Wukela.us

View Cleared Lots in a larger map

By John Sweeney
Published: April 24, 2011

FLORENCE, SC —
“Wonk” is a fun word. It sounds like an insult of some kind, a slur that would start a riot at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory.

But the joke was on me when I looked up the definition and found “wonk” has three possible meanings: A student who studies constantly and has little or no social life; a stupid, boring, or unattractive person; someone who studies a subject or issue in an excessively diligent and thorough manner.

Hopefully, Florence Mayor Stephen J. Wukela, attorney Gary Finklea or Florence City Councilman Steve Powers weren’t offended by my referring to them “wonks” in an article on the “Majority Rules—Minority Rights” forum last week on SCNow.com.

I was subscribing to the third definition of the term, what I consider to be the “right kind” of wonks, of which I consider myself a member. Wukela, Finklea and Powers’ thoughts on government were interesting to people like us and it was a fascinating evening; however, it is doubtful Tuesday’s event fulfilled the goal of the Founders Coalition, the event’s sponsor, to educate the public on the principles of the Founding Fathers.

Forgetting the fact that the principles of men like Jefferson, Madison and Adams are up for interpretation — something the Supreme Court has reminded us of constantly since it debuted 1790 — the pursuit of the Founders Coalition is admirable nonetheless.

Stimulating thought and stoking the fires of debate is vital to a free nation, something discussions like the one had last Tuesday certainly accomplished, but those in attendance were hardly the ones who needed to be there.

The small audience was made up mostly of citizens already involved in the political process through one facet or another. Only two of the roughly 20 faces were ones I had not seen at a city council meeting or public forum since I started at the Morning News at the beginning of this year.

Coalition Chairman Ron Moore acknowledged that the discussion was quite in-depth and perhaps not something that people without an acute interest in government might find interesting.

“But what we believe is unless we get the general public beyond the ‘red meat’ and get them into dialogue and listening to these principals and how different people approach those principals and apply the principals in every day governance, we’re going to be in the same type of situation that we have now going forward,” Moore added following the forum.

People have different loves and passions and not everyone will be as fascinated by the workings of government like the wonks who attended last week, but it’s nice to know that groups like the Founders Coalition are doing what they can to stimulate thought and debate.

After all, it would be nice to have the right kind of wonks.

By John Sweeney
Published: April 19, 2011
Updated: April 20, 2011 – 6:00 AM

FLORENCE, SC —
Political wonks would have been in a sort of heaven Tuesday night at the Drs. Bruce & Lee Foundation Library in Florence.

As a matter of fact, three such wonks were serving as panelists of the event hosted by the Founders Coalition, a Florence-based organization focusing on interpreting the Constitution and intents of America’s founders, titled “Majority Rules—Minority Rights,” and they certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Florence Mayor Stephen J. Wukela, attorney and former Founders Chairman Gary Finklea and Florence City Councilman Steve Powers were led in a lively discussion by Ron Moore, chairman of the Founders Coalition, on topics that ranged from specific local items such as the nuances in language of a pending smoking ordinance to the differences between Democratic, Republic and Democratic-Republic forms of government.

To the casual citizen somewhat unfamiliar with the intricacies of political theory, it may have been difficult follow parts of the discussion. That would explain why most of the 20 or so in attendance — which included former Florence City Councilman Bill Bradham, Tea Partier Murray Jordan, former Johnsonville City Councilman Brad Richardson and several local attorneys and political activists — were relatively familiar faces at such functions.

That’s an issue Moore said he was aware of and something the coalition hopes to change through more events like this one.

“I suppose that the public likes the ‘red meat,’ more than it does the in-depth discussion and dialogue that was presented tonight,” Moore said. “But what we believe is unless we get the general public beyond the ‘red meat’ and get them into dialogue and listening to these principals and how different people approach those principals and apply the principals in every day governance, we’re going to be in the same type of situation that we have now going forward.”

That “situation” was an underlying theme in much of the panelists’ comments throughout the evening, talking about the current system of government on the local, state and federal level and its benefits and flaws.

