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Hello everyone and Welcome once again to
another episode of Selling Greenville
your favorite real estate podcast here
in the upstate of South Carolina I'm
your host as always Stan McCune realtor
right here in the Greenville area and
you can find all of my contact
information in the show notes if you
need to reach out to me for any reason
and also as always please leave a rating
leave a review subscribe to the show if
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encourage me to keep producing content
for you guys today we're going to be
talking about the primary elections that
happened in our statethis past week
specifically with regard to our local
elections and specifically with regard
to Greenville County CouncilI was
following this election very closely
I have some skin in the game I'm a part
of arealtor political group and we
actually interviewed some of the people
running for County Council and soI
had interviewed some of themI know
some of thempersonally and it was a
very fascinating Race For Me on multiple
levels I was very interested to see how
things played outfor various
candidatesand for my purpose for my
purposesthere are a few different
things that I am am concerned about when
it comes to our County government one is
justpolitical dysfunction and we see
political dysfunction all across the
board right nowbut certain people in
County Council I'm not going to name
names here but certain people in County
Council have brought dysfunction to the
council and I think that that's a really
really bad Trend we've already seen that
happen in the stateand you know
basically have seenour our state
legislators legislatorsget
completelylocked on something to the
point where they can't even come up with
enough votes to adjourncrazy things
like thatbut with regard to our
County Council that has been really a
big problem specifically the past year
there been all sorts of problems and a
lot of you know thankfully our our local
uhjournalists have covered it how
there is dysfunction and so it's it's
gotten some pressbut we had four
seats up for election three of which had
incumbents people that were rerunning
that had been on the councilfor for
a while quite franklyand this
election was to me the way I saw it it
was a referendbecause normally for
County Council incumbents are heavy
favorites I mean heavy heavy favorites
because people know their names you
know they've been around for for a while
and that's just it usually you can
serve on the council once you get on the
council usually you can stay on the
council as long as you want people
usually go out on their own termsin
fact oftentimes people won't even run
against them because they just think
it's a waste of
time but it wasn'tthree of them
were incumbents three of the elections
had incumbents two of the three
incumbents flat out lost
and and and I I should mention in these
primaries in every one of them there was
only one party running three of them the
the three with the incumbents were all
Republican primaries the fourth one was
a Democrat primary and in each case
there is not another party running
against them so in other words the
primaries essentially determined who is
going to win with with one minor
potential exception which I I'll discuss
here in a secondso these primaries
were very
consequential so two of the three
incumbents lost flat out and one of them
had four different people running and
typically what happens when four four
people run for the same office for the
same seatthe result is that nobody
gets to to 50% of the votes and then we
end up having a runoff election and that
is what happened in District 19 which is
where Willis Meadows who is the chairman
of Greenville County Councilwas
running as the incumbent against three
others he did not even get the most
votes of the four he came in second
place and honestly it you know if a few
more people had voted there's a good
possibility he would not have even made
the runoff but he did he made the runoff
and will'll bewill'll be having
another election I believein a week
and a half well when when I'm recording
this it's in a week and a halfit'll
be towards the end of June if I'm not
mistakenbut don'tI'm not voting
in that that's a a different District
than me so look that up make sure that
you know when that runoff is cuz that's
going to be there's not going to be a
lot of people that vote in that runoff
but it's super super importantwho
ends up winning that so that's something
to keep in mind he's going up against I
I don't know how to pronounce the last
name so ex correct me if I'm wrong I'm
sorry but Benton
blownBenton Blount basically I mean
with all due
respect in my opinion did not run a
campaign he has a huge social media
following because he's a singer who was
on America's Got TalentI honestly
kind of chuckled a little bit when I
went on his website to just kind of see
I didn't think he had a chance I had no
ideathat it I would have never
guessed that he would have gotten more
votes than the
chairmanthere were there was another
person running that I thought had a
pretty decent chance of at least
competing with the
chairmanbut at the end of the day it
was someone with a huge social media
following who basically didn't campaign
I guess people just recogniz the name I
believe his name was at the top of the
ballot as well which that's one of those
weird things that helps people out if
one name is higher than the other
just kind of a weird thing that we run
into in a in a democratic form of
government but we havea singer
who is going to be going against a very
long long-term County council member
and what what I was saying before
that made me chuckle when I went on his
website it's like his main platforms
they're actually better than I've seen
for some people a lot of times people
that run for theselocal offices
they'll have like a national platform
like they'll be talking about Second
Amendment andyou know prolife or
pro-choice or all these different things
