Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

No, so we do get all right.

Good. Good evening. Good morning for me, but it's 631 on August 17, 2026. we're here town hall complex of 120 B, West church street. Go ahead and call this planning commission regular session to order roll call. Please.

Laura Gillespie here. Sean Bryant here. Geraldine Bowers. Well, John Williams, Kevin Duggan's here. Riley Adams here Bart. Johnny may lemon here.

All right, sorry. Yeah, we'll go for the 1st item on the agenda approval of minutes from July 30th, 2026 because we did not have a meeting in June. uh do i have a first a motion to approve sorry call motion a second second all right uh we'll go ahead and vote laurel yes kevin yes riley yes miss lemon yes and i also say yes All right new business the recommendation to include hospital medical treatment facilities into C1 general commercial as permitted principal uses and structures. Do I have a motion?

Motion to approve.

All right. Do I have a second? Second. All right. uh do we have any discussion on this yeah i think we pretty much got it all out of our system the at the last meeting here at the work session so hearing no discussion we'll go ahead and vote laurel uh district one votes yes kevin yes riley yes ms lemon yes and i also vote yes motion passes And then the next one's going to be a recommendation to amend the verbiage and subdivision hang, hang here. Sorry. Y'all subdivision ordinance section 13 dash 1 to say shall in place of may as defined in section 2 dash 1 of sub division ordinances. We obviously discussions discussed this in the last work session as well. So do I have a motion to approve? So move. All right. Do I have a second? 2nd all right we'll go ahead or any discussion on it nope all right we'll go ahead and vote laurel district one votes yes Kevin. Yes. Riley. Yes. Yes. And I also vote. Yes. Motion passes. All right. Cool. We'll go ahead and adjourn our motion motion to adjourn. 2nd. All right. And we're done. We'll move into the give us like, 2 minutes and we'll move into the. Work session. This is where I needed to have Michael here so I could. Do you want the board? No, because I'm not writing all of this one forward. It's a lot to write. all right i'll go ahead and uh that's yeah if you scroll down further becky it'll be the the two options that i came up with um for it and those will be all the but we'll go through that in a minute let me go ahead and do a follow order all right we are now on the same day and it's now six minutes five minutes later it's 6 36 p.m same place Uh, we're going to go into a work session, planning, commission work session, and we're going to go ahead, call the meeting to order and do a roll call Laura Gillespie.

I'm here. Sean Bryant.

I'm here.

Jeremy Bowers, but you're on a Williams, Kevin Duggins here. Riley Adams here. Bart carts crawl. Johnny me lemon here.

All right, so new business 1st item on new businesses, all of the residential zoning areas, clarify clarifying definition for commercial and industrial vehicles in reference to the 72 hour prohibited parking and. or definition for commercial and industrial vehicle on the screen here. Uh, this is what I came up with, so I don't know. Obviously I want all you guys to read that and actually see that, um, to see if y'all like it or not. Um, and then the two options at the bottom down there, uh, quit. I mean, obviously, I know and Becky, I know you have the definitions for from the state code. Did they fall kind of in line with what I have right there, even though. for industrial because there's no such thing as an industrial right vehicle it's all commercial vehicles right so that's all commercial so and i don't know of course not having an attorney here is killing me on that part but i don't know how i mean if we can even use something like this to define an industrial vehicle Because the state doesn't recognize as a, and it's a commercial vehicle. So I don't know how that would work out. Riley. Do you have any, you have anything on.

I would think if we made a definition, we would have to make it go through council and all of that. Like, well, yeah. Yeah.

And we're going to have to and if all of this goes through, it would have to be put into it. I guess this would be a separate. We can, we would have to do it on our 1 and our 1 a have it attached to it because we've already sent those up and those have already been approved. So, the other 2 are 2 and our 3 would we could just fix those as we went through and that part wouldn't have to be done. So we would only have to send up the 1 and our 1 a. Yeah, absolutely. You turn your Michael.

so this is you know i went through a lot of thinking about what are the limitations to this do we go by wheelbase do we go by weight will a weight of certain truck mess up the sidewalks you know because we know that sometimes the sidewalks do get broken up by the

That is true. Now, there is a town ordinance for not driving on the sidewalks as well or whatnot, just so you know.

We need to give it to the people that clear our wood. Okay. And then I thought about, you know, when I looked it up nationally, they talked about safety, space availability, and neighborhood appearance. I knew the neighborhood appearance was primarily what this was all about. Again, my thoughts were years ago you didn't have people driving home cars that had company signs all over them that were wrapped totally in a wrap but at the same time you know that's a person's work work and home car in a lot of cases and that's what i brought up last time so what do you limit it to do you limit it to a semi truck to a box truck nothing any larger than your truck you know do you limit it to a van

I mean, so my thoughts are I don't want to tell somebody they can't have their company vehicle or if they personally own their own company. Let's say they own a dump truck or a logging truck. I don't want to personally tell somebody, well, you can't park this at your house, the property that you own. I don't think my personal opinion, of course, I don't think that's right. I don't like. I don't want to tell someone, Hey, you can't park your livelihood at your house that you pay for. Does that make sense to everybody?

i think it i think it will depend on the neighborhood and subdivisions are going to have their own restrictions and hoas hoas right now though they're they're going through the ringer right now they are they're getting taken to court left and right and they're losing a lot right now so that's the other thing because there's too many freedoms being taken away yeah uh and then i was thinking this really came up originally as r3 multi-family Parking is a problem when you start doing multi-families. So, you know, I wanted to take that into consideration or to have a discussion about that too.

Well, and with what I did here on the option one and option two. So option one, the storage or parking of industrial vehicles in excess of 72 hours unless parked entirely within private property lines and behind the front building line of the primary structure. Um, if we added, if we kind of change it to that, I think you're not taking, you're not taking away from anybody. If, if it fits, I mean, it's kind of like, I like, I know I use it a lot, but it's kind of like UPS or you, the USPS, the postal service, if it fits, it ships. Well, if it fits, it sits there, nailed it. Um, And then obviously option two is the storage or parking of commercial or industrial vehicles in excess of 72 hours, unless the vehicles are parked entirely within the private property lines of the owner's lot and does not obstruct any public street sidewalk site triangle or right away, which personally, I obviously I like option two better because it's got a little bit more verbiage in there. So they, they're not having, you know, That way they're not going to obstruct specific things. And if it fits, it shifts. But if you're blocking this, you're blocking that, then it doesn't sit.

