Pendleton Mayor Hopes to Continue Town’s Solid Progress

Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer

On Nov. 4, two candidates are seeking the office of Mayor in Pendleton.

Incumbent Frank Crenshaw and challenger Sarah Stokowski.

Both candidates were asked the same questions by The Anderson Observer, and both given the opportunity for a video interview. Stokowski declined the video interview offer but answered the questions, but Crenshaw did not.

1. Why are you running for mayor again?

Well, Greg, I just enjoy helping people for one thing. And I love my town. I've you know, I'm a lifelong resident of town of Pendleton and grew up here. And we've got a great little town. We're making a lot of progress. I think we've got a good town council. We've got a lot of good things that we're doing. So, I want to continue that. Keep that momentum going.

2. What are your three top priorities for improving the town and how you think you can achieve them?

The first thing is public safety for me. I think that's the most important thing. And I would like for us to have a 24-7 police department. Right now, we're not quite there. We currently have 10 officers in the police department. But I would love to see us go to 24-7, and to do that, it's going to take about three more officers. And, you know, it costs probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $450,000 a year to do that. But looking at the number of homes that we have scheduled to get built out, we'll have some additional growth coming. And I think we'll be able to get there within the next hopefully within the next budget cycle, but it may be a little longer, and it's hard to say. Just depends on how that goes. And then the next thing, of course, would be public works. We've done a strategic plan and brought in community stakeholders. people in the town that live here and a lot of our partners and try to to decide which is the way to go here and what we need to do next. And another one of the things that we've come out with from that is Corps services, which of course, Police Department's core service, also, in my opinion, the Public Works Department's Core Service. And we really need to improve Public Works some; they do a great job. The guys work really hard, but we're a little understaffed and we need more equipment. So that'd be the second thing. And the way we would get that money is really the same way. We're going to have to see. you know, hopefully a little more growth. We have houses that are being built on infill lots in town here now and then there's some others that are going to come. You know, so that's probably where we get a lot of that money. And as things just develop more and more, hopefully, we'll have more funding available to improve public works. And the third thing that I would like to see is I'd like to see us to improve the recreation opportunities, both rec sports and also recreation in general. You know, when you say recreation, there's a lot of Different types of recreation, and we have a pretty large elderly population here. So, some people would like to see more. like pickleball courts and things like that, but also rec sports. Rec sports are very important, and we have a fantastic organization right now that's volunteer that's doing a lot of the work there called the PRA. and they're a great bunch of people. They're getting a lot of things done. We really appreciate it. We have voted to give them money last couple of the budgets and increased that greatly. So, we're trying to help them as much as we can with what we got. So I would like to see that get even better, and I'd love to see us have our own rec off at some point here as soon as we're able to fund it.

3. How would you describe your vision for the town 10 years from now?

That’s a good question. There's my vision, but I think more importantly, there's the people's vision. And I think what I should have is the people's vision, because they're the ones that elect me. And that's why I like getting a lot of public input on anything because it really helps me see where the people want us to go. You know, I think local government is the most responsive form of government, hands down. And that's because you are right here with your constituents. And what someone wants to see done here depends a lot on where they live. and sometimes just what their situation in life is, you know, whether they're barely scraping by to pay the rent payment or whether they have all the money they need. So it varies a lot. And we need to remember that we want to make the town good for everybody. So that would be my answer.

4. What makes you the right person to lead the town at this moment in its history?

What would make me the right person to lead the town at this moment in history would be, I would say, mostly experience. I have been on council. For quite a while, since 1990. I've been the mayor since 2012. I've seen a lot of things, dealt with a lot of things here, and I just have a lot of experience and knowledge about How government works and what it takes to get things done, and we get things done, I think, in my opinion. I have educational background, which is Pretty good for what I'm doing. I have a bachelor's degree in business administration, and in a way, the town is simply just a big business. So that helps me. And I also have a degree in psychology, which doesn't hurt either. So that would be the two biggest things, but mostly experience, and that would be it.

5. How would you balance growth with preserving the town's small-town character?

That is a tough thing to do. But we're doing a good job of it here. And basically, we need to have the ordinances that protect our downtown, which we do. Sometimes people don't like it. like them or think they're a little too restrictive, but they do create a good environment for maintaining historical character. Because the downtown is really to me the most important when it comes to history, obviously. You look around us, we're standing here in a really old building called Hunters Warehouse. We surely don't need some developer to come in here and Tear this place down and build something, you know, here. We got to make sure that these older structures are taken care of, and that if there's something new comes in, you know, it looks like it belongs here in the downtown. And we really work hard at that. And at the same time, on the outskirts, we've got a little room for a little growth on the outskirts. So I think that's how we do it.

