What to Expect on County Council in 2025 with Chairman Benton Blount

Benton Blount, the newly elected Greenville County Council Chairman, sits down to discuss his priorities for 2025. He covers hot topics like the county budget, fixing roads, the Unified Development Ordinance, and how to improve transparency and build public trust. Get an inside look at the challenges and opportunities ahead for Greenville County.

Links:

Benton Blount Website

Transcript

Sponsor:

This episode is sponsored by Palmetto Project. Forty years ago, South Carolina leaders championed the idea that every social and economic challenge in our state could be solved through innovation. They believed in the power of new ideas to fulfill the promise of our home. Since 1984, the Palmetto Project has listened to and partnered with community leaders and members to transform our state through 330 public-private partnerships. Today, our programs address early literacy for more than 23,000 children through Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, civic engagement, and equitable access to healthcare through the only statewide nonprofit health insurance agency in the country, and more. Learn more at palmettoproject.org or at our Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Katy Smith:

Benton Blount is the newly elected chairman of Greenville County Council. He came on council in 2022 when he was elected to represent District 19, which is generally the Berea area on Greenville County's west side. I'm Katy Smith with Greater Good Greenville, and on this episode of Simple Civics: Greenville County, I'm pleased to talk with Chairman Blount about his priorities for council and how he'll handle some hot-button issues, such as the county budget, growth in the Unified Development Ordinance, and council dynamics. 

Two FYIs for you: In case you haven't heard previous episodes on how county government works, our county is divided into 12 districts that each have their own elected council member with no at-large member that represents the entire county. And members elect their chairman. We've interviewed Chairman Blount twice before, once as a county council candidate and next as a council newcomer, and we'll link both of those episodes in the show notes. 

If you are a newcomer to this podcast, please give us a follow on your favorite podcast platform. We release episodes every Tuesday, and we have a rich back catalog of topics and candidate interviews since late 2021. We are nonpartisan and not focused on any particular issue other than making a good engaged base of Greenville County residents. Benton, thanks so much for being here today, especially after you're brand newly elected, for coming right in to talk to us and our listeners.

Benton Blount:

Thanks for having me.

Katy Smith:

All right. So you're the new chairman, and the chairman is not an office elected by voters like a mayor. Just for listeners, you're elected by fellow council members to run the meetings, decide who's appointed to committee chair positions, decide what gets on the agenda, if and when special meetings are called, and how to handle the parliamentary procedure of the council. But baked within that, you can have a point of view in terms of issues and how the council interacts with each other and with meeting attendees. So I would just love to hear how do you view the role of the chairman and what are your priorities this year in terms of policy and process?

Benton Blount:

Well, first of all, I love the fact that you said baked within the chairmanship is your ability to have an opinion because a large responsibility of the chairman is to run the meetings, to be impartial, to handle debate. And that really honestly kind of takes your voice away because you have to hand off the gavel to even really give your opinion on some of those issues. So it sounds like it's a powerful position. The way I've always seen it, though, is it actually almost makes you take a step back as a councilman because you don't get to have the freedom of talking anytime that you want to, like some of my colleagues will have. 

But there are some important things that the chairman does that the other council doesn't. The chairman appoints council members to our council committees, like Planning and Development, Finance Committee, Public Works, Public Safety. And then we have some additional ad hoc committees, which is a huge responsibility because those are the people that make the big decisions to shape our ordinances and our policies before they come forward to full council. So making sure that there's good representation in each from districts that have higher density or more in more rural areas when it comes to planning and development, those things have to be taken into account. And I think it's important to have a good mixture of all those in order to best shape the policies for Greenville County moving forward. 

As far as the policies go, especially with me being newly elected as chairman, I'm still taking a lot of it in kind of like an information water hose. But I think that the clear beginning phases of this current council is about transparency. It's about accountability. It's about rumors that swirl in the public that we don't get a chance to address on where money's spent, how it's spent, really getting back to the basics and really simplifying a lot of things. I came into council two years ago, so I'm still new to a lot of it. And I had to dumb it down for myself. So I feel like that citizens, sometimes we talk over their heads rather than to them. So I think just at the very beginning is just making sure that we're very clear about our agenda, about how we plan to reach those goals, to set reasonable goals rather than goals that just sound good on an audio byte and just try to start to really earn the trust of Greenville County citizens across the board.

