VANCE – “Oh, no. I will have to move to Montana to escape the growth.”

That’s what Vance area resident Nancy Warwick, who moved from Summerville and moved her mother to Bradford Village in Santee, said she was thinking when she attended last week’s Vance Town Council meeting to learn more about the town’s interest in annexing outlying areas.

Although the Vance Town Council’s regularly scheduled meeting April 24 was canceled for lack of a quorum, Mayor Vernell Wright addressed the standing-room-only crowd of approximately 75 residents about possible annexation that could reportedly bring as much as 27 square miles of land into the town limits.

Anticipated future growth is apparently one of the reasons Vance is interested in annexation.

When asked about plans for future growth in the town, Wright referred the question to former Orangeburg County administrator and Santee town administrator Donnie Hillard, who is currently acting as consultant for the town of Vance.

“We are not at liberty to discuss those plans at the present time, but there are major changes that will affect our area in the making,” he said.

At the previous Vance Town Council meeting on March 27, Wright submitted a map of the proposed Vance annexation. News of it spread throughout the area, stirring up a hornet’s nest. Petitions were passed around for signatures opposing annexation in many nearby subdivisions.

During last week’s meeting, most of the residents wanted to know if they could be annexed into Vance without their approval.

“Not without 75 percent approval of the residents of the area being affected,” Hilliard told them. Legislation is currently being considered to lower that to 60 percent.

“In order for the town of Vance or any town in the state of South Carolina to annex anyone into the corporate boundaries, you must comply with state law,” Hilliard said. “The law states you must have a referendum, and a referendum means you must have a vote to say that you want to come into the town.”

Property owners would be the ones to vote, not the general population, he said.

Wright said no area will be annexed unless the residents who live there want to be a part of the town of Vance.

“We are going to start with those that want to be included in the town of Vance first,” the mayor said. “The area down Highway 6 wants to come into the town, and we will start with them first. We will phase in other areas at a later date.”

In order for an annexation vote to be called, all property owners have to be notified and there would have to be documentation that all property owners were notified and how, Hilliard said.

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