The Charleston City Council held its regular meeting on May 4, 2026, at 7:00 PM in Council Chambers. Twenty-five members were present, with two absences excused. The meeting included public comments, proclamations, committee reports, and several unanimous votes. Mayor Amy Shuler Goodwin presided.
Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much to everyone for being here this evening. Council will please come to order. Members will please rise while Councilwoman Kearns leads us in prayer. Almighty creator, help us to remember that you created all people in your image. We thank you for the astonishing variety and race of races and cultures in the world, our state, and in our dear city. Each and every one, regardless of their history, the color of their skin, the manner of their dress, their choice of religion or their gender with which they identify are all precious in your eyes. Each and every one enriches our lives as we speak to put aside our differences and fears and learn about each other as we continuously widen our circles of friendship. Show us our your presence in those who differ most from us until our knowledge of your love is made perfect in our love for all your children. Through your spirit, show us the unity you have created in the midst of diversity. We confess that in our brook brokenness as human beings, we are diversity or a diversity and a source of all alienation, injustice, opposition, and wounding. Give us new strength so that we may build places of belonging to create a community for all of us to share their gifts, to know that each of us is loved, to help each of us to see the light of your spirit and all that we serve. Let us remember that each of us is loved, each of us is willed, and each of us is necessary. Make strong in our hearts what unites us, build bridges across that what divides us and unite us and rejoice in our diversity. Amen. The clerk will please read the journal. Madam President. Yes, Madam Mayor, I request unanimous consent to dispense with the reading of the journal. There's a motion on the floor we dispensed with the reading of the journal here, and you're seeing no objections. The reading of the journal is dispensed with. Fabulous council member will help you. Yes. Um Madam Mayor, Council. I am the Whitfroes back here asked me to speak on their behalf this evening. They live on Crestland Drive, and I live at the bottom of Crescent Drive work here at uh Creslin and Garrison come together. For a lot of years now, we've had flooding off of the hillside at the end of Crestlin where it's a dead end. Over a year ago, I had emailed the city engineer um to see what could be done about all the flooding and the water runoff because after um the board put the new school up there, it got worse. And as of today, we still do not have any answers. There's a lot of water that pools in their yard. Um's yard gravel gets washed out. Um pivots like this big and is deep between the property owner's property and the street. Sometimes they're afraid to run over it in case you know they bust a tire. So I would like to see if we can open a dialogue, a round table discussion with the city engineer's office. What we need to do, because if you look at Creslin and you go up Creslin on both sides after Earl Street, there are no drains. So what we need a clear, distinctive um answer if is it the city's responsibility to put a drain in, and if so, where? Where does that end and begin? Or is it the property owners? Because these folks cannot go through another year of heavy rains. And honestly, it's a it's an issue for the city of replacing gravel all the time. Um just wondering in their yards getting flooded and being told, well, you need to buy hay and put like 16, 20 barrels of hay in your yard, and that'll cur uh curve the flooding issue. That's not an answer. That's not an answer because then what are they gonna do when it rains? Go out there and and pick up the hay and it's gonna smell and everything else. We need a definitive answer. We need a discussion. Um so if we can work on getting that, that would be wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm going to make sure Andrew grabs numbers. If you're not seeing for the whole meeting or the couple who's with you, if they don't, we're just gonna quick and get some phone numbers.