www.cottageville.net

MINUTES
PUBLIC HEARING

COTTAGEVILLE TOWN HALL
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2008
6:00 P.M.

Mayor White called the meeting to order, explained the sign-in sheet, led the Pledge of Allegiance and called the roll.

Members present were Mayor White, Council Member Cook, Council Member Thomas, Council Member Eutsler and Council Member Strickland.
The following takes place in open session.
ATTESTATION
Page Line Change/Correction Reason

Minutes approved: ______________

_________________________
Terri Crosby, Town Clerk

MAYOR WHITE: Good evening.
The purpose of this meeting tonight is to advise the town with information regarding sewer and water prior to the November referendum. There will be no motions made tonight. This meeting is strictly to provide information.
You’ll have the same opportunity as myself to vote yes or no to the following questions which you vote in November and there’s the questions. Question number 1, Shall the town council be empowered to acquire by initial construction or purchase and thereafter operate a water system and waste water, waste water sewer system to furnish water service and waste water sewer service to individuals, firms and private and public entities? Yes or not.
Question number 2, Shall the town council of the Town of Cottageville be empowered to issue general obligation bonds of the Town of Cottageville in the amount of up to $12,500,000 for the purpose of acquiring by initial construction or purchase or thereafter operate a water system, a waste water sewer system to furnish water and waste water services to individuals, firms, private and public entities? Question number 2.
These questions will appear on the ballot on November 4.
If you’ve attended the meetings in the past year and a half you already understand how concerned I am about the financial position of this town. The town has already been saddled with unpaid bills to the state from previous administrations. The money was there but just wasn’t paid.
I will not put this town back in the financial position it was when I came into office. If this referendum passes I will seek out the best way for the town to finance this project.
Please remember, I live in this town, too. I own a business here and I’m not planning on moving my business or my residence out of the town because I feel that I am looking for what is best for the town to finance this project.
I will go over the information which I’ve compiled. There are several topics and at certain points I will ask the experts here tonight concerning water and sewer their opinion on different items.
At this time I would like to go ahead and make the introductions. Mickey Seabrook (phon.) from EMC Engineering.
Dan Paulsberg (phon.) from Paulsberg Engineering.
And let’s see.
Richard Sheffield (phon.) and you’re from the Colleton County?
MR. SHEFFIELD: Fire and Rescue, yes, sir.
MAYOR WHITE: Fire and Rescue.
And Bob Kennedy and he is the — It’s not a chief anymore; it’s captain.
MR. KENNEDY: Correct, of station 9.
MAYOR WHITE: Okay. Station 9.
And tonight I’ll kind of change the agenda up just a little bit but I’ll ask Richard Sheffield to go ahead and speak concerning water and — well, concerning water. I’m sure with the fire department it’s water. You’re more concerned with water -
MR. SHEFFIELD: Absolutely.
MAYOR WHITE: — than what you are with water and sewer.
But I’ll ask him to speak. He needs to leave right after he makes his comments.
MR. SHEFFIELD: Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
I am available for questions right after and I’m not sure if that’s on the agenda or not.
I just want to say that the fire department is all for the Town of Cottageville receiving a water system. It would greatly benefit the fire department and fire protection in your area.
Currently we have no reliable water sources in this area. We have two dry hydrants which are TVC pipes located in individual ponds and on a drought the water might not be there and there’s no reliable access to the river to receive water there. So in order for us to get water for the fire protection we have to shuttle it in and it’s coming from Jacksonboro, the industrial area in Walterboro, Cannadys.
We’re making it work but a water system could greatly influence on how well we provide protection in the city and as well as the outlying area of the city.
Do you have anything you’d like to say?
MR. KENNEDY: That’s really the biggest point I wanted to make, too, is it’s, you know, not necessarily try to convince you one way or the other but something else to think about, that the fact that the fire protection would be a lot better in this area with a pressurized water system, even if it was just mains running through the center of town, you know.
