Hundreds of representatives of cities and towns across South Carolina gathered in Greenville for the 2026 Annual Meeting of the Municipal Association of SC. Its presenters discussed everything from keeping local communities thriving to data center development and civility in public service.
Keynote speaker Doug Griffiths tackles community-killing problems
A former member of the Alberta, Canada, Legislative Assembly, Doug Griffiths now focuses on helping communities find their individual pathways to economic success.
He authored the bestselling book 13 Ways to Kill Your Community, covering commonplace issues for cities that can cause destructive declines in morale, commerce and eventually population. It addresses areas like cities refusing to accept newcomers or new economic realities, and prioritizing a sense of independence over the need for responsibility and cooperation.
Another frequently seen issue is a failure to engage young people, with leaders instead simply demanding that the youth stay put. Young people naturally want to explore and move away, he said.
“Our key to success is not to keep them, but to let them go,” he said. “Give them a reason to come home after they’re done exploring, and to bring those new contacts, those new ideas, relationships, concepts, back to your community.”
He has often found local officials talking despairingly about their community’s ability to keep young people rather than articulating a real vision for the community’s future.
“When those young people come back, you’ve got to engage them, you’ve got to give them some control, some authority, some power to implement stuff,” Griffiths said. “I still hear too many leaders in communities say, ‘those young people, they don’t know anything. They have no experience,’ … we need them to learn how to be leaders faster, and we need to trust that they know where the world is going, sometimes better than we do.”
Brandy Amidon completes term as president
Travelers Rest Mayor Brandy Amidon marked the conclusion of her term as the Municipal Association’s president at the meeting.
She expressed gratitude for the Association’s staff and for her experiences among fellow elected officials — “celebrating your successes, learning from your challenges and seeing firsthand incredible work happening in your community.”
Among her favorite experiences, Amidon said, was visiting communities to learn about major projects as they came to fruition, whether they were “parks, or a revitalized downtown, a streetscape, a trail, or a long-awaited building that has finally opened its doors.”
“I know those projects don't happen overnight,” she said. “They represent years of planning, countless meetings, difficult decisions, grant applications, budget discussions and the perseverance to keep moving forward. You should be incredibly proud of what you've accomplished in your cities and towns.”
Executive Director Todd Glover discusses financial technical assistance, civility
Association Executive Director Todd Glover discussed South Carolina’s 2025 – 2026 legislative session, which he described as the most consequential and challenging he had experienced, with state lawmakers grappling with the impacts of rapid population growth as well as government funding structures. He noted the numerous proposals at the State House to cut the taxes that fund local government services — mirroring similar proposals in many other states — and a growing focus on local governments’ submission of their required audits or financial statements.
He announced that the Association will hire additional staff to provide financial technical assistance to cities and towns, just as the Association’s Field Services managers provide general technical assistance to municipalities.
He also reiterated the Association’s long-running focus on civility in local government.
“We're seeing people — good, decent public servants — leave office at an amazingly high rate because they're tired of being beat up all the time for the work that they’re doing,” he said. “We're losing great staff people because they're taking the brunt of some of this incivility.”
The Association-developed civility pledge is now used by cities in other parts of the nation and the world. It received additional praise from the current president of the National League of Cities, Louisville, Kentucky, Councilmember Kevin Kramer, who addressed the Annual Meeting to discuss the NLC focus on civility.
“How many of us have unfriended someone in the last two months, because of how negative they are on Facebook?” he said. “We've got to get back to a place where we can recognize — I may not agree with you, but that doesn't make you any less of a person. It doesn't make it such that you deserve any less respect.”
Annual Meeting presentations, Achievement Award videos, available online
Some Annual Meeting sessions have presentations available online. The Municipal Achievement Award videos, which debuted during the meeting are also available online.