County Council - Regular Meeting

Amen.

Good.

Welcome out everyone appreciate you coming out tonight to this Kershaw County Council, September 8th, 2026 meeting glad to have you here. We have a few folks who I know are going to be on the agenda with resolutions and otherwise that are held up with traffic. I think there is a gargantuan traffic back up with 20 and it's running through highway 1. And so we might move a few things on the agenda, but we've got a quorum. Mr. Tucker is unable to attend at this time due to work, but he will be calling in and we have Mr. Jones here with us. So we've got a quorum and we'll move forward. We've been called to order. We have an indication on the agenda and Pledge of Allegiance, which will be led by Councilman Russell Brazel.

Can you hear me?

Dear Heavenly Father, we just We just thank you for today, and God, we thank you for our families as we've been in a period, a long period of grieving, Lord, that we've suffered substantial loss here in Kershaw County. God, we just ask that you lift up all of the families. We ask you to protect the hearts of the loved ones who are suffering. We ask you to keep each and every one that lives and serves in Kershaw County safe, Lord. Thank you for bringing us here tonight safely, and we just ask that you give our hearts grace and open minds as we discuss topics for Kershaw County tonight. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you, Councilman Browse. I appreciate that invocation and leading the pledge for us tonight. That brings us to adoption of the agenda item number four. Do we have any motions on the agenda? Do we have any motions on the agenda?

I'll make a motion we adopt the agenda.

Any second?

I'll second.

We have a second. Any discussion on the agenda? All right, let's move to a vote and we still don't have Mr. Tucker. Is that correct? He just joined Mr. Tucker. We're voting on the agenda as presented all who are present and voting in favor. Raise your hand. Miss Hannah, it's unanimous in favor for those who are present and voting. Mr. Tucker, how do you vote remotely on the agenda?

I vote yes, and I heard you when you dabbled in.

Okay, great. Thank you, Mr. Tucker. The agenda is adopted. Miss Hannah. Um, under the chairman's prerogative, I believe we have members of the long family here. Is that correct? I have everybody. Yes. Got everybody. I think, um, under chairman's prerogative, I'm gonna go ahead and move item number six B, um, to this point in the program, and then we'll proceed from there. We will have a deferral on item number 6A, and we'll proceed to that point in the program. As you can see, item number 6B is a resolution honoring the life of Officer Christopher Michael DeLong, Jr. I make a motion that we adopt this resolution. Do we have a second?

I'll second the motion.

I think the entire council would second the motion.

Absolutely.

There's been much said about the life of this outstanding young man. I say young man just because I'm older, but father, husband, son, friend. And at this very moment, for those listening, his beautiful children are recognizing their father who's pictured on the council screens. I could go through all of his accolades in law enforcement. And everything that he's done, but really all that needs to be said is that he was amazing husband, amazing father, amazing family member. An amazing friend, and he was a man of faith. Council members any other comments or discussion.

just um i would just say again thank you guys for coming i know it's been a rough couple of weeks uh going through all the memorials and i want you to know that those who live here and who know you guys know that chris's memory will continue long after all of this we're going to be with you guys for the long haul so thank you guys and thank you uh thank you for chris's service thank you mr shoemake jim mr cato sorry go ahead he yields mr brasil

to Hannah and the family. I just want to say to each and every one of you, we mourn with you. We don't understand the depths of where you've been, but we're praying for you and while attending the memorial, I just was so glad to see the Lugolf Elgin community and all of Kershaw County supporting Chris and your family. And it was such an honor to be a part of and God bless you all and the days ahead, weeks ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Brazel. Mr. Cato.

I just want to say, Coming from a law enforcement background myself, my son myself is in law enforcement. I just want to send my deepest sympathies to each and every one of you. I can't imagine even being in law enforcement. I couldn't imagine going through what you're going through. And to sit there and listen to his children point him out is really heart-wrenching. I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate his service. And, you know, when you're in law enforcement and anybody that's ever been in it, they'll tell you that the whole family's involved. It doesn't just, it just doesn't end with you. It goes deeper to your wife and to your parents. And so we love you and we continue praying for you. And I thank you all for being here tonight.

Thank you very much, Mr. Cato. Council members, any other comments? Yes. Mr. Jones, please.

And there's no words. I think all of us have tried to express it here. And I just want to tell you, we feel your pain. I've retired law enforcement. I have a son that was a second-generation retired law enforcement. It's our worst nightmare, but he gave his life fighting, protecting us, and he's a hero. And we really appreciate that. I'm honored to be here tonight to be able to just say his name. And we love you all.

Thank you, mr. Jones. Any other comments from those who are present? Mr. Tucker remotely. Do you have any comments?

Oh, yes. Right. Uh, mr. Chairman, thank you. Just want to say, um, to the entire family that, uh, my love and my prayers will be with them and throughout the many months and years to come. And when I asked that all who has been apart thus far remain apart and the ones that who hasn't joined as, uh, the kids still need to be raised and loved. and uh support it so i hope that uh kershaw county does what it always do which is support and love um because uh chris made the ultimate sacrifice for us and um my heart goes out to the whole family thanks mr chairman hey mr tucker uh what's your vote remotely yes that's a yes vote we'll move it to a vote for all who are present voting raise your hand if you're in favor

Ms. Hannah, it's unanimous, the resolution is adopted. And again, I'll just say on behalf of Kershaw County, to the extent we represent everyone here, we love you, and we're very sorry for your loss, deep condolences, and we will do whatever we can to support your family through this very challenging time. At this time, we will present the resolution. If Mr. DeLong or Hannah and Stella and Sutton could join us up front, if you'd like, we'll present you with the resolutions. And of course, if you'd like to say anything, you can do so at this time. We do have remote mics right here.

you

Before we get back to less important business of the county, I may have heard one of the things that's most important for me to have heard all year. And any other council members who are sitting up here, a child saying, I'm going to go see my daddy again. I want to see him again. We have great hope in the resurrection and I have every confidence that you'll see him again. Thank you so much for being here. You don't have to stay for the rest of the meeting if you don't want to. If you find it interesting, please feel free. Well, we'll give you all a moment, family and friends to thank you all, sir. Thank you for being here tonight.

Thank you.

We'll give you a moment to clear the room.

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you, Derek.

Thank you everyone present for your reverence during that very solemn resolution. All right, next up, we've got a proclamation on the agenda, item number 5A. Speaking of Littles, United for Baby Diaper Need Awareness Week in South Carolina. Do we have a motion?

I'll make a motion that we adopt the proclamation.

Do we have a second?

I'll second.

We have a second. Any discussion? This is diaper week. Is there Ms. Huff here? Ms. Huff is here.

I would like some explanation on that one.

My name is Shalita. I'm from 94 Baby. That's a non-profit that I started here in Kershaw County. We provide diapers and wipes for free to families here in Kershaw County. And Diaper Need Awareness Week begins September the 14th because families with young kids know that there's a need, there's a crisis of diapers because it requires eight a day for child care. And without those diapers, parents can't go to work or school. So we fill that gap where the families are working hard and really struggling at approximately $200 a month to pay for diapers. Because when commodities go up and tariffs go up, diapers go up. And so we work really hard, we advocate, we request support from our generous donors and they help purchase diapers. We just got a delivery of diapers from Honest, the diaper company, and we'll be getting those ready to give right back out this month.

Well, that I do understand. Thank you so much.

Thank you for sharing that message. Any other discussion from those council members who are present? I was just being a man any other discussion for those council members are present. Mr tucker any discussion remotely?

No discussion. I vote.

Yes, that's a yes vote remotely from Mr tucker for those who are present voting on the proclamation. Raise your hand if you're in favor. It's unanimous and passes the end of the proclamation is adopted. Do we have that?

We do and the proclamation proclaims the week of September 14th through September 20th is national diaper need awareness week.

And we do have a population myself if you'd like to come up and be presented with the proclamation.

We're not reading it.

Okay.

As I mentioned earlier, item number 6A, let's go ahead and defer to the next meeting. There's a couple of different phone numbers we need to try after the passing of Mr. McKenzie to get in touch with some additional family members for the next meeting. And so if you would note that, please, Ms. Hanna. Item number 6C, recognizing National Preparedness Month and the contributions of the South Carolina State Guard. Is there a motion? Mr. Chairman, I make a motion. Is there a second?

I'll second.

We have a second. Mr. Tomlinson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Instead of reading the resolution, I figured I'd take this opportunity to tell a quick story that dates back to 2015. Everybody remember Hurricane Joaquin that came through and dumped a ton of rain, especially in Columbia. My father-in-law was the commander of the State Guard at that time. So I had the opportunity to go out to Columbia and other places across the state to help assist giving out waters and food and everything. And let me tell you, the men and women in uniform and the state guard that came out, not only for that day, for weeks upon weeks on end, In the sun, rain, shine, it didn't matter. They were out there giving their lives, volunteering their time to help communities across South Carolina. And if it wasn't for those state guardsmen, men and women, I don't know where we'd be in that case. That was devastating. And then it turns around and that happens in 2017, happens in 2019, 2021. We really appreciate all the state guard has to do here. Thank you for coming.

Thank you very much. Any other comments or discussion? Mr. Schumacher, do you have a second?

If I may.

One second. I defer to Mr. Jones.

Thank you. You know, when I was a jail administrator, we actually, the state guard came in and would help us during the Carolina Cup and times like that because we got such a heavy overflow. And by the way, we have two attorneys up here. I've never seen as many kids that were going to be a lawyer than the ones that were drunk and locked up at the Cup. That's the truth. So I locked them up together and said, you can talk to your soon-to-be attorney locked up together. But anyway, the State Guard was a tremendous help to us, and they were with us like 12 hours in one day. So I appreciate that, and thank you for putting this on the agenda.

Thank you, Mr. Jones. Any other comments or discussion for those who are present? Mr. Tucker, any discussion or comments remotely?

No, sir. And I vote yes.

That's a yes vote from Mr. Tucker. I just want to check. Do we have the Ivory Thigpen who is present here representing the South Carolina State Guard? Mr. Thigpen and I served together at the State House for a time in a season of life, as they say, and how we're both doing different things. So good to see you tonight. Well, for those who are present and voting, raise your hand if you're in favor. It's unanimous, Ms. Hannah, and it is adopted. Mr. Thigpen, if you would come up, we'll present you. And you can feel free to share any remarks you'd like.