Katy Smith:

Great. I wanted to ask you a question about transparency. Like, what do you think that would look like in this coming year? Like, for instance, just on the budget, what would more budget transparency look like in terms of what voters and residents can expect?

Benton Blount:

Sure. I think a lot of times people get information overload when they look at the budget as a whole. Like if you hand them the document, I know that it's information overload for myself and I have to be in charge of helping put that together. So for citizens, I think it can be something as simple as something I've proposed already for us to discuss, which is the greenvillecountybudget.com or .org, whatever the website would need to be. But something simple like that, very similar to the website that was put together by county staff for the roads project, something where citizens can go to a website, pull up a very easy to digest version of the budget. They can click through it, make it really easy for people both young and old to navigate it and really look through where the money's being spent, where it's going. 

Because I think there are a lot of misconceptions out there. Now, I am a fan of going through our budget with a fine-tooth comb, but at the same time, I don't think people realize the size and scope of the budget and where the money's going to a lot of places that actually provide the services they need. It's really just letting them know is the first step that a lot of times this money is actually being utilized properly. And if it's not, then these kind of steps will make it clear to the public and they can address us so we can fix it.

Katy Smith:

Right. Thank you. So last year, there was wide agreement about the budget that we need to do something about our roads and that the budget has not kept up with growth, but there was not agreement on what to do about it. So last year's council passed a millage increase, the first in 30 years, to boost the budget. And they also put a penny tax for roads and bridge projects on the ballot, which failed in November by three percentage points. So if you agree we need to do something about our roads and those growing expenses, I'm curious what your solutions would be and how you think council and staff should go about pursuing those solutions.

Benton Blount:

That's a great question. And it kind of takes me back to when I first came on the council again, in the middle of an information overload, we started discussing the budget in this property tax increase. And as I looked through what we were adding money to, it wasn't just salaries and some of the other things that they were using in the public to discuss. And while these are still very important initiatives, and I still support these, there was money being spent in pretty large amounts going to extra money for affordable housing, extra money for a transit system, extra money for the natural land trust, which preserves land and helps us with parks, all very essential, but they weren't brought into the conversation. 

So in my opinion, especially someone who tries to be more fiscally conservative, it's more of what do you need versus what you want and not saying that we don't need those things. But at the end of the day, I think that there was a little bit of misrepresentation of how much money was being allocated to simply hire more people to have more sheriff's officers and then over the large scope of the budget, what the money was actually going for. And that's ultimately why I opposed it. On top of that, we were just coming out of COVID and there's people living paycheck to paycheck that, you know, an extra 30, 40, $50 that they have to pay is a whole lot more than people realize. And I had to take that into account as well.

As far as roads and how to address those, I do believe that we need to work on getting our roads budget increased drastically, doubled, tripled, possibly to compete with at least the other counties and what they're putting into theirs. My biggest problem with where we were at with the proposed sales tax that did fail was that it addressed more issues that we need to develop strategies with the state because they were state roads. The county road system is not nearly as bad as people realize, but a lot of people don't know the difference between a county road and a state road because they all look the same. But if you look at the upkeep of the county roads versus the state roads, I think that our county taxpayer money should go to fix the county roads. And a lot of that money was going to be directed to state roads. And again, it's more about transparency and showing the public really what's under the hood. And once they realized that these were projects that they technically already paid for through their state taxes, they didn't want to double that in the chance that they might have those roads improved. 

So I think just that, again, it comes back to simplicity and transparency. And if we're open with the public from the beginning of the budget process all the way through the year on how the money is spent when it comes to issues like a sales tax, if we were to go a route like a transportation sales tax, which is much more customizable, we can base it more on the actual needs of the county versus this larger scope, as well as it gives the citizens more of a seat at the table to have a decision in those processes because council ultimately has to put those projects together instead of a commission.

