County Council - Regular Meeting

At this time, I will call to order the 05/18/2026 County Council meeting. Just stand with me for the pledge of allegiance and invocation. Dear heavenly father, we thank you for the many blessings that you've given us. We especially thank you for living in a free country where we have the ability to govern ourselves and to gather and to talk and to speak out in favor of the things that we support and to speak out against the things that we don't. Lord, we thank you for that.

We ask you to bless our county, to bless our citizens. We thank you for our many employees who do the work of our community. We ask that you put your arm of protection around all of those that serve us in uniform, protect their families, both here and abroad. We ask for your wisdom and guidance here tonight that the decisions we make and the discussion we have would be glorifying to you, and that would be in the best interest of the people that we serve. In Jesus' name, amen.

Wanna welcome everyone here tonight. We do have an agenda that does not have any public hearings tonight. So we do not have any oath of office or appearances scheduled. We do have a public forum session. And the public forum session is an opportunity for us to listen, to listen to the concerns of our community.

We allow 15 individuals. It's first come, first served to come and sign up on the sheet to speak out on a matter that's important to them. What I would ask you do if you are here to speak, I will call your name. If you'll come to the podium, if you'll give your name and address before you start speaking, and if you'll keep in mind that that you are limited to two minutes because we do have an agenda to complete. There will be on the screen, it will let you know when you're getting close to your time to be done.

So if you could kindly cut off your comments before I have to, I would very much appreciate that. If we would we would ask that. A lot of times, folks folks come to counsel and they're very passionate about things. We appreciate that. What we what we ask is in order to keep decorum is that folks refrain from clapping or hooting and hollering or booing.

We wanna ensure that this is a safe space for individuals to come and to speak their mind and to do so without feeling like they can't. If you are here with a group and you think it's important to recognize the group that's here with you instead of hooting and hollering. You can say, hey, I'd like to recognize the folks that are here with me to share the concern that I have. If you kindly keep your comments respectful and civil and appreciate all that. So our first individual is Frank Jernack.

My name is Frank Jernack. I live in Fort Mill. Good evening, council members. I'm retired. I live long enough to recognize arrogance when I see it, and your county government has become arrogant. You ask citizens to trust you while you spend their money like it grows on trees. The proposed fiscal year twenty twenty seven budget reads like a government that has completely lost touch with the people paying for it. More positions, more spending, more studies, always more studies. You know what retirees call that? Dollar tax is for the price tag.

Meanwhile, ordinary citizens are struggling to survive rising taxes, insurance hikes, grocery bills, and utility costs, all while this county keeps expanding itself like an empire. Self Rep should have been the wake up call. Instead, it exposed the government more concerned with defending itself than protecting the public. Citizens urge for transparency. They got legal maneuvering.

Citizens raised safety concerns, they got talking points. Citizens asked for accountability, they got stonewalled. Shame on a culture where citizens are treated like enemies, where legal fees pile up, where disagreement is marked, and where bureaucrats behave like untouchable nobles inside castle walls, all while taxpayers fund the banquet. Some of you may recall from your oath these three words, preserve, protect, and defend. Your county government seems to have forgotten who they serve.

I hope I have left you with something to think about, but that was my intention. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Jared Morocco.

My name is Jared Morocco. I live in Fort Mill. Good evening, council. I'm a York County resident. I pay my taxes. I follow the rules. I believe local government existed to protect citizens first. Instead, I see a government that protects insiders, developers, and its ego while ordinary citizens get ignored, lied to, and buried in bureaucratic nonsense. And now we're staring at another bloated budget, more positions, more studies, more consultants, more bureaucracy feeding itself. You know what we hear when government says additional external studies?

We hear, we already made the decision. Now we're spending your money to justify it. Shame on every elected official who chooses to circle the wagons around failed leadership instead of defending the people who elected you. Silphab exposed to everything, the zoning confusion, the backroom maneuvering, the endless statements trying to explain away what citizens can plainly see. And the proposed solution is what? More consultants, more studies, more management layers, more lawyers? No. The problem is mismanagement. Healthy organizations do not constantly need damage control. Healthy governments do not fight their own citizens and burn public trust to protect administrators.

Stop defending management. Start defending your county citizens. Thank you.

Bill Dunlap.

Bill Dunlap, 2633 Saluda Road. Good evening, council. I'd like to, talk on the, fire budget for the upcoming '27 budget on some items I support, some items I don't support. I'd like, I don't support all the citizens in all 16 fire districts across the county having to fund extra firefighters and proposed budget for one single fire department. I'd like to ask the council and management to support a fire tax the the fire tax districts to do their own tax referendum to increase their millage.

And that way, they they can support their own districts with new employees. Tax districts have been able to meet their own needs since the eighties, late eighties when the tax districts were created. Let's continue to do that and not use the entire fire tax in the county to do so. Let's have a plan for the future of the fire service that everyone can agree on both sides. I support the upcoming budget for to pay for the South Carolina firefighter dues for all 16 departments.

I support an increase for the equipment allocations for the departments. For example, a set of turnout gear for one firefighter from head to toe is $6,000, and we're increasing it from 20,000 to 25,000. That'll get us roughly four sets a year with that and have a thousand dollars to buy some worn out equipment. I support increase for equipment allocate, excuse me. I don't support increase for the county suppression squads to beat from to four squads. Let's get the three squads that we got working better again with the fire department's input, which had some been done since we've had it created for over seven years.

Thank you.

I've got something that I've I've gave to all of you for to be able to read.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. Bert, Carrie.

Hey. Good evening. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. My name is Bert Carey. I live at 124 Charlotte Street here in York. I'll be short and sweet. I'm here to talk about the budget. One look at the budget, and I had to look at my paycheck. I'm gonna bring you right down to the to the ground level. Alright? I had to look at my paycheck. I just got a merit increase. I worked for a little little tiny company. I'm not here to speak it on their behalf. I'm speaking on my behalf.

A merit increase the the maximum merit increase in the entire company this year was 3%. 3%. I'm looking at these numbers, and it's more than my 3%. Just one one budget is gonna eat up everything that I've that I've worked for to to make as a merit increase. You're gonna take it away.

For what? This is one of the fastest growing places in the country, not in the state, in the country. York and Fort Mill are two of the fastest growing cities of their kind in the entire country. There's more people moving in. That's tax revenue. Use it appropriately. Use it right. Don't put the burden on us, the ones who already live here. You're making sales tax. You're making property tax. You're making all kinds of tax revenue from these new people moving in. Your budget is fine. It takes management. Do your jobs. I appreciate your time.

Thank you, sir. Steve Penland.

My name is Steve Pedlan, and I live at 6457 Campbell Road in York County. I would like for you to know that for the first time, myself and several residents on Campbell Road did receive a notification about this present scheduled QTS community meeting held on May 12. This past Saturday, the group, York County Citizens for Responsible Growth, held its first community meeting and was attended by almost a 100 residents. There were 11 items presented. One topic was water usage.

QTS has stated that the facility will use a closed loop cooling system that should save millions of gallons of water annually, and water will be supplied by a municipal water system. QTS has also stated multiple times that no water wells will be drilled to supply water to the project. Groundwater use is a high concern for our residents in the area where almost all utilize wells for their water supply. Data center locations where wells were utilized to service or contribute to the facility, groundwater depletion has caused reduced water pressure, residents' wells to run dry or produce milky contaminated water, particularly in areas already facing drought. I would recommend that if water wells were drilled to service data center, that the company be fined and shut down until wells were capped.

This data center is similar to the Fayetteville, Georgia location where 70,000,000 gallons of municipal water was used last year on one building. That's close to us. That's what we're looking at most likely from the first building going into operation. The construction company that built the QTS data center is on Camel Road has purchased one year permit to take unlimited water from nine hydrants on Camel Road at the cost of $630 per permit. That is $5,670 to draw as much water as they want for a full year. Since this water is unmetered, there is no record of how much water is present presently being drawn from the hydrants during this drought.

Thank you, sir. Carl Falk.

I'm Carl Falk. I live at 3755 Total Pond Drive, Rock Hill, South Carolina. I was here last week and talked on the budget. I agree with what chief Dunlap had to say tonight. He's went a lot more in-depth than what I did. But we're working with a double edged sword. Council has come and found, items in the budget that they won't explain. They don't understand. And so, from my understanding, you turned the budget down last week, and that's what ought to be done. Somebody's got to be accountable for these budgets.

You just can't have a budget and not be accountable for the money and where it comes from. It's a hard job, but I had to commend you to doing what you do and how you work with it. I just want us to be contingent, and I wish y'all would all work together, but I know that's impossible. But at least y'all can give it a good try. Thank you for what you do. Carl Falk, chief of the fire department.

Too. Sir. Scott Cocanauer.

Hey, everybody. Scott Coconauer. One two two West Oak Street in beautiful Whitehall Park neighborhood downtown Fort Mill. Thirty four year resident there now. Went to a town workshop where we're looking at an ebike ordinance. We got kids on ebike that are just going too fast. So we're gonna do an ebike ordinance. And after that, we're gonna do the big wheels and the electric scooters. So I would like the opportunity for the county to maybe look at doing this too. Maybe we can get together on it. We got and, you know, too too too much of that going on. And by the way, I am also big daddy e biker on Instagram, if you wanna follow me on Instagram. So you can do that. I'm in favor of the Sam Smith sidewalk. I'm in favor of the bike trail master plan.

I am in favor of new business item number one, which is the mobile command unit. Thank you, staff, for getting that back on the agenda for tonight in new business. I was disappointed that it was deferred last meeting. It was just deferred, put out in space. There was no date on that deferral. So, anyway, good job by whoever got that back on here for new business. That's a much, much needed vehicle for everybody. For the budget, we may need another public hearing. I hate to say it that way, but I'm afraid there's gonna be stuff coming. We may have to have another public hearing on it. I am in favor of impact fees. We're talking fire departments. We're getting a new fire department in Mesa Bend in Fort Mill. The fire department across from Calaveras High School, impact fees paid for that, not taxpayers. That's growth paying for growth.

That's what we need. Oh, Thursday, I ride into the shop, 07:30, Google Fiber, burying fiber in front of the shop. They're in the right of way, they got the right to do it. Didn't notify us. I got with mister Hamilton. Didn't notify mister Hamilton either. So SCDOT was supposed to do all that for us. So, anyway, we know there's gonna be road improvement coming there, so we've got fiber being buried. Somebody's gonna pay to relocate it. I'm gonna have a few hours out of my life because they're throwing fescue seed on my Bermuda side. And so, you know, I'm not gonna allow that. So I've I've sited that myself. I put irrigation myself. So, anyway, we'll work that out with Google Fiber though. Hey. Appreciate everything I'll do. Thanks again.

Thank you, sir. Gloria Langley.

I'll let you

Gloria Langley? I'm sorry.

Signed up accidentally.

You don't wanna sign? Okay. Alright. Michael Thornton?

I don't really have a prepared speech. My name is Michael Thornton, and I live at 1311 Leland Court here in York. I was I had gone to a meeting last Sunday, and they talked about the QTS data center. And I was really appalled at how the how this whole thing was kinda pushed through. There was no government in the sunshine.

