By Mike McCombs
The immediate future of impact fees in Beaufort County is in the hands of County Council and will be decided Monday night. The long-term future? That’s not as clear.
At the March 28 meeting, County Council voted to repeal all Beaufort County impact fees. Since that time, County Council Chairman Joe Passiment has written an opinion piece, distributed to local media, and the county has issued a media release, both in the first week of April, strongly expressing the need for impact fees in Beaufort County.
Both also lay the blame squarely at the feet of the county’s municipalities for the potential elimination of the fees.
“Beaufort County and the municipalities within the County have spent months, and in some cases years, discussing the need to adopt new impact fees for schools and EMS and renew/update existing fees,” Passiment said in the county’s April 7 news release. “Lack of participation and cooperation by Hilton Head, Bluffton, Beaufort, and Port Royal has led Beaufort County Council to consider eliminating all existing impact fees and abandon its efforts to adopt school and EMS impact fees.”
Some municipal leaders feel like they are being made the scapegoats by county leaders.
“Beaufort City Council had a public worksession discussion March 22 to look at (the intergovernmental agreement), and there are several outstanding issues that need to be resolved,” City of Beaufort Mayor Stephen Murray said. “The City of Beaufort sent a response on March 24 (four days before County Council voted to repeal the fees), clearly articulating our concerns to county staff. As of today (April 12), we have not had a response to our concerns. It is our opinion that the county is holding up the passage of impact fees, not the city of Beaufort.”
Beaufort County Administrator Eric Greenway defended the county’s response, saying it takes several weeks for staff to go through the concerns raised by the municipalities to determine if their concerns can be addressed.
“We have to go through those comments, with state statutes and see what we can and can’t do with the impact fees,” Greenway said. “We (had to) review those items. The impact fee statute is very clear about what we can and can’t do, and there’s a very significant regulatory, if that’s the right word, process on impact fees. There’s also a lot of eyes on impact fees from people looking to take legal action, who oppose impact fees, so we have to make sure that everything we’re doing is up to par as far as a legal response.”
In the meantime, County Council’s motion to eliminate the fees had a second reading April 11 and passed. The third and final vote will be held at Monday’s County Council meeting at Buckwalter Recreation Center in Bluffton.
Representatives from County Council, representatives from their consulting firm Tischler Bise and representatives from the county’s municipalities were scheduled to meet at least once in the past two weeks, but the county canceled that meeting just hours before it was scheduled.
According to Greenway the parties are set to meet at 1 p.m., Thursday at the Beaufort County Administration Building, likely the last chance to resolve any issues before Monday’s vote.
If the fees are repealed with no new agreement in place, areas in the county that are not seeing growth will face a property tax inequity as they are forced to help pay for growth in infrastructure in other, faster groing parts of the county.
“Of all the things that the state legislature has ever allowed jurisdictions to do, (impact fees) are one of the most effective ways to manage growth,” Greenway said. “An impact fee is exactly what the title says it is. They are designed to assist with providing the capacity of infrastructure based on growth.”
Port Royal Town Manager Van Willis said he understands what’s at stake, but like Murray and the City of Beaufort, Port Royal has a specific responsibility to its citizens to be sure they aren’t simply giving the county money.
“We see the validity of impact fees. But we need assurances that the town will see equitable distribution of those funds,” Willis said. “You have to understand, experience has shown that in any sort of revenue that is collected collectively, that the town of Port Royal typically gets the short end of the stick. Our town council is committed to see that the money is distributed equitably. There has to be some assurance that the dollars that we contribute will be spent in Port Royal.”
Mike McCombs is the editor of The Island News and can be reached at TheIslandNews@gmail.com.