So the only thing I feel that's missing is maybe it should be a certain number of feet. from the roadway to make sure it's not blocking the vision. Because you can't even plant within so many feet of the roadway now or something. Doesn't even DOT have a rule. Do you know how many feet it is? So maybe something like five.

I believe it's five. So if it is five, then you can't plant. So if it's a DOT-owned road and you have a mailbox and you put a planter around your mailbox, you can't have flowers at your mailbox?

No, it's a certain height. I think it's defined as it just says if it's within the vision of a right-of-way. So that's sort of determined by. We might be able to pull it up.

Okay. Okay.

I mean, of course, that's subject to what type of vehicle you're driving.

Sorry.

How should I word it? D-O-T within. You're already looking it up? Yeah. Googling it. Okay. You're faster than I am.

But what is anybody's comments on this? Especially from the legal mind over there.

Plus we everybody on here, we have a cross section of people that live in different types of neighborhoods.

So, I mean, and obviously are going to have their own, they're going to have their own deal. So, but that's just this was just what. I looked up and came up with and after lots and lots of time spending on trying to figure out how to do it.

Yeah, I was drawing. I was trying to draw out so many feet and how big a semi truck and how big a box truck was.

Me for there, I certainly lean option two with clarifying up that right of way vision restriction.

And I'll be honest, when I was coming up with when I came up with option one, I was like, all right, that's that's pretty much that's plain and to the point. But then at the same time, that's why I added option two. And I was trying to come up with a third option, but I didn't I didn't get a chance to. And that's I mean, I have no problem at any. We can add a bunch of stuff to this if we want to or not add anything. But that's why I wanted to make sure that I put all that extra stuff in there so that we were kind of somewhat restrictive, but it's restrictive and it's obvious.

And should it be restricted to like a driveway or something, gravel, whatever, and not be parked on the grass or something? I mean, is there any other restrictions?

I like option two the way it is, but that's just me. Again, that's why we all get a vote.

We all get to discuss it.

Yes.

I just think about all that, you know, Irma had, remember, went through that fit about you couldn't even put down Pine Strong Park on it. Now what? Didn't they reverse it a couple of years ago, I think?

I don't know.

Some people were putting down pine straw to be able to park a third car when their children reached a certain age and they needed that third car. Those are only two car driveways.

Driveways run out real fast with children start driving because who knows, we got two of them. Luckily, one just went back to Newberry and one goes Friday to Winthrop. So we'll be back to empty driveway again.

Well, I like to

Let's see. Of course, I can't find... As long as we can find it. I'm seeing the...

DOT right away.

The DOT stuff, but I'm not finding it actually in the laws.

Let's see.

Yeah, because that's in...

I've got Duke Energy on mine coming up. Right tree for the right place, but not DOT. But in case y'all want to know, it has to be at least 10 feet from the front of the transformer.

John, what are we looking for? I was looking for the D. O. T. Planting shrubs and stuff like that. So I was a rabbit trail. Thank you for pulling me before. I appreciate it. What are your thoughts on that around this stuff? Riley for landscaping? No, for the pro for the industrial commercial vehicles. I guess I could have sent that to you as well.

I mean, I think we should probably limit it to be like, non. Like vehicles not owned by the resident. If we don't want to exclude somebody's livelihood arbitrarily.

So if we come up with verbiage, it's going to go to council.

We'll have to vote on it next meeting.

And then council send it back and then it goes to the attorney or will it go to the attorney before it goes to council?

It should go to attorney.

Because I think last time it didn't.

That's what's supposed to happen.

Okay. That's how we got it back.

Well, they had some changes that they wanted just.

Michelle.

Riley, I just sent this email. I sent it to Becky. That's what's supposed to happen. To your.

That's okay.

So miss lemon, do you have anything you wanted to add to the prohibited or whatever for this?

I was just trying to understand the, um, but the vehicles parking in your yard. if that person is driving long distance you know as long distance trucks as 18 wheelers do they have a right because most of them don't stay there that long so do they have a right to park that truck say in their backyard back if they had the room to do so that would be the difference in the backyard yes i believe so as long as there's like a fence or something up and they could have you know they could have an in and out

front yard would be a different story. Much like an RV. Yes.

A large RV. They can park them in the back.

And that would be the other thing with a semi-truck, because a lot of long-distance truckers, they sleep in their truck, and we would have to ensure that no one's actually sleeping or living in the truck while it's parked in the yard.

So how do we add that in?

I don't know. We can write down all our thoughts and what we want to add in there, and then we can send it to the attorney and let him figure out how to add all that in there. Kind of what I like to have. That's why I keep requesting to have someone present.

Well, once we write it up, then he just takes a few minutes to look at it.

That's probably easier than him. You can also send him everything that you sort of want in it, and then he has the ability to write that for us.

What was the... Let's see, hold on. I was trying to find, figure out where it was that, oh, there's a NAT. Trying to find, in the ordinance now, trying to find everything.

When you say you're trying to find everything.

Yeah, because I wanted to you have it pulled up already or no, no, no. Yeah, that's the landscaping plan. Okay.

There was something we had about the landscaping plan and how far you could there is. Yeah.

No, the actual like what the actual ordinance says for I know it said for the industrial commercial definition. It's under 7, 7, 1.5, the storage or parking of commercial or industrial vehicles in excess of 72 hours. Yeah, see, I think that's just that's just me, but I think it's just too restrictive because if it is somebody's livelihood, then.

The restaurant truck, I liked Riley's suggestion of it's a vehicle that you don't own. You know, if you don't own it, but then on the other hand, what if your company owns it and you have use of it to and from work 24 hours a day hours a day, then it has to stay or if it's.

If it's just given to you to drive to and from work and that was kind of my issue was. If I have a company vehicle and I go on vacation for, let's just say I'm lucky and I got, you know, three weeks of vacation and I take my three weeks in the summer. So now. my company vehicle is going to be sitting at the house for three weeks straight and i could technically get a ticket for it right and then have a ticket it had it ticketed every day that i am not home but i'm out of out of country for three weeks let's say and i come back with the ticket therapy with the issue that gave you the ticket therapy that the car was wrapped

and maybe an advertising eyesore because someone who writes their truck off on their taxes for their company, that's a company vehicle and you would never know it and it's sitting in their driveway. So what's the difference there? Like what's causing you to give that ticket in that instance?

