City Council - Regular Meeting

Alrighty, let me call the meeting to order This is a regularly scheduled called and convened Greer City Council meeting held July 14th 2026 we appreciate your presence here and If you're watching by YouTube, thank you for joining us over the YouTube channel and would thank you for being part of our regularly scheduled meetings. Having called the meeting to order, I would ask that if you would like to participate in our invocation and pledge allegiance, you'll join me as we stand, please. of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Most kind and gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for the blessings of this day. We thank you for the rain that has refreshed this area over the last couple of days. And we thank you for health and strength that you have given to us to be here tonight and to participate in this meeting. We ask as a council that you will give us insight and understanding as well as empathy for our neighbors and as you instruct us to love our neighbors as ourselves. We want to remember the Graham family and the loss of our senator. Pray that you will comfort them and we thank you for the time and thought that he went into representing this state. We ask now as we go through the balance of this meeting, you'll give us wisdom, you'll give us insight and understanding in all that we do for the betterment of this community. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Ms. Duncan, anybody to appear in public forum this evening?

No, sir.

With that then, council, let's move to the minutes of the council meeting. You should have in your packet the June 23 minutes. I'll entertain a motion that they be received.

So moved. Second.

And a second. Any items of note for the clerk? Hearing none, Ms. Duncan?

Mr. Arrowood?

Yes.

Mr. Booker? Yes. Mr. Hopper? Yes. Mr. Lander? Yes. Mr. Bates?

Yes.

Mr. Lamb? Yes. Mayor?

Yes. As we do from time to time, we have some special recognitions this evening.

And I will come around for that.

As we do, as I said, from time to time we recognize employees that have reached an milestone in their service to the city of Greer. And tonight is no exception. We do that through a couple of different ways. One is to read a resolution, this being resolution number 17-2026, a resolution recognizing and commending city of Greer employees. And it reads, whereas the city of Greer endeavors to recognize and reward its dedicated and faithful employees, and whereas Mason McCrary has served in the Public Services Department, Kaylin Richards has served in the Police Department both for five years, Sawyer Remus has served in the Police Department for five years, Kaylin Upton has served in the Fire Department for five years, Denise Livingston has served in the Robert Stevens has served in the Planning and Development Department for 10 years. Diego Gomez has served in the Public Services Department for 20 years. And whereas these employees have served in a distinguished and professional manner, now we have therefore resolved that the City of, Council of the City of Greer, South Carolina, in a meeting duly assembled, wishes to officially recognize and commend these employees for their distinguished and dedicated service which they have performed. In further resolve, the city of McGregor hereby rewards these dedicated employees with a certificate of appreciation and an administrative day on with pay approved this 14th day of July 2026. As we call your name and you'll come forward, we've got a presentation for you. Mason McGregor. Haylin Richards.

Sawyer Rives. Haylin Upton.

Pace Livingston.

Robert Stevens.

Diego Gomez.

to balance this out a little bit.

The next item that we have on the agenda this evening is a petitioner. Before we go to the petitioner, I know there was some questions after our last meeting about appearances of citizens at a council meeting. It is stated in our code of ordinances how that is done. We have two sessions, a public forum session, as you heard me ask just a little bit earlier, which pertains to items on the agenda, and the petitioner can come before council as well to speak to an item that may or may not be on that particular agenda that evening. These Rules are part of our code of ordinances for the city. You can find it by going to the code of ordinances. You'll find that on our website. It's section 2-42, meetings, appearances of citizens. And I'm just gonna take the time tonight to read through this section. It's not long and it'll give you an overview. And I know some of the folks that were watching us on the YouTube channel last week may have had some questions about that as well too. So for edification and information, meetings, appearances by citizens. Public forum. During a period of 30 minutes at the beginning of each city council meeting referred to as a public forum, the presiding officer may recognize citizens of the city or others who have standing in the city, such as business owners who wish to address council on matters pertaining to an item that is on the meeting's agenda. B, petitioners, any citizen of the city or others who have standing in the city, shall be entitled to an appearance before council at any regular meeting concerning any municipal matter with the exception of personnel matters. Persons desiring to speak must notify the municipal clerk six days prior to the beginning of the meeting to be placed on the meeting agenda. Petitioners must provide their name, address, and topic to be addressed. Public hearing, any citizen of the municipality or others who have standing regardless of the topic, the public hearing shall be entitled to an appearance before council at a called public hearing. sign up for public forum and or a public hearing. At least 15 minutes prior to the commencement of a city council meeting, a potential speaker wishing to appear before council who is not already a petitioner appearing on the agenda and is not a previous petitioner speaking on the same subject must come and place their name, address, and whether he or she is for or against an agenda item in the public forum at the public hearing. The list shall be maintained by the municipal clerk. Sign-ups for public hearings and public forums would be on a first-come, first-served basis. The municipal clerk shall make the public forum and the public hearing lists available for council and public inspection. No names will be added to either list once the list is given to the presiding officer and the public forum or public hearing has begun. The presiding officer will give equal time to those who wish to speak for or against the agenda item that is to be discussed that evening during a public forum and during the public hearing. Appearing before council, when recognized by the presiding officer, the speaker shall approach the podium, give their name, address, and in an audible tone, a voice for the record, state the subject of which they wish to discuss, state whom they are representing, if they represent an organization and or other persons, if applicable, present the authority for such right to speak on subject matter on behalf of the organization or other persons. Time limits. Any speaker appearing during a public forum as a petitioner or at a public hearing shall limit their remarks to three minutes unless the city council authorizes one extension of three minutes. The municipal clerk will be the timekeeper and will notify the presiding officer when a speaker's time has expired. All remarks made by the speaker shall be addressed to the council as a whole and not to individual members of the council. No profanity or personal attacks will be allowed and the speaker will forfeit his time as a result of either. The presiding officer may terminate. a presentation that is covering the same information that has already been presented as a previous speaker or before. Such speakers shall be encouraged to simply state their agreement with the previous speaker and to bring new information or subject matter. Other, no person other than members of the council and the speaker shall be permitted to enter into the discussion either directly or through a member of the council without the permission of the presiding officer. Otherwise, such behavior by those in attendance may cause cancellation of a public forum or a public hearing. The purpose of addressing counsel is to allow council members to hear the opinion of a resident and is not intended to afford the opportunity to engage in debate or dialogue. Therefore, no reply or rebuttal by council members is required. To the best of my knowledge, these have been contained in our code of ordinances as long as I've been mayor. I don't know of any updates or changes that have taken place. They pre-date my service, so we know they at least have been in effect for the last 25 years. Just wanted to bring that to your attention if you had questions or wanted to... note about that as we move forward. So indeed, we do have a petitioner this evening. Mr. Louis Vaughn would like to speak to the council regarding budgetary matters. We have provided you, Mr. Vaughn, with a chair and a microphone. Since the clerk is going to be sort of behind you, she will inform me when you have one minute left. I will raise this to let you know that you have a minute left to speak, and then at the three-minute limit, she will inform me that the three minutes is up, and I will hold up the red piece of paper. After you state your name and purpose for being here this evening, we will entertain you as a petitioner.

