County Council - Regular Meeting

Good test. Welcome out tonight everybody. Let's be called to order. We welcome you to this Kershaw County Council meeting February 24th, 2026. Thanks everybody for being here. We've got a couple of proclamations that I think will clear the room up a little bit earlier on in the meeting, but we've been called to order. Let's go ahead had go ahead and have an invocation. Uh Mr. Kato, would you say that prayer for us?

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we just come to you tonight giving you thanks, praise, honor, and glory for everything that we have. Dear heavenly father, we just thank you for giving us this opportunity to come out tonight and conduct the business of this county. Dear father, I pray that you'd give us the wisdom, the knowledge, and the courage to do what's right. Dear heavenly father, make the the decisions that we need to make based on how you would have us make them. Dear heavenly father, Lord, I lift up the ones that are sick, the ones that are bererieved, the ones that need your your care and your personal attention. Dear heavenly father, I just pray that you'd put your hand upon them, Lord, and you would bless them, heal them, and give them guidance. Dear heavenly father, I pray for this nation. I pray that you would be with our leaders in Washington and abroad, dear heavenly father, that you would give them the the mindset to do the things that needs to be done for this nation. Lead, guide, and direct us throughout this night. But most importantly, dear heavenly father, forgive us when we fail you. For it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Amen. If you don't mind standing, we'll also have the pledge of allegianceled to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you everyone and thank you Councilman Kato. That brings us to the next item on the agenda, adoption of the agenda. Do we have a motion? Make a motion we adopt the agenda as submitted. Mr. Chair, we have a motion. Is there a second? I'll second. We have a second, Mr. Kato. Any discussion on the agenda?

Seeing none, we'll move it to a vote. All in favor of adopting the agenda, raise your hand. Miss Hannah, it's unanimous for the record. The agenda is adopted. We have a series of two proclamations next. First one was placed on by uh Councilman Russell Brazzle. Proclamation honoring and recognizing Betsy Gentry Greenway. Is there a motion? I'll make the motion for the proclamation. Is there a second? Second. Mr. Browse, you have a four. Thank you. Thank you. Um Chairman, I'd like to note that Councilman Tucker was interested in having his name beside mine in uh in offering this this proclamation. So, I wanted to make mention of that uh because I think I forgot to do that.

It's okay. Um I' I'd like to make a motion for this proclamation. Um, and is is the family here? If if y'all would like to stand, and I'm going to read this proclamation aloud if the family wants to come and stand together, and then we'll have a picture. Yeah. Make your motion. We'll move to a vote. We already made a motion. Yep. Yeah, we made the motion. I'm saying we got a vote. Yep. All in favor of having this proclamation approved, raise your hand. It's unanimous hand. Miss Mr. Brown, go ahead.

All right. Tonight like to honor uh years of service uh through uh advertising with with an absolute um wonderful human, Miss Betsy Gentry Greenway. I can remember first getting back from college and anytime I needed to to have something in the paper before we had Facebook and and all these different sorts of social media, you actually had to go down to the paper and and have it listed and um Miss Greenway's always been there to help us and covering so many things in Kershaw County for so many years. It's just an honor to present and and read this proclamation. Whereas it has been proven and demonstrated that dedication, leadership, and excellent creativity is brought to life through great passions and careers. And whereas it has been shown that Betsy Gentry Greenway as she has exemplified exceptional services for 47 years with the Chronicle Independent, the local newspaper for Camden and Kershaw County and surrounding areas. Whereas a mother and grandmother to the best. A mentor to many, a pillar to the Chronicle Independent, promoting excellent ethical standards within advertising for businesses, churches, individuals, and building relationships and sharing everlasting memories all over the communities within Camden, Kershaw County, South Carolina, and beyond will always remain memorable. Now therefore, this 24th day of February, 2026, Kershaw County Council presents and honors Miss Betsy Gentry Greenway

for her hard work, commitment, and dedication to a local profession, which will be one hard act to follow. Betsy Gentry Greenway has set standards very high for the next. With that, I offer the proclamation. We've already voted in favor unanimously. The proclamation is approved. Would uh Betsy, would you like to say anything at all before we come up and have you get a picture? Sure. Just speak into the mic up here so we can hear you if you don't mind.

I think we owe her a round of applause. Uh it has been my honor and pleasure to have worked for 44 years with Camden Media and the last three years with Paxton Media. Um it I I never I never ever got up in the morning and said I hated to go to work. It was always a pleasure. my relationships, um the relationships, the endorsements, um the trust that the advertisers placed with meant so much. Um it is um it is it is with great honor and I'm very humbled to have this proclamation. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Betsy. If you don't mind just waiting at the mic, count council members might have just a few comments for you. I said if you don't mind just waiting at the mic. Um, council members might have just a few comments for you. Mr. Jones, go ahead. I want to go first. Betsy, we go back a long ways. Jamie, we have we have and I tell you remember the great old days. I would come in Chronicle Independent. She tried to sell me an ad. I was trying to get one for free. Ended up paying for it. But Bessie, you've been you're a pillar of this community and I tell you what, I'm very proud of you and I'm very proud to be a part of this and I'm proud to put my signature on your proclamation. Welld deserved job. Well done. Thank you very much, Jamie. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Council members, any other discussion? Come, Mr. Tucker. Yes. Uh,

thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Greenway, because I don't know you by Betsy because you've been Miss Greenway all my life. Um, I know you as Sammy. Yes, ma'am. I'm going to die. Sammy, we go back a long ways.

Yes, ma'am. We like Cadillac seats. We go way back, don't we? With that being said, I want to say thank you too for your hard work, dedication, and just passion to this county, to the surrounding community because you did work in adjacent counties as well when the paper was going out and about. Um, but I also want to say thank you to your family uh for supporting you during these times cuz um as it was stated earlier, there was no I think Mr. Brazzle said it, there was no social media. So that was a lot of traveling, a lot of late phone calls, uh that you had to give up time with your family because it it just wasn't like it is today where you can reach out and touch people and um you've raised tremendous and loving kids. I'm seeing one over there standing up against the wall and uh the other one and um you've just had great support by your by your family as well and I want to thank them. But I would ask that God continue to bless you and give you the things that your heart desire moving forward. And may you enjoy retirement, but don't get too retired where you fade away. Keep busy.

Thank you, Sammy. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tucker. Any other comments, discussion? Yeah, council members. Mr. Sorry, I got ahead of my skis wanting to give you this proclamation. I jumped up and was running out front and the chairman had to slow me down. Um, it's a real honor to be able to do this. And um, Cameron couldn't keep a secret, I don't think. We tried to make it a surprise, but he sent me a text the other day. He said, "Well, the cat's out in the bag." I said, "Well, I guess that's okay." But Cameron and I have been friends for a long time. Um, just now getting the pleasure of meeting your other sons, but we've known one another on and off for a long time, and it's just always been a pleasant experience. So, thank you for who you are and what you've done for our community.

Thank you. I I would I would ask y'all to please support your community newspaper. If you don't support it, it's going to go away and we need it. Uh it's accountability. Um we we have tried the the best we could do. It's only three of us now at the Chronicle. Uh and now I just left. So Tom and Martin, they do a great job. Please support your community newspaper. I can't believe they do what they do with that smaller staff. That's amazing. Thank you, Miss Bessie. Thank you, Mr. Brownley. Any other comments or discussion? Uh, Miss Betsy, you've sold me many ad. I did, man.

Thank you. Thank you for that. I'm glad to support, but I want to hopefully bring one thing full circle on how important you are to the community. If you look at the front page, at least of the most recent edition that I've received, um, Stover wrestlers being recognized for their outstanding achievements. And so, that's right here on the front page, and it has a whole story about some of the things we're going to talk about here. Many of these youth and parents and coaches tonight are with the Stover wrestling team and so we thank you for covering that and getting that information out to the community. It's very newsworthy. Thank you so much. Now, now we've got to ask Martin to make sure that we get this photograph on the front page of the next front page. Martin, Miss Betsy, if your uh family could come right up front and we'll present you um with the proclamation. Would

one of her children want to say something? Y'all welcome to say something if you want to. Y'all can come on up front, Betsy. Right through that little door right there. You get right in the middle. Love it. Yes, ma'am.

Everybody ready? Don't get Derek and I confused now because we have the same shirt. All right. Very good. CONGRATULATIONS.

You earned that, Bessie. You can still say it. You can still I don't think many have heard that. Thank you, Miss Betsy and the Greenway family. Very grateful for that. Council members, that brings us to the next item on the agenda. It's another proclamation placed on item number 5B. I make a motion that we approve this proclamation honoring the Stove Middle School wrestling team state champions. Is there a second? I'll second.

We have a second. I don't really have much discussion. I'll just bring it to a vote. You've seen it. It's in the packet and then I'll talk about it. All in favor? It passes unanimously. Miss Hannah, the proclamation is approved. I just wanted to share before um we have maybe some of the team, if they can fit up here uh come up, how impressive it is that they're a multi-time uh team state championship team. I've lived it. It is extremely difficult to excel in wrestling. We've got some folks who've come through the Stover wrestling program that competed at the high school level and now will be going on to college. They're sitting in this room. It's such a great example because it lets younger kids know that they can achieve great things from Kershaw County. I just want to mention a few of the high points in the proclamation. They had a 16-1 dual record. Some of the individual outstanding recognitions I want to mention are Maline Ross, girls state champion, most outstanding wrestler, Gavin Rush, state champion, Dalton Henson, state champion, and Matthew Moore as a finalist, finishing in second place. The coaches, Coach Lorenzo McGee, Coach Elijah McGee, Coach Robbie Hinton, and I'm going to individually name the team members before I have y'all stand up to a round of applause. The team members, Matthew Moore, Meline Ross, Ben Mardle, Emry Green, Wyatt Perry, Shawn Dilker, Jaden Pina, Dalton Henson, Chance Lowe, Matthew Garcia, Gavin Rush, Austin Graham, Jayla Gonzalez, Melissa Palablano, Connor Moore, Hunter Griggs, Carter Perro, Sierra Blackman, and Michael Rogers. If I could get the coaches and the wrestlers to stand up, please. Let's give them a hand.

Now, before y'all come up for a picture, I'm not trying to disrespect anybody else's sport at all, but the joke we had, and we always thought it was true, is wrestling uses every other sport to warm up and then we go compete. I've kind of found that to be true. We also thought it was true that once you compete in spandex in front of large groups of people, not much else can bother you in life. That's true. I've also found that to be true. Wrestling reveals so much about you individually. Um, and we also have coach Ted Monroe here tonight who's coached many champions. He's a legend.

And we'll be we'll be looking at uh these wrestlers coming up into the high school program. We beat East Side, didn't we, Coach? And now we got to now we got to overcome Fort Mill. U before we have them come up, I'll have uh council members any discussion or commentary? Mr. Tucker. Uh thank you.

I'll give you my brief experience with wrestling. I'm a baseball player by trade and family. Um I went and wrestled for Camden High as a freshman. The young man pent me and I think my face on the left side came off and uh I was done with wrestling. that is a sport that I um I've always admired uh people that do it and um it takes talent, strength, commitment, and determination uh to do that cuz it's hard when someone's got you baldled up in a knot to fight your way back out and win your uh win your match. Um I will say this since you guys and ladies, I have to make sure I include that because this was impressive to me to see those names on the list. um you're the antidote even though you're going down in class next year to these bigger schools that want to um take on Ludolfph Elgen High School in wrestling. So these championships will not be left at the middle school level as y'all um transition up into your classes. Um I expect to see you back in front of us being awarded more proclamations and congratulations as the years to come. But stay grounded, keep in your education, and know that you've got a bright future. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Tucker. Mr. She. Yeah. So, again, congratulations. I'm also a baseball dad. Uh but I mean, all all of you who compete, you'll find as you get older, it's going to be invaluable uh as you pursue your adult endeavors. I wrestled for approximately 3 to four weeks. I had Yeah, I had an opportunity to be a newspaper editor and I told Coach Wash that I had had this opportunity. He asked me if I could write a sentence. And when I told him yes, he told me I was already a better editor than I will ever be a wrestler. That's a true story. I confirmed. And so I went into the newspaper business. So uh congratulations guys. That's awesome. Mr. Chairman,

thank you Councilman. Uh Mr. Jones first and then Mr. Thomasson. You Mr. Thomasson, please. Yeah, I' I'd do like to say congratulations. That is a huge accomplishment. Um not only for Stove, but to the individuals. um no matter where you place on the mat. I had the opportunity to compete for six years um and then coach a few after that. It's one of the the life lessons you learn and the struggles on the mat in practice at home getting mentally ready prepared. Those times when you don't think you can go anymore, but you know that you have 45 seconds left in the third period. Those are the times that you will use when you're not competing on the mat at some point of your life. You're going to take those life lessons and let them guide you. Wrestling's a sport that builds builds heroes and y'all are going to be heroes.

Amen. So, thank you. Congratulations. Thank you, Mr. Thomasson and Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chair County. Well, Ted Monroe, we're so proud of you. You know, my first off, thank you. And we we're very proud of you at Sto. You guys have earned this. You deserve it. My son wrestled for six years. I was going to write a book on how to get pinned in 5 seconds because he got pinned in 5 seconds. But you know what he did? He never quit and he ended up using those life skills that uh Council Schumank just talked about carrying with him. You know, you were a Marine. I'm sure being a wrestler helped you get through that Marine basic all four hours.

The bottom line is the the skills that you learn, you will carry with you the rest of your life. And I'm so proud to be able to put my name on this and Mr. Canel, thank you for putting this on the agenda. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Any other comments or discussion from council members? What?

Mr. Brazle. surely don't want to be the only one not to congratulate you. Um get my wife actually taught at Stove for a year. So, um we we had a couple of little cookouts and whatnot. It's been a decade or so ago, but um very proud of you. Excited for you. I too had a very short stint in uh in wrestling. Mine lasted one practice. Um, and it was coach Walsh as well because I was just a year ahead of Derek and he didn't have to tell me that I wasn't going to like it. I crawled up underneath the uh the mats and that was the first day they put us up underneath the mats and this is probably illegal now and cut the temperature up to 90° and I said anybody that wants me to do this I don't think I can handle it. So I didn't come back for the second day. So yeah, you guys are tough and I want the three biggest ones of you to take on Chairman Connell.

I think that's fair. I'm good for about two minutes if we can we can have that display now in a photo session here and Mr. Chim on your behalf if I may. You know how wonderful is it? We have a three what? National champion three times. I did. Okay. Six times. I know the number gets larger, but we're proud of you too, sir. Yeah. Thanks. I just want to congratulate you all. I I'm I'm big on these proclamations for our young people um excelling in whatever it is they do.