Let's say the company vehicle's wrapped. Let's just say that's one thing.

So that's where we have to be careful because the company vehicle, we can't say just because it's ugly.

Right.

That's what I'm saying.

And I think that's kind of my thing is that it's just, it's so vague. Like that is just so vague as to what commercial or industrial vehicle.

But it's also too, if it's wrapped... If you live next door to somebody who's very conservative and you own a vape shop or a CBD shop and you've got marijuana leaves all over the car, it's wrapped in marijuana. Well, that's going to be voted down next year. Is anybody going to have, you know what I'm saying? It's already coming. But that's something we have to be fair because that's no different than somebody that owns an ice cream and has ice cream all over their car. There has to be a fairness there.

I watched a Comcast rap go by the other day, and I was thinking, that's his or her car.

Man. I guess reach out to the attorney.

Okay.

Get his opinion on some of this, and then we'll deal with it next month. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Hey, can we request the attorney to be here again next meeting as well? Yes. Okay.

Okay.

All right, we'll move on to the next item on the agenda. Sorry, y'all, we didn't get very far on that. We did. All right. This will be the sharing research found at Dominion Energy regarding attending or mending section 6-13 of the subdivision ordinances to specify LED streetlights to be used.

So did we find out anything about that?

Did we talk to anybody for Dominion?

I think Jay was going to.

I see to do. Yes, and I know we kind of talked about it and.

Law enforcement was worried about. The color of it.

The color of it, which I would kind of want to talk to the officer, I guess, or the officers to know what time of night, what the problem was. I want to be able to physically see that.

I can see that, though. I remember I was driving when I used to have to do deliveries. I was driving like 5 o'clock in the morning. and somebody was jogging with those flashing lights, I thought it was Christmas tree lights. They're right there in front of me. I mean, I was like, just barely missed.

I'll say that I used to wear one when I ran. I would have a flashy, flashy light on my back and on my front so that you would notice me instead of running me over. But

they were using colors yeah i did that's what i used i used color i used it was blending right in with all the christmas lights i think on this one you know we were talking about we were all going to do some research on on dominion energy's led lights and then come back in so if anybody has anything from their research that they want to share at this point but if we don't and we just want to kind of take a minute to do some research then we can come back to it i

well and i'll be honest i completely forgot about this trying to get the find a definition for the industrial the commercial because there is no industrial technically definition for south carolina so whatever on that part but yeah i've totally got wrapped up in that and trying to get all of that um that's okay all my data center research is sitting on my desk so i left that folder in there at least at least you have it I did receive an email as well about some of it. I'm trying to pull it up.

Mine was the, it came up as street and parking lot lighting, kickstart your outdoor lighting project with a design, a light tool. And it was, they gave you an 800 number. If you needed more information, you can save energy, improve lighting quality with our LED street light program.

So they have different wattages for the LEDs. And I would assume like at my house, when I just installed my new bathroom fixture, it has a switch on it to switch between the different, uh, um i call them colors but it has multiple different colors or whatever and it has like a bright white or you know it does have a bluish light um i mean we could just go to turtle friendly um leds which are 81 watt leds and several wildlife i mean we could we could do that and i think the lights should not point upward anymore

What a waste.

I don't think they are downtown.

All our downtown ones.

Oh, they're there because they have they're just a ball on the top a globe.

And they should be that's not good for the sky.

Are you talking about the old lighting?

So that that was put there because that's part of the promenade. Yes. And there were street lighting that was requested for that promenade. And it is.

um trying to think of a politically some people are very attached to that lighting well because it looks historically correct but but it really does not put the light where you need the light and it throws the light up into the sky where we don't need the light yes yeah

I promise you, as soon as you go up or down below that bridge line, I promise you it's dark down there. I've been in, there's a little creek that runs right there and I've been down in that creek and unfortunately.

You know, everybody has had the situation where the outside lights are too bright coming in their windows at night.

not me i have the i have those i have those blinds and then blackout curtains yeah so you like the turtle friendly lighting light does not get into my bedroom because i sleep at all hours of the day well i think turtle friendlies for the beach but it does say and wildlife all right so street light colors Most common LED streetlight color temperatures include warm white, which is basically 2700K, which stands for Kelvin, to 3500K, and then neutral white, which is 3500K to 4500K, and then cool white is 5000K and then 6500K. I bet Wilkie could have told us the

could have made recommendations they've probably been through this backwards and forward um i mean if you i mean we could require the warm white street lights do we have any warm warm white in town anywhere all i'm seeing right now is the the bright white

What are the lumens or the Kelvin of existing lights that we have in town?

I have no clue what those are existing. I know the ones down in the industrial park.

Those are LED?

They do have a... bluish hue to them but and that's i mean of course i don't know what what the issue was with um the law enforcement side of it i don't know who had who had the issue or who didn't have the issue or do we know

It was just expressed in a meeting that sometimes the blue light is just hard to see under that LED blue light. It doesn't give enough illumination to see. And it's hard to say what the lumens are in town because we have like so many different types of lighting around. You know, that promenade lighting is way different than what's in parking lots and neighborhoods. But I will certainly ask and find out.

I say we go with whichever ones provide the furthest distance of, like, visibility at nighttime.

Whatever that would be scientifically, I don't really have a color preference. Right? I would assume dominion would have an expert on this and they could come to come see us. Right? Sure.

I can make a call to Scott.

Um, even if they could just chart which color and brightness is where, and then we can figure it out from there.

And then maybe we could have, um, our, uh, chief of police or, um, anybody else who has the issues or at least come and kind of give us a better idea on to, as to, you know, what the main issue was or, you know, heck, I mean, if they could, if they could,

maybe get a you know a photograph or something of one so we kind of know what but don't you want it to be more uniform than one this way one the next way or whatever colors or whatever right when you want it be more uniform so it wouldn't be so yeah i agree but i think too we have taken consideration

lights come in so many different colors and lumens because of where they're placed like you don't want to have a super bright light somewhere that it's going to disrupt in a neighborhood or wildlife even right in a green space we don't want a super bright light you're not going to use the same light in a park as you're going to use you know on a street in a business area that's why i think that's a hard ordinance to set because Well, we know that council is interested in this. If we're talking about in a subdivision, which is where I thought we were kind of talking about, then we can kind of narrow down what we're talking about. But if we're talking about one standard light for the entire town, that's really difficult.

