Scruggs had previously been among the four person majority who voted against the original “Cadillac” version of the plan which would have also included a remodeling of City Hall to provide more space for staff and would have cost an estimated $1.7 million. Everyone seemed to determined to vote the same way they had previously, prompting those in favor of the plan to predict its failure during the public meeting. It was obvious, though, as the group voted that Scruggs was on the fence. His head was down and took several moments to think when it was his turn before voting yes, ensuring a passing of the plan by a 4-3 margin.

Scruggs later said that he originally voted “no” late last year because he wanted the City to explore other options before dedicating itself to spending $1.7 million of tax payer money. Dave Stormer had also presented a plan that he believed would provide the extra space necessary and would only cost $600,000. However, after further analysis it was thought the Stormer plan would cost at least $900,000. It was at that point that Scruggs began to move onto Mayor Carl Beckmann’s bandwagon to support the original plan. Everyone agreed that more space was needed and Scruggs did not believe the goal would be achieved any other way.

The plan that was passed on January 19 is a “basic” version that only addresses the Public Safety Building and does not include City Hall. It will create a second floor for sleeping quarters and other offices and will house the police department as well which is currently on the first floor of City Hall. That space will be utilized to give City Staff, still in City Hall, more space. While the plan is estimated to cost anywhere between $1.2 and $1.3 million, it was made public that the actual cost will be more. The City has to comply with County Codes that requires an estimated 73,000 in renovations. Furthermore, there are costs associated with the temporary housing of fire personnel and equipment during the construction that was taken into account. There is also the possibility of water damage in the walls that may have to be addressed but was not researched because Mayor Beckmann did not consider this cost worth discovering until the plan was passed.

Tom Scruggs, Mayor Beckmann, Laura Beck, and Charlie McCarty were the four members of the City Council which voted in favor of the plan. The Council will hold its next regular meeting on January 26 at 7pm at City Hall.

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Staff photo: Kathy Church tries to keep the City Council focused on the task of evaluating options for City expansion. However, the hired facilitator found herself getting drawn into the abyssal debate the Council has been circling for months.

As a result of their admitted inability to make any progress on how the City should go about providing more space for its staff and Public Safety Department, the City Council hired a facilitator, Kathy Church, to head their Special Meeting on November 19 which was intended to be an honest discussion on various options the City had at their disposal for expansion.
The Council came up with approximately seven options which included using the original $1.6 million plan, building a separate facility on City owned property, downscaling the original plan, purchasing a nearby private property with structures, using the old Water Plant, renting office space, and redrawing the current plan.
But as the Council examined the various options and developed criteria with which to evaluate them, the face of debate reared its ugly head. Council member Beck later suggested that since the Council members could not even agree on what constituted a reliable source for information, it would be difficult to make progress. However, they agreed to use cost, square footage, City services provided, professional benchmarks/models, and the need for temporary space as criteria to evaluate the various options. The meeting seemed to be flowing well at this point as Church kept them focused. However, when it was suggested that keeping all departments in one building, or Co-location, be used as a criteria, Church decided that the Council needed to agree on this point alone. She also weighed in with her opinion siding with McCarty who said the current trend is to keep all departments in one building. Of course, some Council members did not think co-location should be a deal-breaker when considering the small size of Folly Beach. Church, though, would not let the Council move on without addressing this issue. For reasons unknown, an agreement on how much money to spend, necessary square footage, or any other criteria did not require any consensus while co-location did.
The facilitator finally moved past the issue by excluding it from the list of criteria to be used and a plan was developed that would allow the Council to evaluate the agreed upon options at a future meeting. Every Council member was given an assigned criteria they would use to evaluate every expansion option. They are expected to come together at a future meeting to reveal their data and possibly choose a direction.
Several interesting points and opinions were raised at this meeting as a result of Church’s facilitation. Church began the meeting with a sense of order that inspired hope by giving Council members an opportunity to express any issues that had not been previously expressed in the public forum which resulted in an immediate identification of some problems. One of the main issues for those who opposed the $1.6 million project was that the process skipped what should have been the very first step: consideration of alternatives and a needs assessment process. Dave Stormer pointed out that while at least 11 meetings have occurred where the plan was discussed, the real issue was never actually talked about. There were no standards, he said. The Council never got to consider options prior to Mayor Beckmann presenting a plan.
Discussion quickly shifted to a criticism of the Mayor and foreshadowed the co-location schism that Church identified and put on a pedestal. Eddie Ellis suggested the original process had not been transparent and criticized the Mayor for trivializing their concerns. He also wanted the Council to share in the responsibility of developing a plan with the Mayor, contrary to how the previous plan was developed, so that the “we don’t have to rely on the Mayor for truth”. Scruggs echoed that comment by saying that the strong mayor/weak Council system they are employing is not conducive to teamwork and said Mayor Beckmann basically presented a plan and expected everyone to “fall in line”. Mayor Beckmann, who made his opinion of Council well known at their October meeting was especially quiet and had to be cajoled into speaking by Church. Laura Beck expressed the main counterpoint to Stormer, Ellis and Scruggs saying that the Council had no business “micromanaging” the project and their main responsibility was fiscal. She said that no member of Council is a professional in the field and they should listen to the hired architects in regards to how the City should expand its facilities.