But I never wrestled. We didn't have it when I was in school. The only wrestling we did was in the backyard with the neighbors and the cousins. So, but I I thank each and every one of you for for sticking with it and and you know, it takes a lot of commitment and dedication in any sport to excel the way y'all have. So, congratulations. I just want to make note that the redheaded young man raised his hand to accept the challenge to wrestle chairman Conell.

He is a dangerous one. I know him personally. Um, thank you very much, Mr. Kato. As a last piece of advice, I'll just share that and this is really a shout out to the parents. My mom did it with five boys who were multiple time state champions, each one of them. And I I just my my hat and heart and wallet goes out to you because I know it takes a lot to uh get these boys to the matches, make sure they get all the practices, make sure they're hitting weight, make sure they're staying healthy, but it will pay off in droves with the lessons that they learn in life. 4:00 in the morning, too. And their nerves while you're while your kids wrestling on the mat. That's right. Yeah. Wrestling moms especially.

But it's really hard to beat somebody if they won't quit. And so never quit. As we sit here in this room throughout South Carolina and throughout the nation, there's a lot of athletes out there that got a mama or a daddy that care about them and they try to make sure they go to do the regular amount or the normal and expected amount of practice. A lot of kids have a coach that cares about them and wants to be successful. What you've got to determine if you're going to excel and rise above is what am I going to do outside of that static amount of preparation? And sometimes I felt like I had to be a little bit crazy to work that hard, but I did it. And every time I stepped on the mat, I knew that the person on the other side hadn't prepared as much as I did and they didn't deserve to win. And that mental edge sometimes makes all the difference in these matches. So, never quit and always work hard. Um, before we bring the team up, coaches, uh, Coach McGee or Coach McGee or, uh, Coach Henson, would you like to share anything before we bring your team up? Any of the coaches?

No. Okay. Well, we're proud of you. If you want to bring the team up and the coaches, we're going to have you line up the same way. Let's give them a hand. Congratulations.

Congratulations. in the back, man. I think he can take he pretty y'all ready. Sammy, you need a step to hangight.

I'm about to jump on bench elers. Congratulations.

YES.

If any of y'all ever want to transfer to Camden School, y'all are welcome to. We'll get you over here. We got a thing going. Can I have a peppermint? Absolutely. Take a handful of Hey, the season's over with. Y'all eat what you want now. Sorry guys. I think you'll start beating with me.

That was good stuff. Chairman, thank you, Mr. Jones. Everyone, you're welcome to stay, but obviously feel free to take off and clear out. You don't have to stay for the rest of the meeting if you don't want to. Mr. Rush, good to see you. Glad to see you wrestling the college. Take care. We're watching you. All right, gentlemen. That puts us back on the agenda. Give it just a second, Mr. Chair. So the background noise. Sure. Let me know when you're ready. You got to get a tea right. No, I just can't hear when he's going here. Come on. From Duck Dynasty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. Mr. Tucker.

All right, I think we got most everybody that needs to clear out cleared out. Gentlemen, that puts us on to public comments. Mr. Deose, do we have anyone signed up? Yes, Mr. Chair, five speakers are signed up for public comment. All right. Um, I'll just mention before we get started, public comment is a time for council to hear from the public. It's not question and answer. We're interested to hear uh what you have tonight and we usually set aside 30 minutes. Um, but we're glad to hear from each person. You'll see a little clock ticking down for the time so everybody has a fair amount of time to share. Who's our first speaker, Mr. Deose? First speaker is Lee Reid. The subject is EMS. Mr. read. I would like to defer to my colleagues to start.

I I was going to mention often um if if you're all sharing the same message, however many people it is, it's efficient if one person can share it. Otherwise, I guess we'll hear it four or five times, which is okay, too. It's different topics, but Okay. So, who who who's up first? What's your name? My name is Ann. And we have her signed up. Mr. Dose. Yes. Great. Miss Null. Uh here's a copy of what I'm going to be reading if they would like a copy. Okay. And good evening. Thanks for having us tonight. Um before I start, everybody from the Liberty Hill area, raise your hand. This is how many is here for this subject. We're talking EMS. EMS. Okay, that's I was going to ask. What's the subject?

EMS. Thank you.

Like I said, my name is an I live on 2490 Cottage Lane in Liberty Hill, South Carolina. On January the 18th, I experienced one of the most terrifying moments of my life. My husband was having a medical emergency and I did what we are all to told to do. I called 911. The dispatcher took my information and then told me they had to take another call and hung up. I was left alone, frightened, not knowing if my husband was going to survive and when no one on the other end of the end of the line to guide me. The first responder first responders did not arrive approximately 40 minutes after the phone call. The ambulance arrived 45 minutes after the initial phone call. 45 minutes may not sound long in a meeting room like this, but when you are watching someone you love struggle, when you are scared you may lose them, 45 minutes feels like a lifetime. We trust that when we call for help, help is coming quickly. We trust that the system meant to protect us will show up when it's most needed. That trust was shaken in me that day. This is not just about my family. This is about every resident in this community. If this happened to us, it could happen to anyone. What if the outcome had have been worse? What if the next time is someone's spouse, child, or parent like what I dealt with? I am here asking for accountability. I'm asking for transparency. I am asking for a change. What went wrong? What is being done to make sure families are not waiting 45 minutes for our medical services? Because 45 minutes is not acceptable for anywhere.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming out tonight. Yes, ma'am. Mr. Bose, it sounds like we have some variation. Who who is speaking next? You defer to the next person? Yes, ma'am. What's your name? My name is Chris Criminger. Miss Criminger, same topic, right? Yes. Okay. Yes, ma'am. My husband and I are homeowners and business owners on the Camden side of Lake Watery as both. The concern that we have in regards to I'm sorry, just one minute. Could we get whatever noise is outside? Can we get them to quiet down so we could hear you better? Russell, I think they can wrestle better than you, bud.

Well, I I want to be very respectful and intent in my opportunity to hear what she has to say.

Thank you. As both business owners and homeowners, the concern that we have in regard to emergency response times extremely concerns us, as it does all of our neighbors. While we do not own the most expensive home or as we are just starting our business, the most profitable business on the lake, we both feel the response times for emergencies are excessive and unnecessarily long. Therefore, loss of life and property loss are at a very high risk of happening. If someone to have were to have a stroke or a heart attack, they would not survive these response times. If they did, they would not have a very good chance of resuming their former lives. If a fire occurs, property loss would be total, which is frightening to us on both counts with the interest we have on the lake. We were told at our meeting last week that fire and ambulance stations are set up by the amount of calls that come in. This is not a long-sighted view in my opinion. The decisions where to put a fire ambulance station should be by population numbers. And in the past 10 years, the population around the lake, both sides, has grown. This has changed especially since the pandemic. Most of these homes 10 years ago were fish camps or vacation homes. The more year-round people on the lake, not to mention the people that live in the area not on the lake and as citizens of Kershaw County and taxpayers, we have the right to enjoy the same services in people that people do in more populated areas. As our county council, and I know you represent people in your immediate area, you should have the best interest of all the Kershaw County citizens, not just

Camden, Blue Golf, or Elgen, because they have the most people. I'm sure you all have heard the phrase food desert, meaning no grocery store closer than 20 minutes. We live in an emergency services desert. Counties and municipalities try to help people in food deserts. We need our emergency services desert helped. Will y'all step up to the plate and show our end of the county that you care about us as citizens also? Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you for coming out, Miss Scriminger. Appreciate it. Hover. Mr. Hubard on list. Same topic. Mr. Huard. It is. Yes, sir.

So, in August of 21, I moved to Lake Watery. I live on Harborview Road. I'm a business owner in Langster County. I live full-time at the lake. I had an experience myself in 2024, August 17th of 2024, 2:00 a.m. in the morning, I woke up with a severe case of diverticulitis. Um, the resident at the hospital told me an hour longer I'd probably have a bag on the side of my heel for the rest of my life. It took 36 minutes for the ambulance to arrive after my wife made the phone call. She was also bedridden because she had had a knee replacement a week prior. So, we were totally handicapped. My household had no mobility whatsoever. Um, I just wanted to get up and share my experience. Okay. Thank you guys.

Thank you for coming out, Mr. Hubard. Appreciate that. That uh was number three. I believe. Who's number four? Right. Mr. Number four would be Mr. Lee Reid on Mr. Reid. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Thank you, chairman and members of the council. My name is Lee Reid. My wife and I live off of Singleton Creek Road in Sunset Point. We are now full-time residents, three years in in Liberty Hill. Before I begin my prepared comments, I want to share some recent research that I feel relevant to my prepared comments on behalf of Liberty Hill. I'm going to skip some of it, but I'm going to go down to first of all the Kershaw County Council fiscal year 2026 budget retreat minutes. February 13th, 2026. Priorities in order of listing, recreation, 10 separate and individual focus bullets. Number two, zoning and land development, jail, economic development, storm water, employee pay, homestead exemption, boat tax, family court, grant writer, recycle center, EMS, specifically EMS station upgrades in Baron, DeCab, and Westville. Dropboxes, sheriff's office, East Airport, Lake Watery. In other words, EMS ranks 12th out of 16 15 or 16 priorities, putting us putting EMS in the bottom 25% of priority items identified at the budget retreat 11 days ago. Some additional research from online distance calculator estimates on the EMS's in Hershaw County. Bthoon EMS 22 to 24 miles 30 to 36 minutes. Camden EMS 24 to 27 miles 34 to 40 minutes. Lugof EMS 28 plus miles 38 to 45 minutes. Elgen EMS 30 to 45 miles 40 to 48 minutes. EMS 2 and Sumpter 24 to 27 miles 32 to 36 minutes. Conclusion of that that makes 30 to 40 minute responses structurally predictable unless resources are staged closer.

That's my background comments. My prepared comments are simple relative to what we're asking of you. I'm following up from our recent community meeting in Liberty Hill last week that was attended by Councilman Brazzle, Councilman Jones, the sheriff, our head of Kershaw County EMS, and other representatives from Kershaw. During our meeting attended by 75 plus local residents, a significant portion of our entire population, the primary concern was regarding EMS service. EMS leadership acknowledged the response time to our rural service zone may average 30 plus minutes. Anecdotal feedback from local residents with personal experience as they shared tonight confirm that to be the case. I think well EMS leadership further indicated last week that Kershaw County EMS response time goal is 10 to 12 minutes. We understand geography presents challenges. Trust me, I do not relish my 20 to 30 minute run to Walmart, Food, Line, or Lowe's, or to the tax office. To be clear, my comments this evening are not a criticism of EMS or any other county service provider. Liberty Hill residents have a great appreciation for all Kershaw County First Responders, and that was clear clearly evident last week at Liberty Hill Community Center, as well as a polar plunge for Special Olympics at Beaver's Den, the weekend before. Our concern is system performance and resource allocation, especially during this budget process, specifically around EMS fire and traffic control on 97 in and around what I will call the greater Liberty Hill area. But for now, I want to return to our primary concern, EMT. As council begins your budget deliberations, we respectfully request measurable performance transparency specific to our zone. We request clarification on the following four questions in particular. What percentage of EMS calls in our zone are reached within 15 minutes. What is the 90th percentile response time in our zone?

Has a formal EMS deployment or coverage study been conducted in our area? What funding operations options exist to improve response times, including potential collocation of EMS resources at the existing fire substation? We also respectfully request that the county council direct staff to present a zone level EMS performance review along with budget alternatives prior to formal final adoption of this year's budget. And the council would have the staff present that report prior to the second reading of the budget scheduled for May 26. Simply put, we're asking for transparency and evaluation, not promises this evening, so that reasonable access to timely emergency medical care can be properly considered and addressed as a part of the current budgeting process. We define and I think it is fair and universally acceptable definition that reasonable access to medical care means access to medical care within a medically survivable window. Cardiac arrest survival drops drastically after 8 to 10 minutes. stroke treatment windows narrow very rapidly. Timely trauma treatment is critical for both life and non-life-threatening debilitating injuries. To conclude, we are not proposing a specific operational solution tonight. We are requesting data transparency and evaluation of logistics and funding options within the budget process. We understand that rural areas are different. That is why we're requesting measurable zone specific performance data and evaluation of improvement options. We understand that funding is limited. That is why we believe this discussion belongs in the current budget process so council can evaluate cost and priorities with clear performance data to appropriately prioritize our limited resources.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Reid. And um Mr. Deose, I think we had one more signed up. Is that correct? And just to show my last the orange are where EMS stations are. The green is where we are. Yes, sir. Mr. Chamer, can we get a copy of his comments prepared? We have a copy of your comments. One of the council members requested perhaps you could email them over um if you want to send a digital copy. Okay, great. If you'd send them to Miss Hannah at council, she'll proliferate it to the council. Mr. Deose, final speaker is Melody Harden. Uh the subject is pecan Orchard. Miss Harden. Yes, ma'am.

Good evening. As many of you know, my name is Melody Harden. I live at 412 Blackberry Place in the Pecan Orchard. I'm speaking again tonight about the storm water drainage issue in our neighborhood. After the finance committee meeting today, I wanted to ask county council to come to a solution or compromise to address our issue with the storm water. At this point, there aren't enough funds to begin phase one. I'm requesting council to help consider all options and grants to fund work that needs to be completed. If funds can't be obtained to complete phase one, I would like county to consider other options to help with our drainage issues. Secondly, I again would like to c the county to start maintaining our roads. This issue came to a head two years ago when many of us brought drainage, water, and sewage issues to the county's attention. At that time, we requested this to be done. As of today, nothing really has been done besides scraping our roads, which typically makes the roads worse. The ditches of gravel are filled with gravel, leaves, limbs, debris, and dirt from the road. The maintenance of our roads doesn't solve our problem, but it helps with drainage. We believe there are many practical solutions that can temporarily help that won't cause more damage and can't make things worse. Lastly, I would like to request another visit to our neighborhood. I know many of you walked through our neighborhood about two weeks ago. If the neighborhood would have known about it the visit at the time, many of us would have been happy to show you our issues in the neighborhood and on our properties. Again, we understand

this is not an easy fix and it it is an expensive fix, but we would again request the help of county council to help with a resolution for our neighborhood. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you for coming out tonight. Mr. Deose, does that conclude public comment? Correct. Thank you everyone for coming out tonight and for those who were um asked to provide your comments, if you again just email them to Miss Hannah Parlor. Um she's the clerk to council and she'll be able to share those. Appreciate that, Mr. Chairman, if I may. Yes.

Um I think we have a presentation by our emergency services director, Mr. Will Glover. Um, and shortly after the approval of minutes, we will have a discussion that, um, I think everyone from Liberty Hill would be encouraged to stay and listen to. Um, it'll give it'll give me and others an opportunity to speak on some thoughts and ideas. So, I wanted to share that with y'all so everybody didn't get up and leave and and miss out on it.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Brazzle. Um, gentlemen, that puts us back on the agenda. Item number 7A, public presentations, forest fires, causes, and pres prevention. As you know, we recently had a a forest fire which could have been extremely significant. We've got Mr. Glover here tonight. I make a motion that we have this public presentation. Is there a second? Second.