It’s just we — Like Richard said, we have to bring our water in on trucks. Our tankers carry 3,000 gallons each and when that — Like Southland fire, I believe that was like 30,000 gallons of water they pumped on that fire.
We have the old school; we have the new school which, heaven forbid, if either one of them was to ever catch on fire it would take every tanker in this county that we have constantly driving from Walterboro and back to attempt to fight that fire. If we had a water system here in town it would just make everybody’s fire protection to every resident in this town better.
MR. DEWITT: Can anybody else say anything about this?
MR. SHEFFIELD: Yes.
MR. DEWITT: How many firefighters do you have?
MR. SHEFFIELD: Firefighters? Currently we have 60, 62 -
MR. DEWITT: I’m not talking volunteers; I’m talking about paid firefighters.
MR. SHEFFIELD: Paid firefighters, we have 62.
MR. DEWITT: Paid firefighters?
MR. SHEFFIELD: Yes, sir.
MR. DEWITT: That’s on 24 hours?
MR. SHEFFIELD: No, sir, no, sir, that’s within — That’s three shifts.
MR. DEWITT: And they’re working three shifts around the clock?
MR. SHEFFIELD: Yes.
MR. DEWITT: Throughout the county.
MR. DEWITT: Throughout the county.
MR. SHEFFIELD: And that’s -
MR. DEWITT: Well, I know it’s — I’m talking about Cottageville.
MR. SHEFFIELD: Cottageville there
is -
MR. DEWITT: Right. Not worrying about county.
MR. SHEFFIELD: At station 9 on Rohoberth (phon.) Road there are three firefighters in the daytime and two at night.
MR. DEWITT: See, I’m retired firefighter.
MR. SHEFFIELD: Yes, sir.
MR. DEWITT: And I can tell you, you can have all the water in the world but if you don’t have ample firefighters to handle the water you’re not gonna do any good anyhow.
MR. SHEFFIELD: On the initial stages of a fire we have two to three -
MR. DEWITT: I know what it’s like, put 40 years.
MR. SHEFFIELD: We also have anywhere from 250 volunteers coming throughout -
MR. DEWITT: Not counting volunteers; I’m counting paid firefighters. That’s what I was.
MR. SHEFFIELD: Okay.
MR. DEWITT: Thank you.
MR. MICHAEL: My name is Charles E. Michael. I live on 248 Durant Avenue.
There’s a well in the front of that firefighter where Lightsey used to have their eight-inch well sitting up under the shed right there.
MR. SHEFFIELD: You talking about across from the station?
MR. MICHAEL: Ten-inch well.
MR. SHEFFIELD: Yes, but we have had — We have tried to access who owns it and we cannot find out. We have not been able to gain any permission from anyone to find out who actually owns that property and who actually has the legal rights to that well. We did try to get access to that.
MR. MICHAEL: Well, that well’s not being used?
MR. SHEFFIELD: No, because we could never get who — legal permission to use it. We could never find out who actually has the rights to that well.
MR. MICHAEL: Well, I know if they own it but Lightsey put that well there for many years ago for the train station and stuff could come there. So y’all check with Lightsey Brothers along back in Sycamore, somewhere up there?
MR. SHEFFIELD: I would have to go back to the people that did it at the time, who they talked — We did this, we looked at this about 10 years ago and we never could find a clear resolution to who owned it, to who we could talk to, get permission to hook into it. That was the problem.
I would have to go back and talk to the people who did it to find out who exactly they talked to.
MR. MICHAEL: All right.
And then if the well’s in the town limits, then you should have privilege, the city should have privilege, privilege of it.
MR. SHEFFIELD: It’s on private property.
MR. MICHAEL: Private property.
MR. SHEFFIELD: We can’t go on private property and take it.
MR. MICHAEL: Well, Youmans used to own that property, right?
MR. SHEFFIELD: That I — That is what we ran into, the problem trying to find out, was who was the legal owner of that well.
We did look into that well when we first built that station over there.
MR. REEVES: The lady’s who over the estate is in Orangeburg and they don’t own the well.
If you need some information,
I’ll . . .
MR. MICHAEL: Don’t the town own a six-inch well over here?
MR. SHEFFIELD: The fire department does.
MR. MICHAEL: Fire department owns that.
MAYOR WHITE: Mr. Ackerman, you’d like to speak?
MR. ACKERSON: This six-inch well they have over there can put a hundred and twenty-five gallon a minute pump on it. They got about a 5,000 gallon tank sitting on the ground. They can put a foundation of it two feet off the ground because you got the suction hoses from your fire pump that hook right in the bottom of it and fill a tank up on the trunk in just a matter of couple of minutes.
MR. SHEFFIELD: That is correct but -
MR. ACKERSON: Won’t have to go to either place, Walterboro nor the river to get water.
MR. SHEFFIELD: That’s correct and that’s why that tank was put there. The problem we ran in to that was lack of funding. It was gonna cost us about $40,000 to have that tank put on a foundation and put up in the air but we did not have the finances.
