Impact fees impact Hilton Head, county

In a way, the disagreement between Hilton Head Island and Beaufort County officials over impact fees is like the dispute that sometimes arises when a group of penny-pinching friends gets their check after dinner: No one wants to pay more than his or her fair share.

Someone passes the check around the table and everyone takes turns calculating their portion.

That's what Hilton Head officials recently did with the new, significantly higher fees Beaufort County wants the town to adopt. Town staff pared down the list of 22 mainland road projects that will receive money from the fees and determined the town should only contribute toward nine of them.

The rest, town officials say, are local access roads for the Bluffton area and shouldn't be paid for with impact fees from the island. Impact fees are paid by developers and generally are passed on to home buyers to help pay for roads, libraries and parks.

The fees are one of the few ways the county can raise money for those services without increasing property taxes. The county began charging the higher fees in unincorporated areas in October, but it can't charge the revised fees in Bluffton and on Hilton Head until the Beaufort County Council formally adopts an agreement with the municipalities.

That was supposed to happen at next week's council meeting. Instead, it will be delayed until the county can reach an agreement with Hilton Head officials. The Bluffton Town Council already has agreed to the new fees.

Until an agreement is reached, the county is losing money by collecting impact fees under the old rates. Hilton Head officials, however, say their concerns were never addressed since they were first raised late this summer.

"We never could get a response," said Charles Cousins, the town's planning director.

The county says the town should raise the fee for roads to $1,540 for each newly built home to help cover the impact Hilton Head residents have on mainland roads.

The town says it should be closer to $800 because it doesn't think island residents and visitors have as much of an impact as the county says.

The town also takes issue with the proposed $563 library fee, saying it should be about $100 less since the island's library doesn't need as many improvements as other county libraries. That's in addition to separate fees for roads and parks.

"The town of Hilton Head wants to pay impact fees, and we really believe in impact fees," Cousins said. "But we want to pay our fair share."

But county officials believe it would be fairer for the town to contribute toward all 22 mainland road projects.

"The basis of regional planning is realizing collectively we have an impact," said County Council chairman Weston Newton. "If we begin to parse out little pieces, it undermines the regional effort."

Town staff doesn't begrudge contributing toward improvements on roads it believes island residents and visitors will use most: Bluffton Parkway, U.S. 278 and S.C. 170, Cousins said. It takes issue with paying for other projects though, such as widening secondary roads like Buckwalter Parkway and building frontage roads.

Besides, Cousins said, Hilton Head charges its own $816 impact fee per home to pay for road projects on the island. That fee is on top of the county's proposed fees.

"No one's paying for Hilton Head," Cousins said.

The town also believes Hilton Head drivers make fewer trips on mainland roads than the county says. The number of trips was one of the factors the county used to come up with the new road fees.

Newton and county administrator Gary Kubic said the town shouldn't be disputing the amount of trips island drivers make on mainland roads because the town supplied the county with that data.

Cousins disagrees, however, saying county staff used its own data to come up with the fee.

Newton and Kubic are both writing letters to town leaders explaining their positions. Newton said he hopes to have the issue resolved in the coming weeks.

"The longer you spend talking about it, the more lost opportunity you have to collect the money," Newton said.

This story was originally published January 18, 2007 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Impact fees impact Hilton Head, county."