South Carolina, Lancaster, SC | featured news

Amid turmoil around the country over the removal of Confederate-era monuments from public spaces, Sen. Greg Gregory wants to add one at the S.C. Capitol.

Dr. Patrick Goldsmith
Guest columnist

Alzheimer’s disease, one of the most devastating forms of dementia, afflicted 5.3 million Americans in 2015 – two-thirds of them women.
Between 2000 and 2013, deaths attributed to Alzheimer’s increased by 71 percent. The number one cause of death, heart disease, decreased 14 percent during the same period. Of the top ten diseases in America, some believe that Alzheimer’s is the only one that cannot be prevented or cured.

Rep. Mandy Powers Norrell (D-44) has been chosen as the only legislator among 16 state educators to participate in the S.C. Education Policy Fellowship Program for 2017-18.

SC-EPFP is a 10-month intensive professional development program for educational leaders. Seventeen states have an EPFP.

The S.C. program is the only one this year to have a sitting state legislator.

Norrell said the program will give her the chance to learn what educators need and bring that information to the legislature.

From release

The next Great Falls Riversweep, sponsored by the Great Falls Home Town Association, and Catawba Riverkeeper, Duke Energy and Palmetto Pride, is planned for Nov. 4.
Volunteers are needed for the event, which will be held from 9 a.m. to noon that Saturday. The clean-up will primarily focus on the islands in Stumpy Pond and some of the bank area around the reservoir.

The Springs Co., which oversees all of the non-manufacturing interests of the former S

The Lancaster County School District has scheduled Oct. 9 as a make-up day for the day missed because of Hurricane Irma.
School was canceled Sept. 11 as winds and rain from Irma passed through the Palmetto State.
Oct. 9 was the next day students were not scheduled to be in school. It had been had been planned as a teacher workday.
“We believe it’s important to use it as a make-up day,” said LCSD Superintendent Jonathan Phipps. “We still face the possibility of winter weather and more missed days.”

The Humana Building on White Street still belongs to Humana, but county officials have already applied for a $500,000 federal grant to renovate it to house the S.C. Department of Social Services.
 “It is a little of the cart before the horse,” said County Administrator Steve Willis, noting that the grant application was filed Sept. 12. He said the county still hasn’t acquired the building, but could in coming months.

Lancaster Mayor John Howard suffered a hemorrhagic stroke last week and spent four days at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte.
He was released Monday and says doctors expect a full recovery.
“I dodged a bullet,” Howard, 67, said Wednesday, after springing the news on his fellow members at the Breakfast Rotary Club and then being swamped by their well-wishes.
“I am fine,” he said in an interview. “I’m weak – I’ll be the first to tell you that – but I am cognizant and confident.”

A trip through a license checkpoint didn’t end well for a Lancaster man after a sheriff’s deputy spotted a bag of marijuana on the man’s floorboard while he was trying to hide an open can of beer. 

Kershaw Town Council voted unanimously Monday night to change the way it pays for water and sewer services, a move expected to save the town about $30,000 a year.

The council approved a contract with Oliver Environmental in Ruby that will cost $127,750 per year. Oliver will provide the town a wastewater treatment director at a cost of $73,000 a year and a public utility and water distribution director at $54,750.