Yes, I'll be brief. Thank you for the opportunity to come here and the words. They are not only profound, but I think a lot of people don't know how important the State Guard's role in the state is. We are a volunteer organization, men and women. We are a force multiplier for the State Guard, but we also serve in community events and really are just a helping hand across the state whenever there's a need as you stated service at the heart of I know not only myself but others and after my time at the state House, I still want to find a meaningful way to impact our state and the state guard is no better place is a state funded. group that really, really does the work of being trained to prepare. Even though you never fully can prepare for any disaster, we definitely do our part to plan and be ready to be deployed. So thank you for this opportunity and recognition for national preparedness. But you have a great group of people in the state of South Carolina. Our Major General, of course, is Sheriff Leon Lott. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. If you don't mind coming up, we'll present you with the proclamation.

You can tip the top toward me. Just like that. Here we go. Thank you.

That takes care of resolutions. Thank you, gentlemen, for that. Next up, Mr. DeVos, we have public comments, item number seven. Do we have anybody signed up tonight?

Yes, sir. We have eight speakers.

Okay. Who's up first?

Thomas Curley. The subject is project balance.

Mr. Curley, please, just as a reminder, that's a time for us to hear from the public, not question and answer. I try to give folks a little bit of time beyond what might show up on the screen, but we do have to move on to voting matters. Thank you so much.

Thank you, sir. Afternoon, gentlemen, I have in my hand the zoning district summary existing zoning already to I'm going to read the zoning district intent. The value the value of agricultural lands, woodlands, wetlands and other resources which characterize this district. are important to clean water, air, and to many natural cycles. These lands provide much of the character that makes Kershaw County an attractive place to live. The intent of this district, therefore, is to protect these area resources from development, which would needlessly alter the rural state and contribute to a balanced environment. The height restriction in this is 35 feet, but I understand that council members went to the planning and zoning to change that. I want to remind you all that the reason why there are parameters for this zoning specifically is so that something that is over 35 feet is going to inhibit those agricultural lands, woodlands, and wetlands from being those resources which make Kershaw County an attractive place to live. I wish that the developer had gone to planning and zoning, not government officials. Anyway, thank you very much.

Thank you for coming out tonight, Mr. Curley. Mr. DuBose, who do we have next on public comment?

Amanda Holland, subject is flock.

Ms. Holland, did I pronounce that correctly? I know I've seen you a couple times. Holland, excuse me. Yes, ma'am.

So I am here to talk about the flock cameras and I would like to read the fourth amendment of the Constitution the right of the people to be secure in their persons houses papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. So what is the difference between a surveillance search and a cell phone search? Police usually track your live location through your wireless carrier, not directly, and real-time tracking generally requires a warrant. Since the Supreme Court held in Chattree v. the United States in 2026 that getting your cell phone location information is a search, however short the window. Extended circumstances include things like a missing child or imminent danger, not suspicion, not trespassing, burglary, theft, etc., these extended extension circumstances let police get an emergency location ping without a warrant but the emergency must be genuine so our law enforcement already has this authority to get our location without needing the flock surveillance network tracking your live location is a search under the fourth amendment

So the baseline rule is that police need a warrant supported by probable cause.

The Supreme Court's decision in Carpenter v. United States, which was in 2018, held that assessing a person's cell site location records and held that acquiring a person's location data from a company is a search because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell phone location information. And it rejected the argument that a short window of data falls outside the Fourth Amendment because two hours of it still counted as a search. That holding is binding in every state. Chattery involves stored location history, not a live ping. But it removes the main argument for treating a quick ping as something less than a search. And courts and prosecutors treat real-time tracking as warrant territory. So in short, the difference between a cell phone search and a flock surveillance network search is the flock surveillance network search is a workaround of the Fourth Amendment by not requiring probable cause or warrant.

Thank you for coming out, Ms. Holland. Mr. DuBose, who's speaker number three?

William Holland, Flock.

Yes, sir. Mr. Holland.

Good evening. I have some random thoughts about flock surveillance cameras since it was on the agenda for this evening. Our sheriff missed the last council meeting due to being out of town. In that meeting, Chairman Connell announced the sheriff would be given a special briefing at the next council meeting, which is tonight, regarding flock surveillance network use in Kershaw County. It just so happened that the last council meeting took place during the week of Flock 2026, a flock company conference in Atlanta. Was the sheriff in Atlanta for this conference? I don't know. But if so, I have some questions. The people want to know, did flock surveillance give him talking points slash sales pitch information as they have done for so many sheriffs nationwide to sell their product to the local governments? Is this what we're about to hear? Was his out-of-town trip expenses paid by the county or proved to be reimbursed by the county? If so, who was this person who approved using county taxpayer money for this trip? Are the taxpayers footing the bill to have our constitutional rights violated? Surveillance cameras, whether Flock, Axon, or others, have created a system that the people are guilty and must prove their innocence. Okay, they're guilty first, then we have to prove it. Some people will say, if you're not a criminal, you shouldn't be worried about it. Well, what if these surveillance trackers were present in 2021? Remember Fauci saying, you don't need to go to church. Well, I'd be a criminal today. So who's to say what happens in the future? No amount of rules or procedures will safeguard our rights outside of the Constitution. How many cops have been fired nationally for abusing flock surveillance cameras? Well, over 100. How many have been fired in South Carolina? At least four. There was one in Calden County last week that got fired for abusing the system. When they abused the system, they abused the people. Okay, if you want to Google flock abuse, you can find at least 10 pages of news reports from Google relating to this. If you want to Google flock employees called lying, you'll get at least 10 pages. On April 21st, the Oshkosh Common Council in Wisconsin voted 5-2 to renew its agreement with the flock. During the meeting, a council member asked a flock rep whether the system could create a heat map of a vehicle's movements. The flock rep answered no. The police chief checked the system the next morning and found out it could do that. The flock representative lied to the county council and to the policemen. Less than 24 hours later, the Oshkosh Common Council reconvened and voted 7-0 to rescind it And several members who had voted yes the night before publicly apologized. You can Google Flock identifies wrong car and see what it's done to people's rights. But in short, if I see representative Jones's wife out in public at the grocery store and food line, I said, hi, that's in public. If I see her in the grocery store and I follow her around and take pictures of her and then take some notes and then sell that information to somebody else, that's stalking. If I keep the pictures in the notes, that's called evidence of the stalker's guilt. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Holland, for coming out tonight. Mr. DuBose, who do we have as speaker number four?

Lynn Conto, Moratorium on Data Centers.

Yes, ma'am. Ms. Conto.

First, I want to thank you for having a moratorium on data centers. I appreciate you considering it. I'm a little worried it's not going to be long enough, the time frame, because the state Senate and House has already tried to pass 10 different bills on the topic. And I think they're running into a problem of getting people to agree, is what I think it is. But data centers use too much water. They put a strain on the electric grid, a financial burden on the people who use that electric grid, and have serious environmental and health risks. There are currently 48 data centers in South Carolina 179 countries have data centers, and there are a total of 11,700 data centers worldwide. The United States has 5,427 of those data centers. That's 46% of the data centers worldwide. I think the United States has won the race on data centers already. However, the real question is who's won the race on environmental protection? The state of South Carolina does not maintain a data center map. It's actually maintained by someone in another country, which is kind of sad. You see, there is no registry with the data department of commerce. According to the state newspaper, there are no official data center infrastructure registries. That means we don't have no specialists on this topic. And I'm a little concerned if you're gonna make the planning and zoning the specialists on this topic, because they have no specialists to seek out on this topic in the state of South Carolina. It will probably take about two years to establish and initiate a data center guideline for the state of South Carolina, is my suspicion, based on how things move slowly in the state. One of the biggest concerns I see is there are so many types. You have an enterprise data center, a co-location data center, a cloud data center, a hyperscale data center, an edge data center, a modular data center, crypto farms, bot farms, Bitcoin mining, AI data centers, cryptocurrency. Are we covering all the potential data centers that could be out there? who knew there were so many types of data centers and why do you think they're calling them farms bot farms and crypto farm operations work just like industrial farms they're often hidden large-scale facilities that automated technology that use and generate pseudo or fake activity in some situations they're used to harvest cryptocurrency much like farms produce goods at scale My biggest request out of all this is don't rush in. Fools rush in, but sometimes they don't rush out. Thank you for your time.

Thanks for coming out tonight, Ms. Conto. Commissioner Bowes, who do we have as speaker number five for public comment?

Buster Beckham, Veterans Monument.

Yes, sir. Mr. Beckham.

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Appreciate the opportunity to come here. Crescent County has a long history.

Sir, if you could lift the mic up just a little bit. You're a little bit taller than most.

Okay. Can you hear it now?

Yes, sir.

All right. Crescent County has a long history of recognizing veterans and those who've served in country and other places, other countries rather. Not far from here, there's a monument for the Confederate dead. Across the park, there's actually a monument for those who fought in the Seminole Wars and the Mexican-American Wars. And the park will be at Rectory Square. There's one for the generals from Crescent County who served. There's also, at one time, and this is my understanding, I can't verify this, on the corner of DeKalb and Campbell Street, there was an Arc de Triomphe, which which was torn down, which was for the ones in World War I. A group of Vietnam veterans, including myself, would like to recognize the Kershaw County citizens who have given their life. I've sent each of you a list of those in World War I, Korea, World War II, Vietnam. We don't have Desert Storm. We don't have that. We certainly would like to include them in that list and some recognition by those people here. I've compiled, myself and John Falkenberry, compiled a list of over 300 people who served in, local citizens who served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Okay. Fortunately, the radio station was able to broadcast these out. All right, now, the problem we're having here is, and we've talked to the people in Bishopville. We've talked to the people representing the East Springs. We looked at establishing a 501 for raising money. We would just like to kind of work with you to, in other words, we don't want to waste your time or our time, but we would like to know what the boundaries and parameters are so we can progress forward and come with some type of program where we can get this recognition. If you could get in touch, I'll be out of town for about 10, 12 days, but I'll be here the rest of the week at any time. I'd like to talk to a group of you or individually. Thank you, sir. Appreciate your time.

Thank you for coming out tonight, Mr. Beckham. Appreciate it.

Good idea.

Mr. DuBose, who do we have as speaker number six?

Lance Lee Flock.

Yes, sir, Mr. Lee.

