WINNSBORO – Representing the Fairfield County Chamber of Commerce, its president, Dillon Pullen, appeared before the Fairfield County Hospitality and Accommodation Tax Review Committee Monday, April 21, to request a recommendation for state accommodation funding for the chamber to promote tourism for the county.
“You see the request in front of you is for $227,228,” Pullen said, addressing the committee. But the request in the hands of the committee was for $199,228, not $227,228, a $28,000 difference.
Following the meeting, The Voice asked Pullen to explain the difference and why there were two different funding requests of different amounts.
He said the $199,228.00 request was initially submitted to the review committee. He said he then noticed that he had failed to include $28,000 for the chamber staff’s employer-paid taxes that he was requesting to be covered by the county’s state accommodation tax revenue, so he submitted a second (corrected) request for $227,228.00 to the county’s finance department, which was not passed along to the committee, He explained that the $28,000 additional request was to pay the employer tax on the Chamber employees’ salaries.
“This is not a request for cash salaries to the staff,” Pullen assured committee members. “It is staff salaries plus the employer’s taxes on top of that. The county was gracious to take state [accommodations tax] funds and allow us to use them to pay our employer taxes,” he said.
Pullen also listed rent ($16,800) for the Chamber’s offices; telephone and cell phones ($7,428); and supplies ($20,000).
“Our total operating expenses for tourism related stuff comes to $40,582,” he said. “But that $40,582 is supplemented with money the Town of Winnsboro pays us for administrative fees to help keep the chamber open so that we don’t charge all of that to the county.”
A Town official told The Voice it provides the Chamber with around $37,000 annually.
Pullen said other funds are generated from the Chamber’s community partners which are listed on the Chamber’s web page.
He said that without this funding, “the chamber would have to cease being the county’s tourism agency which, of course, would require a huge staff layoff.”
He said the chamber would also have to give up its offices.
“Your staff would greatly dwindle, greatly dwindle,” Pullen repeated. “If we didn’t get these funds, you would see a skeleton of a chamber. We would probably go to one part-time staff person because that’s all we really need to do chamber business,” he said.
Asked by a committee member about the size of the chamber staff, Pullen responded that there are three full-time staff members – himself, a director of tourism and an administrative assistant.
Asked how much more he was requesting over last year, Pullen said that last year the chamber was awarded $197,940.00 in state accommodation funds.
“So, this year we’re requesting $227,228.00,” he said.
“We spend 75 to 80 percent of our time on tourism stuff, not chamber stuff,” he said.
Turning to the Chamber’s list of requested funding, committee member Dwayne Robinson, Sr. asked if, in the future, Pullen could break down the chamber’s funding requests for various categories, including salaries, supplies, utilities, rent, and phones.
Robinson pointed out that all but one (phone) of the funding request categories are rounded to the nearest thousand.
“It could be $10,000 rounded to $20,000,” Robinson said. “I’m not saying that’s the case. But just to be more transparent, is there a way for us to itemize these things so we can kind of look at them?”
“I would be happy to do that,” Pullen said, but added, “I would be open, as the president of the chamber, to a different type of application. If there was a different application for A & H taxes, I would be open to filling that out to get a little bit more detail of specifics,” he said.
Before voting on the Chamber’s funding request, Watkins asked Gene Stephens, the County’s PIO, how much funding is available to award to the applicants.
Stephens, who oversees the committee, said he didn’t know.
“We’re going through the audit, so we don’t have the audit amounts yet,” Stephens said.
With one member absent and two members recused, the vote was 4-0 to recommend that county council fully fund the chamber’s request for $199,228.00 (not $227,228.00) in state accommodation tax revenue. That amount combined with the March 31 award of $65,052.00 local accommodation tax award totaled $264,280.00 awarded to the Chamber for tourism for 2025.
The committee also voted 5-1 to recommend that council award $23,288.00 to the Olde English District (OED) for print and digital advertising to promote tourism in Fairfield County, even though no one appeared to represent the OED to request the funding.
County administration said council decided to send both the Chamber and the OED requests back to the review committee for reconsideration.
That meeting is set for 10 a.m., Monday morning, May 5 in the council chambers where the committee will review the chamber’s request for $227,228.00 instead of the initial request for $199,228.00 in state accommodation tax revenue. If it is recommended to council, the total local and state accommodation tax recommendation for the chamber (including $65,052 in local accommodation tax) will come to almost $300,000.
In addition to the state accommodation award recommendations, the committee has so far recommended local accommodation tax awards of $60,000 (of a requested $145,000) to the SC Railroad Museum; $20,000 to the Pine Tree Playhouse; $47,500 (of a $95,000 request) to the Alston Trailhead; $5,000 to Wings & Wheels and $65.052 to the Chamber.
Requests for local accommodation tax funds were also submitted by the Grieving Needs Support Summit ($9,800) and from Set in Stone Sustainability Farm ($7,000). Neither of those requests were recommended for awards by the review committee.
The review committee will next meet to reconsider the state accommodation recommendations at 10 a.m., Monday, May 5, in the county council chambers of the Fairfield County government complex.