So I think it's more of just the way that we get there. Like you mentioned, we all agree that we need our roads fixed. It's just a matter of the process and how we get there. And I feel like we just let the people down a little bit in this process from the budget all the way to the sales tax.

Katy Smith:

All right. So I did hear that during the penny sales tax debate that, wait, we've already paid a gas tax or this is a state road. If there is something to be fixed with that connection between county and state or dialogue between county council members and state legislators, how does that happen?

Benton Blount:

I wish that I had a solution to it because I think we could have already been moving forward. But it is a difficult process because you have to have legislators that are willing to go to bat for really the county to force the state to come in and do what they need to do, which is a tricky thing for them as well. I had suggested everything from having some kind of conversation with the state on a reimbursement process where if we did have to pay for a state road to be fixed with county money, if eventually, even if it's 20 years down the road, the state would reimburse us because that's their job. It's not ours. And that was kind of met with, I mean, I don't think anybody really knows how to approach that and get it done, but if we can come up with a solution to that, that would completely change the perspective on how the sales tax operates and the things more people will be on board. People at the end of the day, just feel like they're getting taxed over taxed over taxed. And then if they have to turn around and, you know, seemingly pay that tax again, it doesn't sit well with them.

Katy Smith:

Okay. So another issue that has your attention and that of your fellow council members is the county's Unified Development Ordinance, or the UDO for short. So quick background for listeners, and Ben, correct me if any of this is incorrect. So the UDO is the county's policy response to the comprehensive plan that passed in 2020. And that comprehensive plan was the result of input from residents who said they were worried about growth and how infrastructure would keep up with it, loss of green space, development in rural areas, and more. And it was also widely acknowledged that the county has too many piecemeal policies and zoning codes and ordinances about trees and neighborhood plans and the like. So the idea was to create a framework to make it easier for folks to make decisions and for property owners and residents to know what the rules were as they prepared to do a project. But you and some of your fellow council members and candidates who now make up the majority of council felt that the final passage of that UDO was rushed. It took place over the requisite three readings right at the end of 2022 before council turned over. So tell me what your approach has been and will be to these concerns you have about the UDO.

Benton Blount:

Well, first of all, this is definitely an undertaking that I would have not wanted to had to do myself. So I commend staff for all the work they've done for four plus years now on this document. And there are a lot of good things in the document. I say a lot. I haven't read the entire thing because it is 700 pages. And I've never been a fan of these instances, regardless of political party, where you have a bill or a law that gets shoved through basically at midnight symbolically that citizens never have a chance to ingest and really understand. And this is one that I would put money on. The citizens have not had a chance to read or really understand, not just the terminology, but just the size and scope, because you're taking all of these documents and melting them down into one code, one ordinance. And there's just a lot to take in. And the more I read, the more concerns I had that the public was not aware, almost like we needed a UDO cliff notes, something that they could really understand the basic principles of what was going to take place. Because there's a lot of changes in zoning. 

So for example, if you've lived in Greenville County ever since zoning started, you have a perception of what your zoning is. Well, in this UDO, it does change some of those zonings drastically as far as what can be done in them. Single-family zoning is something that I know our northern and southern parts of the county that more rural areas are very passionate about. They want to protect that space. They want to have a place with less congestion. And the ordinance that was proposed, the UDO, did have some things in it that protected those areas, but some other things that indirectly could almost remove that and make it to where density could become more prevalent. And I know that for their way of life, they don't wish to have that. So my only concern about a big single ordinance is that sometimes that blanket approach can cause some unintended consequences. And I wanted to make sure that those things were addressed before we moved forward with that policy. So our, you know, our farmers and our people that just like a more rural way of life in the mountains and in the low part of the county can have their needs met as well. And so I think that that was my biggest concern is that when it came to decision-making power, even there were some things that were switched to where staff got more control over some decisions that either the Planning Commission had before or the Council had before, and even to the point where it's right on the edge of whether it breaks state law from the 1994 Planning and Enabling Act. 