6. What strategies would you use to attract new businesses or industry while supporting local entrepreneurs?

Well, if you can get the right mix is important. You know, your local people, a lot of them are niche businesses, and that's important that they are able to continue. We want to create a good environment for them that they can survive in. Not over-regulate them and not over-tax them and all those kinds of things. And aside from that, when we bring in other businesses, well, you know, it's good if we can get the ones that aren't competing with those people. So that's what we try to do. Now, you know, you can't do that in every situation, you know, because it is a free country and they have a right to be here one way or the other. We can create an environment that helps them, and we can also do things to encourage certain types of businesses. And that's what we would do.

7.  How will you ensure that the downtown village green and town square remain vibrant and economically strong?

Well, sort of the same sort of thing here. But one thing is, you know, we've hired a community engagement director doing a great job at promoting events, and we're having a great event today. It's called Fall Festival. So, you know, you see a lot of people that are here today, and they're patronizing our businesses here, and there, you know, putting money into this economy. And also, we're trying to do things from the town side to make this a very walkable downtown, a very pedestrian-friendly downtown. Well lighted. We're doing a new parking lot renovation on the Bruce parking lot right there. So you can walk in there. It'll be well lighted. It'll be much safer and better lighting on the for the other parking we have. So parking is something that is concerned to the downtown businesses So recently we have put up signage identifying where our parking is and also has QR codes that are interactive with our website, town website So, that a person can just click on the QR code and they can see where the locations are that they could possibly park. And we have a lot of on-street parking that That yet needs to be identified because if you grew up here, you would know where you could park. But if you're just coming in from out of town somewhere, you might not. So, we're trying to identify all those things. But those are the main things without getting too lengthy.

8. What role should the town government play in promoting tourism or local events?

Well, a big role. You're looking at it here today. So we've spent money To have someone that focuses on these events. And that's, it shows. If you look at it, I think this is the biggest crowd I've ever seen here for Fall Festival today. It's unbelievable. Of course, good weather helps too. But basically, we want to do things to help them have their event. We provide police protection up here for them. We try to make it a safe environment, a walkable environment. And we're supporting them from every direction with all that.

9. How would you support small business recovery or expansion in Pendleton?

We actually have done that before. And, you know, we don't have to think back too far to remember what happened during COVID, and a lot of people were struggling. Due to the fact that our hospitality has grown a lot since I've become mayor, in 2012 when I came on as mayor, our hospitality tax was about $40,000 a year. Now it's over $500,000 a year. But what we have done with some of our hospitality money is we have created grants for businesses that were struggling, and we paid out money to the businesses that applied. and qualified for grant money during COVID. That was a time that it was a tough time for them. And we have provided what we call facade improvement grants where You know, they could apply for money to redo the front of their store, make it more attractive, that kind of thing, bring people in. So, those are some of the things we could do.

10. How important is the planned TIF district for Pendleton, and why should it or why should it not be a priority?

It is very important, and it definitely should be a priority. I can answer that easily. As you know, that refers to tax increment financing. So what happens there is we have a blighted area that we would like to improve. It has really poor infrastructure, poor roads, poor water and sewer. It's in bad shape. The homes that are there, most of them, not all of them, but most of them are in very poor condition. They're falling down, falling in, et cetera. And what we are in the process of doing is to go is going in and redoing all of that infrastructure. We have received recently grant money to do that. And we're going to go in there and we're going to improve the infrastructure, put in new roads, put in new water and sewer lines, and then we're developing a plan of what that new development over there would look like. So, it could be a mixed-use development with some commercial, some residential, or it could be all residential. We presented this plan recently at Pendelton Elementary School again to get public input because we want to follow their vision on this as much as anything. So, you know, there is a developer that owns a lot of property over there right now that they could go in there now and build if they wanted to under the current zoning that's there. But they don't want to do that from what I can tell. And they may not, you know, ultimately, whether they will be there at B to One, you know, that that could still change. But ultimately, this thing will get built out and then we will start receiving tax money from it that we'll use to pay off the bonds that we're issuing to do all this work. Out of those bonds, we get, out of the tax money, we get not only our tax money, we get the tax money that the Anderson County School District for here would get. We also get the tax money the county would get. So it's a real big win from our taxpayers' perspective if you see what we're getting back to pay the bonds off. And of course, it's a big win for the school districts. It's a big win for the county too, because ultimately, they're getting money off of this instead of nothing off of it. So that's a great thing. But once it gets going, we're also able to take money out of this TIFF. To do other things. One of the things we would be doing to help the recreation, which I mentioned is a big priority with me. We've got pretty much got $420,000, at least, maybe more, that we've already earmarked for Veterans Park. So, what we'll do, we'll take that money, go out there and improve the lighting, do things out there to make it better for the REC program. And then we should have money to go and put a new roof on town hall, which we need. And we will have money to go in here and possibly build a new fire department and a new public works facility, a new police department. you know, a whole new public service facility out there. So I think that's that's just huge. I mean, it's absolutely huge.

