meters a day. So we had complaint after complaint after complaint about our utility service and billing. We knew we had a problem,” Taylor said. “Now we have a solution.”

    That solution is an AMI (Automatic Metering Infrastructure) system which consists of a new compact smart meter installed at the residence and another small piece of equipment attached to the smart meter that will transmit the meter reading every hour to antennas on the town’s water towers which in turn will send the data to the Town of Winnsboro’s billing office.

    In Winnsboro the system will also read meters for the city’s other utilities – natural gas (2,300 customers), electricity (3,200 customers) and sewer.

    Rob Watson, a field representative for Ferguson Waterworks out of Columbia, told Winnsboro town council members Tuesday evening that the final equipment for the Blythewood water customers had arrived that day and that the system in Blythewood should be up and running the end of the month.

    The Winnsboro system, which has more customers, requires more equipment. Its launch depends, Watson said, on how soon the equipment arrives.

    “But, because the homes are much closer together in Winnsboro than in Blythewood, we should be able to move faster once we get started,” Winnsboro John McMeekin said.

    Taylor said Winnsboro’s total cost for the system to cover both Blythewood and Winnsboro is about $3.9 million. Of that, Blythewood’s system is $791,189.25.

    “Winnsboro is basically a utility business,” McMeekin said. “We are one of only four, possibly five, towns in South Carolina that offers water, natural gas, electricity and sewer, plus we offer garbage pickup.

    “These utilities offer a great advantage as far as being able to revitalize our town,” McMeekin said. “Brought up to proper standards, these utilities can provide revenue which goes back to our citizens. These utilities are not businesses to make money like a private industry. They are businesses for the benefit of our citizens.

    “Run efficiently and properly, this new system will provide correct readings and on-time billing for both Blythewood customers and Winnsboro customers,” McMeekin said. “That’s what we want. We want to provide good service for our customers at a reasonable cost.”

  • Winnsboro admin aims to clean up the downtown

    A storefront on S. Congress Street in Winnsboro. | Barbara Ball

    WINNSBORO – You might have seen them popping up around town: code enforcement signs on derelict buildings, some of which are dramatic eyesores and some of which have simply fallen into a slow state of decline.

    The message to owners, says Town Administrator Jason Taylor: It’s time to clean up your property.

    “It’s not unique to Winnsboro,” Taylor says of the problem, which is common in small towns, especially those that experience periods of economic stagnation.

    “Properties fall into disrepair at times, and sometimes people need to be reminded that when you live in a community with close neighbors, you need to maintain your property to be considerate to your neighbors.”

    Burned out house on S. Congress St. | Photos: Martha Ladd

    The arrival of new town staff and new elected officials has brought a fresh set of eyes, Taylor says – and their vision is a cleaner and more welcoming downtown.

    It’s something Taylor already has some experience with: When he was town administrator in Ridgeland, he was involved in a similar program of code enforcement combined with public investment in sidewalks, streetlights, landscaping, and parks which was successful in revitalizing the downtown.

    “We had a downtown that was in terrible condition – by far worse than Winnsboro,” Taylor says. “The public investment really spurred a lot of private investment, and those buildings were all occupied by the time I left.”

    On the flip side he says, the long-term risk of inaction is real: “Decay will take your whole town if you let it continue. If you don’t cut it out, that cancer will kill the town.”

    One of the most hazardous cases, he says, has already been resolved: the owner of a burned-out house that’s been sitting for a couple of years decided to deed the property to the town, which has capability to remove the destroyed structure and turn the site into a usable lot.

    Meanwhile, he says, the town is also looking at its own properties and improvements that could be made to those.

    For property owners receiving the notices, he says, the main thing is that they need a plan to make repairs; in some cases, the fix that’s needed is minor.

    Those properties that truly pose a hazard are the biggest priorities, he says, and if those owners refuse to work with the town on a solution, the code violations could be enforced through legal action.

    “All this is headed toward a better quality of life for our citizens,” Taylor says.

    “If we have a more attractive town, a more inviting town, a more pleasant place for everybody to live, if properties are maintained, everybody’s property value goes up instead of down,” he says. “It’s a better, cleaner community, more attractive…. People will potentially want to live, visit, and work here, and our property values will continue to go up.”

    • A building used for storage on S. Congress Street.
    • A deteriorating historical house on S. Congress St.