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CALHOUN FALLS — Dozens packed into Town Hall, filling nearly every seat for the first regular council meeting since a state-funded audit excoriated officials for mismanaging town funds and falling hundreds of thousands behind on payments, including to its water and power providers. On April 28, Calhoun Falls Town Council took its first step forward, approving a resolution meant to address many of the audit's 26 findings . The resolution passed with little discussion, the details being hammered out behind closed doors at a hastily called "emergency meeting" last week that gave residents little notice.
Among its 20 points: After the meeting, Mayor Terrico Holland said the town is working to move forward. "It's a beautiful place to start," council member LaSean Tutt told The Post and Courier on April 29. She stressed that it's just the beginning, though, and there's a lot the town needs to do.
Audit findings certainly laid out a lot of ground for municipal officials to cover in Calhoun Falls, a town of about 7,500 that's roughly 60 miles south of Greenville . It owes more than $600,000 to vendors with less than $300,000 in the bank at the end of the last fiscal year, and the town's books are a mess. The town also has to get its water services in order, owing more than $400,000 to the city of Abbeville — that debt is the subject of a lawsuit — and losing water and money through problems with billing, meters and unidentified leaks, with the resulting unbilled water usage averaging 62.
2 million gallons per year. An immediate concern still is having the town provide financial information to the council. Members got some bank records ahead of the April 28 meeting, which is progress, but it's not the records they should be getting, Tutt said.
The resolution forces the town to provide its elected leaders with those records, Tutt told The Post and Courier, and she plans to hold the town to it. "They had to give it to us now," she said. Fellow council member Viggo Lassen pushed on the issue during the meeting, saying he had emailed questions to Holland and Town Clerk and Treasurer Wendi Lewis about the financial records they did get, and those queries went unanswered.
Holland told Lassen he didn't have the files he wanted. "Everything goes through that office," Lassen replied. "The fact that you don't have these files shows the dereliction of duty all the way through.
" He pointed back to the damning forensic audit that showed the council was kept in the dark about the town's finances. "You're still doing it," Lassen told Holland. The strain between Lassen and Holland showed throughout the meeting.
At one point, Holland asked him a question and Lassen told him he'd have to repeat it because he was too mad to listen the first time. Lassen pushed the mayor on other matters — including whether Holland had canceled an order for a $517,000 firetruck. "We're in a financial situation, and I'd rather discuss it later," Holland responded.
Once he finished that sentence, some in attendance exclaimed, "Oh." "We're going to have to pay the full price of that firetruck because you haven't canceled it," Lassen said. Holland urged him to discuss the matter with him outside of the council meeting.
Residents, vendors express frustration Kristy Wynn, whose husband, Jody, is pastor at Northside Baptist Church, was among those at the April 28 meeting and said she is "very frustrated with the arrogance." "It's getting swept under the rug," Wynn told The Post and Courier. "I've never experienced anything like this before.
" Others, too, have expressed frustration. Much of that is focused on Holland, whose name appears alongside many of the audit findings. It was something that Charles Simmons zeroed in on when speaking to The Post and Courier after the meeting.
Charles Simmons, who runs Belton-based D&S Sanitation, holds an invoice to Calhoun Falls he's waiting to have paid. "The mayor has so much power that they can't be questioned, and there are no audits, so there are no checks and balances," he said, referencing the town's five years without submitting an audit to the state. Simmons, who runs Belton-based D&S Sanitation, was there with a nearly $40,000 invoice in hand to get the latest on when — or if — he'll get paid.
"I've been doing this for eight years and never had a problem with a bill until now," he said. That "now" has been going on for a few years, but he does sometimes get payments. A recent $12,000 check is why the debt is only $39,213.
07. He's weighed options, including litigation, and even considered stopping trash collection until he collects the money owed to him. "We haven't made that concrete because just imagine what it would look like if we did that," he said.
For now, Simmons is trying to be patient and taking what payments he can. "I know their financial problem," he said..
