This email just in:
Friends and Leaders,
THE PENNY PASSED!
Just left 2020 Hampton with final numbers including absentee and precincts:
Question 1 YES 74,029 NO 64,684’
QUESTION 2 YES 69,391 NO 62,884
This is gratifying. Congratulations to all those who worked hard to make this happen, and to the people of Richland County for making this decision. The community has decided to build a better future for itself, and that’s a very good thing.
I look forward to seeing the improvements, in our bus system and in the county’s roads…
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I look forward to 17,000 jobs and saving $280 a year on car maintenance. Because that’s what they promised us. Right?
You are expecting much from a pack of local leaders who have shown themselves time and again to be irresponsible with public funds.
While most of my disdain is reserved for City leadership (who are well on their way to destroying our water/sewer system), the ethics-free conduct of County Council members, current (Kelvin Washington, Norman Jackson) and former (Gwendolyn Kennedy), gives me little hope that we will see much “transportation” (or any other tangible thing) from this “penny” tax and its evil cousin, the “half billion dollar” transportation mortgage.
The failure of our “leaders” to ever accurately determine how much public transportation actually costs, or how much benefit comes from currently generated revenues suggests to me that this new money will be flushed down the conflict-of-interest toilet.
I, too, look forward to “seeing the improvements, in our bus system and in the county’s roads”, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope from seeing it come from the incompetents that run things in this county. Any change we could rent some council-people from the Upstate?
This email is from …?
What Doug and Stan said.
I expect much of this money to be spent on personnel, studies, and overhead.
More taxes are what we need. Maybe we can make the sales tax higher if it’s from a “luxury store”. The rich people who shop at Earth Fare and Whole Foods can afford it.
jday, that was from Betty Gregory over at the Chamber, on behalf of Citizens for a Greater Midlands…
Rather than the usual jaded response from someone who loses on an issue I’ll say this – Hopefully the leaders in Richland County have learned a valuable lesson from the voting debacle and will use this money wisely to provide the citizens of the midlands with a modern, efficient transportation system. If they do I will be the first to say I was wrong on this issue.
I did not like this regressive tax, and still don’t, but I hope it at least solves our transportation problems (and please, enough with the fake trolleys.
Not only is it a regressive tax but we’ve just given them 1 BILLION to squander away for political capital. My understanding is that the highly touted be-all end-all project “List”(one member of the committee admitted that they basically played Santa Claus w/ county residents) is already undeliverable as it exceeds a billion. I predict a large portion will go for CYA projects (like the city sewer/water system mess) and not transportation. The bus system (which I would like to see continue) was just an emotional card to fuel a yes vote from the disenfranchised. Still shaking my head at my fellow liberals who claim to be champions for the poor but yet voted for a tax that takes a larger percentage from low income earners. I, too, would like to believe “they” (City and County) will be responsible but their track record for accountability and transparency is abyssmal and we voters were perhaps even more irresponsible for giving them $1,000,000,000 to fritter away.
I wasn’t a supporter. I voted against the penny as well.
Saying that I think Richland County Council did set up a fair oversight committee. With the right membership it could be an effective organization to ensure our money doesn’t get shuffled to the whims of future councils.
While its not a perfect solution it IS the solution for the next 22 years so I’m going to fight to ensure the dollars get spent as advertised much as I spoke against the penny tax itself.
The silver lining is there are some exciting projects on the horizon and I look forward to seeing the new face of Richland County transportation system.