Rock Hill leaders announced their choices Monday for a 10-person group charged with finding a solution to train blockages in the downtown area.
Two businessmen, two neighborhood leaders, a church representative and a Norfolk Southern railroad official are among those picked for the group, which will hold a series of public meetings over six to eight months to explore answers to a decades-old dilemma.
The group will try to reach a consensus on what many locals perceive as a conflict between downtown business interests and a pair of working-class mill villages - Aragon and Industrial Mill.
Downtown boosters want an end to the gridlock caused by long lines of stopped freight cars. They support a plan that could shift train-switching operations away from downtown and closer to the neighborhoods, which lie to the northeast.
Neighbors fear the outcome will shift the problem closer to their homes.
"The city had a plan geared toward business interests in the Textile Corridor," said group member Leslie Moma, president of the Aragon Mill neighborhood association. "There's nothing wrong with that, but there's also interests in our part of the urban core.
"The mill villages are part of the fabric of Rock Hill. We need to make sure they have a voice."
Train blockages took on added visibility after the city's recent purchase of the former Bleachery textile site. Crews are tearing down much of the property along White Street to make way for future redevelopment with homes and stores.
The sought-after revitalization can't flourish as long as freight cars routinely block streets, downtown business owners and supporters say.
City officials want a federally mandated "quiet zone" between downtown and the neighborhoods so train engineers aren't allowed to lay on their horns as they rumble through town.
"I hope we can find a solution beneficial to everybody," said Josh Gray of the Industrial Mill neighborhood. "If the goal is to resurrect the Old Town area, make it nicer, it's not going to happen by expanding the tracks inside of a neighborhood."
Tom Roper, a local attorney and planning commissioner, will serve as chairman in an ex-officio capacity, meaning he won't vote in the group's deliberations. City Councilman Jim Reno and County Councilman Chad Williams will also serve but not vote. They represent the area.
Councilman Kevin Sutton opposed the final choices. Sutton has called the effort a "dog-and-pony show" intended to create a facade of consensus around the city's pre-ordained agenda.
There was no public discussion on the topic at Monday night's City Council meeting. Council members had already talked about names of appointees during a closed-door executive session.
S.C. law allows, but does not require, names to be discussed in private as long as a final decision is made through a public vote.