We have a second. Any discussion on the public presentation? Seeing none, we'll move it to a vote. All in favor? Miss Hannah, it's unanimous on the public presentation. Mr. Glover. Yes, sir. Chairman, members of council, thank you for uh inviting us up to talk about uh wildfire. Wildfire season's coming up. The spring typically is is when we have a influx of fires, although this year, for some reason, we've already had an uptick. So, this is a good presentation that we can put out. I want to highlight the the efforts that we had on Ivy Bush fire on Valentine's Day. Uh a lot of the gentlemen standing behind me uh from the fire service helped, you know, make sure that fire didn't grow more than what it did. So they they put in a lot of work. So I want to make sure that they're recognized for the work that they did. So this was Valentine's Day. We'll go through a fire and then we'll talk about how to prevent fires in in just a minute. So

yes, sir.

Um the just to highlight the responding units. I'm not going to read every single one of them, but you can see we we dumped a large amount of resources on this fire from Kershaw County Fire Service. Our uh automatic aid agreement with Camden Fire provided us with with some units. Lugaw fire sent something. Our brush truck over. Kershaw EMS provided medical standby in case one of something happened to one of our firefighters or a resident in the area and then also the sheriff's department sent a lot of deputies in case we had to start evacuating homes and also to shut the road down because smoke was blowing so so far over it. So a lot of units responded to this fire from inside the county and then our partnerships outside of the county. uh Lee County, Sumpter County, of course, Black River Electric was there, Lancaster Fire Department sent assets, Alligator Fire Department in Chesterfield, and then South Carolina Forestry Commission. Our regional supervisor is here tonight, Mr. Kobe Blizzard. So, you know, want to give them recognition. They had three bulldozers, a plane, and three command officers from their area, too, working handinand with our people. So, a huge response. Uh when you get this many people coming to a fire and operating on a fire, it's a logistical nightmare of trying to keep up with everybody and make sure we're sending them to the right place. So kudos to our people who uh who did that. Just to hash out the the call real quick. Um one of our volunteers actually lives right next to this place. So he stepped out of his door and he was on scene really fast. So one of the quickest response times that we can have to the fire. But um call was received at 13:20. He was there. He estimated the fire at 5 acres at 1328. At 1329, multiple homes on Bluff Road started calling about the fire getting close to their resident. Uh first engine was on scene 1332. Another phone call about a house threatened on Holland. Another phone call about a house threatened on Sher and then it jumped Holland Road at 1404. So it expanded very quickly. Wind conditions pushed this fire. humidity levels were low, so it allowed the fire to burn very quickly and and very fast

and in a certain direction where the wind was blowing. Uh at 14:14, we started notifying residents around Park and Holland to evacuate in certain areas in case we couldn't uh get ahead of it and stop it. And then, you know, 3 hours later, it was 100% contained. So something that started from, you know, an outside burning that quickly jumped to 5 acres to 10 to 20 to 30 to 40. Uh all the units working together hand in hand was able to get the fire under control, you know, in a couple hours, which I think speaks to the our our team. So overall, 55 acres burned. Uh we did lose seven structures. They were all classified as abandoned, abandoned mobile homes or or sheds in the woods. There was one house that was burned, but it had been abandoned and and overgrown with vegetation. But we saved 14 structures that people lived in. I think that's the thing to highlight. We were able to to uh get our resources in place and save those. And I got a map later on of where those houses were. Uh we called extra resources immediately. We're able to communicate with all of the agencies that came in uh to this fire uh simply because of our radio system that we bought into that that y'all helped provide funding for. uh we we've established a drone operation here recently and that we can get it up in the air and see where the fire is running a whole lot faster than we can by foot or by vehicle. So that helped us out tremendously and and dispatch was calling all the resources. Uh they turned the call over quickly. Um so they did a really good job of of keeping everybody up to date of where everybody was. So just a couple pictures. I'm sure y'all saw some stuff on Facebook. I sent a a text message out to some of the firefighters and I was like, "Hey, did y'all have any fire or any pictures of this fire?" And they were like, "No, we didn't have time." So, I had to go steal pictures from other other places to try to try to put them on here, but just a couple quick pictures. We'll run through really quick. We were able to save some of the cows in the community. Um, and you can see that that car on the left hand side. It's a it's a sheriff's deputy from another

county. The fire was running up on them and the bulldozer actually just cut a break around the house and the car to keep the the car from burning. So, quick quick uh actions on the bulldozer save the save the vehicle. Also, sheriffs appreciate that.

Exactly. Uh on the right hand side is kind of a map of the area after we got it under control. They walked it with a with a app to to lay it out to show us exactly how many acres it was. At one point, the the airplane from forestry was showing that it was 75 acres, but then we were able to fine-tune that down a little bit to 55. Uh this is drone pictures after the fact. You can see where it jumped one road. Uh it it jumped the power lines of course uh and it was it was moving pretty quick there. So it got a little hairy for some of our people, you know, for a little while, but they were able to get it under control. This is the picture I really want to highlight. Um somewhere around, you know, in between 13, 12, and 14, that was kind of the origin of the fire. Correct me if I'm wrong,

okay?

Uh but we count the houses that we were able to to to protect and save from this. So, you know, 14 homes that people lived in. You can kind of see the cluster in between four and nine in that area. That's where a lot of abandoned mobile homes were and we just weren't able to save those. But the other ones, occupiable houses, able to to to save on those. Not to mention, I want to throw this in here. Uh at the same time this fire was going on, uh we had already been toned out to a fire on Timber Creek Road. So we had units operating there. This fire came out. Uh then we got toned automatic aid to Camden for a fire and a fireplace that was toned out as a structure fire to start with. Then we had a 3acre woods fire on Bishopville Highway. Then we had a 8 to 10 acre woods fire on uh Jones Road. Then we were dispatched to a woods fire on Salem Acres Road and another fire on Gary Golf which is across the river. So all at the same time we had these other calls coming out. Our mutual aid partners helped us with several of these fires because we had all our units tied up on on the one big fire. So, it wasn't just this one on that day. Typically, when we have one big fire and the humidity is low, when the wind's high, we start getting them all over the county. Uh, in 2025, Kershaw County Fire Service responded to 94 outside fires with 79 threatened. As of 2020 when we uh started this pres making making this presentation, we had already responded to 72 outside fires with 24 threatening structures, three of which actually damaged structures. So we had 95 total or 94 total in 2025. We've already gone to 72 right now. So and and technically grass fire, woods fire season hadn't started yet. So just the temperature, the humidity, and the wind has has been brewing. So, this is a really good presentation to put out and and maybe some quick tips on how to how to prevent some of these. And uh South Carolina outdoor burning, this is all from the

South Carolina Forestry website. Debris burning uh any planned fire that escapes falls into this category. It accounts for 50% of the fires that we go to across the state. Um actually uh 25 to 30% is classified as arson, woods arson, meaning somebody else lit the fire and it crossed onto somebody else's property or they maliciously you know started the fire themselves. Equipment use 5% smoking 3 to 4% and then children is 3 to 5%. So some quick statistics of of why these fires happen. So outdoor burning tips and I've got some pamphlets that forestry brought up here. Think before you burn. We can give these out if you need more. I'm sure Kobe will get us some more. But state law requires that citizens notify the forestry commission before any outdoor burning. So you can do that online at the website listed here, scfsf scffc.gov/notify, or by phone, 1 800758609. You simply give them your address, what you're planning on doing today, and and it counts as your burn permit, and it lets us know that somebody's doing a controlled burn in the area. The other thing the forestry commission and we push is think burn. So be prepared, understand the laws about burning, respect the weather, and never leave your fire unattended. And we'll go into this a little bit more. So what does being prepared mean? Keep hand tools and water supply close. Uh do you have enough time to remain with the fire? A lot of the fires that we go to that get away from people, they they simply say, "Look, I stepped inside for a minute. I came back out and the whole world was on fire." So you know, you can't run to Walmart. You can't run to the store to grab something. You got to stay with the fire the whole time. If you have one large pile, can you divide it up into smaller piles to make it more manageable for yourself? Uh, make sure you create a good break around the pile and don't burn near homes or other structures. You would think that would be a a given, but a lot of times we have a, you know, somebody sets a pile of leaves on fire 10, 15 feet from a house, the wind changes, it goes towards the house, and

they have a they have an issue. So, uh, quick tips there on being prepared. the laws about burning. Uh I'm not going to read the section number, but it's on there. Starting fires in woodlands, grasslands, and other places shall be unlawful unless certain precautions are taken. Those precautions include notifying the forestry commission. We already talked about that. Clearing the area around the site, assuring adequate personnel and equipment are available to keep the fire from spreading, and making sure the fire is under control before leaving. So fires out, no hotspots, no anything. Um, another section of of code uh states that negligently allowing fire to spread to lands of other uh or other property, if your fire escapes, you will be fined. If any damaged property, you will be liable. It is also against the law to burn household garbage and trash, tires, chemicals, plastics, and other building materials anywhere in South Carolina. So, just yard debris is all that's supposed to be burned. We go to a lot of homes where they're burning household trash in in the in the yard. That's a that's not what we want. Uh, it's just outside yard debris and and Forester Commission tries to stay on top of it to the best of their ability. Weather's a huge thing. You heard me say wind speed and and humidity a couple times already. Check the daily weather forecast. How long has it been since the last rainfall? We had a decent amount of rain, but then the humidity dropped and the wind speed came up. That dries things out very quickly and and makes it for a very volatile fire environment. Whenever we're burning outside, it's safer to burn a few days after a soaking rain or when the humidity is higher than 30, I would like to see the humidity higher than that. You know, anything anytime the wind speed and humidity gets close together, that's when you start having a a bad day. Are there going to be any higher gusty winds? Wind causes branches, leaves, pine needles to to dry out quick. A debris fire will burn more intensely when it's windy, of course, and gusty winds can blow sparks into other areas, even past your break. Uh, so make sure that we we pay attention to how fast the wind is going to be blowing and also

what the wind direction is. Think about where the smoke will blow. Technically, you're responsible for your smoke. So, if it blows over a road and causes a a blackout situation, then you're kind of responsible for that. Uh, don't burn as smoke will blow into roads, airports, or other occupied buildings. And then lastly, never leave your fire. Watch for any flying embers or sparks. Pay attention to any kind of smoke drift going into other property. notice changes in weather and if you're concerned about safety, just go ahead and put the fire out. That's that's the safest thing to do. And make sure it is out before you leave. So once again, hammering that home, don't run to Walmart and leave a fire burning in your backyard. Uh couple things just to think about moving forward. Uh I know, uh as we we go to look at some of our zoning code, uh defensible space and new subdivisions. If anybody heard about the Ory County fires last year, we actually deployed resources down there. They have very little defensible space. Defensible space means, you know, short grass, um, either either dirt, rock sections or anything else. A lot of those homes are built right up against the forest or are the bays in that area and it doesn't give much area for us to use as defensible space. So, always we got to think about that moving forward. Uh, limited water sources in remote areas. Most of the county on the eastern side, very limited water points. So, we have to think about that. And then a lot of other counties in in the past have looked at county ordinances. Forestry can only do so much of of enforcing and trying to keep up with the laws of of burning outside burning. DHECK also regulates outside burning depending on what's being burned. So, some counties have put in ordinances to try to help, you know, some of these uh outside debris burning kind of kind of push that down a little bit and save some property. So stuff that we can look at in the future. Real quick, this is not a wildland fire, but I wanted to highlight something. Has anybody heard about close before you doze? So close your bedroom door before

you go to sleep. So we had a structure fire over in in Elgen a couple days ago was on Barfield Road. Came in just as any other structure fire. Our units receive responded, arrived on scene, and they confirmed that there was a victim there. Um the victim was rescued, identified where they were, pulled out of the structure within three minutes of figuring out that there was a victim there, and then we were able to control the fire. Um so kudos to our people being able to make a rescue a 14-year-old um individual on this one. But uh the thing that I wanted to highlight is this close before your dose. The left picture is uh outside of the bedroom, heavy heat conditions, heavy smoke conditions. On the right side, you can see a little bit of smoke stain that I think that was after the door was open, you know, once we got the kid or the individual out. But that room is almost untouched for the most part. If you close that door, it gives you an extended amount of time to to get out of a residence if if the house is on fire. So, we want to hammer that home. We we do social media releases and press releases, but please, if we can push the close before you doze uh message, it it could save somebody's life. So, um, and I wanted to highlight the the owner of the the property said that we could use those pictures f first off and then, um, you know, she was thankful, uh, the the son and then, um, I think four cats and a dog were pulled out of this this fire. So, just a a quick um good job to our people and then also pushing the the close before you doze message. Director Glover, thank you so much for the presentation and I congratulate you and thank you for the service you've done, particularly with the recent wildfire that we had, but yeah, I wasn't aware of this one just a couple days ago. Um, perhaps saving someone's life in Elgen, it sounds like along with their pets. Um, just eyeballing the clock. I'm sure we're going to have some discussion from council members. I'd take a motion to extend our public presentation uh time period. Is there a second?

Second. Got a second. Any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all in favor? We've extended it unanimously as needed. Miss Hannah, council members, any comments, questions, discussion? Very quickly, Mr. Jones. Good job. I was a fiber for nine months. This sounds like some of the wrestling background. Thank you, Mr. Jones. It's It's all our team. Nine months was a lot longer than the other short stints in wrestling. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Uh, any other comments or questions, discussion? Mr. Mr. Tucker.

Um, this is actually be towards administrator. Is there um any way that we can possibly um put some of the um information about the website and the phone number on our website so people can be able to access it a little quicker. We do have it on the Kershaw County Fire Service page website, but I can work and help them get if people like me, you know, who's not internet savvy or anything IT savvy, we might struggle to get to the fire one, but if we can get up on the Kershaw County one, um, that might be a little quicker to access and people will use it as well. I'll show you how to do it, Sam. Director, you're the right teacher.

Sending smoke signals to send a message is kind of the opposite of the idea. We got We need you to modernize, Sammy. I know. And I want to say, well, thanks. Thanks for all that you and your team do. And uh I know you probably have already done this, but I'm going I'm going to say it um because um if they happen to be listening to know that council appreciates too the surrounding counties, Lancaster, um Lee, um Sumpter, and I don't know if anybody came from Richland or not, but Chesterfield,

Chesterfield, did they come? uh for all the surrounding counties that did respond to our our emergency, I want to say thanks to them and their um leadership administration because that's what it takes. Um these fires get out of control very fast as you well know and um you know we've had this year already that I familiar with. You know, one house fire we were not able to save someone which happens to be one of my church members. um different circumstances, but still that's a life and um you know that's a horrible way to go is in a fire whether you awake or sleep it's just a horrible way to go. But thank you and to the crew. Thank you Mr. Tucker. Council members, Mr. Chairman, if I may,

Mr. Brazzle to uh to every fireman in the room. Thank you. Thank you for your hard work, your dedication, your service. um had the pleasure of being at the town hall with uh with Will. Was it just what a week ago now roughly? Yeah, I think

it's probably been longer than that. It seems like it was two days ago. um the the amount of leadership that you exhibit and and the way you present to us and the way you respond to us is second to none. Will um you and I started here at Kershaw County about the same time. I was sworn in in January and I think you came to work in March. Is that right? Of 20 May. Yep. 2021.

