Symrise Pet Food announced a $65.5 million expansion at Tuesday’s Greenwood County Council meeting — growth that will span the next three years and bring 65 jobs to the county.

Diana Pet Food opened its North American headquarters at 5300 U.S. Highway 25 in 2007, and since rebranded as SPF. The company specializes in making flavor enhancers for pet foods.

“Based on my experience in two years and talking and working with the team, we really wanted to make that investment here in Greenwood County,” said Tim Lonc, North American General Manager at SPF. “Along with that investment obviously goes commitments we’ve made in the community, commitments in academia and technology. We’ve invested quite a bit in the last nine or ten months making sure this is the right place for us.”

Lonc emphasized SPF’s partnerships with the Humane Society of Greenwood and investments into Grace Street Park, the United Way of the Lakelands and contributions to the Greenwood Promise and Piedmont Technical College’s industrial skills programs.

Emon Satterwhite, SPF’s North American director of operations, said that before this expansion, the company worked to respond to community concerns about the odor their manufacturing processes produce. In the past two years, the company installed a $2 million equalization tank to help remove solid waste from water being sent to Ware Shoals for treatment.

Satterwhite said the company will improve its gas extraction process to help remove odors, along with using a new chemical treatment for wastewater, along with expansions to their productive capacity.

“We started this process about a year ago, 14 months,” Lonc said. “We’ve gone through the approval process over the last nine months. … Our plan is to get that work done fairly quickly and start construction hopefully, if everything goes well as far as materials, in 2022.”

Lonc said he expects the expansion will be complete in 2025. Greenwood County Economic Development Director James Bateman said SPF’s expansion will double its investment at the Hodges facility so far. He said the company exceeded its investment commitment since 2007 by more than $40 million and 90 jobs.

Bateman said he and county officials toured a wastewater treatment facility in Cary, North Carolina that used a similar process as what’s coming to the Greenwood facility to mitigate its odors. Residents near the plant there had no complaints about the odor, and council member Theo Lane said when he visited the wastewater facility at that plant, there was no discernible odor.

Tami Baber, Hodges town clerk, read a statement by Mayor Michael George regarding the expansion. He said though he’s been active and vocal about his residents’ complaints of odors from the facility, the company was responsive with public meetings to discuss and learn how to address those complaints. He joined the trip to the North Carolina facility and said he was impressed by the odor abatement efforts there.

“I’m hopeful today that we are closer than ever to putting all of this in the past,” George wrote. “I eagerly anticipate the day I can speak to council about something other than odors in northern Greenwood County.”

For the past 15 years, SPF has been a close partner for Greenwood County, said council member Edith Childs. She was grateful for their continued investment in the area, as was Lane, who said council took seriously the public’s environmental and quality of life concerns.

Council voted 6-0, with council member Mark Allison absent because of illness, to approve a fee-in-lieu-of-tax agreement with SPF North America for this project. The FILOT agreement waives property taxes for the project for 30 years, replacing it with a fee. The agreement locks the expansion’s millage rate at 6% of the assessed value, and includes a 35% special source revenue credit for the first five years and a 25% credit for the next 10.

In addition to voting on final approval of this economic development project, county council took their first actions on another titled Project River. This project is set to bring $37.95 million in capital investment and 300 new jobs, from a Minnesota corporation that has yet to be publicly named. Council approved an inducement resolution allowing the county to move forward with a FILOT agreement with this company, and had first reading of the fee agreement ordinance.

In other matters, council voted to spend funds on a new trash compactor for the landfill and a camera system for the Greenwood County Detention Center.

County Treasurer Steffanie Dorn said council put aside $375,000 earlier in the year from special appropriations to eventually spend on a trash compactor, and she is now “extremely concerned” about the prices she’s seeing. She asked council to allow $500,000 from the landfill enterprise fund to go toward securing a new compactor, though she said she hoped it wouldn’t take all of that money.

Public Works Director Rob Russian said bids for a new compactor are due April 27, and the county needs to be able to act quickly to purchase one to ensure they don’t have to rely on a backup compactor, which is in need of repairs. Council voted unanimously to approve the funds.

Council also unanimously voted to use more than $272,000 in unspent salary and benefits funds from the county jail, along with $35,000 from a sheriff’s office fund, to buy a new camera system for the jail. The system would include 131 cameras for the jail, sheriff’s office and the perimeter of both buildings, and would provide better-quality images and coverage to view areas of the jail that are currently blind spots.