Yeah.

That's a good point, Becky.

Yeah, because, I mean, Dominion has a, I mean, they literally have, it's a Dominion energy flyer right here. It's turtle-friendly energy. says 81 watt led 7200 lumens but that's not going to be the actual color of the bulb because the color of the bulb is done off of something completely different does that that make sense so like yeah and it does say it's for wild wildlife and that that's one thing they don't have is like

But I think for this that we're talking about, we're talking about amending an ordinance in the subdivision ordinance. So we just kind of have to stick to what type of lighting are we wanting to see in a subdivision, not necessarily in a park. Well, there are green spaces in a subdivision, but not necessarily like in a Walmart parking lot. That's gonna be different. And I think that's been something that we need to discuss because the actual, fixture is one thing, but then the light that it puts off, that probably needs to be a standard.

Because it seems to me that when we had the discussion with Wilkie, didn't he say that they go by whatever they are told to do by Dominion? He said electrical company, I think.

I mean, that's all they could go by because they would have no other.

Dominion will have a recommendation. Right. And that's what I wanted. I'll find out exactly what that. And that's what I wanted to tell the council. And that's what y'all want to go by.

Yeah, if we could, I guess we'll get somebody from Dominion who is a genius and way smarter than any of us up here on how these LEDs and the colors and. And the cost of the monthly cost. Um, well, their little flyer says they're 30 to 30 to 70% less energy consumption than high intensity discharge discharge delighting. So I don't know.

And I would think in a subdivision, we would not be interested in high. whatever you said, high intensity.

High intensity, yeah.

Yeah, we're not trying to, you know, we don't need to see every ant crawling on a sidewalk.

I mean, maybe.

Maybe. Maybe.

Maybe it's summertime and the kids are out there and they're trying to have a science lesson out there in the middle of the night.

That's what flashlights are for, man.

Kids don't play outside anymore, Sean.

Yeah. They don't play outside.

You can't rain on my parade right now, Riley. Come on. It's a good question.

If not, turn around 1,800, no more than 2700. This is about a 5,000.

If you go to 6,000, you basically need a daylight and you're getting that more when I'm talking about that you would buy at Walmart. That would be 27. It's 2 for 1. Sometimes I feel like I like 3000.

Yeah, I don't like white light in my house.

I agree. Just like the lights on your cars.

Same thing. The warm white is the 3000.

Well, see, and that's the thing on this flyer that I have. It doesn't have here. I'll send this to you.

Can we get non-LED lights? There's a lot of health studies that say LED light is bad for the cornea. Makes people crazy.

I love y'all. I'm pulling us back away from this rabbit trail. You got me off the rabbit trail earlier, Riley. I'm getting us off of it now.

Riley's right. That's one of the reasons I felt we ought to discuss this.

Dominion, if we can have...

I thought we got Michael.

That Michael?

Do you want me to have Dominion come in?

Yeah, I'm not saying Michael's not smart by any means.

I'm pretty impressed with his answer.

Yeah, if we can get somebody from Dominion that's a lot smarter on this LED stuff. And I get the Kelvins because, like, this – this Dominion streetlight types, they don't have like the actual Kelvin on them.

They just have like, I bet they have some sort of like a sample that they can bring.

Okay. And that'll work.

I would like samples.

You would. Okay. We can do that. Maybe they have like a little model with trees and people. Okay. To scale. I can make that happen.

Could we consider a town lamplighter?

Now, see, now we're talking. Now we're talking. I definitely like, although that's another employee. Creating jobs.

That is another employee. I like it.

And we'd have to have two of them because you've got to have a backup because, I mean, who's going to take care of it if he goes on vacation?

Yeah.

Or he goes out on sick leave, you know? So we've got to look at that. God forbid he parked his truck in his home. I know. That's true. Turn that sucker in.

Yeah. So moving on to section C. Yeah.

Yeah. Hold on. I'm trying to send this.

Not to beat the dead horse of the town lighter, but moving on.

all right becky i just sent you that um okay that little street light led thing all right let's see i think i did yeah i definitely did okay if we didn't have the free version we'd probably be able to get it a little bit faster all right so we'll go to see the proposal on staff recommendation to amend subdivision ordinance 3-2.3 if distribution of sketch plans shall be distributed to a develop and then to a development review meeting which should take place with the zoning official director of utilities town engineer if we ever have one or when we have one i'm sorry my bad um Director of Streets, Park and Recreation, the Fire Marshal, the Fire Chief, the Chief of Police and the Town Manager.

So we do it's only official, so I just like to add as a staff staff recommendation that last week we had our very 1st development to review meeting and we did have most of these departments present. The ones that were unavailable for that meeting time went ahead and reviewed and sent their questions and comments. And so we could all discuss that. We had the developer there with us, and it went really, really well. And we felt like we had some. really good you know we were able to approve the sketch plan right then and there and get it all of the red lines done so that when she comes back with us the developer comes back to us with the preliminary plat that you would see it's going to be all her red lines will be corrected and we will be good to go and you guys won't have to do that hard work measuring hydrants and all of that fun stuff

You did tell them that that's what we do. Like, we'll literally. Oh, yeah.

They fully believe that's what you do.

Okay, good. We do. We do. Like, I literally.

Y'all do.

I can't tell you what, at least two subdivisions for sure. Three subdivisions that we've done, maybe. I went on. Hey, I don't see any. I don't see any lighting here. Wait, there's no sidewalks either. Yeah, what happened to the sidewalks?

Well, they don't require it in the county.

Yeah.

Well, guess what? But it was very helpful. All departments had some really good questions, comments, input. So it went really well.

I mean.

And she felt, the developer, she felt very heard and seen and like, hey, I got all this redlining to do. Thank you guys. That helps me to know what direction I'm going. So I'm not sitting at a planning commission meeting getting eaten up by all the things I wasn't aware were going to be wrong. Yeah. So. Great.

Yeah. Notations be anywhere for us to just see or no? Yes. Yeah. Like the changes.

Yeah. From what the original was to what she changed.

Okay. So do we really need to even discuss that? We just need to put that on next month to vote on it. Right?

Yeah.