2021. And somewhere between the time I was sworn in and the time you were hired, I had a phone call from one in particular person telling me that I needed to find out who Will Glover was. And I said, "Okay." And this person was very adamant that you come back to Kershaw County. I'm so thankful that you're here. Um just really impressed with the way you've you're able to assist at the town hall. I was impressed at your ability to communicate effectively with people in a positive manner and tonight this presentation I really appreciate what you've what you've shown us and um very familiar with the forestry service. Um my education was in forestry and I know there's different techniques that could have been a big fire. 55 acres is a big fire. Um but it looked like it was a lot of it was kept low and um

we uh we got lucky a couple places. Um first of all I want to say it's not me, it's the team behind me. Absolutely. The team that's not here. Um without them I couldn't do anything. So you know all the kudos goes to them. I'm just I'm just here. So um Colby and his team uh from from forestry the working relationship that we have with so many agencies now uh is is second to none. uh the aid agreements that we've been able to put in place, uh mutual and automatic aid. I mean, it's just it's it's great the way that we've been able to network and and Chief Bullard and his team, they're continuing to move that that automatic aid and mutual aid agreement forward. Uh Chief Edge on the EMS side has also been doing that. So, it it's not me, it's it's the team below me.

Someone who defers to their team and gives them the recognition is a leader. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Tomlinson. Yes, sir. Thank you, director. Um, just a quick question. You mentioned in the presentation um, other counties have have local ordinances. Um, could you give some examples of the type of ordinances that that they have and is there any of the surrounding counties that have ordinances? Um, Richland County, SER County, Darlington, I can help you out if you know anybody else.

Um, a lot of the surrounding ones do. Most of them just look at the state law, you know, and they set a minimum requirement of you can't burn within a certain amount of feet from a house uh to just put that in in place. They they reup the um only burning yard debris and not household ga uh uh household trash. Mhm. Um, so really simple things that's kind of in state law that we can we can put into an ordinance and enforce it at a local level instead of, you know, having to rely on on, you know, forestry or or dees to uh to enforce it and we can handle it oursel. In other words, correct. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Any other comments or discussion? I got you, Mr. Kato.

Well, thank you again. And I've I've spent a good bit of time as a volunteer up in Bthoon, but I I just want to I want to put this out there that y'all really need volunteers. Volunteers aren't as popular as they were back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s in the rural departments. And and I know that slacked off and a lot of it has to do with so many different things families have to do at this particular day and time. But, you know, anybody that's interested in volunteering, I I would ask you to reach out to Will and his staff. I want to thank them for the job they do. They they are they are amazing and they they really work hard at what they do. I've got a brother-in-law that's part of the forestry team and uh I I thank them for what they do. They have saved many lives in many houses. So, so thank you again and I just wanted to put that out there. If someone wants to volunteer or is interested in helping, please reach out to them because they need all the help they can get.

And I'll say too, uh, the volunteer system now, we've tried to tailor it to where you don't have to be a interior firefighter. You don't have to put an air pack on and go inside. We can train you to pick up a truck, drive the truck, and other people will, you know, put the air packs on and go inside. We can train you to, you know, emergency medical response. So, there's there's different avenues. So, if you don't want to go inside of a burning fire, we may have a different option for you. How long how long would that training be if you were going to be a support um

depending on which way you go? Uh driver operator training, you're looking at, you know, 60 hours probably of of of training to get to the point of driving a truck where you can pump effectively, draft water. Um that that sort of thing. EMR training is about 40 hours now, I believe. Yep. 40 hours. So, uh, and and interior firefighting is up about 150 hours of training, the initial training. And then you have to do annual certifications, even if you're a volunteer. Yes. Yep. How long does those um certifications last?

The the certifications are good as long as you continue to do training. Uh, annual training requirements for for volunteers. Um, there it's somewhere per ISO, it's a whole lot higher. We hold them to a certain standard and I believe it's changed to about four month four hours a month now. or what's I'm looking at the training the new training officer back annual training for a volunteer now requirements four to 10 hours a month

so Councilman Tomlinson thank you for bringing that up that was going to be a point that I wanted to make that was part of our discussion I think you said it was roughly six weeks of training per year for interior firefighter you have to go about 150 hours um to get the initial certification. Okay. Um

I think that that to bolster our volunteer base um that's probably the best suggestion right now is to find people who can help that wouldn't be an interior firefighter. We we need to look to our friends at the state for um ways to to bring young people in that doesn't take three and four and five weeks of training. Uh they can be trained at WTC. Is that right?

Yep. We've got that program. um that that is definitely something that we need to encourage our young people to to get involved with and kind of bolster that because it it used to be when I was growing up such a honor to to be a part of something like this and um it still is. It's it's just tapered off. So, anything that we can do to make that easier on you, please let us know. We'll do. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bows. Any other comments or discussion? Director Glover, you're doing an excellent job. We look forward to uh doing our best to support you in the future. Let us know if you have any ideas or what you need and it's completely appropriate to bring up something like defensible space because we're in the middle of a Z DR rewrite and smart growth committee is going to bring recommendations in. Thank you so much. Yep. Thank you all. All right, gentlemen. We're back on the agenda. That brings us to item number 8A. We have two uh sessions of minutes to approve. We'll take them as two separate motions. Is there a motion on item number 8A? This is the council regular. Mr. Chairman, I make a motion. February 10. We have a motion. Is there a second? Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the minutes for 8A. Seeing no discussion, we'll move it to a vote for approval. All in favor, raise your hand. Miss Hannah. 8A. The minutes are approved unanimously. Now seek a motion on item number 8B. This is regarding the budget retreat. Mr. Chairman, I'll make a motion. We have a motion. Is there a second? Second. We have a second for Mr. Kato. Any discussion on 8B? Mr. Chairman, if I may. Yes, sir.

Um I was looking through here and um the gentleman that got up, Mr. Reed, I believe, and um spoke about the minutes. I just want to say for for just um clarity that there's no numbers beside those um topics intentionally because they're not in any priority. So just FYI that there are things that are important to council but council has not prioritized any of that yet. Correct. Yes sir. Okay. Any other discussion on the minutes for 8B? MSB number one. Sir. No. No. I'm good.

Okay. We'll move it to a vote then with Mr. Jones being good. All in favor raise your hand on 8B. Miss Hannah. It passes unanimously for the record. Next up we have item number 9A placed on by Councilman Brazzle. Emergency services. Is there a motion? Yeah, I'd like to make a motion to discuss uh options for emergency services. Is there a second? Second. We have a second. Mr. Brazley, you have the floor.

Thank you. Um I'd like to point out the fact that this was um Danny Kato brought this up uh during our retreat as a as a point of keen interest for him. So Danny, thank you. Thank you for for for pointing out the the fact that we do have a desert a a gap and we we have had things change postco people have uh been able to work remotely others have retired and uh these more rural communities are experiencing these issues with longer lead times and and the lake geographically divides our county and it creates these long points. Um everything can't can't be just lug golf just Elgen just Camden. We have to find a way to to get these response times to Will said you know the ultimate response time is 10 to 12 minutes. Will we get there? I'm not sure. Does it need to be 45 minutes? Absolutely not. It's um it's unacceptable. And that town hall left me with a lot to think about. And um director Will Glover and I have talked um through this. He has ideas. I have ideas. And um as I was on the way home and and Councilman Jones attended with me and he actually rode with me and I dropped him off and we I don't know we live about 12 minutes apart and halfway back to my house I called him. I said I've got an idea and I think this is going to work. So, I'd like to present that to everyone tonight. And um I've already reached out to some of our

partners um MUSC um health resources district and actually spoke Councilman Tucker to um the COG and there are opportunities beyond those three for partnerships in Kershaw County for rural services and that certainly qualifies and and one of them is is a state level partnership and and Ben having served at the state house can certainly um better educate the rest of council. So, with all that being said, I'm going to read through a letter that that will be issued uh to some of our partners and um and talk about the rule response times as soon as I put on my glasses. Take your time. It's already past my bedtime. Now, this is this is something that has not come from will. This is something that was that was just thoughts in my head after a town hall. Kershaw County Rural Response Team, so RRT for short. A rural response team is a specialized unit designed to address the unique challenges of low density areas that have long travel distances and limited infrastructure, a reliance on volunteers, and it will have to have full staffing. In the case of Kershaw County, those areas would be Beaver Creek, Pine Grove, Liberty Hill, of course, all the areas around the lake. um Casset and Bthoon as well, although they they currently have um excuse me, more stations and um EMS

than than these other areas I've mentioned. Establishing a rural response team for EMS and ambulance and emergency services in Kershaw County will require a structured approach that integrates with the infrastructure that we have while addressing the the challenges of the unique rural geography. Our mission is to align with the executive director, Will Glover, um, and continue to adhere to the rules and regulations already in place while trying to foster better relationships through all all of the partners that we have to work with. Um, I'm going to ask for I think Will's going to ask for two EMS vehicles this year. I'm going to ask for an additional four and I'm going to reach out to our partners um including the COG, including MUSC, including the Health Resource Districts and the one um that I have not had time to reach out to would be a grant through the South Carolina Office of Rural Health. I think that we would certainly qualify for any of these opportunities. had some great conversations already. Um, and and I've got a letter here. I'm gonna read it and then I'd like David, are you here still? We've got David Adams with MUSC. I'd like to hear from David if if he would like to speak on this subject. Um, but here's a letter that that I formed and I would like for it to come from council if if everyone agrees and supports uh these opportunities to to work together with state agencies. Um, I'm writing to propose a strategic collaboration between Kershaw County, the Medical University of South Carolina, known as

MUSC, and the Health Resource District to establish three rural EMS ambulance stations supported by rural response teams. This initiative directly supports providing the right care in the right place at the right time by expanding physical medical presence in underserved areas specifically off Highway 97, Longtown Road and 521 at Baron Decab in order to reduce response times to the lake community as well as one of the most remote and medically sensitive areas in our county. Despite South Carolina's health care advancements, rural populations continue to face significant disparities in access to timely medical care. The proposed EMS ambulance stations staffed and supported through dedicated RRT units will serve as critical access points, reducing traffic barriers while strengthening emergency response capacity and stabilizing local healthc care and community. These rural response teams will enhance patient outcomes through faster stabilization, improve community accessibility and delivery of timely treatment to individuals in need. I respectfully request a preliminary meeting with the organization to further discuss the demonstrated need and urgency surrounding placement of these rural EMS ambulance stations and accompanying accompanying RRT deployments throughout rural Kershaw County. I look forward to your response and the opportunity to work together towards improving health care and access for our residents. With kind regards, I am Russell Brazzle, Kershaw County Council. Now, what we've done is we've started a

conversation. You engaged with me and now it's my turn to engage with others and get us all to a table and work through these issues together. Um, I certainly know that everybody here on this council supports safety and healthc care in our community. Our chairman's been a tremendous advocate and work with MUSC for years. Um, I can't say enough about each and everyone that's I mean some of you guys been law enforcement. These are the things I've never done. I probably have the least amount of of knowledge regarding emergency services andor fire, but I do know how to build a team. I do know how to put put a group together that can solve a problem. And that's how I look at this is is we have a problem and we need to solve it. Um we're going to have a funding issue. The ambulances are probably a half a million dollars each. More than to rehab the old structures, to find temporary structures. If it's nothing more than a small office and a uh and a shed for for an ambulance. Um Will, where you at? Could I ask you back up? You've got so much knowledge that I I need to borrow. Oh, I do. Don't be shy. Other than a than a full-blown ambulance, what are what are the other opportunities uh

as far as improving services in areas? Well, yeah, I think there was a a smaller truck, a medic truck or something. What you call it? We have QRV vehicles, QRVS, medic units that uh you know, they can provide ALS, advanced life care support um until an ambulance arrives. Can they transport somebody? They cannot. Can they Can they administer lifesaving medicines if someone's having a heart attack? They can.

Okay. Well, my my shortterm goal is to establish those just as fast as possible. Um I think there at one point there was one at Beaver Creek years back I believe. So, um I don't know when that was pulled. I think the actually the Lake Water Reociation helped fund um part of that salary. Uh so, well, can we find out when it went away and what we need to do to refund it? I want to do that now. We can do the research on that. Yes.

Um and let me let me say this to everybody in the audience. These men with their badges on, they're doing their job. This is on us. This is on me. I'm your representative, and I'm going to take full responsibility and ownership. Uh Will and I had a very deep conversation in which he says, you know, I really just I appreciate my guys so much. I want them to feel loved. And I said, Will, this is not your fault. This is my fault. And I want you to know that. But we're going to fix it. We're going to fix it correctly. And I don't say that I'm not a people pleaser. I'm going to tell you the truth whether you like it or not. Um and the truth is is we're going to fix it. I heard you loud and clear. That was a tremendous crowd and there were so many people let down and that just should not be the case. Um, I'm going to lean on our partners. I'm going to lean on the people that um have have the expertise in these matters to help us. So, um, does anybody will do you want to provide any more information?

I'm I'm sorry. As administrator, can I be read into this? Yeah, of course. Because I'm I'm flatfooted here. I don't know anything about that. You can Well, this is this is council. this is council and it's me bringing an opportunity and an idea to fix this. But I I just hear one of my staff being tasked with something that I'm not anything aware of. I hear um and in particular I'll just mention as a point of order uh this was placed on the agenda as a discussion item only. So literally unless it's moved or we create a new item, the agenda is Well, we're not voting on anything tonight.

Well, no no action item can be taken. I don't think we can even refer something to um to the finance committee. Mr. Deose, is that correct? Like no action can be taken from a discussion session. Yeah. Strictly speaking on discussion items, they're not those aren't action items. All right. So, I just want to comply with what the rules are. To your point, options exist to create u action items, but uh addition to the agenda would be a twothirds finding with exigent or emergency circumstances to to take any action on something not ours. We're having a discussion, Mr. Deose. We're not I'm not I didn't ask for a vote. And Danny, I didn't if I offended you in any way, I certainly apologize because um

Let me say something. I didn't know it. I haven't seen it. I haven't seen this before tonight. Did y'all know about it? No. But but he told me he had something he was bringing forth that might resolve a lot of our issues. So I think, you know, I mean, if it's a bad idea, I'm happy to be told that it's a bad idea. Mr. Chairman, can I ask a question? Sure. Um to Danny and and Director Glover, I know that last year in our budget process, we we worked really hard to bolster fire, EMS, and even supplement sheriff's department. Do we have a number? I can't trying to remember through all the budget means. Do we have a number about what what we budgeted um for each one of those? You don't have to answer that right now, but that'd be something for for all of council to look at.