It all just seemed like smoky backroom healings. And the thing that is, in God we trust. Every one of y'all gonna have to stand before our creator God and account for what you have done. Because all these people that their properties are being diminished in price, the toxic waste of the diesel fuel that's going to be stored on-site, thousands, thousands, and thousands of gallons, the water that's supposed to be pumped out of the ground. Because I heard from one of your council members as we talked about it, and they said that the old system where it's gonna be water's gonna be pumped out of the ground for the cooling was still intact, that the recirculating system was not to be used on these first buildings.

So, guys, this is on y'all. This is between you guys, this community, God almighty. That's it.

Thank you, sir. Typically, don't respond to comments from folks, but I think when there when there's blatant misinformation, we just need to address that. And in this particular case, everything that council has been told is that QTS will have to be and is on water and sewer. There are no ground wells, and the council has also got pending legislation that does not allow any ground wells to be used for any any data centers. So I I do think it's important that we clarify that. Larry Bird.

Go ahead. Yes. I did.

Good evening, honorable counselors. My name is Larry Bird. 375 Starlight Drive, Fort Mill. Thank you for letting me speak tonight. Thank you for your service, all of you. I request that you look at at the overall budget and see where you can reduce spending and not increase taxes. Please look at any programs that can be cut or reduced in size so that taxes will not have to be raised. Specifically, you know, this data center coming in, I mean, electricity will probably be raised to people. People are having a hard time making a living, buying groceries, paying their taxes, taking care of their kids, taking care of their clothes, but things like that. I'd like you to be sure to look very carefully at that budget.

Where can you cut? What do you need? What do you don't need? Now some things that can be looked at, just for some cuts. How about some community programs, special initiatives or pilot programs?

How about administrative overhead? Duplicate roles across departments, excessive management layers, contracted administrative services that can be consolidated. Another one that may be like you to look at is vendor contracts and procurement. IT service contracts, maintenance contracts, waste management. How about capital projects deferral such as building renovations, equipment upgrades, new facilities?

How about another one would be fleet management, reducing take home vehicles, extending replacement cycles, pulling vehicles across departments. Twelve seconds. Wow. Another one would be technology and software sprawl and overtime and staffing structure. Another one would be energy and facilities operations, closing under unused buildings, reducing operating hours, etcetera, etcetera.

Thank you, sir.

And we thank you very much. And I just wonder how many people here are against this tax increase. Stand up, please.

Ron Wathan.

Hi. Ron Wathan. 1692 Wedgefield Drive. Few meetings excuse me. A few meetings back, there was a slide displayed here to show how low property taxes has stayed over the last ten years or so in York County.

While everyone appreciates paying low property taxes, I would gladly pay double what I pay now if it meant not living next to a data center, but I wasn't given a choice. I was lucky enough last year to be able to retire. My wife, Sharon, who's here with me tonight, and I were looking forward to spending retirement in our peaceful neighborhood of Allison Acres going for daily walks around the neighborhood, ended off with a cool drink on the porch trying to identify what birds we hear singing in our yard. But now there's days we don't even hear the birds at all because of the QTS construction noise. On those days, our conversation usually leads to talks of relocation trying to determine where we would like to be to get away from this noise because according to QTS, this construction is going to last another seven years.

That's just on the first parcel of land, another seven to nine on the next 400 that'll probably develop. Not what we wanna spend our retirement listening to, but we weren't given a choice. I don't know where relocation might take us, but we certainly know it'll be out of York County and that we do have a choice in. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Sean Donahue?

Good evening, counsel. Sean Donahue, House And Acres Subdivision. I wanna first thank you all for your service. You're citizens just like us, and I do believe in the American dream, and you guys serving here are part of that. And I thank you all. I also wanna thank you all for your time that you took to consider coming to our event on Saturday where we did discuss more about the QTS data center. Instead of going to the sales pitches, we've done the research. We've compiled a lot of research, and we'll be more than welcome to share it with Right now, it's kind of god's providence that the poor gentleman before me spoke about this, but I'm gonna let you listen to QTS tonight. Right now, I wanna take a moment of silence. Ten seconds.

We can watch on the clock. So ten seconds. That's background noise of 44 decibels for a baseline in this room. What I'm gonna play right now is from one of our residents in the area of this, you know Basic what was it? UTS' buffer area.

So let's play. Yeah. So you might be able to say it was maybe 60. My speaker can't even get loud enough in here, but that rumble is a twenty four seven that our residents are listening to for seven to ten years. This could have been a mine.

I guess it is. There's a QR code with the baseline of this lady's backyard and this video for public record.

Sir.

Thank you all.

Julie Ferrara.

Hi, council members. First, wanna thank you for your time, thank you for your service, and I thank you for giving us time here. My name is Julie Ferraro. I live in Vander Lakes. I would like to address the pending proposed ordinance amendments for data centers.

First, I wanna start out by saying we realize, unfortunately, that there is a need for these data centers as we all use technology and the demand is growing. We realize that in order to keep up with other countries who are not friendly to The US, we must keep up with technology. We are not ignorant to that fact. But what we are opposed to is the location of them, and that is not the only impact that the end result will have on citizens, and that is the whole other discussion. But it's the life altering detrimental impact, the years and years of endless noise and stress, damage to property during construction it has on the citizens that no one really is talking about.

It's very concerning that these factors were not considered when approving a sale to a data center next to residential properties, schools, farms, and thousands and thousands of citizens nearby when there were other options. In the May 6 planning and zoning meeting, there were consideration for increased buffer material of a 100 feet to bring the building heights back to 60 feet and increase setbacks from residential property lines from the covenant 70 feet, and most importantly, to place a moratorium on any new construction permits until more research could be done, which was shot down by one of the representatives, which triggered an executive session. When you came out of that executive session, nothing was resolved, and we were told there would be more discussion and another meeting. We do appreciate the consideration now to place stricter restrictions, but hindsight is twenty twenty. So currently, site plan for 400 acres with nine eighty foot buildings within 70 feet of a residential property line with upward of 542 gigantic diesel generators that will spew noxious chemicals in the air on a rotating basis throughout the month.

If these restrictions are important now, they're enough to be considered necessary, then why weren't they before? My hope is that you will have some compassion when considering these order ordinance changes and approve the moratorium on future permits until the changes in the ordinance can be made and to also include any new permit request for the existing property to be made to conform to the new order.

Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you for your time.

We read

that quickly. Zach Wilson.

Hey there, council. My name is Zach Wilson. I live, right down the road. I even don't know the name of it, but it's in District 2. Appreciate you guys taking the time to listen to me.

I came out because of the, the data center issue. Frankly, at this point, it feels kind of a hopeless endeavor, but I feel nonetheless that it's it's my civic duty to show up and voice my displeasure with it. From multiple standpoints, you've heard others speak on it, the water consumption, the electricity usage. Things are things are hard for those of us that are coming up in this world. I've got two daughters that I'm I'm trying to raise to be god fearing children to enjoy nature around us and then to have to drive down past that amalgamation of metal and see what we've done to this planet that god has graced us with.

It's very disheartening, but I stand here before you today to to make it known that there are those of us that that don't enjoy it. And I I support a moratorium on any new construction. I don't know if there's anything we can do at this point to stop what's already been set in motion, but I I urge you to think about it and know that there are those of us that don't support this. I I'm I'm not much of a public speaker. I feel like I've been rambling, but I just I appreciate you guys being here and listening to those of us that are trying to raise children in this world, and that I want them to see the beauty of the world, not just steel and metal and technology. So I I appreciate all your time. Hopefully, something will come of it.

Thank you, sir. Peter McVane.

Thank you. Peter McVane. 907 Lake Club Drive in Rock Hill. I spoke last Tuesday about the rural fire tax increase of 1 mil. I would urge you again to consider putting the full 1 mil back on that. None of us likes taxes, but we all know that taxes, we have to pay them for our services and we want services. We need trash. We need planning. We need attorneys. All of this.

But even more importantly to me is the fact that we need to avoid huge tax increases. I commented last week that a million and a half dollar house with a rural fire tax board would cost a cup of Starbucks once a month. The average house cost in York County is somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000. That's $20 a year. I would much rather pay 20 to 60 or $120 a year in increases rather than three years down the road get hit with a 5 or $600 tax increase.

It's much easier to handle a small increment. I would urge you, you have hired tremendously talented people to work for this county. The county manager, the assistant county managers, the people that work for them are extremely talented. Please listen to them, take their advice, and work with them to come up with an answer. Thank you for your time because I know each of you puts in a good number of hours a month, probably sixty plus, and you're not getting anywhere as close to the minimum wage. But please take your time, work with the county staff. They're talented. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. That concludes our public forum session. We do appreciate folks coming out tonight to speak and to address the council. Our next item in business is the consent agenda. Do we have a motion?

Motion to approve. Second.

Motion and a second to approve consent agenda. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Hearing none, consent agenda is approved. We move now to our first item of old business. I'll give folks looks like some folks are leaving. So our first item of old business is to have second reading on the budget. I will say that given the discussion last time, I'll just let council know the way I intend to approach it is if we can get once I finish reading, if we can get a motion to approve and then I will allow each council member the floor to make any amendments or ask any questions that they want to do.

That way everybody will have the opportunity to share whatever it is that they wanna share on council. Alright. Council to consider second reading of an ordinance to establish the operating and capital budgets for the operation of the county government of York County for the fiscal year commencing 07/01/2026 to provide for the levy of taxes for York County for the fiscal year commencing 07/01/2026 to provide for the expenditure of tax revenues and other county funds to establish a consolidated fee schedule for all existing county fees relative to the operation of county government, its boards, agencies, and department, and to provide for other matters related there too.

Motion to approve with the cuts that were proven first read.

Second.

Motion to approve. I didn't hear the rest

of that.

Just Alright.

Just yeah. It's motion.

Okay. Motion to approve, and there's a second. Any discussion?

Yep. Yeah.

Hang

on a minute. We gotta we gotta get a vote on the right? What want

do I No. We're discussion.

We still have We have a motion and a second.

Yeah.

Do I need do I need to call for a vote in order to get to discussion point of order? I can't even remember.

You have a motion and a second. If you wanna go ahead and open up discussion on the main motion, can. Yeah. Or you can do amendments and circle back to discussion on the main motion at the end.

I think we still I think we still have to approve first the motion and second. We don't we just go straight to amendments, run down the line.

If we vote on it, it's approved. Yeah.

Good point. So you have the

It's been a late night. Good point.

You have the motion and the second. So if you wanna wait and have any discussion on the just the main part of that motion. First, you can do your amendments, have discussion on those, and then you can come back to the main motion and vote on it.

So that it's clear to to you all and to me too. We have the way that we're gonna address this is we've made a motion to approve first reading which allows us the opportunity to start taking up discussion in order to take up discussion in a in a more rational way, and that gives an opportunity for every council member to have their say. What we'll do is we'll allow each council member the floor in order to make any amendments or comments.

Alright. You ready?

