WINNSBORO – After a well-attended community meeting last month, facilitated by the Central Midlands Council of Goverments (CMCOG) to assess the needs of the Zion Hill and Fortune Springs Park neighborhoods, CMCOG is ready to present residents a draft plan for meeting those needs.
The community meeting will be held at the Fairfield High Alumni Building on Tuesday, Sept. 10, at 7 p.m. in the school cafeteria.
Gregory Sprouse, Director of Research, Planning and Development for CMCOG and planner John Newman along with Chris Clauson, Fairfield County Community Development Director, as well as county, city and school officials will be on hand to talk with residents.
The meeting in July was initiated to encourage residents to voice what they think is wrong with their neighborhood and what they want changed.
“We wanted to find out from the residents what’s going on, what are the issues, the opportunities, the challenges,” Clauson said. “We wanted to hear about traffic issues, infrastructure problems, lighting, town services, transportation (transit), public safety and issues with health and education. Our goal is to pair them up with potential grant funds to fix the problems.”
During the course of that meeting, residents began to pour out their worries and frustrations, including what they perceived to be poor code enforcement, the inaccessibility of Zion Park, poor responses from the Sheriff’s department and town hall and nothing being done about houses falling into disrepair.
According to Sprouse, the draft plan to be presented at the Sept. 10 meeting will be the next step in identifying community needs, project ideas and potential grant funding opportunities to meet those needs and to give life to the project ideas that members of the two communities brought to the table in July.
While the meeting will focus on the needs of the Zion Hill and Fortune Springs Park area, the public is invited to attend.
The Fairfield High Alumni Building is located at 403 Fairfield Street in Winnsboro. For information about the meeting, contact Sprouse at 803-744-5158.