I will respond. I reside at 623 Ashley College Court. We are shot at 11-29-651. And tonight I want to speak on a budget. And probably we won't speak on it for several board meetings. But let's start with your budget for 25-26. $61,600,000. The budget in 2019 was $25,905. Now, that was a 98.7% increase in, what, 67 years? OK, let's go on to the next one. on the budget for 26 and 27 is another 18% increase. When you add that into the mix, you come up with 135% increase. 135.1%, Mr. Mayor. Now, I have done some research on what people on fixed income get when they're old, but they get about 80% increase in their social security. Medicare takes half that. So we wind up with about 30%. Now, 30% is a far cry from 135%. Now, your budget really was $91 million, but I'm not going to get into that because that is a reserve fund. Now, the 14 mil shacks increase that you increased in 24, 25, that wasn't needed for your budget. that was needed for the reserve fund. That 14 mills generated 3.5 plus million dollars, according to the numbers I got. Now that's going to increase every year from now on. And without increasing the mills, the bonus is going to increase. When I was in the legislature, I never looked at whether people increased taxes or not. I'd like to see if the budget was increased. Hey, my budget has been doing an increase of 135 cents in the last 20 years. I've lived the last six. Okay, I'm going to wind it up right now, Mr. Mayor, because I know that my comments are not going to get anywhere with you folks. But I'm not here to speak to you folks. I'm here to speak to the people of Brewer. And that's what it's all about. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to call it off right now, because I tried to get a public forum review, folks. And I sent every one of you an email, and none of you responded. So I assume that there's several people that don't want a public forum. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Merriman, your report, please, sir. Mr. Mayor, Council, thank you. I'll keep it brief. Just a few things. The sesquicentennial celebration continues on this Saturday, the 18th. Greer Uncovered will be from 12 to 4. Behind-the-scenes locations will be open for one day, so please go check out the city website for that. as well as our summer continuance of events continue on in the city park. Tunes in the Park, Saturday the 18th, the Farmer's Market will be Sunday, July 19th, and then Moonlight Movies continue this Thursday. So we've had a great summer, great attendance with our park activities, and I want to commend our parks, recreation, tourism staff, and our event staff for continuing to put on such great events for us. Mr. Mayor, Council, that concludes my report. Thank you, sir.

Council, let's move to appointments of boards and commissions. You have the Board of Zoning Appeals. We have a vacancy coming up in District 3. New or additional information in that regard?

Yes, Mr. Mayor, Council, I'm happy to bring forward Mr. Justin Bradley for nomination this evening. Mr. Bradley, his family lives in the manor at Abner Creek. I've enjoyed getting to know Tim, over the last several months, Mr. Bradley very much appreciates values we hold dear in Greer, who lived in that area in Greer about six years. You can see on the information provided, he actually served one term on Spartanburg County Council, 2015 to 19. So he definitely has an understanding of development, land use, the impact that that has. And so I think he's going to be a great addition to the Board of Zoning Appeals. And I just want to thank Mr. Yuva for his service as well. Both Mr. Yuva and now Mr. Bradley are residents south of Interstate 85, which I know I don't have to explain to you the growth that we're seeing in that area. So it's been very important to me, both on Planning Commission and on the Board of Zoning Appeals, to make sure we have good representation from those residents in that area. And so for those reasons, I'm very excited to bring forth Justin Bradley for nomination.

Comes as a motion to hear a second. Second. Floor is open for discussion or questions. Hearing none, Ms. Duncan.

Mr. Aaron Wood?

Yes.

Mr. Booker? Yes.

Mr. Lander? Yes. Mr. Bettis? Yes. Mr. Lamb? Yes. Mayor Danner?

Yes. Council, we have a full slate this evening, so let's move forward with new business. The first item before us this evening is the first reading of ordinance number 20-2026. It's an ordinance to provide for the annexation of certain properties owned by Sandra McAfee located on south of Suber Road and West Wade Hampton Boulevard by 100% petitioning to establish a zoning classification of commercial corridor for said property. Ms. Cottey joins us this evening. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. This request is for annexation to bring two parcels into the city and establish a zoning of commercial corridor. This is an aerial map. Again, these two properties are fronting areas East Suber and West Wadehampton near the intersection. This is the current zoning map. All of the surrounding property along Wadehampton is zoned commercial corridor. This is the future land use map. The majority that you see is suburban commercial. The yellow that you see kind of behind Town Center Drive would be traditional neighborhoods. This is the current existing conditions on West Wade Hampton on the left, and then South Super Road on the right. Again, this is a request to annex, so to bring these properties in the city. It is surrounded by commercial and vacant property. It is consistent with the comprehensive plan, so staff does recommend approval. There will be a public hearing next Monday evening on the 20th, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

For the purpose of discussion and with the recommendation from Planning Council, I entertain a motion.

So moved.

Second. Floor is open for discussion or questions.

Ashley, the vacant commercial property to the east is the next east that we're going to be voting on, I'm guessing?

Yes, sir.

OK.

Others. Is this, and I don't know why I remember, I think that I remember this, do they want to develop a bank there?

So that actually is the parcel on the corner. That piece, the little square that's right between the two red, that was brought in about a month or two ago, and they were looking at doing a bank. These two parcels and then the adjacent property, that's going to be the next ordinance. Currently, they are exploring a gas station convenience store. But again, anything in commercial corridor would be allowed. Okay.

Others? This is related to the bank project as well, or is it separate? Same developer?

Honestly, I'm not sure. It's gone through a lot of iterations. They were trying to kind of assemble parcels and do a master development, but they were bringing the annexation in pieces. I don't believe the bank is going to move forward at this time, so I am not certain if they are still partnered.

Same developer for these. Is that right?

I am not certain if they are at this point.

Since this is first reading, by show of hand, is the owner of the property or representative of the owner of the property with us this evening? Would you be available for questions if they arise?

Yes.

Okay. Okay. I'm not sure that who the developer is is germane, particularly to the conversation at this point in time, but would you like to add anything about the development of the property that might be insightful for council? Can I stand up? You'll come to the podium, please. You'll state your name and address, please. You can use the podium. That's fine.

property does belong to my mother. Yes, it is two developers. By now, if I start to say too much, Charlene's my broker. Please let her know. But in another situation that the one developer brought the corner, which is what you're talking about, which was being used as property, I think they were interested in a bank. The property that is highlighted, which is my mother's property, is where, can I say who it is?

I don't think it's pertinent right now.

I don't know. I mean, you know, you don't want to open your mouth and stick your foot in it. I do know that the next one that's going to be beside us is the same developer. I will say that. And I think, here again, I said think. Then now you've got maybe a discussion going on between the two developers where it might go back from behind.

Any questions? That's appropriate. Thank you, sir.

You're welcome. Is it next Monday night? Yes, sir. That's what you all set up.

Others? Conversation? Discussion? Questions? Hearing none, Ms. Duncan.

Mr. Arrowood? Yes. Mr. Booker? Yes. Mr. Hopper? Yes. Mr. Lander? Yes. Mr. Bettis? Yes. Mr. Lamb? Yes. Mayor Danner?

Yes. Council, let's move to the second item, which is the first reading of ordinance number 21-2026. This is an ordinance to provide for the annexation of a certain property owned by Greer Gun and Pawn Shop Incorporated located on West Wheathampton Boulevard by 100% petition and to establish a zoning classification of commercial corridor for said property. Ms. Cotty. Thank you.

Thank you. So, yes, this property is adjacent to the two that we heard in the last ordinance. Again, fronting West Wade Hampton. They are asking for commercial corridor and to come into the city. This is an aerial map of the property. The current zoning map, again, the pink that you see is commercial corridor. The future land use map adjacent parcels are suburban commercial. The existing conditions on the site. And then again, their request is to annex and zone the commercial corridor. It is surrounded by commercial property, vacant commercial property. It is consistent with the comprehensive plan, so staff does recommend approval. It will have a public hearing next Monday evening on the 20th, and happy to answer any questions.

Council, for the purpose of discussion, I'll entertain a motion.

So moved.

Second. And a second. I am going to go ahead and ask, by show of hand, is the owner of the property a representative of the owner of the property with us this evening? Thank you. Are you available for questions if they arise? Thank you, sir. With that, the floor is open for discussion. Questions? Comments? Comments? Hearing none, Ms. Duncan.

Mr. Arrowood? Yes. Mr. Booker? Yes. Mr. Hopper? Yes. Mr. Landry? Yes. Mr. Bettis? Yes. Mr. Lamb? Yes. Mayor Danner?

