Council to plan city parks’ future
By Bobby Bryant, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
Darlington City Council and the county Recreation Department will meet to plan a course for the future of the city’s parks and to consider how to tie them together with a system of trails, council agreed last week.
“You’re going to have to connect these parks,” Recreation Director Lee Andrews told council during its Oct. 1 meeting. “You’re going to have to do a trail system. You’re going to have to do something along that line to draw people into wanting to use these, wanting to visit these parks.”
“We’ve got to do something that’s going to say, ‘Come visit us,’” Andrews said.
He said that at some point – with luck – the property where Brunson-Dargan Elementary School now sits could play into the city’s parks plans. The school is being phased out; next year, its students will attend a new school that’s being built next to Cain Elementary School. Cain’s students also will be absorbed into the yet-unnamed new facility.
“As recreation director for Darlington County,” Andrews said, “I do not think that we can have enough places for kids, adults, seniors, whatever, to go out and enjoy themselves. … From the beginning, from 2013 to now, we have talked about a hundred different things. What I would like to do is sit down with some of y’all and let’s put a plan together on exactly what we’re going to do.
“So we can work toward that, so I’m not getting a piece from this one and a piece from this one and a piece from this one, and then we’re trying to go in a hundred different directions and nothing’s being finished.”
“Let’s put a plan together,” Andrews told council.
“Let’s say, ‘This is what we’re going to do,’ and let’s work toward doing that. … I don’t want to spend my time spinning my wheels on something that necessarily the council as a whole does not agree on. I want it to be something that everybody’s united on and we move forward with.”
“Let’s do it,” Andrews said. “Sit down with me; tell me what you want. I might not agree with it. You might not agree with me. But at the end of the day, we’re going to do what’s right. And we’re going to do what’s right by Darlington.”
“There’s a lot of needs as far as recreation goes,” Andrews continued. “ … We are Top 10 in the country as far as Little League charters go. … I want you to think about that. In the United States of America, Darlington County is one of the Top 10 biggest charters in the country. And we’re playing on ball fields that were built in the ’70s, the ’60s, with the same bathroom facilities.”
In a related matter, the city will get to keep a softball field on the Old Florence Highway that originally was to be sold to Georgia-Pacific as part of a still-mysterious economic-development deal called Project Peach. Technicalities resulted in the softball field being dropped from the land purchase. But the deed to the 5-acre property requires that it be used for recreation.
City Council member Sheila Baccus had expressed interest in turning the property into a playground. Andrews investigated the options and found an opportunity for the city to buy $41,000 worth of playground equipment on sale for half its original price.
Council voted last week to pursue the deal as long as issues could be worked out involving where the money would come from. Andrews had suggested using the hospitality tax, but some council members questioned whether a playground could be shown to have a tourism connection. Assuming the funding source is resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, Andrews said, the property will be both a playground and a softball field.
In other business last week:
— Council voted to donate $5,000 in hospitality-tax funds to the Darlington Sweet Potato Festival. The 37th edition of the festival is Oct. 12. The request for the funds was made by Pilot Club members Judy Langley and Ginger Ridgill. “We really need some additional support,” said Ridgill.
— Council approved, on second reading, a plan creating a special property tax assessment for rehabilitated historic properties. “It would certainly create more incentives, especially in our downtown, but all over the city,” said city planner Lisa Chalian-Rock.
— Council approved, on second reading, an outdoor-lighting ordinance intended in part to keep business’ lighting (such as for parking lots) from spilling onto nearby homes. “This will help codes enforcement better be able to serve the city,” Rock said of the plan.
— Council issued a proclamation in honor of National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, which runs through the end of October.