DARLINGTON, SC (WBTW) – Darlington County Council met Monday for a workshop to discuss its progress on the Darlington County Courthouse project.
County council has held several public forums over the past few months to get public input on the downtown courthouse building.
The options that the council presented to the public were whether or not to leave the courthouse as-is, renovate the current building, or build a completely new courthouse.
“If we don’t move forward, we just told the citizens we don’t have enough sense to be sitting on this council,” said one county council member during the workshop.
During the workshops, the public discussed pros and cons of each option.
County council said the majority of residents who attended the forum that took place within the City of Darlington said they wanted to keep the courthouse within city limits. However, the people who attended the public forums outside of the city, said they wanted to build a new courthouse in a central location.
“If they’re going to build a judicial center downtown, we’d like to have some input as to how it looks aesthetically, the landscaping, and the parking,” said Darlington City Manager, Howard Garland.
Many member of Darlington City Council took a seat in the audience at Monday’s workshop.
“Frankly, the decision to put that courthouse up in 1963 was one of the worst decisions ever made by Darlington County, and we don’t want that to happen again” said Garland.
Darlington City Mayor, Gloria Hines, said the county offered to give the city the courthouse, but the city is not interested.
Garland said the city does not have the resources or the funds to keep the building up to code.
“We don’t want that headache,” the Mayor said. “There are too many problems with the courthouse, and renovations are not a question,” she continued. “Mold is in the building. When the building was first built, they had problems with the windows and they’re still having problems with the windows,” she said.
Garland said he attended the meeting because he thinks the city should have a say in what is done with the downtown courthouse.
“They’re going to make some type of decision in the next three months that will affect our county for the next thirty years,” Garland said. “We want to be a part of that discussion.”
Darlington County Council said, overall, the findings of the public forums showed that residents want a new courthouse, but they do not know how they would want to pay for it.
The information collected by the county showed that the majority of the residents who showed up to the forums do not want a property tax increase. The public said it would be open to a sales tax which would be beneficial when the city has big events like a NASCAR race.
“What they [County Council] do, they’re going to keep for two, three, four decades,” said Garland. “So we want to be sure that we have input that’s fair for Darlington County, and that’s fair for the City of Darlington.”
