Who pays for stormwater repairs in Hilton Head’s gated communities? Right now, it’s you

Gated communities on Hilton Head Island may be inaccessible to the general public, but every islander pays to manage stormwater and flooding issues inside those gates.

That may be changing.

The Town of Hilton Head Island is rewriting portions of its drainage agreement with those communities to put the onus them to fix —and pay for — more stormwater problems.

Town engineers said the proposed agreement formalizes and puts on paper the way the system works now.

And at least one Hilton Head Island Town Council member sees the change as more fair to those who live on the island but outside the gates.

Gated communities “knew they’d have to foot the tab for their maintenance,” council member David Ames said. He also said the changes would allow the town to “use our resources to improve non-planned unit development” land.

Leaders of the gated communities said they’ve been blindsided. They also said they need more time to make those changes work and to plan for the increased costs to their residents.

The new Town Council set shifting more of the cost to the gated communities as a goal for 2019 at their workshop in December.

“There was a misunderstanding that just because a deficiency is identified, it’s the town’s responsibility to fix it,” finance and administrative committee chairman Tom Lennox said at the first meeting on the issue in December.

What will gated communities be responsible for?

The town’s responsibility is to take care of “qualifying deficiencies” within gated communities, town engineer Jeff Buckalew said at a second meeting in January. That means that most problems that occur behind the gates falls to the town to repair and pay for.

He said the new agreement defines those problems more narrowly, meaning the gated communities would be responsible for:

• Operation of lagoons, including lowering water levels before storms.
  
  
• Fixing aesthetic problems, including lagoon or tidal erosion.
  
  
• Maintenance and replacement of devices that control the flow of water like small dams around lagoons.
  
  
• Fixing the consequences of stormwater repair issues such as repaving a road after a pipe has been installed.
  
  
• Providing access, at no costs to the town, to sites where repairs are needed.
  
  

All of that could cost gated communities more.

Peter Kristian, the general manager of Hilton Head Plantation, said the change means the town can pick and choose which projects to address.

“At the town’s sole discretion, they can say ‘no, we’re not doing that,’” Kristian said. “We see this as offloading (of the town’s responsibilities).”

Asked about how much such a change would cost the communities, Kristian said it’s “too soon to tell an exact amount as we don’t really have a clear picture of what is being covered and what is not.”

Last year, the town budgeted $2.42 million for stormwater issues inside 10 gated communities on the island: Hilton Head Plantation, Indigo Run, Long Cove Club, Leamington, Palmetto Dunes, Palmetto Hall, Port Royal Plantation, Shipyard, Sea Pines and Wexford Plantation. The new rules would take effect by the end of 2019.

In 2018, there was a increase in annual stormwater fees from $108.70 to $150.00 per household, according to the town budget.

Chip Munday, general manager of Indigo Run, also disagrees with the town’s new definitions.

“This is a total pass-off of maintenance responsibility, and this timeline is not workable,” Munday said. “This document shifts most of the responsibility to the associations and away from the town.”

Originally, town engineers said they’d present the plan to all the general managers of gated communities and return by the end January with changes.

But the general managers said they needed more time to move the changes through boards of directors and the private companies such as golf courses that operate within the gated communities.

Kristian said he and other general managers are trying to “delay implementation” until 2020 “so each community can appropriately budget for the additional expenses that would be shifted on to the POAs.”

“We’re getting this dumped in our laps,” Kristian said.

What’s next?

The town has invited all gated community general managers to a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the new agreement. Buckalew said that input could be used to draft changes.

The finance and administrative committee will then hear the new agreement before it moves onto Town Council for a vote.

This story was originally published January 22, 2019 at 2:05 PM.