Council Meetings
By Lauren Dean
City Council Meeting
City Council finally met as a group on May 11 for the shortest meeting on record – seven minutes. It was actually a special City Council meeting with barely a quorum present called for the specific purpose of voting on the mid-year budget, which basically tacks on unanticipated expenditures that were not part of the fiscal budget.
Mayor Goodwin was present along with Council members Charlie McCarty, Eddie Ellis and Paul Hume. Pennell Clamp was out of town for the funeral of a family member and Laura Beck was attending the school play of one of her children. The budget passed without them. Life goes on despite stinky little things like budgets and they were where they needed to be. Besides, Councilman Ellis was there to scrutinize the mid-year supplemental budget for the public record.
City Council Workshop
The City Council meeting was preceded by a Budget 101 workshop in which Ellis conducted an exhaustive line-by-line examination of the budget, which he later voted against. The $835,000 increase included funds for joining the County-wide dispatch system, the City Hall expansion, and the hiring of a facilitator to help former Mayor Beckmann control his Council, none of which Ellis had supported.
Citizen’s comments are heard at the beginning of council meetings, and former Mayor Bob Linville showed up spitting nails over the new County dispatch system. “It ain’t working and it ain’t gonna work,” Linville said. “I hope to God we don’t have another Hugo and have to rely on the County to help us.” He then related a story about a dog that had been picked up by Folly Beach Animal Services over the weekend and a man who had been looking for that dog for two days to no avail. With no animal shelter on Folly due to the relocation of the Fire Department, Pet Helpers took in the animal, but County dispatch didn’t know where the dog was and Linville’s wife Carol, founder and director of Pet Helpers, said the dog was just hours away from being neutered when by chance the man called her.
Current Mayor Tim Goodwin told a story of his own about an injured duck he found on the Folly River Bridge, and his story had a better ending. “Here’s what you do,” Goodwin said. “Call 588-2433 (the old Folly Beach Public Safety phone number) and ask to speak to Ralph.” Ralph Bryant is the Folly Beach Animal Control Officer.
Goodwin went on to explain that Folly residents can still talk directly to a Folly Beach cop by calling 588-2433 (which now goes directly to County dispatch), telling the dispatcher this is not an emergency, and requesting to speak directly to a Public Safety officer. The Mayor said he had been against using County dispatch from the start, but after two good experiences and one bad experience, he was beginning to come around.
Many residents have expressed concern about the handling of non-emergency situations such as noisy parties at rental units next door, music blaring from bars on Center Street, and missing pets. It seems the new Mayor has worked out a way to keep our dispatch calls Folly-friendly. He said after the meeting that the County was going to have to figure out that Folly was a “whole different animal” from North Charleston or even James Island and learn to respond accordingly.
City Administrator Toni Connor-Rooks went to great pains to explain the costs of the new dispatch system. Bottom line was that Folly Beach will no longer be paying the salaries of five dispatchers and even though the City will pay the county upwards of $250,000 per year for 2011 and 2012 and approximately half that in 2013, payments will disappear entirely in 2014. This is important stuff, although the mere mention of the word “budget” makes most folk’s eyes glaze over.
Other ho-hum business concerned the pros and cons of hiring an engineer to run interference between the City and the Department of Transportation (DOT) in hopes of getting bridges that satisfy Folly residents. Paul Hume wondered why we needed to hire an engineer to tell DOT we didn’t like what they were doing, but Charlie McCarty insisted that an engineer could better state the position of the City regarding issues that have not been resolved with DOT.
Thank God for the seven-minute City Council meeting after a work session that ran 30 minutes over schedule. The good news is there was no smirking or rolling of the eyes and everybody seemed to get along just fine. The next regular City Council meeting is at 7:00 p.m. on May 25. Inquiring minds can come by City Hall and pick up a copy of the agenda and talk to the Mayor or any of the other City officials while they’re there, or less chatty, computer-literate types can print their own agenda by accessing the City website at Cityoffollybeach.com. Remember, you can attend the Council meetings or watch the fun on Channel 60 from the comfort of your own home.
