Darlington moves forward with expansion of historic district
By Melissa Rollins, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
After a special called executive session before their regular meeting, Darlington City Council voted July 10 to extend City Manager Howard Garland’s contract until July 1, 2020. The vote was split, with Mayor Gloria Hines and councilwomen Sheila Baccus and Elaine Reed voting against the motion.
The executive session was held ‘for the purposes of discussing an extension of the city manager’s contract,’ according to councilman John Milling. After the vote, Milling asked that a work session be scheduled for council.
“(We need to) go through our city ordinance and further define the duties and responsibilities of the city manager as they may be found in the current document,” Milling said. “We also need to discuss among ourselves a good way that when there is an issue that needs to be addressed that everybody is onboard and everybody understands; some of that housekeeping kind of stuff. We need to get that done so that each one of us knows what’s happening and as we communicate with Mr. Garland he knows that we are communicating with him as a unified council.”
During their regularly scheduled July meeting, in old business, council approved the second reading of Ordinance 2018-13 for the annexation of 224 Blue Street. The property owner asked for the annexation into the city because their well went dry and they needed to get city water hooked up. Council also approved a zoning change for 224 Blue Street. The zoning classification is now R-6.
City Planner Lisa Rock said that the planning commission looked at the current zoning designations in the surrounding area and decided that R-6 was most appropriate.
“The adjoining properties if they had the same issues with their wells would likely be zoned R-6 as well,” Rock said.
In new business, council gave Rock and the Historic Landmark Commission the go-ahead to pursue the expansion of the North Street/Oak Street Historic District. The expansion has been an agenda item before but was tabled when councilmembers wanted more specific information about which residences would be added to the district. Councilman John Segars asked for it to be put on the July agenda.
“I’ve been contacted by some of the residents in this section of the city,” Segars said. “They would like to pursue getting the historical district in that section of town. They see an advantage to their homes to have that designation.”
Now that city council has approved the request, the Historic Landmark Commission will send out certified letters to all of the residents of the proposed district. Many have already been contacted and expressed an interest in the designation, Rock said, but it is required by law that residents be notified by certified letter before a historic district can be created or expanded. Anyone in the specified area who is not interested in being part of the district can petition the city council to be removed. If council approves the removal of a residence from the district it will be specified in the ordinance that will be written to govern the expansion.
On the agenda was a first reading of ordinance 2018-08 relating to the pickup of bulky refuse by the city. In past meetings, councilmembers have said that residents are leaving items like furniture and refrigerators and it is an eyesore in the city. They were seeking with ordinance 2018-08 to chance the current policy saying that the city never picks up these kinds of items. Karen Carroll with the Street and Sanitation Department urged council not to change the current policy saying that picking up bulky refuse items on a regular basis would be a burden on the city’s employees and its equipment.
“The ordinance that is standing now says that we do not pick up brown goods and white goods, which is furniture and refrigerators, stuff like that,” Carroll said. “The proposed ordinance says that we will pick up appliances and furniture…on a reasonable basis. Placing more than one item a month will result in an additional charge based on a fee schedule. That would be an extreme burden on the two new cherry pickers to pick all that stuff up and I think it is opening the door for an enormous amount of refuse to be put out there.”
After hearing from Carroll, city council decided not to approve first reading and to take the ordinance back to the table for further considerations.