Yes. Council, the third item before us this evening is the first and final reading of resolution number 18-2026. This is a resolution to accept Chestnut Grove subdivision streets, namely Laxton Road, Cartmill Street, Burglary Circle, and Hillcraft Drive into the City of Greer street system. Mr. Buchanan joins us this evening. The floor is yours, sir.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. As you said, the project we're talking about today is Chestnut Grove. This project started in 2020. It is located off Kiss Road, approximately 250 feet south of the intersection of Kiss and Burns Road. This resides in Council District 3. All the utilities are installed, the streets are fully paved, and housing construction is fully built out. with 173 of the 173 lots built out. Staff has inspected the construction and believes it meets city standards. Therefore, we recommend Laxton Road with a length of 1,040.6 feet, Cartmel Street with a length of 594.5 feet, Berkley Circle with a length of 4,437.5 feet, and Hillcraft Drive with a length of 1,174.4 feet be accepted into city inventory for ownership and maintenance. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Council, I'll entertain a motion for the purpose of discussion.

So moved. Second.

And a second. Floor is open. Questions of Mr. Buchanan?

Just for my little information, there's 171 homes in that, I believe that's what you just said.

I believe 173.

170. Do you know when the construction on the first home started?

The first home, I believe.

Roughly.

Fully CO'd, I don't know. I know they started grading the site in 2020. Typically, it's about a year to plat, and then probably minimum six months. So maybe mid-21, I could get you that information. No, no, no, no, I'll just. Sure. What does a two-year warranty typically cover? So that's a standard document for all of our new construction. That's basically an agreement between the city and the developer that if we have any issues with any of the assets concerning the roads, that we can basically call the developer up and come fix it within that two years of acceptance.

OK. Questions? Comments? Further discussion? Hearing none, Ms. Duncan.

Mr. Arrowood?

Yes.

Mr. Booker?

Yes.

Mr. Hopper? Yes. Mr. Lander? Yes. Mr. Bettis? Yes. Mr. Lamb? Yes. Mayor Danner?

Yes. Thank you, sir. First and final reading of Resolution 19-2026. This is a resolution to amend the City of Greer financial policies and procedures. Mr. Klein leads us in that discussion. The floor is yours, sir.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Coming to you tonight with a resolution to update the financial policies. I'll go over some highlights of the changes made and then open it up to you all for questions. First change we made was we added an ethics and integrity section. This section includes but is not limited to ethical conduct, conflicts of interest, employee expectations in dealing with financial job duties, and reporting and preventing suspected fraud and misuse or misuse of government funds. There are various adjustments to the internal control policy. The primary adjustment was we redefined what a material weakness and a significant deficiency was. We redefined this so that way it was consistent with our financial audit. As it currently stands, there's two different definitions between the two, so we wanted to make it consistent between them. And then there were other various minor changes throughout, primarily grammatical or just the changing of job titles. Moving on, we are proposing a change to the contingency policy. Currently, the contingency policy reads that there'll be a 5% of the fund balance of the general fund that goes to this contingency policy. We're looking to change that to 1%. This is not to be confused with the current 35% policy in the general fund. We have a contingency fund that's separate from that. And right now, it's set at 5%. We're looking to change that to 1%. In the debt management policy, we added a section on installment purchase revenue bonds, IPRBs. There wasn't anything there before, so we wanted to add some language there. And then finally, we added a section on professional services. So we wanted to add a section on banking services. The banking services essentially reads that we'll go through a formal RFP every five years. And then we added a section on the financial audit, and that states that we will go through a formal RFP every four years. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Council, for the purpose of discussion, I'll entertain a motion to receive. And a second. Floor is open for discussion.

I'm happy to see that we added the ethics integrity section. I think it's probably something that should be in all of our policies.

That way it's not implied.

Yeah. Can you explain the reduction in the contingency? Why that's being done?

Yes, sir. So essentially, as I mentioned, currently it's set at 5%. The contingency fund, when I looked over the last five years, we've only expensed an average of $30,000 out of that fund. So as it stands, 5% of a $60 million budget would be set at $3 million. I think that amount is significantly higher than it needs to be. 1% of that would still be at $600,000. The contingency fund is there in case of an emergency. But again, as we currently have, we have 35% in the general fund. the expectation, right? And whereas the GFOA recommends 17%, we're actually doubling that with 35%. When you include this extra 5%, we're essentially setting aside 40% of general fund balance, which again, I feel could be better utilized elsewhere.

Okay. So, I mean, we're just kind of shifting that contingency name to the overage that we have on the general fund.

Essentially, again, it's still just trying to, instead of saying we need to have this set reserve in the contingency fund, we're lowering that amount. So that way it's, you know, it's not as high. We're not trying to budget an extra amount that we may not need every single year.

On the IPRB, is that it's being added? Is that? Are we changing our financial approach wholesale?

No, sir, we're not changing any approach to it. It just wasn't in there previously. We have information in our policies on general obligation bonds, on revenue bonds. There wasn't anything on IPRB, so I just wanted to add it in there. But we're not changing any approach to anything.

And then the one thing that I noticed when I read through it was the source of funding, the capital section. We got rid of the... I have to look at it, but... replacement, the word replacement?

Yes, sir. So this fiscal year, as you recall, for FY27, we do have the capital projects fund. In the past, as it was written in this policy, it was more of a plan. Now we actually have done that, so I updated that language. A lot of that said we plan to do this. Why it was called a replacement fund in the past, not too sure. I just wanted to change that verbiage there. It could be a replacement of equipment if it comes to that, but that was just more of a title change to the fund.

So this is all, sounds like it's more verbiage than anything.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Clean up.

It's not like a shift.

No, no, we're not shifting anything that we're doing.

Okay. Do any of the changes we're making here help address the issue we ran into when we had the the bids that we considered for the work that was done upstairs and the timing issue that we ran into there.

Yeah, we won't, we won't, we don't have to change any of the scope of that. We can, we can look at that if we need to, but essentially we didn't have anything written in policy that said we would go out to go out for RFP every five years for banking services. So we wanted to add that in there just to have that language, but we're not planning to change our approach with that process.

Mr. Hopper, The question is about how we procured the actual construction work upstairs, specific to how now we've got a capital account for capital projects account. And so we will be able to pull from that without having to roll over from year to year. So yes or this. This should address that particular procurement issue that snagged us on that project. I'm sorry.

I misunderstood. No, that's OK. I'm dialing my communication. So this corrects that issue? Yes, sir. I apologize, Jim. Great. Super.

OK, either or. Walk me through that again, how it would help us through the situation that we went through with the work and got down to the end of the budget year. So what?

So as you know, construction projects typically are going to take longer than one fiscal year, right? So it makes it hard to budget for it. So what we want to do, which is what we did this year, is we have a project identified. These are the total dollars that we need to complete the project, whether it takes one year or two. We're going to transfer that money into this fund. And so that way we can maintain and keep track of it separately instead of it being housed in the general fund. in which, at the end of the year, revenues over expenditures get rolled back into the fund balance. So it's designed to be more flexible, Mr. Arrowood.

That's specifically what it is. The general fund's hard and fast. Stops on June 30, begins July 1. And from an auditing perspective, it's black and white. By doing what we're doing with this capital fund, it allows elasticity in our budgeting to assume a rollover from year to year on longer projects. It's just not as hard and fast.

Or shorter projects. Or shorter ones, yes, sir.

Or things that we want to the point with the issue we ran into upstairs is we won't have to have that June 30th deadline date to have this project completed. We could roll it into the next fiscal year and not have any audit impact. Good. Correct.

Others? Just to close the gap, did we hit June 30th?

We did. Looks good upstairs.

Discussion? I just want to show my appreciation to the unsung heroes that handle the cash day to day. I know it's not a glamorous, eye-catching thing for our citizens to see, but I appreciate y'all's prudence to make sure that everything is done correctly.

Thank you.

Further discussion? Hearing none, Ms. Duncan?

Mr. Erwood?

Yes.

Mr. Booker?

Yes.

Mr. Hopper?

Yes.

Mr. Lander? Yes. Mr. Bettis? Yes. Mr. Lamb? Yes. Mayor Danner?

