Politics & Government

Irmo Town Council Candidate Profile: Josh Smith

Josh Smith is one of two Irmo residents running in the March 6 special election to fill a vacant seat on Irmo Town Council.

On March 6, registered voters in Irmo will vote for a candidate to fill an unexpired term on Irmo Town Council.

Running to fill the seat that was left vacant after in November, are Josh Smith, an information technology consultant, and former council member Kathy Condom, an office manager at a real estate firm. 

For the November race, we asked all candidates several questions to help our readers when deciding his or her vote. 

Find out what's happening in Irmo-Seven Oakswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Today's profile is on Josh Smith. Check back later for an update to our profile on Kathy Condom. 

 

Find out what's happening in Irmo-Seven Oakswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Name: Josh Smith

Age: 31

Occupation: Information technology consultant

Years on Council (if any): This is Smith’s first time running for council.

Prior Experience (any governing board): None

Family: Married, wife Melissa

Education: Bachelor’s degree in business administration-management information systems from the University of West Florida

Web site: http://www.smithforirmo.com/

 

Patch:  Why are you running or why should people vote for you?

Smith: “I went to council meetings and didn’t like what I saw. I felt like there was a lot of time spent on issues that nobody in the community cares about and that nobody in the community asked about. When a group of us showed up with an issue we were almost ignored. I just didn’t think that’s how council needed to be.  I have a different take on the way things should go not having been on the council. Mostly being a citizen trying to work with the council I kind of have a different way of looking at it. I don’t have any ties essentially with people on the council so I’m not necessarily going to vote with anybody because I’m friends with them or anything like that.  I’m going to vote based on what I think is best for the town. If you have an idea I want to hear the idea and if you convince me that it’s the best thing for the town, then I’ll vote for it. I’m not going to vote with you because I’m your friend or you’ve worked out some deal with me. I’m going to vote with you based on what I think is best for the town.”

“It’s gotten personal. I think both sides have valid points but it’s gone beyond that. It seems to be a lot more personal now. I kind of want to take some of the tension out of that. If there’s some people on the council who you don’t automatically have their vote then you have to go back to the way it should be and discuss it, and try to prove that what you want is the best thing.”

 

Patch: What issues do you see Irmo facing in the next 5 years?

Smith: “We obviously have problems with code enforcement, people not keeping up with their property or the quality of the roads in some of the subdivisions. There are a lot of things with how nice we want the town to be. There’s a problem with code enforcement. The cops that are actually doing that can’t necessarily do their jobs that effectively because if they do make a case against someone who is actively doing something that’s bad for the town it’s really hard for them to actually get it into the court and have anything ever happen. Crime is potentially an issue. I know Harbison (Boulevard) isn’t technically Irmo but when we had that shooting not too long ago I think people worried about that. I think council is focused on all the wrong things.”

 

Patch: What’s your stance on the Okra Strut Festival?

Smith: “The Okra Strut lasts two days out of the year. Why on Earth are we talking about it all the time? I really want to take a meeting or two, finish up the Okra Strut and not hear about it.  People have festivals all the time without all this fighting. It needs to make a profit. It needs to be more transparent. The whole deal with the finances not matching up with the town’s (numbers), what do we have to do to fix that? Let’s fix it so at the end of the year it’s very simple to know how much money it made and how much was spent. It’s not rocket science. We really shouldn’t be spending all this time fighting about it.  My first thought is the wife of a councilman getting paid doesn’t sound great. If she’s going to do a good job and everybody on the commission votes for her, I don’t have an issue about it. It probably should’ve been a non-issue from the start. I think there needs to be some fundamental reworking of how the finances work or how the finances are tracked so it’s much easier to know how much it makes or loses every year. I’m really tired of hearing about it and most people I talked to don’t care. I think we’re talking about a vocal minority that really cares about the festival.”

 

Patch: What are your thoughts about having chickens in your backyard?

Smith: “Chickens were the reason I got involved with council in the first place but there are more issues right now that are more important that need to be taken care of first. I’m not going to bring it up the first meeting. There are other things that need to be taken care of. If we get some of these other issues resolved then yes, I’m going to bring that back up. I feel there was a lot of misinformation on the council when we talked about that. I still have people who talked to me all the time about it. These are Irmo residents that are interested in it. Eventually I would like to come back to that.”

 

Patch: What are your thoughts on Irmo growth (zoning, annexation, etc.) ?

Smith: “Irmo is a small town and that’s what is good about it. I don’t think we should be trying to annex anything in order to grow. I think we should only annex stuff if it’s going to better suite the town like it is now. We’re kind of bound by the lake and the rivers and stuff like that. If there’s annexation that’s beneficial to the town, then I would support it but I’m not going to support annexation just for the sake of annexation.”

 

Patch: What’s your stance on financial spending? Conservative or liberal?

Smith: “I think that over the last 20 years (council) has done a really good job at managing the town’s funds and not having property tax. What I fear is that we’re losing sight of that in the craziness for the Okra Strut. The fact that we’re trying to dive into spending $500,000 on a piece of property and then whatever else we have to spend to actually renovate that sight, and get it ready and yearly maintenance cost. That’s all coming out of the reserve fund, which from what I understand we’ve had to pull from the reserve fund to meet our budget. We are in a good place but we need to guard that. We need to be careful about what we go blowing money on. I liked Kathy Condom’s idea of having the event at Saluda Shoals Park. Everything we need to do the Okra Strut it seems like Saluda Shoals already has.”

 

Patch: Do you think Irmo needs a new town park?

Smith: “I think we should open up our existing park for more uses. It’s pretty but who uses it?  I don’t know if we’re getting the full use out of the park we have now to see why we would need another park. It’s (the new proposed park) obviously for the Okra Strut but no one will say that. If it did come to the point where we couldn’t have it at Saluda or something like that and people were set on having (another) park then it needs to pay for itself. Maybe a dog park like at Saluda Shoals. Maybe have facilities that can be rented out throughout the year.”

 

Patch: Anything else you want to add?

Smith: “I would like to see more people at town council meetings. It helps to keep everything a little more civil when there’s a room full of people watching. I would love to see in the next election after this one a whole group of people running who’ve never run before.”


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