So, 1 of us need to say, I move to have this added to next month or just I would well, and just to I agree, but just to be clear, we're just moving it from, you know, it says in there.

Right now that you're supposed to distribute these plans to each and then they're supposed to comment do their red lines and get it back to me. We feel like it's more efficient if we actually do it all together at 1 time in a meeting, because then they can kind of bounce off of each other, which is exactly what happened. So that's what we're asking to change.

And I think that's a genius idea because it's kind of like all of us sitting up here when we That's kind of why I wanted to do a work session Or why we had talked about when we have a big neighborhood come in We do a work session with everybody here because we bounce we we see everything right and Laurel might have something or Kevin might see something that I don't see but then I There was something else that when he said that, that brought something else to my attention as well. And we can kind of discuss kind of everything. And, you know, like you said, bounce everything off. I think that's.

Yeah, it's super helpful. And then also we're all busy people, especially heads of department and you get plans and you have every intention of looking at them and you're busy and they get lost. And then here comes the planning, the preliminary plat and you haven't even looked at it.

Yeah. And it's I think with that, it's being good when we're all in one room, you have to you actually have to set up the meeting and they have to come to that meeting more or less. I mean, and then it's, you know, and then so therefore it is definitely going to get looked at, which is what I've been trying to do.

We can only know so much, you know, I know, you know, there's building codes is in there, somebody that's more of an expert on fire code, somebody that and that's what's so helpful.

plus they all know they all know the reason why right i think it's great do we want to do we want to remove stuff we're just changing f we're recommending for f to include these these bulleted items only right okay so we're taking out the central midlands council of governments needing to review our town sketch plan

We can keep that in if you would like to.

I think it's kind of weird.

Do they actually review our plans?

No. Only if there's something really wonky going on will I reach out to my guys over there at COG and ask them.

You or your replacement can reach out to those people as well and have them come down and won't be a requirement it'll be i mean right yeah and they're willing to step in and come to a work session if we need i think that's more of a yeah i think that should be more of a case-by-case situation instead of uh i don't think that should be a requirement for the i agree with you riley

And then the appropriate soil and erosion control agency.

Which for right now, that's Lexington County. But I know why they put that in there like that, because what if we get one one day? And yeah, so I get that.

Well, I mean, somebody tried to tell me that that's all fill dirt, that they're going to fill in all the wetlands. I was like, you can't do that. And that comes under the Army Corps of Engineers. And you either mitigate it, right? You either move it. But you don't just fill in.

Yeah. All right. Moving on to the back page of our work session agenda. The work session discussion on proposed creation of a new zoning district for possible data centers.

That's a tough one.

We'll take a momentary five-minute break to get a couple things done.

It's a good idea.

It's a good hour or more. So it's not a quick watch. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of that one on July 31st.

I don't have one from July 31st. And I don't believe my email.

There's no way I could have left you out because I have it in a group.

But you know, I've already watched that on my own. A couple months ago.

Oh, wait.

I didn't realize it's the same. That's the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think I told Jay that they had something on there.

You know what? Mine came from another state. I don't think that I was following. But it was the same sort of

Well, for those of us that did watch, it discussed a lot. I didn't believe it. To me, it was a really good information gatherer because it wasn't they're evil or they're great. It was they're coming whether you like it or not. And they are very, very... their expertise is in negotiating. And if you as a town are not prepared to negotiate, then they're going to take, they're going to sniff that out and take advantage of it as any industry would right to their advantage. So they're just basically this video was just get prepared. And here are some things that you may or may not have thought about and questions you need to ask. And I thought that was, um, that was really, uh, Yeah, by 2030, 12% of US energy will be used for data centers. That's four years from now.

Yeah.

And I can't go to California. Sorry.

I'll watch the video. I'm pretty anti data center personally. And I think they just kind of prey on small towns.

They try to- You're going to love this video.

Capitalize on wanting the town to increase their tax basis or tax revenue. But I think the long-term health implications need to be studied.

When they talk about Dominion's stance and where Dominion and what they're choosing and what they're voting for and what they're doing. And you'll be surprised at some of the things that they're choosing to do.

But we really don't need to look at Dominion. We need to look at the new company that's buying Dominion.

They talked about Duke, too, because that's one of the second Southeast leaders.

I got a packet this big about the buyout.

Yeah. I mean, my big thing is like, I think it's, Yeah, there's small ones, you know, whatever. But I think the big ones, the hot topic issues, I don't think it's that difficult for these, you know, conglomerate trillion dollar industries to influence or buy, you know, a couple council votes to get a get a thing like that approved. I think something of that scale would need to be a public referendum voted on by the residents of a town.

I totally agree.

Because we see all these. arguments in all these different jurisdictions where people are showing up telling the council not to do something and then they still do it anyway right i think you know that's kind of a irreversible kind of decision it's a little bit yeah because once this pass has passed and i would say that town it the town you know just discussions we've had amongst ourselves that's the consensus that there would we would definitely need some public input here and value that

And do you put it so many, is it so, is it a certain mile from town or is it in town or, you know?

Well, and I think that's some of the issue is if it's not in town, then the town doesn't get money, but still the resources are being used from. So I get that, like, I get that side of it as well. So like, if you. if you can have them in town, you can at least, I don't want to say control, but you can mediate that, you know, them being literally right outside our town limits and not being able to mediate anything. You have zero opinion or zero influence on how it gets built or.

One thing that concerns me the most about them is like they're, They have just as much lobbying power as, you know, pharma, tobacco industry. So a lot of the proposed legislature in the South Carolina Senate and House is preemptive of local laws anyway. So if you let one in and you're like, well, you know, we're going to have all these restrictions and it's going to meet our requirements. There's pending legislation that unless changed will say you have to go with what the state says. You can't be more restrictive than what the state rules are. So if they get if they lobby the right people. get their law passed, they can have whatever. And our requirements don't mean anything.

And look how close we are to other counties.

Yeah, this is the next county for one, I think, in South Carolina. I think this is going to be the next county for one in South Carolina, based upon the trend.

Have you followed Newberry this month?

Aiken has two right now.

Right. They're in process.

There's one trying to come to McCormick.

One was Newberry, I think they fought.

Newberry, yeah. York County. There's two in Aiken.