In other business:

Council passed an ordinance setting the hours for Stockman Park and the Wilbanks Sports Complex, closing those parks from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. daily.

The Hodges-Cokesbury Fire Department earned the Fire Safe S.C. community designation, the only department in Greenwood County to earn the distinction.

Dorn said her staff is working to present a draft budget to council by the end of next week. She said fine revenues in court are back up after the COVID-19 pandemic slowed that income, and while hospitality tax income increased 13% this March over March 2021, accommodations tax income unexpectedly dropped 8% compared to the same period last year. She said Capital Project Sales Tax revenues were up this past quarter, and the tax is set to collect near 100% of its expected revenues.

Originally Published by Index-Journal on:Apr 19, 2022

By DAMIAN DOMINGUEZ ddominguez@indexjournal.com

Article Link: https://www.indexjournal.com/news/spf-announces-65-5-million-expansion-in-greenwood-county/article_c4b37619-2954-5ea8-89c8-c7adf8f52d77.html

A Greenwood farmers market’s fate is uncertain, but board members don’t want park renovations to oust them from the building they’ve been in since the 1980s.

The Greenwood County Farmers Market is housed in a building at 1612 S.C. Highway 72/221, between the American Legion baseball field and the Wilbanks Sports Complex.

Work is planned this year under the Capital Project Sales Tax at the sports complex, and initial design proposals suggested taking the farmers market out of its building and out onto an open lawn. The building would be used to house the park’s maintenance staff, but when the farmers market board caught wind their vendors would be out of a covered building and selling on the grass, they made their displeasure heard.

“It’s just kind of befuzzling to me that whoever the company was that came up with this design didn’t consider the farmers market,” said Carroll Culbertson, a farmers market board member who has been involved since its early years. “I mean there’s a big sign out there that says ‘Farmer’s Market’ and it’s the biggest building out there.”

Culbertson said the Greenwood County Farmers Market started in 1975 after the Clemson University extension office pushed for Greenwood and Abbeville county residents to start a local farmers market. It gained momentum over the years. Eventually, Greenwood County helped the farmers market put up the building the market has been hosted in ever since.

About $9.6 million in county funds and capital project sales tax dollars are going toward renovating the adjacent Wilbanks Complex, including putting in new ball fields, pickleball courts, restrooms, concession areas, walking paths and green spaces. CPST coordinator Josh Skinner said if the county can get the project out to bid soon, construction could start this summer.

The initial design concepts shared with the public in mid-January, designed by McMillan Pazdan Smith Architecture, proposed housing maintenance in the farmers market building and putting the market under tents on a lawn.

“I’ve got closer places to home to sell my goods if I want to sell out in the dirt,” said market board member Diane Lee at a meeting Wednesday.

The farmers market is used by vendors to sell their produce, but it’s also a site for senior food voucher federal nutritional assistance programs, Susie Culbertson said. The building is used as event space for the annual Greenwood County Sheriff’s Office deer supper, among other club events.

“It’s not just a farmers market, it’s a resource,” she said. “And it’s ideal to have it here with the sports complex because the farmers market is a cornerstone for those people eating healthy.”

At Wednesday’s board meeting, the members spoke with county councilmen Robbie Templeton — who serves as chairman for the committee that will suggest a final design for the site’s upgrades — and Theo Lane. County Manager Toby Chappell, Skinner and Parks and Recreation Director Brad Cuttill also attended.

“The concerning part to me was that somebody had to meet with this planning group. … I don’t see how they missed the farmers market,” Carroll Culbertson said.

Templeton said the design team was made aware of the farmers market prior to their designs. He said a committee was formed to handle the CPST parks renovations more than two years ago, and although they gathered a group of stakeholders for the park site, it did not include a representative of the farmers market.

“Carroll’s right, in their plan they want to move the market to an open-air market in a green space,” Templeton said. “We haven’t seen the final plan, we don’t know what’s going to be on it.”

Current maintenance storage is simply too small for the expanded park site, Cuttill said, which is why they wanted the market building. County Councilman Mark Allison, who serves on the farmers market board, said he wants the county to take that building for maintenance but wants a new building for the market.

“To stay that’s a farmers market building is a stretch. … It’s a multipurpose building is what I would say,” he said. “But I will not vote on a plan that has nothing but a green space for the farmers market.”

Allison proposed putting up a new, smaller metal building, closer to the front entrance of the Wilbanks complex, that could house the market. The board conceded that if they can’t keep their current building, they’d like a new one.

