Voters need to keep tabs on city’s spending

The Rock Hill City Council works like a large ATM machine. It spends every dime it takes in from the taxpayers.

Currently council members have been borrowing more money through bonds or Tax Increment Financing Districts – TIFs. The city has been on a spending spree for the last decade. The part that is distressing is the city debt that has increased with the current mayor and city council. What is more troubling is their obsession with spending money on downtown projects and neglecting the rest of the city.

The city has not raised property taxes but our business, license, stormwater and user fees are raised to make the city look favorable by not raising property taxes. The city uses a 2 percent hospitality tax to help finance tourism projects.

The mayor and the city council plan to borrow and spend over $100 million on public projects to help downtown. This includes nearly $15 million of street and sidewalk improvements, $14 million for upgrading the city’s utility system and $15 million on adding a parking garage and parking space for Knowledge Park.

The Knowledge Park development TIF will cost over $40 million of taxpayers’ money. York County’s Pennies for Progress funding for improvements to White Street cost $9.1 million, which involves widening lanes along White Street from downtown Rock Hill to Constitution Boulevard. The county has given the city over $16 million of our taxpayer dollars for downtown.

To date, the city has spent $3.2 million on a parking deck for Comporium, which is a great benefit to Comporium, as well as $4.8 million for Fountain Park, $450,000 for the Children Museum, $1 million for a walkway to a 46-unit apartment (not including the city’s cost of tearing down the Woolworth building) and $500,000 for utility and sidewalk upgrades.

The city will spend $5 million on a new water tank on Main Street. The city is currently in debt on the Textile corridor for $6.5 million, and on Red River/Riverwalk for $11.3 million. A TIF is taxpayers’ money that either comes from the Rock Hill school district or the York County. It’s our money.

The city feels that it needs to subsidize downtown business instead of letting the free market determine a fair price. Since 1996 the city incentive program and jump start grant program has spent over $670,000 of our taxpayer money.

Some of the businesses in downtown you might have heard of: Erin’s restaurant received $14,593; Firehouse subs, $10,000; Augello’s Coffeehouse, $15,000; Periwinkle Café, $10,171; Vintage Finds, $14,000; the Vault, $5,000. These are just a few that have received our tax money.

What do all these have in common? They’re all closed. Half of the money the city has spent went down the drain. The city should never be in a position to pick winners and losers.

The newest subsidy in downtown will be $54,000 for a specialty grocery store. The city has a failure rate of 50 percent. The one question I have: who is profiting with these subsidies – the property owners, realtors or the new businesses? We need to ask these questions. The real truth needs to comes out.

Every year the city has to report its budget to the public and have public hearings. By the time it gets to the public nobody really pays attention to the findings, but you need to. In 2009, the entire debt in Rock Hill was $132 million dollars; in 2010, $166 million; in 2011, $168 million; in 2012, $170 million; in 2013, $181 million; and in 2014, $184 million.

In the last five years the city has racked up over $61 million in debt. Who is really watching our elected leaders? I want to make it clear that the city is in good financial shape at this time but the trend is troubling. The city’s yearly interest payments in 2014 were $8.5 million, and in 2015 they are $9.1 million. That is almost 5 percent of the city’s budget.

The council is pushing York County to forgo future property tax revenues on the downtown Knowledge Park area. The county will lose millions of dollars of tax revenue to the city for another 10 years. The Rock Hill school board had to be bribed into passing TIF with upfront money and extra police officers. What does the county get in return? If Knowledge Park fails, the city is on the hook for the debt – which means the Rock Hill citizens will pay. The constant spending on downtown could break the city.

There is a fundamental question: who is minding the store or, in this case, who is watching the mayor and city council? Nobody goes to the council meetings, and we rely on the press to keep us informed. Our cable news is not received by all due to satellite dishes, so we rely on The Herald to inform us on city council.

The mayor and the city council have been there so long they forget who elected them and who they serve. We, the citizens, need to go to the meetings and get more involved. This is our city as well as theirs. Could we wake up and see our city looking like Detroit or Chicago? I hope not!

In conclusion, my letter to the editor is to enlighten the citizens about our debt and where they are spending the money. The city will tell you they are prudent, and in most cases they are, but how many knew about the current $184 million debt?

This story was originally published March 22, 2015 at 8:37 AM with the headline "Voters need to keep tabs on city’s spending."