Hello, everybody. First of all, I want to say my condolences go out to Officer DeLong's family. Anytime you lose a police officer, it's a bad, bad day. I am here about the flock cameras. I've been living here for about 25, 30 years. Raised my family up in Kershaw County. Those who gave up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety. I didn't say that, Ben Franklin did. A couple of these saints, a couple of other people have already stole my glory about what I was gonna talk about, but that's no okay, because I got three pages full. Let's go back over what justice means. Justice is treating all people impartially and equally under shared rules. Liberty is freedom from unreasonable or arbitrary governor interference. The protection of fundamental personal rights. Freedom is the basic rights and liberty that a country law guarantees to its people. Again, protection from government overreach. All this falls in line with the flock cameras. I've got five flock cameras within five miles of my house. There's even one that goes out to the lake if I go out there fishing. Somebody's gotta know I go out fishing. To tell me that the flock cameras only shoot a license tag is not true. It uses AI. It can tell you who's in the car If you have a luggage rack on the car, if you have a bumper sticker on the car, if you have a flat tire, insurance companies are using this information to raise rates as we already have the highest rates in the state and in most of the states around. So flock cameras are not for the people. and they're not to catch criminals. We know what they're for, like the young man said earlier. Four years ago, if flock cameras would have been around, I would have been an outlaw also. Fourth Amendment protects people from unfair and random searches and arrests from U.S. government. There's no warrants that has to be attained from an LPR. That's part of our Bill of Rights, something that y'all are supposed to be upholding. Who voted for these flock cameras? Can anybody answer that question? Was it ever brought up to the public? Was it ever brought up to a voter? Should we have them? Does it make a job for a police officer a little bit easier? Yes, it might make it a little bit easier, but what did you do 10 years ago? You didn't have cameras in. You did your job just fine. The Ninth Amendment, People have fundamental rights not listed in the Constitution, and that's a right to privacy and or travel from being ignored or taken away. I leave my house and I get shot by a flock camera. I go down southeast toward Camden. Another flock cameras going to tell me I'm going there. To tell me that somebody could not attain this data, but a law enforcement officer which have 200 cities that the law enforcement officers have actually suspended cameras because of misuse we all know what it is and there's no use in sugarcoating anything it's a way for you to keep up with the people where we're going what we're doing an example i leave my house at night Anybody can tap into a computer system that's got a half a brain that knows how to do it. I can't do it. But I can tell you right now, if somebody can stop me from a flock camera and see that I'm not home.

Mr. Lee, your time's concluded. If I could ask you to conclude your remarks, please.

I will. I would like to know, in conclusion, there is a 71% failure on reading these plates. And I would like to know who voted for these flock cameras in Kershaw County. Six of them in one little town of Elgin.

Thank you for coming out tonight, Mr. Lee. Mr. DuBose, who do we have up as speaker number seven?

Jim Steele, flock.

Yes, sir. Mr. Steele.

Chairman, I'd like to yield my time to Mr. Lee so I can finish up on his thoughts.

Unfortunately, Mr. Steele, that's a nice thought, but our rules don't provide for that. If you'd like to speak, you've got up to whatever was on the clock, four plus minutes.

Then I'll talk a little bit. Instead of about flock, I'll talk a little bit about data centers. We talk about data processing centers. What data are they processing? In order to process data, they have to collect data. Where are they collecting this data from? What's the data that they process gonna be used for? Another thing that maybe I missed it, but I haven't heard whether Kershaw County's current electrical infrastructure can support it. They use a tremendous amount of energy. What about the water that they use? It seems to me that the environmental impact is something nobody's talking about. They use a tremendous amount of water I've read that 80% of it is wasted through evaporation. You know, Kershaw County in this part of the Midlands sits on the largest underground aquifer of freshwater east of the Mississippi River, okay? That's why Nestle's moved in up in Macbee, so they could tap into it, okay? Well, this data center, how much water is it gonna use? I've heard they can use 500,000 gallons a day. If 80% of that's wasted, what's gonna happen? What's going to happen to all that fresh water? Nobody's talking about that. So that's the question I have. How are we going to support it electrically? And what impacts are you going to have on the environment here? People that have wells, they're going to go dry eventually if they're tapping out that much water. The funding for it.

You know, where's that coming from?

Who are these companies involved with? How are they getting the data? Are they going to collect everything that we do on the Internet? Every keystroke that we make, every site that we visit, every email that we send out, it's all questions that I have. And I won't support data centers or the flock cameras until I can find out some answers for that. Thank you.

Thank you for coming out tonight, Mr. Steele. Mr. DeBose, by my count, who's the concluding speaker? Number eight.

Amy McCaskill, Project Ballast.

Yes, ma'am, Ms. McCaskill.

Yes, the properties that were included in the FLO for the gas plant are part of the Kershaw County, Lancaster County Park Agreement. y'all had second reading i believe the last meeting on that and in the minutes it said that mr cato and mr jones voted in favor of that agreement and that mr thomason was opposed so that was not what i saw so i just wanted i was just going to make that i know we don't speak during the time you talk about minutes but i just wanted to put that out there um The information that the planning committee posted about the project ballast, land, and all the questions and answers that were put to the company and then the engineering, I guess, engineering company that they hired, most of the answers about the stormwater were this, requirements will be incorporated into the construction documents during the design phase, so no answer for that. I don't know how typical it is when companies have to answer to counties about what they're going to do, but there were a lot of non-answers in that information, not just in the stormwater part, and in the Kershaw County Fire Service just what they answered about what was offered by I guess Beaufort Rosemary. The project ballast will be located in the northern corner of the Kershaw County Fire Service area. This area is part of the rural fire service area with a more limited fire suppression water supply. This area is also not a staffed area of the county, but has full-time staffing from Cassett Fire Station and the next closest coming from the Westville Fire Station. The closest fire stations to the proposed sites include the Bethune Fire Station, Gates Ford Fire Station, and Buffalo Mount Pisgah Fire Station. When available, the department does staff the Buffalo Mount Pisgah Fire fire station with a part-time firefighter during the weekdays from eight to five. And then the question about impact on capacity. As mentioned, the primary area is served by volunteers. The next closest staff station would be impacted due to leaving its first due call area to respond to any emergency at this site. Given the potential of this site, the department could be facing very large impacts to the overall system and recall of off-duty personnel for catastrophic events if such were to take place. This type of facility, while mostly controlled, can become highly volatile. It sits not only on a natural gas line, but a liquid propane line as well. This could potentially have huge impacts on the entire eastern side of the Kershaw County fire service response area for days, affecting personnel and cost personnel cost and apparatus cost. And what would the impact on cost be? While there cannot be an exact amount placed on this type of facility, it can only be based on a risk analysis, this type of facility can present, depending on several factors, including daily workers, medical call volume, alarms, gas leaks, odors, et cetera. Others increasingly more dangerous or less frequent but much more impactful. Those would become much more costly just for one incident, could cost the department tens of thousands of dollars in personnel and apparatus cost in just a matter of days. The risk analysis associated is low frequency, High hazard, high volume, meaning it will not happen often or maybe ever, but if and when it does, it can or will be catastrophic.

Okay. Thank you very much. Mr. DeVos, do we have anyone else signed up?

No, Mr. Chair.

Okay.

Mr. Chair, certainly you're going to have the clerk look into the votes and the names.

Certainly folks will look at the minutes and review them, and then it comes up for a vote in just a moment. If you want to make any motions to amend, we'll definitely entertain those. Next up on the agenda, we have a series of public hearings. This is item number 8A. This is a public hearing on an ordinance to amend the agreement for development of a joint industrial park between Kershaw County and Fairfield County. to increase the boundaries to provide for economic development for a project known as Project Gemstone, which we also now know as Project Candy Root, located in Kershaw County. Do we have anyone signed up, Mr. DuBose?

Not for this one.

Okay, I'll open and then close the public hearing. My apologies. You do have someone?

Sorry, there is one sign to speak of this, Linda Franklin Moore, Multi-County Industrial Park.

Okay, public hearing's open. We got one person signed up. Yes, ma'am. Ms. Franklin Moore.

Stand back so I don't get reverb. Anyway, we should have clapped last meeting when you all had the first reading on the moratorium. So I apologize for that. But thank you all very much for taking that matter seriously. And we do appreciate your efforts. I had a couple of questions regarding the joint industrial park with Fairfield County. Mostly I would just like these answers hopefully would be on the record. This is not so much a question, but in doing my research I noticed that the portal on the county site for the ordinances stopped at 2,020. So there's nothing from 2,020 forward as far as the ordinance is listed. on anything. So perhaps maybe that can be corrected. I noticed that this is still being referred to as project gemstone. The public is aware of the candy root project. And my question is, are there other entities included in project gemstone? Or is it just candy root? Okay, I thought during public hearing we had a little question.

Well, tell me because I don't know.

I don't know. That's why I'm asking you. But if you don't know, that's a bad thing. Yeah. You know, if I understand candy root gemstone, they're kind of synonymous, but I didn't understand why we're still referring to them as code names when sort of the cat's out of the bag, unless there are other entities involved in this economic project. Looking for a little transparency there. I noticed that the properties in the multi-county industrial park are spread throughout the county, and I realized this was created way back in 1,996, when the chairman was yet a wee lad.

I was never small.

I can say from experience that is very true. I remember a little block rocking through church. But anyway, I have just never encountered an industrial park that was not contiguous. We've got Invista on there, Target, a lot of different entities that are classified in the multi-county industrial park. So I know that there's some folks that are curious about that, and so perhaps council could address that. I know there was... an elimination of one of the industries. They went out of business, so therefore they were taken out of the multi-county industrial park. But those are my questions, and thank you very much for your time.

Mr. DuBose, you have a legal question from one of the council members related to responses during public hearing.

So a public hearing, y'all's rules do not have the lack of dialogue, but they do reference comments at public hearing. In the same vein as public comments, I believe the intent of public hearings and public comments are for council to receive information and feedback, not necessarily to engage in a debate and back and forth.

Does that first, Mr. Browse, does that answer your question? Typically the council receives information from the public during public hearing, and also I believe under Robert's rules, and then we engage in debate and further discussion as required under the ordinance for vote.

So we can, I think we can better clarify Later in the agenda. Is that right? Correct. Yeah. We can clarify that for you, and we can ask legal to help clarify it so that it's on the record and everything's transparent and clear, and I'm happy to do that. Mr. Jones, do you have a point of order?

If I could, if you would allow it, please.

Yes, sir.

