Remarks by Jim Morrison
81 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 2 of 4
It will be reasonably short. Do you want to do it now? My question is, with 4th Street being the primary conduit through downtown, why are we closing 4th Street and not doing it somewhere else? I'm a bacon lover. I'll probably be there first in line and probably be the last in line, but why are we closing 4th Street, which is a major exit off of 177? How and why did that happen?
Well. Again, this is the first time I've seen us do street closings, and I just wanted to know if there was a procedure and a protocol that somebody made a decision, which I assume they did. I just wanted to have an explanation.
So does the city have expense to do this, installing the barricades and patrolling them extra, or is that something the sponsor does?
I see it's for professional services. Correct. I would assume for stormwater and drainage.
So it's not part of the agreement with the university to do design work for... storm sewer and that. It's not part of that project.
I guess if we can't get it out of 4th Street, we can't do the rest of it, can we?
Just wanted to know if it was part of or part of our responsibility. The university said no, and I understand.
I want to discuss the second installment of that. First and third are okay with me. I just authorized staff to submit a nomination for the sections house to the state and national registry. Mayor and commissioners I recommend we pull item G and we'll discuss that's fine with me I mean but my objection is not to the first part about doing the cemetery application nor the last one about commencing the legal work but if you want to pull it that's fine with me yeah okay all right thank you McCullough do you yeah danielle could you please just address the
My observation is our community is not a manufacturing company community. We have a lot of small businesses that are critical to our community. But our primary industry in this town is the university. I'm not eager about this project, but I think we need to go ahead and set it up for hearing. And I would expect that if we don't have the agreement drafted at least weeks before the hearing in November or whenever it is, I'm gonna be either moving that we delay it to December, January, or whatever year it takes to get that agreement between the foundation and the city. Our staff needs to be able…
with that comment and be prepared for me to move to delay it if it isn't here timely, and I say timely, minimum two weeks. Because if it's like some of the other stuff we get and there's 50 or 100 pages of stuff, of technical stuff, I'm not gonna kill myself to do it in a week or four days. So be prepared to either be a no vote or a continue vote for a hearing more reasonable if we don't have it. I won't try to make an amendment now but I think we need to set the hearings and if they run into a deadline they may have to ask for a continuance or the staff if they feel like they haven't gotten…
and I'm not competent on the computer and print it so I beg being a newbie and ask staff to print it for me so I can pick it up because I am slow and it takes me a long time to go through some of the stuff. And they've been very accommodating, Chelsea and Lauren have been very exceptional and I did take them cookies once just to make sure I had privilege.
Didn't read that part, yes. And I'd move to amend it further to declare what date we're setting it for the hearing since it's not in the caption of the ordinance.
I'll second Larry's proposal and the city manager's, and hopefully somebody will second mine.
as I stated at the comments at the time I moved to pull it, was that the first part, nomination for Sunset Cemetery Historic District, I have no objection to and would move to approve that. And I would move to approve the last part, that is to authorize and instruct staff to file a legal action to quiet the title on the property that is the Sexton's house in those two items and the remaining item about the property the sections house also being petitioned for the state and national registry of historic places be deleted at this time until title is established.
Well, that wasn't a vote, so if anybody wants to put the second item in, that's somebody else's business, not mine. My motion is do one and three and skip two. That's the motion I make.
Are there any exceptions that are concerns that you have? I know I expressed some to staff. Have you had a chance to look at those? Unfortunately, there are probably more than I would have thought and you would have expected, but.
Madam Mayor, I did go through those more diligently than I do most of what we've gotten because it was a couple hundred pages, reasonably thought through, reasonably well written, except that a lot of things that I don't think are appropriate for us to adopt without guardrails. The Conservation District, I think, creates liabilities and responsibilities to the city. We become a HOA in a form that we manage. I think Stephanie at one time mentioned that we didn't have the staff or the manpower to exercise some of those responsibilities. There's a couple sections in there that I took concern…
The issue with the house is one of those that I think is a stop on everything. One, if we don't know that we don't have ability, in my opinion, to get permission to put it in the district. If we do own it, we won't know until we have a judge tell us. A quiet title action is what it's called. Those are done. every year, multiple times. The biggest problem we're going to have legally, from my point of view, is who are the owners and who are the family heirs? And the family has been dead a long time, and there could be one, none, or a thousand. And so the law becomes really a challenge for our…
I don't know how long ago, when you get to my age, time passes quickly, but there was a major effort by the cemetery folks who rehabbed the bell tower, what, 30 years ago? Yeah, that was Dean Rathbone.
So the question of it is, if it falls down, are we gonna be required to put it back? I would say the community would probably say yes if the bell tower worked, but it didn't work for 30 years until they fixed it. And I don't live in that neighborhood anymore, so I don't know if it now is functioning as it was designed to or not. But I think those are some things we ought to make sure. And just because we may not have a direct liability, there may be some moral or other community liability we'd look at at the time. But I think we need to answer some of those questions personally.
So a question on the map. The proposal is to take the house out on Sunset, right? Of that district?
And according to the map that was presented, the Girl Scout Park was originally in that map. Is that still requested to be within this zone?
Well, my comment to the staff is that we add cemetery excluding the Sexton House. And if we have to bring it up at a legislative meeting and we can direct you to commence a legal action to take care of the house, if you require that as having authority to proceed with a lawsuit, I think you may have to have the commission authorized and direct that you do that. So put it on the next one. It may even be a consent item. That's up to your handling of your agenda. But then and when and if that is resolved, It seems to me a community issue and the interest to have it added, if and when we can add…
Well, I'll start the questions. I have three while I think are serious and one that's somewhat frivolous. The serious one, in my opinion, was earlier this year, a good number of our community faculty went to Clemson to see what their similar concept of this economic development. But one of the things I got, I didn't go. My oldest granddaughter graduated there a year ago in engineering with 900 engineering graduates. But Clemson took those contacts in that economic development and have convinced companies to be there to enjoy it. And nothing in these presentations is that appear to be an…
57 years ago, I had a contract Professor law school say the devil's in the details Sure is before you come back. Well, we have a an agreement drafted between your lawyers or you and our city staff that we can actually say here is the Proposal so we know what you are going to give and we know what we can expect and we know what we can ask for Because I don't want to talk about this again until we have that agreement that we know what it's hard and ready to go and