Orangeburg County Council: Minor district changes approved
Orangeburg County Council has finalized its changes to its map of county council districts, bringing them in line with the 2020 census.
Council gave final approval to the redrawn maps and ordinance during a special called virtual meeting on Friday morning.
“Orangeburg County was within the plus-or-minus factor of redistricting,” Orangeburg County Administrator Harold Young said.
He explained, “Every council district should strive to have the same amount of people within the tolerance of 10 percent and we were under that, so there was really no request for us to do redistricting.”
“What we did was focus on areas that were ambiguous, as far as how they were represented,” Young said.
“Especially in one area, we had three council people basically representing one street or one block, which was definitely not conducive or good for the citizens,” he said.
Four areas underwent minor redistricting, said Bill Addison of the county’s Geographic Information Systems department.
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He explained that Sprinkle Avenue, in Orangeburg, was divided among three council districts. Council wanted to “smooth out” the district lines on Sprinkle Avenue “to ease confusion of citizens.”
Sprinkle Avenue was mostly represented by District 2 and District 7, with a small part by District 3.
Under the newly approved map, District 7 will continue representing the north side of Sprinkle Avenue and pick up the part that had been represented by District 3.
District 2 will represent the south side of Sprinkle Avenue.
The three other areas with minor changes include: a portion near the Methodist Oaks, Bill Salley Road and an area of Limestone Creek.
Each district represents about 12,032 residents.
The 2020 U.S. Census revealed Orangeburg County’s population is 84,223, which is a decrease from 92,501 in the 2010 census.
Council Districts 1, 6 and 7 are up for election in 2022.
A public hearing was held just before the meeting got underway Friday morning.
No one from the public commented.
Also during the meeting, council approved a resolution exempting a purchase of heavy equipment from the Orangeburg County Procurement Code and related matters.
Young explained, “The County of Orangeburg, years ago, became an exclusive Caterpillar user for our heavy equipment fleet. The advantage to having a lease is it would allow us to update our equipment every five years, so it gives us the ability to not only use state-of-the-art equipment, but less downtime as far as our fleet is concerned and with what we do with low maintenance. This is just part of that agreement we have with Caterpillar Financial Corporation.”
“While this may seem a little déjà vu, because you saw the very same title on your agenda Jan. 3, Caterpillar, this time around, has decided each time it makes a shipment, it wants to call that a separate lease-purchase agreement. As a requirement, we have to go through this authorization step again each time there’s a shipment,” Orangeburg County attorney D’Anne Haydel said.
“It’s a change in procedure for the company, but it does not change anything else for us,” Haydel said.
Gary Cooke, of Orangeburg County’s Finance Department, said, “Because of the supply chain interruption that we’re experiencing, usually they deliver everything to us in one delivery, but this is actually going to be spread out from now until the month of April. So there will be continuing transactions that come up and each one is going to require a resolution to allow them to process the paperwork for that lease-finance transaction.”
Cooke told council to expect to see similar resolutions as transactions continue between the county and Caterpillar Financial Corporation.
Contact the writer: mbrown@timesanddemocrat.com or 803-533-5545. Follow on Twitter: @MRBrownTandD.
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