MR. ACKERSON: Somebody’s got a loose screw in the head.
MAYOR WHITE: Okay.
Is there any other questions for Bob and Richard?
(No response.)
MAYOR WHITE: Thank you so much for coming tonight and I appreciate it.
I’d like to go ahead and continue with my presentation this evening.
As I said before, if you come to the meetings on a regular basis, I’ve tried to put out the information on what money the Town of Cottageville has.
This is actually from our audit report for the fiscal year 2007-2008 and I know that it’s hard to read but there’s a pie chart there but our income from — We received income from local option sales tax in the amount of a hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars. Business license, we get about $27,000. Business permits, we get about $5500. SCE&G franchise, we receive check one a year for about $24,000; Pine Tree Cable franchise, about $2,000 and Pine Tree Cable right now is looking for — They’re trying to sell their, their business so that amount dwindles each year.
In fact, we wouldn’t be getting that if we didn’t take action to go ahead and get that, those funds to come in.
Municipal association brokerage tax, $4,000; insurance tax, 55, about $56,000; court fines, $637,000.
You have to remember that on court fines, well, about 58 percent or what they — you know, their assessment value is, about 58 percent of that $637,000 belongs to The State of South Carolina. That’s the line item that, you know, that I keep bringing up about the hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars that has to be paid back to The State of South Carolina and, you know, we have an attorney working on that and also the department of revenue.
Ticket refunds, which is a negative number of $3,000. Victims advocate fund is a negative number of $800. We have somewhere in the neighborhood of about $60,000 in victims advocate.
Aid to subdivisions, we received $22,000. That’s what we received last year. The State of South Carolina has been good enough to go ahead and reduce that figure by 3 percent and come January they plan on reducing it by another 10 percent.
Interest income checking, we’ve received about $800 and miscellaneous revenue to the tune of about $9,000.
Total revenue for this past year which was up over $200,000, the grand total was $911,000.
Getting back to water and sewer. I’ll just go down each one of these.
Economic benefits. Property values will rise. A character wide mix of local businesses which will offer both necessity and conveniences to the public. Decrease household fuel expenditures. Won’t have to drive to Walterboro or Summerville; no need to leave town to pick up a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread. Decrease in cost of necessities. Household goods are cheaper, groceries. Job creations.
Utilize the properties that will not support traditional septic tank systems. There is some areas in town which will not perk. Forty percent of the incorporated land area. Prevent South Carolina DHEC regulations from steering land, subdivision. Right now we’re limited to seven tenths of an acre for house with a septic tank on it.
Encourage private investment within the town. Lower fire casualty insurance rate throughout. Fire protection enhancement, residential decrease of about 22 percent. Commercial decrease is about 30 percent.
Environmental and public safety. Improve water quality. Systematic regulatory monitoring of municipal water systems quality, water quality. The well depth will be greater than 700 feet, happen to the aquifer.
Eliminate proliferation of individual septic systems. Virtually all usable soil in town has been exhausted. Many existing tanks back up in wet or rainy season. Thank God right now, you know, we’ve been in a drought for awhile. That’s — And there are some people that suffer whenever it does rain.
Nonconforming conditions and lack of routine maintenance and, you know, the lack of grout or grout damage on majority of existing wells versus risk of contamination of drinking water.
Quality of life. Control of development in and around town. Facilitate the ability to further subdivide town and property. Existing setbacks in property lines and structures where individual septic tanks are no longer. Promote redevelopment of existing underused facilities.
Some of the lots in town that have buildings on them right now do not really have enough land to have a septic tank.
Town revenue. Prevent future necessity for a municipal property tax levy. That’s one thing that I’ve been fighting against. I know that we have bills from years ago that I’ve been trying to take care of. I’ve been trying to keep from having a property tax levied and I really don’t want to go that way. I don’t think people want to see that happen. If we were to have other businesses come into town they would — As I said before, they pay for business permits, licenses. That will be an annual income that would pay the town. We would also have money from the water system coming in from the businesses and this is what we’re faced with right now.
