Some Hilton Head land owners will no longer have to pay this $300+ fee. Who it affects
Hilton Head Island’s Public Service district voted Wednesday to end a fee it’s been assessing property owners who don’t connect to sewer lines when they’re available.
The unanimous vote will affect around 1,150 property owners who were being charged $400 annually for not connecting to the water and sewer systems.
Abolishing the fee will particularly help native islanders who own vacant property and have no desire or need to connect to newly available sewer lines.
Murray Christopher, whose family owns two properties that were assessed availability fees, was present at the board’s meeting Wednesday. He told The Island Packet in March that the fees threaten native islanders’ land where family ownership can be traced back nearly a century on Hilton Head.
“It’s most definitely making it more difficult to pay the property taxes,” he said. “If you’re struggling to pay the taxes, and they tack on another fee with no explanation, that’s not something that I think should be done.”
Prior to the district’s action, if Christopher’s family didn’t pay the property tax bill in full, including the sewer connection fee, their properties could have been sent to the delinquent tax sale — one of the most prolific ways in which native island families lose land in Beaufort County.
“You have to pay the fee in order for your property not to go to tax sale, even if you don’t know what it’s for,” Christopher said. “Transparency is a buzzword today, and that’s not transparent.”
How did we get here?
The Hilton Head PSD has long assessed sewer availability fees to vacant properties. The fees once encouraged property owners inside gated communities to develop their property and connect it to the sewer system.
When the island underwent a massive push to extend sewer to 60 new streets outside the gated communities, the accessibility fee came with it to unsuspecting owners with no plans to develop their land.
Hilton Head PSD commissioners who represent areas populated by native islanders have taken up the sewer availability fee in an attempt to abolish it.
Herbert Ford, who has served on the commission since 2010, said the new expansion of the sewer system has created opportunities for people living outside gated communities to connect to sewer but also created issues for people with plans to keep their land vacant.
“This has been going on for a long time. Now that they’ve expanded the sewer system outside the planned unit developments, native islanders with vacant plots of land are being assessed the availability fee,” he said. “How can we charge someone for not connecting to a system when they have nothing to connect it to?”
Pete Nardi, general manager of the PSD, said some combination of the $300 annual sewer availability fee and the $100 annual water availability fee was assessed to 1,150 properties this year.
The fees were designed to bridge the gap between paying for the utility to be extended to an area and the actual amount those who use it pay each year.
“The availability fees were a way of defraying the cost. Otherwise, the people using the system are paying a disproportionate share of the rates,” Nardi said. “The whole philosophy of a fee like this is it diminishes.”
He said fewer property owners have been paying the availability fees in recent years because they’ve chosen to connect to sewer. Revenue from the fees has dropped 30% in the past 10 years.
Managers at South Island PSD, which covers the south end of the island, said the PSD does not assess availability fees. Broad Creek PSD, which covers the middle of the island, did not return a call and email seeking comment in March.