Yes. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Council, let's move to item number five on our agenda this evening. It is the award recommendation for the pilot watershed study phase two plan. Engineering Department is in the process of evaluating our storm drain systems citywide in 2022. The City of Greer commissioned a pilot watershed study to assess the condition of the stormwater assets. within the highest priority watersheds. The next phase of this study will focus on the third party inspections of storm drain assets within the Bible Brook watershed. After evaluating proposals from three contractors, engineering staff recommends awarding the contract to Compliance EnviroSystems in an amount not to exceed $200,000. Funding will come from the storm water fund. We are led in this discussion by Adam Vidalis from our civil engineering department, stormwater. Floor is yours, sir.

Good evening, mayor, council, residents. My name's Adam Vidalis. I'm the stormwater engineer with the city. I just want to give you guys an update on the next phase of our pilot watershed study. So to give you a little background, we had the first phase, which was completed in 2023 by W.K. Dixon, now Ardura, and that phase covered the Maple Creek watershed. And the main goal of that phase, if you all remember from a few months ago when I was here, was to address the flooding in flood-prone areas, to identify any infrastructure that needs to be repaired, to enhance our GIS inventory and discover unknown assets, and then to kind of figure out what we were going to do with the next few phases. As you can see from this map, the red areas are the highest priority watersheds that were identified by the consultant as well as resident feedback. So Area 1 is the Maple Creek Watershed. That's from Phase 1. Area 2 is the Bible Brook Watershed, which would be the next phase that we're targeting. And as you can see, it's divided into two sections, and I'll get into that more later. So once again, to reiterate, Phase 1 was completed in 2023. They surveyed about 500 drainage structures, eight miles of pipe. They also geolocated a lot of pipes and structures that were not in our database. But they didn't do any CCTV inspections. So they didn't actually take pictures and videos of the pipes. And I'll get into why that was important later. They assessed a lot of streams, which gave stream restoration recommendations. And then they did a computer model of the system, which provided what we call level of service analysis. And that roughly means what severity of storm event fills that pipe. Based on the results from phase one of that study, we had our public service crews get out there and actually perform CCTV inspections of the most critical areas from that study. We did about 7,000 feet of pipes, and then we cleaned about 1,200 feet of pipes. And the big takeaway from this was that some critical assets were actually in good condition and didn't need to be repaired. So that gets us into phase two. Phase two is scheduled for this year. It's in the budget. We have between those two BASINS FOR BIBLEBROOK THAT I MENTIONED BEFORE, WE HAVE 76,000 FEET OF STORM DRAIN PIPES AND THAT AMOUNTS TO A TOTAL OF 900 PIPES THAT CAN BE POTENTIALLY INSPECTED. AND OUR NEW GOAL FOR PHASE TWO IS TO inspect and fix damaged storm drain assets. These are assets that are under roads that might be failing that have the potential to cause more problems like sinkholes and collapses and whatnot. And then we want to also be able to budget more money towards cleaning the pipes. That was something that we felt might have been lacking with the first phase is actually getting out there and doing the inspections and doing the cleaning. Secondary goal is to once again locate unknown assets that might be the city's maintenance responsibility We want to just confirm that the location and dimension of those existing assets and update our GIS system accordingly So our new approach as I mentioned is to shift our focus towards the inspection of existing assets So here I have two pipes the top one As you can tell, it looks pretty good. It's in good condition. The one on the bottom is collapsed. But from the first watershed study, what's interesting is that the top one has a higher criticality score than the bottom one. So if you're just looking at the computer model, you would say the top one needs rehabilitation and you might overlook the bottom one. This is the importance of inspections If we just went off of that study, we might have never caught that the bottom pipe is collapsing. According to the pilot watershed study, the top one floods for the 10 year storm, which is technically below city standards. But the bottom one is obviously collapsing and is in much greater need of rehabilitation. So ultimately all pipes need to be inspected before repairs are made. And it's our goal with phase two to look for the most critically damaged assets that are structurally deficient and will ultimately cause more damage in the future. One of the tools we're looking at using for this is called a zoom camera. So they can quickly drop the zoom camera down into a manhole. And it has an optical zoom, like a telescope, that can zoom all the way to the end of the pipe. And quickly, within five minutes, you can inspect an entire pipe. That's going to be very important, and it's going to add to our efficiency with these inspections. And then if we do find defects, we're going to do a full CCTV inspection with a little Rover car. I'm sure some of you have seen that. Like I said the actual analysis from phase one doesn't account for the actual condition of the pipe So that's what we want to do. We want to allocate more resources towards inspection of pipes and Maybe a little less towards the you know, the computer the theoretical model and the stream restoration So here's a quick comparison of the phases and With both phases, we're gonna geolocate the existing assets and we're gonna identify infrastructure that needs inspection. But with phase one, what we were lacking was we didn't actually have any inspections there. There were no inspections, there were no reports, there were no photos or videos. We had to send our guys out there to do that. With phase two, we wanna cut out the middleman and jump directly towards hiring experienced professional inspectors inspect our entire storm drain system for this basin. And then for phase one, like I mentioned, we had the hydraulic analysis and the stream restoration. We didn't really find value in that as much as we wanted, so we're considering cutting that out for this next phase. We had three vendors. We solicited proposals from three vendors, CES, EAS, and Champion Cleaning. Those were referred to us by people we know and You know, people we've met at conferences, Champion Cleaning does some work for Greer CPW, but ultimately we decided to go with Compliance and Fire Systems, CES, for this. They had the best blend of experience and price, and they came out on top, in our opinion. So the deliverables were this. will be 360 degree manhole inspections as well as zoom camera inspections and CCTV inspection videos. We'll get inspection reports and then we'll use those reports to make repair recommendations, capital improvement projects for the next budget year. And hopefully this will be an iterative process and we'll keep doing this. for the next phases. So to summarize, we recommend compliance with our systems for a contract not to exceed 200,000 for both Bible Brook Watershed sub-basins, and this funding is from the Stormwater Fund. And I'll take any questions.

Also for the purpose of the discussion and the award of the study, I'll entertain a motion to receive. So moved.

Second.

Floor is open.

Is this a T&E style contract?

Are these estimates that you have here on your vendor overview page?

What do you mean by that? Time and expense. Because you have solid numbers there, right?

Yeah, so this is based on our... If I can rewind, this is based on our actual quantity of storm drain that we have for each system. So for each basin, you have those two basins combined, they have 76,000 feet of storm drain, which is 900 total pipes. That's 900 zoom inspections. We assume that about 30% of them are going to need a full inspection, and we had a bid form that we had each vendor provide with their prices, and these are the raw numbers that we got from that bid form.

Okay, so these are numbers that you got that are assumptions, correct? Which is why you're asking for not to exceed $200,000.

Correct. The 30% is an assumption, but the total cost without CCTV, that is, I would say it's a pretty accurate figure.

Okay. And then how did you come up with the, obviously price is pretty standard, but experience, deliverables, is this bouncing off of other...

clients of theirs or how did you get these check marks we met with all of these um vendors and we this is kind of just a subjective easy to read kind of thing that we did but um essentially we went off purely off price so the the best price is going to have three check marks The worst price is gonna have one. In terms of experience, we were very impressed with CES. They had a full process for their storm drain inspections. They do this all day, every day. They're originally from Louisiana and they have a lot of experience with their storm drain systems down there. They're the ones that actually came to us with that Zoom camera idea, which is going to be a huge time saver, and it's going to save a lot of money as well. EAS didn't have a Zoom camera, and Champion Cleaning really only does sanitary sewers. So in terms of doing storm drains, CES was the clear winner there. And same with deliverables. They had all their inspection reports ready. They were very well organized. Communication for all of them was great, but ultimately we thought that CES had the most experience and the best overall package for that.

Okay.

Others? The prior study that was done, has all of that, I mean, there was mapping in that, correct? Yes. And that's been placed into the GIS system now? So, okay. And so this will be as well. So we'll be able to see, well, we've got storm drains here and there, correct?

Correct.

And this really has nothing to do with the study, except for when you find a failed pipe. Now, I would assume that concrete pipes shouldn't cave in, but they do. Are there different classifications of pipe Is there a classification of pipe that we require now to be installed that maybe these weren't?

