Local Radar

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Edgefield Town Council approves seeking bids on demolition of Crest building

web posted August 24, 2006

EDGEFIELD – The Edgefield Town Council held a special called meeting Wednesday afternoon to make a decision on the Crest Building and to hear from Constance Bess and Michael O’Keefe with American Senior Mentoring Enterprises, a senior mentoring program. Mayor Durham also took a moment to wish Ward 5 Councilman Robert Rogers a happy birthday.

As the meeting was called to order Mayor Durham said the would like to thank Ms. Bess and Mr. O’Keefe for bringing their idea of the American Senior Mentoring Enterprises, or ASME, to his attention. The irony of the ASME presentation was they were wishing to renovate the Crest Building into their program. The program, Senior mentoring, is designed to get retired individuals to teach the young their profession be it computer technologies, graphic design, agriculture, or management.

Mr. O’Keefe stated the mentoring seniors would be paid, the apprentices learning the trade would be paid while training and the work product would be sold to help support the program. The program, which was said to be scalable depending on the available building size, would not be in competition with other senior citizen mentoring programs. Mr. O’Keefe stated they wanted to give young adults an opportunity to get free training and advancement in marketable skills.

Both ASME and for-profit entities that leased space in the building would administer the program. Mr. O’Keefe said once a building is found the program could be “up and running in a year.”

Mayor Durham and the town council thought the idea was worthy of their support and offered their assistance in trying to find a building in the town that may be available.

Next on the agenda was the matter of the Crest building and the exchange of property with the Senior Citizens Council for their new building. Mayor Durham stated that he was going to recuse   himself from any discussion or vote on the matter due to possible or implied business connections due to the construction of the new Senior Citizens Center and his owning Edgefield Construction.

Councilman Ellis took over the matter and asked for a motion to allow the town to go forward with plans to work with the Senior Citizens Council on a land swap for the property the Crest building is now situated on and the proposed site of the new Senior Citizens Center building. The vote was approved unanimously. A second vote was taken to allow the town to seek bids on the demolition of the Crest building that also passed unanimously.

Ells Thomas was the next matter discussed. Mr. Thomas sent a letter requesting the use of the gymnasium on September 30 for a mentoring program with 50 young males for the day. The council voted to approve the use.

David Miles was also allowed to take the floor to discuss issues involving the Crest building and power lines that run across the property. The issue revolved around the rerouting of power lines due to the land swap with the Senior Citizens Council and the town. Mr. Miles, a representative of  SCE&G said their company would be willing to provide power to the sole entity the lines serve now, provided by Aiken-Electric Co-op, if a letter to that effect is given. This would allow Aiken-Electric Co-op to simply remove their lines rather than reroute them. SCE&G would then run a line to the sole customer, and the new Senior Citizens building in exchange.

With no other business, the meeting was adjourned.
 
 

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