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Councilman Hudson responds to Edgefield
Daily.com readers Edgefielddaily.com web posted September 23, 2005 MERRIWETHER – Edgefield County Fifth District Councilman Joel Hudson sat down with Edgefield Daily.com for an interview Thursday afternoon. Edgefield Daily.com took questions from readers as well as having our own. One of the reader’s questions pertained to zoning which Mr. Hudson explained all zoning considerations are in the hands of the planning commission at the present time. “I don’t see anything happening as far as zoning is concerned anytime soon,” he said. The Planning Commission has started forming several committees to study parts of the zoning ordinance. “That’s the way I think it should be,” he said. We had several questions sent in about how or what the county council is doing to stop the rising taxes in Edgefield County. Mr. Hudson explained that the county’s portion of the tax bill is actually lower this year by four mills. “We’ve been fighting it for everything we could,” he said and that resulted in streamlining certain areas of public services and still being able to upgrade road equipment. “We spent some money, but we saved money in the long run,” Mr. Hudson said in regards to the new scheme to swap out new equipment every three or four years; “This way we get to keep newer equipment which breaks down less and that saves money.” Mr. Hudson said it did cost the county money upfront but a majority of that was recouped in the sale of old equipment. “We got a good part of it back in the sale,” he said. Mr. Hudson stressed that county residents, “who live on private roads can have the county come in now and then and scrape their roads,” for a minimum charge that is very affordable, “it’s a great service that we provide,” he said. On the issue of the closing of John’s Road at the request of Bettis Rainsford Mr. Hudson said in the beginning he was against the idea, “after looking at it in the long run from the side of the county it’s a smart thing,” he said because the county will not have to continue to keep the road up and the cost of the gravel for the road was expensive. “That’s basically a clay road and there are tons and tons of gravel we have to spread on it to keep it passable,” he said. The majority of the traffic on the road is for a construction entrance to Mount Vintage and the county has poured money into the road to provide that access. That was an issue Mr. Hudson raised at the first consideration when he wanted to know if Mr. Rainsford was going to repay the money the county had spent on the road. He dropped that in favor of not spending more money and closing the road. We asked Mr. Hudson about the rising gas prices and how that was going to affect the county operations and services. Presently, “we are OK,” he said but qualified that statement on the basis of prices not rising much higher. “If gas hits $4.00 a gallon we’re going to have to look at maybe making some cuts,” he said. The county has also raised the rate county employees who use their personal vehicles are reimbursed, “we used to pay twenty-nine cents a mile but we have raised that to the federal rate of forty-two cents.” Mr. Hudson said he also felt that Merriwether deserved some type of a parks and recreation facility, “like they have in Bettis Field.” However he said the county would not purchase property and had no plans to do so but hoped someone would gift the land to the county. “If that happened I think we could get the funds.” Adding more Sheriff’s Deputies was a priority as well, “we have all these people moving in and with that you have to add more (law enforcement personnel),” he said. “We are going to have to look at adding more Deputies, but there’s a lot of money associated with that,” and in the coming years taxes might go up for that. When asked about his greatest accomplishment since he has been in office Mr. Hudson said he felt like keeping taxes from rising tops the list. “We’re a small county and for us not to raise taxes every year is almost unheard of,” he said. Edgefield Daily.com reminded Mr. Hudson that even with the lower millage rate the county did impose an increase in taxes via the $10 per vehicle Road Maintenance Fee. “I felt like that was right, if they use the roads they should have to pay for it,” he said.
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