Today I had another conversation with Mrs. Nicholson in the SC State Housing Office and I learned that tomorrow (Tuesday, May 21) the “2013 Point Scores” of all applicants this year for tax credits will be posted.

That link will appear tomorrow when you visit this page

I have been told many of the proposals in the competition have a perfect score, this year a 186, and the Authority will utilize the tie breaker criteria outlined on page 11 of the 2013 QAP in order to break the ties. The Authority is still in the process of underwriting the developments and plans to make final award announcements in mid-late June.

As I previously shared weeks ago , there are 65 applicants across the state; but only 16 or 17 will be funded. Today I learned that of those 65, aprpoximately 20 to 23 are in the “GP” category and in that “GP”category, only 4 or 5 will be funded.

While nothing is certain, based on the community’s opposition – and based on no letters of support from local officials, I feel that the Bickley Manor project will not be one of the 4 or 5 from the group that is funded.

Again, just my feeling here, should the project not get tax credit funding, I do not believe the developer will have an interest in continuing with the project.

I want to thank each of you who has written, called, and emailed my office. More importantly, you contacted the SC State Housing Authority to voice your concern as well.

It’s my hope and belief that in mid-June, we will see that this project will not be awarded tax-credits and therefore will not proceed.

As always, come back to NathansNews.com often and stay informed and share your opinions, advice, concerns.

My Education Friends in District Five,

On Teacher Appreciation Day, I wanted to simply say “Thank You” for what each of you do developing our leaders of tomorrow!

As many of you know, my mom was a teacher for more than 30 years. Growing up, I saw first-hand the dedication and hard work teachers have and do for their students. With Sarah, JC and Emma all in District Five, I also see every day how fortunate they are to learn from men and women who care about them and are preparing them for a bright future!

For several years, I returned my legislative salary back to our community – mainly through scholarships to deserving seniors in our area. Those seniors have now graduated from state universities and colleges and are working in our state or serving our country in the military. Each one of them represents our community well in their own special way!

I continue to enjoy visiting with our School Improvement Councils and especially your classrooms around the district! Please call or write anytime I can help or visit you and your students – or, let me know your advice and opinions on educational issues before the South Carolina General Assembly.

While today and this week are dedicated to you; you continue to dedicate each and every day to our children. For that, I and others are grateful and again say “thanks!”

I hope you’ll continue to stay in touch with what’s going on in the State House and our community by visiting my website (www.nathansnews.com) and sharing your thoughts on my regular posts.

Nathan Ballentine
House of Representatives, District 71
Richland and Lexington Counties
320B Blatt Building
Columbia, SC 29221
803-734-2969
www.nathansnews.com

With the recent incidents around Chapin and Irmo , I wanted to be sure everyone knew our Richland County Community Action Team contact!

Deputy Mo Gabr can be reached at 513-9622. As you can see in the picture above, he covers from Piney Grove out to Chapin and had visited several Chapin communities recently. If you’d like him to visit your neighborhood HOA, please give him a call. If you are going to be away and would like your house watched, give him a call.

To learn more about the Richland County Community Action Team, click here .

Obviously, please call 911 anytime there is an emergency.

I attended the Grand Opening of the Irmo Farmers Market this morning and really feel good about this endeavor. The town has partnered with Brown Box Veggies to bring local farmers and artisans together for our commuinty to support.

Learn more at www.irmofamersmarket.com and stop by one Saturday from now til October. The market is open from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month on Carlisle Street.

For previous updates on this proposed development, click here and here

In an effort to continue to keep you posted on the Housing Development being proposed off Bickley Road, I checked with SC State Housing today. Below is their response:

***

We have completed the application reviews and notified developers of missing/incomplete documents giving them a seven (7) day business day timeframe to provide the missing/incomplete documents. Point scoring will begin this week and we hope to finish by the end of next week. A double check of the initial scores will be done before posting preliminary point scores to the tax credit webpage. We anticipate posting scores around the second week of May.

The underwriting analysis and reviews are just beginning. Depending on the time it takes to complete these we anticipate making award announcements by the end of June.

We have received 188 letters and one (1) petition containing 106 signatures in opposition to the development. We have not received any positive support letters. As for phone calls, I have not kept a record of those but would estimate having received around 10 calls from neighborhood residents.

Should you need anything further or have additional questions please feel free to call me.

Laura Nicholson
Development Director
SC State Housing Finance & Development Authority

***

Two years ago, I shared a “Meet Your Neighbor” post on Jonathan as well. Today, we see what else Jonathan’s doing in our area.

