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A city across the river from downtown Columbia is up against the clock to finish a deal it needs to hold onto a $10 million grant to alleviate flooding issues in one of its key neighborhoods. Negotiations have caused tensions to flare between the mayor and some members of the City Council.

Cayce’s City Council in a special meeting Wednesday approved an agreement to purchase an easement from the Congaree Bluff subdivision, a necessary step to move forward with a large stormwater and drainage project in the city’s Avenues neighborhood. City staff have until Sept. 19 to finalize the agreement with the subdivision’s homeowners’ association.

The grant to do the work came to the city in June 2023 through the S.C. Infrastructure Investment Plan, overseen by the state’s Rural Infrastructure Authority. Cayce Mayor Elise Partin said the authority was owed an update Thursday showing that the city is on its way to completing the project, which is why the City Council had to hold a special meeting to approve the Congaree Bluff agreement.

Ahead of the Wednesday meeting, Deputy City Manager Michael Conley said Cayce is looking good to complete the work on schedule and fulfill the terms required to receive the grant money.

“We are about 60% in on the engineering,” he said. “We have some right-of-way and some easements to get so we can get some of the water pipes to the river.”

But there is a time crunch for the city to get started with construction and to complete the project, as the terms of the grant stipulate that all of the money has to be spent by December 2026.

The terms of the grant also stipulate that the project has to be completed as submitted, so if the city can’t get the easements it requires, amendments would have to be submitted to the Rural Infrastructure Authority, Conley said, which could put a drag on Cayce getting the work done in time.

Securing the easement going through Congaree Bluff is required to do the work as planned.

Congaree Bluff Subdivision Map

“It is one of the easements that we do have to get,” Conley said. “It’s going across their common space that’s next to their neighborhood.”

Partin said there are eight other easements needed to move forward with the stormwater project, all of which have been secured.

Cayce has been working to solve drainage and stormwater issues in the Avenues for a while now, with Conley noting that localized flooding is common in the neighborhood.

A $750,000 grant allowed a fix for a small portion of the Avenues, which was completed last year. The $10 million will allow the city to tackle the whole neighborhood, which essentially extends from 12th Street to the Congaree River between Knox Abbott Drive and Holland Avenue, Conley said.

Partin noted that funding has been a critical struggle as the city has looked to address issues in an area filled with county and state roads when Cayce is the lowest-taxing entity of those three stakeholders.

“We in this decade are saying we’ve got to really figure out how we navigate decades-old infrastructure issues,” Partin said.

The mayor noted frustration with one of her fellow City Council members, Mayor Pro Tem Tim James, when discussing the difficulty to secure the Congaree Bluff easement. The tension continues a pattern of animosity between Partin and the rest of the City Council .

“I have no respect for Tim James,” the mayor said. “So, you know, that always makes everything precarious.”

“It always comes down to Tim James can’t handle anyone not liking him,” she added. “So any conversations, any negotiations, have to not include anything that might make somebody not like Tim James.”

James, who is also the president and CEO of the Greater Cayce West Columbia Chamber of Commerce, said that he didn’t feel like an outlier in discussions related to the Congaree Bluff easement. He added that he didn’t want to jump to using eminent domain to force the subdivision to comply with the project.

“I’ve always been very cautious of an overreach of government,” said James, who lives in the Avenues and represents the district on the City Council. “I’ve been very vocal about making sure that if we ever have to be viewed as overreaching, that we have done everything that we possibly can to be able to work with the citizens before that takes place.”

City Councilman Hunter Sox echoed this sentiment, decrying Partin’s comments about James.

Sox said he’s been meeting with residents about drainage issues in the area for a while and “about a month ago, attended a meeting with Tim with the neighborhood association, and staff’s been working real well with the HOA and the residents over there.”

“We’re pretty confident, staff’s confident that, and so is the homeowners’ association president, that they’ll be able to get the votes so we can come to a decision,” Sox added. “I know for a fact since I’ve been there, but I don’t know ever that there’s been a precedent set where we’re just going to go take people’s property without asking them, with it being such a big chunk of land.”

Sox said one lesson the city can glean from the process with Congaree Bluff is the need to begin such discussions earlier so they don’t happen right up against the deadlines for a project.

“It’s going to affect people all the way up the avenues that have had drainage issues,” he said.