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In a controversial decision that ended with flared tempers and name calling, the City Council voted 4-3 against a resolution that would have resulted in the City spending $1.6 million for a 5000 square foot expansion of City Hall and the Public Safety Department. Council members Dave Stormer, Eddie Ellis, Tom Scruggs and Tim Goodwin made up the majority of the expansion’s opposition.
Mayor Carl Beckmann believes it’s “all political”, adding that there is no other explanation for anyone to vote against the expansion. “It’s a slap in the face to staff,” he said, to those who have worked hard on the current plan. At the end of the City Council meeting, Beckmann took a moment to publicly criticize the opposition.
“What Council has done proves this Council has no regard for staff, workspace or otherwise. This is the eleventh hour, do-nothing Council. I’m looking out for the residents of this City and you, my friends, are not,” he said. As the opposing Council members began to object, Beckmann banged his gavel to officially end the meeting.
Mayor Beckmann said that if any of the four opponents had issues with the plan, they should have spoken with him about it before the vote. However, none of them, according to Beckmann, were willing to sit down and address the plan. Instead, they waited until the last moment to “blow the project out of the water”.
“It’s sad. If that’s not political, then I don’t know what is,” he said.
However, the Mayor’s own comments could epitomize two of the largest reasons for the plan’s failure: miscommunication and fact misrepresentation. For example, while Beckmann claims that no one concerned about the expansion tried to talk to him about the plan, Stormer said that he sent the Mayor and the City Administrator memos as early as November of 2008 suggesting alternatives and expressing a need for a “neutral” architect. He claimed that neither replied to him. Ellis publicly referred to Beckmann’s statement as a lie.
Stormer, who has been the plan’s antagonist from the beginning, believes that the process used to develop and present the plan was questionable and resulted in a fallible cost assessment. For example, while attempting to sell the project to the public, Beckmann claimed that no tax increase would be necessary for the expansion. However, there was no accounting for the estimated $50,000 per year in maintenance and operation cost which the extra space would require, in addition to having to furnish 5000 square feet of additional space, Stormer argued.
PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) money was also an issue, as it is the reason the project could supposedly be done without raising taxes. However, some consider this a “hidden” tax itself. PILOT funds are the result of the City taking 15% of the Water Utility’s revenue. Of course, that is money that is paid by residents and water bills have been raised to account for PILOT since its inception in 1997. While it’s not technically a tax on residents, they are the ones providing the money. This is important because the funds are currently used to pay the debt service on the current City Hall building, which is scheduled to be repaid in full in two years.
Additionally, while the City currently has a kennel for dogs and cats, the expansion actually removes the kennel, and the $1.6 million plan doesn’t include room for a new one. This was a problem for at least one Council member, Eddie Ellis, who voted against the plan. Beckmann said that they are looking into leasing an adjacent lot and building a kennel there, but the cost was not factored into the “tax-free” project.
One of the most agitating aspects of the issue arose from the “us versus them” attitude taken by the most outspoken proponents of the plan: Mayor Beckmann and Public Safety Director Terry Boatwright. Both made statements that attacked the character of anyone who might vote against the project.
Reiterating a previous speech to Council, Boatwright pleaded for approval before exclaiming “It blows my mind!” in reference to the fact that some Council members might not put their stamp of approval on the plan.
“You can’t tell me you care a flipping thing about the employees and not provide them with the tools they need,” he added. “This is not something you need to be playing politics with.”
However, every member of the Council has agreed that space is needed. Boatwright’s statement was taken personally by Scruggs, who pointed out that the Chief has a “pretty nice job”, gets a nice paycheck from the City and a free car to drive, as well as other benefits paid for with tax money to which he has the luxury of not contributing.
“You don’t live here,” Scruggs said to Boatwright before explaining that he should use tax payer’s money responsibly.
Whether unintentional or strategic, the inability to focus on facts and communicate effectively created a schism on Council, making any compromise on the project an impossibility. Of course, the fact remains that the City’s staff needs more space.
“The ball’s in their court,” Beckmann said, referring to the those who voted against the plan. “It’s all political.” For Council member Stormer, the success of his vote is an opportunity to explore alternatives which he feels were neglected in the face of the $1.6 million expansion, and will encourage his fellow Council members to do the same.
“Bottom line remains that Public Safety needs space,” Stormer says. “There are options that have not been explored that need to be explored.”
In the meantime, those directly affected by the dramatized delay can only hope that the City Council returns to the drawing board with an agreeable spirit. However, if you were at the November 10 City Council meeting, your hope may have been crushed as 30 minutes of debate were required for Council members to agree on the details of a special meeting to be held on November 19 where they will debate the matter again. It looks to be a long road.