You're gonna go first. Thank you, sir.

Of course.

I don't think it's gonna go quite as smooth as we hope. I mean, there's just a lot of amendments and things to take care of. The very first amendment I would like to make is to revert the budget back to the recommended budget prior to first reading.

Second.

Motion and a second. Any discussion? Only and this is as to the amendment. The amendment? The amendment is to revert the the whole budget back to what was done before first reading.

You wanna Yeah. Let me I'll I'll say this, and I'm part of the the the thought process of going back to the original offering of the budget, and then we tackle it one by one. Basically, what what Tom and others, Watts, myself, Andy, Debbie, Tommy, We can pick these items off one by one. It makes it a cleaner version instead of trying to add things back. If if there's a consensus on what needs to come out, that's a cleaner way than trying to go back and put things back in there.

It's clean if we just start over from the beginning and if each each individual council member wants to take something out, that's a cleaner way to do it. And we're not voting on a package of amendments like we did the first time. That was very confusing. I wanted to vote for some of the items that was in there. I didn't wanna vote for some that were in there. So I voted against it because I couldn't stomach what I didn't wanna see. There are some things that came out of the budget I wanna support individually, but I didn't support the package totally. So I think it's a cleaner version if we just do it that way, revert back to the original, then pull out what we don't want. It's easy to spit out what you don't want than to swallow what you don't want.

Any other discussion on the proposed amendment?

Yeah. I just wanted to, reiterate that that, I agree. I think it's gonna be I thought about it long and hard and I think it's gonna be messy trying to add back and and making sure that what was added back completely covered, what was removed or not removed. And, just to make it easy for all the audience and everybody that's watching to understand this, make it easy for staff to keep up with it. I just think we should start at the beginning and do these more as a line item veto type thing than this big mass, like, problem that we have currently because I have a feeling.

I'm hoping that, after spending three hours in a workshop last week determining what all of the the consequences of all of these cuts were gonna be that maybe some of that stuff can be needs to be fixed anyway. Any

other discussion on the amendment?

I just concur with what's been said.

Any other discussion? I I don't support the amendment. I think that we had four council members who voted and I think we should proceed with what was approved, from first reading. All those in favor of the amendment, aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Opposed. Do we have noes? Yeah. Alright. So the amendment fails. As it stands right now, the motion where we start from will be from what was approved at first reading. Alright.

Well, I guess the first amendment that, I would like to cover is, I would like to remove the special counsel attorney funding from the budget. It's $277,000. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion?

I just wanna say, I'm supporting removing it now because so much has come up around it. It's not clear cut as the the defined role that an additional, counts attorney to counsel will cover outside of what our interim county manager is already doing. We can further define that role. We all agreed initially well, not all, but majority agreed initially. And if we decide to fund that position later, we can always amend the budget and add that position back into the budget.

It definitely, will reduce some of the millage that we're looking to add, and it's not throwing it all the way back. It's not a catch and release. We can always go back and pick that position up. So I would support it taking it out with the thought in mind if we needed it or if we come to a consensus on it after the budget passed, we can always add a position back and amend the budget.

Any other discussion on the proposed amendment?

Yes. I would agree with withdrawing this from the budget as well. Number one, York County has one full time attorney currently and a secretary. So when you look at the top nine counties that are classified in group one for for the 46 counties of, South Carolina, we're we're grossly understaffed. And the immediate need would be for us to get the county attorney staff staffed properly.

Number two, when you look at assistant county attorneys, we have 277,000 I didn't vote for it. I voted against it. But what was approved was $277,000 up to that including benefits for an attorney. The average, when you look at the South Carolina Association of Counties, the average pay for all assisted county attorneys in South Carolina, 46 count or no, in the top nine, sorry, apologize, is a $144,000. So I'm opposed to the $2.77.

I'm opposed to the position in general because what what's been proposed is for counsel to have their own attorney representing them. So to me, that illustrates a bit of conflict between us having our attorney, but also having our county attorney's office that reports to us. It's conflict of interest. So I I've been opposed to this from the very beginning, but I'm opposed to the $277,000 as well. Thank you.

Any other discussion?

Yeah. So, again, you know, it was a sad moment, you know, and as you all know, Michael had passed away, our our attorney, and, again, very, you know, very sad moment. The the county attorney's office had been looking for six new attorneys. Okay? And the process that we went through, there was a a a approval process that it was outside of this budgetary process that we already had approved.

We actually had voted on it. And it was it was approved outside of this budget process. The opportunity to bring in, I think, Watts is saying, there is help, and the help is on the way for the for the attorney's office. Part of the role of these attorneys also is to bring transparency to county government. Okay? And there has been a concern around that, and that is part of the exercise that that will help us in regards to having these attorneys in place. And, again, we're still not filling it all the way to six. It's five attorneys, but it is filling the gaps of what you did mention. So, again, just wanna share that.

Any other discussion on the amendment?

Well Are we there on five or 10?

Also, the way that I see it, though, if we do get our own attorney, Lauren and they strapped anyway, but if it gives us the ability to have someone that can work on ways for us to combat these impact fees and, basically, a voice in the state force. It's already budgeted out. I don't see why we'd go back.

Any other discussion? Alright. I do not support the amendment. I think the attorney position, clearly, it was previously approved before we got into the budget. It does not raise or increase the budget items.

The position is clearly needed six to one. The council previously supported it. The main focus is to have a legislative liaison. Counties of our size typically have used lobbyists and we have had in our budget a 100,000 for at least one or two years that we've been unable to secure some help because it's not enough funding and a lobbyist splits their time with five other people. So the thought process behind this was to make sure that we had someone who was qualified, who could keep keep up with state legislation, who could help us make proposed changes to state legislation, advocate for our county on policy issues that the council is is living with and trying to change.

The position fits well within the legal department and is aligned with the staffing proposal that the county attorney proposed. Laura, there was a question about conflict of interest. Is there a conflict of interest that exists with this respect to this position? I'm sorry. Will you repeat that? Is there a conflict that that we've had one council member suggest that there's a conflict of interest with this position.

Say conflict. Mhmm. Not

on its face. It is it is not a conflict of interest to have another attorney. I think my understanding of it is that if I'm looking at this from a numerical perspective, it certainly fits with the number of attorneys that have been requested by the county attorney's office. And to the extent county council would like to engage with me and work on that position description to shore it up and help help make certain it it fits the legislative liaison role and fits with county attorney's overall objectives, I'd be happy to do that.

I think that this this position will also help us with policy decisions. It allows for more transparency. There are oftentimes where there are issues that are pending for councilor that are legal, which council has been advised not to say anything about and that prevents clear communication to the community. I think that would help as well and this position is to be aligned with the council office. So as to the amendment which is to eliminate that position, all those in favor of eliminating that position from the budget say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? No. Amendment fails.

I see a show of hands.

No.

On the

Tommy's voting no. Okay.

Mister Litton.

Okay. I wish to remove the $140,000 council discretionary funding.

Motion on the floor. Is there a second? Amendment fails for lack of a second.

I wish to remove the nonprofit agency funding, which is about $550,000.

Is that I guess I need a point of order. Is that a specific enough motion so that we can identify what that is? Can you point to the budget, Andy?

You want me to? Can you go down the list?

I'll get I'll get on the list.

With the amount. Agencies. Go down with the with the dollar amounts. Okay.

So I wish to remove the Catawba Mental Health funding of a $125,000. The Keystone, $55,750. The Board of Disabilities, $108,050. The council on aging, $88,750. The safe passage, $100,000. That's correct. Yeah.

Okay. Do we have second? Amendment fails for lack of a second.

Oh, good. Can we get a thirty second break to get the motion from of what all was cut? I didn't do you have that anybody have that printed out already? All the cuts from last month? I didn't write them down. I didn't expect it to fail. If not, what was We'll worry about

it put up the original motion.

Do you want me to I have a slide on my hand. Want me to pull it up?

Okay. I would like to re add the director of budget and CFO back to the positions.

Second.

We have a motion and a second to put the director budget director and the CFO back into the budget. We'll proceed with discussion.

You wanna oh, I'll say, I've had some conversations with the county manager about the importance of having these two positions on staff. He's been in from my understanding, he's spending time trying to handle financial situations when that's the role of a CFO, a budget director. He's indicated to us on multiple occasions that he can't be effective in the county manager's role if he's having to fall back and do other roles that should be designated to a specific position. We said that we wanted when when Kevin Madden left, he was basically hybrid and doing basically two roles. And we said the next per the next position or the next person, we wanted them separate.

We all agreed to that. And now for some reason, we're doing an about face and trying to take those positions away from staff. You know, that's that's unheard of because, ultimately, if things don't proceed according to plan, it's on the county manager. But we can't expect him to be effective in his role if we're not giving him the tools and the staffing that he needs to be successful because it won't be anybody else's job on the line except his. And if we can't stand here and say we have we don't have the confidence that he's effective if we're not giving him the tools.

That's like having a head coach and not giving him the players that he needs. So I support putting the positions in it. Correct me if I'm wrong. One of the positions one of the individuals already on staff, so it's not adding two positions. It's just reclassing someone that we already have to be in that role. Am I understanding that correct?

Yes. So the the CFO position, y'all added at the same meeting that you added the additional attorney y'all were just talking about. So there was there was agreement at that time by counsel to add a CFO position. And we had that conversation over multiple over multiple weeks, and and it was something that our former CFO recommended as you shared. The budget director is here.

We've had a budget director since before I got here. And I think it's important that y'all know what the role of the budget director is. And and I think it's also important that y'all know that York County is a lean county in terms of employees, and our budget director has been doing two or three jobs the entire time she's been here. And I think her story is very much the story of York County, similar to Kevin Madden doing three jobs, similar to Aaron Siegler doing three jobs. That is part of the reason we haven't been able to make the strides that we need to and what one of the things I'm trying to resolve.

But our budget director previously was the PIO. But while she was PIO, she also ended up managing, a $118,000,000 of capital projects implementing projects like Moss Justice Center and Family Court. She ran point on implementing capital projects as PIO. She wore multiple hats back then. She became the special projects director. And when she did that, she started managing grants. She managed ARPA and has from the very beginning. She managed grants before she was budget director, and she was over grants and has done a phenomenal job. If she left, we would have nobody who could sign into ARPA. That's what she does.

She reports on ARPA. So not only has did she do that before she came budget director, she still does that. So as budget director, she's over grants. And when I got here, of course, I'm a strategic planner at heart. You all adopted the strategic plan after a lot of hard work. She's over the strategic plan. Last summer, SCAC, y'all saw a presentation about perfect performance measures. And you asked me why don't we have this? Part of the answer is we don't have somebody to develop them, run them, work with departments to create them, and hold them accountable. Trisha has done just that this year.

She has worked with departments, trained them, implemented performance measures. So I think part of potentially why y'all voted that was potentially you don't understand what a budget director does. She does all those things and more. And without her, those are not things that I can do. Those are things that will go by the wayside. We will struggle on grants. We will struggle on strategic planning, and we will struggle on, budgeting. All these things are organization wide processes that have to be run by somebody, and she has done a phenomenal job in all those. CFO, goes without speaking. We talked a lot about that.

