Author: Dick Mangrum

Prisma Health has partnered with the South Carolina Emergency Management Division, the South Carolina National Guard, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) and the South Carolina Hospital Association to create Regional COVID-19 Recovery Units – essentially, shared recovery units to serve all the hospitals in that region during a surge. The initial units, based in Prisma […]

Oconee County Council has begun the process to convert an emergency order to an ordinance that requires facial coverings in certain county offices and facilities.  It is not an ordinance, as explained by the county attorney, that would apply to anyone in the county outside county offices or facilities—just at those places operated by county government.  Nevertheless, the ordinance process […]

The chairman of Oconee’s Joint Regional Sewer Authority has removed from the table, at least for the next few months, any notion that its member cities should pay more for wastewater treatment.  Chairman Scott Moulder, the Seneca administrator, conceded that the idea of a 20% increase in the annual charge to his city and Walhalla and Westminster caught commissioners of […]

  The mayor and five of the city’s six councilmen agree priority one for the city is raising revenues.  And they are not talking about property taxes or utility charges.  At their annual strategy meeting, there was agreement to consider other methods to grow the city’s finances.  Mayor Brian Ramey says they include incentivizing home development, expanding garbage pickup routes, […]

South Carolina’s U-S senators, and the rest of their colleagues, are now sworn to be judges next month on whether Donald Trump in the waning days of his term bears responsibility for the insurrection at the Capitol.  South Carolina’s Tim Scott, in a pre-trial statement yesterday, said he’s unconvinced the Senate has the authority to try what now is a […]

An architect on behalf of a two-member team from the state municipal association helped rev up a crowd of interested Walhallans into imagining the future for the city’s downtown business district.  Randy Wilson has been in Walhalla only three days, but he’s sold on many of the assets that lie within the core commercial district.  He and his colleague Jenny […]

An accident late this afternoon left Walhalla’s N. Katherine Street at Tulip Drive reduced to one lane of travel both directions.  Police and fire personnel responded, but no injuries were reported.  The accident occurred around 3:50 pm.

No injuries are reported this afternoon in an accident involving a FedEx truck north of Walhalla.  The accident scene was the Austin Edwards Road where, according to a public safety responder, the small box-type truck left the roadway and hit trees.  The state patrol logged the accident around the 1 o’clock hour.

For a new 24-hour period, smaller numbers of COVID cases and deaths are reported by the South Carolina state health agency.  Just yesterday the state’s acting health director said the state, of late, has seen a plateau of the numbers. In today’s DHEC report:  new cases fell to 1,993 (28 of them are from Oconee County).  Statewide there were 24 […]