ROCK HILL --
Rock Hill's leadership is considering spending more of your money - $75,000 - on another consultant.
The consultant this time - you've already paid for an airport consultant, a police consultant, a "college town" consultant and a homeless consultant - would tell city leaders, whose offices are right downtown, how to recruit employers to the downtown area.
Rock Hill has more than 700 employees, and a staff dedicated to the Old Town, economic development and more. Yet consultants are needed to figure out how to get business downtown?
But Rock Hill loves to pay consultants. Consultants methodically, slowly, at taxpayer expense, compile reports filled with bright colors and charts. They often use computers and give PowerPoint presentations.
They wear high-end clothes that cannot be bought in a place such as downtown Rock Hill because there is no place for a man to buy a suit of clothes in downtown.
"It seems like a pattern at the city, the consultants," said Rock Hill optometrist Britt Blackwell, who defeated incumbent Chairman Buddy Motz on the York County Council in the June primaries after campaigning as somebody who will be a tough sell on spending taxpayer money.
Blackwell, a Republican and former school board member, is running unopposed in November and seems assured that he will have to make decisions similar to what the city will make on this newest consultant.
The city could get some grant money to help pay the consultant - but grants come from taxes, too.
"It is clear the city needs to be more business-friendly, and downtown is vital and important," said Blackwell, a city business owner himself. "But some things, you would think the city has staff to handle it. Taxpayer dollars are hard-earned dollars.
"Sometimes you do need outside help, but there is an impression, looking at it from afar, that the city throws the tough action over to consultants, and that gets troubling to taxpayers."
There is no denying the economic recession hurt downtown and everywhere else. That is not the city's fault - even Rock Hill doesn't need a consultant to say that.
City leaders say the consultant could help Rock Hill identify the types of businesses that would make sense to target. In the past, consultants have identified businesses for business parks and areas closer to Interstate 77. Now they want a strategy for Old Town, an area that goes out about 1.5 square miles from Main Street and includes downtown.
But it shouldn't require $75,000 of taxpayer money for somebody to tell the city it needs more retail and filled storefronts to thrive, that maybe rents need to be cut as a lure, said Betsy Rock, owner of Overhead Station.
Stalwarts hang on because they believe in downtown. Rock came to Main Street with her Overhead Station boutique store from Oakland Avenue in 2001 after more than 20 years in business.
Rock is the definition of downtown development - she staked her livelihood on it.
"I took a leap of faith for downtown," Rock said. "I wanted to be a part of the growth and vitality, the revitalization of downtown. I still do. I love it - no regrets.
"But I had no idea it would be this long. It makes my knees knock a little bit about this consultant. There must be other ways to give downtown stimulation."
When city police officers needed to help county deputies barge into an apartment two years ago and arrest Phillip Watts who had shot four people in a rampage lasting weeks, they consulted nobody. They acted.
Capt. Charles Cabaniss, retired after almost 35 years of needing not one consultant to keep Rock Hill safe from shooters and dope dealers and burglars, crashed inside that apartment, and Watts will never see sunlight again.
Yet a consultant was paid $78,000 and change just last year to tell the city it needed more cops. That came after everybody already agreed the city needed more cops to handle a growing population.
A consultant made it official, though, and made a nice chart, too.
When Rock Hill firefighters found out a lady on Ebenezer Avenue was inside a burning house last winter on a cold night, they smashed the door and saved her.
Consultants all were asleep at the time, as were politicians who spend tax dollars on consultants.
Cops, firefighters, business owners - they figure out how to handle a crisis every day without consultants.
The city needed no consultant to enact a jaywalking ban downtown a couple years ago - in a move to help business - although now, there is apparently not enough business downtown.
So a consultant is needed to bring people downtown to not jaywalk.
A jaywalker Thursday would have seen some thriving businesses, and we are all thankful for each one of them.
But a jaywalker - yes, I jaywalked, at least seven times Thursday, and didn't get a ticket - saw several storefronts with rental advertisements for real estate agents hoping to fill buildings fronted with plenty of empty glass.