Thank you. Point of order. Well, I mean, I was here when we changed that, and the reason we put the public hearing the way it was so that we could engage with Communication with the citizen under public comment in the beginning. We're not supposed to I think we all understand But the intent was when I voted on it some years back was so we could have and we always have I've never known a council not to allow a little bit of questioning and dialogue between the citizen and the council member. You know that too, Ms. Franklin. You've been here as long as me or longer. But I thought I'd just share that with y'all.

Thank you, Mr. Jones. Just as we're clarifying a point of order, I wasn't here whenever the last rules were voted on, though I do try to enforce them as best as I can. We do have a series of amendments coming through that I'll be putting up, and y'all are free to chime in on and suggest amendments as well to clarify some of the rules that were voted on last time. Thank you. Yes, sir. That would conclude the public hearing on this particular agenda item that was 8A. Mr. DuBose, do we have anybody signed up for 8B?

No, no one is signed for 8B, which was my confusion earlier.

Okay, I'll just announce that 8B is an ordinance approving a private hangar contract related to the airport the county has in Camden. contract rates and terms related there to authorizing execution of the related contract. I'll go ahead and open the public hearing and close it since we have no one signed up. It's open and closed. Lake takes care of item number 8B. This moves us to public presentations. Item number 9A placed on the agenda by Councilman Tomlinson. Do we have a motion? Mr. Chairman, I make a motion. We have a motion. Is there a second on having this public presentation?

I'll second.

We have a second. Any discussion before we vote on having the public presentation by Sheriff Lee Bone? None. Okay, for those who are present and voting, raise your hand if you're in favor of having the presentation.

I'm in favor of hearing him, not what he's talking about.

We're not voting on anything substantive. Having the presentation occur during council time. And it appears to be unanimous for those who are present and voting. Mr. Tucker, how do you vote on the presentation?

Yes.

That's a yes, so it's unanimous. Sheriff Bone, please.

Now, Mr. Chairman, for the record, you do know we can't have some dialogue with the sheriff.

I'm sorry, say again?

We can't have dialogue with the sheriff during this.

Typically during presentation, yes, sir.

Thank you.

All right, tonight I'm here to talk about probably what became the new nastiest F word in the United States, bluff. I appreciate the ones that came out and commented tonight. I do listen to what everybody says. I truly listen to it. I want to start out with a little history of, and I'm not just going to say the F word, I'm going to say all license plate readers. We're going to lump them all into one group. From what I read up on it, they've been in existence for about 50 years now. They've been in America about 30 years. I think the actual flock company's been in existence almost 10 years now. We've had them in our county for about five years now. The basics on them, and trust me, this is no reading points. I don't get paid by flock. I don't owe flock anything. They take a still shot of the rear of the vehicle as they pass. And that still shot, it records the tag, vehicle details, description, color, Date and time, location, direction of travel. Then it'll notify us instantly if there's something on what's called a hot list. That's your stolen vehicles, felony vehicles, anything that's been entered in the NCIC. It automatically lets us know when it passes by one of the cameras. Hey, we just got a hit on this. Sends it to dispatch. Dispatch will send somebody out. That's reactive. We also have the ability to search it. Looking for tags, tags only. It's a force multiplier. We can't afford to have the deputies we need. Nobody wants to pay the extra taxes, so we always need more, but we don't have the money for it. This gives us an opportunity to have that force multiplier. I could have a deputy everywhere we have a flock camera at, and the cost would be extreme, because you're running 24-7 out there for a deputy to sit there and write tags down, which has always been legal. They do not continuously track anybody. Not one camera can tell me where Ben Connell is sitting right now. Not one. I can't put Ben Connell's name in the flock system and it tell me where Ben's been. It runs off the tag and a tag on. The flock don't know the information that belongs to you, your personal information. It does not capture any cell phone data. I've seen that pass around. does not do facial recognition. And South Carolina tags are at the rear of the vehicle. Therefore, the only way, even if the camera could see your face, it's because you got it planted to the back window of your car, because that's the only angle it's taken of the vehicle. It's the back where the tag hits on it. It does not capture speed of vehicles. It can't tell us how fast the vehicle is driving when it passes by. So we're not doing traffic enforcement off the cameras. Those are some of the things that have come out that I've really been paying attention because, again, I really appreciate even the negative stuff I listen to because a concern of our citizen is a concern of mine. All of us are elected officials and we know we can all be job hunting if our citizens don't appreciate what we're doing. Now, what really concerns me is the Constitution and privacy. I know that's been mentioned up here tonight and Folks, when we talk about the Constitution, we kind of pick and choose what parts we like, and we skip over Article III. The judges have the ultimate say over what's constitutional and what's not. The courts have consistently ruled that block cameras are not a violation of anybody's Fourth Amendment. And I know there are some appeals there, and I've been following it very closely for several months now. The courts, we gotta trust our Constitution. The courts are there for a reason. The courts are there to let us know whether something's constitutional or not. As far as invasion of privacy, courts have already ruled on that. When there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public setting, tags on your vehicle, in display, outside of your vehicle, they're there. No flock cameras ever jumped off the pole and climbed in somebody's vehicle and done a search. They're just taking a photograph of the rear of the vehicle. I know there's also talks about legislation that could get passed, and it may, it may. I'm following all that very closely, but as of right now, I can tell you, I don't see anything illegal with the use of LOCA. This is a legal technology that we are using in our county. Now, one of the big concerns that people also have is misuse, and I think one of our speakers that came up earlier spoke about misuse, like everything else. We do the best we can to try to grab a hold to it. But just because one officer somewhere misuses something, we can't take it from everybody, technology. It's no different in our firearms, our cars, or anything else. They've been misused before. We don't take them from everybody. We crack down on the ones who are causing the problems. And what you're seeing lately is because Flock has come out with an auditing process, that's why you're seeing them all popping up now we didn't have before. Now, as far as Kershaw County, we've got a solid policy. I've sent it to all the council members on the use of this, which you have to have. You have to enter in the case number, the reason why you're running it. And what that does is that's an official document that we use. And if a deputy were to go in and lie on that, not only can he be terminated, he can lose his certification and be criminally charged. There's a lot at stake for somebody to go in and just start fishing around looking for information. All of our deputies are required to sign a confidentiality statement. We do audits at the sheriff's office. Our retention period, a lot of agencies, standard 30 days. We moved ours to seven days. So we're only holding data for seven days. We're not going to be able to form much of a pattern. And we only give about 10% of our agency access to the flocks. I don't even have access to them. Only 10% of the ones who actually use them. We got one on each shift. We got our investigators and our drug guys are the only ones with access to it. And we've limited our outside agencies, because until we can get a better grip on what their policies are and they're obeying everything and they're on board with FLOX auditing system, we're going to hold off on that. There's a process involved, because when you first get on, you've got everybody networked in, so we're in the process of kicking everybody off and start working with our close agencies and kind of expanding out, no further than we have to. The problem is is when I cut somebody else's access, they're cutting our access to theirs, which means if we get something stolen, we can't necessarily go on their cameras if we're not sharing our cameras. Flock has a transparency portal online if you go to Flock's website. The Kershaw County Sheriff's Office has opted into that where you can go into it and see what we're doing with the Flock cameras. We've also started looking at other cameras than Flock. So I'm definitely not a, paid by FLOC, because we're searching around for other ones that don't have the network FLOC has, so there's not the ability to share data that we may not know about. Kind of summing it up, feelings are not facts. I know feelings are pretty tough right now, but they're not the facts. And I look at facts based off Constitution, what the courts are ruling on it right now, case law and these things, and there are case laws specific to FLOC out there. and so far the courts are ruling and this is not just my opinion the courts are ruling that it is not unconstitutional for tag readers in our county we have uh i figure about one and this is counting every lpr camera we own we have one camera for every 45 miles of roadway So we're definitely not able to track anybody with it. And I see comments all the time when something gets stolen or we're pursuing somebody in a chase, why don't you just use the cameras? Well, we don't have enough cameras to track people. That's just, we don't have that ability. And I say one every 45 miles. Also keep in mind, each camera's only getting one direction because we only have a tag on the rear of our cars. If it was on the front and back, one camera could get both directions. So technically speaking, roadways, We really have one per 90 miles of road is what we're averaging. We're definitely not tracking, and right now we have no plans on extending our number of cameras. I think we're at a good place right now that, and I would agree that if we have so many cameras that we can track people, then yeah, I wouldn't need to wait on a court to make that decision. We'd make that ourself, put a plug on it. Basically, I'm kind of, in my position, I'm split. I'm split because people count on me to solve the crimes, make the community safer, and protect them. We know these cameras are doing that. But at the same time, regardless of what a court may feel, if our citizens are concerned about them, that's a concern of mine. And I've had a lot of sleepless nights over these cameras here, looking at that balance there. We got one group that they feel their rights are being violated and they don't want that to happen. I'm with them. But the other group is what we call victims, victims of crimes. And they want me to solve their crimes. And I know these are good, valuable tools in helping us solve the crimes. They don't solve every crime, but they are valuable tools there. So it kind of puts me in a bad situation to where I can't make both sides happy. But trust me, I'm not telling you here tonight that we're using LPRs indefinitely. I don't care what nobody says. I'm still listening to what the public's saying. I'm still weighing out everything. I'm watching these court rulings. I'm looking at what legislators are talking about. I'm looking at what our citizens are talking about. And at any time, if I feel we get to the point where these are wrong, I'll pull the plug. Nobody has to tell me or ask me. But I won't broadcast it if we do pull the plug because Of course, that's going to create a little more invitation to criminals to come in our county. But that's kind of all I got. Unless anybody's got any questions. Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Sheriff. Mr. Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Sheriff, we're in good hands having you as our sheriff. You could tell by just how much you care about the people and exactly what you said. You know, this is a tool that we can use to help with public safety, but also you were monitoring, listening to every one of the citizens, and you said this is not forever. That's something that you can truly tell you have a pulse on the people, and I really appreciate you giving this presentation tonight. I know that this has been a hot topic around the state, Um, and one of the things I really appreciate you doing is you being forward thinking and we have a use policy in place. I wonder how many other counties across the state have a use policy. And I wouldn't even know that we could really call them flock cameras. I mean, this was an automated license plate readers. Um, it's kind of what they should be referred to as, but for us to have a sheriff use policy or a deputy use policy in places is outstanding. And thank you for taking that leadership approach to it. Um, One question I have, so what happens, so let's go seven days. You said our policy is keep them for seven days. What happens after seven days to that data?

