Panel Consisted of two Council Members and one Advocate and one Opponent – No Women on Panel
Chad Groover, Chairman of the Greenville County Republican Party Executive Committee, hosted and moderated a forum to discuss the pros and cons of the proposed sales tax referendum to be voted on the next day.
Councilman Fred Payne and Greenville Chamber of Commerce political consultant who has apparently been hired to lobby for the referendum and one cent sales tax increase.
Councilman Joe Dill and Seth Powell of the Greenville CountyTaxpayers Association pointed to shortcomings in the arguments for a rush to approving a referendum for the November 2014 election.
Payne argued that if we want state and federal “roads in Greenville County fixed in the next eight years, we must do it ourselves.”
Payne quoted statistics from Washington saying “The average driver in Greenville loses $470 a year driving on bad roads.”
Dill and Powell pointed out that Greenville County sends 16.8 cents to Columbia for every gallon of gas sold in the county. Only 4 cents per gallon sold comes back to the county to build and maintain state roads.
Greenville County collects $15 annually for every vehicle in the county dedicated to roads, That is more than $6 million per year to maintain County roads.
Five percent of Greenville County roads are said to be in poor condition and 24 percent of County roads are in fair condition. County roads are in much better condition than state roads within the county. Sixty-eight percent of state roads within Greenville County and cities are in poor condition.
Councilman Payne believes that “people do not care who owns the roads, they just want the roads fixed,” This is interpreted to mean that since the people want roads fixed, they will be willing to support the largest tax increase in county history.
The debate over tax increases for,”road improvements” involves an element of trust. Some $47 million is listed as going for “pedestrian amenities.”
The extreme interest in the tax increase by bicycle clubs and environmentalist organizations indicate they have been promised a sizable piece of the $60 million annual windfall for bike trails green projects and the like.
Councilman Dill said all the money for the first two or more years would go for new roads and other projects in the Woodruff Road area of the County leaving none for Northern Greenville County where some state highways are not even paved.
Dill and Powell made a strong case for looking at all needs and options before jumping into a local tax increase to fix roads the state should be maintaining with tax funds that come from the Upstate but are being spent on roads in Charleston and the Low-country represented by House Speaker Bobby Harrell and Senator Hugh Leatherman who control where state taxes are spent.
Historically speaking, Greenville County is suffering from payback for the time when Speaker David Wilkins and Sen. Verne Smith were bringing more than our share of highway funds to the upstate to build roads like the J. Verne Smith Freeway.
Groover conducted a secret ballot straw poll at the end of the forum. Of 80 attendees, only 16 voted in favor of a referendum on a sales tax increase as proposed. This was somewhat surprising, because several members of the Road Commission that came up with the “want list” were present.
A group of individuals from citizens organizations showed up wearing T-shirts advocating no tax increase. A few times these individuals cheered for the opponents of the tax referendum. In response moderator Chad Groover gaveled them down and referred to ;them as “Libertarians.”