I can I can put together the increases and where those increases went. Yes, I can put that together. And and I agree. I I think every year we should bolster emergency response and I know that a few of us up here have have done that every year. Um and I appreciate everybody coming on board. What would be so if we do have three new stations, four vehicles, what does that impact and reoccurring budget line item if you have for FTEES?

Councilman, I don't think we can get that granular tonight. That's why as a discussion item and Will and I specifically spoke about the fact that we didn't want to get into the weeds and the details because this is like a 30,000 ft discussion. Well, Mr. Thompson has a floor. I mean, you Well, actually, I had the floor. Actually, I had the floor and I was interrupted and I didn't get to finish my first thought. would appear to be I had a question that I yielded to Danny because he seemed um like he wanted wanted to speak but I yielded back to me browser. May I say one quick thing?

Sure. When I was a I was a county employee for 25 years in the department 15 years and our county administrator always told county council they could talk talk to the it staff and Danny's been very good about that along with it carpenter arrest but also the county administrators required their staff to make sure he let they let him know that they're going to be working with a county councilman or getting some information for that county councilman. So, I would recommend that maybe you ask your staff from this point on to make sure you do know, you know, what's coming before us. I think that's a great idea and I will have a memo go out. Yes, sir. And that's the way we council and staff because I think that's a two-way sword, but thank you. I appreciate that, Mr. Jones. You okay, Mr. Brazzle retaining the floor?

I would like to go ahead. Yes, sir.

So, as an elected official, I'm tasked with listening to the people. As an elected official, I don't need anybody's permission to try to solve a problem. Danny, respectfully, I'm happy to read you into every conversation if that's what I need to do. Um, Will and I had a great conversation. I told him what was on my mind. If this council decides it's not the avenue we want to go, then that's we won't we won't go that avenue. But I think Will has ideas that he's probably worked with you on that we can all find happy medians in. And none of this is about me. This is about everybody sitting in this audience, our families, and our loved ones. This has zero to do with me. This has everything to do with the people in Kershaw County, and making sure we're doing the right job. Um, David Adams is here tonight with MUSC. If if others have questions for Will, I've expressed what I'd like to see. I'd like to utilize buildings that we have, the buildings that are existing. I'm willing to donate materials to get them up to code if necessary. If if there's a bedroom that needs to be redone, I'm willing to help. I'm here to help. Nothing about this conversation is anything other than I want to find a solution and I want to do it with you. I want to do it, Danny. I want to do it with you. Okay.

Got it. I welcome that, sir. I welcome that. Good. We'll save your neck and tell you, administrator. So, at this point, I will yield. Um, any further comments? Yep.

I have read the letter. I have read my thoughts that God gave me that I fear not being uh deterred from ever using in the future because I will continue to. And I welcome anyone else to speak to Mr. Glover, please. And I would after Mr. Glover's done, I would like to invite Mr. Adams from MUSC to share the conversation that he and I had together and the absolutely unbelievable ideas that he had to share with me about the Liberty Hill and the upper Kershaw County and lower Lancaster County options that could be a longer

Russell had floor then I intervened. He took it then you got it. Well, you can have it after I make this last statement. I was trying to say, but but I'm gonna yield to you because I'm a nice guy. It'll just be really quick. Go ahead, Mr. Thomas. Um, I

Russell, I appreciate all your hard work on this and I know that Chief Glover and all of our emergency response staff would love to have additional funding. I know that our our county administration would love to have additional funding. And we can sit up here all day and have great ideas to put out. But if we're not willing to vote to put taxpayer money on paper in a budget, these ideas are all all speak. And and that's that's the hard part. We we've got to be willing to get up here and take that responsibility to make those votes in the process. That's the last statement I have to make. Great statement, Mr. Thompson. Mr. Jones,

that was very good. Mr. Thompson, you know, u you got to talk about it before you can put money on it. And uh one thing that I I will say is that I've always been in favor for my 20 years. I've always from the very first day I was on council, I had an argument first night I was on county council and it was about public private funding and Mr. Tucker knows what I'm talking about. We had a lot of fun with that one. He voted against me. I vote against him. You always ask 61. But the thing about it is what I'm hearing and I need more understanding. Russell, because some may think I know, but I don't know. I'm I'm very interested in and I'm I'm very proud that we have a council member that will go ahead and ask questions and try to find funding for certain issues to try to do a a private uh public partnership. That's a t that takes the burden off the taxpayers for the whole 100%. If I'm not mistaken, that's that's what you sound like you're talking about. I don't I don't know. I'd like to hear from Mr. Adams about what how MUSC, you know, or the health resource. I'd like to hear how they are going to be involved or would be involved, but I'm I'm certainly thinking that it's to save money. And and and to my colleagues, and I know y'all probably didn't know about it, but that was a very passiondriven town hall meeting with a huge crowd, almost 100 people. And in my 20 years, I've never seen a town hall that big. In other words, I've seen town halls with more politicians and bureaucrats than people. Uh but that was that was probably one of the biggest I've ever been to. And I'll tell you, when I hear this lady over here, and ma'am, I don't need your vote. Don't want your vote. I'm saying this because it's come from heart. It broke my heart to hear what you said about your husband. Of course, we can't run off of emotions in here, but it's just the good sense, right thing for us to do. So, I'd say to my colleagues, Mr. Brazzle, thank you for bringing this before us and to have a conversation to get it started. But I can assure my colleagues, they know that because finance committee certainly has to go through them first. But bottom line is nobody would ever intend to just

go throw money at something without having a conversation first. So I thank you. I thank you folks for sitting out here tonight. I thank you folks for being up there the other night. It was my honor to be there. Will I thank you and and I I just tell you uh Mr. Brezzle continue to fight, continue the good work because this was this was really I just I'm just excited to hear the rest of it. I'm I'm ready to hear from Mr. Adams. Does anybody else have anything? Mr. Jones, thank you so much. Any other comments or discussion from any council members at this time? I I'm a little bit perplexed, but I'll save that for later. Mr. Adams, please.

I'll do my best. You always do. Well, Mr. Adams, you see what you're walking into. I was We had a conversation. Um, and we had a great We had a great conversation. I apologize. Am I Go ahead. Yes, sir.

Okay. I'll do my best to be brief. Um, yeah, yesterday, Councilman and I, he gave me a call and uh asked me to look into a few items. Um, we talked about um the fact that MUSC does not do emergency services. We don't have funds that do emergency services. Um, I am looking into some other items that we had discussed about um some other grant funding possibilities. is I know there's some items uh there's some funds from the federal government that have come to the state. I know that we are applying for them for other purposes um through department of health and human services. The governor has designated them as the place to apply for grants for rural transformation funds and I do not know if this fits within that yet. I have not gotten an answer back for you yet. Um I do know that there is a model around the state right now for service holes where um and the example that I gave you yesterday is one I'll share with the rest of you. Um there is a model um that we have tried to use in places where there are emergency services holes uh that is happening in eastern um Richland County right now. There is a place in Richland County where it takes about 35 minutes for an ambulance to get two people and then about 35 to 40 minutes to get back to the closest emergency room. Um and we are um doing uh we are working with a group that is putting together an emergency department um closer so in eastern Richland County so that when the EMS does arrive there they have a shorter drive to get somebody to their um their critical care and to be triaged. um that is something that is out there that um that I will be happy to um talk to our leadership about that.

Now that particular project took about four years to put in place. This has been this has been something that we had uh the the local legislators had discussed with the MUSC leadership over four years before it was actually able to be something that became a reality. Um, but we do not do emergency services. And so I'm digging into some more questions right now. Uh, and haven't gotten a lot of answers since our talk yesterday, but those were the things that we had discussed. So if we were to overlay that idea in Richland County to Kershaw County, the hypothetical would be a smaller version of what you have at the Elgen campus off I20 as a satellite location further north of your main hospital that would serve as a a smaller ER or something like that.

It is an emergency triage department. Okay. And that would be in northern Kershaw County. You're saying will be I cannot be. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I'm I'm a terrible politician. I know. Listen, I used to have to buy fire trucks and ambulances for a living. I I understand how much it cost. I I am I am an absolute terrible politician. But I can tell you what I'm good at. I'm good at pushing initiatives. Okay. So, let me rephrase the idea that that you brought up to me could potentially be in northern Kershaw County and would service southern Lancaster and Northern Kershaw County.

These are things that we would Yes, sir. that we would look at with you to that model. Yes, sir. That's what we talked about very very comfortably on the phone. Absolutely. Yeah. And you don't have to say serve me. You know me. what what I want to do is is provide these services to these rural areas. Um, and I wish Daryl Augerman could have been here tonight because he he's from that northern Kershaw County kind of Mount Piska Jefferson area and he said this has been a problem for years, Russell

and um I'm very thankful for for his phone call as well. But are are there any other highlights that that you have that um All right. I Okay. I've not gotten any answers back from about yesterday. I'm not sure if there was something that I might have said that struck you that I don't recall. Well, I mean, the first thing that struck me was that that there could be a small hospital built in a rural area. That blew me away. It's an emergency room or a very small emergency room. Yes, sir. Again, my words are wrong, but that's okay. I'm just trying to make sure I'm being clear,

but my intentions are are pure. So, thank you so much for being here tonight. I mean, what a what a tremendous potential opportunity. Okay. But but the framework for for doing something now is is there. And um that's that's what I wanted you fine folks to hear tonight. Um, everyone that came from Liberty Hill, thanks for being here and thanks for having me at the town hall. I got something I want to say when you finish. I'm done. Thank you. Um, Mr. Brazle, I need to give every other opportunity of council to Mr. Second. Wasn't a second.

You were the second, but you've already spoke and under Robert's rules, I just didn't need to let everybody I'm just trying to follow the rules. I'm supposed to let everybody else have a chance to speak before someone speaks. I don't think you're following the rules, Mr. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted before Mr. Adam, sit down because um when you speak of Richland County, I do know certain things are a little different on the scales, but in your research, can you find out are they leveraging this um particular um opportunity with the penny sales tax because they have a penny for progress. They're not levering that with this not have to do with the local government. This has to do with um as I understand it, this has to do with the MUSC leadership's determination to serve South Carolina.

Okay. And they were asked by several legislators to come in and do an evaluation in certain areas. Um there are a number of areas that they have looked at. This was one that they had begun the process with. Thank you. I just think that's fantastic. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tucker. Any other council member who has not been heard wishes to be heard? question. Mr. Jones, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to just say one thing to you. I want to thank you for coming here tonight. I really appreciate it. You didn't have to do that, but you took time to talk with Mr. Brazzle, and I didn't know the particulars of what y'all talked about, but I I appreciate that. And uh I think that speaks volume.

Thank you, Mr. Jones. I I don't have anything for you, Mr. Adams. Thank you for coming out tonight. Thank you. We'll catch up later. Um, any other comments, discussion, questions from council members? Yes, Mr. Jones.

I guess I'm I'm I'm a little bit I would use the vice chairman's word perplexed or just confused. Why? I I would think everybody should be smiling up here, be real happy that we're trying to find a solution to provide some ENFS services to the, you know, the Livid Hill area. But I I feel like it's almost like a hostile and I'm not used to being hostile. It's like a I mean but it seems like there just a lot of I read look I I can do body language and I can read faces. Okay, I read the book three times. Um and I just got the impression that this wasn't a popular subject tonight and I don't I just don't understand why. Y'all know I'm right. You know I'm right on what I'm saying. So don't sit there and say I'm wrong. I'm 100% right. But guys, we got to come together. We got to do something for Liberty Hill when it comes to We got to do something for Bthun, you know, when it comes to uh Pisga Ambulance Services. We we just have to figure something out and and you know, I find this committee I think has done a great job on working on things and uh you know with great leadership on that. But that that's just what I wanted to say guys. We need to pull together on this.

Thank you, Mr. Jones. Mr. Kato. You know, I don't use the word I very often. I don't do it. You know why? Cuz I ain't an I in team. Doesn't mean the budget retreat, and I'm going to use I brought this before the budget retreat with a small short presentation. Mr. Jones, the reason I'm sitting here the way I am is because I feel like I've been left completely out of the loop until today.

Well, wait a minute. You were invited to the town hall. I got the floor. You You invited You were invited to the town hall. I got the floor. For the record, you were. For the record, I got the floor. Go ahead. Mr. Brown, please suspend. Mr. K was invited to Liberty Hill about six hours before the event. was the first time I knew about it in which I had a church obligation and I wanted to explain that to each and every one of you. That's the first time I heard of it 6 hours before the event. The rest of this stuff I knew about at 1:00 today, but I'm the one that brought it up.

Mr. Jones, that might not matter to you. No, I might not matter to you. Well, I'm going to come back at you if you come at me. I'm just going to tell you that right now. I'm trying to be nice. No, I'm trying to be nice, but you're trying to sit over there and be all bullish. That's fine. My problem My problem with this is there's a lot that can get accomplished if we would all get on the same sheet of music.

Okay. But it's like everybody wants to take credit. I don't want credit for anything. I want us to come together as a body and figure out how we can financially support EMS services in that area. Listen, that area between Porter Road and I showed it in the retreat and Lake Watery is a huge geographical area. Huge. We had an EMS station at the end of Lockheart that had to be destroyed. Okay. for two reasons. One, it had problems with the building. Two, was the line of sight for the emergency vehicles to come out of. When I first come on council, that had already been taken care of. That had already been eliminated. I asked last year that we re that we visit. It was a little bit too late, but I asked that we visit putting another EMS station somewhere in the Baron Cab area so that it would serve both Highway 97, Liberty Hill area, Westful area, and it could even get over back towards North Central if the unit on Porter Road was tied up because the one on Porter Road services Casset and Mount Pisga and all the way over to the Lee County line and you know, So there's there's a large geographical area. I don't want anybody here, and you get upset with me if you want to. I don't want anybody here to misunderstand why I'm upset. It's not about this. I'm behind it. I I'm behind doing what we need to do for the people up there, and I always have been. Mr. Brazzle said that he talked to Mr. Ogburn. And listen, I'm from that area. I know what it's like. I've lived there

my whole life. Okay, I know what the response was. Fortunately, during my time, we had two rescue squads, one in Mount Pisga and one in Bthoon, that service those areas that were strictly made up by EMT and paramedics that were volunteered, that volunteered their time, had had remotes in their house to dispatch volunteers to go out to emergency medical events and fires. It didn't come through 911. But now we don't have that and it's time that we catch up. But we've got to do it as a team. We can't go out on our own. We've got to do it as a team. And if we do it as a team, we can get this done. And I look forward to working with that and seeing that we can get something accomplished. It's going to take money. It's going to take money. And it can't be done in just a few months. But we've got to get the money first. But it can be done.

