Pelzer, West Pelzer public works agreement to end June 1

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By Stan Welch
The second party to the agreement between Pelzer and West Pelzer took action this week to confirm and acknowledge the previous action of the first party. On Tuesday, the day of Pelzer’s regularly scheduled council meeting, the Town of West Pelzer hand delivered their letter of termination of the agreement that saw the two towns experiment with a cooperative approach to the public works duties of the two towns. The experiment lasted a little more than a year.
A week earlier, Pelzer had voted at a special called meeting to terminate the agreement, an act that West Pelzer rejected on technical grounds; but which they later mirrored. Among those technical grounds were the special called meeting at which Pelzer made their decision; the language of the original agreement called for any such vote to terminate to occur during a regularly scheduled meeting.
West Pelzer Mayor Blake Sanders also stated in the letter that he had not been personally informed in accordance with the terms of the agreement, but went on to state his town’s decision to also terminate the arrangement. At the Pelzer meeting Tuesday night, the mayor amended the agenda in order to have the letter read aloud.
The West Pelzer letter reflected the financial aspect of the agreement that saw Pelzer bearing fifty five per cent of the financial burden for the joint operations, based on their larger number of customers. The letter also reiterated that, following West Pelzer’s sale of its waste water treatment facilities to ReWa, Pelzer would continue to pay that fifty five per cent, only to a different entity.
Mayor Roger Scott and other members of the council pointed out that the radio read water meters that require software to be fully functional can and will be read manually, and the data entered manually to allow billing to continue. Councilman Eddie Waits remarked later in the meeting that he hopes that the town can update all of their software to increase efficiency. “The savings on the four hundred dollars a month we pay to have our billing done now would soon pay for that software.”
Mayor Sanders reflected West Pelzer’s intentions to continue providing the agreed upon services until June 1 when the contract will no longer be in effect.
In other business, the Pelzer Council voted unanimously to adopt a resolution to use a portion of funds it has on account with Anderson County to leverage additional funds to be used in road repairs. The fifteen thousand dollars will be used as matching funds to access an additional one hundred fifty thousand dollars, to create a total of one hundred sixty five thousand dollars.
Mayor Scott reported that he and Town Clerk Cheryl Boudreau had ridden the town’s streets more than once and had created a list of ten projects to be submitted to the county for consideration. “Holt Holcombe (sic) said that next year, we might not even need any money down for other projects”, added Boudreau.