I did articles in early, 2024 (Tax bucks, road maintenance “shenanigans“, Sky is not falling) and since Lexington County voted in January to go back to the original road maintenance agreement after all that hoopla, I would like to follow up to those articles. Yes it has been months, but I have been busy at my real job, plus Irmo had a special election which required my involvement.
You may not know, back in January 2025 Lexington County Council voted to restore the 1978 Road maintenance agreement with all Lexington County municipalities which they had voted to not honor back in December 2023. So once again the county will maintain roads in a municipality just like they had before, be that as it may. Yes there was an article February 6, 2025 in the new Irmo News and most likely in their other papers as well. But not much has been written about why all that occurred in the first place.
I wrote before some reasoning behind it such as the election that was coming up in 2024 and some politicians wanted to look like they were doing something to address traffic and road maintenance issues. But has any of that been addressed? No. In fact, the County is still growing. Many articles were written in The State Newspaper and the Post and Courier for the past year regarding growth in the State and in the Midlands area. Josh Archote with the Post and Courier did articles in April 24 one titled “Lexington is “most desirable place to live in the Midlands“ and in the State newspaper January, SC is growing more than even Florida, California or Texas. July articles in the State about Blythewood growth, another about 300 homes coming to Lexington county and one on Redbank growth. With all this growth continuing, why the change from the county to go back to the original agreement?
Meetings were held between municipalities, the county and the county delegation which should have taken place prior to the county canceling the agreement, but it didn’t. So now you have meetings and nothing came about from those meetings as far as a new agreement that municipalities would accept and things were still not resolved. Then a letter from Mayor Hazel Livingston of Lexington gets written, a very good letter, to new Lexington County Council chairman Todd Cullum, and it gets on the agenda and it passes unanimously to go back to square one. All those that voted for it to be canceled now voted for it to be reinstated, hmmn.
Yes, this new vote was after the election, and after the meeting with the county delegation, which includes state elected officials as well. I was not at those meetings, nor privy to any conversations any of those statehouse elected officials had with county officials, but according to the articles written and comments made by some of those state elected officials, it was stated in short that this issue can be worked out.
Yes, it can be worked out by taking the money that comes to the county from the state for road maintenance to be properly divided, and given to the municipalities based on population, road miles, traffic, congestion issues, and based on years since last improvement done to those particular roads. So you figure out how much of that money each municipality is to get based on future maintenance requirements and a lump sum based on a pass-through to make sure they have adequate funds. And herein lies the problem.
There isn’t enough money in the kitty from the state in the first place to properly divide that limited money, nor an agreeable equation that everyone would agree to. So that is why in 1978 the agreement was made that the County would keep the money and do the maintenance. My guess is someone told someone to figure out how to divide the money so that everyone is happy or go back to the original agreement. and that’s what they did.
It was not “a step in the right direction“ it was a step in the only direction to be taken that was fair for all citizens of Lexington County. In all my years of serving on Irmo Town council, there has always been “ open dialogue” between Lexington County and the municipalities though the Lexington County Municipality Association. Not sure if that association still exists, if it doesn’t, it should.
Hardy King
