Revamp current County Office complex

The city of Aiken is the county seat of Aiken County, and when other towns were making the mistake of moving their offices out of the center of town in the 1970s and 1980s, our County Council at the time not only did not abandon downtown Aiken, but used buildings that would otherwise have stood empty and derelict and also saved the taxpayers a lot of money. It is no accident that we have one of the few viable downtowns in South Carolina. Because these county offices are downtown, many people are able to walk to this complex, which would become impossible if the buildings were out on the bypass. In addition, offices which use county services have stayed downtown, and their employees patronized downtown restaurants and other businesses.

The County has not made major improvements to the former county hospital on Richland Avenue since it was converted for office space almost 30 years ago, so it is no wonder that systems need updating and replacing. This would be true if we had built a new office complex for either another wing or parking. We have $12 million. Have we considered using that as our budget, renovating and/or adding to the building the County already owns and perhaps building a better meeting room for County Council meetings? Are we sure that modernized departments would need as much space? There are many demands for tax money in Aiken County, and we don't need to spend taxpayers' dollars to make property outside the city of Aiken more valuable to adjacent property owners.

Let's ask our County Council members to maintain Aiken as the county seat and be an example for us all by using the amount of money budgeted to renovate a building much in need of repair and important to Aiken's downtown. Let's hope both County and City Council members will work together to maintain our quality of life and keep existing taxpayers from bearing the burden of the cost of growth.

Jane Vaughters
Aiken
The writer is a member of Aiken City Council.