It's deleted from the system, and we no longer have access to it. And I've thought about that too. What if somebody's on vacation, comes back a week later, because a lot of people take a week vacation, find out their house was broke into, we've got no data. According to research, 90% of the searches by these cameras are done within seven days. So I figured 10% or less is done the rest of the time, but at 30 days. So I'm willing to show, to try to earn some trust of our public to show I'm willing to cut out on 75% of the storage data and keep just 25%, knowing that it's statistically gonna be able to solve that.

And it's probably more cost effective too, right?

Well, it doesn't cost us anything either way to do it.

To store them 30 days compared to seven days? There's no cost difference?

Yeah, pretty much. They charge us the same. Now, we'll still audit everything, and they keep their audit trail. So I can still see what deputies do beyond seven days, but I can't look at tag data beyond seven days, nor can anybody else search in our system.

Well, that's all I have, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate you coming out tonight, Sheriff, and I thought your presentation was outstanding.

Thank you, Mr. Tomlinson. Mr. Shoemaker, then Mr. Jones.

Yeah, Sheriff, I echo Councilman Tomlinson's appreciation for you coming out. You guys have very, very hard work. Some of these mics are popping. Let me back away a little bit. So if I can nerd out just a second, you know, I have three jobs. I work my counsel job, my lawyer job, but my third job is I'm an adjunct professor at the law school, and I teach technology and criminal law. Somebody mentioned Carpenter, Shotry. I'm actually teaching Shotry in two weeks, Monday night at the law school, if you want to come and listen to it. What we're really talking about is something called persistent surveillance and the third-party doctrine and things I could nerd out for for way longer than anyone wants to listen to. But one thing that's important in all of this is that all these issues are being litigated at the court. The sheriff mentioned there's a case out of Virginia Federal Court that's on the 4th Circuit where they held out of the Norfolk Division that these cameras are constitutional. The 4th Circuit may or may not take that up. But you're going to have courts making these decisions. And so I'm not here to talk about whether flock cameras are constitutional or not. That's for some judge down the road to make that decision. But I do think it is really important as a county council that we be very careful that we are not stepping into a judicial role. You know, when we start banning things that are law enforcement tools because we don't like them, that's a slippery slope. We have an elected sheriff. He answers to the people. If the sheriff wants to use a tool that is at this point legal, I think county council is really stepping into both a legal murky territory and an ethically murky territory when we, many of us here were former law enforcement, but none of us are active law enforcement. When we step into the role of law enforcement and start dictating the tools that should and shouldn't be used to fight crime when we have an elected sheriff. So I think that on the legal side of it, People make decent points, and there are some really, really smart lawyers, way smarter than me, that are litigating both sides of these issues. One quick thing I'll say in closing that's kind of interesting, and I actually tell this to my class. Most people who have a problem with flat cameras would probably have a problem if I told you that with a single piece of paper, any law enforcement officer in the country can access every banking transaction you've ever done in your life from any specific bank. Most people would find that incredibly invasive. Yet we have something called the Bank Secrecy Act that permits exactly that without a warrant. This gets attention because it's current and in the news, but we've got technologies that are being used that are far more antiquated that dig far more invasively. That's not a defense of those technologies. It's simply saying that Sometimes there's a bunch of ruckus over here, so everyone looks over here, but if you really want to ask yourself these bigger questions about privacy and what should be, then you should really be going to the legislature and say, hey, why do we have the Bank Secrecy Act? Why do we not disallow flock cameras? If that's a legislative decision, At the state level or national level, that's one thing. But as of right now, it is something that is legally allowed. No court in this circuit has said it is unconstitutional. So at our role here, I'm very, very reluctant to even entertain a conversation where I'm going to tell our elected sheriff, who's an active law enforcement officer, how he should fight crime. So those are my thoughts.

Mr. Shoemake, Mr. Jones.

I'm so glad you went before me. That was really, really good. And let me tell you why I say that. Because you just said that we need to be careful the role we play here on county council because it is the sheriff who's the constitutionally elected officer. Sheriff, did you put this on the agenda?

no no i'm glad you brought that up i know one of the questions earlier about me going to a flock conference or something and that's not the case whatsoever i was at a i was at a sieges i want to see just board there which is uh and i were was able to ask questions on what information flock was able to get but it was not flock not sponsored and not taxpayer dollars or yes and what my point is you did not put it on the agenda were you asking for an increase in flock cameras No, no, we're where we need to be right now. With the citizens' concerns the way we are right now, there's no way I'd open up that can.

But then I guess I wonder why we're having this conversation. And by the way, there has been no vote yet on it. But why are we having this conversation? I agree with what Mr. Shoemaker said. He eloquently said it. I could probably get close to as good as he is, but on that topic, he's got me. But I do agree that you didn't put it on the agenda. This council put it on the agenda. You didn't know about it until you were notified. Did you hear about it, or how were you notified that we did that?

I saw it on the agenda last meeting after I'd already made plans to leave in town for the procedures board meeting that I had in North Carolina. But yeah, and I reached out to Councilman Tomlinson and we talked and he asked me, because Council don't have subpoena in powers. He asked me if I would mind coming up here because citizens had questions about it. And, I mean, how do you say no to citizens having questions?

Well, you know, we talk about, we listen to the citizens. I haven't heard anybody talk about their favorite flock here tonight. I mean, I know this doesn't represent everybody, but, you know... I think we need to be very careful. You know, we got so many things going on. We got so many projects that are incomplete. Even the baseball fields aren't completed yet. We got things we're working on. You know, and yet we're sitting here making a big deal out of this, and yet you didn't ask for it. I certainly didn't ask for it, so a member of council put it on the agenda. I think that's not falling. Not that there's a written protocol, but I think there's a protocol that we've always used If it involves something the sheriff's going to enforce, can we talk to the sheriff about it first before we bring it to county council? And it's apparent to me that that didn't happen. And nobody intended, I believe in my heart, nobody intended anything wrong. I think sometimes we can get excited and do something and maybe not, it might not be the, it's not illegal, but just what I would consider the protocol we should use. Because I would never put anything on the agenda that you did not come to us and say you wanted.

Mr. Jones, I can answer your question about who put it on the agenda. It was me who put it on the agenda, just like everybody else. I have a right as a councilman to put something on the agenda, and I appreciate the sheriff coming out tonight.

I don't think we need to beat a dead horse. No, sir, I'm not going to beat a dead horse, and I certainly don't mean to upset you, because you are one calm person, and I do like you.

I like you, too.

I mean, I mean that. I'm not being funny. But bottom line is, I just don't want to get him upset over here. But bottom line is, I think all of us were under the impression that you did this, but you didn't. So for us to blame you on this one, we'll blame you on the next one maybe. But on this one, we are beating a dead horse if we're trying to say, well, this is what Sheriff McCaskill did. A legend, a legend, sheriff legend. But that Sheriff Bone didn't have anything to do with putting us on the agenda, but you were kind enough to not, you remind me of myself, you show a lot of mercy. You know, you were kind enough not to say, look, I didn't know about this. Nobody told me about this. You came here as a gentleman, a scholar, or whatever, and you said, this is what they'll do. This is what we have. You never once mentioned that you didn't ask for these. You didn't put them on the agenda. So I think case closed. And, you know, and Mr. Shoemake just validated everything that I said, you know, when he said that we need to be careful about the legislative role we get into when it comes to our constitutional officers here. I've been sitting on this council 20 years. I got four more meetings, people. And you don't have to worry about my mouth anymore after that. But let me just say this. In my entire time of serving, I've never known a single time that we put something on the agenda that involved the sheriff, that the sheriff wasn't taking the lead on it and pretty much said that's something he wanted. So from that standpoint, I'm not going to support any flock cameras. I just happen to not like them. I think I take a good picture. But that's not what it's about. And we talk about, well, There's more technology out there. They can do a whole lot more than this. There is and that's mr She makes think when he's correct on it, but that's not what we're talking about tonight We're talking about fly cameras tonight and with with data centers and and all these other things that we've looked at and you know that have got folks concerned and Upset and about rightfully so I tell you what I have, and you know, we know, you guys know I'm not looking for anybody's vote. When I say something, I'm saying it comes from the heart. And I know theirs too, but they are looking for votes. But, and so was that one time. But I can tell you this, I have so much appreciation and respect for each one of y'all that come up here and speak your mind. And I want you to know something, I do listen to you. And if you don't believe me, go back for 20 years and look at my record. You know, and usually I was by myself with just a couple of us. And, you okay, aren't you? Oh yeah, I'm all good. But anyway, but thank you for being here again. I do appreciate it. And Mr. Schumann, thank you for validating everything that I just said.

You kind of brought up two things that I want to kind of comment on. First and foremost, Sheriff McAllister is a legend. He's the one that hired me and got me started in here. Also on technology and using technology. This technology has been around for 50 years. If every law enforcement agency in America were to just Cancel contracts. They're not throwing away the technology. Somebody somewhere will use it with or without us.

Mr. Chairman, I do conclude.

Any other comments, questions? Yeah, Mr. Chairman, if I could really quick. Mr. Thompson. Yeah, and Mr. Jones, the reason I put this on the agenda is because there are concerns. from the citizens and the sheriff done a great job and I appreciate you making that point, but I feel as an elected official for this county and my citizens have concerns, I have every right to put anything on the agenda that I feel is is good so i appreciate the sheriff's time tonight i thank you for coming out and the presentation was incredible i thought it was exactly what i was looking for to answer those questions you answered every question that i had thank you sheriff before we get into any um anything remote or any other comments in person i'll just say i think it's a completely appropriate line of inquiry

Sheriff is independently elected, but the Council has fiduciary responsibility to make sure that money spent wisely. And so I think it's totally justified to say, is this justified or not? What are the bases for particular uses of equipment or not? Um, policies are a close closer call, obviously, with an elected official.

but we have to approve that budget money and take responsibility for that or a lot millage to the sheriff for him to use at his discretion but he was getting his room beat was there was there anyone else present that wanted to come forward for that presentation um brought a lot a lot of insight and i hope it helped everyone here tonight um i agree 100 when mr shoemake you know during my time in investigations i found that i could I could obtain a whole lot of information on somebody just by getting their cell phone number. And you could take a cell phone number with a, as Mr. Shoemate said, a single piece of paper, and it's unreal how you could track and what you could do with that single telephone number. So it's really not any different than anything else that could be done. But I appreciate for your insight. There's still some things that, you know, kind of worry me a little bit. As you just said, they worry you. But I'm glad to see that you're on top of it and that you're keeping a

a close eye on it and that makes me feel better about it so thank you appreciate it any other discussion from those who are present well i'll just briefly say that ever since i've been elected i've befriended lee bone and he's befriended me and i can tell you this i i trust him uh very much in his position um i'll also go on to say that i'm not a fan of flock cameras So two things can be true. And while we're dealing with emerging technologies, whether it be a data center or some sort of a camera that could potentially solve a crime, I was just on the phone with the sheriff and his team today about a stolen vehicle. And there may be good in in in the cameras i don't know that that i am ever going to be a fan of them but i am open-minded and willing to learn more about it and i can tell you this sheriff phone's a good man he does this a good job here in kershaw county and i really appreciate you being here tonight sheriff your your leadership and your friendships meant a lot to me over the last six years um i think i think it's good to open have open and honest dialogue um and and that's what being american is is all about that's what that's what being uh south carolinian is all about so um thanks for the presentation uh genuinely thank you very much thank you sheriff we'll go to mr tucker remotely any discussion questions mr tucker

I think y'all have asked all the questions. Sheriff needs to go home. Thank you.

