Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Spartanburg City Council met on September 28, 2026, for a regular meeting that included public comments, proclamations, an update on the International Festival, board appointments, a detailed employee engagement survey presentation, staff updates on a high-profile arrest and a zoning rewrite initiative, and council member updates. The meeting was opened with the Pledge of Allegiance, and the agenda was approved as amended.
The meeting adjourned without a recorded time.
Let us bring the City of Spartanburg City Council meeting to order. We're going to stand for a moment of silence and be led by the Pledge of Allegiance. Mayor Protein, do you mind leading us in the pledge? And to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Second. All in favor? Any double? Aye. Any that opposed? So now we have the approval of the agenda of the agenda for the September twenty-eighth, twenty twenty-six City Council Mending with amended second. All in favor? Aye. Any that opposed. No, um forward, just give us your name, and uh after you give us your name, you'll have two minutes to state your comment. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, uh, members of council. My name is James A. Jones. As we celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, um, we celebrate the contributions, the presence, the station that they have here in our community. Um, and we're gonna celebrate with you, hopefully on October 3rd at the um celebration and the park. One thing the city and county can do to help some of our undocumented um foreign nationals is that we work with the local police departments, we look work with the local prosecutors and the local judges in developing a consistent and comprehensive process for which folks who become victim to crime that may be eligible for a U visa can know what that process is, know where to turn, and know what that process looks like. I think it needs to be consistent because oftentimes something might start in the Sit City, end up being detained in the county and then you know, prosecuted by county and and judges and attorneys. So it needs to be one consistent process. I haven't yet in years of doing this, found that we have anything published, and folks have to start over every time I bring a client up, we have to start over as if nobody has ever presented one of these cases to both the city and the county. My firm can help, others can help. We stand able to do that. And something else I'll put out there with the work that we're doing over at USC Upstate, but they'll central and other groups here. We might end with um Judge Beatty. It might be a good time to start having a conversation about establishing a immigration law clinic based right there at USC Upstate, and working with the local judges and attorneys so that anyone who goes into especially that court in Charlotte will have a representation and have some of our local students and law students and other attorneys involved to make sure that everybody from Spartanburg and in the Carolinas can have good representation, and we hope that you would help see that happen. Thank you. Thank you, sir. We have no other public comments that were submitted. Thank you, Miss Lindsay. All right, proclamation. We have two, as you can hear, one was just added, but we also have a proclamation declaring October 3rd, 2026 International Festival Day in the City of Spartanburg. And we have a few folks that's gonna come down for the reading of the proclamation. Come on, right? Come on this way. Come on, this don't have back here. Come on back to the score. Because we're gonna get a nice picture right here just a little bit.