FORT MILL -- If Piedmont Medical Center wins the right to build a hospital in Fort Mill, the company will also win a 50 percent tax break from the town.

The tax break is part of the original incentive package the town agreed to when PMC offered to annex its site, off Hwy. 160 West near The Peach Stand, into the town.

The vote on the incentive package was 6-1 with Councilman Grady Ervin opposed. It occurred before the council took up first reading of PMC's annexation request, Fort Mill Town Manager David Hudspeth said.

"At the time it looked like there may have been a reason for the incentive," Councilman Danny Funderburk said. "At the time Piedmont was the only company interested. The other three hospitals were very late getting into the process."

Since Piedmont filed its application for a certificate of need from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, Carolinas Medical Center, Presbyterian Hospital and Hospital Partners of America all filed applications. DHEC is expected to award a certificate to one of the four companies by the end of the summer.

Carolinas Medical Center is the only one not planning to build a hospital somewhere in Fort Mill.

Funderburk said in retrospect, he wished the council didn't vote for the tax break, but he does not regret the decision because of the information the council had at the time.

"We were in a position to take a look at the potential jobs and commercial development that would come and it looked good," he said.

Ervin said it was odd that PMC uses, as a selling point, the fact that it will be the only hospital entity paying Fort Mill taxes if it wins, when the company will be getting a 50 percent tax break from the town.

But PMC President and CEO Charles Miller said the company would still be paying more than $370,000 a year in taxes to the town. And that is still $370,000 more than the town would get from any of the other competitors.

Also, the tax break will last for 10 years. After that, PMC's tax bill would reflect 100 percent of the property taxes it would owe to Fort Mill, Hudspeth said.

Even though the town council has already agreed to the tax break, it won't be as easy as just billing Piedmont half of what it would owe. State law prohibits the town from giving PMC a simple tax abatement, but it allows such incentives to be rolled into things such as infrastructure investments that would effectively lower PMC's tax bill.

For example, the town could deduct the cost of running water and sewer lines to the site from the tax bill if PMC agreed to install such lines. However the site already receives water and sewer service from York County, so the exact mechanism to effectively institute the tax break has yet to be worked out, Hudspeth said.

And the whole issue becomes a moot point if PMC does not receive a certificate of need from DHEC.