Plan to fix SC 183 shows how our government should work
On the same day that our US House of Representatives effectively voted against a third person to be Speaker of the House, our state and county delegations held a press conference announcing how cooperation led to $95 million coming to our county to fix Pickens County’s most dangerous road, SC 183. The contrast between functioning government and dysfunctional government could not have been greater.
SC 183 has been a safety priority for many years - decades if you have lived here. Five-year crash data, per the S.C. Dept. of Transportation, showed the 6mile stretch of SC 183 in Pickens County was a site for 288 crashes, 84 injuries and seven fatalities. Funding has always been the issue. In 2016, the county was receiving only around $2 million a year for local road funding through the $20 per vehicle fee. Fixing SC 183 from just SC 135 to the county line was expected to cost upwards of $100 million.
In August 2016, “Pickens United” held its first meeting. Pickens United is a meeting of all elected officials in the county. It is thought to be the only county in the state to have such meetings. Out of Pickens United, in November 2016, County Council chairman Roy Costner and State Rep. Neal Collins attended a meeting wherein the state infrastructure bank (SIB) was mentioned as a possibility for funding of projects that local governments could never afford. However easy this sounds, it is not.
Created in 1997, SIB had never awarded Pickens County funding because Pickens County had never applied. To apply for SIB funding, a local county must not only provide a local match of money, but, more difficult, it must have local consensus on the project. To the near-unanimous county council’s and the unanimous state delegation’s credit, they agreed to submit an application to fix SC 183.
The first time SIB entertained the application in 2018, it was denied because the county match was not as high as other county applications. The first application solely relied on county and county transportation committee (CTC) funding. County Council and the state delegation decided to look for other sources of money.
During this period, in 2020, County Councilman Henry Wilson ran his campaign on fixing SC 183. He won a threeman race, indicating to all that this was an important issue for the community. Then, in 2021, disagreement within Greenville County Council led to removal of members from GPATS(the Greenville-Pickens Area Transportation Study), which led to Sen. Rex Rice moving from vice-chairman to chairman.
As to finding additional funding:
● Rice, Majority Leader Davey Hiott, and Collins secured $10 million in the state budget in May 2023.
● CTC agreed to use a significant sum of the money it receives from the state to pay the county bond.
● Upon CTC approval, County Council, led by Chairman Chris Bowers, voted to secure $12.5 million in bonds.
● The Rice-led GPATS and Collins secured $28 million through GPATS in August 2023.
The final obstacle was the $44.7 million SIB application in October 2023. Fortunately, SIB approved the funding, bringing the total funding on SC 183 to $95.2 million.
This entire process was about solving a longstanding problem of safety without creating a financial burden for our constituents. All the money in place for this current project is without any tax increase at the local or state level to cover the costs. While our foremost goal is safety, the supplementary benefit will be some relief in congestion as people who want to travel to and from Greenville have an alternative choice to safely travel.
In summary, the challenge for fixing SC 183 was always said to be finding enough funding. The real challenge, however, was getting different levels of government to work together. Fortunately for generations to come, the state delegation, county council, CTC, GPATS, and SIB all worked together to cobble together the necessary funding.
The challenges, of course, do not stop with just funding. The public will have an opportunity to provide input on how they want “fixing” to occur. Then, engineering and environmental studies must be performed. Right-of-way acquisitions take time. Then, of course, construction. Construction costs have risen substantially since this project first started in 2016. It is safe to assume costs will continue to rise.
However, while dysfunction in D.C. makes headlines, it is nice to know that here locally and for the past seven years, our state and county delegations have solved a problem by working well together and with other entities.
S.C. Rep. Neal Collins, State Sen. Rex Rice, Majority Leader Davey Hiott, and Pickens County Council members Chris Bowers, Roy Costner and Henry Wilson