Sheriff can go home. Thank you for coming out. Thank you, Sheriff. No votes required.

Thank you, Sheriff.

All right. Before we get to approval of the minutes, Mr. Tucker just indicated to me that he had an issue hearing of the discussion or either the vote on the agenda earlier in the program and so if there's no objection from council we'll just have miss hannah record the uh unanimous vote from all council members in favor of the agenda for tonight any objection no objection mr tucker and that confirms your uh yes vote on the agenda correct thank you sir yes mr chairman okay So noted, Ms. Hanna, for the minutes in the future. All right, that brings us to approval of the minutes, item number 10A. Do we have a motion on the minutes?

Yeah, I have an amendment, Chairman.

Yes, sir, what's your motion?

Looking at the minutes here on page five, second reading of the multi-park agreement, As Ms. McCaskill had brought out earlier, there was a mistake in the minutes. Jones and Cato should have been opposed to this vote, and Tomlinson should have been a vote in favor.

That was a multiple layered vote. There was an amendment and then a vote on the initial motion. And so let's give council members an opportunity to clarify what their votes were. I think it was just a scrivener's error right before the packet got sent out. So would you state your motion again?

Uh, the motion is to correct. So, uh, the second on the second reading on the ordinance for the multi park agreement, um, the votes should have been in favor Connell, Tucker, Shoemake and Tomlinson. If that's not right, correct me. And the opposed vote should have been Brazel Jones and Cato. That's right.

Correct. That has a four to three.

Yep.

That's correct. I second that motion.

All right. Any discussion on the motion to amend?

I just appreciate Ms. Caskell and her vigilant eye, because you were right. Thank you.

Mr. Tucker, any discussion remotely on the motion to amend before we get to a motion to approve, if there are no other motions?

No questions. I vote yes.

That's a yes vote on the motion to amend remotely. We'll take a vote now for those who are present. May I have a motion to amend?

Ms. Henry, you do a great job. We appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you. We really do. All in favor on the motion to amend? All right, so we've got a motion to amend. Now we have a motion before us, or we need a motion before us, to approve the minutes as amended. Do we have such a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve the minutes.

We have a motion. Is there a second?

I'll second that as well.

Any further discussion on the minutes as amended? For those who are present and voting, raise your hand if you're in favor. It's unanimous in favor. For those who are present and voting, Mr. Tucker, how do you vote on as amended for the minutes?

Yes.

That is a yes vote. So the minutes are approved. Ms. Hannah. Thank you very much. All right. That moves us to item number 11, a, um, a discussion item placed on by councilman Tucker regarding a hate ordinance. Is there a motion?

I like make a motion that we discussed this. Mr. Chairman, is there a second?

I'll give it a second.

I don't really know what it's about, but I'll give it a second. Okay. All in favor on this discussion, raise your hand. Unanimous in person to Mr. Tucker. I assume a yes vote from you on discussion.

Yes, sir. It is.

Let's do it.

All right. Um, so I don't know if you guys remember, um, the petition that had a little over 600 signatures that came before us early spring, uh, late spring, early summer. Um, those citizens have been contacting me and others, um, in reference to, um, what we have come up with. So I'm asking my colleagues tonight, uh, for your input, your concerns. Um, I would like to be able to have some discussion and ideas thrown around, um, and trying to, um, I guess, collectively, uh, have an ordinance, uh, that's address some of these issues, but I want it to pertain to Kershaw County. So it doesn't need to be the wild, wild west or, um, we're, um, we're charging people for, um, true or frivolous. So I just want you guys to be aware that, um, I'll be looking into this. I've already asked staff for their assistance and Mr. DuBose our legal team. So I will be coming back with some type of recommendation in the near future. So reach out to me when you get an opportunity. Love to have your input.

Thank you, Mr. Tucker. Mr. Shoemake, you had the second.

I mean, I'm willing to listen. I don't have, like Sam, I understand what he just said, and I'll be happy to look at anything he puts together.

And if I may, Mr. Jones. Yeah, very good. I'm going to take the same position on this as I took on the flock cameras. I think you talk to the sheriff, get the sheriff. If he wants a hate crime bill, I'll support a hate crime bill. If the sheriff or the chief, they don't want it, I mean, those guys are the ones who have to enforce it. And we're a county, and so that's the position I take. But I am very willing to listen and talk. But please listen. Let's get our sheriff involved. Let's get our chief of police involved.

Mr. Jones? Yes, sir, Mr. Tucker. We've had that conversation, and he'll be coming to the table as well.

Quit showing off.

thank you gentlemen any other comments or discussion for those who are present i wanted to echo those same same words as i read through my agenda i had written sheriff beside this because um that i feel like he would he would have to be able to um support and enforce said ordinance so i'm again happy to listen like to find out what substance is is involved in the ordinance and uh um you know i won't not listen thank you thank you mr bradson also note that this wouldn't be um just the sheriff it might even be primarily code enforcement and others for jurisdiction that the county actually has

But Mr. Tucker, anything else in wrapping up before we conclude? We don't need a vote on this.

No, sir. No, sir. We're good. I just want to, like I said, have all-inclusive and make you guys aware and encourage input.

Thank you very much for bringing it to our attention. No votes required. Thank you. Item number 11A.

You know I listen to you, Sammy, talk.

All right. Next up, we have a series of ordinances. Second readings initially. Item number 12A. This is second reading on an ordinance approving a private hanger contract, establishing the contract rate and terms and authorizing execution thereof. We had first reading as indicated in the packet. Do we have a motion on second reading? Mr. Brazel has a motion. Is there a second? Second. Second.

Where's Councilman Tucker at?

Yeah, that mutes it. We have Mr. Tomlinson. Yeah, second. All right, any discussion, Mr. Brazel, on second reading for 12A?

No, I don't have any discussion. This is something that we've talked about and talked about. I think it's, after reading it, I'd like to say thanks for moving forward with it.

Thank you, Mr. Brazel. Mr. Tomlinson? I don't have any discussion. Okay, any other discussion for those who are present? Seeing none, Mr. Tucker, any discussion remotely?

I just want to tell Councilman Brown, thank you. I couldn't get it off mute, so I appreciate that.

Mr. Chair, can you? How do you vote, Mr. Tucker? Oh, excuse me, Mr. Jones. Yes.

I'd like some deep clarification on this, for the record.

Okay, well, to the extent you go real deep, it's a contractual matter. But, Mr. DuBose, can you provide some clarification on what it is we're about to vote on?

Yeah, this was a private hangar contract for Mr. Ron Prestage. He constructed the hangar out there, amateurized an original investment, which the FAA allows. I understand he did recent improvements to the hangar. These setups, typically the local government takes title to the hangar after the person's amateurized their cost of constructing it out. Again, Mr. Prestage had made some recent investments. Um, the hangers taxed while he owns it. If it became county property, it would not be taxed. That tax amount is, I understand it roughly equivalent to the lease amount. He will be paying a ground lease amount on this as well. And this does qualify for the abatement structure that county put in place in the 2025 ordinance.

Mr. Jones, it's essentially an economic development incentive that's been created by the county.

Yes, and thank you. And Mr. Tucker, thank you so much for working on that.

You're welcome, Mr. Jones. Mr. Tucker, I'm pretty sure I heard a yes vote on 12A. Yes, it was. And for those who are present voting, if there's no more discussion, how do you vote on 12A? Raise your hand if you are in support. It is unanimous in favor. All the way around, Ms. Hannon passes on second reading. That brings us to item number 12B. It's the second reading. to establish a temporary moratorium related to data centers, controlling and updating the ZLDR related to also cryptocurrency mining operations, data processing facilities, and related facilities. We have first reading as indicated in the packet. Do we have a motion on second reading?

I'll make the motion for second reading of moratorium on data centers.

Mr. Brown has a second. Mr. Thompson has a second. Any further discussion on 12B?

I'd like to say that it's no different than the earlier discussion. I mean, we've got tremendous emerging technologies. There's a lot to learn. the biggest thing that we can do to protect ourselves and our community is pause, and that's exactly what we're doing. And we've heard a lot of nasty things about the data centers, and I, for one, am gonna educate myself, learn more, and I think this is good for council. I think this is what we're supposed to do. I think we're supposed to educate ourselves on all of these topics, And at the end of the day, we're supposed to make the right call for Kershaw County. So I appreciate everybody's willingness to establish this moratorium.

Thank you, Mr. Brazel. Mr. Tomlinson, you have a second. Mr. Chairman, I have no comment. Any other comments or discussion from those who are present? Seeing none, Mr. Tucker, any discussion? No, sir. I'll vote yes. it's a yes vote on 12b from mr tucker remotely i'll just mention i've been researching a lot on data centers since it's become such a hot topic and i'm astounded by how much we rely on them it's kind of mind-numbing if you think about it just look at your screen time on your phone or what you do at work or uh i see some some data and uh website specialists and marketing specialists out in the crowd who are nodding yes it's just uh unbelievable how much we rely on them and so i think we need to know them much better than we do now and their impact and this will give us time to do that i mean even this meeting the the streaming of this meeting relies in some sense on a data center so that people can see it out in the world and and have it memorialized as well so with that uh we've got a yes vote for mr tucker for those who are present and voting how do you vote raise your hand if you're in favor it is unanimous in favor and passes that's 12b miss hannah for the record Item number 12C is the next second reading. This is an ordinance to amend the ZLDR adding section 342-19 regarding directional signs for hospitals and medical facility regulations and to amend section 345-1 regarding prohibited signs and prohibited sign characters and also adding section 3411-2 regarding off-premise advertising and exempt directional signs related thereto. We have first reading as indicated in the packet. Do we have a motion on second reading for 12C?

