SENECA — Voters got the opportunity this week to learn more about three candidates making their first foray into Oconee County politics and to be reacquainted with an old friend who’s spent a season on the County Council hot seat.

A debate put together by the Clemson Area League of Women Voters gave District 1 residents an opportunity to hear directly from the candidates, learn a little about their backgrounds and hear where they stand on many thorny issues.

For instance, when asked how they would keep taxes as low as possible, Jack Collins, the lone Democrat in the field, told the audience that taxes have always been his problem living in the county.

The 70-year-old state award-winning beekeeper, Army veteran and retired machinist said he went from hardly paying anything in taxes to paying $10,000 an acre on his property in the Madison community near Westminster after property tax reassessment took hold in 2006.

“The county has a spending problem,” Collins said.

Steve Moore reminded voters that the last budget approved when he was councilman in 2006 totaled about $31 million. By contrast, he said, the current council is fine-tuning a budget that’s hovering around $43 million, or more than 45 percent higher than when he left office.

“Government has grown that much,” Moore said. “It’s ridiculous.”

There were chuckles when the moderator, Donna London of the Strom Thurmond Institute at Clemson University, read one of the questions submitted by the audience: “Do you support the Golden Corner Commerce Park?”

C. Paul Corbeil of Salem, a retired executive with Merrill Lynch, said he’s in favor of using $350,000 already set aside for the project on a design phase that would let the county know what it could do with the 400 acres on Highway 59 and how much it would cost.

Corbeil said he agrees with experts who say: “If you build it, they will come.”

Corbeil is first among the candidates to have already launched a campaign Web site — www.corbeilforcouncil.com — where he states his reasons for running and outlines his platform, among other information.

Robbie D. Lee, a 37-year-old local businessman, said he’s in favor of economic development but not the way it’s been practiced so far in Oconee.

Specifically, he said tests should have been done first at the 400-acre tract before being bought.

The county purchased the 400-acre tract for $2.3 million in 2005. A study by Wilbur Smith Associates estimated that after the Fair Play industrial park reached capacity in about 15 to 20 years, it would provide about 2,000 new jobs.

Moore said he told his fellow councilmen at the time that only about 275 acres at the site would be usable and there was not enough creek flow to push the effluent. He said the cost of getting infrastructure on the site would be in the neighborhood of $40 million.

Collins said the industrial park land “won’t hold a building up,” and recommended it be turned over to local teacher Gwen McPhail, who wants to put on a fair that highlights Oconee’s agricultural heritage on the land in the fall.

The Republican candidates go at it again in a GOP forum June 22 hosted by WGOG radio. The 6:30 p.m. event will be held at the Walhalla Depot.

The winner of a Republican primary July 7 goes on to challenge Collins in a special election Aug. 25.