Public Health and Human Services Committee

March 19, 2001

The Public Health and Human Services Committee of Spartanburg County Council met on Monday, March 19, 2001 in Conference Room Two of the County Administrative Office Building. In compliance with the Freedom of Information Act, notice of this meeting was provided in advance to the local news media and other interested parties. The following were in attendance: Honorables Johnnye Code Stewart, Chairman, Ken Huckaby and Jeff Horton, Committee Members; along with Karen Floyd, David Britt; Rock Adams and Frank Nutt; Council members. Also attending were James K. Hartmann, County Administrator; Bill Dennis, Deputy County Administrator; Glenn Breed, Assistant County Administrator; Chris Story, Assistant County Administrator and Roy McBee Smith, County Attorney.

    1. Chairman Stewart called the meeting to order.
    2. A. Ms. Elena Rush appeared to update Council on Archer Road Community Meetings. Ms. Rush provided an update on what occurred at last public meeting. Mr. Britt went to PUD meeting. He felt the Spartanburg County Community & Economic Department did an excellent job presenting information. Ms. Rush stated they have continued to receive input from the community expressing their interest on the project. Perhaps the most significant thing is that the developers have responded to quite a lot of the input they have received from the community as far as the scope of the project. They forwarded Ms. Rush some correspondence that essentially made two points. One was they felt a better job could have been done about concentrating on some of the Fair Housing Issues. Secondly, they have agreed to eliminate two of the separate facilities. The Anderson Youth Association Project is going to be located in an entirely different site. They are looking at some property now for that closer to the city limits. The permanent housing for people with disabilities would be integrated into the affordable housing project as a whole. Another part of it had to do with building some single family home ownership houses. They had eliminated that from this piece of property and are proposing to look at some other property within the neighborhood and perhaps construct some new homes for sale. No Action Taken.

B. Ms. Elena Rush appeared to provide overview of the County’s involvement in the Arkwright redevelopment. Ms. Rush stated considerable activity is taking place in the Forest Park, Arkwright,and Sims Chapel areas. Due to some of the contacts that members of the Arkwright Community have made the redevelopment of that area received a lot of attention by the Federal Government and some of the Federal Agencies. In particular, there is an Interagency Working Group that has been formed at the federal level that involves many of the agencies such as The Department of the Interior, EPA, Department of Energy, and HUD. We have already received notice of a significant amount of federal funding that the city and the county have just started to tap. This is going to continue to be a high profile project. At this time, the City Engineer, Ms. Rush and Carol Mitchell, who represents the community, have prepared a request for statement of qualifications for a consultant to examine the whole area and try to make some plans for redevelopment. There are some contaminated sites that EPA is working with the owners of those properties. They hope to have some consultant numbers within the next 60 to 90 days.

No Action Taken.

Meeting adjourned.