That is also the finance director. Finance has not had a director of that department for some time. That person was also the assistant manager, and the treasurer. I wanna make sure that our finance department has the help they need. And I show this slide of the workshop. We have the smallest finance department amongst our peers. That's even when you add the CFO.

Keith, what's what's the current state of our treasurer position?

So so when y'all y'all did this, think, again, I my recommendation was to create a position that was both the treasurer and the CFO. In consultation with previous CFO, Remember, he came up here and and stood before y'all and recommended y'all not to do that before he left. In his goodbye speech, which I appreciate he was honest and open, y'all listened to him and you said, we want a separate CFO and we want a separate treasurer. But what you didn't do was create a treasurer position. We have an interim treasurer who's doing an amazing job, but she was all she's also, speaking of doing multiple jobs, the deputy treasurer.

Okay? But she has stepped up, done amazing, and maybe she's our next treasurer. I don't know. But she's doing two jobs right now. And and and so we are doing all we can to do all these things that you all want us to do. But if you take away current positions, I'm not even talking about new positions, I'm talking about current positions, I don't know what you expect from me.

Thank you.

Any other discussion?

Yeah. Might as well. I'll I'll share this now. Madam Clerk, can you pull up my slides, please? And can I hold a pointer and then run through this as quickly as possible?

Do you

have a clicker?

You're go to probably slide two, but let me see the slides first. So I think it's important to mention this because it's easy as a citizen. See, it's easy as easy as a council member to say. We don't need to increase taxes. We need to do all we can to spend the cash we have on hand to do what we need to do.

But, unfortunately I don't know how many of you have experience running 560,000,000 budgets. I don't. My my my business is owned, cumulatively, don't add up to a smidgen of that. But it take it takes a lot of professionalism and intentionality to run a budget that's $560,000,000. Okay?

So when when we hired our county manager back in 2024, so he's hired in April, look on the top of this page. 09/03/2024, not long after he was hired, we managed to work through a strategic plan. We went through a strategic planning session, not just county council. The entire staff of roughly 1,400 employees of York County went through and contributed to the strategic planning of York County. A lot of those individuals are sitting in the room tonight and there are a lot that are listening because they let me know that they listen to our meetings and they give me feedback, give us all feedback.

So through that strategic planning process, you look in the middle of the page, we set out six goals. We voted on this and we approved it, 09/03/2024. So we approved something. I hope we didn't do this. We didn't go through all this and have our county staff work for almost the last two years working on these to bring them to fruition to not fund it because of a lot of what we're dealing with right now, quite frankly, are things we have not funded in the past.

The chickens have come home to roost. Okay? So it's painful to increase taxes, and I'll show you some amounts in just a minute when we get to that part of the discussion. But the six areas in the middle of page, grow economic opportunities, premier parks, high performing organization, grow responsibly, quality infrastructure, safe community. And the community of York County participated in this as well, by the way.

So they gave us feedback on these. So this is what we adopted. You go to the next page, performance measures. I don't know how many of you work for businesses that are intentional about measuring performance, but your county is a county that is truly measuring performance. And I've heard citizens and and you can say I'm being arrogant, whatever you wanna believe believe that that you don't know me if you say I'm being arrogant.

But York County hired a county manager to do just what you see on the screen here, manage this county with intentionality. I'm proud to say that Josh Edwards is the county manager of York County and the staff that he works with him. And I'll tell you what, there are none of us sitting up here that know what he knows and his staff knows about this budget. Maybe there are couple citizens that understand it as well as he does, but I don't think so. It's very complicated.

It's not easy sitting up here making these decisions, especially the ones that call you to be pretty bold and courageous in your vote. It's not easy, but you gotta do what's right. So what are we looking at? We're identifying under areas early. Studies. The studies that we have in this budget are studies with solutions. How many of you drove to this meeting tonight on January? Did you enjoy that ride? I didn't enjoy it. I left my house at 04:20. I got here at 05:15 to drive, I don't know, 15 miles. Did anybody come in on Highway 49? Nobody came from 521 in Lancaster. I know that. But do you like driving that that piece of road?

How about Cherry Road and Rock Hill? Do you enjoy driving in those areas? Well, guess what? Unincorporated York County, if we're not intentional and invest in the planning so we can avoid this, we're gonna have the same you we're gonna this unincorporated York County is gonna look and feel like the rest of this county. So that means you gotta make hard decisions. So you gotta identify underperforming areas early, allocate resources more effectively. Speak on that just for a second. Before I joined county council, I paid I paid attention to national politics, even state politics. Thought maybe I'd run for office one day. I don't think that's on the agenda after serving on county council.

I don't have any interest in being a part of that political scene. But allocate resources more effectively. You know, with the with the federal government, if you're gonna add something, you do take something away. On the state level, same thing. A lot of pork, I'd say, as a citizen, not really serving those two capacities, I'm gonna I'm a use a little opinion here and say that I think there's a fair amount of pork from what I read. That we don't really have that kind of pork here. You can say you can do without a position. You can say you can cut this. And and some of the things that were mentioned earlier, we do those things here in this county. We run pretty efficiently.

You may not believe it, but we do. So allocate resources more effectively. That's what we're talking about tonight. We have problems. We've had problems in this county we have not funded. And we we're gonna have to you're either gonna fund them this year or part of them this year, you're gonna fund them next year or the following year. Some council's gonna sit up here scratching their head and whining their watch thinking, how in the heck are we gonna pay for this in the future? These are hard decisions. They're they're not ones you can you can you can outrun either, by the way. Improve cross team alignment.

They're working on performance measures. I I wanna get into that, but there's a ton of leadership going on to collaborate and get the capacity out of our leadership here in York County. I see it, I read it, and I believe it. It is happening. Support leadership communication.

Not only we supporting leadership communication within York County, this county is now communicating with every other strategic partner in this county, the school districts, the municipalities, and divisions of these. We're doing that. Strengthening long term planning, critically important. Our organizational chart, you may not know this, but I I may be wrong on this, but I think there are 33 departments in the county. 33 departments and reportedly around thirteen hundred and thirteen hundred and forty employees.

So we had a $560,000,000 budget, and we don't have a CFO. Our county manager is acting as our CFO. Our county manager should be spending days in Columbia working on our behalf to get money for York County, which he's doing. He's doing that and so is his staff. These three gentlemen sitting over there, they're doing that too.

They're communicating with Columbia to get us funds to fund our budget so we don't have to tax the taxpayers. He's doing that while he's doing everything else I've mentioned thus far and he's our acting CFO. Does not make a bit of sense to me. The executive message, this is somewhat of our what I've already talked about. I'm a wait and go over this later if there's even time to go over this, and I'm a go over that last page in a little bit when we get to that part. You can pull that down. Thank you. That's enough, I believe. So I I support the CFO and the budget position as well. I will finish with this.

The budget position I'm not sure council understood what Josh shared, and I appreciate you sharing what the budget director does and what the budget director, not by person, the position does and what it's been doing. There's tremendous value in this position and the role this individual is playing. How in the world can you take that out of the budget? Who's gonna assume that responsibility? It's easy as a citizen to say, oh, we'll just delegate that to somebody else. Not so easy. Not everybody is made to to to juggle two or three jobs. Some people can. Some people can master theirs. There are these people out there.

I have a few that work with me. There are few people that can take on their job, and then when someone leaves, they kinda absorb 80% of what the other person was doing. But that's few and far between. And I'm not saying that's what we're in a position to do here in York County. I I don't think we are. I think we are, as our previous CFO said proudly, we're a lean county, and we have been a lean county. But we have we have a responsibility to plan for the visionary future of this county because if we don't, then you're probably not gonna like what unincorporated York County looks like one day. If if I don't even know if I'll still be allowed to see it, but thank you.

Any other discussion?

Yeah. So, again, you know, it when people look at different versions of government, I you know, I'm a I'm a limited government guy. I think that limited government works. I think that it's it puts, you know, the the burden or not the burden, but the the the how do I say it? When you put sometimes you put things in government hands, it doesn't seem to turn out quite the way you wanted it to come out.

And my concern is that when I looked at this budget to start off with, I looked at a budget that had a $45,000,000 increase from last year. Alright? We're looking at 515,000,000, and this year, you're looking at roughly $559,000,000 to start off with before first reading. You know, when you look you talk about the size of York County. Alright? And you talk about the growth, which was brought up earlier. You you have to look at also too about how much revenue comes in when new businesses come in and and as growth continues. In our county alone, and and I know you sent some numbers here, and this was as of April. We were about a 5.13% revenue growth over last year. Alright?

So if you add in, alright, May and June into that, which are heavy tax collection times plus car taxes, additional plus you have the delinquent taxes that come in, like, roughly four months after that. You're probably looking at close to an 8% revenue increase in taxes coming in.

Can I finish? I just wanna make sure we share.

We don't

Anyway, with the numbers you gave me went up to April. So so when you start looking at those that amount of revenue coming in, alright, and you say and you look at your wallet and you say, okay. I've got a certain amount of money this year and I'm getting a 5% increase or an 8% increase, alright, then you need to stay in your budget. Alright? And and we're not. We're not staying in our budget. Alright? And that's critical. I think it's it's when you look at an area such as ours, alright, you've got challenges out there. People are having challenges, you know, buying groceries sometimes, paying paying their existing taxes.

They got kids in school trying to buy clothes or whatever it may be for them. Again, we need to be efficient. We need to be lean as a government. Alright?

And we

need to make sure we're maintaining the dollars that we bring into the government here. And again, with the amount of money we currently have coming in here, there's no reason why we can't stay in budget with zero tax increase to the public. Public.

I know I've I've talked a lot about what's behind these increases and I feel like my my team and I answered a lot of what's behind this in all of our different meetings. But I really wanna remind y'all, we have a huge pennies year next year. So a $145,000,000 of this budget is pennies projects, which everybody wants done. We have a big increase in utility funds. So when you say $40,000,000 increase, that's an increase in the utility fund, that's an increase in pennies.

We are doing exponentially more capital projects in this budget because we heard from y'all that you want us to get moving on these big projects. All those things result in that increase, but one of the biggest drivers is the raise that y'all wanted to give the sheriff's office. And and for that to be forgotten and for that not to be recognized, it is a disservice to everybody here. So I think we prioritize public safety in this budget because y'all want us to. We prioritize capital projects because you wanted us to.

We prioritize all these things because y'all gave us that direction, and then all of a sudden, the budget's too big. But I'm telling you, you've got to give the direction on the policy and the direction, and we've got to tell you how to do that. And sometimes it comes with an increased cost. And that's what's happened here. If you if you want the cost to come down, we'd love to have a conversation about how to do that in a way that still accomplishes the majority of the things that you all wanna accomplish. Can I remind

everyone one We've already hang on a We're we're gonna we're gonna keep this? We I expect that we're gonna have a number of of we're gonna be here a long time. So I'm just asking us to respect the process and let's restrict our time to everyone will have the floor and let's not interrupt each other. And and so I I can't remember about did you already speak on this

one? Yeah. Yeah. But I wanna remind everyone, we're talking about we're breaking this down.

