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Suggesting the Town of Hilton Head Island tap its 2 percent tax on prepared food and beverages to help pay for it does not count. The town has committed that money to town operations and other projects.
Lawmakers have limited the town's revenue options and its ability to raise property taxes. The state built the toll road and is responsible for paying for it.
"We can't give up a funding source and not replace it with something unless we're going to start reducing the firemen and the other services the town provides," Mayor Tom Peeples said.
We'll need to compare specific alternatives for paying for the road before we know whether removing the tolls is a good idea.
The $39 million still owed on the $81 million project won't go away if the tolls are eliminated. The debt is now scheduled to be paid off in 2022.
We do support Chalk's idea of reducing the road's debt with any money the state gains from the sale of five acres purchased as a staging area for the road's construction.
The town bid $1 million for the waterfront acreage, but the state turned down that bid and two others. S.C. Department of Transportation officials, who were said to be looking for bids closer to $4 million, said they would negotiate with the unsuccessful bidders.
In the meantime, is there a big groundswell for doing away with the tolls, as Chalk suggests? It's not as if drivers don't have a choice. If you don't want to use the shorter, faster route, you don't have to. Just travel down William Hilton Parkway to reach your destination.
Sure, no one likes to pay a toll, and few welcomed last year's increase from 50 cents to 75 cents for Palmetto Pass holders and from $1 to $1.25 for others. The state also tacked on a $1 monthly administrative fee. But is the cost too onerous for most users?
The toll road had been operating at a loss for all but one year -- after the debt was refinanced -- when the tolls were increased in 2008. Totals for revenue and expenses since the toll increases weren't immediately available.
Tolls, with the cost to collect them, are not the most efficient way to pay for roads. But they do confine the debt to the road's
users. The fact that the Cross Island Parkway was to be a toll road moved it up the state's project list. And Hilton Head needed relief for traffic-jammed William Hilton Parkway. The toll road cuts three miles and 12 traffic lights from a north- to south-island trip, and provides an alternative route for getting around the island.
Eliminating the tolls would be nice, but nice doesn't pay the bills. And in these economic times, with the state facing another $120 million drop in anticipated revenue, it seems unlikely state officials would shift the debt away from the road's users.
If Chalk wants to relieve his constituents' financial burden, he would do better to focus his efforts on correcting the inequities in state funding for education.
