I attended the January 30, 2024, Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.
All commissioners were present.
The first agenda item was Library Board Appointments.
There were three open positions on the Library Board.
Five people applied for the positions: Jay Menard, Ed Maichel, Rebecca Sofolo, Julie Purvis, and Mari Pat Brooks. Maichel, Menard, and Sofolo were present at the meeting. They answered questions from the commissioners and explained their positions regarding whether juvenile readers should have access to reading material at the library that was age inappropriate based on its sexual content.
With three positions open, the Commission decided to have each commissioner appoint a new member. Presiding Commissioner Skelton appointed Mari Pat Brooks. Commissioner Gohagan appointed Jay Menard. Commissioner Williams appointed Rebecca Sofolo. All appointments were approved unanimously.
The next agenda item was GFI Digital Presentation.
GFI currently handles the printing and copier services for Camden County. The local GFI representative, Randy Moseley, had heard a lot of complaints from Camden County employees about the county’s IT services. As a result, they wanted to make the Commission aware that GFI also offered IT services to include cameras, phone systems, camera operation, and data server operations. The GFI representatives answered questions from the commissioners for approximately 20 minutes and asked for the Commission to keep them in mind the next time Camden County was planning on putting out a bid request.
The final agenda item was Revision of Minutes – Correct the Year on Previously Approved January 8th and 11th Minutes.
The minutes for those meetings had the wrong year on them so a new set of minutes had to be approved with the correct year.
The new minutes were approved unanimously.
After the agenda was complete, a couple approached the Commission to speak during Public Comment.
Beth Bewley-Randall and Tom Randall are the owners of 67 Cherokee Court in the Village of Four Seasons. This property has been known historically as the location of The Duck restaurant. The following is their side of the story and there’s always two sides to every story.
In 2023, their LLC (which is the owner of the property) signed a lease with another LLC to rent the restaurant location. The tenant LLC was delinquent in rental payments and they were put on a 5 day Notice of Delinquency on December 22, 2023.
The Randalls reached out to the tenant LLC numerous times regarding the delinquent rent and even offered them a 75% reduction in rent during the off season, but never received any official response. The Randalls said they were harassed by the other party and attempted to get protective orders to protect themselves. They were told by law enforcement that the harassment did not warrant a protective order.
On January 4, 2024, by direction of their attorney, they proceeded to secure the property as outlined by the signed lease. According to Beth Bewley-Randall, the lease stated that if the tenant was in default, the tenant terminated their right to the premises. It was not an eviction, but instead it was a termination of a contract between two entities. They had a locksmith change the locks while a deputy was present on site. After conferring with the deputy and his supervisor, they secured the premises.
They notified the tenant that the legal teams could confer and schedule a mutually agreeable time when the tenant could enter the building and recover any remaining property belonging to the tenant. Over the next week, Beth Bewley-Randall winterized and cleaned the building, drained the pipes and turned down the heat.
On January 18, 2024 at 11:30 a.m., the tenant notified Tom Randall that they would be entering the property in one hour with a Camden County Sheriff’s Deputy standing by.
Tom Randall was in Florida so the Randalls’ attorney responded to the restaurant and spoke with the deputy while the tenants entered the property. The attorney tried to explain to the deputy that this was a civil matter and the tenants had no legal right to enter the property. At 2:00 p.m., the deputy left, stating there was nothing for him to do there.
For the next eight hours, the tenant and eight helpers removed all equipment, furniture, glasses, kitchen pots, and pans. They used the bathrooms, poured all of the open liquor containers into the drains and thus into the septic system, shoved food down the floor drains, and advertised on Facebook that they were giving away dishes, pots, and pans for free to the public. They turned the water back on, left the faucets running, and turned the building temperature up to 80 degrees.
The building flooded and there was structural damage as a result. Beth Randall said the damage could be in the millions of dollars. The Randalls’ main complaint to the Commission was that the deputy allowed the tenant to enter the commercial property. Tom Randall explained that the tenant and his companions even had crowbars and drills.
Commissioner Skelton talked about his career experience as a locksmith and observed that it was never a good sign when the person who called for the locksmith brought a tool they could use to break into the property. The commissioners expressed sympathy for the Randalls’ situation, but it seemed there was little else they could do for them.
And that was that.
Among the Dogwoods 