COLUMBIA, S.C. — Several dirt road residents showed up to Richland County Council's meeting on Tuesday to voice their concerns about the county's road paving program through the Transportation Penny Tax.
Bridget Craver was one of those residents to show up. Craver says her family wants to keep their dirt road exactly the way it is.
"We like having a little privacy, that's why most people live on a dirt road," Craver said.
Starting in 2012 the county collected funds for transportation through a penny sales tax and received $45 million to put towards paving Richland County's dirt roads.
The county is 29% of the way through with the project, which council chair overture walker says means they are behind.
"$45 million was allocated for paving dirt roads in Richland County, more than half of that has been expended and only 29% of the roads have been paved," Walker explained.
This has the county council looking to ask residents whether they want their roads paved or not, but with paving could come some changes to the roads. (The question came after the Transportation Ad Hoc Committee asked the council what to do now that the county is behind on paving. The committee was trying to figure out how to uphold what taxpayers voted for in 2012.)
However, for property owners like Craver, the agreement to pave would also be similar to an easement because the county would have to take a bit of her property to do the job.
"We own halfway into the road, and you have to have so much footage which would mean all of our trees would have to come down. We live on a farm so we have a 10-foot tree barrier for our horses in case anyone on the road lost control or did something," Craver said.
The county's original paving policy stated that 25% of the residents on a road could determine if the road was paved or not. But county council discussions stated that this was the fairest way to decide.
"I do recognize the fact that the principle of majority rule is a foundation principle of American government, and so it makes sense to me that that might be where the threshold is," Branham stated.
Residents living on dirt roads will be sent letters in the mail from the county in the future to ask about paving.
Although the county did vote to approve this 51% rule, they are still requesting discussions for how long residents will have to respond to the letter and what no response to a letter would mean.