And I just feel like if we're going to have, once this ordinance would have went forward and really been enacted, there's not really a way to pump the brakes on it at that point. So I wanted to do everything that I could to address it now, not to destroy it or get it thrown into the trash can, but to fix it and make sure that it addressed all the needs of all the citizens and not just the people who maybe are more in the municipality areas, which is where I feel like this document was the most different in the future growth because Greenville County's changed a lot. But I feel like that some of those policies also kind of drifted out into those areas where people do not want that kind of more dense lifestyle, the open space subdivisions and things like that. There's just some concerns that I think need a little more sunlight and need a little more time to let the citizens have input on them so we can make sure that whatever this document is, it's going to be here for decades, and we just have to make sure we get it right.

Katy Smith:

So can you then describe for folks what has happened in hitting the pause button? We're recording this on Thursday the 16th. There was a special called meeting on Tuesday the 14th. So share with folks what happened if they hadn't heard, and then what you imagine the rest of 2023 will look like in terms of the things you just discussed.

Benton Blount:

Sure. So before I was elected chairman, for about three months, I obviously had had my reservations about the UDO, and I had voiced those very publicly and said I would do anything in my power to make sure that we addressed the problems that we see rather than just let it go and hope that nothing bad happens. And so at the time, I didn't know that I would be chairman or that I was even going to run for chair. But becoming chairman, I wanted to continue fulfilling that promise that I made to the citizens. And citizens overwhelmingly were concerned about this document because growth is a big concern.

And so when I became chair I got with some of my colleagues who were very concerned about it and realized that I could call a special call meeting and there hasn't been a lot of time for developers to get into this ordinance yet so I knew that if we could go ahead and address it now it would be the best way to respect staff and all the hard work that they'd done but at the same time respect the people that put us in this position to do our jobs. And there's a way, in my opinion, there's a way to do it all. I think a lot of times politicians feel like they have to do it either for one or the other. And I think there's a way to do it where everybody can be happy. And so that was my goal for calling the special call meeting, which was just to go ahead and get it addressed, even all the way down to there's wrong footnotes in this document. And why would we pass something when it's just not fixed. They admitted that it was at least 25% from being completed. And so my question to them was, why not get it right? And that's our goal. Basically, the process of what happened with the UDO and the special call meeting is we suspended a rule to allow for reconsideration from either side who has new or concerning information. At that point, we then had another motion made by Councilman Bradley, who made all these motions to reconsider the UDO, which essentially hits the rewind button. You go back to the prior meeting, back to third reading, almost as if the last vote had never happened.

Benton Blount:

And then at that point, we made a motion to move the ordinance from third reading instead of voting yes or no, moving it back to committee, which Councilwoman Seaman made a motion to send it to committee of the whole. The original intent was to send it to planning and development. And my thinking behind that was just, it's a development document. So my view is that that would be the best parking spot for it to begin this process.

But at the same time, I do acknowledge that Councilwoman Seaman's motion to send it to committee of the whole means that all of council gets to sit down and begin that process. And I think that's a fair place to, ultimately, it can go to planning and development if it needs to, or the planning commission. So I didn't have a problem with where it went. It's just let's begin the process to get it right.

Since then, I've already talked with staff and I've asked T. Coker to assist me in setting up some online workshops through Zoom, but it'll be live-streamed through the county website to go back through the UDO, not necessarily word for word. So again, it's 700 pages, but any of the areas where anybody on council or the public have had real concerns, we'll get online. Council can talk to staff, staff can talk to council, the public can listen and begin the process of going through the concerning areas of the ordinance so we can really draw out to the public what they are. And if there's any misconceptions, staff can correct that right there with counsel and the public listening. And again, it's more about just, when I say transparency, I don't mean it in a, even a political way, but just a simple way to understand what this document is. And once we achieve that, if there's any amendments that need to be made, we can make those amendments, we can get it corrected. And then it's only, it's at third reading. So we don't have to go back through the whole process again. We move it forward to full council, we vote it third, and then it becomes our new development ordinance.