Wukela and Powers, who have prominently held different positions over the city-wide smoking ordinance that passed first reading April 11 with a vote of 5-2 — Powers one of the dissenting votes and Wukela one of the affirmative — addressed some of those differences in their comments Tuesday night, explaining their positions from a more in-depth, philosophical standpoint, giving one a glimpse at a part of their thought process that led them to their respective positions.

Those positions varied during the discussion just as they did during the numerous city council meetings and public forums that led up to last week’s first reading vote, though the debate had a different flow with a relatively fresh perspective from Finklea.

And don’t think the Founders Coalition doesn’t favor one political philosophy over the other. One look at the group’s website and even someone with an elementary knowledge of American political could tell you the organization holds a conservative slant.

While Moore admits Founder’s leanings to the right, he also points out the group’s goal goes beyond pushing the special interests of their own philosophical interpretation of the message of America’s founders.

“To say that we don’t have an agenda would be naïve and, I think, dishonest,” Moore said. “We are who we are, but our agenda is not as much focused on issues like the smoking ordinance as it is the underlying principles. And what we want to do is create a debate and understanding of what those underlying principals are, because we believe that if people understand those principles and how to evaluate those principles and apply those principles as these hot button issues change next week, next year, next election cycle that we’re going to be more able to judge for ourselves where we stand and what we believe to be the right.”

The Founders Coalition was founded roughly a year ago and has held a variety of forums since, including a February event discussing African-American history from the perspective of founding principles.

For more information, visit the group’s website, www.founderscoalition.org.

By Patricia Burkett
Published: April 19, 2011

FLORENCE, SC —
A local delegation recently returned from a trip to Washington, D.C., to speak with Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint and Congressmen Jim Clyburn and Mick Mulvaney about issues facing Florence County.

The main topics of concern included the loss of Delta Airlines at Florence Regional Airport, losses in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding, the Pee Dee Regional Transportation Authority, dredging at the Port of Charleston and the The School Foundation, which serves Florence School District 1.

Members of the delegation said they asked lawmakers to help them encourage Delta officials to reverse their decision in October to discontinue service at the Florence airport.

“One of them (the lawmakers) said there’s not much we can do when a private enterprise decides to do something, but we’ll at least make the calls and see if we can be of some help,” Florence Regional Airport Director Hartsell Rogers, who was among the delegation, said. He didn’t identify the lawmaker.

“We hope they will and we will follow up to be sure that they have the proper bullet points and we’ll make those phone calls,” Rogers said. “Nobody can understand why they pulled out to start with … when you look at the big picture and what really makes sense, Delta just fits Florence. We’re hoping they will make those phone calls … and point out to them (Delta officials) that they made a mistake when they chose to move out of Florence.”

Rogers said though officials at the airport are in continued talks with Delta, the airline has not said whether it plans to return.

Meanwhile, work on a $7 million concourse that was originally intended for Delta continues and is expected to be completed near Thanksgiving.

Rogers said he hopes that if nothing else, the legislative meeting would inform those in Washington of the issues facing Florence County and just what they can do to lend a helping hand to those here at home.

Florence Mayor Stephen J. Wukela said he felt it the impact of the group’s visit will be felt throughout Florence County.

“Members of Congress need to see the local impact that those decisions have. It can be somewhat abstracted in Washington, even for the best member, of course,” Wukela said. “Also, I think it must be said, the effect of seeing a Democratic mayor along with some Republican members of the Chamber of Commerce come together to lobby members from both parties on the same issues, I think makes an impact and it shows a united front here in Florence for the needs that we have and the importance of federal involvement.”

Wukela said that he made special mention of the importance of CDBGs to the Florence area and lobbied for federal funding to continue. The grants are one of the main sources used in downtown redevelopment efforts, and lawmakers in Washington threatened to cut them entirely. Instead, a new federal budget plan would cut the grants by 7 percent.

“The chamber and I both lobbied Congress to not cut it altogether. We certainly understood that it was going to be cut, but we would certainly rather have 7-percent cut than a complete cut,” Wukela said.

Among those in the delegation were representatives of the Greater Florence and Darlington chambers of commerce, Florence city and Marion County officials, and representatives of PDRTA, Roche Carolina, Progress Energy and HillSouth.

