Society Hill Town Council meets new police chief
By Melissa Rollins, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
In an attempt to correct outstanding issues with its current employee handbook, Society Hill Town Council made its first steps to adopting a new handbook January 10 during its monthly meeting. Though council ultimately did not approve a first reading, opting instead to take the book home and go over the changes in detail, Mayor Tommy Bradshaw said that they were taking a step in the right direction.
“The old handbook was much too liberal and it was costly to the town,” Bradshaw said. “In the old handbook, the town of Society Hill had 14 paid holidays and the annual leave was just out of the sky.”
Bradshaw said that the old handbook stated that an employee with the town between three and 10 years had 13 and a half days of paid leave; Darlington County employees, by contrast, only get 10 days. In the new handbook, paid holidays were capped at 11, subtracting President’s Day, Veteran’s Day and an additional day of the employee’s choosing.
The paid leave was changed to 5 days for employees with one to three years with the town; employees with four or more years are given 10 days of leave. The old handbook stated that up to 360 hours of leave could be rolled forward to the next year; the new handbook does not allow leave time to be rolled over if left unused.
In other business, council voted to approve several changes to ordinance 2016/2017-05. Section 2.303, regarding the date of elections was changed to say: “All general Council elections shall be held on the first Tuesday, after the first Monday in November, in each odd number year.”
Changes were also made to section 2.305, removing item B “Petitions shall be required.”
Section 2.306, regarding filing fees, was amended to say, “The filing fee shall be 1% of the salary for the four-year term of the office the candidate is seeing. If a vacancy occurs, the filing feel shall be prorated.”
During the meeting the new town police chief, David Young, introduced himself to council and the town’s citizens in attendance at the meeting.
“I wanted to come to the council meeting tonight to formally introduce myself to council,” Young said. “I am a lifelong resident of Darlington County; I grew up in Darlington, went to school in Darlington. I reside now in Hartsville.”
Young comes to the town after having worked at the Darlington County Sheriff’s Office.
“I’m a former deputy and division commander for Sheriff Wayne Byrd,” Young said. “I was the captain over investigations; I was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the criminal investigation division.”
Young said that he is not a stranger to the town, having worked there before joining the sheriff’s office.
“I’m very familiar with Society Hill; I actually worked in Society Hill back in 1992,” Young said. “Danny Douglas was the police chief back then and I worked for Danny; I really enjoyed it. I would tell people that was the best job I ever had, working in Society Hill; it is a very peaceful little place.”
Young said that his job with the county kept him up to speed with the crime, or lack thereof, in Society Hill.
“As part of my duties at the sheriff’s office, all of the reports written in a 24-hour period came to me. It was my job to look over these reports,” Young said. “In a 24-hour period there were about 35 to 40 reports written over the whole county…Society Hill has the least crime rate in the county. It is a peaceful little place and I just thought I’d share that. That is something to be proud of and I plan to try my best to keep it that way.”