Yes. So there are several different classifications of pipe, depending on material, and what you're going to be using it for. So a lot of this is pipes that are under the right-of-way, under a road. They're going to be run over all the time by heavy vehicles. Those pipes are going to need to be a lot stronger. They have a higher schedule to them, is what they're called. So yes, there are a lot of different classifications. And there are some pipes that are not necessarily appropriate for certain use cases, like under a road.

And we address all of that in our development regulations and stormwater regulations? Correct. OK, great.

Others? Questions? Comments? Further discussion? Hearing none, Ms. Duncan.

Mr. Arrowood? Yes. Mr. Booker? Yeah. Mr. Harper? Yes. Mr. Langer? Yes. Mr. Bettis? Yes. Mr. Lamb? Yes. Mayor Danner?

Yes. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Let's move to the first and final reading of Resolution 13-2026, a resolution of the City Council of the City of Greer, South Carolina, adopting the City of Greer Housing Assessment and Strategy Report. Mr. Cahill joins us for this discussion and presentation. The floor is yours, sir.

Hey, good evening. Thank you, Mayor Danner, Mayor Pro Tem, honorable council members, Alex Cahill with the Planning and Development Department. We presented at council work session on April 28th. The consultant from Civitas was here to present the findings and data from the housing study. Tonight, we want to focus a little more on the strategic recommendations that came out of that study. I won't spend too much time on this, but I know it's a big, dense document. So I want to jump into this a little bit. I think a few things that are important to consider tonight before resolution to adopt is what this report does and what it doesn't do. I want to demystify this a little bit. So why would we consider adopting this report tonight? First is that it establishes an evidence-based housing policy framework grounded in demographic data, market analysis, and stakeholder input. The second is it would signal the city's commitment. And this is a prerequisite for many state and federal funding sources in terms of grant and grant applications. It does provide staff with a clear council endorsed direction to coordinate with partners and explore research policy tools. And that does position us to respond proactively to housing challenges as population growth hit 50,000 and continues to grow. Most importantly, what adoption of this plan tonight doesn't do. It does not create any financial commitments. There is no new programs funded by this action this evening. There is no budget appropriation authorized by this action. And any future program that we would consider or have council consider that has a budget implication or is a legislative development decision like the UDO amendment would come back to council for approval. So I just wanted to share that information as we go forward in these recommendations this evening. There are three types of housing that we're talking about tonight in these recommendations. All of them are pretty heavily regulated by the federal government, but especially affordable housing. They have defined the 80% AMI or below threshold as affordable. This is households that earn around 85,000 a year or less for a family of four. This is childcare providers, retail workers, admin staff, people that support our services and operations both in the city and within the city. Workforce housing, which is at 81 to 120% AMI. You'll often hear this term thrown around. And this is for families earning around $127,680 a year for a family of four. So you might have two parents working and two kids. This could be a teacher, city employee, et cetera. And then there's market rate housing, so when you hear us say market rate, that's 120% AMI or over. These are housing that's priced at the full market and what the market dictates and the cost is borne by the developer and then the purchaser of the home or rental unit. So we looked at the study and there's multiple ways to approach implementation of it. And we looked at near term, long term, quick wins. We decided on is we should look at this in several ways. One is what are some things we can do right now to keep the momentum going in Greer? What is something we can do to engage in strategic investment? What's something we can do as a foundation builder? And then what is something that we can do looking into the horizon into 2030 and beyond? So with that, I'm going to cover real briefly each of the recommendations that came out of this report, and then I'd open it up to council for any questions. First is some quick wins. Developing a communications and education strategy was one of the recommendations. And this could be to help both provide education to staff, to residents, to elected officials, to anyone that would like to learn more about what housing is. Our focus would be on affordable workforce and market rate, what those definitions are and what it actually means for someone in Greer. This one would not require additional staff or resources as something we feel we could absorb currently with our current staff and resources. The second would be to explore revising the UDO to accommodate housing typologies. Some of the things that we hear and we saw in the study is that there's some housing types that maybe our UDO doesn't allow the market to create, and we would wanna do some research and look into what are those constraints, do some fit testing, and come back to council sometime in the future with a recommendation, a UDO amendment on allowing these. I know at least one council member has asked about exploring the DRD or a new iteration of the design review district and finding out what we can do with that. So that would require no additional staff and no additional resources, but it would require council approval in the future and we would come back and follow the development legislative process for that. The next is strategic investments. I think one of the most mystifying ones is a housing trust fund. We could probably talk about it all night tonight, but we won't. But I wanted to introduce the concept because it is one of the key recommendations in the report. This would create a flexible financing tool to fill development gaps, acquire land, fund housing preservation in a fiscally sustainable way. Staff, including Heather Stahl and Ashley Cottey and I have met with key stakeholders to learn more about this as we wanted to know more about the recommendations before we spoke on them. I know some of them are here tonight, so thank you for being here. And really got a sense of what a housing trust fund could look like. Again, this would require staff to administer, budget appropriation, this is not something that we're proposing in the near term. This is something that would come back to council in the long term. There are two legal things that provide authority for us to explore this as a city should the council choose this direction in the future. The Mesher Act in 2007 authorizes municipalities to create a housing trust fund. And then the second thing, in 2023, the legislature did authorize municipalities to explore using a portion of their accommodations tax, so they choose to fund a housing trust fund. That's why we're seeing an uptake in South Carolina right now in housing trust funds at least being explored as an option. There is a sunset on that provision in 2030, so that's why that housing trust fund is in multiple circles for discussion. And then lastly, real quick, a housing trust fund can be used in several ways. We met with some other cities. Some of them use it to provide down payment assistance for their staff, to love on their staff. So I spoke to the administrator in Goose Creek and learned more about how they do that. One of our partners here talked to us about how a line of credit would work, where a developer might borrow money from a housing trust fund, build the home. Once the home is sold, repay it back, goes back in the trust fund. You can use it to build another house. So there's quite a few options. And if that's something we look to do in the future and come back to council, it will require, I think, a lot of research and a lot of investigation and a little bit of education, I think, for all of us. The other strategic investment is investing in our rental housing. So this is something that would help support the stability of our homes and the tenants in the homes by adopting a rental registration and inspection. This would allow us to do two things. One, it would allow us to make entry into rental properties. So this is both multifamily, apartments, duplexes, townhouses, or single-family homes that are being rented out. Both Florence and Rock Hill have pretty robust rental registration programs. They charge a very minimal registration fee to the landlord, allow staff to go in on a certain cadence and inspect the properties and make sure they're up to minimum housing code standards. And this is something that we could approach with all housing levels, so whether it's affordable housing, market rate, allows us to make sure that the stability of the housing is high quality for years to come. That would require a staff, and that would require a budget appropriation, so that's something that would come before council for consideration for approval of denial at some point in the future. Horizon initiative. I think we brought this up maybe in the budget presentations, but as our official population I think is 50,007, we could potentially be eligible for entitlement status in the next year. HUD actually has to invite you to be an entitlement city. I know we just resigned our current three-year agreement, but this would give us an opportunity to spend those three years looking at what it looks like to be an entitlement city. Does it make sense for us to administer it ourselves? Does it make sense to continue with our current provider? What are the pros and cons? And come back to council with a proposal and or recommendation on how to approach. And then lastly, doesn't require any additional staff or financial resources, but really strengthening our public and nonprofit partnerships. We have a lot of individuals, organizations that reach out to us every day and have started the conversation with us, but how do we strengthen partnerships with South Carolina Housing Finance, LISC, et cetera, to really look at supporting the work they're doing already and preserving existing housing supply. So the initial report that the consultant presented on had 10 recommendations. We spent some time researching a little further the recommendations, looking at seeing what makes the most sense for Grier, Grier specifically, and we made some recommendations to the recommendations. One is that we recommend removing this standalone recommendation of just hiring staff and instead tying a hiring of staff for any sort of budget appropriation that would come before y'all for consideration. So instead of, I think the recommendation said hire a program coordinator, hire a housing coordinator, et cetera, actually tie it specific to programs and have council choose what their vision is in the future as it approaches them. The other two are adding value to the capital stack. That is a term where it takes a lot of funding sources to fund a project, and that is probably the key point between affordable and market rate development right now. It costs the same to develop both, but there has to be some sort of subsidy on the affordable side to make it work these days, and that often takes six to 13 different layers of capital stack to make it work. We think that really aligns with the Housing Trust Fund, as well as city-owned land is really part of a Housing Trust Fund too. If we're able to donate land, we're able to offset the cost for a developer. And so we recommend really bundling those, putting them into the Housing Trust Fund recommendation and thinking about this in a comprehensive approach and way. So we think these six recommendations are within our reach over time. We understand that future councils and iterations of the council will have the opportunity to decide if that's still the right approach at that time. But for now, there's two things that we could be doing. That's communications and education strategy and supporting public nonprofit partnerships. Those both don't require additional staff or resources. And then the other four would come before council for consideration, approval, or denier in some time in the future. So we're asking for three things from you tonight. I know I talked a lot. One, what are some recommendations that you'd like to learn more about in the future? I know for some of us this is a new space and learning together is a way we make strong decisions. Two, are there any recommendations that you want to add to or edit or you don't see that you'd like to see? And three, staff recommends adopting the study. Again, that does not tie us to any sort of budget appropriation or program. It just makes it more palpable or a better appetite for us to apply for grants in the future with the federal government. So with that, I'll open it up to any questions y'all might have. Thank you for your time.

