Council passes two ordinances, announces new judge
Glenn Willis and Al Agnew stand with Mayor Gloria Hines after she signed a proclamation making March American Red Cross Month in Darlington.
Photo by Melissa rollins
By Melissa Rollins, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
Darlington Mayor Gloria Hines announced during the March meeting of city council that a new municipal judge had been chosen.
“Last night we elected a new municipal judge to begin July 1st, 2017,” Hines said. “We would like to thank Mr. Dan Causey for 30 years of service. The new judge will be attorney Robert Stucks and I think he will start 6 weeks before Mr. Causey leaves.”
In other business, council gave final reading on Ordinances 2017-04 and 2017-05 dealing with council filing fees and mileage reimbursement, respectively.
The filing fee ordinance reads: “The filing fee for Mayor and Council for the City of Darlington shall be one percent of the four-year total salary for Mayor and Council.”
With the wording of the ordinance, any changes in pay will not require that any amendments or new ordinances be drafted. According to City Manager Howard Garland, the current filing fee will be $200 for council and $340 for mayor, in accordance with this ordinance.
Ordinance 2017-05 changed the mileage reimbursement from .36 cents to .535 cents per mile, bringing it in line with the current Internal Revenue Service Standard Mileage Rate.
Councilman John Milling made a motion to amend the ordinance so that when the IRS rate fluctuates, the city’s rate will automatically be adjusted without the need for a new ordinance.
In new business, council voted to accept first reading of Ordinance 2017-09, relating to the storm water bond.
There were some concerns expressed by councilmen John Segars and Bryant Gardner over the amount of money that would be spent from that bond to deal with the ditch on Chalmers Street.
Segars said that his concern was with how much the price had grown.
“I am concerned that this Chalmers ditch project started out as a project that we were going to spend about $400,000 to remedy,” Segars said. “It has now grown to $1.2, $1.6 million [$1.7 according to Howard Garland]; it could be $2 million before we get through with it and it has just really gotten out of hand on this thing.”
Segars also said that he would like to see if there are alternatives to the current scope of the project.
“We’ve got probably 13 easements that need to be satisfied and those haven’t been done,” Segars said. “I feel like we are going to have a problem completing this project number one, on time, and number two, I don’t think the city can afford the money it is going to cost us to fix them. I would like to see if there is any way that we can scale this project back to what its original intent was and do the project on a partial basis as revenue and resources become available.”
Several members of council spoke up in favor of passing the ordinance, explaining the necessity of the growth, both in the plans and the price.
“We had a work session that indicated what started out as the Chalmers Street project was just the tip of the iceberg,” said councilwoman Elaine Reed. “The engineering company that was awarded the contract to do this, once they got in to see what was actually necessary, what caused the problem, this is why the money has to be increased, to correct the real problem. To scale back would mean not really addressing the project. The way that they have given it to us will meet the criteria that the grant requires.”
Mayor Gloria Hines, who lives in the Chalmers Street area, said that the ditch needs to be fixed and the only way to do that is to listen to what the experts are telling them.
“I don’t feel that we can draw back on this at this time,” Hines said. “It won’t be held up forever; there will be monies left over out of it and out of the general obligation bond. If something else comes up, we can draw out of that. I am not, at this time, willing to draw back on it; it has been going on too long…It is something we need to address, we don’t need to draw back on it.”
When the discussion closed and the ordinance went to a vote, Segars was the lone nay.
Also during the meeting, two representatives of the American Red Cross, Al Agnew and Glenn Willis, accepted a proclamation from the city saying that March will be known as American Red Cross Month.