Clarendon County Council will have one more line item to consider for its 2017-18 fiscal year budget when members convene for their regular monthly meeting on Monday.
Turbeville Town Council voted last week to offer its Recreation Department program to the county, less than a month after a meeting letting area residents know what such a deal would entail.
"Of course, we have some terms in providing such an agreement to the county," said Mayor Dwayne Howell.
Howell said Town Council was in agreement with many of the negotiated terms provided by the county.
"However, Barrineau will need to have at least two teams to keep the lease on their field," Howell said. "We have also requested that the county try and keep the basketball separate from being co-ed. Residents are adamant that they want boys teams and girls teams. We are very conservative over here when it comes to that. We understand if they don't have the numbers, then they have to do what they have to do, but we do not want co-ed basketball."
Howell said a group of residents who approached him shortly before a meeting in May outlining the county's proposal for the town's Recreation Department merging with its own had also presented their own proposal.
"Nevin Goff had a meeting at his house," said Howell. "He invited about 20 people, but he didn't say how many showed up. The No. 1 thing they wanted was to keep all the programs that we presently have. Of course, we're in favor of that."
Goff also wanted to keep one All-Star franchise in the Turbeville area.
"There is the concern that if All-Star teams are chosen from throughout the county that Turbeville and Barrineau will be left out," Howell said. "That concern has mainly come from the coaches presently coaching within the program now. We had a good discussion about that."
Howell said that "choosing All-Star teams is the hardest thing you have to do in recreation ball."
"When you've got as many kids as you have over here, and we have a good many, and then you choose 12 per program, that's pretty tough," he said.
Howell said in his own experience coaching high school sports that it's even tougher when you can only choose 54 children out of thousands.
"You look at it for a solid year before you make a choice," he said. "But when you have a league and you're playing three and four times, you should get a good view of those kids, so you know who the best are. You have to keep politics out of that."
Howell said that Goff had suggested the town pay someone $1 per year to supervise the program.
"I told Nevin that we're trying to get out of the recreation business," said Howell. "If we kept it, that would leave the liability on us, instead of putting it on whoever takes it over. If we still have a paid employee out there, even working at $1, that's going to put us in liability."
He said that Goff had also proposed that the county take over the football program, because the residents' group could "get the insurance cheaper without having to have a contact sport."
Howell said, in his opinion, such an arrangement would "not change anything."
"You would just be eliminating the recreation director's position," he said. "What control would we have over a person for just $1 a year."
Howell said in meeting with town attorney William Johnson, he was advised that the town should not turn it over to a residents' group because of the liability issue.
"It would still be on us, even if we had volunteers over there," he said. "The facilities would still be ours. We would still be on the hook."
Should the county vote to take over the program, it would assume liability, Turbeville Administration Reginald Johnson said.
"When the county does it, that's a whole other entity," he said. "They'd be leasing the facility, and that would shed the liability for us."
Howell said any arrangement with volunteers makes them "free from control of the town government."
"They are not governed by the town's employee manual or subject to direct supervision of town employees," he said. "Volunteers mean well, but it appears the volunteer works on behalf of the town, and the town would likely be found responsible for actions taken. Because of this reality, any arrangement is troubled. That's what our attorney has written in an advisory letter on the issue."
Johnson said that County Council should now vote on the town's proposal and return its own offer to the town.
"Eighty-eight percent of the participants in the program are paying taxes in the county and supporting the county's program," said Johnson. "Two dozen of the 250 in the program are from the town itself. The program just isn't sustainable for the town at this present point and time."
Howell said the participation fee will likely go down once the program is subsumed by the county.
"I think it will go down about $20 with the county," he said.
Clarendon County Councilman Benton Blakely said "it's about time we get some benefit of the tax dollars allocated every year for recreation."
"All of us pay tax dollars, and we get very little benefit from it," he said. "This is an opportunity. And if at some point, y'all feel the need to jump back in, it's there."
