Budget passes during wild county council meeting | Local News | Our Gazette

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Budget passes during wild county council meeting

Published Wednesday, July 28, 2010 1:01 PM

By Dan Brown
The Gazette

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Dennis Fish

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Jack Schurlknight

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Tim Callanan

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Dan Davis

Berkeley County has an approved budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

In a series of parliamentary procedure moves that would rival anything Perry Mason could muster in a court of law, Berkeley County Council passed a 2010-2011 fiscal year budget that includes using all of the 29-percent local option sales tax money.

The move left several members of council wondering what had just gone on.

“I’m a little confused here as to what we’re trying to do,” said councilman Tim Callanan.

The third reading of the 2010-2011 FY budget had denied earlier that night in council’s finance committee, a vote that was a precursor for several motions and votes that were to follow later in the evening.

Originally, the budget was to be amended to exclude the 29-percent local option sales tax money except for $500,000 that would be allocated to the Jedburg Road interchange project.

Councilman Dennis Fish had offered during the June 17 county council meeting to explore an alternative means of funding the county’s capital improvement projects by way of departmental cuts.

The alternative departmental cuts were never presented to council and Berkeley County Supervisor Dan Davis said he couldn’t wait any longer.

“We’ve waited and waited for Mr. Fish to come up with an alternative means of funding these projects, but we’re running out of time,” Davis said. “We needed to move on.”

Councilman Jack Schurlknight agreed.

“They tried to throw this back on me, the county staff and the supervisor, that we had not given them enough time to come up with an alternative budget, but I have been asking for suggestions in writing from council for months now and haven’t received the first thing from anybody,” he said. “It’s time to move on.”

The proposed budget workshop had been discussed but did not materialize as both sides waited to see what the other would do.

“I’m not going to schedule a workshop until I see some concrete numbers in writing,” Schurlknight said. “I haven’t seen anything from Dennis Fish.”

Fish in turn, was waiting on Schurlknight to schedule a workshop before presenting any figures for discussion.

“I’m not going to do anything until they schedule a workshop,” Fish had said earlier in the month.

The standing room only crowd attending Monday night’s meeting appeared split in regard to council’s intentions regarding the local option sales tax. Applause broke out on both sides of the fence, whether to use the 29 percent tax on capital improvement projects or return the money to the taxpayers.

Monday night’s meeting contained a short agenda and after the budget had been denied in committee it looked as if the night and the status of the budget would pass without resolution.

Then councilman Steve Davis proposed a resolution to adopt the original budget presented by the supervisor that did not include any restrictions on the 29-percent local option sales tax.

“I move that we include the 29-percent local option sales tax money in the budget so that the people of St. Stephen can get a nice courthouse like the fine people of Hanahan, Goose Creek, Moncks Corner and Bonneau,” Steve Davis said.

Davis added “that it’s very rare the citizens down my way have an opportunity to see their tax dollars at work for such a worthwhile cause. The whole climate in relation to this budget has become so clouded politically. It is time to get beyond the politics. We need to move forward and pass the budget the supervisor presented to council.”

After several recesses and an executive session to seek legal advice, a final budget was presented, which passed by a 5-4 margin with the supervisor casting the deciding vote.

Callanan tried to buy some time by pointing out that the supervisor could not cast a deciding vote in any legislation that includes an increase in his own salary. The new budget contained a 1.5 percent cost of living increase for the supervisor’s salary.

After another recess to confer with county attorney Nicole Ewing, the budget was presented again for vote this time omitting the supervisor’s cost of living increase, and again passed by the same 5-4 tally with Dan Davis casting the deciding vote.

Fish told the supervisor that it was his budget and if this was how he wanted to proceed to go ahead and do so.

“This is your budget,” he said. “Let’s vote on it and be done with it.”

Councilman Bob Call said the night’s antics were just more of the same from the team of Callanan and Fish.

“Callanan and Fish bring a red herring to every meeting,” Call said. “It's vindictiveness for the elections they lost. The business of Berkeley County's taxpayers is the big loser.”

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