Also, you heard the recommendations from staff that are before us this evening. I'll entertain a motion to receive for the purpose of starting the discussion around this, please.

So moved.

Second. Floor is open for conversation.

Two things that I was thinking about as you were talking, to enact a rental housing registration, shouldn't we already have that information because aren't landlords required to have business license?

Yes, that is a great point. So they are required to have a business license right now. That doesn't necessarily allow us to make entry into the home.

Okay, so that's where you're trying to, okay. Yeah. And I don't recall how long it's been, but I know a planning commission that at one point, and Mr. Lamb may have been serving on it at one time, they asked a developer to... put so many homes. If the subdivision was going to have an average of the homes of 2,000 square feet, they asked the developer to put so many homes in that development that were much less than that, like a 1,500 square foot. And to me, I thought at that time it was, that was something that actually reduces the cost just because the square footage goes down. Is that something that we still have or do we have the ability to do or would it take changing of the UDO or zoning or something like that?

Yeah, that's a great question. So it would require a UDO amendment because one of the things that we're running into is the 5,000 minimum lot size requirement. It doesn't allow for that creativity that you're kind of describing without some sort of new district or a relived DRD district.

DRD, yes. Yes, exactly. Okay. Well, that might be something that we want to consider.

All right. Explain to me... So right there, point number three, adopt the study. Vote to adopt the study as an official policy framework for the city of Greer. There's a lot of things in this study that I agree with, but there's also a few that I don't agree with. We talk a lot about private property rights when we're doing annexations and all that stuff, and this is kind of not going in that same direction. A recommendation from somebody was to change that verbiage from adopting and endorsing to receiving and acknowledging. And that's something I would personally like to see happen because I think this is kind of tying the hands of future councils because this is an official policy framework of the city of Greer. I don't know if I have to set that in as a motion or not.

I guess my question more is we're not necessarily forcing developers to partake in whatever we adopt. All of this wouldn't necessarily be voluntary or people that would come to us to partner with on these projects. Just kind of speaking to his concern, how does this actually play out from the public?

Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you both. You know, some cities and states have inclusionary zoning, and that would be they require a certain percentage of units are affordable. That is not... but not what we're proposing at all and not in the recommendations at all. Well, I think there's some language that kind of reference that a little bit. That is not this approach. This is a, hey, we understand the full spectrum of housing is important. We recognize we need housing. The study said we need housing at the luxury end. We need housing at the affordable end. These are some strategies to address that entire spectrum. We tried to focus it in a very market-driven way. Nothing is being projected on anybody except the idea of potentially the rental registration and that, again, this would not be approved tonight. The rental registration would come back for y'all for consideration as an ordinance. I'm very attuned to the private property rights, so I definitely hear what you're saying, and I hear the concern about that. We did take a fine tooth comb and look at this, and we didn't see that it impacted those in any way, but I'm definitely open to hearing feedback on that so we can make sure that it doesn't.

This is a resolution as well instead of an ordinance, which basically means that we support it, but if there's going to be anything that's where there has to be a requirement, we would have to vote on it as an ordinance.

OK. On separate occasions. Yes.

So each one of these things would come to council for further approval?

This is, if I just can clarify and maybe give you a little bit of Reader's Digest version of this, is I think the operative point to take away from this is this is a policy framework. And what council's doing by adopting the resolution is recognizing that this is a need in our area, it is in the city's best interest to address, and there is recommendations within this study that can help point the way to get us there. So what you're doing in a sense is saying, we commissioned a study, we see that the results are in, the recommendations are made, and we recognize that there are going to be decisions that will be made in the future that have budgetary implications, that have policy implications, that have land use implications, that we will, you, council, will consider individually. So this is a non-binding. I think the way that Mr. Cahill laid this out in the beginning is very important. This has no fiscal impact, no immediate fiscal impact, and any fiscal impact that there will be or any land use impact that there will be will be individually decided on by this council.

So to be specific, adopting the resolution does not mean that we necessarily endorse every little nuance.

You adopted the UDO, Mr. Hopper, and not every little nuance in the UDO is something that this council swallowed hook, line, and sinker. I think Mr. Airwood could write a treatise on it. But the point is this. That was an ordinance, and you adopted this ordinance. What you're doing here is saying we recognize that this is important. And we need to start strategizing. Mr. Erwood, you're always on about strategic plans. This is nothing more strategic than a strategic plan specific to housing.

More specific conversation, hammering out details and specific strategy and tactics to come. In other words.

I have one other question or thought. In District 1, this has been some time back, There was a lot of examples of how we had communities that had come together really trying to better their property values, the quality of life, all that kind of thing. And as the organization of the city, we would provide them things that might help. But they took the lead role. you find that you can have a really nice street and have one bad home that generally, in these particular cases, were rental homes, and it would bring the whole street or series of streets down. And the recommendation to one of the groups was, why don't you find out the landlord name, and instead of, you know, we're calling the city for help because we're giving you all we can to call the landlord. And I don't even know that we have the right to do that, but that recommendation was made. They followed up on that, and there were several homes that I can take you to today that changed, and it changed the whole street or that whole little neighborhood. Is that something that we, with the registration of the property, the rental property, and I know this is mainly to do with, I guess, the cost of living, but is it proper or is it even legal for us to be able to say, We have rental properties that are causing issues in this neighborhood. We have done everything we can by our code. But neighbors, here is the name and address of contact information of the landlords, the owners, or the managers that you can express your displeasure with. Is that something we can do?

I think there's a way of getting at what you're suggesting, maybe with a different pathway, but absolutely. I think essentially what we're saying is we want the community to be invested in the quality of the housing stock, rental housing stock. I think there's an approach to do that. I think the rental registration is one of the first steps. We have to figure out if there's a minimum housing code violation, and then there has to be a pathway to improve it. There needs to be some education. A lot of times some landlords don't know, and other times they're absentee.