those those aren't things that the
county does anything on on the county is
focused on infrastructure and things of
that natureand soBenton Blount
or blunt or however you pronounce it
he does actually understand that I can
tell based on his platforms but but it
still made me chuckle a little bit that
like one of one of them one of his main
ones was that he wants to to build some
kind of pedestrian bridge in in a very
specific areawhich is fineit's
just we've got we've got a lot of other
needsin Greenville Countyyou
know so building a pedestrian bridge
great I've got no problems with that in
theorybut you know we we do have
things we do have crumbling roads and
some parts of the county and Sewer lines
that are failing and and things like
that that need to be addressed as well
maybe not as sexy of a topic as
building a nice pretty pedestrian bridge
but
people voters are very concerned
about those issuesanother one was
another major platform was painting ugly
water towerswhich again great I've
got no problem painting ugly ugly water
towers butyou know if you if you
can't drive on the roads to even get to
see the water towerswhat does it
matter sofascinating to me this was
a
referendumagainst those who had been
on County Council one of the incumbents
Joe Dill has represented a rural part of
North Greenville County for
24 years he was voted out and he was not
happy about ithe said I'm going to
ask for a
recount and I only lost by a couple of
votes is what he said he lost by 131
votes I only lost by I'm paraphrasing
something like I only lost by a couple
of votesand and he believes that
even though he lost the primary that he
can still win in the general election by
trying to build a campaign as a right in
candidate so he's going to attempt to
get people to write his name in on on
the ballotI I think it's possible
obviouslyI'm I'm skeptical as to
whether that will work that's not an
easy thing to dohe does have a very
easy name for people to remember so that
helps it's hard to be a WR in candidate
whenyou're you have a difficult name
so I don't know we'll see I will say
he refused to interview with the group
that that I was a part of he was one of
the few that refused to interview of
course Benton Blount didn't even respond
but again like I was saying Benton
Blountdidn't really appear to be
doing much of a campaign from what I
could seenow that I could be wrong
just again that was just from what I
could seelong story short big
shakeup in Greenville County Council is
a referendagainst the county and we
have to ask what is going on and I think
that there is a common theme among those
who won and that theme is a theme of
anti-development again I don't really
knowa ton about what Benton blout
like what kind of conversations he was
having with people if anybut outside
of himfor sure the others that were
running were running pretty much on an
anti-development platform trying to at
the very least if that wasn't like a
major part of their platform they were
at least pandering in some way to the
anti-growth crowd the crowd that
essentially wants to stop developments
in Greenville County they don't want any
more houses built in Greenville County
or at least not in the part of the
county that they live in in their
Districtand the one primary that
didn't involve an incumbent which was
District 23 kind of the nickletown area
the winner Allan Mitchellwhile I
would not call him an
anti-development type oftype of
person he is a big proponent of of
affordable housingso he's he's okay
with that type of development
development that's geared towards lower
incomeindividualsbut he is
effectively anti-development for what he
calls and what others call quote unquote
market rate housing market rate housing
simply means housing that is sold for
what it's worth on the open market
he's against that because he believes
that's driving gentrification and
causing people to have to move out of
places where they've lived their whole
lives and he's not wrong we've talked
about
gentrificationon this podcast how
it it there are people who it helps and
there are a lot of people who it hurts
he's trying to help out the people that
it hurts by focusing on affordable
housing development and basically
opposing market rate housingnow
again like like all of them they all of
these people have that when they talk
about development they all say okay yeah
we know that we need you know as
Greenville County grows we need more
housing we just don't think it should be
in this area well the problem is
everyone's saying that so nobody wants
housing in their areato nobody wants
more developments in their area and so
we're going to we're we're starting to
see a
culture of
anti-development really take hold of the
countyand and let's be real people
are calling for that like the the County
Council has been dealing with complaints
about the county growing too quickly for
a while and now people put their money
where their mouth was they went to the
polls and they
voted against development that is what
they did at the at the end of the day
and and the interesting one really was
Joe Dill because Joe actually is
anti-development in a lot of waysbut
apparently people are still unhappy
enough with how things are going that
they felt like you know what we want
a a new person in there we want new
blood to come in there and to reassess
things and to to take a completely
different approachI also saw
interviews at some of the polling places
and the interviews at least the ones
that were highlighted all focused on
people that were anxious about
development in in the county people that
were anxious about how quickly things
are developing how infrastructure is not
keeping up with itfeeling like
Greenville is being
overdeveloped and and yeah so that was
definitely on people's minds when they
were voting there's no question about it
and the last time we had County
elections something very similar
happenedthe people that
voted they were I should say the people
that got voted in during that time they
have all been pretty much
