The Candidates forum was held last night at James Island Charter High School. One issue that was covered was the candidates' view on reuniting the Town.
On the bright side, all of the candidates said that they support reuniting the Town. Unfortunately, the question that was asked on this issue was muddled.
The moderator was Andy Savage. He asked if the JIPSD should support Thurmond's bill to combine the JIPSD and the Town of James Island.
Was this a trick question?
There is no "Thurmond bill" to combine the JIPSD and the Town. There is a Thurmond bill that would reunite the Town.
The Thurmond and McCoy bills would give the JIPSD Commissioners authority to request that the Town annex the unincorporated portion of the JIPSD territory. This would include all of the areas that were in the Town in 201l.
Nothing in these would involve the Town and JIPSD merging. If the bill passed, and the JIPSD Commissioners asked the Town to annex the unincorporated portion of the JIPSD's territory, and the Town accepted, then conditions would return to what existed in 2011.
The Town and JIPSD would both exist and be separate bodies. All of the territory of the District would be in the Town's jurisdiction. The JIPSD could continue to collect taxes and sewer bills and provide fire protection, solid waste collection and sewer services.
The Town would return to its borders of 2011 (with the addition of perhaps 20 houses that had been left out in the 2006 incorporation) and would provide code enforcement, planning and zoning, and building services. The Island Sheriff's Patrol would be extended into the newly annexed areas. The Town would begin working on sidewalk, road paving, and other public works projects in the newly returned areas.
Candidate Sandi Engelman said that the bill included a provision that once the Town had reached a certain percentage of the JIPSD, then it could take over the JIPSD's taxing authority. (In an email, she said that I had personally added that to the bill.)
There has never been any provision of the bill that said anything like that.
Engelman also mentioned her close personal friendship with moderator Andy Savage and his wife. Does Savage think he knows about the bill due to explanations from his friend and client Sandy Engelman?
Candidate Kay Kernodle said that she went to Columbia for the subcommittee hearing on the Thurmond bill last Spring. That is true.
She listed a various interest groups that attended the hearing. She said that they were there because the bill was complicated.
However, when the Town's Attorney, Danny Crowe called JIPSD Trent Kernodle to find out what he thought was wrong with the bill so that we could fix it, Kernodle said that the problem wasn't the bill, it was the Mayor. He then bragged about how he had rounded up a bunch of interest groups to go to the subcommittee hearing to fight the bill.
The Coastal Conservation League said that the reason they opposed the bill is that the Town was planning to annex Johns Island. Who told them that? It was pretty clear that many of the interest groups had been told the bill was to allow the Town to take over the JIPSD. Nothing in the bill said that!
Regardless of the challenges the Town will have in passing the legislation we need to reunite, there should be one place where we have support--the JIPSD.
Candidate Donald Hollingsworth said that the Commissioners supported the bill and just didn't like some of the verbiage. Well, they had plenty of opportunity to point out exactly what verbiage they didn't like. And read above. The Town's Attorney asked JIPSD Attorney Kernodle about his problems with the bill and he had no specific verbiage in the bill that concerned him. It was personal--it was the Mayor, not the bill.
Why was Trent Kernodle so opposed to the Thurmond and McCoy bills?
Well, he said at the hearing in Columbia that he opposed it because I was leading a conspiracy to take over the JIPSD. Supposedly I was recruiting candidates for JIPSD Commissioner even then to have the Town take over the JIPSD.
Well, all I can say is that I have never had any plan or goal to take over the provision of services from the JIPSD. Nothing in the Thurmond or McCoy plan is necessary or helpful to any such effort.
None of the candidates for JIPSD Commissioner that I support have expressed any interest in having the Town take over the provision of services from the JIPSD.
I am sure that if the legislation to reunite the Town had passed late last summer, Kernodle's run for Mayor would have had even less of a chance for victory.
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