Katy Smith:

Great. Thanks for that information. So in thinking about our tax options and our funding options, a lot of this is because we have a very convoluted and messy state tax code. Everyone agrees that that's the case. It's just so much work and political courage to fix it, which is hard for a legislature to do with two-year terms. That is why we have things like FILOs, fee-in-lieu-of-tax agreements, that I think people agree are messy. Some people hate them. The county is like, well, this is the tool that we have to recruit companies. Given all of that and how much you're hearing about people's discomfort with FILOs of the people that come and speak at meetings, what are your thoughts on how to fix this?

Benton Blount:

It's a very complicated topic. And a lot of it, again, this is why I keep saying simplicity, that there's never really been an effort from the county in the way that it needs to be to address the public on issues like FILOs.

Some things that I've learned about them since coming on the council that the public is unaware of, cause I've had to inform them. And when I do, it changes their perspective is for manufacturing jobs. If we don't give a big company a fee-in-lieu-of-tax agreement, the County doesn't receive any money for five years. So by doing the fee-in-lieu, you actually get money up front that you wouldn't have if you had not done it. And then on top of that, the FILOs, in my opinion, there's different parameters. And I think the parameters need to be looked at and maybe restructured a little bit because when they were created, we weren't nearly as big as we are now.

But the main goal is high-quality jobs, large numbers of jobs in the proper location in the county, that housing doesn't become an issue. There's a bunch of different metrics that have to be met. And I feel like the problem is that we drifted away from the metrics and just worried about making sure that the investments were coming in. And that's unfortunately put us in a bad place, even from development, because now we have housing issue, which I don't think is necessarily just an affordable housing issue, but even housing shortages because of the massive number of jobs that come in. So if it's not looked at across the board in a large scale way, I think the unintended consequences sometimes creep up on us. Another example would be something that I'm going to try to press forward on this year, which is impact fees for developers.

And it's not to attack the developers, but the developers are making a lot of money in Greenville County right now. And the impact fees are a key piece of the Greenville County system that I think we're missing out of the top five counties in the state. We're one of the only, we're the only one in the top five that doesn't have impact fees. And what those do on a simple scale is they address the infrastructure in real time of the areas that are being developed.

And so if we don't have impact fees, the developers come in and they don't have to worry about road issues, then five years down the road, the county spending tax money to address that road instead of impact fees, which could go ahead and address it in real time. So ultimately, that could even affect our budget, our property tax. It could help lower property taxes. But really, the big goal behind the impact fees is to address all the real issues people are concerned about when it comes to growth in Greenville County, our congestion. Impact fees can be used for so many things, but I think they should be streamlined to the most basic things like just our basic infrastructure, whether it's storm drainage, whether it is the right size of road to handle the amount of traffic that's going to be coming in, and those can be addressed that way. So I think there's just pieces of the puzzle that we haven't really looked into too. It seems like we just go into property taxes. And when we need more money, we go back to property taxes. And I think there's a way to collaborate and come up with some new ways to generate revenue to handle our infrastructure needs, our road needs. And it doesn't always have to come out of the taxpayer's pocket.

Katy Smith:

Thank you. So Benton, it's so neat to visit with you because we met when you were a candidate. We met when you were a newcomer and now you're county council chairman. What have you learned over the last couple years?

Benton Blount:

It would take me five podcasts to talk about all the stuff I've learned and half of it I feel like I forgot already. But I've just looked at my role as a councilman, regardless whether I'm the chairman or not, as a public servant that listens to the people. And that's gotten controversial from time to time because even in recent conversations about the UDO, I've had several groups reach out to me and essentially their thought process is, well, the experts helped put this document together. So the citizens don't know enough to make the decisions is ultimately what they've said. And my point is, well, that's where we failed as council because our job is to inform the public of those things. So at the end of the day, I feel like our job is to still listen to the citizens. That's what we're put in that position for.

