Thus read a South Carolina headline in 1861, and so read a headline in today’s papers here in 2006. However, this time, it’s the town of Greer wanting to secede from Spartanburg County.
Over the past several years, it seems that Greer has been annexation crazy. First, they wanted to incorporate large portions of the community of Taylors. Taylors made a failed attempt to incorporate as a town to stave off the annexation threat from Greer. Now Greer has turned its attention to the "Golden Box", and area south of the airport and I-85 which includes the communities of Abner Creek and Sugar Tit. These communities are bounded by some of the fasted growing areas of development, and contain some of the largest tracts of undeveloped land. Hence, then term "Golden Box."
The problem with the Golden Box is that utilities have not been developed. The lack of sewer for the area was brought to the forefront as an issue when we announced the construction of the new Abner Creek Elementary School, set to open in 2008. Greer decided to use this as a reason to annex the area so that it could provide sewer services. The folks in Reidville also decided to annex the area, if for no other reason than to prevent Greer from getting it. All of the sudden, Spartanburg County comes to the rescue, offering to provide sewer services, and thereby nullify both Greer and Reidville’s claim to the area. Needless-to-say, Greer was not happy.
In addition to an inferiority complex which makes it want to expand in all directions, Greer suffers an identity crisis. The Greenville-Spartanburg county line splits it right down the middle. This, coupled with actions by Spartanburg County, made Greer threaten to secede those portions of the town in Spartanburg to Greenville.
I personally think it’s just an empty threat by the town of Greer, but we’ll see. The students in the affected areas of Spartanburg County already attend Greenville County Schools, and it doesn’t make much sense for the town to remain split between two counties.