By admin Two Midlands towns are taking steps to change the ways their communities are run, and they are going about it in very different ways.
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In the town of Irmo, voters will be asked this November to approve a change in town government by referendum, moving from a council-led model to one that empowers a town manager to run Irmo’s day-to-day affairs. Up Interstate 26 in the town of Chapin, a power struggle is underway under a different style of government, between the town’s “strong” mayor and the town council trying to exert its own authority.
The contrast shows how South Carolina’s towns and cities can operate under very different rules, often with very different results.
The state allows municipalities to operate under three forms of government, as explained by the S.C. Municipal Association — and all three are in evidence in the suburbs northwest of Columbia.
- Irmo currently operates under the council form, which nominally puts the town council as a whole in charge of town operations, like setting a budget and hiring and firing town employees.
- Voters on Nov. 3 will decide whether to move to a council-manager form, where the town council still sets policy, but the town is run by a professional, nonpartisan town manager. The manager oversees town staff and acts as the go-between with council and town department heads.
Irmo leaders say the vote won’t change how the town operates so much as solidify how it already operates.
“The reality is we have operated as council-manager forever, longer than I’ve been involved with the town,” Mayor Bill Danielson previously told The State, pointing to ordinances that vest most of council’s nominal authority in the town administrator already.
Irmo Town Administrator Jim Crosland, who previously worked as the city manager in nearby Cayce, said town residents wouldn’t notice a difference in town operations, but if the referendum passes, it would bring the town more in line with how it’s actually run.
- Chapin, on the other hand, operates under the third form of government, mayor-council or “strong mayor.” Here an elected mayor is empowered to act as the town’s chief executive, running operations directly, while the town council (including the mayor) votes on ordinances and sets policy overall.
Until late last year, Chapin had a similar structure to Irmo, with Town Administrator Nicholle Burroughs overseeing much of the town’s operations day-to-day. But unlike in a council-manager government, an administrator is a subordinate town employee to the mayor.
When Mayor Bill Mitchell was elected in November 2025, he eliminated the administrator position and took over administration of the town as a full-time mayor.
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Since leaving her job in Chapin, Burroughs has moved down the road and become deputy administrator in Irmo.
Mitchell has disagreed with Chapin’s town council over his management style. In recent weeks, council members have voted no confidence in Mitchell’s leadership, and passed measures to allow the council to hire and direct a town attorney outside the mayor’s control.
At a town council meeting on Thursday, Mitchell said his council colleagues’ maneuvers were going against the spirit of Chapin’s adopted form of government.
“You can’t ordinance your way into a council form of government,” the mayor said.
South Carolina law requires that a town adopt one of the three forms of government by a voter referendum, just like Irmo is pursuing now. Chapin adopted its current mayor-council form in a townwide-vote in 1976, according to the town website.
So far, Chapin’s town council has not moved to change the town’s form of government outright, thought Mitchell suggested at Thursday’s meeting that the council may want to try in the future.
Not every attempt to get voter approval for that kind of change succeeds. Back in 2013, then-Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin tried to get the capital city to approve a change from council-manager to strong mayor when Benjamin was at the height of his popularity in the city.
He handily won re-election to a second term that year, but a separate referendum on changing Columbia’s form of government went down to defeat by 14 percentage points. Opponents warned that it would place “absolute power” in the hands of the mayor.
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