So I am one of those people that believe, yes, at the end of the day, I listen to my citizens before anybody that's labeled an expert. I think that hopefully my leadership as chairman will reflect that as far as us being very transparent in ways that Greenville County Council has never done to show the citizens everything that we're doing, where the money's being spent, how it's being spent, not making it a political magic act where we're convincing them of this while we're doing something else. I think that's where we've lost trust with citizens in the past. And so my goal really over the next two years is, again, it goes back to simplicity. I simply want to show them how their tax money is being used. I want them to see that clearly our decisions are being pushed by their voices and not just the voices of external groups.

And once we establish that trust, that's when we really start to make progress because citizens are going to trust us with their money at that point. And right now I don't blame them for not trusting this at all. So I think our goal, we have to earn the trust. We can't just expect that they should turn over everything they have for us to spend it on things that they may not know about. So the transparency thing has kind of been something that has been a driving force for me from the time that I ran for office. And now even being chairman, it gives me the opportunity to make sure that that transparency is expanded. I know a lot of people joke about our crystal cathedral that we have over at the county. And the way that I look at it is we should turn that around and try to give it a positive spin and say that our Transparent Sound Council is going to be as transparent as the building itself.

Katy Smith:

I like that. Well, and I love the themes you just shared, because honestly, that's the whole goal of this podcast is we want to help create more knowledge and let people be informed about what's happening. We want to help people be equipped with how their voices can be heard. Because I come to every council meeting for the most part, as you know, and I'm glad that they're well attended. But honestly, it's like 100 people in a county of five hundred and thirty thousand people. And so voices do get heard, but would love for more voices to weigh in for sure.

Benton Blount:

Absolutely. And they really they want to get involved. And that's the part that I want to capitalize on because I do. I started a newsletter that I put out just for my district. No intentions were trying to grow it into some massive thing, but the information I put out was fairly simple. A lot of times it was copied and pasted from emergency management. If it's about the hurricane or from Ms. Hesha Gamble, if it was about roads and debris pickup and, but people, it's like, they were like, I've never seen anything like this before. This is great. And I'm just looking at it like it's copy and paste the stuff that's already there. They just don't know where to look sometimes. So I think that citizens really want to be engaged. They just, a lot of times they don't know how to. And I think as council, we need to look at unique ways, whether it's, and I believe this podcast is great. And I hope that more citizens will listen to it because it does give you a chance to get a more of an in-depth look at what goes on under the hood of all of our different, anything in Greenville County, really. And I think that we can do that as county, just like the city does an excellent job of that. I think we can learn a lot from them when it comes to our outreach and how we inform the public. And it just comes down to if people feel like they're a part of the process, it makes everything a lot easier.

Katy Smith:

Yeah. I appreciate you mentioning that theme of trust, because I do think when there's trust among you 12 as council members, between you and staff, and between the public and staff and council members, people don't have to read or feel like they need to read a 700 page document because they think we got the right people in the seats coming up with the solutions and the right people voting on what they put before us. So I appreciate all that you said in that vein. And if you have not listened to this before, but you've listened because you saw, oh, Chairman Blount is speaking and I wanna hear what he has to say, give us a follow. We are a nonpartisan podcast just here to help inform people and get them involved. And I appreciate all that you have done on that front, Chairman Blount, for sure.

Benton Blount:

Well, thank you very much.

Katy Smith:

Well, Chairman Blount, I appreciate so much you coming on in such a timely manner to help connect with listeners and voters and really appreciate you stepping up to serve not just District 19, but your fellow council members as chairman this year.

Benton Blount:

I appreciate you having me and I'd love to come on anytime. And hopefully we just continue this dialogue of transparency and openness with everybody in the county. And the next two years will be great and beyond.

Katy Smith:

Great. Thanks so much.

Benton Blount:

Thank you.

Catherine Puckett: Simple Civics: Greenville County is a project of Greater Good Greenville. Greater Good Greenville was catalyzed by the merger of the Nonprofit Alliance and the Greenville Partnership for Philanthropy. You can learn more on our website at greatergoodgreenville.org.