After ‘a bad, bad reaction,’ Hilton Head stops drainage talks with gated communities
Following pushback from Hilton Head Island’s gated communities, the town will leave existing rules about who pays for flooding and drainage repairs in place — for now.
“We got ourselves into a hornet’s nest here that (we’re) trying to recover from,” town engineer Scott Liggett told the finance and administrative committee Tuesday. “It was a bad, bad reaction that we elicited.”
The town originally set out to standardize stormwater agreements across all the gated communities and had hoped to have a new plan in place by the end of February. But that timeline angered general managers, left community boards of directors feeling “blindsided” and resulted in public backlash.
Now Liggett said the town has “disengaged” from discussions with the communities over a new agreement. The goal of that agreement was to define what the town was responsible for and what fell to the gated communities to do.
“We’re still hoping to get input from (gated communities) and council,” Liggett said.
He said the town will use the standard language agreement previously submitted to larger gated communities when creating new agreements with smaller ones.
“These are the challenges of trying to formally document a process that has been in place for 20 years,” finance and administrative committee chair Tom Lennox said Tuesday.
How much money goes to stormwater?
The town and the county collect stormwater fees from each household — $150 per year — to fund projects as they arise no matter where they occur on the island.
In 2018, the town budgeted $2.42 million for stormwater repair projects in 10 gated communities, and $3.36 million for 26 projects outside the gates, according to town finance director John Troyer and to budgeting documents.
In the early 2000s, the town signed agreements with gated communities to take over stormwater projects behind the gates, according to town engineer Jeff Netzinger.
What’s next
Town leaders hope to have a new agreement in place by the end of 2019.
Chip Munday, general manager of Indigo Run, told the committee Tuesday that he and other management of large gated communities want to schedule a work session with town staff to create “a base template for which there would be addenda for each community.”
No date has been set for that session.
What do residents think?
Residents took to social media and inundated council members with phone calls opposing the change when discussions began in January. Many said the time frame for making the change was too tight.
“What’s driving this whole thing?” asked Pat Otis, a property owner in Port Royal Plantation. “When you delve into this, there’s a lot more involved. . . . This seems like a rather complex decision-making process, and there doesn’t seem like there’s anywhere near the amount of time needed.”
Tom Hoppin, a Hilton Head Plantation resident and former president of the property owner’s association, said that although most of the island lies behind gates, stormwater issues are best solved through collaboration.
“The vast majority of the stormwater funds received by the town come from property owners within the gated communities,” Hoppin wrote to The Island Packet. “The gated communities should not expect a dollar-for-dollar ratio. That would ignore . . . the real and largely long neglected needs for stormwater infrastructure funding outside the gates.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2019 at 9:08 AM.
