Local News

After 18 years, Audrey Curry will be stepping down from Lancaster City Council in January.

Although he was hoping to serve at least another four years on council, he’s taking it all in stride.

“I’m a big guy. I can get over it and get through it,” Curry said. “It’s on to the next adventure.”

Curry, who has represented District 3 since January 1991, was defeated by Linda Blackmon-Brace during November’s general election. She will be sworn in on Jan. 7.

There was bad economic news all over in 2008.

Here in Lancaster County, the unemployment rate was in the double digits and the county had one of the highest percentages of unemployed residents for most of the year. The jobless rate here was blamed largely on the loss of textile jobs, particularly those from Springs Global, which shuttered its manufacturing plants here and elsewhere in the region in late 2007.

In May, Springs Memorial Hospital announced it was laying off 43 employees.

2008 was a historic election year, and South Carolina was in the national spotlight in January, when both the Democratic and Republican parties had their first-in-the-South primaries here.

Only two candidates campaigned in Lancaster County – Republican John McCain, who made a stop at Sun City Carolina Lakes late in 2007, and Democrat John Edwards, who made two stops in the county before the primary.

McCain, a U.S. senator from Arizona, won the GOP primary on Jan. 19, after which he was the clear frontrunner in the race for the Republican nomination.

The county got some unwanted national attention in early October when Forbes.com, the online version of Forbes magazine, ranked the county as “the most vulnerable town” in America.

On this top-10 list, Forbes.com cited the county’s 12.2 percent unemployment rate for August. It also noted that only 18.6 percent of the workforce here has an associate’s degree or higher and said about 20 percent of residents live at or below the poverty line.