Templeton said he’d take their feedback to the design team and his committee, which in the coming days will be reviewing design plans and making a final recommendation to county council in a public hearing at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 15, at the Greenwood County Library.

Originally Published by Index-Journal on:Feb 4, 2022

 By DAMIAN DOMINGUEZ ddominguez@indexjournal.com

Article Link: https://www.indexjournal.com/news/fate-of-greenwood-farmers-market-in-question/article_bed76479-e44b-523f-ae37-56314c6f8eb9.html

Small tweaks can make a big difference, and Greenwood County hoped to shore up some of its internal rules Tuesday as county council approved changes to three policies.

Anita Baylor, county procurement officer and risk manager, laid out changes to vehicle collision review, workers’ compensation and procurement policies during Tuesday’s county council meeting. First up was a change that would create a vehicle collision review board, responsible for examining all wrecks involving county vehicles.

“The collisions that we have had in the past several years have really cost the county quite a bit of money, so we’re trying to actually bring back our review board so that everybody is held accountable and we have consequences,” Baylor said.

The board, made up of four county manager appointees and one person appointed by the sheriff, will investigate all wrecks involving county staff, vehicles or equipment. They’re tasked with ensuring best practices are in place and providing disciplinary recommendations in wrecks determined to have been preventable.

The policy creates four new categories for wrecks and lays out the penalties for wrecks determined to be because of disregard for defensive driving or disregard for state driving laws. An employee’s first offense comes with a verbal warning and a four-hour training, the second offense is a written discipline and eight-hour training. The third offense comes with a recommendation for suspension or termination.

“This policy will hold individuals more accountable,” Baylor said.

Council also considered a new workers’ compensation policy, which the county did not have prior to Tuesday. The policy outlines the state law’s 66 and two-thirds% rate for lost wages, as well as the number or days a doctor must approve an employee to be out before lost wage benefits start.

Baylor said the workers’ compensation policy was reviewed by the state Association of Counties.

The last policy change dealt with expanding some of the purchase amount ranges under the county’s procurement policy, which details how departments make purchases.

“Things have changed over the years and we do a lot more ordering online, and our threshold for using the procurement card is rather low,” Baylor said.

The changes would raise the minimum range from $1,000 to $5,000, meaning purchases costing less than $5,000 do not require a requisition or purchase order. They can be made with a county purchasing card, billed to the county under a credit account or invoiced to the county. Purchases at this level don’t need any bids, but receipts and invoices must be approved by the department head or someone they designate to approve them.

A second tier, requiring price quotes, raised from $1,000-$10,000 up to $5,000-$10,000. The third and fourth tier costs remain the same.

Council member Mark Allison, after asking a few questions about the oversight of the broader first tier of purchases, asked County Manager Toby Chappell if he was comfortable with this policy.

“I am,” Chappell said.

“Because the buck stops with you,” Allison said.

Council unanimously approved the three policy changes.

Council also unanimously approved an easement allowing Ninety Six Commission of Public Works to do work on a county section of Business Park Road. This will allow them to install a new water line that will serve a Global Supply Bonded WHSE and Mumford Industries.

County Economic Development Director James Bateman said the public utility easement was a condition of a state grant awarded to Ninety Six CPW, and that CPW would be responsible for putting in and maintaining the waterline. The easement was approved unanimously.

In her update to council, County Treasurer Steffanie Dorn shared that staff is gearing up for the 2023 budgeting process. She said hospitality tax collections were up about 9% from July to December of 2021 over the previous year, and building permits were up in December by about 26% over last year.

She gave an update on Capital Project Sales Tax collections, saying they were about 2.5% less than the previous quarter. January collections are usually lower than the previous quarter, she explained, and 2021’s fourth-quarter collections were 12.5% higher than the same period in 2020.

“I still feel like we’re going to get in that 97% or so range of what we originally intended,” Dorn said. “Hopefully we’ll make it to the 100% mark. As you know, it’s just a crapshoot really on where we end up.”

Nationwide, retail saw an 8.5% increase in December, and Dorn said she hopes to see that reflected in the next round of collections.

In other business:

Council approved third reading on rezoning two properties — one 1.95-acre property at 121 Cannon Road to allow the resident to build a modular home, and another of 0.38 acres at 3704 McCormick Highway to allow the owner of Promised Land Grocery to sell the store but retain part of the property adjacent to his home.