Thank you. Now y'all can bash me however you want to. No, I don't want to bash you. I do want to say something. Okay. Mr. Jones, you yield. Oh, I got I definitely got something to say. Could Could Jones Councilman Jones, could I respond first? Yes. Go ahead, Mr. Brazel.

Councilman Kato, I think I initiated the conversation with with the statement that he absolutely championed this um at at the retreat. It was maybe I was just the lucky one who got to to hear from you last Wednesday. And Danny, if if you felt left out or blindsided or anything like that, that next Thursday morning after getting home late, uh my wife and I took a much needed trip to Florida. We drove 10 hours, went to Destin, Florida. It's really nice if you ever want to go. And we returned yesterday. I have a business. I have a family. that I spend most of my time operating. I don't have time to call and ask everybody's permission if it's okay for me to call somebody else. So, if I rubbed anybody wrong, don't think it was that I meant to. I I did I did my very best to to include. I did my very best to um to be kind and gentile and and and point out the fact that this wasn't my idea. it was their idea because they're the ones who are suffering and and and yet what I left out was the fact that the community that I was born and raised in Pinerove and Lake Watery on the Lugall side has the same exact issues you have. You guys are just a little further. So, um it's funny we had brush fires tonight. The worst call I ever took from a

constituent was from a brush fire and I got my tail chew because it took 40 minutes for a truck to get there. Something happened with the way it was dispatched. Nobody came from Pine Grove Fire, which was like 2 miles up the road at the time. We didn't have a full-time uh fire person. Uh the the closest responding and this was years ago, the closest responding uh fire truck came from Elgen. And my mother lit me up cuz my dad caught our field on fire. And she said, "Y'all got to do better." And when I'm telling you that, you ever met my mother?

Yeah.

She'll tell you what what's on her mind. And I was like, "Wow." I've never had to deal with my mom being upset at me because I'm on counsel, but I did that night and we were able to make some changes for the better. But Danny, I'm 100% with you. His team, it ain't me. Um, I'm here to work with you. I'm here to work with Ben. I'm here to work with Sammy. I'm here to work with Derek. I'm here to work with Brandt. I'm here to work with Jimmy. And I'm certainly here to work with our administrator. So sometimes I'm a little bullish and that's just who I am. So with that I will shut my mouth.

Thank you, Mr. Basel. Mr. Jones.

Well, I was going to say something. Um, very well put. I I do want to say this. You know, I didn't know about it. You know, I know you invited me to go up there. I was ready to get out of the house. the wife was working late and and I went over there and really enjoyed myself and I was glad I could be a part of it that night. Um, I don't think anybody was intentionally left out, but I do want to say to you, Danny, I look forward to working with you. And I do want you to know that I for one, and I know Mr. Brazel, nobody was trying to leave anybody out because I didn't know anything about it either, but I did go and I would normally sit up here and tell you to relax and take a deep breath, but that might be sound like I'm agitating. My wife told me not to agitate people up here. Uh, but we do need to take a deep breath. And we do need to relax. We do need to just calm down. I can't even believe I'm talking like this because this is not what I was really gonna say.

I know. Isn't it wonderful? Well, it's okay. But uh but but the thing is I have much respect for Mr. Kato. I have respect for each one of you up here. But guys, we just can't take it personal. And uh but I but I'll say this. I look forward to working with each one of you to try to resolve an issue. And here's what I will leave everybody with. Okay. Mr. Brazzle, thank you. You've brought some ideas to the table. So, if we don't go with Mr. Browser's ideas, let's see where council wants to go with ideas. I'm willing to change my thought on the ideas, but I'm willing to see now, okay, we got one person saying he had these thoughts. If that's not going to prove over, we're not going to do that. Then, let's let me hear y'all's ideas what we're going to do. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Jones. Council members, any further discussion? Um, I haven't been heard on this item yet, and I just want to share a few things. I'm sorry I didn't know about your meeting. Um, but I do have a few things to share tonight that I think will be relevant and show that there's some path forward for addressing some of your concerns and others in various parts of the county that have concerns. Um, this started, I want to say 8ish years ago when we were primarily volunteer-based and we discovered that so many people were working outside, so many of the volunteers were working outside of Kershaw County that we were having extremely delayed response times. God bless the volunteers, but we had to figure out a way to fund full-time fire service so that we could reduce response times in very densely populated areas. If you had somebody in Lexington that was a volunteer, they got to check with their boss, make sure they can leave and then try to drive 30, 40 minutes over here to then get their gear on and try to unless they have it in their vehicle and then respond to a fire in a particular area. So, we knew we had to do something. At the time, folks, we had handwritten uh data entries and faxed in reports and then another human has to collate all that and try to enter it in and get it into the system. We are very um we were aged at the time. We'll say we need a technological update. That's what the fire professionals who work for Kershaw County and the administrators were telling us we need to do. And so we did that. We conducted a fire study which tied in EMS as well and determined where we needed to spend the money to put stations first. That's a capital expense. And I know I'm preaching to the choir, but then we got to worry about the personnel expense because that's recurring, right? So that study came back and said Doby's Mill and Elgen, you got to put your first fire and EMS station. We couldn't afford to do both initially. We did a fire station first. It took us a while to fund it and I'll talk about the mechanism for funding personnel or an operating cost and then we did EMS after that and just recently we committed the Cassid uh fire station as part of a hub and spoke system that's

been part of this emergency response plan for for years and so those two got done. The next rankings in priority as I understand them and I had to had to check my notes in memory and I believe some of your concerns are already in the queue. So Buffalo Mount Pisgga is in the queue for a fire station. That's one of our next top goals. If you were to ask the fire professionals in the room, as I understand it, if Director Glover was here, he'd say Buffalo Mount Pisgga fire station. And that's datab based from the fire study. And then also the new technology allows us to get uh counts more accurately and quickly has confirmed that. And then next up, number two, would be a Highway 5 EMS station. So that's part of the fire plan, an EMS plan. um somewhere up Highway 5, maybe past the Old Allen's Market, but not real far up Highway 5 because they still have to hit Lugoff some, but that addresses some of the late concerns in that area at any rate. And then the third one and the most expensive one would be a Baron Decab combo EMS fire station. So something like what you have at Doby's Mill and Elgen, but at Baron Decab, which would be on that side. I'm not sure how far north yet, and the county hasn't identified the property yet. So some of these concerns are already in the queue. They're already part of the plan and we're working on funding them. But building them as a capital expense, a onetime expense is one thing. Funding them because you have to have safety standards for firemen that go into a building. You got to have like is it two people for every one that goes in in case you have to pull that person out. And there's all these ratios that that they have for safety to make sure the county can stay uh insurable with workers comp and keep the firemen safe as well. With that said, I think the just on our best numbers today, an EMS fire station to fully staff it so that you could have the shifts you would need to cover the calls around the clock, it'd be at least $2.2 million at least. The personnel cost for each ambulance. So, each ambulance, I heard

um earlier tonight was about $500,000. They're expensive. The personnel cost to run the shift that would operate that ambulance. So, it just doesn't sit there. So you can actually respond, I think, would be about $850,000 per ambulance. So if we had another four ambulances, how many people, however many shifts they run? Yeah. So eight people per ambulance running on shifts. What if we what if we went back to a 12-hour shift? Mr. Brazzle, please, if I can just complete my thoughts. Go ahead.

So if if you had another four ambulances, just my rough math would be $3.4 million in personnel costs. Now, that's significant because how we fund personnel versus or operating costs versus capital costs. And I'm sorry to get on the weeds, but I think it it's just merited here. Capital cost is one thing. We have a fire mill or fire millage that we are capped by. There's a law, state law, we have to live by called Act 388. We can't just jack the fire mill up to cover all these operating costs. We are capped at, is it a 3.5 or 5% increase, Mr. Bose per year. I believe it's three and a half. I'm not

three and a half. Okay. I have to check my math, but that's the cap we're allowed. One fire mill is worth $190,000. Point of order. Yes, sir. You told us not to get into the weeds, and you're getting into the weeds. No, sir. I didn't say that at all. Yeah, we were chastised for getting into the weeds. No, sir. I didn't say that at all. Well, I sure felt like it. No, sir. I believe Mr. Brazzle asked that we keep it a high level conversation. No, it was said up here by everybody talking to, you know, about us having a conversation

to to to finish my thought on the discussion. And so the point is even if we wanted to, we can't increase the fire mill legally to pay for the personnel that would be required to occupy these stations. If we could build you one tomorrow, we can't increase the fire mill to pay for the firemen that would occupy it. So that's a real problem. Advocacy at the state house would be very helpful. You could do a one-time reset. Smaller counties have to deal with this issue. Greenville, Richland County, Charleston don't have this problem because they already had full-time fire service whenever they set their fire mill. When we set it, we had a bunch of volunteers and not full-time employees. And so our fire mill got set low and all of a sudden our population started to grow and we needed full-time. When you're looking at a a 1.2 to$2.5 million increase in one year, it was a real struggle. So the way we tried to address it is a fire fee, which in some ways is inequitable. You could have a improved parcel that has a shack on it and it's a quarter acre. If it has a structure on it, it's paying the same fire fee as a $2 million house somewhere else. They pay the same amount because that's what the law requires. And so I think advocacy at the state house would be very helpful to allow the rural counties to reset their fire mill to fund fire service the way we need to. We're hamstrung by that. And then that's the operating cost side of it, hiring people to actually do what we'd want them to do and respond to the calls. The second part is EMS is supposed to be an enterprise fund. So it pulls from the general fund some, but it's supposed to kind of stand on its own. And so in order to hire that number of EMS, I mean, it would require significant uh tax increase, which I don't see how we could do at this point. But we do have goals and as I understand them from the professionals who know better than me, the goals are fire station at Buffalo Mount Pisgga, Highway 5 EMS station and then Baron Decab, a combo EMS fire station and we want to try to tackle those uh those goals as we can. I think

we getund M Mr. Templar is it 120 or something million dollar requests each year and we just as an example have an operating budget of 30 to 40 million depending on how it goes and so we get those requests for expenditures each year and we're unable to spend the money for the request that we want to and so we've got to make the tough decisions. I agree that this is a worthy project. It's already in the queue based on the heat maps and population density and calls. Uh, I think the professionals are telling us that that we have these goals. If we can get recurring funds from some of these entities that were mentioned tonight, I'm all for it. If there's grant that will cover recurring costs, um, that's awesome. Or capital costs for building purchasing vehicles, trucks, or uh, ambulances or building the actual structures. That's great. I'm not aware of many grants that are recurring for personnel. It's usually one or two years and then you still have to figure out how to fund it. and either deal with that act 388 firemill cap or the enterprise fund issue with EMS. And so those are some of the thoughts I would have shared earlier or you know I thought were appropriate to share now to see the the framework that we're working with on emergency services. That's all I wanted to share.

Any other comments or discussion? Well, I've got a question. Yes, sir.

Um so I was talking about EMS services. Are they are they capped at all or or can we can we relocate monies out of the general fund to support something like a a happy median um proposal? Because what what I proposed was a short-term proposal and what you've gladly shared is our longer term goal which is probably a four to sixyear reality. Um we're we're not hindered are we with EMS when it comes to funding. So I I would generally say and then I'll see the administrator wants to sit up. Um it's an enterprise fund. Think of it like the airport fund which we dealt with recently. We dealt with that budget a whole bunch. It's an enterprise fund. So it's supposed to stand on its own which means yes there is some base millage that can be taken from the general fund which that millage I think we'd have to look at the most recent um reassessment but I think it's $340,000 per mill. And so, you know, funding $3 million worth of personnel, if we even tried to do that, if we could do it and it was legal, would require a 9 to10 mil increase in a year to fund the personnel, which is not

Is that Is that the same fund that we fund every other agency with, including um the recreation department? If I could just finish, the last thought was on the enterprise fund, since it's supposed to stand alone, the fees generated from the service are supposed to fund it. And so you'd look at a some significant increase in EMS fees related to the service that's provided to cover that cost as enterprise.

Mr. So just on that just a point of interest the uh you know last year we cut out half of the general fund millillage to the sheriff's office as dedicated millillage with him being able to capture the organic growth in that millillage. So really hindered my ability to of course we're funding the sheriff. he he needs every dime. Um but what that did is that that cut down the ability for the capital to grow on what the my half of the pie, if you will. Well, we still it's only a percentage up, isn't it? It's 50% almost. So, the sheriff's office is getting 50% of

the general fund mill. Well, the school district's getting 67%, aren't they? But of what I typically had to deal with in years past is building a budget. He we just dedicated the millillage he had we we converted into mills what his cost was for operating every year

and took that over there. So we had uh I think it was 24 25 mills just for example and then just say he got 12. So I'm left with 12. here. Here's, you know, we we could we could talk about how we structure things. I don't I don't think we're hindered by the state house to to move around millillage for MS. Um I'm not looking for a four or$5 million increase at all. Um I'm looking for some paramedics or medics to staff something to help our rural communities. that that that's what I'm looking for.

And so and oh go

whatever that looks like. If we can all generally agree that this is a problem and I think we can all generally agree that we can find a solution and that was the kind of the level I wanted to leave this. I didn't want to get into a debate. I just wanted to enter a discussion. Um, frankly, I thought it would have been much more wellreceived, but um, then again, I'm not a good politician. So, um, let's let's close this as we've got other issues. Thank you all for being here. Uh, we care about you. We care about your your families and your lives. Um, if I haven't exhibited that personally, I apologize. If you feel that way, I can assure you I do. and I think others do. But let's uh let's try to keep this conversation going and and get something get something going in the right direction.

Thank you, Mr. Brazzle. Mr. Kato, one last thing. Um we have really went far and beyond I think where we should have tonight, but I think this this is a something we should have been talking about with finance and everything else. I think we kind of got way off, but maybe this question would be and maybe Will could answer this question if he would. We need something We need something now to help those residents. Is there any way and I I know Mr. Edge with EMS is in here too. Thank you, Danny.

Is there is there any way that we may could put a QRV in that area? Maybe I know you talk about the hot the hot hot map and stuff of that nature. I'm sure that there's a hot time so to speak that most of the calls come in. Is there is there some way that we could at least get a QRV that would be in that area until we can get this problem resolved?

So, we currently run two QRVS. Um, most of the time if they have to chase a truck, and when I say chase a truck, if we're running some ambulance that's not ALS, they may have to respond with it depending on the call so they can provide advanced care. So, if we did put a QRV out there, um, it would get pulled quite often uh to to respond to other areas. Um, on on the fire side, uh, we have looked at, you know, we have part-time staffing and and trying to move some part-time staffing up there. We already do that during seasonal times, but we can continue to research other areas to to try to do something as as quick as we can based on what resources we have now.

