Summerville town leaders meet for mid-year budget retreat

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. (WCBD) – Summerville town leaders spent much of the day Thursday learning about where things stand in the town during a budget retreat.

“We are in our mid-year budget retreat,” said Mayor Russ Touchberry. “We’re kind of checking in on where we’re going with our current fiscal year budget, and what we are preparing for our future budget that will start July 1 and carry us through the next June 30.”

There is some good news when it comes to town finances.

“Finance Director Rhonda Moore has indicated that we anticipate a good surplus this year,” said Mayor Touchberry.

Moore said the town had a $4.5 million surplus at the end of the fiscal year last June 30^th.

The town is looking at a capital fund in the future, so they have regular money available to do things like repair and replace things on an ongoing basis.

“We need to replace a fire truck every so many years. We’ve got to replace police cars on a replacement cycle,” said Touchberry.

There are several road projects, including the Maple Street extension.

“That project is behind. Due to some utility delays, the project team has met, and it sounds like the project is going to be moving forward at an expeditious rate. We anticipate completion at the end of this year. That’s very exciting.”

Sidewalks will be added to a little more than a mile of Central Avenue.

The town administrator said a new cost estimate they received yesterday on the Cedar Street extension is $10 million, which is much more than the $5.5 million estimate they had before.

“I’m not sure which entity, we have two cost estimates. One was from Dorchester County, one was from our engineer of record. I didn’t know which one was the $10 million and which one was the $5.5 million. We do have some discrepancies we want to make sure that we nail those costs down.”

Finally, the Main Street resiliency project is a big deal, bringing some of the look and feel of the Hutchinson Square area down the street to about Highway 78.

“It’s going to be beautified. The utilities are going to come underground. I’m hoping that this is going to be a walkable user-friendly pedestrian corridor. It’s going to be almost like a linear park feature that brings in people in our town in our business district.”