By Mayor Pro-Tem Phil Wallace
I would like to thank the City Council and citizens of Dillon for allowing me to serve as your mayor pro-tem for the last three years. It has been a great joy for me to perform this duty, although at times it has also been very challenging. Overall, the state of Dillon is in very good shape. I will provide a general overview of the status of the individual departments, which include the general fund, the fire department, and the police force. I will also cover the sewer and water department and discuss storm drainage, recreation, and downtown revitalization in more detail.

As we are all aware, COVID has continued to consume much of our daily activities over the past year. We have adapted constantly to the new guidelines and adjusted how we do our daily activities. We have had test sites and vaccination sites set up at the Dillon Wellness Center for the vast majority of the year. This was led by DHEC, McLeod Health, and Care South Carolina. Presently, the pandemic has seen a decrease in our area, with very few cases on a daily basis, for which we are thankful.
From a financial standpoint, the city is in excellent shape. We have had an unqualified audit for the last 15 years, as far as I can recall. Unqualified is a good thing. Currently, we have an approximate budget for the general fund of 6.5 million dollars. This means we have enough money in the bank to cover 130-140 days of operating expenses.
Our water and sewer departments have a budget of about 3.8 million dollars and we have restricted and unrestricted funds totaling about 4.3 million dollars. The caveat in this is we have a 10 million gallon a day sewage treatment plant, which would cost about 60-70 million dollars to replace. We need to have this reserve funding, probably in the 10 million ballpark, and we are making adjustments to make this happen.
In the future, we are going to have to go to the west side of I-95 with sewage treatment, and hopefully on that side of the interstate we will have not only industrial growth, but residential growth as well.
Our Fire Department has responded to 180 emergency calls this year, which is five more than they did the year before. There were 48 structural fires, 14 vehicular fires, 39 grass fires, 62 fire alarms, 13 electrical fires, three fuel spillages, and one elevator rescue. We now have a Fire ISO rating of three, which is an improvement from the year before. This should impact homeowners’ insurance in a positive way.
The City Police Department was dispatched and responded to 8,291 9-1-1 calls. They have been very busy as well. Crime is a tremendous problem in Dillon, as it is in all cities. Instead of defunding, we are adding funding to the police department in an effort to encourage individuals to pursue a career in law enforcement. We are continuing with our efforts to have our police vehicles replaced every seven years, so that no outdated vehicles remain in circulation. We are also trying to be competitive in our salaries for the police officers. A large problem is the presence of gangs in our young adults that make it very difficult for our investigators to get information involving crimes. Dillon is unfortunately in no way unique in this predicament. Drugs continue to be a substantial driving force within our criminal activity.
Dillon has had an influx of new funds through the American Rescue Plan (ARP), and a variety of different sources for infrastructure support. We received approximately 3.1 million dollars from the ARP, and 3.9 million dollars for repair of our storm drainage.
Our storm drainage has been a major issue in Dillon for many decades. We have had studies done and it would cost about 24 million dollars to fix all of the current storm drainage problems. There are about 33 different projects that need to be completed. We have them prioritized according to the significance of the flooding that it causes.
Recently, we have received 3.8 million dollars in grant money to start on the top three projects. There is more money at the state level we can apply for to secure funding for additional projects. The sewer department is also very busy. We have received grant funding for pump stations at Rosewood, St. Stephens, and Hillside Drive. These projects should be completed sometime mid to late summer of this year. The total amount of received money for these three pump stations is about 2.35 million dollars. We also rehabilitated the elevated water tank on South 20th Avenue at an expense of $450,000 which was also from grant money. All three of our elevated water tanks are newly restored.
We have formed a downtown revitalization committee made up of three City Council members and members from the Dillon Community Alliance. We are meeting once a month to establish how to best move forward with downtown revitalization, specifically addressing the many vacant buildings that are not currently up to code. We hope to put ordinances in place that would encourage the owners of these buildings to adhere to the guidelines and make attempts to fill them with tenants.
We are following a master plan that was drawn up in November 2020, for which we paid approximately $30,000. It is very beneficial to our city and includes ideas for how we can best utilize parking spaces and grow our downtown.
We took ownership of the First Bank building downtown, and our hopes are that we will restore this building to use as a police station. We have put aside $300,000 of our ARP money to renovate the building.
We also bought the building behind the First Bank building, the Bethea property, with hopes that we can turn it into an event area for our community, possibly with staging and public bathrooms in this building.
We are working with the Dillon County Health Initiative as well, with the possibility of building a farmers market also on the Bethea property.
We have hired Lisa Moody as a downtown developer and grant writer. She has really hit the ground running and has already successfully held many events that brought wonderful crowds to our downtown area.
Special events have been a big part of our community life, and we continue to strive to bring our citizens together and work towards an enjoyable downtown atmosphere. We held our annual Celebrate Main Festival in April. The first Friday evenings of April through October, we held events downtown. Our annual Trunk-or-Treat, Holiday Goodness, Chili Cookoff and Breakfast with Santa events, held at the Dillon Wellness Center, were great successes.
We also held the Father-Daughter Dance and the Mother-Son Dance early this year, which continue to be greatly loved events in our community, and they had outstanding turnouts. We can look forward to all of these events and more in the year ahead.
On the Parks and Recreation front, the city purchased 40 acres behind the Wellness Center for further development. We are excited about this expansion. Our plans are to have a walking trail, picnic spots, natural observation areas, and other leisure amenities.
It should be noted that we have just three more payments before we complete the financial obligation to pay off the Wellness Center in full. This was a 5.1 million dollar building which we started on 17 years ago. Our annual payment is roughly $240,000 a year. In that account we have around 1 million dollars that we use to cover the Wellness Center, recreation, and the golf course. We are exploring options going forward after the Wellness Center building has been paid off. We have discussed both a splash pad as well as an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool to enhance aquatic recreation for our community. Our parks will require approximately $400,000 for upgrades and replacing lights. This will be done at the fields behind the armory.
The golf course has had a strong year. Our revenues are up considerably, and it has become very busy. The Johnson Foundation donated the property in the closing days of 2021, and we are so thankful that we can now pursue some grant money to upgrade the golf course, as well as the building and parking lot. Going forward, our first steps are to most likely rebuild the golf cart shed and resurface the parking lot.
I am very enthusiastic about our current state in Dillon. I am optimistic about what the future holds for our community. I strongly believe we are moving in the right direction with our downtown revitalization efforts and seeking to support new residential growth. Again, I sincerely thank you for allowing me to serve you. Together, we have a bright future here in Dillon.