By Bill Rauch
I got myself into a mess recently.
Readers may recall a column I wrote a month or so ago about how the surface of the Broad River Bridge could be refashioned to accommodate not just cars, but runners, walkers, and bicyclists too. In the column, I noted that a similar refashioning of the Woods Bridge surface some 20 years ago had been obviously successful as exhibited by the many runners and walkers we see who use it every day.
I also wrote that it was my recollection that it had been then-State Senator Scott Richardson who had gotten the SCDOT to go along with the change, and who had also successfully lassoed up there at the Columbia rodeo, and trucked home to Beaufort, the funds necessary to close the gap and get the walkway job done.
Mayors spend a lot of time putting together funding packages for the improvements that are necessary to move forward the town they represent. You go to Washington with hat in hand. You go to Columbia with hat in hand. You make nice with the County Council. You go to the School District. You go to the Water Authority. You go to the Council of Governments. And you go wherever else your resourceful mind suggests to you there may be some dollars on the loose.
I put together a bunch: the $7.5M Waterfront Park upfit; the Pigeon Point Park upfit; the Bay, Port Republic and Charles Street streetscapes; the Woods Bridge walkway; the initial Southside Park upfit; the Municipal Complex; the Third Crossing Study; and TIF1 and TIF 2 for starters. Putting together funding packages is at the very heart of mayoral politics. City managers help a lot. Sometimes City Councilpersons help. But mayors and the voters both know getting in the money is at the top of every mayor’s job description.
A couple of days after the column appeared, I ran into my friend Edie Rodgers who said she would be presenting a photo to the city “for safe keeping” at the Beaufort City Council’s next regularly scheduled meeting, on Jan. 13 at 6 p.m. The photo, she said, had to do with the Woods Bridge walkway package.
Hmm, I thought, that’s not a coincidence. Edie never said she had been the one to lasso the money, nor that Scott Richardson had not been the one to do that. However, I reflected, it takes the whole Beaufort County legislative delegation – led by the Representative in whose district the money will be spent — to sign off on a one-off check like that.
Although I had the whole family home for dinner, I figured the right thing would be to go to the meeting and cheer for my friend Edie. Before the meeting began, Edie showed me the photo which shows then-S.C. House Rep. Edie Rodgers, who represented Beaufort, standing with then-SCDOT Commissioner John Hardee and some of the then-members of the Beaufort City Council gripping and grinning over an oversized check in the amount of $200,000.
To accommodate the public, the Beaufort City Council’s public comment period has been, of course, traditionally always at the beginning of their meeting, so I figured I’d be out by 6:30, at the latest.
Wouldn’t you know, they’ve changed the order of march at Beaufort City Council meetings? Now, only the public who wish to comment on matters that appear on that meeting’s agenda are permitted to speak at the meeting’s outset. Everybody else has to wait for the end of Council’s regular business. This, of course, discourages the public from coming in to speak to their elected representatives because there’s no telling when Council’s regular business will be concluded. It could be a half hour. It could be a couple of hours. I don’t care if the Supreme Court mandated it, the change is a bad and undemocratic idea.
It certainly discouraged me. I headed for home … but not before thanking Edie for her pivotal role in securing for Beaufort the Woods Bridge walkway money. I would have said the same to the City Council in the public comment period, but I had to get home for dinner.
Bill Rauch was the Mayor of Beaufort from 1999 to 2008 and has won multiple awards from the S.C. Press Association for his Island News columns. He can be reached at TheRauchReport@gmail.com.