By Tucker Mitchell
Published: April 17, 2011

When the results of the big 2000 census were announced, Florence city officials were crestfallen. The numbers said their bustling city had barely grown. City fathers tried to appeal, but census officials “wouldn’t accept anything,” Florence City Manager David Williams said.

“We were pretty frustrated with the U.S. Census Bureau,” Williams said.

Fast forward 10 years and Williams and company have nothing but nice things to say about the nation’s people counters. Figures for the 2010 census show Florence with 6,888 more residents than in 2000, a gain of 22.8 percent. Florence’s official population is now 37,056, good for 10th in South Carolina, just behind Hilton Head and just ahead of Spartanburg.

“We had questions about the accuracy of the numbers last time,” Florence Mayor Stephen J. Wukela said, “but this time we think they’re spot on.”

That’s the way it goes with America’s every 10 years count. The winners laud the bureau’s technical expertise, while the losers complain about quirks and anomalies.

Among those on the short end of the 2010 stick in the Pee Dee was Darlington, where the population dipped by 431 to 6,279 — less than Dillon or Lake City. Darlington City Manager Howard Garland said city officials there do not believe the census count for Darlington is accurate. “We’ve discussed that,” he said. “We don’t think it’s accurate. We don’t see how it can be.”

Garland said city officials are planning an appeal.

A few miles up the road at Society Hill, Mayor Valencia Thomas is shaking her head, too. Society Hill’s population plummeted by 19.6 percent, dropping by 137 to 563. Thomas said she was bewildered by the slew of census documents that came her way, some of which asked why she hadn’t answered the call, long after she had.

“And I wasn’t the only one up here who got multiple forms and visits even after we had turned our papers in,” she said. “I’m not completely surprised (by the results), but I do have some concerns.”

Census numbers matter as a point of pride — no one really wants to live in a place that’s getting smaller — and they impact a city’s bottom line, too. Several state and federal funding mechanisms are population dependent. Cities with falling populations lose out while cities that gain cash in.

Florence’s Williams said the differences can be dramatic. Speaking about one population-driven money pool, the state’s Aid to Subdivision Fund, he said, “We (Florence) are going to see a cut there (because the entire state budget is smaller), but because of our numbers it won’t be that bad. I look around at some of the other places in the state and they’re going to get hit hard.”

Florence received $726,426 from that Aid to Subdivision money last year. Projections suggest this year’s grant will be $691,777, a drop of almost $35,000. That’s not good, said Williams, but it is manageable.

Census numbers show that the Pee Dee, as a region, experienced little or no growth. Most of the area’s counties either lost a small number of citizens, or gained a few. The city-and-town picture was much the same. Seventeen of the 32 municipalities on the Morning News list had gains, 15 had losses.

Florence was the Pee Dee’s biggest gainer, both in total population and by percentage. It was followed closely in the second category by little McBee, which jumped by 153 residents to 867 people.

Mayor John B. Campolong said he hasn’t had a chance to really delve into the numbers yet, but welcomed the news of his town’s population growth.

“Twenty-one percent, that’s a pretty good increase,” Campolong said. “Apparently we’re starting to retain more people, which is something we’ve been trying to do.”

Darlington was the area’s biggest loser numerically. Hemingway, which lost 19.8 percent of its population, was on the bottom percentage-wise.

Hemingway Mayor Grady Richardson, who’s now presiding over 459 citizens, 114 fewer than his predecessor in 2000, wasn’t baffled as to what happened. Asked if he could explain the drop, he said, “People leaving and nobody coming in. …

“Hemingway is an old town,” Richardson said. “It’s a town with a lot of elderly people in it that have been here for a long time. We’re working on trying to get some business and industry in, so we can recruit some younger people to come back into the town.”

Society Hill’s Thomas said the picture was much the same in her neck of the woods. “The young people move away because there’s not much opportunity for them, not much to do,” she said. “But I’ll tell you — and I know this from personal experience — when you get a little older, this is just the kind of place you look for. It’s quiet, it’s safe, the cost of living isn’t as high as Florence, and you can make some friends.”

Darlington’s Garland said his town is a nice place to live, too. Maybe too nice.

