BENNETTSVILLE—The Bennettsville City Council meeting on Tuesday was over two hours as citizens voiced concerns about the city and administrator William Simon Jr. gave an update about his one year on the job.
Mike Hanna of Hanna Engineering gave an update on Crooked Creek, which has been overflowing for decades — yet previous administrations hadn’t acted on finding a solution to benefit the Shady Rest and Richardson Park neighborhoods. Those two areas of the city bear the brunt of flooding issues, whether it’s from dam breaches or natural causes. Over the past few months, flooding in those areas has been caused by both.
Hanna said they are currently in the middle of a study of the creek. “It’s an awful long study. It’s about 50,000 acres of floodplain, we have identified everything all across lands we have inserted all this into our hydraulic model and we are working through a calibration model at this point,” Hanna said. “It’s not just going to be an overnight success. It’s going to be other grants that we’re going to have to apply for so the federal government to help us make improvements to the channel, so we are looking at those now.”
The study started late last year and Hanna said by the end of this year, there would be a substantial update as to the next steps.
However, he said that Crooked Creek needs to be improved. “At one point in time, it was an eight to nine to ten-foot deep channel probably one hundred feet wide, today It’s a two to four-foot channel sixty feet wide so it doesn’t carry near as much water as it originally intended, but there are places you can see the bottom of the creek so it’s only got twenty-three feet water flowing over it where used to have ten feet water flowing over it. That’s my primary opinion, my model hasn’t showed me that yet, but I’m sure it will.”
Hanna said they applied for and were turned down for a million-dollar grant because the results of the study need to be seen first.
During public comment, residents of the neighborhoods were extremely vocal about their frustrations with the creek, the flooding, and no solutions.
Nan Flemming said, “In the Pee Dee region you can expect bad weather every three years as a result of climate change. Mr. Simon, you were not here when all this happened. I was here for most of it as most of you were. I am so glad that Mr. Hanna was here to lay out what the city of Bennettsville can do and what the city of Bennettsville can not do. We know it is a problem, so we need to get the state government involved. We’re going to have extreme weather. Whatever needs to be done, there is money out there to do it.”
Flemming said if something isn’t done, one day the dam is going to breach, and “it’s going to be like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.”
“We don’t need to be pointing fingers, we need to get busy,” she added.
But a major part of the meeting was about fingers that have been pointed at Simon on social media and by a TV reporter from North Carolina.
Simon addressed council and the public to clear up many misconceptions. “As your city leader, I will always serve as I promised from day one, I will serve with integrity and honesty and make sure that we have an inclusive government. We’re not a perfect government, things are going to happen and quite honestly, I’m super excited to see people engaged now.”
Simon said when he took the job, he was told that citizens weren’t engaged with city government. And before reports from a Charlotte TV station started floating around on Facebook there weren’t filled seats at city council meetings. The latest report that gained traction featured city council members Wanda Weaver and Alan Tate speaking with the reporter to talk about a financial consultant that city council approved the contract for following the resignation of the finance director after questions arose about COVID funds — monies that came into the city from the federal government when Max Alderman was the administrator.
“I’m not sure how my predecessor handled community engagement, maybe he did a better job than me,” Simon said. “If so, I will try to improve upon that to make sure that we have an open door and that questions get answered. And that things get clarified, we really do need that. We have a lot that’s going on in Bennettsville and I want to make sure that we stay on the same page. Are we always going to agree on everything, we are not. I think all of you in the room know that.”
Simon said he gets that people love the city and want the best for Bennettsville. Simon said regardless of what he does as the city leader, if people don’t know the state of the city then they won’t know how far “we’ve come. So the mistake that I’ve made is I’m trying to celebrate and tell you how far we’ve come. But I was assuming that we all know where we were at and that’s not the case. When we talk about the things that have gone on in our finances, you need to know some of the issues we’ve had over the past five or six years.”
Simon said informing people and clarifying things is key, but he won’t be doing that on Facebook and other social media platforms.
He said he wanted to cover a few things that people have seen in the media and on social media.
Simon said the messaging can be confusing and he gets it. “I’m sympathetic to that, I know what it can be confusing when so many different things are thrown at you in so many different ways. So many different people are telling you things in so many different ways. I can’t control others, I can only control me and certain parts of city operations.”
Simon addressed several elephants that have been in the news, starting with the police assessment.
“I just want to let all of you know, in spite of what all of you think, me and my chief have a working relationship,” he said of BPD chief Kevin Miller, who has a pending lawsuit against Simon and the city.
“Regardless of what the media says and what others would lead you to believe, we have that. We talk whenever it’s necessary to resolve issues because we know that the safety of this community is important. But let’s be clear on how we got there. When I first got hired, several officers approached me there were issues,” he said. But as the new guy and someone who is not a trained law enforcement professional, Simon said he didn’t want to take one side of the story. Then he was approached by community members as well.
He met with leadership and it was agreed that something needed to be done about workplace culture. Simon said at that point he had two options — do nothing or try to fix it himself.
“I’m not a law enforcement professional and I’m new. So good luck with me putting a report on the table that’s going to be respected by council or the community or even leadership. So, I did the next best thing, I had an independent source come in and that’s how we got here.”
Before the assessment was done it was discussed by city council. However, after the report was released to the public there was backlash and some council members started talking to TV outlets about it — even though they’d approved the study.
Simon has welcomed the community to visit him at city hall and ask tough questions so that they can be informed about what’s really going on in the city.
“When I look at the past administration, I have to question how were things handled because I’m assuming something, that all of you know and all of you are aware,” he said.
District 5 representative Tyron Abraham said when the last administrator was working for the city, the council didn’t “nic-pic” him.
“Why is it happening now, I have a problem with it,” he said.
Abraham also questioned why information from executive sessions ends up on social media. “If we’re going to go in executive session then the information needs to stay in executive session until we give it out. The two words we’ve been using since January is moving forward. It feels like we are divided and we got to get it together.”