Dutch Fork High coach Jonathan Johnson was announced Wednesday as the new coach. The pair connected through a mutual friend, and once they met to discuss the opening, a deal was quickly reached.

“By the end of that dinner, there was no doubt in his mind and no doubt in my mind that it was the right fit and the right thing to do,” said Johnson, who is stepping down as Dutch Fork’s coach at the end of his third season.

Johnson, a former first-round pick of the Texas Rangers in the 1995 MLB draft as an All-American right-handed pitcher out of Florida State, pitched parts of six seasons in the major leagues with Texas, San Diego and Houston.

Johnson, 38, who serves as the minister of recreation for Riverland Hills Baptist Church in Irmo for his primary job, can’t wait to coach the more experienced Blowfish players, whose 56-game season begins May 28, with the first home game at Capital City Park the following night.

“To have kids like this coming from great college programs that already know the game, it’s exciting and challenging to coach at a higher level,” Johnson said. “It’s an awesome opportunity to work with some tremendous talent and helping these guys become better ballplayers and better men off the field. There’s so much I’ve gone through over 20 years of playing baseball, 10 professionally, that I feel like I can share with these guys.”

Johnson, who played in the Cape Cod League in 1995 before he signed with the Rangers, understands the dynamics of summer leagues, from the transition to wood bats for hitters and pitchers to the adjustment of out-of-town players living with a host family.

Read the complete article from The State here .

To learn more about other neighbors in our community, click here .

Two Lexington-Richland 5 high schools and one in Richland 2 have been ranked among the most challenging high schools nationwide, according to a new Washington Post list.

Only 14 S.C. high schools made the list among the nearly 30,000 nationwide in the ranking.Lexington-Richland 5’s Dutch Fork is ranked 383 and Chapin is ranked 628, while Richland 2’s Spring Valley is ranked 1,610.

Read more from The State here. More from Washington Post here.

In my role as State Representative I focus on our community and Palmetto State Citizens. From time to time, like each of us, I have an opinion on national issues. Since it appears most people have a certain stigma attached to “the immigration issue”, I thought I’d present another view many not be thinking about.

Just utter the words “immigration bill” and people start to choose sides for a battle, but that shouldn’t be necessary with the Immigration Innovation Act (I-Squared) now pending in the U.S. Senate with strong bipartisan support.

The I-Squared bill is something of a modern miracle. It’s an immigration bill we can all support because it amounts to a substantial high-tech investment in South Carolina’s economy and our schools.

I-Squared is a common sense solution to America’s critical lack of professionals with degrees in the STEM disciplines (science technology, engineering and math).

First I-Squared would modernize the outdated system used b the Immigration bureaucracy to issue the H-1B visas. These are the visas reserved for immigrants with special skills in STEM fields needed by American companies who can’t find the skilled people they need in the U.S. labor force. For 23 years the immigration bureaucracy has kept an annual limit of 65,000 on these visas, even though this doesn’t begin to fill the needs of American companies.

And the increased revenue generated by H1B visas would be used to create a STEM education fund to improve the teaching of STEM subjects in U.S. schools and enable us to increase the woefully inadequate number of STEM grads produced by US colleges and universities.

Demand for these high-skill work visas first outstripped the supply in 1997. And that’s happened every year since 2004. This year’s entire supply of visas was used up in 10 weeks. In 2007 the supply was devoured in less than a day. The fact that this employer demand has continued right through a fierce recession is dramatic testimony to the need for STEM skills.

South Carolina business needs STEM skilled people to grow and not just in the surging tech sector, which has been such a constant bright spot in the state employment picture. STEM people such as computer technicians and mechanical engineers are needed to support non-tech industries as well. Both our tech and not-so-tech companies depend on STEM-skilled people to keep operating. Under a worst case scenario, if those companies can’t get the visas required to bring the overseas STEM talent they need to South Carolina, pressure would build to move their manufacturing plants to lower cost countries with a home-grown supply of STEM graduates.

It makes sense to increase the number of STEM graduates we produce in South Carolina. But like every other state in the country, we have a long road to travel. According to the latest available figures, only 11 percent of the post high school degrees and certificates awarded here annually are in STEM fields. That’s slightly above the 10.7 percent figure nationally.

Through my longtime association with the South Carolina School Improvement Councils, I’ve watched the state’s committed effort to ratchet up the quality of science and math education in our public schools, the foundation for someday earning a college STEM degree. Once again, like the rest of the states, we have a long road to travel.

Passage of I-Squared would help us get where we need to go on STEM education while we continue to get the STEM-skilled immigrants we need to keep our economic wheels turning. For South Carolina and the rest of America, this legislation is quite simply a good deal.

As always, I’d appreciate your thoughts.