By admin 
Chapin’s town council is seeking professional help.
Following a series of high-profile clashes between Mayor Bill Mitchell and the other four members of Chapin Town Council, all five local elected officials are headed to a training session with representatives of the S.C. Municipal Association.
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The council will meet for a public training session on Sept. 29 with Municipal Association Field Services Manager Rob Wolfe, council members decided at the end of a meeting on Thursday.
Mitchell characterized the session as a part of town elected officials’ “continuing education” in their roles running the town.
“I have invited all of the (municipal department) directors to attend this meeting,” Mitchell said. “It’s open to the public, so you can sit in those chairs (in the gallery) and listen and learn with us.”
The meeting will guide local officials through their powers and responsibilities under state law and Chapin’s form of government, using a brochure published by the association, Mitchell said.
Such training isn’t unusual for part-time elected officials serving in municipal government. But in Chapin, where Mitchell and the rest of the town council have publicly clashed over the mayor’s management of the town and the council’s ability to check him.
Chapin Town Council passed a motion of no confidence in Mitchell’s leadership in July, and have pushed through a string of measures to try to curtail his powers since, often over Mitchell’s objections and threats of legal action. Thursday’s town council meeting passed largely without fireworks, but a heated meeting a week earlier broke up when the rest of the council walked out on Mitchell.
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The town council voted unanimously to undergo training at its Aug. 20 meeting.
Members of the town council have clashed with the mayor over what they say is his tendency to make decisions without consulting or informing the rest of the council. After Mitchell contracted with several attorneys over the past year on various issues, the council voted Sept. 8 to hire attorney Ryan Hicks of Columbia as Chapin’s town attorney.
But Mitchell said the decision encroached on his statutory attorney as a “strong mayor” to manage town employees as he sees fit. He said he would refuse to pay Hicks despite the council’s vote.
The disagreement comes as Chapin faces a lawsuit from Lexington County over Mitchell’s refusal to issue more than 600 sewer taps to a proposed development in the former county technology park at Brighton. That refusal has jeopardized a $20 million sale of the site for a new housing development, the county contends in its suit, and could violate a contract to serve Brighton signed by a previous administration in 2015.
Lexington County is asking a judge to order Chapin to release the taps or pay the county $20.4 million in damages.
Mitchell has said the town doesn’t have the capacity at its current wastewater plant to serve the planned development and other new houses requesting municipal sewer service, which extends to many customers outside the limits of the town of some 2,000 north of Lake Murray.
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