11. And speaking of infrastructure and public services, what are your immediate goals for maintaining and improving local roads, utilities, and public spaces? Well, you've touched on that a little bit.

I've touched on a little bit. Yeah, and one thing that would be great is if the 1% road tax got passed by the county. I don't know how that's going to go, but There are some of our roads on that list, and there's roads on the list for other municipalities and the county roads. And the roads do need a lot of work. I mean, I feel like I know people hate to hear the word tax, but I think it's again, it's a good deal for our taxpayers because some of the money comes in for people that come in county from other areas and use our roads. They help wear our roads out. So, I think it's good that they help pay for it. And it won't that's the only thing it can be spent on. It won't be spent on food and drugs and things like that. I think it's that's one thing. But as far as from our standpoint, yeah, we'll go through and we'll lobby to get money through ACTC, which is Anderson County. The end of that, as far as the funding, it comes through them, but Ashley County Transportation Commission. But it's hard for us to do paving on our own. And a lot of people don't realize this. They think you can just go out and start paving roads, but it's the people that are paving the roads don't want to do small jobs and it costs about a million dollars a mile now to pay the two-lane road, which is why it's so expensive to do any of this. So a million, two million dollars, you know, doesn't go anywhere hard. So we have to make it part of a bigger contract, which is usually we join in with the county, other municipalities, and they bid it out, and we go through them to get that money. And that's the short answer.

What about the utilities and public spaces? Same kind of question.

Yeah, utilities and public spaces, utilities. Well, I'm going to tie that to the waste treatment facility right now because. Our waste treatment plant is bumping the limits of what it can treat. And it's a two million gallon per day plant It's bumping 2. 2, 2. 3 million gallons per day on peak times right now with an average daily flow right now of around 1. 2 or 1. 3. But once you start going over the two million mark, VHEC makes you do something with it. This is something we started talking about several years ago, and it was a lower cost at that point. It has escalated. Right now, it's $64 million. And to be honest with you, it's probably the most important piece of infrastructure that we own. That nobody ever thinks about and doesn't really even know it exists. But if you want your toilet to flush, it's real important. So we got to have it. And we do have partners in it. We have the city of Clemson, which flows into that plant. We also have Anderson County, which flows into that plant. And Clemson University will also be flowing into the plant with their new veterinary school that they're building. So, we do have partners that are helping us. That's how we're able to do what we're doing over there. And it is being done right now and hoping to be completed before Tule. That's in the works. And then you said gathering spaces, I believe, was other public spaces, yeah, huh? Public spaces, yeah. So, public spaces, the green up here is a public space. Which, as I say, we're constantly working to improve that space and the walkability of it. And you know, it would be good if we can come in here and probably some of our sidewalks need to get widened Things like that, and just create some little areas where people can congregate easily and safely and enjoy themselves here in our downtown and other places too.

12. How do you prioritize infrastructure projects such as the new wastewater plant given budget limitations?

Well, that's the number one project. It's just got to go. Once DHEC tells you you've got to do something, you just got to do it. So, it goes to priority one. Then when you go to the other infrastructure projects, you just have to sit there and look at it. Council reviews it, and just we try to see what is the most important thing and we go from there because it'd be great if we could do everything every day, but you know, we just can't. We just don't have that money. We struggle to get by like all municipalities do in the state, and sometimes we have things come down from the state. that are mandates, and that would be one of them from DHEC. And a lot of times those mandates are unfunded mandates. Sometimes they'll help you get money to do whatever it is. But it's a struggle really to get it all done. Growth helps, but we also want to, you know, we really want growth to be good for us. We want smart growth. We don't want just anything coming in around us either.

