County likely to close down Lower Richland flood recovery center soon

More than four months after Richland County opened the Lower Richland Operations Center to help handle residents’ post-flood needs – and two months since the last person walked in for help – the county likely will soon it close down.

A full-time county employee has been manning the operations center off Lower Richland Boulevard where, since Christmas week, no one has come for flood-related assistance.

In the six weeks prior to Christmas, 11 people visited the center, which shares a space with the Lower Richland sheriff’s substation and has provided one-on-one assistance for any manner of flood-related help requests, from connecting people with volunteer organizations to helping them fill out applications for recovery funds.

County Council will consider at its March 1 meeting a recommendation from its Blue Ribbon Committee flood recovery advisory group to shut down the center along with the county-operated flood donations warehouse on Shop Road.

The donated supplies warehouse, also meant to serve post-flood needs for individuals and organizations assisting with flood relief, has mostly housed items such as clothing, diapers, books and toys and in recent weeks has drawn minimal traffic, according to Mike King, the county’s flood recovery chief. A part-time county employee has been manning the warehouse, King said.

“We don’t believe the county government is operating this as well as the other organizations,” assistant county administrator Kevin Bronson said at a Blue Ribbon Committee meeting Thursday. “We’re not good at soliciting donations. And if we were soliciting donations, we would then be competing with the other folks who are soliciting donations.”

“I don’t see a need for what the county has been doing. We kind of took that role on,” said Rachel Larratt, a member of the Blue Ribbon Committee who runs the South Beltline-Gills Creek Community Relief Foundation. “We’ve been serving more people with more items than have been coming out of that goods warehouse.”

The functions served by the center and the supply warehouse are now being funneled to a consolidated case management system of volunteer organizations. The items remaining in the county-run warehouse likely will be redistributed to volunteer organizations.

This story was originally published February 18, 2016 at 6:12 PM with the headline "County likely to close down Lower Richland flood recovery center soon."