And I think the city was doing inspections to see if there were code violations. But I think that maybe there were other issues that maybe it was the quality of the tenants and the things that they were doing that, yeah, that were disturbing. Maybe they could call the police, but you don't want to be calling the police every weekend or every other day, that kind of thing. And it seemed that when those folks found out how to get in touch with the landlords, they could take it further. And it seemed, at least on a few roads, it changed a lot. And if there's any way that, I mean, I have no issue if it's not illegal that you put a sign out front on by, Well, it empowers, I mean, it sounds kind of, it sounds funny, but it's, it empowers, it empowers the community instead of, you know, there's only a certain amount of things that we as a city can do, but a phone call by several people to one individual, it seems to

I think under here, Mr. Arrowood, if I may, that rental inspection component of it will actually set a new base ground floor for us to work off of. And so to answer your question, this, for lack of a better term, grassroots effort on Arrowood Street to fix the negligent landowners or the landlord's home would be more of a grassroots effort, but it would be certainly something that we could work on through a program like this. But right now, we're at the basement level of any, but we don't have any inspection level. So we're trying to set a standard that will hopefully mitigate a number of these concerns. And if we have those one-off instances, well, then we can certainly address it through A, code enforcement, but B, most of that information is already readily available online anyway. You can search a property record and find the owner of that property.

And generally that's a true statement, but sometimes you get the landlords or the owners that are buried in LLCs that it's real hard to find the owner. And... I think it would be wise for us to try to see if we could do something like that, because what I saw with these particular communities is they had some leadership. They developed these groups, almost like a homeowner association, but it wasn't. They met. They addressed crime and traffic and the conditions of homes and things like that, and it really empowered them, and they

It just changed the whole community. Mr. Erwin, I think what you're doing is very valuable right now, specifically because what it does is it points out specific policy debates that will need to be had by this council under the framework of this necessary action y'all will take under this resolution. So that is case in point, why what we're doing is recognizing a need, and then we'll come and hammer out the fine-tuned details. The other thing that's very important about this is the why adopt number four specifically. We're over that 50,000 threshold. We will become an entitlement city, and if there are state and federal funds that are available that are tied to the existence and adoption of a plan, that is a necessary step that this council needs to take. So for us to even be eligible for that, we have to have this.

All right. Okay. First, business licenses. I can think of at least ten rental property owners right now off the top of my head, and I'll bet you $100 apiece none of one of them have a business license in this city. They may only have one rental property, but anyway. All right. So I'm 100% in favor of the rental registration, sooner the better. Yeah, I know it's going to cost us money, so we'll have to argue about that. But I'm happy with what I've heard tonight, because much like what Charles said, I don't want our hands tied in the future. So I guess I'm in.

I would just argue. that that's more of a business license enforcement issue rather than anything. Well, I'm just saying it exists. I'm looking forward to learning more about what this looks like, the housing registration inspection from a cost standpoint. I mean, we're talking about making housing more affordable. We're talking about adding another layer of bureaucracy and cost onto a property owner that's a landlord that way. So yeah, there's things I'm looking forward to learning more about, I'd say, coming out of this document and this discussion.

Mr. Hopper, I agree. And so many times, what we're talking about, the registration and the inspection, a lot of times it's just for the majority of the landlords, it's just so unnecessary because they do a very good job. But there are some, unfortunately, that in my opinion, In my experience as a fireman, we had a fire in a neighborhood and it was a rental property and the house was Restored, and it looked great on the inside. And not too terribly long after that, the fire department got another call because somebody thought the house was falling in, and the chimney had just fallen. Then they found out that the sewer line wasn't even connected underneath the house. And unfortunately, I got it. I mean, it would be... If you go down that road, there will have to be some expenditures for inspections.

And I don't hear you saying anything different. My thing is, if you've got 10 landlords, nine of them are doing everything right, well, here's a list of rules for all 10 of you for that one that's being a knucklehead. I want to find the easiest and fairest way to make sure that one is held to account and doing the right thing. And I know there's all kinds of layers of even, if I'm not mistaken, there's even state. A tenant can call someone at the state, I believe, and complain about conditions of a et cetera, et cetera.

There's actual property code for all of that.

Just for the record, those individuals I'm thinking about, their properties are in fine shape at this point. There's nothing wrong with her properties, it's just...

And to Mr. Merriman's point, this is the kind of thing we look forward to finding and researching and talking more about. Because specifically to your point, Mr. Hopper, I think both Florence and Rock Hill tier it so that first inspection, you pass, you don't come back for five years. But if you're a frequent violator, you're going to come back more often and you're going to get more visits. So there's ways, I think, to balance it so we're not penalizing, but we're also protecting the public safety in general. I think that's a really good point.

I feel like I need to be further educated here. There are items on here that I wholeheartedly disagree with, and I'm being asked to adopt a study as the official policy framework of the city of Greer. Please educate me.

Are there specific recommendations that you would like us to edit, remove, consider removing?

Yeah, several. I mean, do I start spelling them out now, or do I get a red pen or something? I mean, obviously, this is something that all seven of us have to do.

Being a resolution, this doesn't have the force of law, right? That is correct.

Yeah, you're right. That's what I need to be educated on, please.

What you're doing here with a resolution is like what you did and not to minimize what you're doing, but to maybe make a comparison. The mayor read a resolution today recognizing employees and their time, their service. And we gave them an administrative day off with pay. What it does is this council recognized the service of those employees and the time that they've done and said, hey, this is what we're going to do by way of recognizing you. Here's a certificate and an administrative day off with pay. This says we recognize that there are facets of this that will need to be debated, but it is important enough for us to raise the level of a resolution that says it is going to be a policy framework, not specifics, but a framework that will be debated in the future. It does not have the force of law. There's nothing in here that we would hammer anybody with. It just is... a policy general statement.

Mr. Merriman or Mr. Cahill, what would you say, by adoption of this, would be the immediate impact of it? what would we see immediately?

I would say what you would see immediately is nothing in particular other than Mr. Cahill's bunch running off and now starting to really start putting legs in the short term on some wins that y'all have got, some midterm and longterm policy decisions that you can then be making. But what it's doing is giving direction to planning and development specific to housing so we can start crafting the things that are necessary for y'all to debate and implement through

ordinances. So if we have heartburn with anything in here like Mr. Lander, he should just present that to Mr. Cahill for maybe for future reference as they progress. That's exactly what I would say.

Yeah, I'd appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, this would be one of the things that let's just for giggles say that Mr. Lander is utterly opposed to a rental property inspection registration ordinance. And under the framework, we've recognized that that's an important piece of this. We would still have to have a funding mechanism for it. We'd have to have an ordinance allowing for it. And we bring it to this council, and it fails six to one. Mr. Lander being the one vote. But for instance, the point is that that then has the force of law because we will bring an ordinance with a policy recommendation, with a budget recommendation, et cetera. This does not have that weight other than to give direction in a formal way to Mr. Cahill and his staff to move forward with the housing plan.

Adopting the resolution and saying that it is policy framework for us moving forward simply says, here's a list of subjects to be discussed and dealt with moving forward and in no way implies.

It is a policy framework, not a policy. Yes.

And it punches a block for the feds.

And that, yes, I cannot stress that enough. Check that box. Yeah.

Mr. Cahill, I do think it's worth, because y'all have been doing a lot of work educating the public, but the July 23rd, maybe put that at the top of our email list, a synopsis of the information y'all are giving to, and you can explain it in a 10-second version of what y'all are doing on July 23rd.

No, thank you for bringing that up. I was going to try to find the right time to slip it in because I think it addresses what Mr. Arrowood said. Our focus in community compliance team this year, we do a series of engagement events each year. This year it's on property management and tenants. And so it's how do we teach both tenants and landlords how to be good stewards of the homes they live in or own. and what the process is to maintain them and whose responsibility is what. And I think it gets to that collective, let's do this together. And so the next event is on July 23rd. And I can send the details to council so y'all can attend if you're interested.

Mr. Cahill, I appreciate your recognition of both affordable housing and workforce housing. I think it's imperative that we be attentive to that as we continue to grow as a community. Because if anyone in this room has looked at either rental rates or housing pricing right now that we understand and realize that we have many, many people that we are quickly pricing them out of living in the city of Greer. And I think it's going to be important for us to continue our relationships with GCRA and possibly creating a housing trust. I'd like to see us as well possibly finding ways to cooperate with the Greer Housing Authority as well and others because I think all those opportunities avail themselves to creating a healthier housing environment in a community. From 2020 until early 2024, average median cost, excuse me, median cost of a home in Greer rose from just a little over $200,000 to over $300,000. I met with a developer this afternoon that said that we are quickly approaching median house range of $400,000. So we know that the cost is going to escalate. I don't think it is in our best interest as a community or as a city not to do everything within our budget purview to make sure that one of the goals strategically is to do everything that we can to find housing for people in Greer.