We're talking

about the CFO positions, but everybody wants to dilute it and talk about everything else. We're talking

about This Rodi. If I allow you to speak, then I've gotta do it again throughout the end. Speak on

speak on what the amendment that's on

the table. Yeah. The per the amendment that's on the table, good point, is is whether or not to put back into the budget what was eliminated at first reading budget director and CFO position. At who has not if there's anyone who hasn't spoken who wishes to speak.

I'd like to say that it grieves me that we did lose, our three most talented and knowledgeable leaders in finance budget and auditor departments. This is very concerning and it's, I still don't understand how that happened, but I feel like, when we're talking about the fact that people shouldn't be doing more than one job or two jobs. There are quite a few people working in this, government that are very much in charge of more than one department and that would be these three over here. When you did your chart, your flow chart, you saw the multiple departments that they're in charge of. So it could be that we go back and combine CFO and treasurer.

And that would so so that's just something to think about because after all, this is second reading. So

we can Alright. Any other discussion? I'm sorry. Any other discussion on the amendment? At at this stage of the game, I think, I am concerned and don't wanna support growing government in this area, at this stage.

I do think that any first, and let me say this. I am very concerned that that some of the discussion tonight has resorted to personal issues. The issue before council is whether or not the positions themselves should be there whether or not there's duplication, whether or not there's some other way to approach this. And I I do share the fact that we have great employees in finance, and we have employees who are talented and who have served in very various different positions, and they are very well capable of serving in other positions. The question for me personally is, are we growing this?

That budget director was something that wasn't put in until two years ago and now we have this and we do have some additional considerations. So I do think that I am continuing to keep I think it would be important to look at all options as we explore how to support that department. But I I do not support putting it back in the budget here at second reading. All those in favor of the amendment say aye. Aye. Those opposed say no. No. No. The amendment fails.

It's a crappy way to find out you're

fired. Alright.

Next That's thing uncalled for and I'm a call you out of order on that. That's not that is not at all

Alright. Your next

the issue.

Next one. I would make amendment to add the thoroughfare plan for a $150,000 as directed, or as requested by the planning and development planning,

department. Was that taken out? Yes.

I'm sorry. What's the motion?

Motion to add the thoroughfare plan for a $150,000 as requested by the planning and development planning department.

I'll second for discussion, but I'd like to have staff remind

me Can you show me the line item?

Yeah. I I would like for staff to mention what what is this cover. I'm second for the sake of discussion so that I can get an explanation of exactly what was pulled.

It looks like you read something. Do you want

So assistant county manager Tom Couch can can speak to that plan.

Alright. First first of all, point of order. Was there I can't remember from first reading. I know that there was a request to remove studies from

1,200,000. That was a facility study.

That's not what this is.

That's not what that is. Right.

No. You're Right.

I get It's a whole new thing.

Let me get clarification from you. Are you saying

That was removed?

What's your motion?

To add that

to the budget.

Okay. It's currently in the budget.

No. I think time

can answer y'all's questions.

Yes. If you give me a opportunity to explain briefly. As you know, there's a series of plans and studies in the budget. And the third fair plan was part of planning and developments initial request. And after we did the our analysis during the process, I made a judgment call to withdraw the thoroughfare plan from further consideration, trying to use judgment in determining, like the county manager said, which plans and studies you wanted to proceed with as we went through our previous retreats and workshops.

But it seems as if mister Linton having awareness that the thorough plan fair was requested is offering an amendment to bring it back into the budget.

So so just so I'm clear and the motion is clear, the council did nothing to remove that from budget. You're saying it was never in the budget in the first place?

It wouldn't. Correct. When we were doing the staff reviews

Okay.

I recommended that we remove that particular plan or study

So the motion Thank you, sir. So the motion on the table is to add something into the budget that was not in the budget at all at first reading.

Correct.

And the the item specifically is a $150,000 thoroughfare plan that was to be funded by general fund. Is that correct? Do we need a line item? You wanna read out the line item? Just so we have we're clear.

It was under $1,104.01 $9.01 $2.03 20. It was also in my email of budget questions, that were responded to by, mister Edwards yesterday or today.

Can you read that number out again? I'm sorry.

Can mister Couch explain the third fair plan to us?

Well, he he said he he didn't even push it

forward. What is budget? Well, because it there was $1,200,000 of other studies placed in front of it.

It was In front of it. Which I'm

I think so. Can explain it.

This is something totally separate. I understand. I can take that anyway.

A thorough a thoroughfare plan is sort of a sub plan to a larger transportation plan, but what it does is it evaluates and identifies current conditions, traffic volumes, and other factors to help you identify where your major thoroughfares are likely to be in the future. It looks like at existing, it looks at all of these future traffic patterns. And it does some more intensive analysis to give you a snapshot of what they or what we would believe that future road improvements maybe in future Pennies projects should consider. I feel quite sure that our FADS has a similar analysis and all the different kinds of plans studies that they do required for federal dollars. And I didn't ask to have it withdrawn because it was a bad idea.

You know, it's a good idea, but in consideration again of the council priorities and also the manager's priorities, we we were at a point where we had to pull pull some things back out of the budget. That is again where I made the judgment call to preserve the other plans and and studies that that were in the budget to pull that out.

Tom, quick

Well, let me explain where I'm going with it. So we've talked about roads and how we've needed road improvements forever in a day. We've talked about how we don't have we haven't planned long term countywide for roads. We talked about it in budget workshops and other workshops. And so, you know, just kicking this can down the road or yeah.

Kicking the can down the road again for, you know, to add this into the comprehensive plan and try to fund where we're gonna do our road improvements. I mean, I don't know about y'all, but roads are the number one item that I hear about constantly. So I don't know why we wouldn't try to come up with a long range plan to get these to see where we're going in the future because every year that we waste is another year to five that we're gonna be behind.

So but correct me if wrong, Tom, but I thought our funds funded that study.

Well, our funds conducts those kinds of studies for within the our funds boundaries. Mhmm. It doesn't extend outside of them. And I think we all know and understand that York County is growing and there are traffic pressures that are being created outside of the ARPADS district. So again, it's not that it's a bad idea, but looking at the priorities that the council and the county manager have put forth, I felt at the time that one was worth sacrificing and maybe we could bring it back next year.

Okay. I'll I'll say this. I've had on my list of things to that line item in particular. My philosophy has always been that you do not put studies in as a general fund recurring expense, that you do that as a one time expense because that unintentionally bloats government. I certainly support thoroughfare plans.

I noticed that the line item that we're talking about here also contains a $300,000 consultant in order to do the comprehensive plan and it also includes I think we need to remove the RFAT. So I would just say I can't support the motion that you've put up, but what I would support is a revised amendment that says that we would remove that that whole line item from the budget and allow it to be brought back as one time expenses in the general as a general funded expense And and it'd be there that way. I think that's a better approach to the to the budget.

Well, I'll say this. Considering that it wasn't in the original budget that came forth, and after hearing the analysis by mister Couch that he didn't feel comfortable moving it forward in the list of priorities, I think I'm my main objective tonight is to put things back that were removed. I'm not looking to add things that weren't in the budget that was presented to us. So with that being said, I would draw my second because we should be trying to work not to add more things to the budget, but I thought tonight was gonna be a good night to put things back in the budget that had gotten taken out. So with that explanation from mister Couch, I would draw my second.

And if staff wants to look at a alternative financing method outside of being in the millage come from the general fund, then they can work that up and bring it to us at third reading. And if that if that's how it shakes out, at least it won't be incorporated into the millage increase. And you just mentioned about a consultant being attached to that part of it too. So that takes it from, let's say, $1.50 or $1.80. When a $300,000 consultant is almost half $1,000,000, so that

The 300 was already there.

300 for a work.

It's already in there for the comprehensive plan.

So we're looking at a $1.50 or $1.80?

$1.50.

Okay. Well, I'm still gonna withdraw. I'm gonna withdraw my second on that item.

So the second have has been withdrawn. Is there anyone who wishes to second the motion to continue and get this to a vote?

Second it so we can move to a vote.

Okay.

So want me to bump it back to revise it to fund balance?

I think the the most I'll I'll say this, and I'm I'm one person. I think the the I think mister Roddy's comments make a lot of sense to me too. I think that my preference I can only speak for myself. I would support I think we need to remove these one time expenses from the general fund budget and bring up issues of how council can approve these fees as one time expenses from the reserve account so that we're not putting the budget in that. So I can't The the motion currently stands, I can't support it. I'm not sure how to fix that. Well Without a new motion.

Since I I'll

make a new motion.

Okay. That's what you

So the motion is withdrawn. The the amended motion is So

the motion would be, I have to make an amendment.

You want me to make a motion?

To include it. Well, you're do the 300 and the one fifty? That's how I was gonna

lump them together.

I think if you I think there's actually more. There's 300. One fifty.

And just so you all know, one of the things we

did four sixty five.

One of things we did after council member Rod Dea at the end of the workshop asked us to try staff to identify a solution in a different way than y'all did in the first motion is we worked through the entire budget and we came up with a way to do what y'all asked us to do with specifically some of those pieces that y'all are talking about. And so we do have a solution that will will address some of some of y'all's concerns and and try to fix this and bring some of these positions back. And so we as staff would love to talk about that too after y'all get through your your deliberation. But part of that is to say, you know, maybe we move some of these plans to fund balance since y'all took the facility space study out of it. Right?

So one of the things as managers, you don't wanna you don't wanna depend too much on fund balance. Cause if you do

You're drawing it down.

You're getting the point where we are with some of these other funds. But if you're not gonna pay for the facility space study that 1,200,000 anymore out of fund balance, then maybe we think about some of these other plans. But my request to y'all would be, if we do that, please let us add back some of these positions that you've taken away because we desperately need them. And help us help us talk about how we bring back some of the funding for the rural fire fund, which we have a a solution for y'all if y'all wanna talk about it later.

Currently, there is no motion on the table. Do you want do you wanna continue or do you wanna I Well I would support a motion, but it I would want to remove the four sixty five or the four I think there is a the RFATs needs to be removed. So the $4.25 from the budget as a general fund expense and that the studies for the thoroughfare and the comprehensive plan study be identified as projects under the reserve fund one time funding.

Second.

Was it did you make it as a motion?

Well, I was I was helping him make a motion, but I'll

You said it. It sounded good.

There's a motion and a second. Let's have some discussion.

Okay. So I'm totally against that because I can't fathom how we cannot fund staff positions and then turn around and fund the study. Positions over studies, better staff. I just can't wrap my head around how can anyone sit up here and vote to say, no. We're not gonna we're not gonna put these two people on staff that county managers asked for.

But, oh, let's just spend some money over here because it comes out of general fund on the study. That's not that's not good government. That's not good practices when your county manager is screaming, I need these positions to be successful in my role. And we say no, but let's pull up a a a study that wasn't even put forth in the budget. Let's drag that in there and see how we can pay for that. It's just not jiving with me. And I know I'm sounding conservative right now, but I don't wanna spend your tax dollars on a study versus over position. And sometimes I feel like and I've said this before. I know I'm way more conservative than the other six that I sit up here with. I try to convince them not to spend as much money. I don't win a lot. They spend it anyway.

