At a called meeting of the Dillon County Council on Friday morning, the Dillon County Council in a 4-3 vote made two big decisions. The first decision was to amend the budget to places $150,000 that they had allotted to the school system back into the county fund balance, and the second was to approve the third and final reading of the budget. What does this mean? Put simply, it means that the Dillon County schools will no longer be receiving a division of the Local Option Sales Tax money that they have been receiving for the past 20 years.
In September 1995, the Dillon County Council voted to give the Dillon County School System half of the money from the Local Option Sales Tax. Councilman Chester Taylor made the motion, and Councilman James “Pee Wee” Webster seconded the motion. Every council member present voted in favor.
It was heavily advertised in the newspaper that the schools would receive a division of this money.
In November 1995, the people of Dillon County overwhelmingly passed the referendum approving the Local Option Sales Tax.
For the past 20 years, the Dillon County schools have been receiving this money until four members of this present council decided to no longer honor the word of the 1995 council and made it final with Friday morning’s vote.
This is the issue. The 1995 council gave their word, the people voted based on that word, and that word is no longer being honored by four members of the current council.
No amount of political grandstanding such as what occurred at Friday’s meeting by Councilman Jack Scott, no amount of trying to build a smokescreen by bringing up other issues on social media in an attempt to sidetrack or divert the attention of the people of Dillon County, and no amount of documentation from a 1990/1991 referendum when the issue is the 1995 referendum is going to work at trying to get the people to forget what these four council members have done. Those officials who try to divert the public’s attention away from the issue at hand are not giving the public the credit they deserve.
At a time when Dillon County is on the brink of greatness, at a time when the Inland Port is coming, at a time when new industries are on their way, at a time when an educated workforce is more critical than it has ever been, the Dillon County Council has cut funding from education—funding that they were promised by a previous council; funding that they were using the way the people were promised it would be used. There is no excuse for it. There is no way to cover it up. There is no way to divert the public’s attention from it. There is no smokescreen that thick. It is what it is, and there is no hiding from the issue or the public, and if these council members are proud of what they have done and believe that they have done the best thing for Dillon County which is what they are elected to do, then they shouldn’t try to divert the public’s attention or grandstand, they should own it.
It is unfortunate that four members of council chose to take this action, and it should be a warning to us all. Watch out who and what you vote for in the future. The word of one council may not be good with another.