MAYESVILLE, S.C. — Confusion over funding, canceled city council meetings and lack of communication from government leadership in one Sumter County town has residents looking for answers.
Mayesville has a population of 556 as of the 2021 Census data.
“Mayesville back in the day was very, very popular. It was a town that you can be proud of, you know what I mean? Had stores, restaurants, everything,” native Katharina Carolina said. “Everybody was very, very happy as one big happy family.”
Carolina grew up in the town with her brother Jerry.
“It was family; I mean, basically, we all knew each other, and we grew up together, all the people,” Jerry recalled. “We had a great time until most of us left, and after that, the town went down and never came back.”
Carolina said she moved back to Mayesville in 2007 and has been here ever since. While Carolina said she served on the town council for one term from 2012 to 2015, now, Carolina said she has no idea what’s happening with her local government.
“I do not have the facts as to what's happening now,” Carolina explained.
She’s not the only one. Utah native Chris Brown took over as mayor after winning 55% of the votes in the November election after moving to the town three years prior.
“My wife and family, five kids, we lived in Payson, Utah for 30-something years. I took a job there in high school,” Brown said.
He said he worked as a teacher and coach at the high school before becoming the assistant athletic director at Utah Valley University. Then, Brown said he went on the road to speak professionally around the nation in juvenile detention centers, prisons and school districts around the country.
Brown and his wife visited Sumter when they moved their daughter to the area and were impressed by the architecture and community in Mayesville.
“I'm a Utah boy. Sixty years there, born and raised. [My wife is] from Minnesota and then transplant to Utah, and we packed everything up, sold everything that we had, and here we are,” Brown said. “We love the small towns. We came from a small town, not this size, but we came from a small town. The people here are incredible. We have loved every minute. Feel like we're friends and family with everybody.”
Since taking office, Brown said he’s run into some obstacles. Not familiar with local government or politics, Brown said he had a lot of questions, like: “Who are the employees? Where does the revenue come in for the city? What is the former budget? Those kinds of things.”
Brown said he doesn’t have any answers. From the former mayor to the clerk to the three voting council members, Brown said he’s faced resistance.
“I don't know if it's education. I don't know if it's misunderstanding. I don't know if it's trust issues. We're having a struggle from old administration to new,” Brown said. “We’re struggling probably a little bit in just understanding what our roles are.”
Part of the issues are stemming from access to buildings, Brown said. He has access to the town hall building, which is dilapidated, its white walls now turned black with mold. Brown said he found out that the buildings that had been used in the past for council meetings are not actually owned by the city but by a nonprofit called “Town of Mayesville Community Development Corporation (TMCDC).”
Per TMCDC by-laws, which News19 acquired from Brown, the nonprofit was to be managed by a Board of Directors made up of nine voting and one non-voting director.
“The five current members of the Town of Mayesville Council are permanent board members,” the bylaws read. “The terms of the remaining 4 voting Directors shall be three years.”
But in a Mayesville Town Council meeting on April 11, 2023, meeting minutes News19 acquired from Brown show that the council voted to change this.
“The CDC board will elect their own officers and the CDC board will operate totally independent of the Town of Mayesville,” the minutes said.
Because of this, Brown said he only has access to an office, which he shares with the town clerk.
News19 contacted the clerk, who said she and Brown were not able to use the space at the same time.
“We need assistance. I would welcome any assistance from anybody throughout the state that would be willing to assist us. I wonder how many small towns are going through the same thing throughout the United States. It’s just not the South,” Brown said. “I didn't know things like this were going on. I didn't know that small towns were struggling like this. I didn't know that there was this turmoil going on and why things don't happen in small town and why towns are dying across the United States. So this has opened my eyes.”
Brown said he hopes to get help from an attorney and the Municipal Association of South Carolina (MASC) on this transition.
News19 contacted MASC, which said that typically, the former mayor will help the new mayor transition into the role, although it said there is no state law outlining how this transfer of power should happen.
MASC does, however, have an 18-page guide that outlines the forms and powers of different roles in mayor-council forms of government like Mayesville.
“That's the side that we know,” Jerry Carolina said, having attended the most recent council meeting, which was canceled after council members allegedly left early. “We don't know what the other side is. You know, until the other side tells us what they're doing or not doing, then we don't know what to think.”
News19 contacted the former mayor, who declined an interview. We also reached out to all three voting council members but didn’t get a response as of this story’s airing at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.
As for the future, Brown said he’s hoping to implement changes based on feedback from community members once any internal issues are resolved.
“They want change. They want things to happen,” Brown said about the residents. “And we're starting to create a communication tree to where people are informed now. They know they have a voice, they know that they can speak, they can come into a meeting and they can present their things that are not working in the city right now.”
Brown said he compiled a list of changes he’s heard residents request, including a grocery store, the presence of a police force, and a laundromat, among other items.
“They would love the convenience of being able to just drive downtown and be at a grocery store. I agree. I don't want to go to Sumter. And not saying anything bad about Sumter, I just don't want to travel that far,” Brown said. “Number two was a really interesting one, and that was a presence of a police force. And I wouldn't have thought that, so I'm doing a little bit of research there. I think the sheriff's department is doing an amazing job right now. They've stepped up. They've called me and talked to me about the different things that are going on, how they'll work with us.”
To accomplish this, Brown said he wants to find a way to generate more money.
“First of all, money. It's tough to create revenue in a small town,” Brown said about his priorities. “There's literally probably three or four businesses that we have in town. And so you say, ‘Okay, let's bring in people so that we can have tax money, but what are they coming for?”
Brown said he hopes that attracting more people and businesses to the area will go hand in hand. To do that, Brown says he’s working on a plan to build an industrial park.
“Not a park to play in, but a business park where we create the infrastructure, and then people that want to be a mechanic or want to run a grocery store that have a desire to do those kinds of things, we hire those kinds of people,” Brown said.