Council members seemed overly eager Monday night to push higher taxes despite being reminded that the county’s budget far exceeds the budget of any county our size and even exceeds the budgets of many counties which are double and triple our size in population.
Council appears to lack serious interest in exploring how other counties can manifest more with less. Do our council and administration not get it that they have a “spending wisely” problem, not a funding problem, as we are the second highest funded county in SC?
What’s more, our council leaders seem unbothered by the exorbitant salaries our top tier management enjoys while our departments are suffering severe understaffing and myriad cutbacks.
County administration salaries have increased by 50% since 2019. Our interim administrator is paid a $12,500 per month consulting fee – that’s $150,000 per year. That’s unrealistic.
Lots of remorse but no remedies were offered by council for the multitude of their constituents who could soon lose their road maintenance.
While administration has proposed an .8 mill tax increase, council fails to mention that our taxes will likely be further raised by property reassessments in less than two years and then will only be limited by a 15% cap.
Unbelievably, our leadership offered up the other-world Horry and Charleston counties as examples of why Fairfield must rush to increase the tax burden on our citizens.
And there are other worries.
Hopefully, Councilman Tim Roseborough was joking when he appeared unaware of, “Who is suing who?” during a council discussion about the big county/Winnsboro garbage debacle.
And six months after this new council and staff came to work in January, they have done little to recruit and hire an administrator. While they insist that they must hire a firm to do the recruiting instead of posting the job on the web as the Town of Blythewood did so successfully recently and was interviewing its top three candidates in less than two months – our county after six months, has not even begun interviewing the recruiting firms.
Heaven help Fairfield County.
Randy Bright
Ridgeway