Clarendon has like several. And then Dorchester, I think Dorchester is trying to get infrastructure in place so they can have them come. And, of course, those are – I don't want to say poor counties, but they're tax-based with that –

McCormick is. McCormick's in Dorchester.

They're the poorest in the state.

But Aiken's not the poorest.

But yeah, I mean, it would help there.

They discuss quite a bit of legislation that's going through Congress right now and different acts and things. So that was pretty interesting too. But one thing I thought was kind of crazy and interesting stuck out to me was that Japan is going to launch the very first floating um data center in 2027 so they're not just something that's being locked on land so for our coastal municipalities and counties how is that you know that's wild but they're putting them on big barge ships in japan and they're out there they're going to launch and you know next year that's wild i just don't think that they contribute anything to society

There's some research out there that says that the data centers are going to be part of digital currency and then move towards that. And they're going to need all this computing power to analyze everybody's bank transactions and kind of just move towards the mass surveillance state that we're already seeing with flock cameras and all of that. So I'm very against them. I don't believe that they're going to be beneficial to our town. So my vote's not changing on that.

Yeah, this says as of 2025, there are 30 in the state of South Carolina.

Yeah, 32 million.

Are you trying to buy Dominion? Is it Enbridge? I don't know.

But I think to your point, Riley, I feel like it's, is it not a necessary evil though? Because like they were talking about in the Ozarks or somewhere, they're in a mountain, they built one and it's just strictly for like ATMs and banking because all of our banking happens digitally. That's part of AI because it's,

ATMs and there's different things, but they're all, it just depends on what they're processing, but pretty much that's what it's going to be is just mining everybody's personal data bank transactions.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was a former mine built into the side of a dolomite mountain in the Ozarks. It's going to house data backup for thousands of financial institutions.

Well, those are just like servers.

Right.

Yeah, there's server farms everywhere that just house data. Yeah. But data centers are supposed to be for computing power to analyze, assess, and interpret information, which you can't do at a human element. It would take millions of years. You can run it through these computers, but... I just don't see how it's beneficial to the town, other than like it would bring some tax revenue, but it seems kind of like a...

Double-edged sword?

Yeah. And there's a lot of unstudied health implications of like the frequencies and the humming and stuff. It drives people insane.

The humming. I mean, you think about electrical wires, how the humming was... Yeah.

And I guess... Kind of like talking to Jay, like that's kind of if we can set the standards before it happens.

I just think it's naive to think that we have any bargaining power in that relationship with a trillion dollar industry.

I agree.

just don't think that we could i mean when it comes down to it we could potentially just say you can't get a business license sorry we could we could deny them i think i mean you've already seen like how the information has trickled down from the court from whoever lobbies for it to the

The communal government associations, the MASC and the COG, they've all gotten briefed on it. And then now it's coming down to the town level. It's lobbying like anything else. They're just marketing, trying to sell it. And then you welcome it into your community. It's like Little Red Riding Hood, letting the wolf into grandma's house.

They're pitting municipalities against each other too, is a tactic that they use. And so they're saying, you know, one of your best preventative measures is to get with the municipalities around you. And what is our goal here? You know, what is our big goal all of us together? Because if you don't have that in a plan in place, they're going to try to pit you against each other. This one said that one's not they want to you're the only guy that doesn't want to.

Has our town been approached by any data center representatives?

Not that we know of. I'm not aware of any. No. But I will say we have a lot of rural land around Batesburg-Leesville. Around, though. But it can be annexed.

It can be annexed, Laurel.

Yeah, it doesn't mean that if they asked to annex, that wouldn't go through.

I would like to add a new zoning... um classification other than industrial i don't know what we should call it you know like special zoning or um like i2 industrial 2 because right now any sort of industrial based business data center whatever is going to have to fit in our industrial and it doesn't account for something like that

I think it would have to it wouldn't be just something that's only for data centers. It'd have to be something that is for something that also encompasses because they talked about these have life spans and what happens when your town has put in all this infrastructure to build this huge build unit to they're building it, but to bring power and water to this huge building. And then if they ever leave, or it goes somewhat or it's gone, it's life span. You need to build it in such a way that something else profitable for your town can move into that building damage to the. So, if we have the zoning for that, we need to make sure that that zoning would encompass for. I mean, they could reason for sure, but still.

Would it not already include any like lesser restrictive zoning classification? Like if it's zoned for I-2, if we call it I-2, would it not be able to just be I-1 or commercial or anything below without having to be rezoned? Because it's already like our most restrictive zoning classification. So they decide they want to bulldoze that and put a residential neighborhood there. Like we wouldn't be opposed to that.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. So they'd have to have a different, they'd have to rezone.

Okay. Do we want to put that on the agenda to vote on for next meeting?

Yes. I'm looking at political right now. Trying to find.

The state newspaper had did y'all want to, like, vote on a new because if we're going to vote on it, then we're going to have to define what it what's going to be in it. Yeah, I don't think we're there yet.

I have 1 that I've been working on. I took it from another county in South Carolina, and I've been making some changes to it, but I don't know if it's ready to vote on. Yeah, let me see.

I didn't know this Northern Virginia is recognized as the data center capital of the world.

I mean, that makes sense there.

It doesn't say anything about. Atlanta Metro has one of the largest in the world.

I mean, I have one. I can add it to the agenda, and if we don't pass it, if we make changes to it or move it to approval at a different...

It'll still have to go to the attorney, too, before it comes.

It can be brought to our agenda, and we may have to... Preliminarily, you know, make some changes and add it to the following agenda or something like that. Yeah.

I mean, that's fine, but I can circulate that if you'd told me 6 years ago that we would be discussing this.

We can do that for the next I'll make sure I'll get yours on there Riley and we can do you just want me to put it on the agenda for next month and then.

Yeah, I'll send it to you. Perfect. Okay.

And then the next item, Sean, did you want, I'm sorry.

Yeah, no, you're good. You're good. You're good. You're good. I was trying to get the plan pulled up as well. So comprehensive plan on for the next item is going to be just kind of go over the revisions of the transportation element, the resilience element, the priority investment element, cultural resources element and natural, well, natural resources and the population element.

So I did go ahead and I found the email where I sent all of our revisions that we originally did to Jay. So he could get those into call. So do we want to either go over what our revisions were and make sure that they made it into this draft? Is that what we're doing?