Oh my gosh.

But who's the conservative sitting up here? I wear that badge with armor because this is wasteful spending over the alternative of supporting a position. So I'm not supporting it. Any

other discussion? I would I would ask I think there's there's a lot to be said. The 300,000 comprehensive planning study is something that we have to do. We have to do the comprehensive plan. That's in the budget.

That has to be done. The better approach for that is not to be a general fund expense. So removing it from the general fund expenditure and it removing the full 425, it is to me that that is fiscal conservative approach. I think one thing that that might help is if we require that all studies come first before council as a one time expenditure in the general fund before they're approved. In that way, we're voting on them one by one instead of them being done. So I would I would ask

were all studies we've talked about at multiple meetings and had multiple conversations about. So

Right. I think the question the question is where should it be funded from? Currently, the comprehensive plan study is funded from general fund.

And and if like I said, if I would've been asked, once y'all took out the facility space study, then I would've made that very recommendation. I have it on this piece of paper right here if you let me talk about Currently, my

I would ask for for a second to the to the amendments that I made. And if not, we can just circle back through and I'll make it when it gets to me.

What what's your amendment?

That every number one, that it's removed from the budget. The full amounts are removed from the general fund budget and that these requests come forward to counsel each study individually for approval through the general fund budget. I mean, through the reserve fund in lieu of that. So basically, it'll come back to us to approve it individually instead of lump sum.

Instead of sticking it in here now currently, I mean, in the

current capital. Guess this is my question. This is this is kinda confusing. So you you want them to come back at what point? And are you talking about fund balance now or the reserve

Before approval. They'll come back to council. We've done this before historically where we've said, look, let's let's put the studies. Studies should not be recurring expense items in the budget. That's my philosophy. So the way that we've handled it historically is how do we put that in the general fund as an expenditure and ensure that council has had the opportunity to approve it. So

If it's gonna come up in if it's gonna come up individually and be funded through the general fund, we don't even have to do anything with it now because it's gonna come up individually October or January. It's gonna be out of the general fund anyway. So it has no budget implication right now because the money is gonna be coming out of the general fund that's already on hand. So No. Miss Kano?

This is to move it to the reserve. I'll withdraw the motion and let's move on and we can figure out a different way to handle that.

Okay.

It's getting too complicated. Yeah. But I'll come back because I have a different motion on that.

Alright. Want to amend the budget to put the water rate increase back to 6% and the sewer rate increase back to 10% as requested in the original

budget. Second. Second.

We have a motion and a second on the amendment to put the water rate to 6% and the sewer rate to 10? 10. That's the motion. Second. Second. Alright. Discussion?

Alright. So, you know, we had a a long presentation on this at the last workshop last week and it shows that we were we're we're losing money and actually providing a whole lot less service, without these increases. I know that we have a rate study coming, but, anybody that watched the presentation last week saw that in 2017 after the study was done in 2018, we did a 25% increase in water and a 30% or 29% increase in the sewer. And then the net very next year did, I think a double digit increase both year, for both of those. By going ahead and getting this increase in currently, it helps us to not have such a big hit when the rate study comes in next year.

Also, the sewer already has a, 8% pass through from the city of Rock Hill. So really, it's a 2% increase for the purposes of York County on that. Anybody in the, Lake Wylie area, District 2, Old Blue Granite area, this is this increase in funding is severely needed to get those repairs completed up there.

I'll I'll add to, I support going back to the six and the 10% increase because a part of that, I think, is with the water, Rock Hill's increasing. So we at least have to cover what? The sewer. The sewer. We at least have to cover the pass through rate that was being passed on to us.

And if I'm correct, we have about $13,000,000 from last year or 13 more going forward in projects that we're gonna have to complete without infrastructure, our agent infrastructure. When we took over Blue Granite, that sucked a lot of money out and it still continue to a lot of money out to help repair those get those infrastructure needs up to par. If and we're not grabbing a whole extra additional cost with these percentage increases. We're spending a lot on the system, but if we're only increasing by what our costs are, we're not setting anything to the side to repair anything in Regent Park, anything with Blue Granite, anything in Lake Wylie, Tiguacat, wherever. We wouldn't run a business to the point that we're not collecting enough to make repairs decent repairs.

These repairs are not cheap. We're spending this year and upcoming year, what, $13,000,000 on the system?

I believe it's it's more than that that, but I'll let a system Yeah.

That that would be the capital.

The capital.

Yeah. Capital projects.

And so these these are funds that's needed to go make these repairs. And we're we're not wanting to cover the pass through plus a little extra percentage because we do have administrative costs that's associated with it. And one thing that councilman Linton left off that needs to be added was the $2.43 monthly increase. If we

base just just so we're clear and we keep the motion clear, the base was not removed. The baseline

Okay. So we left that in there. Mhmm. Okay.

I didn't

see the write ups. Okay. So I'm in full support of the six and ten because we need that. We we gotta have those minimal increases plus a little extra. I know some people concern that we haven't done the rate study, but I can tell you projects to repair and improve the system, the costs are only gonna get they're only gonna increase.

Rate study is coming, but I don't need a rate study to say you need to be collecting a little extra now because the rate study we haven't done a rate study since 2016, 2017. And like councilman Lyndon mentioned, we had to come back with a 25% increase. And we heard someone gentleman say earlier, I much rather see any kind of increase come gradually than after a rate study ten years later, hey, we gotta go up 25% because we didn't incrementally go up to put some to the side. It's like going on vacation. You pay your bills, you put a little bit on the vacation fund, you put a little bit in the savings fund.

When it's time to go on vacation, you got money to go on vacation. You don't have to go back and cut your bill money to go on vacation. You'll have some in the vacation pot. You'll have some in the savings and retirement pot. So it's not good government. It's not sound financial responsibility if we don't put these back to the levels that were recommended. I know for a thousand reasons why some will and some won't, but it's basic economics. You have to fund your cost. And in this business with water and sewer, those infrastructure needs, costs are dramatic. If we're not putting some to the side, how do you make those repairs? So I'm in full support of the amendment.

I won't repeat what's already been said, but can you can you pull up the slide, the last page again, please? Last page. Right here. That's good. You can just just number three. Just show number three if you don't mind. Scroll it up so you don't see one and two. Here we go. Number three. So what we're talking about is an unincorporated York County, we have 22,000 customers that utilize water and sewer from York County. That's what we're talking about. Thank you for blowing that up. We're talking about a 6% increase in the water rate and a 10% increase in sewer rate. It was just mentioned we're increasing our base rates on water and sewer. You see that $2.47 and dollar 47¢.

But look at the bottom. So this this is a good guesstimate on what it's gonna cost, the 22,000 people that use the water and sewer system that has a ton of infrastructure needs. I think today, we had reported leaks. Did we not?

Last couple weeks, we've been very busy.

Yeah. It's probably easier to note the days we haven't had a leak than to mention the days we have had leaks. Right? Yeah. Big problem. Can't kick this can on down the road because it's only gonna get worse. And guess what? When you kick the can down the road and you don't deal with what you have to deal with today, you don't get to what you need to deal with tomorrow, you're putting those off. Right? The future projects, can't get to because you're dealing with the projects of today.

And we're already behind the eight ball on this. So, unfortunately, there's 22 customers would be looking at these increases, 6044¢ for 2,000 gallons or less up to 40 6,500 gallons yet 12 o seven and then sixteen forty four if they're a high user up around 10,000 gallons. So this is what we're talking about money wise. And, you know, this this is and can be significant individuals. But what we're talking about here is if we're not going to fund our water and sewer properly, we're losing money. We're subsidizing these 22,000 customers, and we have other needs and infrastructure that we have to address. I mean, it's just the ugly truth. Thank you. Well yeah.

I don't agree with anything you said, but why didn't the rate study already get done?

That's not the question.

Why did the rate study already get done?

I don't think Hang on.

Hang on

a minute.

Understanding is to answer your questions

So that I can keep process hang on a minute. So that I can keep process, the question should have had have been direct. We're not gonna have a back and forth. We gotta keep the process. If if you'd like to answer the question.

I'd love to. So we we talked about this at the workshop. We've got five studies going on right now. And so anytime you're wanting to do a rate study, you actually have to plan and understand what's in the ground and what needs to be done in the capital side. So what hasn't happened here, and this is one reason our budget's going up, that we're we're actually beginning to do a lot of these capital projects you'll have talked about for some time.

We've got a real CIP on both the general capital for six years. And what we're trying to do with Eric's help is develop a real utility CIP, which we haven't had. And so to do that, got you to study your system and work with engineers that can say, here's why you have capacity issues in your in your network. Here are the worst capacity areas. And I think you all know where those are. We've had all sorts of water pressure issues over the last few days. We have tower issues. All these things are infrastructure related. You need to have engineers study it and say, here's how expensive it would cost to replace that. Here's what we would do differently.

Here's how we would design your system If you've got a we've got big commercial folks coming in, you have have other areas that don't have water pressure. And so all that work has to be done before you plug that into a rate study because the rate study is telling you how you pay for all those projects. We're in the situation next year if y'all don't raise rates back up to our recommendation that we have annual operating costs, operating, not capital, that would have to be paid out of a fund balance. And this is the fund balance that is decreasing rapidly. And that's where as a manager, I've gotta raise my flag and say, you can't use fund balance to pay for operating costs, but we're about ready to do that if you all don't raise rates back up.

Because we have so much preventative maintenance that needs to be done in our system in order to catch up. It's been underfunded. We don't have a great system because of some of those that were brought on, and we're trying to catch up and do the right thing. We need y'all's help to make sure we have the funding to do that. But once those studies are done, sir, then we'll be able to pull that in.

Miss Rackett, you stop floor on the motion to amend. Again, the motion is to increase the water rate to 6% and the sewer rate to 10%. You I'm sorry. You still have the floor. Do you do you have anything else?

Yeah. But I was just I thought we we had approved this last year.

The pass through.

Yeah.

So we

have the we had a chart which shows you the workshop and it showed historically we all approved the pass through, we're talking

about about study.

Oh, I thought he was talking about the pass through.

Well, I mean, I've just I mean, it I mean, I can understand the 8% pass through, all that, but I still don't understand why we couldn't get that water and and and the sewer rate studies so that we'd know exactly how much we need to increase.

So now you can

It's gonna be more than what we're asking for. It will. And so remember that we showed this chart at the workshop the last time you all did a rate study, and I don't know if Karen's got my slide deck handy, but there was a huge increase that next year last time you did rate study. I think it was close to 30%, Eric. Is that correct?

Yeah. 29.

Yeah. So so in in talking with our consultants that are doing these studies, they're gonna have a huge amount of projects they recommend. We're not gonna be able to afford all of them. The only way we're gonna begin to dip into this is to take out debt to some degree based on our current fund balance. And so when we do a rate study, they will develop models on how we actually do all these projects to fix our system, and that's how we'll fund it.

