Greenville County Councilman Joe Dill has been elected as President of the South Carolina Association of Counties. For 25 years, Joe Dill has served the people of Northern Greenville County, first on Greenville County School board and then as County Councilman for Greenville County District 17.
Dill is known by constituents as a hands-on politician. He carries a phone on each hip, and they ring constantly. He is also a father, grandfather and great-grandfather, minister of music at Blue Ridge Baptist Church, and Vice District Governor for Lion’s Club District 32A. He is active in historic preservation projects around the county and people call him wanting help with everything from their phone bill to busted pavement on their road. He says he has been through the other side and knows what it is to need somoene to help you and they pass you on to someone else.
He likes to stay busy and manages his time with sticky notes, two calendars and an old Mickey Mouse watch. “I’m just a public servant,” he says. John Wood encouraged Dill to run for school board for the first time in the 1980’s. Wood was a a long time friend, mentor and former House Representative for District 17. “He was a conservative democrat, and he was a master politician,” says Dill. Wood took him into a barber shop in the Slater Community in Northern Greenville County and started introducing him around. “It was just like the barber shop in Mayberry, but it was better than anything you could put on tv. There was a room full of people and they were just there, just hanging out. He made me talk to those fellas.” When we left he said, “Whatver you are telling people today you’d better be telling them 20 years from now.”
Dill says there are not many people like Wood anymore. Dill says he decided to get into politics because he was mad. In 1984, Blue Ridge High School in Greer was the only school in Greenville County that did not have a science lab. There was only an elementary school and a high school, from which Dill graduated in 1963. He rallied the community and saw to it that Blue Ridge had a new middle school and high school, complete with science labs. Dill served on the school board for the next 12 years including his time as board chairman. “It was the first time there had ever been anyone from District 17 as chairman of the school board,” he says.
During those years, the school board went seven years without a tax increase and streamlined administration in the district. Their policy was if you did not directly see children, you were not needed. They also changed curriculum in the classrooms. Some of his ideas were not popular. “I lost that last election with 15 votes,” he says. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me because it opened the door for me to run for county council.” “On the school board you can vote to do something and it could never happen. It’s almost impossible to see the products of your labor. On county council when I vote to pave a road, in a few weeks or months I can see that road paved,” he says.
Dill is currently serving in his 13th year as councilman for the Northern Greenville County. He has served as chairman of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee and has been on the Greenville County Finance Committee, the Capital Project Sales Tax Committee, the Reedy River Steering Committee and the Greenville Parks and Recreation Committee. He is a member of the board of directors of the Appalachian Council of Governments and serves on the board of the State Appalachian Council of Governments.
During the time he served as chair on the Greenville County Task Force, the committee developed a plan for and replaced the Greenville County Downtown library and branches. During his years on council, he has helped improve EMS and placed deputies back in neighborhoods to cut down on crime. He is currently working to help preserve the Campbell Covered Bridge and Blythe/Goodwin/Hagood House on Scenic Highway 11. He is proud to have been a part of the preservation of the historic Poinsett Bridge and surrounding property, as well as Slater Hall in Slater Mill Village and to have had a hand in the process of the development of Greenville County’s Swamp Rabbit Trail.
“It makes me feel good to walk down through there and say I had a little bit to do this. Travelers Rest was dead and now it is alive and thriving,” he says. “When I was on the school board I believed you had to attack and intimidate. But that’s not the way you get anything done. You’ve go to build relationships and trust. When you have a need, people will work with you to accomplish it,” says Dill. Dill says South Carolina Senator J. Verne Smith was his biggest inspiration. He knew how to pick his battles and he worked for things dear to his heart. “He was a master statesman. And he would do whatever it took to get money for disabled people. He was a good man.”
Joel, Dill’s 36 year old son has down syndrome. When he is not working in the gym at North Greenville University, he accompanies his dad to meetings and social events, shaking hands and working the crowds. “People at the Association of Counties told me they are voting for Joel, not for me,” he laughs. “In my acceptance speech, I said Joel was going to open a consulting office in Columbia come election time.” “To be elected president of the Association of Counties was a great accomplishment.” When counties were created in the 1970’s they were given the authority of home rule. Dill says the SCAC works to preserve the counties’ rights to raise taxes, hire and fire and stay autonomous. “We are protecting the authority of County Council,” says Dill. “In the end it’s all about relationships and building relationships that will last.”