Hilton Head’s Sea Pines to vote again on raising property owners’ fees by $600. Why?
Over a year after a referendum in Sea Pines failed, the Hilton Head gated community is trying again to pass a ballot issue that would raise property owners’ annual assessments by $600 starting in 2022.
Sea Pines’ Community Services Associates board of directors voted Monday to call for a second referendum.
The latest attempt comes as Sea Pines leadership continues to consider a special tax district, operated through Beaufort County government, that would raise $2.5 million for road, trail, drainage and bridge projects. The proposal would drastically limit who can vote by requiring property owners to be registered to vote in Beaufort County.
Sea Pines CSA is confident a second referendum will pass, according to chairman Larry Movshin, and raise $3.5 million annually.
“We are responding to the many comments we received ... that a very simple referendum has a very high likelihood of success,” Movshin told The Island Packet.
In summer 2019, a referendum that would have raised property owners’ assessments by $450 failed. Although 72% of ballots cast were in favor of the proposal, the tally didn’t meet the 75% threshold needed to pass, as outlined in the community’s covenants, written in 1974.
The referendum was packaged as a way to address “Sea Pines Community’s aging infrastructure including roadways and stormwater ... deteriorating landscape and our traffic issues,” then-CSA president Bret Martin wrote about the results.
Of the 4,214 ballots returned to the Charleston-based referendum ballot administrator, Elliot Davis, 3,039 were in favor of the referendum. It was 122 votes short of passing.
Elliot Davis reported nearly 80% participation, which Martin said was the “highest return rate and engagement from Sea Pines Property Owners to date.”
The new referendum will go out for a vote in the community later this year, according to a Sea Pines news release.
Currently, residential assessments in Sea Pines are around $1,014 each year.
Who will pay?
Residents have long worried that their assessments will be increased while the annual payments of Sea Pines Resort and commercial entities will stay the same.
The latest attempt at a referendum doesn’t promise increases for those properties, but the release said resort and commercial property owners’ assessments may increase, too, if the vote passes.
It does not specify how much more the non-residential property owners would pay.
While property owners vote on the referendum, Sea Pines CSA will continue to work on the special tax district. For it to pass, it requires a petition by registered voters and then a community-wide vote by those registered to cast ballots in Beaufort County.
Plans for the special tax district will “be ready to implement if the referendum doesn’t achieve the required votes,” according to the Sea Pines news release.