I'll make a motion.

We have a motion from Mr. Shoemake. Do we have a second?

I'll second.

We have a second from Mr. Cato. Any discussion on second reading 12C?

We've talked about this. This just allows basically signs to show where hospitals are, and we amended it last reading to make sure that It's not an advertising mechanism. It's quite literally just a directional sign so people will know how to get to hospitals.

Thank you, Mr. Shoemake. Mr. Cato, you have a second?

No comment.

Okay. Any other questions, comments? Mr. Tucker, we'll go to you remotely. Any discussion on 12C? Second reading. No vote yes. Does a yes vote remotely from Mr. Tucker? For those who are present and voting, raise your hand if you're in favor. This is 12C and it's unanimous in favor. Ms. Hannon passes second reading, that's 12C. Item number 12D. This is a second reading for an ordinance to amend the Kershaw County Zoning and Land Development Regulations known as the ZLDR, adding section 342-19 and amending section 522 to clarify subdivisions of land under exempt provisions. and also regulations related to parcels that might be considered or exempt and considered a part of a larger common plan and also prepare for regulations promulgated by the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services formally. And then a general permit for stormwater discharges as well. Formally DHEC. Okay. Is there a motion on 12D, second reading.

I'll make that motion.

Mr. Shoemake has a motion. Is there a second on 12D?

Second.

Second from Mr. Tomlinson. Any discussion on second reading 12D?

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Shoemake.

Yeah, so we had a pretty lengthy discussion last meeting on this. It's fairly technical, but basically this brings us in line so that we can... make sure that some of our zoning ordinances and that some of our larger common plans both fit into state regulations and also allow staff to handle those in a way that's been a bit, it's been a bit difficult to manage those. I think that's the easiest way I can say it without saying it for 15 minutes.

Thank you. Mr., we had the second from Mr. Thomason. Any discussion? No, none. Mr. Reisel?

I spoke with a, with the department head at des today more about this and i may have a slight amendment coming in the third reading i may not this is very technical and what i don't want to do is cause issue by fixing it another issue but it's a lot to go through and it's a lot to understand but I think the intent is good is chairman Connell said the last person can be left holding the bag but it also leads me to think why was this not a problem 20 years ago so i need to dig a little deeper into this to love it but tonight's second reading it's not in its final state so i would ask just for open minds as we go into third reading to have a little bit further discussion thank you see no other discussion from those who are present mr tucker any discussion remotely no no discussion i vote yes that's a yes vote remotely from mr tucker on 12d for those who are present voting raise your hand if you're in favor on 12d second reading

It is Shoemake, Brazel, Connell, Cato, and Tomlinson in favor on 12D. Any opposed? Mr. Jones in opposition. It passes second reading on 12D. Next up is 12E, a second reading. This is regarding an ordinance to amend the Kershaw County ZLDR to amend section 514-5 related to systems including fire hydrants and clarify fire hydrant requirements in major and minor subdivisions. Is there a motion? Chairman, I make the motion that we approve this ordinance. All right, we've got a motion. And is there a second? Second. We have a second. Mr. Cato.

Through the first reading, I explained that this was something I worked jointly with the administration on, and I appreciate their hard work on this and the fire service. But this has something to do with the rural part of the county, mainly, where the water supply is not there in order to have a fire hydrant. And it just kind of regulates, it resets the ZLDR to fit the needs of the rural part of the county.

Thank you. No discussion. Any further discussion from those who are present on second reading 12E?

Just like a little bit of clarity from our county attorney. John, if it's a minor subdivision, is it the same as a major subdivision as far as the footage apart?

So as proposed in the amendment, yeah, same footage, but it's not a hard and fast... requirement you get a determination letter from the water district and it verifies infrastructure in place the planning and zoning and fire marshal though review that information for potential expansion of the fire protection network and iso compliance but um again it is not a hard and fast requirement if it's not moving the needle on iso or bettering the fire improvement district if it is a huge burden on someone providing basically very little to no benefit um it'll allow some discretion and right-sizing of it do we have a um a family split exemption in place I think um those family exemptions are certainly a factor in considering the wisdom of of whether a fighter fire hydrant would be needed. Um Those are exempt from certain plat recording requirements, but um the lots created by them often have to comply with subdivision standards and stuff. But again, this is this is getting, I believe, adjusted and right sized so that um those minor subdivisions are not automatic requirements.

Okay.

Thank you. Any further discussion from those who are present? Seeing none, Mr. Tucker, how do you, before you vote, how do you want to discuss this? No discussion. I vote yes. Yes vote for Mr. Tucker remotely. And thank you for the summary, Mr. DeVos. We have a yes vote from Mr. Tucker remotely. All in favor, raise your hand. It is unanimous in favor. And 12 E, Ms. Hanna, for that record. All right, this is the third reading. This is 12 F. In order to amend the agreement for development of a joint industrial park by adding certain real property associated with it with the economic development project known as Gemstone, which we've also identified as Candy Root Lodge, we have the first and second reading as indicated in the packet. Is there a motion on third reading? Mr. Chairman, I make a motion. Mr. Thompson has a motion. Is there a second? Yes.

I'll second.

Okay, Mr. Shoemake seconds. Mr. Tomlinson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think with this being third reading, I don't have any further discussion related to the ordinance.

Okay, and I'll just note that it is just Candy Root Lodge. They're not LLCs or entities other than those associated with either operating or owning the dirt and golf project over there. And Mr. Shoemake, you had the second.

I think your clarification addressed the one question.

And then also one other clarification. There's no requirement. Often we do have industrial parks or county related economic development parks where you'll have an aggregation of businesses that go together. That does that does occur but also for these mkips you can have non-contiguous parcels go together Some of them that might come to mind would be like sue omen and kind of stands off on its own but if it's going to be eligible for a Any type of tax incentive or a filo agreement then it need to be added to an mkip by state law and so I think laser form might be another one of those. They're just a few I was thinking of and

So, Mr chair, put another way, if we were not to put it in an industrial park, we would endanger our ability to have the golf course because the field itself would be in danger.

Correct. It's a technicality of sorts. Correct. So it's pretty common, as the chairman stated as well, just for your point of clarification, ma'am, if there's a LLC that owns the land and leases it to the business or something of that nature, they would all be included in the package and so that that may you know perk somebody's eyes up say hey what's going on here but uh fellows that i've seen in my tenure have all been to to one specific project and um i'll say this i I'm a really bad golfer, but I like playing, and Candy Root let it play out today, and I couldn't even get logged on. They got bogged down so quickly. I think their play from October until the end of the year sold out in a half hour or so. And I was trying to get a team from our work to be able to play and literally couldn't even get logged in because of so many people hitting the site. I think it's a fantastic project for Kershaw County. As I've heard, I hadn't seen the golf course yet, but as many as four golf courses. It reminds me of something like Pinehurst up in North Carolina where they have multiple golf courses, PGA events. I think it could be a tremendous economic value for our community. So I'm glad they're here. I'm glad that we're able to do these things and promote good businesses here in Kershaw County. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Brousel. Any other discussion from those who are present? Seeing none, Mr. Tucker, any discussion? And how do you vote?

No discussion. I vote yes.

That's a yes vote on 12F, third reading from Mr. Tucker. All who are present and voting, raise your hand if you're in favor on 12F. That is Shoemake, Brazel, Connell, Cato, and Tomlinson. In favor, any opposed? Mr. Jones opposed. It passes on third reading. All right, that brings us to item number 13A. This is a new business item. Mr. Administrator, great to hear from you tonight. Thank you. Do you need a motion or is this an update in summary?

This requires a vote because what this does is that, and there's some handouts at each of your places there that give a little more background on the candidates, but this is our grievance committee and we are obligated to have a grievance committee and this just helps us refresh and renew some of those members to keep us going.

Yes, sir. I remember discussing this last meeting and then having it up for... actual approval this go-round. Do we have a motion on item number 13A regarding appointments for Employee Relations Committee?

I so move.

Mr. Jones has a motion, is there a second? Second. Mr. Thompson has a second. Any discussion?

I'm just glad to see these two men at the end getting along.

Okay, seeing no other discussion from those who are present, Mr. Tucker, any discussion and how do you vote? uh no discussion thank you mr templar i vote yes and again just to clarify this is approving the names indicated in the packet submitted edgar neal bridget gerald natasha simon and autumn furnace correct and yes again okay um we already have a vote for mr tucker all those in favor who are present voting raise your hand We have, it is unanimous in favor, Ms. Hanna, and passes. All business placed on, I think you requested a two-meeting punt on this one regarding inmate work crews and road crews. Mr. Brazel, are you ready to bring it up tonight under 14A?

I think the thing that I wanted to do is have... our jail administrator talked to us. I don't have anything further to talk about, and I'd like to have our administrator come bring us the information for the public, not for me, for the public.

He is here tonight.

Oh, yeah. That'd be great.

So is there any votes required or just for discussion?

No, I'd just like to hear about the ability to better clean our community.

Okay, so we have a motion to have discussion on this old business item. Can I take it as that?

Yeah, we'll do that. And do we have a second? Second.

All right, we have a second.

Yes, sir. I think he was hiding back there. I didn't see him. Thanks for being here tonight.

I feel bad we could have put this in. Thanks for having me, Mr. Chair and Council members, I was I came prepared to answer any questions that you may have in regards to detainee workers. I do know that there were some questions as related to having detainee workers to go out and work on the outside. Typically, we don't allow Detainee workers will go out there unless they are sentenced, and these are sentenced family court individuals. Year to date, we've only had 16 individuals that would have qualified, and at no given time did we have 16 individuals inside the jail at the same time. We would have normally three or four at that time, and then we would have those working inside of our kitchen or doing laundry or things like that. Uh, 1 of the things and I'm, I'm happy that you brought up. How can we keep our, uh, our community clean? Uh, we have not had any individuals who are actually sentenced to litter detail within the last 3 years or so. I've only been here in this county for just for just over a year. However, my research tells me historically. There's been somewhere in excess of 3 years. We have not had any individuals who were actually sentenced to litter detail. So with this being said, if they are sentenced to litter detail, we could take those individuals out and have them to actually police the grounds and make sure that we can beautify our county.

