By Stan Welch

Anderson County Council started early Tuesday night, with an investiture ceremony prior to the first meeting of the year.

The meeting, at which Pastor Bill Rigsby, of North Anderson Baptist Church, spoke and administered the oaths of office, was followed by a reception. Councilman Mitchell Cole, from District Three, was the only new addition to the Council.

Council then convened and one of their first acts was to adopt a resolution recognizing the newly formed Mill Town Players theater group from Pelzer for its accomplishments in the arts. Chief among those achievements was the group’s winning of the South Carolina Theater Festival.

Anderson County Council

By Stan Welch

The most anticipated agenda matter for Anderson County Council during their meeting Tuesday, which involving the interim status of County Administrator Rusty Burns, was delayed until the next meeting.

The cause for the delay in taking action on the recommendation of the personnel committee, which met last Friday, was the absence of that committee’s meeting minutes in the packet provided to the Council before the meeting.

The minutes were not included because the personnel committee met last Friday, almost simultaneously with the preparation and issuance of the agenda. As Councilwoman Cindy Wilson pointed out, it was virtually impossible to include those minutes. “The meeting may have still been underway. The timing just wasn’t there.”

By Stan Welch

It’s rare to find a town or county council whose agenda doesn’t include a reading of their budget at this time of the year, but the Anderson County Council plans to have at least one more budget workshop before bringing the county’s budget to the floor for a final vote.

As a result, the Council moved smoothly through an agenda which saw third reading approval given to the ordinances needed to approve the financial incentives given to E & I Engineering, which plans to create at least 250 jobs in the coming years. The company, which is occupying an existing building near Exit 21 on Interstate 85, is expected to have a total economic impact of $400 million over the next twenty years.

District Seven Councilwoman Cindy Wilson made a presentation on several aspects of the pending budget, and on the county’s financial status in general.

By Stan Welch

Tuesday night, Anderson County Councilman Francis Crowder, feeling somewhat liberated by his decision not to seek reelection this year, offered his thoughts on the strategic vision the county should be following.

Crowder, finishing up his second term, began his presentation by citing the House of Representatives’ recent passage of yet another budget that cuts the aid to subdivisions, or the percentage of tax revenues returned by the state to the various counties. “It appears that the State legislature is shorting the counties by about seventy million more than the deal they had made,” said Crowder.