Greenwood looking to hire penny sales tax manager

With an $80 million portfolio to manage through the capital projects sales tax, the county plans to hire a full-time supervisor who will oversee the distribution of funds and provide an additional layer of accountability as the venture moves forward.

County Manager Toby Chappell said the position will be advertised within the next two weeks, and officials hope to make a hire by the spring.

The first installments are going to Piedmont Technical College, which is using $6.1 million from the one-cent sales tax levy to help pay for its Upstate Center for Manufacturing Excellence, a 47,000-square-foot facility to be on Emerald Road.

“My projection is the July payment will be the first payment outside of Piedmont Tech, so we will need that person in place,” Chappell said during a budget planning session this week.

In November 2016, voters approved a referendum authorizing a special penny sales tax to generate funds for 27 projects. Collection of the levy began in May 2017.

“I would like this council to have input on where that person fits within our organizational structure. I have grave concerns that they’ll be covered up by normal work. My first suggestion is they work for you and they’re not intermingled with another department where that department can cloud their responsibilities with other things,” council chairman Steve Brown told Chappell.

“That person needs to be 100 percent toward capital projects and not be subjected to outside influence,” he continued. “It’s important they have a channel to you, because a massive amount of goodwill needs to be created among these other people who are using these monies.”

Chappell and the council agreed the sales tax manager should not be a political appointee — which is outside the scope of state statute.

“That’s been my struggle all along is, wherever they are, accountability has got to be the first priority. You’re talking about $75 million, $80 million this person is responsible for. To me, there are only two places that make any sense. One is my office, and the second is engineering, but then you get into the issue of, between me and the employee, there is now a built-in filter,” he said.

Councilman Theo Lane likened the person to a company’s chief operations officer, compared to Chappell’s CEO.

“I would want to see that person look just like the county attorney, that you can walk right through that door and get an answer and vice versa, with nothing in the middle. That position has got to be laser focused. There doesn’t need to be any ambiguity. When we get about three years into this things, there are going to be so many things happening simultaneously,” Lane said. “When the chief operations officer walks in and says ‘We’ve got to have this and this and this,’ they know that comes with the blessing of the CEO and to me, that makes things so much more expeditious.”

Originally Published by Index-Journal on: Mar 2, 2018

By ADAM BENSON abenson@indexjournal.com

Article Link: https://www.indexjournal.com/news/greenwood-looking-to-hire-penny-sales-tax-manager/article_4168fc38-e81e-5eee-8b71-d1ea0c6da7b0.html