PICKENS COUNTY — After months of discussion and debate, Pickens County Council has reached an agreement and established the Recreation Advisory Committee to ensure that county recreation funds are used in “a manner that best serves the community.”
The ordinance, No. 535, was passed on Monday to establish a process focused on accountability and transparency, said a county spokesperson.
According to county documents obtained by The Sentinel-Progress for a previous story titled “County Rec Funds under fire,” the use of the rec money has veered greatly in recent years from what the fund was originally supposed to pay for.
“It used to be you used that money to pay for a recreation activities,” said county administrator Gerald Wilson, discussing the rec funds in a previous interview. “Nowadays, you can spend it on just about whatever you wanted to.”
In 1993, along with a budget allocation, council established and appointed a Recreational Advisory Committee, and published a procedure manual that detailed the method and manner of awarding recreational funding.
That process remained unchanged until 2006 at which time, council allowed the appointments of the members of the Committee to expire — and then assumed duties associated with the Recreation Fund decision making themselves.
“Council began individually directing funding decisions for their council districts beginning in 2007, with the understanding that each council member would have decision making authority over 1/6th of the total funds allocated on an annual basis,” county officials said in a statement. “Policies remained in place to stipulate that funds could only be designated to not-for-profit entities such as local governments and/or festivals, and that funds were to be used for strictly recreational purposes. The purpose of the change was to assign greater responsibility and authority to council members, who had knowledge of the needs of their districts and who were answerable to the citizens.”
The county states that while the revised process did provide citizens with the opportunity for direct input with their local council representative, over time council members started to have”concerns with the new process.”
“The lack of transparency and the lack of a structured process for the allocation of public funds were the greatest concerns,” read the statement. “Other identified issues included the lack of coordination of expenditures to overall goals, as well as the lack of procedures to ensure that funds were administered in accordance with county financial management policies and with the excellent stewardship of public money.”
Through a resolution in 2013, council renamed the fund the “Recreation, Tourism, and Hospitality Fund” — which allowed its usage to be expanded to cover the additional two areas as well as included language to state that the fund would “be disbursed by individual council members subject to collective wisdom of the entire Council.”
“Toward the end of 2016, County staff began exploring strategies and held discussions with Council members to identify ways to fully implement the resolution language to incorporate the ‘collective wisdom of the entire Council,’ as well as to address the other identified issues,” reads the statement. “Council members expressed support for revising the process; however, there was not sufficient time to finalize changes prior to the end of the year.”
At a council retreat in January, the newly elected council voted to freeze the rec fund until they could get a handle on the situation and paved the way for the new ordinance, effectively removing control of the Rec fund from any one council member.
“On May 1, 2017, the Pickens County Council adopted Ordinance No. 535 establishing procedures for the allocation for Pickens County Recreation Funds,” council stated. “The Council is focused on establishing checks and balances, a fair and open process, administrative safeguards, and transparency for the Recreation Fund by establishing the Pickens County Recreation Advisory Board, as well as a formal application and review.”