Others? I've said this a million times, and I say it to the administrator and the department heads. As you're going through all this, instruct you and your staff Think outside the box. You know, I think a lot of people are very gun-shy when we talk about affordable housing or workforce housing because it sounds as if it's going to be subsidized in some way, shape, or form. And you're just throwing money at a problem. or an issue, that's not thinking outside the box. That's right in the middle of the box. And it really doesn't accomplish a whole lot a lot of times. But I think y'all are on the right path.

That's one thing I will commend this council on, is as we continue to infill this city, which I think is a strategic move, you have always been open, at least to the idea of looking at different types of housing, mixing different types of housing, the future for not just the city of Greer, but for any town that is growing is going to be adopting different forms and types of housing and how we do it. And over the next several decades, that is going to change immensely. Others, questions?

The reason why there's no financial impact of this study is because we struck out a, their recommendation to add personnel, right? So would these?

Even then, even then, Mr. Lander, if we didn't remove that, that doesn't obligate this council to make a budgetary decision to add personnel or make a budgetary appropriation to pay that. In the future. It just says that that's something we agree that would. It's important, but that doesn't mean at budget time you have to approve it. OK. Mr. Cahill and his staff just disagreed with that particular recommendation. OK. But I would assume that's in the short term, correct? Short term. I mean, in this particular case, we can get into budget time next year and look at a rental inspector or a rental inspection program. We would have that as a headcount addition, a personnel addition. However, hopefully, we would have an offsetting revenue to pay for the cost of that person. So the idea would be to net out. Like I said, in this case, that recommendation is just not something that Mr. Cahill felt was important enough for the goals of his department to even consider in this resolution.

Thank you.

Others? Questions? I just want to thank you all again for taking the time to put this together. I know with the housing bill that just got enacted into law, I'm curious to see how this all can kind of move us in the right direction. So thank you again.

Further discussion. Hearing none, Ms. Duncan.

Mr. Arrowood?

Yes.

Mr. Booker?

Yes.

Mr. Hopper?

Yes.

Mr. Lander?

No.

Mr. Bettis?

Yes.

Mr. Lamb?

Yes.

Mayor Danner?

Yes. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Council, item seven before us this evening, first reading of ordinance number 26-2026. This is an ordinance authorizing the conveyance of easements in certain real property in the city of Greer. Mr. Merriman.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, council. Very simply, this is a conveying easement to, and I don't know, is it up there, Ashley? Can you navigate for me? Michelle, can you navigate for me? I'll kind of walk through it. There you go. Everything you see that's highlighted in that lighter blue is city-maintained, city-owned property. As those areas develop, if you'll look at Hibiscus, Geranium, and Tigerdale, those areas, what would be to the west of them, and then on the other side of the easement are going to be additional areas residential neighborhoods. What is necessary are two things. One is what will be a road that crosses the easement on the north side of Hibiscus. And then on the south side of Tigerdale in that area, there's going to be some temporary construction easements, some lay down yards. In essence, what we're doing is, in theory, it's all temporary because the one road that will be built. And Ashley, is there another? There should. There was that other. There it is right there. What you'll see is that road right there is really what's in question is we're going to have to cross an easement. We will end up accepting that road if it meets city standards anyway. So theoretically, it's all temporary. But we do need to convey that easement there. And then where that arrow is, there's another temporary easement that council will need to convey there as these two areas are continued to be built out.

For the purpose of the discussion, I'll entertain a motion to receive.

So moved.

And a second?

Second.

Door's open for questions.

All right, that's just an overhead power track?

Yes, it is, yes, sir. Is it due easement?

Yes, sir.

So Ms. Cotty, this quite literally is close to home for me. I know, yep. Can you, just to make sure I'm orienting myself here correctly, all of what we're looking at here is, the plans for what they want to do, or are we looking?

So this is existing. This is Riverdale.

That's the existing, yes, sir.

And so Tigerdale would continue.

That's where, right there is where it ends currently. And then over here, it currently ends right here, going to this. And so the easement, can you point out the circle there? So the easement we're talking about doesn't exist. It doesn't impact any current residents at all, what we're talking about. We're talking about over in, kind of between the two parcels. It does.

It bridges the two via road. Yes, sir, across that aerial easement. Got it.

Here's all the existing, and then here's kind of that new connection.

Got it.

And so this would be kind of the connection for Hawkesbury. They actually own this though. It's not right of way. And that this is where the current right of way ends right now.

Got it.

Then again, all this dark blue is, or I guess it's light blue is city property.

It's been, when did we rezone this?

Uh, 2021.

It had been several years.

Yes. They've been doing site plan development. They also have one off, um, So they brought two parcels at the same time that were originally part of Riverdale. So the site development plan for the other one is already approved. This one is under review and close to approval.

And specifically, they brought it for rezoning so that they could do single family detached.

Yes, sir. It was PD. It was planned development, but there wasn't an attached statement of intent. And they came forward and asked for our 12 rezoning. And then with the UDO, it's now suburban neighborhood. So yes, it is lower density, single family detached.

Well, I know all these questions are kind of dancing around the question I had with the easements, but I'm just trying to get myself.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, it's important. Do you know their timeline for what they're wanting to do?

I mean, they seem eager to get their site plan approved. So I do believe there's a representative here. I don't have that information, but they do seem eager.

I can even get caught up offline after tonight as well. Thank you.

Just for my own educational purposes here, the right-of-way is a Duke right-of-way, but it's our easement. It's our property. Oh, okay.

So we own the parcel, but the entire parcel is an easement.

And then this area that we own is all floodplain.

So it's really not developable. I honestly don't know why we own it. I think Mike does.

It was originally to be a trail and a park along the river.

Brad, back when we were doing annexations, this was one of the neighborhoods, like several that we had, especially over in your neighborhood, Mr. Lamb, where these leftover artifacts that were developed were transferred to the city for the potential development of future recreational possibilities to create trail systems.

Yeah, it was a trail system. Well, I can get on board with that if that's still... Now you know why it exists.

I certainly don't think this precludes that.

I thought I was done with questions. Can you remind me when this was originally annexed? Mid-90s somewhere in that?

I believe so.

Yes. Along with all the other in that area.

I believe 1990 or 1991. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And I don't believe that this would preclude any potential future trail opportunity either. All right. Because ultimately that'll become a city street, so it'll still be in city control.

Ingress egress to this part of the development, it's still just off of Wade Hampton on Hawkesbury, correct? Yes. That's the only way in and out?

Yes. Okay. Others? Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Erwood. Yes. Mr. Booker. Yes. Mr. Hopper. Yes. Mr. Lander.

Yes.

Mr. Bettis. Yes. Mr. Lamb. Yes. Mayor Danner.

Yes. Council items number eight and number nine. need to be held over until after executive session. You'll gather pertinent information in executive session regarding first reading of ordinance number 27 and 28. So with that, I'd like to move to executive session. We have two matters for executive session. One is a contractual matter. A motion to enter into executive session to discuss two contractual matters pertaining to Project Keystone and Project Titus as allowed by state statute section 34-70A2 and then a legal matter. Motion is to move to Executive Session to receive an update on a pending legal matter as allowed by State Statute 30-4-70A2. I'd like for somebody to make that motion to go into Executive Session. And a second, please.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to enter into executive session to discuss one contractual matter and one legal matter, both allowed by state statute section 30-4-70A2.

It comes as a motion to hear a second. Second. Ms. Duncan.

Mr. Arrowood. Yes. Mr. Booker.

Yes.

Mr. Hopper. Yes. Mr. Lander. Yes. Mr. Bettis. Yes. Mr. Lamb.

Yes.

Mayor Danner.

Yes. Council will take a very brief recess, but.