Emergency services cleared for $2 million in upgrades
By Samantha Lyles, Staff Writer, slyles@newsandpress.net
Darlington County Council convened their final regular meeting of 2019 on Dec. 2, and members voted to make some key purchases for the Fire District, E-911 and Environmental Services.
Without objection, Council approved a $1.3 million purchase of three new fire trucks for the Darlington County Fire District.
This includes two Pierce Pumper/Tankers with Freightliner chassis ($698,594) and a Pierce ENCORE rescue vehicle ($599,016).
One new pumper tanker will replace an older unit at Society Hill Station #11, and the other will be deployed from Dovesville Station #13.
The vehicles will be bought through a cooperative purchasing contract with funds on hand from the $4.1 million Fire District GO (General Obligation) bond approved earlier this year. The vendor is Spartan Fire and Emergency Apparatus of Roebuck. County administrator Charles Stewart said the vehicles should be finished, delivered and ready for service by this time next year.
In other matters, council approved a $248,749 contract award for a 40′ x 40′ pre-engineered metal building to serve as a scale house for the Environmental Services department. The vendor is Sun Construction of Darlington.
Council also approved spending $822,721 to upgrade the radio dispatch console at the Central Communications/E-911 Department. The equipment will be provided by Motorola Solutions.
Council also approved final reading of Ordinance 19-22, which authorizes a fee-in-lieu-of-taxes (FILOT) agreement between an as-yet unidentified private industry known as “Project Star” and the multi-county business park owned jointly by Darlington County and Florence County.
The Project Star investment is expected to total $5 million over 10 years. By approving this FILOT, the county agrees to receive an agreed upon fee instead of property taxes for a period of 30 years. The FILOT payments will be calculated based on the fair market value of land used by the company, with an assessment rate of 6 percent.