Yes. Yes. That's what I thought.

get it to the population i don't know population element becky wins her last day with the town september 11th that's a terrible day you're gonna have to change that all right so we did the population wasn't one this also includes the new this also includes all the new ones so let me move down to

This is a pretty big one. Natural resources. Was that one?

Yes. Gosh, housekeeping myself. All right.

So natural resources. All right.

So on this one, we did.

Let's see.

Man, I wrote page numbers down off the original one, and I don't know if they're going to correspond to this one, but it gets close. So there was a discussion about preserving land for future ag purposes. The planning commission felt that the youth were not interested as much in farming as a future in town limits. They stated that the outside town limits should have more ag and more residential in-town limits, having the new developments focus on urban green spaces. So there wasn't really necessarily a revision here.

It was just kind of our opinion of what we thought of what was in the natural resources part of it.

And reading through it, I didn't see that they had any major changes there. It was just us kind of talking about how we didn't think that we needed to protect as much land for youth to actually farm in town limits. So that's kind of what our rural areas are for. So, okay. And then this talks about mining soils, all of that. So what is the next section?

I think I have that one over here too.

Yes. Under history of Batesburg-Leasville, which is where we are, it begins to discuss school history in the fourth paragraph down. So 1, 2, 3, 4. They would like to have historical mention of Twin City High School and Batesburg-Leesville High School in the 1920s specifically. So there, I believe they did add, yes. In the 1920s, the communities jointly constructed a consolidated high school intentionally located between Batesburg and Leesville as a symbolic practical gesture of unity. So they did add that in. Is everybody good with that?

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

That was cultural resources. The next section was that was the.

Housing don't think that was 1 that we've gone over yet. They're a little out of order from what we had last time, so I'm having to. Transportation area planning commission requested a copy of the 2020 master plan for a walking path along the railroad to have in hand for future reviews of the comp plan. So I think these maps encompassed some of that. Deem necessary to have traffic on Highway 23 one way and traffic on Route 1 going the opposite. So Planning Commission would like to discuss further having a plan in place should it deem necessary to have traffic on Highway 23 going one way and Highway 1 going the opposite direction, utilizing the cross streets for through traffic. So they do talk a little bit in here about traffic volumes. Uh, but they didn't necessarily implement that because it's just an idea that we had. It wasn't it's not something that we are implementing.

Well, I thought that's what this. Complain was was an idea that we would potentially move to if yeah, in the next 10 years or where we wanted to go. Does that make sense?

Sometimes even do the reverse just for certain hours.

It was kind of even suggested in the video that we watched about making a comprehensive plan that we weren't making policy. We're just making an idea. Right. An umbrella.

All right, guys, I'm working without a mouse. I just think that the single traffic really hurts. Retail. And that's future roadway projects. That's what I'm looking for.

I mean, you don't see harvest in doing it. And they handle a whole lot more.

Yeah, they didn't go too much into it. So I might need to go back to them and say we want that in there as part of our future.

So let me circle that.

You said future roadway projects? Is that what you were looking for?

Well, I was looking for what we, what we said about it going one direction and possibly the, you know.

Strong foundation for mobility. That wasn't in. I got future roadway projects is on page ninety one.

I don't have page numbers on these.

Yeah, you do. Look at the top of it right there. See right there? Oh, up here.

Okay, sorry.

That's okay. Scroll back up a little bit. It's on, well, it's also on, yeah, 7-5 was right there, but I hadn't finished reading through it, obviously. Yeah, I don't see it in there. Yeah.

And it goes on to air facilities and talking about airports.

Yeah, I think, I mean, I don't know if, I mean, obviously I'm not, I don't know what. I would think that we would want to have that at least in there because this is technically our roadmap for the next whatever years.

It's 10 years, isn't it?

It has to be redone every 10 years, I think.

It's taken two years to get it done.

Yeah. Two and a half.

Mm-hmm.

There we go.

All right, on the resiliency.

All right, paragraph four, page two. Sorry, I should have these highlighted. Right here.

Okay, resiliency element.

Page four. One, two, three.

She just passed the flash flooding part.

Hazardous weather events. We were questioning a fact check on tornado touchdown date in Lexington in regards to 1994. And if you look in that second paragraph, they did change it to 1994.

Well, I forgot what they had, but I don't even remember what they had.

All right. Did they fix that?

All right. So here in paragraph three, they would like a fact check and revision on the sentence that states Lexington County averages multiple strikes daily from lightning. So I had that on page five.

Oh, that was my question. Daily? Every day we have lightning?

I mean, potentially.

I didn't think that wording was right.

i felt like it should say could have there it is lexington county averages multiple strikes daily from lightning and we asked for yep And we wanted it changed because I think they had a number and then we asked for a fact check and we wanted it changed to Lexington County averages multiple strikes daily from lightning. And that's what they changed it to.

All right, preparedness, mitigation and recovery. Right here.

tell you what as many times as i've heard this week the alarm go off at the school apparently lightning has been in the area every day this week

okay we asked for them to discuss in here why we have the emergency siren that goes off on the first monday of each month or that a siren goes off the first monday of each month because we felt like the citizens don't know why a lot of new people moving into town don't know why that siren goes off correct so they did put here in this first paragraph the town should also enhance public communication uh regarding its monthly emergency siren test conducted on the first monday of each month so

they did put that in there.

And that's been on the page lately too, the town page, haven't they done?

Yeah.

Yep.

I'm not ignoring y'all, but I'll be right back.

I'm kind of excused on water. Riley, he's taking over.

So part of these two, I gave these ideas to the staff, you know, town manager, and it was up to him as well. I mean, I'm sure he conveyed these, but if he felt anything was, I don't know that everything got conveyed. He may have thought, you know, that's great, but for whatever reason, we need to add or not add that. So. The next one that we had was there was much discussion on stormwater issues and clogged drains. We brought up the idea to participate in a program called Adopt-A-Drain where citizens and business owners can adopt a drain to maintain and keep their system clean. And then we had a website. I don't see that that made it in there. I can ask the why that didn't make it in there.