But in order to do the things we're doing currently so really, this is about our current projects and our current operating. We need this increase. This doesn't even begin to pay for all these new projects that are gonna get identified, and that's our fundamental problem. We're just trying to do the projects we already started and to do those, we need this increase.

Okay. I just wanna make a comment about infrastructure issues, particularly I'm not sure about the other side of the county, but our side. We had a problem today. It was DOT hit a pipe and pretty much a large majority, including myself, was out of water. So I spoke with Eric.

I want us to take a strong look at, making sure that these people who do this damage pay for repairing the damage. So that would not take any money out of our budget as as far as that go. Then we have fiber optic companies that are doing damage. It's just it's getting very, tiring to run out water. It's not anything our folks are doing. It's other companies who are doing this, but they're gonna hopefully pay for

repairs. Can't

ahead.

Okay.

Couple of things. You know, with this base rate change that we talked about, when you run the math and I know it's $2.47 and $1.37, and the numbers just went down here. But when you add that all together in a one year study, in a one year accumulation, that's 817,000 just on the bay base rate change. Okay? So that's an increase in revenue to put towards row put towards these, you know, these issues that we have.

The change from Rock Hill was there was a 0% change on their water. There's no increase there. There's an 8% change on their sewer. You know, I'm not gonna be supporting this motion because I feel like we would do a zero on the water and 8% to cover the pass through. With the base rate changes roughly 817,000 that we can put towards towards facility improvements while we wait to have the rate study plan done. Once we have the rate study plan done, we can reidentify. That way, we're not we know what we should be charging as opposed to spitballing this and just throwing a dart out there. So that's why I stand.

So I'm inclined to agree with with mister Ardette Ardette at least. I I definitely agree that we need to do the pass throughs. There is the baseline involved in this. I've seen a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about the water increases. This is nothing to do with property taxes. This is nothing to do with property taxes. Let me say that again. It only applies to individuals who are on county water and sewer. So individuals who have a well and septic, this does not apply to you. Again, folks on the well and septic, this does not apply to you.

I do think that so I would support the pass through and the baseline is already in there, is an increase. From the information that we were provided, the unrestricted fund balance would cover the projects '26 and '27. And this idea that somehow we're kicking this can down the road too long is not true. Council funded this rate study last year and we're talking about waiting a few more months to get the rate study back and to do the right thing with actual data. Perhaps they're gonna look and say commercial should raise differently and residential should be something different.

I do think that it's not good government's governance to take a stab in the dark on this, especially when we already funded the rate study and it was it needs to be done before we it needs to be justified. Anytime we raise those things, I think it does need to be justified. So I would support a motion to to have the pass through and the base is still in the budget. Super. But I will not support the amendment as as it's stated currently, I would want to revise it to include the the other.

Would I also think it's important that we've got to start using and and executing on the funding that the council has already put in the budget. So we have a number of utility positions that have not been filled and that needs to get done. And we funded those positions before now and that's critical. We also are experiencing an issue with the utility manager. That position has not basically, for a better part of a year has not been filled, which means that those fund positions increase the surplus, increase what's in the account in addition to these other things.

So I do not think it's too much to ask to do the pass through and wait for the rate study that honestly, I think we should have had before now.

So so real quick and I thought I said this earlier and said the workshop, the rate increase covers the budget. So if you're not gonna raise these rates back up, we're we're taking we're taking on even more water, pardon the pun, next year with annual operating costs, which we don't wanna use fund balance for. So staff would like the opportunity to reduce the utilities fund operating budget if you're not gonna bring back the rates because it's it's it's leading to even more of

a of a decrease in

the fund balance, which I would never recommend. So the way we created the rates was based on the projected expenses for utilities.

The motion on the table is to amend to to go back to the

Six

and ten.

6% water and 10% sewer. All those in favor?

Well, is there any other discussion? I mean Well,

are we gonna go back through again? Yeah. Okay.

No. I mean, yeah.

I think they're Alright. Yeah. I'm gonna go back through then we'll let everybody do it again.

Haven't made yet. I mean, if I mean, look. Most of us in our lives, we have conversations. We don't we don't make a statement and then never gonna go back and communicate the another point of view after someone else brought something else up. Go back to the base charges just for a second. $2.47 and dollar 47¢, base charge increase. And and we've already voted on this, but but the point is that that's a million dollars right there. We that's already in place though. Right? So let me ask. I don't have this. I didn't do the math on it. I didn't ask for it. I apologize. If you don't have it, that's okay.

But what is the six what does the 6% equate to, and what does the 10% equate to? Why are you pulling that up? Here's the point. The six and the 10% is to cover our needs now. If you don't get that now, then I'll ask the second question. So I'd like to know that number. But number two is, are we look it's a shame we don't have a forecasted budget that we look at for the next five years. So we understand that we're not just talking about this year, we're talking about next year and the following year. So you begin to see the path forward to realize how difficult this is. But I'll just say, do you see here in the next five years where we spend less money on water and sewer?

No. We do have a forecasted budget for operating expenses. Just don't have it finalized for capital yet. But, yeah, it definitely increases each year.

So we don't see it. We don't see a decrease. So so if you don't whatever the number you're about to share at 610%, if we don't get it this year, you lost it this year and you lost it next year and every day after because we gotta we gotta fund something else next year, unfortunately. The question is how are you

gonna do it? Let me be clear. The rate study is supposed to be here this year.

I'm not talking about

the rate study.

I'm talking

Rate study is gonna be done this year. Right?

The the goal is for it to be done in the fall winter. Yes.

Okay. So alright. So Can we get

let's get the

answer question right quick. What is the 6% to 10%?

That would equate to about $280,000 in water from the six percent and one point seven in sewer. I think it's important to understand, and I haven't had a chance to explain this yet, but, county manager just alluded to that. The 6% and the 10% in the baseline were not just, a shot in the dark. They they were calculated based on operating expenses. So when we when we were going through the budget process, budgeting operating expenses, coming to this number, and we don't and can't fund operating expenses out of the fund balance.

So that this equates to what those additional operating expenses are. And I will say that we have this wasn't the first time we had an initial budget and we went back through and looked at those operating expenses and we took out what we could. What's left in there right now are things that can't go. I wouldn't know where to cut any additional operating expenses out of this budget.

So by the way, the motion that we approved in first reading was taken this six to 3%. Councilmember of debt took six to three and ten to three. So I'm just curate I'm curious what was the logic logic behind reducing this down and what does 3% pay for and what's left to be paid? I'd like

We're not gonna have questioning of council members back and forth. You can leave your question open out.

But Okay. Open any question then

They can choose to pick it up if they want. I think Okay. But the purpose of the debate is to state your position and

Thank you. I appreciate you clarifying. So our staff is sharing with us that our needs are for a six and a 10 and a $2.47 $2.47 a month and a dollar 47¢ on sewer, water and sewer. They're sharing with us that's what we need to drive the budget and to and not not even get ahead, just meet our needs. And so the motion was made to go from six to three and ten to three, and I need to understand the logic behind

that

if somebody can explain it.

Okay.

Other than cutting the budget, can somebody help me with that? So

Yeah. Okay. So we're gonna go down the line.

Yes. Mean, we're

gonna do it Just so that No. No. No. We're not doing that. This is this is what we're gonna do. We council thought it important enough and it looked like that there was some interest in wanting to have another round of of folks talking. But the in order to manage the discussion, I think each council member will again get the time to ask the questions or to make the points. It won't be back and forth.

So real quick, we said that the increase will net us roughly, I think, $800,000. What does $800,000 pay for in a water sewer system infrastructure? How far can that get

us?

Well, specifically, the $800,000 will cover the Rock Hill 8% increases. But, yeah, not a lot.

Okay. So next question is, will 3% water increase and a 3% sewer increase cover our needs to run our system so that we're not drawing funds from a fund balance?

No. We would have to cut operating expenses.

Alright. Now we talk about positions that are unfilled in our water department. If they're unfilled right now, we're not paying that out. So that's not really an expense that we're paying right now, but we anticipate filling those positions. We still have maintenance that we're gonna have to do.

Now if we're not my next question. Okay. We're using fund balance to pay the difference. It's just it just doesn't make sense if we're not taking enough money to just cover the basics. We're not adding a lot of I don't see a lot of fluff.

We have failing systems throughout our we have failing infrastructure throughout our system. And for the life of me, county manager just explained, we have to know what kind of projects we're gonna have to do in order to plug into the water study so that the study tells us you need to raise rates according to this to pay for these projects. I've heard several people mention the rate study. Well, you can't do a rate study until you know some of the projects that you're gonna have to do so the rate study produces the amount that you have to increase annually to cover those projects. You can't work backwards.

You can't do a rate study without knowing what the rates you have to charge to do the projects. That's working backwards. I just don't see how that is even possible to think that we can have a rate study done when we don't even have a full slate of the projects that we need to do. Because if I understand correctly, the projects need to be plugged in so that the people doing the rate study can say, this is how you increase rates or this is how you charge your customers to do these projects. Now if I'm off base on that one, I apologize, but I clearly heard that the projects have to be plugged into the study so that the study nets you what you have to charge over the next six, seven, ten years to cover.

But if if we wanna keep digging into the fund balance to to meet the shortfall, we're only drawing down our reserves. We're only hurting ourselves to be able to go out and borrow because when they see money dwindling over here, you're not covering your cost. That's in turn gonna affect our credit rating.

And ability to borrow money.

Credit rating affects your ability to borrow money. And for the longest, we've had top notch credit rating in this state for our county because our finances were well kept, but we're coming down. And the safe people are struggling to buy groceries, yeah, we are. The safe people are struggling to send their kids to college, buy clothes, yeah, we are. But by god, we had a chart up just a couple weeks ago that showed we're not hammering our citizens. We're not hammering our citizens. We talk about how much the budget increased. But then when you look, the county manager explains, we got pennies. We got a 140 something, a $150,000,000 in pennies.

$1.55.

And we have all these other things that's not these are one time deals that's coming through our budget. So it looks like, yeah, we're just we're just out of control spending. But you take pennies out. You take the water sewer things out that other counties show clearly show we're doing things other counties are not doing. So our budget is gonna be bigger. Some other counties don't provide water sewer to their customers. We do. Some other counties not doing pennies. We do. So when you take all that out and compare apples to apples, we're right in line or in some cases below what other counties are doing in charging for their millage, the capital that they're raising.

And if you don't like the pennies, you don't like us upgrading our facilities and our infrastructure, try living in some of these other counties that's not even doing it because we're trying to take care. Now we all support the strategic plan, say we wanted this. We wanted to support the shift department and the raise. We wanted to support upgrading facilities. We wanted to do the parts. We wanna do all this stuff. Then it come time to pay the piper. We don't wanna pay it, but we want it. But we don't wanna pay it. So we gotta go back through, look at that strategic plan, start striking lines through what we're not gonna fund because it doesn't come for free.

