By Natalie M. Zeigler
City Manager
July is here, and governments everywhere have begun operating under their 2015-16 Fiscal Year budgets. For municipalities including the City of Hartsville, however, a late-breaking financial issue emerged just before the beginning of this budgetary cycle, when we became aware of a proposed Darlington County yard waste debris fee which would impact our residents.
County Council ultimately discarded this fee, which would have charged municipalities an additional $38.50 per ton to dump yard debris at the county landfill. This was alarming, because the new cost for us would have amounted to $160,000 a year. The charge would have come on top of the existing $53 solid waste fee included on property tax bills for all county residents. As Hartsville City Council and our staff developed our budget in the months leading to this, we reached out to the county to find out how their budget plans would affect ours. Even so, our budget was passed before we learned of the proposed fee, and as a result it wasn’t covered in our plans.
We’re grateful for County Council’s decision to discard the fee, and especially Council members Robbin Brock and David Coker for listening to our concerns. Still, the situation illustrates how much local governments impact one another. We always need to be talking, but unfortunately many times government leaders do not.
In the City of Hartsville, we pay Darlington County taxes and fees, and our usage of the county landfill is far from the only county service we rely on. County employees manage much of the recreational programming you see at the City’s Byerly Park Recreation Complex – everything from softball and basketball to gymnastics and art classes. Many of our city roads are maintained by the S.C. Department of Transportation, and some are maintained by the City itself, but a handful of additional roads around the city are maintained by the county. When Hartsville Police arrest someone, that person is taken to the Darlington County Detention Center. Depending on the location of an incident and the needed resources, our police are often working alongside the Darlington County Sheriff’s Office, and our firefighters are often doing their duty alongside the Darlington County Fire District.
In many ways, Hartsville’s economy is Darlington County’s economy, and the county’s economy is our economy. We have in-city employers like the Darlington County School District, Coker College and Carolina Pines, operating alongside near-city employers like Duke Energy, and Sonoco has a campus which is both in and out of city limits. Employees from all these live and spend their dollars on both sides of city limits. The Darlington Raceway might be more than 10 miles from us, but its economic impact is felt every time the Bojangles’ Southern 500 takes place.
When it comes to local communities, local governance and local development, we really are all in it together. Cooperation and unity are as important today as they ever have been, and it is always my hope that we in the City of Hartsville will remain in as close as possible communication with our local, state and federal governments.
Natalie Zeigler is the City Manager of Hartsville. For more information, call City Hall at 843-383-3015 or email info2@hartsvillesc.gov.