My Remarks to City Council supporting a FDTC Downtown Campus
This text represents my spoken letter to Hartsville City Council as delivered during the Public Comment section of the Special Meeting on September 1, 2026. It comes from YouTube’s automatically generated video captions. In this reproduction, filler words and repeated phrases were removed, punctuation was fixed, and known caption errors were corrected for the sake of readability. This is not a verbatim or official record.
On that meeting’s agenda, Resolution 09-26-01 read as follows:
Resolution 09-26-01: A resolution expressing the intent of the City of Hartsville, South Carolina to sell and convey property to Florence-Darlington Technical College for purposes of developing a Hartsville campus; and other matters relating thereto.
Council approved it 6–1.
The resolution was a formal action taken by City Council to authorized their city staff to negotiate a property transaction with Florence-Darlington Technical College, who hopes to build a new campus in Downtown Hartsville. Notably, the resolution does not define the amount, boundaries, or price of the property that might be transfered. It only authorized staff to particiate in a conversation.
A recording of the meeting is available at youtube.com/@cityofhartsvillesc. The City of Hartsville posts official meeting minutes online.
This text represents my spoken letter to Hartsville City Council as delivered during the Public Comment section of the Special Meeting on September 1, 2026. It comes from YouTube’s automatically generated captions from the meeting’s livestreamed video. In this reproduction, filler words and repeated phrases were removed, punctuation was fixed, and known caption errors were corrected for the sake of readability. This is not a verbatim or official record. The City of Hartsville posts official meeting minutes online.
Good morning, council. Thank you for having me. My name is Casey Gardner Hancock, of 819 West Home Avenue, and I love this city and her people. I love it enough to make my life here. I love it enough to be involved, even to be here today. And I guess I love it enough to have done something crazy and run for mayor before. For four years, I had the honor of loving it by serving as mayor of our city.
So I've been on both sides of this room. I've sat where you're sitting today, wondering what in the world us folks out here were thinking. And I've sat up there with you and realized that sometimes the work up there is a whole lot harder than it seems to us down here. I learned something while I was up there with you. Each one of you sitting on our council put your neck out to serve our city, and I appreciate that, because you did it for the same reason I did: we all love Hartsville. Of course, we didn't always agree. For goodness' sake, we didn't always agree. But even when we fussed and yelled and got onto each other's nerves, I never questioned that you sitting beside me care deeply about our city.
That's important to me this morning, because I've been quiet until now. When I was mayor, I recused myself from anything involving the possible new tech campus surrounding Wild Heart Brewing, because, as everybody knows, I'm a partner at Wild Heart Brewing, which is surrounded by the property in question. So, of course, I recused myself from the votes, and I stayed out of those conversations, because that was the right thing to do. I trusted you all, city council, to make the right decision. I trusted you, city staff, to give the council good advice. And I believe you did. I know you did.
Whether this council decided that the property around Wild Heart was the right place for a new campus at the time, or whether another property was the right place, or maybe the whole thing wasn't right at all, I trusted that process, and I still do, even though I'm not the mayor. As I said, I'm a business owner over there now, so I have a little skin in the game.
Truth be told, between the Hancocks and the Gardners, my family has as much history with that piece of dirt as anybody in this room here today. My grandfather worked there, my grandmother, my uncles, my father worked there, and I worked there. Hancocks and Gardners made a living on that piece of dirt, raised their families from what they earned there, and watched it change right along with Hartsville. We've helped make Hartsville better, and I'm proud of that. We've been here when those things were good, and we've been here when those things were very bad, and we came back. I never stopped believing in Hartsville.
Now, everybody in here knows I wanted to continue serving the city as her mayor, but it didn't work out that way. I'm still very proud, damn proud, of what we did together then. I'm proud of what we did right. I'm proud of the chances we took. And I'm even proud of most of the fights we had up there amongst ourselves and out here with the people of Hartsville. I'm proud for all those reasons. I'm proud because I knew that even when we disagreed, we were doing what was right for Hartsville.
So I'm not standing here today as a former mayor asking or telling you what to do. I knew better then, and I know better now. I'm sitting here as Casey, somebody who loves this city and her people. I'm somebody who has roots in that ground. I'm somebody whose business sits right there right now. And I'm somebody who cares a whole lot about what happens next, because whoever goes there is going to be my neighbor, be it a school, houses, retail, commercial, or hopefully all of the above. What happens there obviously affects my business, but it also affects all of the businesses around me and around us. It affects our whole downtown, our whole city, and I'll add to this, our whole state.
I thought about it a lot. I believe a new Florence-Darlington Technical College campus coming to downtown Hartsville could be a good thing for the city and our people. Yes, obviously a campus would be good for Wild Heart. It would be good for the whole area, as I said, but believe me when I tell you that's not why I'm here as a representative of Wild Heart. Such a new campus would be good for all of the businesses around it. It could bring more traffic. The city could benefit from A-Tax and H-Tax revenue. Even the car counts could make the case for infrastructure funding. It could help us get a grocery store. More importantly, it would be good for so many of our young people who need access to education and to the jobs that follow. It would be good for their families, and for our families. It would be good for our institutions. It would be good for our employers, because they need these skilled employees. It would be good for the future of the city of Hartsville and our people.
So, city council, for whatever it's worth to you, you've got my full support on passing Resolution 09-26-01. But not as your former mayor, and not because somebody asked me to say it. I say it as a neighbor. I say it as a Hancock and a Gardner who's been on that piece of dirt for generations, and as a fellow Hartsvillian who loves our city enough to see it keep getting better.
I've spent most of my life watching that piece of dirt, and I very much look forward to seeing what that piece of dirt becomes with your support of a new Florence-Darlington Technical College campus in downtown Hartsville.
Thank you, and cheers.