Becky, do we have? i tried to find is there an ordinance about blowing grass into the road did you see some this yeah we had a problem in town with that yep and that has been discussed with that homeowner um there's one doing it on um north on carolina avenue oh i don't have that one okay talk to me about that one and we will um i can't recall the exact house when he's cutting his grass he's blowing it you know when i cut the grass and i understand why because the traffic is is in the wrong direction it's dangerous for him because i have the same situation i have to just make sure the road is clear yeah

Here on priority investments, underneath this chart in the first paragraph, it says under table 10.1, in fiscal year 26, the total budgeted revenue was 1.53 million. We're asking is this a typo on the year date or a grammar error and should read total budgeted revenue is instead of was. And they felt like it was not an error, so it did not change. So they have is they have was there.

They kept was instead of is.

Did I miss that meeting? I don't remember.

I mean, I know it was a while back, so that was all the revisions that we had.

So now we just need so, I guess now we just need to set up a.

So, now we go back to I go back to cog and let them know that we're good or not good with the revisions. We had 1 or 2 on here that looks like they may have missed. So, we, I go back to cog and let them know that they revise it. Then it's going to go up to council.

Do we need to do the work session with council before it goes up to council?

I believe there's been discussion about doing a joint work session. There is. I don't know if that's what I was trying to think in my head. Is that on the ones that we've already revised? They also wanted their input on it? Or is it on the new ones that we have not had a chance to put revisions on yet that I sent you guys?

Are we in this first paragraph here?

Yes.

Was. I don't remember talking about it.

See.

That doesn't make any sense.

That one I have in my notes that the only error that we felt, and I think LaJarna was the one that brought it up, was a grammar error there and that it should have read is instead of was. But we think also the budgeted should be anticipated. Is that what you're saying? I think they're saying that's the that's not what actually was that's what we're budgeting gotcha yeah, why does it say f y fiscal year fiscal year of 26.

Because technically fiscal year for twenty six is twenty six twenty seven, because it runs from July one to June the thirtieth.

What did Riley say? I'll make note of it.

Chairman, would you like to start revisions on the new ones?

To be absolutely honest with you, no. But if everybody, if everybody, I know it is. I knew this. We all knew this was going to be heavy. It was a lot. I'm just looking at the time on. because it's already 8 o'clock and I don't want to keep y'all or me here or any of us in general here forever.

I mean, I'm okay with it. I will say that I was not anticipating that we would get this far. So although I sent you guys digital copies to review and start reading and start doing personal revisions on, I don't have them printed out for everybody to like actually mark up.

I'll be honest. I didn't make it through that either too. I mean, I read through them.

I just sent you guys digital instead of hard copies. I do better with the hard copies.

It was a lot. It was a lot.

Okay.

I can have hard copies ready, packets ready for you guys. Is that easier for everybody else? Do you like to have paper in hand?

I mean, for me.

Okay. I'll have a couple to pick up.

When should I pick them up, Becky? If my notification will go off. Thank you. Because I mean, Michael set it up to notify me, but it doesn't notify me. But it does say I have 300 notifications of something else.

So the next meeting that we have will be. 21st. Yes. One, two, three. Yes. Come on.

September the 23rd. 21st. Yeah. I think Jay maybe. Oh, I already have it in here. It's young Cooper too.

They're going to pay you as a contractor. I mean, you can still come visit us and see the progress we're making. You're allowed to do that.

Or be one of the four people that watch it on TV. Do y'all check to see how many? michael does he does town council was four on youtube i'm sure i was one of them because i i watched it i have to watch council from home yeah it's in the best interest of time i said told her the same thing all right so

But we also need to plan to have the work session with council as well.

So I asked Jay about that. There were little. Backed up on work sessions right now. They've got quite a few plans.

That'd be actually kind of cool if we could have the. in the calendar for outlook have like what days work sessions and stuff like you know what i'm saying like actually on the website it'd be really cool if it was on our outlook calendar there just saying Yeah, I'd say we just hold off on, we put F on next month, next month, and we just go through. That way it gives us all some time to, because that was a whole lot tonight.

And I would say, I think best practice would be just for everybody to read the ones I sent you, print them out, get your red crayons, markers, start making annotations and work throughs and then that way when we come back it flows a lot faster because we've all already read it going through it i was kind of talking to myself because i was a little slow tonight yeah

I think I focused too much on the length of the driveway and the type of truck and focus on the data center alone.

Stuff was.

So, all right, so for next next. Meeting on the actual agenda. What all what all are we going to have? I like it. I like it. That would be work session, yeah. So we definitely need to click the definitions for the industrial commercial. OK.

So the other thing we're going to vote on is moving that distribution of sketch planes to all these people.

Yes. And I guess if the attorney can't be here, if we can get his opinion on that industrial commercial vehicles, because Maybe that'll help some.

Yeah, so we're not going to vote on the lighting because we're going to have to have enough.

No, because I won't want somebody from dominion here to kind of give us an idea since that's who has to technically do them whatever throughout the town anyway. So.

Talk a little bit more about what the attorney says his ideas are, his opinion on commercial industrial vehicles. And we will look at the new comp plan.

The housing, economic land use, and economic elements. That'll be, that's all the work session. So only thing on the agenda will be Riley's I-2. And the other, uh, the sketch plan stuff, or whatever the, the review meeting. Take place with all that and all that good stuff. So just be those 2 things plus the minutes and then then we'll go straight into work session. Okay. And then maybe council will have an idea when they want to have a dual work session for us. Well, Jay will be here, so we'll just ransack him with all the questions that we have.

And if you didn't watch the last meeting, the mayor really spoke to them about how the meetings would be conducted.

Yeah. And that's all. And that's, I mean, I'll be honest, that's all I ask is that we mutually respect each other and at the same time, mutually have the same amount of say so and and i don't want it to be a this is my meeting this is my meeting or or shut us down i want to i want to sit down and have all of us we're all adults and i want us all to be able to have meaningful conversations about the direction that we want the town to go so i think if we with us going through it as well Upfront before that, we'll have more. We'll have the ability to back up some of the information that is in there. And when this question, we can potentially answer some of those questions as well.

Well, and I think they were trying to follow Robert's rules of order the way they well, and we follow, but we don't follow. We are very loose, but cog told us that it actually can. It can slow down. it can, that you're not having a discussion and they recommended that you not use it during the work session.

I mean, you still have to have some semblance of order. I get that. But I mean, we don't even dare in our regular meetings, we have a very loose version of Robert's rules because I feel like we get a lot accomplished and we're all adults and I expect us to do better. So, all right. Do I have a motion to adjourn? motion to adjourn do i have a second i'll second it all right adjourned