Okay, so that's interesting. Before we get too deep into that, I've got a question. If you had a group that wanted to go out that were... non-sentenced volunteer group, would that be possible and or feasible?

Well, we have to look at this. These individuals who are not actually sentenced as of yet, these are individuals that are in General Sessions court and these individuals typically are not the ones that you want to take on the outside because that would increase liability. Say that an additional crime was committed say that they tried to run or say that there was an injury that had occurred. We have to really You run a really slippery slope on that because you could stand to actually violate the 14th amendment right as well. So, and there's some history behind that in 1979 case between the bill bill the wolfish case. So, with that, when you look at that, you can see that there are some risks that are involved that the county would actually face by putting these kinds of detainees outside and making them work.

well tell me tell me back years ago how that how that worked because i certainly know at some point it was common practice it was common practice tell me tell me how that worked then and how it changed because i've never been in law enforcement so i've never i've never worked in your world so i'd like to learn more so there's a lot less family court individuals as of right now

Historically, there were more family court individuals. As of recent, there just have not been that magnitude of family court individuals who are present inside of our jail. So again, like 16 detainees year to date have been inside of our detention center that would have qualified for this kind of program. But it was not 16 individuals who were present at the same time. They were not there in tandem. So there were maybe three or four here or there. So we can count them all together. Since January, there's been 16. Historically, there were a lot more than that. And I'm sure that you can probably even go back to even the time when you had Mr. Jones, who was actually the jail director in his season. There was a lot more who were sentenced to family court in his day and time.

If I may, Russ. Yeah, of course. He's absolutely correct on that. We had a lot more family courts, it seems like, 25 years ago than there is now. And, Doctor, I'm so glad Danny brought you here. You're doing a great job. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. But, you know, you have to, and he may correct me on this because laws change, but one thing that you can do is you have to have a separate person, like a liaison between the courts and the jail that spends nothing but time on that to say, okay, help the judges get educated in doctrine with the fact that sentenced more to litter, weekend litter pickup, stuff like that. But, I mean, if you don't have the sentenced inmates in the jail, you can't do it.

Right. So, I appreciate that clarification. What was the second portion that you brought up, being sentenced to a litter detail?

So, the recommendation was that we can get with our magistrates and perhaps sentence some individuals who would fall within that qualification guideline to Little detail and that way we could have we could still take them out. Historically, from what I understand that these individuals actually paid a certain fee in order to be sentenced to that little detail. These are conversations that we are prepared to have myself. My command is that we are definitely prepared to have that with the magistrates to see if we could revisit. that practice and that could definitely provide us with some individuals that would be able to go out and to continue to enhance and beautify our lovely county.

So you would be comfortable and willing to do that?

We have staff that will, yes, absolutely.

You and your staff, yes, sir. Yes. Could I be privy to those meetings just because I'm curious to know how it works, and I'd love to see the conversations and a result. Absolutely. Just to watch, if you will.

He's an open book.

absolutely that'd be fantastic thank you so much i really appreciate your time i appreciate you taking the time to be here tonight that means you care about what you do it means you you care about the job that you do and and that impresses me it's a mission sir anybody anybody that um isn't willing to come to the mic and and properly explain we've had several fantastic um conversations tonight, you know, starting with the sheriff and now yourself and others. So I do appreciate it very much. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Braswell. Danny, thank you for having him here.

Any other questions from council members who are present? Satisfied everybody here? Mr. Tucker, anything remotely?

Just tell Dr. Gordon thank you for what he do. He and his staff.

Thank you, sir. Thanks for what you do. Thank you. Mr. Templer, anything else needed on that? No, sir. No votes required on 14A. Thank you, sir. Good job. Thank you so much. Next up, we've got council member briefings. Mr. Cato.

I'm going to be very brief tonight. First and foremost, I want to thank the family of Officer Chris DeLong for being here tonight. And again, my heart goes out to you. Not just tonight, but in the days ahead, there's going to be some long, hard times for this family. And my prayers will continue for you all as you go through this time. I do want to reiterate what some of the others have said. I appreciate the sheriff and everybody to come out and speak tonight and give us some information detention center and uh the wonderful presentations and the way they brought them i want to thank you for that second or thirdly and lastly uh i want to again remind you this will be our last meeting before the first annual chair competition chair comp competition at the north central high school called bone town brawl So that'll take place September the 19th.

Is it a bloody knuckle?

Well, it might be if they get to fighting. You fighting? No, it's a cheer competition. I've never been a cheerleader.

Y'all please respect Mr. Cato's time. He's talking about cheerleading.

Thank you. Thank you very much. But yes, please come out and support these cheerleaders from all over, from all over different schools here at North Central on September the 19th.

Thank you, Mr. Cato. Mr. Tomlinson. Mr. Chairman, I have nothing tonight. Mr. Jones.

Yes. First off, I mean, it breaks your heart when you lose one of your police officers or firemen, you know, anybody in the first responders. But I want to say this. I think you deserved it. Thank you. I know you worked very hard. You haven't said anything about it. I don't mean to embarrass you. But you worked very hard. to pull the visual together that they had in Elgin, and you worked very hard on some of the things for the town of Elgin, and I appreciate that for this family. And that's all I have.

Thank you, Mr. Jones. Mr. Tucker, anything remotely to report? No report tonight. Thank you. Mr. Shoemake.

Yeah, just very briefly, again, obviously, all our hearts go out to the DeLong family. That's awful and I meant what I said, we need to remember as a community to keep this young woman in our thoughts in the next years and wants to come also wanted to briefly address. I think we still have remember the current year back there by Johnny. We got an email today. There was some questions about data centers and I'm more than happy. She asked a question. So I've been pretty clear about this, but as we have these data center discussions. She had sent me three questions. Do I support the moratorium? I just voted for it, so that's a yes. Concerns I have about data centers. You know, one thing I think is important is, and I've said this before, we have to be very careful about closing the door to new technology. Not saying that we should be all in on data centers, but I'm also saying I'm absolutely not anti-data center. And so in terms of what we do at the end of that moratorium period, it would be my hope that we have a set of regulations we can roll out and have data centers, if they make sense, if they do reclaimed water, And if they have their own power supply, we look at data centers, you know, as a single, you know, look at 1 off projects for data centers. But I think that it's a much larger discussion over this next year. Uh, to me, this moratorium is not as closing the door to data centers, nor is it kicking the door open. I think it's really important that we keep an honest and open mind to. That business and any other business, so that's all I have.

Thank you. Mr. Mr. Brazil.

um i'd like to thank everybody for coming that spoke a lot of good valid concerns tonight a lot of concerns that that i share as well as as we navigate data centers and and flock cameras and all these sorts of things um i want to be very clear We have concerns. I have concerns. My family, my children, my wife, we talk about these things from time to time. And we also have these general concerns and we have the opportunity to do something about it. And so we're having real conversations about what's beneficial and then what's, you know, you can look at communist China and they've got cameras everywhere. They're literally tracking people. Far be it for us or me to support something like that. I think that's insanity on a next level. So I do appreciate everybody being here. I do want to verbalize those thoughts. you know I think these things a lot to myself and uh fail to enunciate and just verbalize these things that that they're concerns they're real concerns and we have to make sure that Kershaw County is protecting the citizens in the correct way and um we've got a great sheriff there's no doubt about it that we've got a great sheriff um you know to hear someone speak and say you know what we went this direction a few years ago i think maybe four or five years ago they may have started with a few cameras i'm not i'm not totally sure but i know that anytime you go through the the southern connector in greenville it takes a picture of your license plate and if you don't pay the toll they send you a bill so that's been in place for a long time so i've thought about these things as as we've um as we've talked but i think that the thing that maybe frightens us, is where does it go from here? And where does this end? And at what point is it maddening versus helpful? And to hear Lee Bone say, hey, look, if this is... not the will of of the citizens of kershaw county and if this is not proven to be helpful this is something that we may do away with this is something that we may take a second look i think that's a i think that's a bold statement and a brave statement from someone not just digging their heels in and saying no it's my way or the highway i like that i like the the fact that um That someone can can look at everybody's point of view, so I appreciate all of that and i'll let my colleagues. thoughts uh regarding chris delong um i hesitate to to even say this but my wife casey taught chris and i think it was a sixth grade and it's been heavy on her heart but not nearly as heavy as it's been on the family and so i that's i don't want that to be the focus of of my comment um god bless them all we we stand to support them as as our sheriff said um the community came out south carolina showed up in elgin and and i was really proud to to be from kershaw county in that moment that moment was special honoring someone's life that was lost in such a tragic way so um thank you all and god bless everybody have a good night thank you thank you mr brazel i'll just

Share my deep condolences again for the McKenzie and DeLong families. Laverne McKenzie was an outstanding man. He was a God-fearing man. He cared about his family deeply. There's never a conversation I or anyone else I think had with him that he didn't focus on family and his faith. And I don't know how many homes in Kershaw County have a legacy of McKenzie furniture there in their household. But may we all remember them and our prayers and lift them up and the DeLong family. Those children tonight, just so touching. That's really what's truly important in life. And so may we lift them up in prayer as well. That concludes my report. Mr. Templer, do you have anything for us?

Yes, or just a few things, just a few announcements. Uh, we got a library book sale going on friends of the library. Annual book sales starts this Thursday at the old armory. Over by the rec department, uh, 1034 West account street and then we open on September 11th, 13th and September 18th and 20th. Also, voter registration will be hosting. Are you ready to vote drop in event on September fifteenth from five to six thirty at the voter registration office, eleven to seventeen Broad Street. Um, they'll just check your and update any registry every any voter registration information you may have and make sure you're good to go for our next elections. So that's all I have.

Thank you. Mr. Mr. Anything nonprivileged.

Yes, sir.

And for clarification, there's no vote anticipated from any proposed executive session tonight?

Correct.

All right, gentlemen, we have up next item number 18. This would be A through C, three items for executive session. These are all under SC code 30-4-70. A2 related to matters subject to attorney-client privilege, potential claims, or other matters related to thereto or contractual arrangements. Do we have a motion to enter executive session on items A2 and A3? So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor of entering executive session on these items, raise your hand. It's unanimous for those present and voting. Mr. Tucker, how do you vote?

Yes.

We are in executive session. No vote anticipated. All in favor of exiting executive session, raise your hand. We're out of executive session.

Mr. Chairman, I make a motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn. Second? Thank you, everyone. We have a second. All in favor?