anti-development and they've been
focused on otherother things like
I've already mentioned some of these
National platform types of things like
trying to make Greenville County a
right to life County things like that
that that you know in in my opinion are
more symbolic than actually
accomplishing anything with within the
countybut yeah so now this is the
second
straight set of County elections that
we've had where people that are not pro
development friendly have ended up
winning racesand this is going to
have a ripple effect for years to come
years to come here in the county
Greenville County expects to gain
220,000 more people in the next 18 years
but the people who are here do not want
further development to happenthat
goes without saying that something has
to give like how are are 220,000 people
going to move here in the next 18 years
if we don't keep developing in
additionally most of the people joining
County Council I I've kind of loosely
referenced
anti-developmentfervor but there's
kind of another kind of layer to that
and and I have mixed feelings on
thisbut we we have to call it what
it ismost of the people on County
Council and joining County Council are
in favor of what we call impact fees
which are addition costs forced on a
developer to pay for infrastructure
improvements and additions needed to add
more housing so for instance they might
have to pay per house a feein order
to improve the sewer infrastructure or
something to that effect or the roads
something to that effect and on a
surface level that seems fair but you
have to remember that what happens F
first off from a fairness standpoint
it's not necessarily Fair because
they're making improvements potentially
that also helps the residents that have
already been there for all these years
why aren't the residents having to
contribute towards those improvements
there are arguments on both sides for
that I'm just simply throwing that out
there as something to considerbut
more to the point impact fees don't just
get paid by the developer they get paid
that that ends up going into the the
cost of housing at the end of the day
and so it increases the price of housing
so all of this between the
anti-development
fervor combined with impact fees that
most I I I think are have they've been
kind of avoided somewhat up to this
pointbut I think that that is
basically a guarantee with the the new
blood coming into the council
amongst other other indicators I have
combined with all you know several
hundred, people coming into Greenville
Countythe next decade plus all this
means home prices are going to keep
going up longterm you know we we've
talked about the short term I'm talking
about longterm the next two decades home
prices we can expect to see them sore
not necessarily overnight but in the
long
run and as I've already said everyone
admits we need more housing in
Greenville as it grows like everyone
knows
this but everyone doesn't want that
housing to be near them they don't want
that development to be near them
something has to givewhat we're
seeing is effectively an environment is
being created in Greenville where future
Generations our children our perhaps our
grandchildren will not be able to afford
to purchase a home in this area until
maybe their mid or late 30s I bought my
first home in myin my mid 20sand
not everyone has that sort of of
privilege and I'm grateful that I was
able to do that despite being in a
recession and despite you know barely
even hanging on to my job during the
recession before I was a realtor
but now we're in a situation well we
already are in a situation right now
where it's really difficult for someone
to buy a house in their in their 20s or
early 30s unless they have just a killer
job a job that is that pays way more
than what the average is but the
trajectory this anti-development
trajectory is going to make that to the
point where now it's going to be people
are just going to have to wait until
their mid to late 30s on average before
they can afford a home unless they
unless it's a two income household and
that's kind of where the economy is
pushing as a whole it's basically
requiring two incomesbut Greenville
has been considered affordable for a
long time and that's changing and it's
changing because of the way people are
voting and is changing because of the
way Greenville County Council is
treating developments
I will say one positive one potential
positive out of this is that perhaps the
new blood and County Council will shake
things up as I said before the current
County Council is really in a state of
dysfunction having some new blood in the
in the council will hopefully help to to
unlock some of this dysfunction and
maybe we can have some normality
restored we'll have to see a lot rests
on the election in District
between Willis Meadows and Benton Blount
that I'm going to be looking at that
super duper closely becauseobviously
the chairman holds a lot of Sway and has
a lot of impact on what happens in
County Council if he loses then there's
some potential for big big changes if if
he wins there may still be changes but
it's not going to be as substantial so
this will be a fascinating thing to
watch over the upcoming years I'm
looking for forward toto seeing how
how these how the runoff goes and how
this othersituation where someone is
trying to where Joe Dale is trying to
build a writing campaign we'll see how
all of that plays out and then we'll
have to to follow County Council and see
what they do in the upcoming years and
what their attitudes are towards housing
and towards development that's all for
today I hope you guys enjoyed it get out
to vote whenever you have the
opportunity to vote just a reminder as
always alsomy contact information is
in the show notes if you need to reach
out to me for any of your real estate
needs please subscribe to the show if
you haven't already leave a fstar rating
leave a short little review and we'll
talk to you guys again next time
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