13. How do you address affordable housing concerns within the town limits?

I was talking to some folks just a few minutes ago, actually, about that over on the street over here, and they were asking that very question. So, that's a good question. I've thought about it a lot. We have a committee that's working on our UDO right now, which is Unified Development Ordinance. And one of the ladies that is on that committee is also in the architecture department at Clemson, and she brought up something that I hadn't really thought of, but I think it's a good idea, and I would like to explore this. which is we could probably build smaller affordable houses. And what I mean by that is years ago There were subdivisions that got put together here in Pelvin. One of them is out, and you would know this area: Crouch Drive, Chester Circle. It used to be called Worley Woods out there. And there were a lot of houses that came in there that actually came from Sears and Roebuck. I shipped them in there on trucks and built them, but they're a little small Two-bedroom, one-bath houses, and they're about a thousand square feet. And I think some smaller, good quality, attractive houses would be one excellent. That's just one answer. Also, you know, apartments for rent that could be maybe constructed in a similar way, a little smaller, a little more affordable. And, you know, there's also grant money that can be gone after for some of this stuff, you know, so we always look at that. If you look at it since 2012 and why it went on, you know We brought in over $40 million in grant money and earmarks. And some of that's because we maintain a good relationship with our legislative delegations and folks at the state and federal level that have helped us. And our team that we have. You know, good things in the town don't necessarily happen by whoever the mayor is. I'm one vote, and we've got a great team of people. I believe in that team concept. I think that Who we have there, our administrator, our planner, other people working there, they're doing a great job for us. And we've been fortunate to hire some really good people to work for us, and our council. Our council has been great to work with. They're doing a fantastic job for us too.

14. You've mentioned a couple of these things in other contexts, but where's your vision for the parks and trails? And how do you propose to make the town more walkable, bike friendly, and safe?

Believe it or not, we have a study that was done several years ago and that was done by Alliance Engineering, I believe it's a company. And we actually have a walkability plan and sidewalk and walkability plan. And we have the previous council was more aware of that. I have since shared that with the current council, and we have discussed trails quite a bit, and we would love to have some improvement in that area. This particular plan has a really comprehensive look at that and also how it might tie in with the Green Crescent Trail. And things like that. Places where sidewalks could go that we don't have them there now. Places where they could be improved or widened or something, and that kind of thing.

Par as part of that though, Frank, I guess when that study was done, the Pendleton Lofts weren't built and the oil mill had not been torn down, so that would be a that's a natural place for new sidewalks Expansion building, too, right?

Yeah, I would say so. You know, that whole thing there is really good in that, you know, and people don't want to hear this word, it scares them because a lot of times they think of negative. Negative, I think, negative thoughts about this, but a little more density in the downtown area is kind of a good thing. And you mentioned how do we do things to help the businesses, you know, keep going. Well, one of those things is having people that are within walking distance of those businesses downtown, which the Janey loss, which is now the Pendleton Mill Lofts, what they want what they're called now. You know, they help guarantee the resiliency of our downtown because they're within walking distance. And what they need here, these businesses need, is people. Do come in their businesses and come in to restaurants, come in to stores, buy things, spend their money there. And that's what these people will do. And at the same time, It's an amenity for the Pendleton Mill Loss because they have a downtown with stores located next to them and they're within walking distance. So, it's a win-win on both sides. So, the sidewalks, back the sidewalks and the trail, which is your question, yeah, we need to make sure we have good sidewalks going down there to those folks. We were looking at a possibility of a walking trail here recently, which would be behind those lots where they could walk across just a little bridge right across the creek. And get on a walking trail and connect with a lot of places. And we have one of our candidates actually that's running the council right now has spent a lot of time working on that.

15. You mentioned recreational activities in the city as kind of helping fund volunteers to do it. What else can be done to expand recreational activities for all benefit citizens? How can it be funded too? This is the important thing.

Well, that's the biggest thing is the funding. I mean, and we've done studies on it, you know, and tried to look at what it would take and how much it would cost and things like that. And we've looked at doing a kind of a partial, I guess you would say a partial attempt at doing a rec department, which is higher rec director. You know, and just have them work in conjunction with the PRA. So, there's a lot of options there. I think to really keep it consistent and year to year, have it Work to the level that we would love for it to work at, which would be a high level. I think we just need to, at some point, he's about to put it and just put in a rec department and we just fund it.