Garland said the city has seen no significant increase in demand for services such as police or fire protection that might be expected from a significant population increase. Crime incidents and fire calls have both been down in recent years, he said. “We haven’t had a traffic fatality in the city in 10 years, I think,” he said. In fact, in the coming year’s budget the city has opted not to fill two police department positions that are vacant.

Even so, the Darlington census drop just doesn’t feel right to him.

“We’ve added 29 downtown loft apartments over the last couple of years; we’ve opened several new housing developments over the last 10 years,” Garland said. “We feel like that should have offset some losses.”

Garland suspects some of those new addresses were overlooked in the census, even though the census participation rate in the city was up in 2010. “We want to make sure those new addresses are counted,” he said.

In Florence, a much-improved participation rate, helped in part by a city campaign to raise awareness and educate certain populations about the census, apparently paid dividends. Participation rates reflect the number of citizens who actively respond to census surveys. The census uses other methods in an attempt to count non-participants.

Florence’s participation rate was 73 percent, just above the national average of 71 percent, but well above past Florence rates.

“You know that helped,” Williams said. “Now, if we could have gotten it to 100 percent just imagine where we’d be?”

By John Sweeney
Published: April 11, 2011

FLORENCE, SC —
With a 5-2 vote for a proposed smoking ordinance, members of Florence City Council brought two months of public hearings, debates and some last-minute amendment drama to an end.

Sort of.

“It’s sort of a relief,” Councilwoman Octavia Williams-Blake said after council’s regular meeting Monday night. “I do realize that this is the first round, this is first reading, and a lot can happen between now and next month when we’re scheduled to have second reading.”

Regardless, Williams-Blake said she will celebrate the ordinance getting this far. When the measure was introduced by her in February with five members of council sponsoring it, it seemed almost a forgone conclusion it would be adopted.

Scheduled first reading of the ordinance was delayed from March to April when Councilman Ed Robinson announced he would be out of town on city business and unable to attend the March meeting.

The next month was full of ups and downs, including Councilmen Buddy Brand and Glynn F. Willis proposing two amendments to the ordinance following an impassioned public hearing March 3.

That caused supporters like Williams-Blake to question whether support of the measure was waning, but both Brand and Willis voted along with Williams-Blake, Mayor Stephen J. Wukela and Councilwoman Teresa Myers Ervin at Monday’s meeting.

“I was not confident,” Williams-Blake said when asked how she felt heading into the meeting after a tumultuous March. “We have worked very hard as a council to try and balance the needs of both smokers and non-smokers, and everybody’s heart was in the right place for doing the right thing.”

The ordinance council passed Monday was 600 words longer than what Williams-Blake introduced in February and included language resulting from discussions between council and Jim Peterson, city attorney.

Changes involved warehouse and work shop areas away from the general public where smoking would be allowed, a provision that allows employees a smoking area away from the general public and not where other employees are required to go and language that protects merchants from having their business licenses revoked for failing to comply with the ordinance.

Enforcement of the ordinance still rests with the city administrator and appointed designees and fines of no less than $10 and no more than $25 will be assessed.

While opinions from past arguments were rehashed by both members of council and several speakers in public comment, Robinson introduced some new points to consider about the issue.

Robinson contends adopting the ordinance would be removing a right of the citizens and, therefore, dishonoring those who fought for equal rights, citing specifically minorities who did so during the civil rights movement.

“So many people have died, sacrificed, gone through so much turmoil to get the rights that we do have,” Robinson said. “Now, you’re asking me to give it up? Under no circumstances.”

Councilman Steve Powers, the other dissenting vote, issued a warning to those who supported the ordinance that they may regret pushing this issue should other groups ask for ordinances pertaining to other issues.

“The ones of you here today asking for all of us to vote on this… you’re going to be the same ones coming back later on saying, ‘Don’t do that,’” Power said. “Because there’s going to be other rights, what’s going to be next? Are we going to start looking at the caloric content in food in restaurants?”

Monday’s vote did not officially mean the city has adopted the ordinance. The ordinance will take effect if the measure passes second reading and adoption, which will be scheduled at council’s next regularly scheduled meeting in May.