Council recognized the county employees of the fourth quarter. They included Josh Skinner, Jeffrey Young, Russell Booker, Wanda Walker, Joyce Kelley, Leisa Hotchkiss, Russell Patterson, Matthew Mills, Sandra Smith and Tammy Watts.

Originally Published by Index-Journal on:Jan 19, 2022

By DAMIAN DOMINGUEZ ddominguez@indexjournal.com

Article Link: https://www.indexjournal.com/news/greenwood-county-council-approves-policy-changes/article_b7f7ff6b-0d6c-504d-9fe8-e03f2881f4fe.html

Greenwood County received an early Christmas present — a clean bill of financial health from its auditors.

At Tuesday’s county council meeting, Josh Garvin of Manley Garvin presented the county’s 2021 financial audit and gave an “unmodified” opinion.

“An unmodified opinion, for those who have not heard that, is a clean opinion,” he said. “That is the highest level of opinion that you can receive from your external auditors.”

Revenues exceeded spending in fiscal year 2021 by about $350,000, but the county transferred about $773,000, reducing the general fund overall about $425,000.

“You say gosh Josh, is that bad? Well, you actually budgeted to lose more money than that, so the county actually did a good job of managing and staying within budget,” he said. “That being said, it is a loss. This is the first loss that we’ve had in the five years that are presented on that report.”

But the fund balance at the end of the year contained about $10.9 million in unassigned funds. The Government Finance Officers Associations recommends having about two months of operating expenses unassigned, and Greenwood County has enough to cover six months.

“That is a strong position to be in — particularly because, as you know, this county doesn’t carry any general obligation debt or anything of that nature,” he said. “That frees you up to do things that you find it necessary to do.”

Council also voted on a package of funding requests. These funds were surplus from fiscal year 2020, which was budgeted for use in 2021. The county didn’t use all of those funds.

County Treasurer Steffanie Dorn walked council through the nine requests, which include $150,000 for airport improvements, $50,000 for work on the Larry Williams Jr. Memorial Park, $140,000 to aid with the Capital Project Sales Tax work on the Boozer Recreation Complex, $100,000 for renovations at Park Plaza along with funds to help buy a trash compactor, an ambulance and other miscellaneous projects.

One item — $5,000 to help rubberize the track of the Promised Land park — sparked some debate. Upgrades to the park are part of the Capital Project Sales Tax, and the community previously requested county funds to rubberize the track. Council denied the funding earlier in the year because the county did not own that park.

“I think it’s problematic that we, as council, add county funds to Capital Sales Tax initiatives and change output,” Council member Theo Lane said. “I feel that way not because I have any objection to that enhancement, but that those dollars are controlled by a legislative process and approved by the commissioners as presented at that time.”

Council member Mark Allison also shared concern, saying he didn’t think this package of projects advisable.

“To just take a pile of money because we got it and just start handing it out, I have a problem with that,” he said. “I think we need to put this money back because we don’t know what lies ahead. We may need this money in the days to come.”

Promised Land is in Council member Edith Childs’ district, and she asked about the funds going to other parks, but Council member Robbie Templeton pointed out that those other parks are county-owned. Council Chairperson Chuck Moates agreed with Lane and said he thought giving additional funds to the Promised Land park project sets a dangerous precedent.

After some discussion, Lane made a motion to modify the resolution to exclude the funds for Promised Land.

Council later voted on a pair of matters that will change how a few things work at the county level. They approved a preferred vendor for a new county internet and phone system. Procurement Officer Anita Baylor explained the current phone system was made in 1996 and includes 370 analog devices. The county’s phone switching equipment will no longer be supported next year, requiring a new phone system.

The new system proposed by Segra and WCTEL will provide phone service over the internet, and offer redundant internet service so that phone usage isn’t lost if the internet goes down. Council gave County Manager Toby Chappell and County Attorney Carson Penney authority to negotiate the contract.

Council also approved contracting with LaBella Associates for design and consulting work on the county landfill. Public Works Director Rob Russian said there’s need to redesign the landfill to reduce costs and increase capacity.

In other business:

Originally Published by Index-Journal on:Dec 22, 2021

 By DAMIAN DOMINGUEZ ddominguez@indexjournal.com

Article Link: https://www.indexjournal.com/news/greenwood-county-gets-clean-audit-report-in-time-for-christmas/article_ae7e7c2c-1092-55ea-a325-d10a639dd3d3.html