Curt McGahee discusses Greenville County's proposed 1% road sales tax plan.

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Pledge of Allegiance: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. (Audience cheers) Singer: O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea! (Audience cheers) Donald Trump (audio clip): America is back! (Audience cheers) Charlie James: Yes, sir! And we are back. Well, the Greenville County Council is going to have a ballot initiative coming up in November about a 1% sales tax increase. Joining us right now from Greenville County Council is County Councilman Curt McGahee. Curt, welcome to the program. Hope you're doing well, sir. Curt McGahee: Hey, thanks for having me, Charlie. Hope you are, too. Charlie James: Absolutely. So, tell us about this 1% sales tax increase. Now, because we're hearing now that it's not just going for roads. Curt McGahee: Sure. So, you know, we had to—we had to compromise, right? And based on the ordinance passed by the—by the—excuse me, the—the—um, the state law, uh, you can do Greenlink funding and Historic and Natural Land Trust funding. Now, uh, obviously the goal is to get the county as far ahead in roads as we can, right? So, just like Reagan or Trump, we had to do a little compromise here. And, uh, what I prefer: all this money go to roads, 100%. But my bigger focus is to get the county the extra money it needs to get the roads where they need to be. So, 3% of that's going to go to Greenlink, based on the current what's on the—what's going on the ballot. That's about 3.3 million per year. County Council currently funds Greenlink at 3.5 million. So if we can get most of that money coming from this tax, that's great! We can take that 3.5 and do something else. But anyway, uh, Historic and Natural Land Trust will be at 7%. That's 7.8 million a year, right? So, and just—just—and this is a point I want to make: the Historic and Natural Land Trust has preserved over 3,000 acres of green space in the last 3,000—I'm sorry, in the last five years, okay? Being funded at about $7 million, okay, in the past five years. Their current fund balance is a million dollars that we just approved. They've spent all their money. They estimate if we pass this penny tax, they'll be able to preserve, based on land and how, you know, land's going up every day, about four—4,500 to 7,000 more acres. Who—who could not be for that? I'll tell you, I would rather give them 7% and we preserve this land that can never be built on. You want to talk about controlling growth? Historic and Natural Land Trust is the way to do it. And giving them 7%, about 7.8 million a year, if this tax passes, is going to preserve a lot of land, and that—and that's a good thing. Charlie James: So now we got—we got 90% left, and that would go to roads? Curt McGahee: Well, so 1% will go to the—1% will go to the state. State law says they get 1% as an administration fee. So now we're down to 89% would go towards the roads. Now the muni—the six municipalities in the county would also get their portion. That's 62.3 million, right? This is based on their portion of sales tax collected in their boundaries, okay? So the municipalities will get a portion. The bottom line: the county would get about 38 million per year in additional road funding with this tax. So after you break it all out, you give Greenlink their portion, Historic and Natural Land Trust, which is awesome, and then you give the six municipalities based on their spend, uh, we—we get about 38 million per year in funding for roads, which is what we need. Uh, you know, we've already made a big commitment, uh, you know, over the years. We did in, you know, in 2024 was 10 and a half million. 25 was 11 million. 26, the last when our—when the first budget this new council came, it's 33 m ...

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