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“What Council has done proves this Council has no regard for staff, workspace or otherwise,” Beckmann scorned. “This is the 11th-hour, do-nothing Council. I’m looking out for residents of this City and you, my friends, are not.”

His comments conjured a small roar of disapproval from those who voted against the $1.6 million expansion which included Dave Stormer, Tim Goodwin, Tom Scruggs and Eddie Ellis.

“I take offense to that,” Ellis tried to say. However, his comments were diluted by Mayor Beckmann’s gavel who ended the meeting immediately after his comments, preventing any official rebuttal.

There has been no disagreement that City staff is in desperate need of more room among Council members. Instead, they have spent their debates arguing over how the City should go about providing that space and the proper use of PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) money. However, passion for individual ideas created a schism based on a false premise that those who are not in favor of the $1.6 million expansion are playing politics. For example, public comment from Chief Boatwright may have emboldened the nay vote. At the very least, his words were offensive to Council member Tom Scruggs who voted against the project.

Replicating his speech to the City Council from a previous meeting, Boatwright begged for help before criticizing those who were hesitant to the pull trigger on the expansion. He explained that the Public Safety Department was severely lacking, saying that “officers don’t have a place to hang their hat” and that the Victims Advocate Officer who counsels and converses with victims of violent crimes does not even have an office in which to have those private conversations. He then suggested that those City Council members who  questioned the project were playing politics.

“It blows my mind,” he exclaimed while addressing the Council. “You can’t look me in the eye and tell me you care a flipping thing about the employees and not provide them with the tools they need.”

This comment came before the vote.

Of course, that accusation did not go over well with everyone. Eddie Ellis assured Chief Boatwright that there was no politicking going. However, it was Tom Scruggs who was obviously offended. As Chief Boatwright stood at the podium, Scruggs pointed out that Boatwright has a “pretty nice job” with a good salary, and a free car to drive among other benefits. He also pointed out that the Public Safety Chief is not a resident who will be financially impacted by the $1.6 million expansion and that he [Scruggs] is trying to ensure the residents are not being taxed beyond necessity.

“You don’t live here. You don’t pay taxes here,” he said plainly to the Chief.

The meeting ended abruptly with flared tempers. Ironically, five minutes had not passed when the siren of a Folly Beach Fire Truck could be heard and the lights could be seen as it left the station located right behind City Hall.

(We will update this story and provide more details in the November 13 edition of The Folly Current)

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