Okay. Yeah. And maybe that'd be something we can just look into as to what it would cost the county to at least get another QRV that would be particularly for that area so that we would have a paramedic that could respond and get there and administer medical attention to the unit truck could actually get there. Just just a thought. I think I think that's a great idea, Danny. I I do too. That's very good. Thank you, Mr. Kato. Council members, any further discussion on 9A? No, Danny answer my question. I was going to talk to you for a minute. Go ahead. I was just going to say I had a question, but Danny took care of it by what he just said. I appreciate that. You're welcome.

Okay. Uh, no action is needed. No votes needed on 9A. So, the matters concluded with discussion ending. Item number 10A. Mr. Administrator, any background for us on this one? Uh, Mr. Chairman, members of council, this just allows us to move forward with the replacement of the office up at the Bthoon Recycle Center. This is a bid. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Do we have a motion on the bid? I'll make a motion. You put it up on the Do we have staff able to put it up on the screen just for public's benefit? We have a slide for this. No, there's no slide. So, um, you make a motion.

Yeah, Mr. Chairman. Um, is there a second? I say, can I first? Yeah, second. And I can summarize. Go ahead, M. Mr. Sheay, you got the floor.

Yeah, just since there isn't a slide up and for people listening at home, just so everyone knows what we're talking about. There is a uh bid to uh rebuild or construct the Bthoon Recycle Center building. We received four bids ranging from 91,000 to 142,000. Um the lowest bid was 91,000 and that was the lowest by $8,000 to the next lowest. So staff is recommending that we award the contract to Michael Jordan Construction uh out of South Carolina, Jefferson, South Carolina, that it's $91,594.80 and um the uh anyway, that's that's the summary of what this document says in front of me. Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Sheum. Mr. Chuck, you have the second. I have no further to add. Council members, any discussion? I'd like to uh defer this until we can find better solutions for emergency response times. We just got through talking about the money we didn't have to help these people and now we're about to spend 100 grand. I'm not going to support it tonight. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Tucker. Yeah, you had the second. You um I'm coming back with a comment. Was that the formative motion or is you just speaking general? You can I'll make that in the form of a motion. I want to hear what the finance chair has to say. All right. There's a motion to defer on the table. Uh parliamentally, I got to address that first. Is there a second on the motion to defer? I'll second.

And specifically, the motion was to defer it until uh I don't want to misstate until you find funds to Would you restate the motion, please? I make a motion to defer purchasing anything such as this, which is probably a worthy cause, until we can find a solution to these people's needs uh that are more life and death. In the regards to EMS, yes, as my motion, there's a motion. Is there a second? Already seconded. Okay, got a second of the restated motion. Mr. Mr. Bzel, you have the floor on your motion. I don't need to say anything else.

Okay. Any further discussion on Mr. Brazzle's motion? Mr. Tucker?

Yes, sir. Um, gentlemen, I got a little heartburn with this motion and and the reason I'll tell you is because we're almost in fourth quarter of 2526 budget season. This money is already obligated to go to certain places in this budget. We're moving into fourth quarter. We got five more weeks. We'll be in fourth quarter. Am I correct, Mr. Administrator, by saying that fourth quarter and now we're going to hold up funds on things that we've already voted on and said that we're going to do for 2526. I understand the urgency and the concern about the situation that's going up on the northern end of the county and I support it with the right information and process. I cannot support it on the back of another project that's already been put in the budget. So, for this reason, I cannot support that amendment tonight or that motion.

Thank you, Mr. Tucker. Mr. Jones, I believe you deferred to Mr. Tucker. I want to make sure you're heard. Sure. You got the second. Can you give me a little bit more information as to when y'all decided and let us know about that? No. About what? What we're doing tonight? This this was already in the um um waste management budget to do the um recycle center. So, that was done when you voted on or voted against the um budget back in 2025. I don't remember specifically seeing this. It doesn't mean that I'm against the the overall thought of it. I I'm sure it needs to be rebuilt.

I just think what Mr. Brazel was doing is looking at the overall picture and I think all of us are. I think all of you are and I know all of you care, guys. I know that. I get it. We just got some misunderstandings that I know we can all work out. I I do and I'm not doing this for any other reason than one. I have respect for our finance chair. I have respect for council brother. But he makes a good point there. Chair finance chair as far as let's just look maybe look at the whole picture. We can defer it just to two weeks.

I I now did you read the um what it said in there. They're going to reconstruct the recycle center in the bthoon area and make sure it have bathrooms. We ask some people to stay out there 12 hours and they either do something that's not decent or they have to leave the facility and lock the facility to go use things that we take for granted. Um, this day has come and gone and this facility needs to be upgraded if nothing else for the citizens and the people that work out there. Well, we can put a port John there and then save some lives otherwise. You're not going to persuade me tonight. I'm not trying to persuade you. I'm making a point. Appreciate it. I'm making a point. I'm not trying to persuade you. I I stand I stand on

Mr. Chairman. Can I Thank you, Mr. Tucker. Um, Mr. K, do you defer to the administrator? Yeah. I I mean, yeah, I'll defer. Mr. Templer,

you know, gentlemen, I have a lot of plates to spend. Um, EMS, fire, sheriff's office. I I mean, I've made a living for 18 years answering the radio. I understand calls. I understand call times. I also understand when calls back up and response times. There's just been a lot of discussion that I think gets pulled out of proportion. Um, if you're at a murder scene, you're not going to get to that that broke into car right away. And it it's it's prioritizing and dispatch helps us with that. And so I have a ton of plates to spend. And this happens to be one of them. this this facility here and I somebody said $91,000 bathroom. It is, but it's also a shelter. We have adult elderly people that work at these are retired and this is a storm shelter. This is a restroom. This is an office and this is a basic workspace and I'm just a little bit passionate about where we ask our people to work. They work in a garbage dump. And if I could just give them some semblance of a decent place to huddle during a storm, inclement weather, rain, snow, shine, we ask them to be open every time. And when we close them for the snow, we make them make it up on other days. And it's unacceptable to not give them a working place to be in. Unacceptable.

Relax, Danny. Relax, sir. Relax, Mr. K. Thank you, Mr. Templer. I I think you answered my question, but I in here this money and I want to I want to make sure for my benefit this money was is already budgeted from this year's budget to go to to go to this sort of project. Is that correct? I don't know if that's a Sammy question or if that's a Danny question. This was part of our capital budget for 2526. It wasn't. I'm

sure you I I do remember in the retreat at some point last year you mentioning that we were going to have to replace the Bthun building because it was in such bad shape. Correct. But this was in LA this was in last year's budget. Yes. Okay. Correct. Any other discussion? Council members on the Brazzle, a motion to defer. Seeing none, we'll move it to a vote. All in favor of the Brazil motion to defer, raise your hand. Mr. Brazzle and Mr. Jones in favor. All oppose, raise your hand. She make Tucker Connell. Excuse me. Excuse me. I meant to oppose. I'm voting for You're You're changed my vote.

You're voting. I'm voting in favor. I think you just did. I'm voting. He's changing his vote from not against to for the bid could be one. Okay. Well, we have to address the first the first vote is on the Brazil motion to defer. And so we I just called for the votes in favor. Mr. Brazzle and Mr. Jones raised their hand. Do you wish to retain your vote? Well, I want you to do it again, sir, if you don't mind. I just Okay.

On the motion to defer made by Mr. Brazzle. Vote in favor by raising your hand. All right. Mr. Brazzle votes in favor. All opposed, raise your hand. Shoe, Tucker, Connell, Kato, Tomlinson, and Jones vote against. The motion fails. My hand, sir. We're We're back on the original motion uh to approve the bid. Any further discussion on the original motion to approve the bid? Seeing none, we'll move it to a vote. All in favor, raise your hand. Shoe, Tucker, Brazzle, Connell, It's unanimous, Miss Hannah. Um, it passes and the bid is approved. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, gentlemen. That takes care of item number 10 A. That moves us to council member briefings. Mr. Kato, I'm exhausted. Oh, you're just getting started, sir. I've been in worse, Jimmy. I've been in worse. I know. I know who you used to work for. I've been in worse. Uh, listen. I I'm I don't even have have a whole lot to say, but I better say this if I don't say anything else. I want to wish my wife a happy anniversary this weekend. 34 years of living in marital bliss with me. So, that's a true statement.

Okay, I'm going to close with that. Well, no, I'm not. I want people out there to understand we get heated up here sometimes, but I want you to understand that I I have always said since I I set my tail up here the very first day that I'd always be open-minded and I'll continue to be open-minded. I get passionate sometimes. And if I get too passionate, I apologize, but a lot of hard decisions to be made up here sometimes. And uh if I get out of line sometimes, I'll apologize for that, too. Other than that, I hope everybody has a good night. Was that an apology or not? To who?

Me. I don't have an apology. No. Okay. I'm just Thank you, Mr. Kato. Mr. Thomasson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um,

I'd like to say I I enjoyed all the the citizens here. Even from the proclamations we did to um the talks regarding emergency services for the rural areas. Um, hearing the citizens come and talk is a huge help to us as decision makers and policy makers standing up here. Um, next I'd like to thank staff, not just our executive leadership, but every one of our Kersaw County employees that they have a lot of times a very thankless job do the work. And I have no doubt that if we put the funds in their budget, it's going to get done. We have subject subject matter experts that we are blessed to keep here in the county. they could easily go another county over and make more money, but they don't because they love this place just as we do, which is why we're sitting up here. We all have a a passion. And thirdly, I'd like to thank my colleagues. You know what? The meeting tonight goes to show exactly why we are sitting up here. It's because we all have passion and it wouldn't be it wouldn't be right for us to sit up here and agree on anything and not have heated discussions because we all care about Kershaw County and the best for it. And I appreciate every single one of you and I look forward to continue to work with you.

And you too. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Mr. Jones, thank you. I I have just a couple things I want to say. Would you have ever believed in my 20 years that I would be the calming factor on county council? No, I mean I'm I'm literally the one who kept everybody calm tonight. And uh I don't know what happened. I want to talk about something very important. I want to talk about myself for just a minute. And that was a joke. No, seriously, guys. Come on. We got to be light-hearted. Look, we got some serious business to discuss up here. We can get heated each other, but don't walk out of that room and get mad with your lips stuck out because we don't agree with each other. You know, you know, God tells us to love each other. And I mean, I love you guys in a manly way. Manly way. But I think that's what's wrong with the world now. Enough people don't tell them they love each other.

We love you too, Councilman. But uh but but seriously, guys, we we have some serious business up here. And we may disagree, but we need to leave it at that. And and Danny, I appreciate what you said. And chairman, I appreciate your recognition and me being right tonight. Thank you so much. I I would fail if I didn't recognize you being right. Thank you, Mr. Jones. And I'm I'm done. Thank you, Mr. Shemate. Yeah, I think my there was uh the quietest you've ever been. Yeah. Yeah, he sure is.

My my wife wanted me to point out that uh she had texted me earlier that the uh district honorroll teachers have come out and so I want to congratulate all the the teachers that have our finalist for teacher of the year. I'm just going to there's only a few Abby Bates, Susanna Hall, Mariana Vanat, Marsha Daniels, and Flo Jackson. Those are our uh those are representing the finalist for teacher of the year for Kershaw County. I want to congratulate them and also want to thank you know our uh yeah um you know so I I was trying to look at the exact numbers and you know our general fund budgets about 30 million Danny give or take. Is that fair? Probably a little bit more a little more

about 34. Does that include what we give the sheriff or that's after the sheriff cut? So it's it's probably more towards uh a little more towards 40, but it's half of that is goes to the sheriff. So

yeah. So that's after what goes to the sheriff. This was Yeah. So you know, you talk about what's seeming like a I mean that's a lot of money to any human being and certainly a lot of money to me, but but when we talk about that in terms of funding, I mean we hear it in the finance committee. You know, to give you an example, you know, last year we only had a little under $1.5 million in organic growth. If we had the same sort of thing this year, the uh boat tax, which is likely to pass, is going to eat 600,000 of that. We were briefed by the auditor just two weeks ago, that even assuming the estimates are right that it will come back in in added revenue, which I have my doubts, that's a different issue. That's still a 5year gap. Is it is it 600,000 total that the revenue is?

No, no, the revenue is 1.2 million. we will lose 600,000. But you know, it stepped down over the course of three years, right? But I'm tell auditor briefed us on two weeks ago was that we would lose $600,000 upon passage of the vote in the first year. So what he briefed us? It it stepped down over three years. So just to be clear, it might not be quite as bad as we think.

It may not be, but that's what we were briefed. And even if it's 300,000, you have, you know, inflationary adjustments. um you know some of the stuff we heard today with Pecan Orchard if with the overruns there and I can already tell you we we've only gotten what two finance committee briefings and with those two even if the boat tax stepped up and you take it at a third of what I just said at 300,000 we've already heard enough to completely eat up the natural growth just in what we've heard and we haven't even heard from all the big departments so we have to make a lot of tough decisions and you know it's you know there's about being creative and finding money I say this all the time to folks I talked to out in uh the community. You our budgets are posted online and if you think there's wasteful spending in there, let's talk about what we think is wasteful. Nine times out of 10 when people do point things out to me, they're relatively small budget items that even eliminated still leave you with the how do you fund the sheriff's departments 20 plus million dollars or you know how do you fund these you know these large departments with their capital overlay. So it's a lot of hard work that we do up here and I think it's important that we're very straightforward that these things take time. a great plan. I mean, we we just made some of the biggest improvements in recreation. Those steps started five, six, seven years ago. So, it takes time to get anything worthwhile accomplished under the wheels of government. It shouldn't, but it does. Um, the other thing I just want to say to close out is I just want to thank the staff. Uh, we have an amazing staff, but I think just about any almost everyone that's left in this room, uh, is staff. Um, you know, our senior staff, the administrator, deputy administrator, uh, Miss Lauren, I mean, she they do a great job. Uh, Director Glover does a great job. Uh, shout out to Zack Hoover, who's temporarily running our planning and zoning department, who's been working on the smart growth overlay and a bunch of other stuff. We put a lot of stuff on them. And, you know, I just want to say bottom of my heart that this county could function without anybody up here

on this little table except for you two. Um, but it uh could not function without uh the staff that's in this room and that makes this county work every day. So, uh, that's all I have. Thank you, Mr. Schumick. Mr. Tucker.

Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, I'll try to be as quick as I possibly can. Let me start off by saying because I see Miss Melanie is still here. We had a finance um committee meeting on Panress Orchard today at 4:30. We were there about 4:30 to almost 5:30. And so what uh the uh committee has asked is that um staff has to do some due diligence on uh the survey, land acquisition, and some additional cost on some piping um to have all that available for council by next meeting so we can bring it before you guys and uh of course have a um a conversation and um and move forward from there. But what I can tell you is that we're looking at additional costs that we have not budgeted for in this budget cycle. So with that being said, there's going to have to be some hard conversations on how do we move forward and what that time frame look like. So without those answers from staff, um we didn't come to any conclusion tonight, but we did ask the residents, Miss Melanie, as I said, is still out here and there was probably four or five, six other people to be patient. We will get them answers and try to figure out what moving forward looks like.

Are we do we have the money to complete phase one? It's already been Well, we had the money from the original scope of work. That money's already been voted on and set aside. 380. Um, yes sir. So 350. So we're not we're not short on money for phase one. No, that's not true. Okay. All right. Tell me what's true. I'm I'm asking. So, so with the unforeseen um problems we've had in phase one trying to do it, we have developed more costs.

What were the what were the unforeseen? Um you you're talking excuse me about having to um deal with the water pipe being removed and then re um re uh submitted or re um put down by county which can be as much as 126,000. Um you're talking about L and water. Yes sir. You have um you have costs for um if we decide that we go with a closed system versus a open system that could be 30 35,000 closed a closed versus tell me tell me what that means. Um that means that on the discharge end is that system going to be open or closed leading down the pipe that you and I looked at.

Right. uh you're talking about land acquisition which I don't have numbers on that now but whatever that looks like or an or an easement granted an easement and that's what you're going to be um you know going up against and that's what we need to get back from staff. So how much has been allocated and how much has been spent? So allocated has been 350,000 spent has been 126 as of today. And what is the approximate need to to finish? Two to 250 200 to 250,000 on top of what's remaining, right? Like not like we have about 175 remaining. Has nothing to do with that. Correct. 2 to 250 on top of what's So we managed to spend half million dollars on that one little old road.

That's what it's going to cost us. Yes. That's absolutely absurd. Um, so with that being said, I just want you to know that this is going to be on the agenda for our first meeting in March. Sammy, we got to do something. We we have voted to do phase one. Sammy, I I hear you and you're going you're going to get all the particulars as quick as staff can get them to us and we're gonna we're gonna pin our ears back and we're gonna see uh where everybody's at. And I I hope I hope and pray that this falls within the means of people wanting to to to to do the right thing and stick with what is the right thing? Well, I'll tell you when I get it. You're asking me questions. Without information, I will not answer. You can ask it 100 different ways.

I'm not going to ask you one more time. I I'll give you those when I get the information which will be on the second Tuesday in November to be ex I mean in March to be exact March 14th I will have more information and along with my colleagues at set on finance. Anything you want to add there Brandt? No sir. Danny you happen to attend the meeting and we'll appreciate you. Anything you want to add?

Okay. All right. Now, I want to say um we have a workshop this Thursday from 3:00 to 5:00. Gentlemen, this is the time if you can make your schedules work and you want to dig in a little better on the topics, whether it's fire, whether it's EMS, um call staff, um Miss Lauren knows what's the topics and see can you set your schedule so you can come have these discussions with us. We dig a lot deeper into the budget at these workshops and that's why we voted on the days and that's why we gave you the days and the time. I know you can't make them all, but things that are important to you come because the conversation we had with this um these citizens this afternoon and and and my I thought the ideas were great and lovely that were recommended, but in my thought um is that we can't be knee-jerking reacting to problems that that we see that exist all of a sudden and not plan. I have a real problem with that because what I will not and never do is take from one to give to the other. You You're needing something.

The government does that every day.

Hold on. Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Time out. You'll get chance. You're right after me, sir. I promise you. So, what I want to do is not rob and Peter to pay Paul. I know sometimes you got to make things work. And this is not a quick fix anyway. There's we need to figure out exactly what um things look like from putting a QRV to a full-blown EMS station. There's things that need to be measured by staff, the professionals, and recommendations brought back by them. And I'm not going to go into a whole big spill because I didn't speak when we were having all our passions running about up here, but I said I'll address my um thoughts until my council meeting council briefing. So Danny, I'm gonna say to you, have passion. Have passion for your people. We can have passion up here. Why can't you have passion for your people?

He did tonight. Stay stay passionate. I was going to call him Councilman Templar. Stay stay passionate. And the quicker you do the memo to your staff and to us, I think the better off we're going to be because what we cannot do, we've had the latitude since Mr. Templar has been our administrator of being able to talk to staff. And I'm just going to This is just one of seven and I'm just speaking for me. I would have been cut y'all off. What? If I was the administrator, I would have been cut y'all off from from talking direct to department heads and going as far as some of us go. You know how that's worked out for other county administrator. Sammy, don't you act like you don't they can't win on that. My floor, Mr. Jones. You're right. Thank you.

Don't put that in position. So, so no, we're putting him in that position by by by not following what is supposed to be our home rule. We're the deal with the administrator or the uh deputy administrator or the assistant administrator on our issues. And sometime in my opinion, I'm not talking about your opinion. We push them a little too far with staff members and that's not fair. That's not fair to staff. That's not fair to Danny as our administrator. So, so, so just just note and be warned that you have a memo coming from administration and staff has a memo and we need to adhere to it. That concludes my report. Mr. Chair,

get your M to lock me up. Mr. Brazzle, please. Egos.

Boy, it's a bunch of egos around here tonight. I'm gonna bring mine with me next week. I'm not going to address everything that that's gone through my mind tonight, but but I want to say something. I attended a meeting where people wanted to be heard. I heard them. I thought about the situation. This how I'm built. I'm built to solve problems. That's how God created me. So, if there's a problem, if there's a group of people that bring me a problem, I'm going to try to solve it if it's within my means. Now, I didn't put anything on here for a vote. I've done that before. Recreation, put it on for a vote. Sammy, you didn't vote for it. But when you walked outside that night, you looked at me and you said, "Russell, you got four votes tonight for the recreation, for the baseball fields, and I'm going to support you moving forward."

How was that been? Tonight, all I wanted to do was have a discussion. I in no way, shape, or form meant for it to be unfriendly. I hope that I didn't frame it that way, and if I did, I apologize. But, you know, I like being challenged. Um, Ben, Ben and I share something. His children go to the school that I went to, Thomas something Academy. Great little school. And uh Ben, do you know what Thomas's motto is?

I wouldn't rob someone who's an alumnist of the glory of sharing it. I want to hear from you. That was a good answer. Thomas Sumpers. Latin phrase act nonverba

action speaks louder than words and and I've carried that with me my entire life. Um and you know forgive me if sometimes I'm ahead of my skis if you will. I operate a business. I don't operate in government. I have the distinct pleasure of making my own decisions. We don't get to do that here. So, sometimes that bleeds over, but um that's just who I am. Probably not going to change. Okay. But at our retreat, um Ben and I were having a good conversation as we always do. And um he said something that stuck with me. He said, 'Yeah, we really hadn't had a whole lot of time to study this this this zoning and building. And I was kidding around with him. I said, ' Man, I could have written a book. And he looked at me and said, 'What'd you say, man? You remember?

Go ahead. You don't remember what you told me? Why haven't you? Why haven't you? There's your book.

You already set one right here on my desk. I got it. Here's a framework document that everybody needs to add to from Jimmy to Danny to Brandt to Ben me. I need to further look into this document. My friend Sammy Derek, these are some thoughts that I had regarding how Kershaw County grows and moves forward. It's 30 pages. It's a short book. I didn't color it. I didn't put any no pictures. Probably could have got it around 40 or 50 pages had I had an animator work with me. But I like being challenged. I'm here to do the work. I'm proud to be vice chairman. You guys put me in that position and I want to support the work that this county has ahead of it in a positive fashion. So with that, I'm gonna shut up. Hope everybody has a wonderful night.

Thank you, Mr. Brazzle. I just want to share a couple things. U congratulations again to the Stover wrestling team. I think by the show of supporting those folks coming out tonight with the coaches who were humble enough not to say anything, but smiled bigger than I've seen anybody smile recently at the accomplishments of the wrestlers and the student athletes. I was very proud of that. Um Lug Elgen wrestling team will come through soon. They finished second in the state and had a state champion and had some uh remarkable achievements. Miss Hannah, I've sent you Mr. Ted Monroe's number. He's the head coach and was present tonight. Let's connect with him and just see when we can get him on the agenda coming up. Um, I know we generally have only two proclamations per meeting. So, wherever uh we can budget that in at some point in the future, I think that's a very worthy cause and achievement to recognize. Um, on EMS or fire, you know, I like practical solutions um that follow a plan and there has been a plan in place that's been followed for six plus years. One of the nuances maybe recently for a capital expenditure could be liquidating the property up at Lake Water. It's an asset we have that we don't use. County purchased it like 20 25 years, however many years ago it was with some aspirations at the time of developing the property into a resort or something. I'm not sure. But um with this council support, I'm working on an opportunity perhaps in the future to liquidate that property and sell it to the state. It makes a lot of sense. DNR and others have properties nearby. if there's something that we need in the way of a capital expense, um, we can move that towards EMS or something else that's that's appropriate and as you guys uh, fellow council members or staff have ideas that we can practically u, and actually pursue, I'd love to hear them. Let's try to make them happen. Um, we do have some lowhanging fruit that we can achieve in the county. That might be one of them. Um, there are others, but uh, we do need to pull together and I hope ultimately whenever we work on these issues, we pull together and get it done. It's it seemed to come that way, especially as we move towards budget. We're going to have our work

sessions. Um, and just the way my mind works is I like to research and study stuff. Uh, sometimes maybe a little bit too much. That requires me to to get things beforehand and have some time to look at them in detail so I can understand the unintended consequences, try to divine that if I can, and then make an informed decision so I can represent the folks that voted for me and that um that have elected me in a in a reasonable way. And so I look forward to hearing y'all's ideas as we get to that point. That concludes my report. Mr. Oh, excuse me. One other thing I was going to mention. Go ahead.

Yeah, I was just going to say um I was reminded that we need to uh honor statewide commander Jimmy Rabin um and the American Legion with Post 17. They had an event yesterday. It was well attended and uh a large function that really put that on the map. So, we're grateful to him and the American Legion for hosting that in Kershaw County. Can I ask for a point of order from Mr. Vice Chair? He left out the um battle of the Wrigley mail. Wrigley's mail. Yeah. Yeah. Um briefly brief us on please.

This is actually something that uh Sammy and Danny I had talked about. Does everybody have that photo? And this is the second time you've seen it. The battle of Rugley's Mill. Does everybody This is an animated drawing. Everybody got it? No, you got my I got my copy.

I got frame hang. The Battle of Wrigley's Mill in Kershaw County um as we talked about before is a historical battle and it was um I think it was William Washington who led the charge in which they took a a cannon made out of a pine tree and and duped a 100 British loyalist into um into surrendering. So it was it was a battle that was won here in Kershaw County just about 12 miles north. um at the creek intersection of um I think it was Granny's Quarter Creek and Flat Rock Creek. So just off of Flat Rock Road if you're headed towards Heath Springs. Um I spoke to an artist that that made this digital image and um requested a quote. I may have done this the right way. I brought it to our finance chair and I brought it to our administrator and and I'm bringing it to council and with our conversations that we had um we talked about fundraising to have a 30x40 original oil painting painted for Kershaw County and display it somewhere here in the uh in the government center. You know, wherever, you know, we can decide. We can move it around. Um, we can take pictures beside it for goodness sakes, whatever we like. But I think it'd be really cool to have that battle picture done and and everybody's got the photograph. Um, the cost is $9,800. Uh, that would be paid for by donations to uh to the cause. And we've got bronze levels at $100, s silver le levels at $250, a gold level of giving at $500, and a

platinum level of a,000. And I would love for if we could all just chip in. I'd be willing to even give up um any of my travel expense and I would I would give up going to um the Association of Counties if necessary to make this happen. I I think this would be so good for Kershaw County um as a whole, but tonight I think the best way to do it is to fund raise it. So everybody, does everybody have a paper with the fundraising opportunities? We we'll make copies, but tonight I'll pledge $1,000 to to get it started. And um my family and our business, we'll do we'll do a th00and. So that leaves us with 8,800. I hope that's something that everybody would like to see happen and um I think it'd be a neat project. Thank you.

Thank you, Mister. Thank you. Um administrator's briefing. Do you have anything, Mr. Templer? Uh two quick things really, really quick. Yes, sir. Monday, I was lucky enough to go speak to a class at North Central. It was Dr. Tom Perry's honors US government class.

And those kids were just so impressive. they ask better questions than uh a lot of the uh the the adults I'm around sometimes. It just so meaningful and thoughtful and just excellent questions. So, I just like to share that experience with y'all and everyone else and just uh congratulate them on their successes and uh especially the job that uh Dr. Perry does with those kids. So well behaved. Um, one more piece. KC West would be completed, but for the uh vandalism over there is about $6,000 worth. So that we got some seed germination going on in there just as you would imagine from people doing donuts on the grass. So unfortunate, but we're on our way to fixing that and we'll be looking for a ribbon cutting coming up soon. We'll keep you all posted. That's all I have.

Thank you, Mr. Templer. Yes. Mr. Bose, any nonprivilege legal briefing? No. No legal briefing. Um, we have three executive session items on the agenda. Don't forget to mention that to us. Okay. Well, before we move to that potential vote, Miss Hannah has updated us again on applications and boards and those seats where we have respective responsibilities. I know need to act on mine. Is Mr. Brazzle. Did he go to the restroom or Yes, he did.

Okay. All right. Well, then then um we'll go ahead and move into uh executive session. We have a quorum. Um seeking executive session. We have three items. Um I think it's AA and B, but it's really A, B, and C. This is under SC code 30-4-7A2 and A1 regarding a matter related to attorney client privilege and legal advice, a briefing related to contractual arrangements, and a personnel and employment matter. Is there a motion? Mr. Mr. Chairman, I make a motion we enter executive session. There is a motion. Is there a second? Second.

There is a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll move it to a vote on executive session. All in favor, raise your hand. Miss Hannah, it's unanimous by those who are present in voting. We're in executive session. And for the public's benefit, I do not anticipate any vote uh concluding after uh occurring after executive session.

Give me one more. Give me one more. You about to get this real quick soon as they walk out. There he goes. Right there. See a motion to make a motion to come out of executive session. Wait a minute. Motion to come out of executive session. Second. Got a second. Any discussion on that? Seeing none, move to a vote. Are we exiting executive session? by those who are present in voting. Miss H executive session seek a motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn, Mr. Chairman. Second. Got a second. Any discussion on motion to adjurnn. Seeing none, we'll move it to a vote. All in favor of adjournment, raise your hand. It's unanimous by those who are present in voting. Miss Hannah, Mr. Brazzle, and Mr. Jones are absent at the moment.

So that's 50. We are adjourned at