The state’s split on revenues for traffic violations. Currently 58 percent of every fine collected must be sent to the state. The only one we get to keep 100 percent of is the seatbelt ticket which is $45. That was really good of them to do that for us.
The state municipal funding cut aid to subdivisions. As I mentioned before, we were cut 3 percent this year; we’ll be cut another additional 10 percent fiscal year 2009. That’s really, as they’re talking right now, that will actually occur a little bit before that, probably at the first quarter of 2009.
Trade and resources revenue. Water service, new commercial construction, new business license, as I just mentioned.
Seventy percent of the town’s revenue comes from court fines and traffic citations which only lends to our speed trap label that we have even though we tried to prevent, you know, and tried to reduce that. Even with the changes we made in the police department we still have that reputation.
Inability to prevent Colleton County from servicing Cottageville. Colleton County collects a revenue. Currently the town is in Colleton County service area. Colleton County past a — Well, a referendum was passed by Colleton County where they are actually the — They can be the water and sewer provider. If they come into Cottageville I feel like that would be revenue that would go to them and instead it could be to the Town of Cottageville.
At least this will give the people of the town of Cottageville the, the control over the water system. It would also allow us to go after grants.
I don’t feel like if you don’t live here you’re not really gonna be concerned with what the people of the town have to pay for it.
Potential funding sources for this project. USDA Rural Utilities Service Grant Program, low interest loan programs, HUD, community development block grants, South Carolina State Budget and Control Board Grant Program, South Carolina State Revolving Fund, South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control low interest rate loan program, South Carolina Electric and Gas utility startup grants and the Rural Telephone utility grants.
I want to go back to revenues for just a minute.
The Town of Cottageville, this is probably the last time you’re gonna see court fines in that area of $637,000 because the South Carolina Court Administration is taking it to the point now where we are — We are very well controlled as far as what we can and cannot do. Every time that we write a ticket, last year on a $232 ticket we would receive a hundred dollars of it. The rest of it would go to the state and then also into the victims advocate fund, which really wasn’t funded until last year.
So, anyway, getting back to that, the state has increased the assessments by another $5, $5 the start of this fiscal year. The town can no longer write $237 tickets unless they’re tickets that’s written for what we were writing for due care. Due care is a pedestrian charge. That is something that, you know, we’re limited to doing.
The courts want us to write, if it’s a speeding ticket it needs to be written speeding. On speeding over 10 we get a grand total of $50 which normally if the person comes to court that ticket is reduced to $25. Well, I mean it’s reduced down to where the town receives $25.
It would be just as good for us to sit somebody out there and write seatbelt tickets but that’s not all that our police department contends with.
We have a lot of other things that go on here in town and our police officers do work and they have a lot. They have a lot that’s going on here behind the scenes that they have to deal with. So we do have a good police department but the revenue figure of $637,000, I do not think that we will be able to see those again.
If the water system does come we would have more businesses come into town. As I said before that, you know, that would actually help us pay for the water system. It would actually pay for — You know, we would have more business licenses, more revenue that way and that is really the direction that you want a municipality to go in. You want them to get away from ticket refunds.
I don’t understand myself, you know. We were always told in the state of South Carolina that you cannot receive the lion’s share of your revenue from tickets but The State of South Carolina, they get the lion’s share of our ticket revenue. Our court fines go to The State of South Carolina.
As you can see, last year we had to pay over $300,000 to the state in court assessments.
At this time I’d like to give council an opportunity to speak, if anyone would like to say anything concerning water and sewer, pro or con.