It doesn't come for free. Not and I've said it many years, even our property taxes here is way cheaper than some of these other counties. We do way more, but I think we we expect that professional level of service from our employees, our department heads. We've lost three top financial people in the last year. Three. How do you run a county government losing top financial people? Yes. The next man up, but it certainly ain't the same. They didn't leave because of pay. I guarantee you, there's some other other things that caused them to leave.

Some were recruited away from us. Just as well as we recruit businesses to come here. People recruiting our recruiting our employees to come work for them because they know we got top notch employees, and we still got them on staff. They may not have the twenty years experience of doing the job, but they're in there fighting every day, and we can't expect people assuming new roles to do three and four jobs. If you come to me on my job and tell me to go do something on the machine somewhere, I work in the lab.

This is my job. I can't you can't cross train but so much. The curve starts to bend backwards when you start getting employees to do too much. The customer service, the professionalism, the efficiency goes down. County manager can't be a CFO, county manager, make meetings, do strategic plan, set budgets. Let him be the county manager, and his budget that he's put forth simply with water rights. We can't even agree on that. I don't know if it's political because people in campaigns, but we got to do what we gotta do to take care of our needs. We're not doing it at 33%.

Any other discussion? Everyone who has not spoken could take another stab at it. So the motion on the table is to put the water rate at 6% and the sewer rate at 10%. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Opposed. Opposed. Fourth amendment fails.

Point of, I guess a question. So since they said the budget was based on that increase, do we need now to make them go back and reduce the budget? Or do we, We'll

need to

identify operating cost decreases because we we can't afford this, and I would hope you all would allow us to do that before third reading.

Before third reading, I think it would also be helpful. There's a 21 I understand. What was represented to us is there's a $21,000,000 unrestricted fund balance. There's 6,000,000 left in projects for 2026 and there's 13 proposed on the horizon. I think with the base level that already has been increased, I guess I would like before third reading clarification if y'all are now saying that we that you cannot do these projects and and I do think that there will be a motion. I will make the motion to to do the pass through. I mean, I agree with that and we've got the base level. So before we before we get out of I wanna make sure I I continue with the process so this doesn't get out of hand. But if there's

We can we can work on that. I think the the thing I would share is when you start a project remember, these are multiyear capital projects. When you start a project, you got to finish it. And so these projects last two or three years. And so when we commit to starting a project and there's one that's potentially coming up soon, you can't just stop midyear when you run out of money. And I think that's where we're very concerned. We'd love to talk more with you all about that.

So Wait a minute. Are you mister Litton, do you have any other proposed amendments?

No. No. I'm done.

Okay. Again, I'm gonna allow each council member the floor. You I I'm hearing you.

Yeah. I just have I do have one motion. I do wanna put forth a motion, to modify the rate from 3% to zero on water and for, and on the sewer to have it the pass through rate of 8%. So zero for water, pass through rate of 8%. So it is covering that cost. You're you're reducing it? Is that what you're doing? I just wanna make sure. Yeah. Zero on water, 8% on sewer. And 8% covers the pass through rate from Rock Hill.

Do we have a second?

Eight and zero. So we went to eight and zero.

So the motion let me restate the motion. The motion is to put it as a pass through on the water rate. So city of Rock Hill did not do an increase if the motion is 0% increase on water and 8% increase on sewer, which it will cover the pass throughs. Do we have a second? A second. Motion and a second. Any discussion?

Can somebody tell me if that is better or worse than the three and three for the budget?

I would have to do that calculation. I'm trying to figure that out myself right now. Maybe. But I would I would need a minute to do that.

Nobody knows.

Well, I have a question. Does 80% cover what we need to do administratively even with the pass through and our calls?

No. That was the six and the 10%.

I mean, but

So Yeah.

Six and ten did it, but eight and zero is a yes or no.

No.

Any other discussion?

I'm at a loss for words. I'm not gonna lie to you.

I have I guess the question I do have is is management now saying that you have no capability to finish what is projected for 2026 and 2027? Because that's different than what I heard at the workshop. And are you saying that we cannot wait on the rate study to be completed that we ordered last year to make sure that whatever we do, we get it correctly. Because that that's just a few months away.

What I'm saying is if we do not reduce operating costs, we will

be That's not my utilizing question, mister manager.

We'll be use utilizing almost $2,000,000 of fund balance for operating costs and we did not plan for that. So what what we need to do is go back to the drawing board and say, what capital projects might we not do? Because we're about ready to start some big capital projects

Well, I wanna ask I you

would never recommend to start.

I would like the question answered.

We're gonna be using fund balance to fund operating costs. So we've got to get back to the drawing board and tell

you what we wouldn't do.

My question is what was represented to us is that there is a $21,000,000 unrestricted fund balance. That 2026 has $6,000,000 left to projects. We do have the baseline that has been increased, and there are also these unfilled positions that have not been plus the better part of the utility manager, which has not been there. All of those things increase that fund balance. I guess my question to you all before third reading is, are you saying that we cannot wait three months to do what we suggested that we do, which is get the feedback from the rate study in order to ensure that these projects are kept up to speed?

And so I I I certainly support the motion to ensure that the entire pass through is put through and the base level is in there. My question before third reading is, are y'all now saying that if we don't do more than that, that these projects are in jeopardy and cannot be done and or that what was presented previously is that we do not have fund balance to help us do that and get it right. So that's that's my question.

And we can work on that before third reading and and this is the kind of stuff that would be helpful to know before we we get in the room here. One of the things I shared with you all in the budget follow-up email is the list of current capital projects and what's expected. So that 6,000,000 you quoted Madam Chair is only those projects that are multi year projects and exist in next year's CIP two. There's current capital projects that will be utilizing fund balance, and we're we're we're more than capable to map that all out for y'all so you can see where that money's going. But I I wouldn't wanna put Eric on the spot and ask him to answer that. But in general, are we able to develop that in time for third reading, Eric? Is there anything you would like to share?

Yes, I think we can develop that. It's probably important to share that the $21,000,000 fund balance was the audited fund balance at the end of fiscal year twenty five. So any fiscal year twenty six current expenses have not been calculated in that.

Then I think the information that council was provided really wasn't helpful in for us to make that decision. But I've asked the questions. I certainly support the pass through. The base level has also been increased and it appears that we have time before third reading to get clarity on are there projects in jeopardy? When exactly will the rate study be done? And what what is at stake there. But at least at the at the very minimum, we definitely need to include and I support the motion to make sure that the pass through is there.

I have another question, please. I think

it Sure.

Yeah. I don't know if we've got can we make rate changes in the middle of the fiscal year? Yeah.

And so one of the things we're trying to to do is get out ahead of it so it's not as big of a rate change because it will likely be a multi year request of three straight years. And and based on this conversation, we'll be asking you all to approve three years of those in that. So I I do think I do think the number will be big and this conversation will be hard and we're trying to reduce that number so we can begin shaving off the peak.

And you know that it'll be here in three months?

No. No. No. When

did when did we start? When did we start that process?

I know you all wanna blame

the No, I'm not blaming you. I'm saying this is a matter of the good governance. Please let us know when the rate study will be back.

Eric wanna wanna give a range. It is it is fall to winter right now because we're still trying to finish these big studies. But Eric, you want to give a better

estimate than I did?

No. That that's what I shared last meeting that it would be fall to winter.

Those seven seven months.

But the rate the rate study is going to be forecasting what we need to do in the future, which we can't even pass for what our needs are now, much less what we need to do in the future. I mean, the expense

is where So we're gonna raise it now and we're gonna raise it five months?

Now. And we're not gonna raise it in mid. Okay.

You will

be why would you

I'm sorry. I'll let I'll let the conversation go go beyond. The motion currently is to allow the pass through and to get some additional information before third reading. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?

No. What

was the vote on that?

Deal four through. Do show hands. Alright. Show hands.

Supporting the motion. Do not support the motion. Okay. Do we have who who wants to go next? Mister Audit, are you done?

That's it for me.

Else want to make amendments?

Sure. Might as well make stab at this. Alright. So, being on the economic development committee, we've had, two groups come to us asking for support with workforce development. I'd like to make a motion to approve the request from Winthrop University for county council to commit to a $250,000 expenditure out of the ED fund that would be paid in f y twenty twenty seven half in f y twenty twenty seven half in f y twenty twenty eight. $125,000 times two years.

I'm sorry. Could you repeat? The motion is to approve a request to Winthrop for

Committing to allocate committing to allocate 250,000 total, $1.25 from f 2027 and f y twenty twenty seven and 125,000 in f y twenty twenty eight for a total of $250,000 to help fund an advanced manufacturing degree in engineering.

And in the funds you're proposing that that come out of ED funds?

Yes.

Okay. Do we have a second?

Second.

Motion and a second. Any discussion?

So it's motion maker. Do you

want me to

share right quick?

Go ahead.

So just very quickly, they did a tremendous job when they came in to share with us the reasoning behind the request. Not that it matters. City of Rock Hill has already committed $250,000. So there's a there's a ton of upfront cost to actually implement any type of degree program. The good news is is they already have all pretty much all the coursework in place to support getting this degree. So now they just have to go to the state and convince them. So one of the things the state needs to know is do you have the money to actually bring this to fruition? Do you have the money to go recruit 60 students? Do you have the money to recruit two professors, to renovate the facilities that you need? All the expense that goes in to have a street degree program.

So ironically enough, the two top areas of academic interest in South Carolina high school students are health sciences and engineering, which is what we've identified in the economic development strategic plan is two industries that we'd like to go after is advanced manufacturing and engineering. We have a shortage of engineers, so Winthrop wants to actually get approval for an advanced manufacturing engineering program at Winthrop, which would do nothing but help us with our desire for more advanced manufacturing, the high paying jobs that we're looking for and high property taxes to help offset budgets like the one we're talking about tonight. So I ask I ask for your support.

Mister Roddy?

That's my alma mater. I support them. I love them. But I would need to see a lot more than just show up and give a five minute presentation, and we give up $250,000. You know, I Winthrop is a is a huge economic driver in our community, great institution.

But in my mind and and what I know to be true is we're helping people that's out here helping other people, then they come to us to ask for money because I know went to help the city of Rock Hill with Miracle Park and things like that, and then they show up at our front door asking for our money. Maybe they would've held on to some of that money they gave to other entities to support their projects. They'll have money to spend on their own projects. And for the life of me, there's some other ask in this budget or other ask that came before us last week that I'm not gonna support because I cannot sit here and stomach us giving away money even though it's out of our economic development fund. It's still money that we are accountable for.

I can't see us giving money to other entities. We're not hiring staff. We're not funding projects, but we're giving money outside of our out of our household. We gotta take care of home before we start looking to take care of other people. I'm just sorry. I'm I was raised that way. Take care of home before you extend our money and our dollars outside of our walls. And tonight, this council show we're not willing take care of home. And if we're if we're not gonna take care of home, I dare you to vote for things outside of this house. Because when this house starts crumbling, we can't count on the city of Rock Hill.

We can't count on Winthrop. We can't count on York Tech. We can't count on, Chamber of Commerce to come here to do anything for us. And we're always giving. We're always giving.