16.  How are you continuing to communicate openly with residents about town decisions and town finances?

When COVID came along, we started live streaming all our meetings. We still do that. So that gives a person an opportunity to View our meeting if they can't get there and/or watch it later because it's on there. You can just go back and watch any of our meetings we've done. Another thing is, I started sending out a letter, a newsletter, after every council meeting just to update people. So, once a month, I update people on what we did in the council meeting, kind of what's going on in town. Just to keep them posted, they can subscribe to that email list, and they'll have that every month. And the third thing I've done is I have something called Ask the Mayor. So, what that's about is, I have a meeting every month, third Tuesday, at 6 o'clock, where they can come and talk to me about whatever they want to. Having to do at the town of Pendleton, and that's whether you live here or whether you don't. You know, if you want to talk to us about Pendleton, we'll talk to you. A lot of times it's a great thing. I mean, we pick up a lot of suggestions, sometimes learn things. We didn't know, and we grow from that and improve from that. So that's another thing. And also, back to the fact we have a community engagement director now who's doing a great job. She works all the time putting this information out there to people. So we're putting it on our website constantly for people. We're sending it out to them. We're doing everything we can to keep people informed because I think that's huge. I think people being informed is one of the best things we can do.

17. How do you handle public disagreement, criticism, or community conflict?

I listen to it and consider what their point of view is. And I love to hear what somebody's point of view is. Even if they don't agree with me, it puts a different perspective on things. So, I think it's important that we all keep an open mind in government as to what people want, what people think. And back to local government being your most responsive form of government, I think it's great when we have sometimes criticism is good and criticism is warranted because sometimes, you know, we make mistakes and And we can learn from that. And if something's broken, we can't fix it unless we know about it. And I think that's what we do. And I believe in civility in government, you know. The Municipal Association of South Carolina has been pushing this, and it's a great thing because there's no reason for people not to be nice to each other. And just respect the other person's point of view and learn from it. I believe, you know, it doesn't cost five cents to be nice to somebody. So, why do we all have to get mad at each other and that kind of thing and do it? And just get all this hatred going back and forth about something. I believe in being civil to people and be as nice to them as they'll let me be.

18. What principles guide your decision-making processes when public pressure and long-term town interests collide?

Well, that's a tough one. You want to do what's what you think is the best for the town, and sometimes that's an unpopular decision. I lean to doing what I think is best for the town and what I think the people's vision is based on the majority of the input I've received. And that's how I look at it. But keep in mind, again, I'm one vote on most of those decisions, so I couldn't say exactly what the rest of council thinks, but I would think that most of them are the same way. But you've got to really be able to take criticism and consider it as a point of view and learn from it. And sometimes you need it. Sometimes it is good that you need it to hear that criticism.

19. If you're reelected, how would you measure your success as mayor at the end of this term?

At the end of that term, I would measure my success as to how Or we have gotten with accomplishing those goals I mentioned. I guess it's probably your first question. That would be one way I would measure my success. I guess the second way I would measure my success would be if I feel like we are headed toward accomplishing the vision that the people want, not mine but theirs.

20. What else do you want voters to know about you as a person?

Well, you know, there's a lot of things that me as a person, you know. There are, my priorities are, you know, as a person, my faith, my belief in Jesus Christ as my Savior. My family would be number two, and then it'd be my town and my country. And that is me as a person. And I like to help people. That's me as a person. I want to try to do good things for this town. I love this town and I love living here. And, you know, I'm just so blessed to have been born in this area and grown up here. And I feel like that's one of the reasons we've been successful. And I don't want to really tout my horn here. I want to say that we have had a great team. I don't want to say I did; I want to say we did. And that's the way I feel about it. You know, we have acquired over $40 million worth of grant money in these last few years since I've been here as mayor. We have brought in a lot of new jobs. We brought in new industry. We worked with Arthrex, Ortec, all of those people. Over $200 million in new investment here. 1000s plus jobs. We have done multiple projects here, the downtown master plan project and all the things that resulted from it. With new and better parking here, more pedestrian-friendly traffic common measures to make it safer We brought back a police department that had been done away with to give us faster response times, more coverage here on police. We're working to try to help the fire department again, public safety. You know, we've got a new project, just got bit out over here for the parking lot behind Brews on the square over there, which is a $700,000 project. We're doing a whole new renovation on the west side of town over here. If you drive down the street over there, you're going to see some things that have been done that were sorely needed. because that side of town was ignored for years, wrongfully so, for really bad reasons. And, you know, it's long overdue that we pay attention to that side of town, help those people up there. And we're doing that. You know, we've put in new parking. We've done paved the streets. We've got new lighting. We're just trying to change that whole side over there to be Better and better. And we've still got a way to go. We've still got more of that project to complete. We've got part of it ready to bid out now. But I'm really proud of some of these accomplishments. We've been able to achieve. And I say we, I mean we, I mean our team. I mean our administrator, our assistant administrator, our town planner, you know, our police chief, everybody in the town hall, and our council. We got a team, and that's what I believe in is team. So, if you ask me what I stand for, it's team. I believe it takes a team to get it done.