‘A very bright future.’ Chester County government head talks 6 months on the job
When Wylie Frederick was appointed as interim Chester County administrator last fall, he made history as the first Black man to hold the position.
His Sept. 25 appointment followed the suspension of former administrator Kenneth “Shane” Stuart. Stuart was indicted on charges of manufacturing and trafficking methamphetamine and other crimes, The Herald previously reported.
SC Gov. Henry McMaster appointed Frederick as Stuart’s interim replacement. McMaster did not say in his statement why he chose Frederick, but Frederick served a short tenure as an appointed magistrate at the Chester County Magistrate Court. He was replaced in 2019 by S.C. Sen. Mike Fanning.
Most of Frederick’s career has been in education, as a teacher and principal. Frederick is currently a preacher at Faith and Love Christian Center in Chester. He also teaches at More Than Conquers College, a private post-secondary educational extension of Charlotte’s Victory Christian Center.
As county administrator, Frederick tasks include running county council, preparing the county budget, carrying out the policies and ordinances, overseeing the daily operations and appointing non-elected county department heads.
Frederick said it his policy to have an “open door.”
After meetings with concerned citizens (“putting out fires,” he said), he caught up with The Herald to talk about his first six months in office and Chester’s future. Answers have been edited for brevity.
This was a big jump for you from your life preaching and being an educator, and this entire process of being appointed happened very quickly. How has that been?
Coming from a totally different background in education, there’s a lot to learn. It’s a lot for me to learn the terminology, processes, ordinances.
It’s been tough. But I can say this, that I do have a great staff, and they do their homework, they do their research. And I told them upfront that it’s OK for them to tell me no, because the ordinance says this or says that.
Six months into the job, how do you think your background has helped you?
It’s about managing people, it’s about managing events, it’s about managing activities. Being the principal of a very large school with over 1,000 students, 70 teachers, it’s about managing people. So that definitely helped me.
And as a judge, you know, you look at the laws and ordinances, and you have to hear both sides and draw conclusions and make judgments. And we have to do that all the time with the government.
And then, of course, being a pastor, it’s about loving and caring for people and helping them any way you can to make life and the quality of life better for people. So that’s the way I view my job.
So I feel like, all of those have really helped me to be the administrator that I am, hopefully, to increase the citizens’ trust in government.
What is the council doing to try to build trust?
One of my goals is to educate people about certain laws and ordinances, and what procedures look like in terms of how to make these things happen. A lot is education and being out there talking to people, and people coming in to talk to me. Build trust, build respect. And that’s the type of government that I want to be portrayed here.
There’s a lot of new industry coming to Chester. What does the future of Chester look like to you?
As far as economic development, it’s looking very good.
In fact, I was talking to Robert Long, our economic development director. And he told me about a list of, not the names of companies because they don’t reveal those at this point, but potential projects with hopes of locating here.
But as far as economic development, along with the housing developments that are coming along in Chester, I think we do have a very bright future.
What’s one thing you would want to say to people in Chester?
I would like to say, thanks so much for the support that people have shown to me. People have come by to see me (at) different places around town. I really appreciate that.
One thing that I do want to stress and that I will do here is to educate the people. I want to do some public service announcements to help people to understand government like road maintenance, what do you do if you feel like your road needs to be paved? Or you got potholes what what do you do? I want to have videos to help people to understand the process. Like, how our taxes are assessed. There’s a process and how that’s done. And we’re working on that making sure it’s fair and as equitable as possible.
There are some other things that I would like to do as well. One is to increase collaboration between the municipalities. I’ve met with the mayors of the different municipalities, and we’re planning on meeting on an ongoing basis with regular scheduled meetings.
And of course, we want to finalize 2014 sales tax projects, as well as get started on 2020. We’ve already been looking at project managers.
We’ve been doing some staff development. I want to increase diversity in employment here to include people from all races. We’re looking for qualified people. You talked about building trust, when citizens see people that look like them, they see people got similar interests, they respond.
