Guest Column: Why is the Capital Project Sales Tax so important to Greenwood County?
There have been a couple of articles recently written trying to update the status of the 2-year-old Capital Project Sales Tax. I feel it is time to take a moment to recap why the CPST was and continues to be so critically important to the current and future success of Greenwood County.
My wife Denise and I have always felt very blessed to call Greenwood home for the past 20-plus years. During this time we have seen many positive changes; however, we have also felt that Greenwood’s potential was so much greater.
During our time living here in Greenwood, I have had the unique opportunity and honor to serve on many local business and nonprofit boards of directors. Through my experiences of serving on the Greenwood Partnership Alliance board, Piedmont Tech board, the Self Regional board, The Humane Society of Greenwood board, or the LPGA/Symetra Tour tournament, I had found myself actively engaged in working with both Greenwood County and City councils.
As a result, I had quickly learned just how challenging and difficult it is for our elected leadership to balance a yearly budget. Once all the necessary operating expenses,such as fire and police protection to name a few, are totaled there is very little left if it at all to address our future needs. A few cases in point were our continued important economic development activities to recruit new businesses and industries were rapidly becoming hampered because of a lack of buildings, infrastructure product to sell. A further challenge or opportunity was for having or helping to produce a trained and ready work force. And finally, of equal importance, continued quality of life improvements or enhancements.
How do these very necessary needs get addressed when there is little to no know extra money in producing a balanced budget each year? Well, like many other progressive and forward-thinking counties, they have successfully used a capital sales tax, also known as a penny tax, to raise the necessary funds to help address these critical needs.
So now, just after a short two years of our capital sales tax being collected, we can immediately measure our success or return on investment by several big wins such as the announcement of Tejin coming to Greenwood and building a major new facility and producing initially 300-plus new jobs with an upward projection of more than 1,000 new jobs. The announcement and construction started at Piedmont Tech’s O’Dell Center for manufacturing training excellence, critical countywide necessary infrastructure improvements, many other quality of life initiatives such as parks and recreation areas throughout the county and now significant new home construction. None of this would have been possible or happened without the passing of our Capital Project Sales Tax initiative.
We are firm believers that Greenwood County’s future remains very bright for all us to enjoy. Denise and I are proud to call Greenwood home.
Originally Published by Index-Journal on:Oct 14, 2019