Beaufort Co. plans to hire $1.3 million Daufuskie ferry company. Why neighbors might sue
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information from Monday’s public facilities meeting.
Beaufort County, despite years of pleas from neighbors to move the Daufuskie Island ferry, plans to offer a contract to the same company that has shuttled residents and visitors from Buckingham Landing since 2017.
Officials are also floating a plan to spend $1.9 million to renovate the ferry’s current location.
Some residents of Buckingham Landing have now hired a lawyer and are threatening to sue the county, according to a letter obtained by The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. They say the ferry’s current location is illegal and dangerous.
The county, they say, needs to live up to its promise to move the ferry’s embarkation spot — a promise neighbors fear it never intended to fulfill.
Beaufort County’s public facilities committee voted 8-2 Monday afternoon to recommend a five-year, $1,295,000 ferry services contract to Haig Point Ferry Co. Inc. — the company that currently operates the ferry. The contract will go to the full Beaufort County Council for final approval.
Council members York Glover and Chris Hervochon voted no.
Hervochon, during Monday’s meeting, described the plan as “wildly expensive” and acknowledged that the county was “going to be sued.”
Tom Taylor, the attorney who is representing 22 Buckingham Landing residents, called Monday’s vote an “assault on the residents.” If the County Council approves the contract, his clients will have no choice but to sue, he said.
The committee’s decision was a step toward deciding the future of the publicly funded ferry, which has operated temporarily out of Buckingham Landing since 2017.
For more than four years, Buckingham Landing residents have complained about the parking and traffic problems caused by Daufuskie Island ferry operations near their Bluffton neighborhood. It’s also an illegal zoning use, they say.
During Monday’s meeting, Beaufort County Administrator Eric Greenway floated a preliminary conceptual plan for a $1.9 million renovation of the ferry’s current location. Greenway’s presentation made it clear that an alternative location is likely no longer on the table.
Renovating the ferry building, which would include 98 new parking spots, relocating the main entrance, demolishing part of the existing building and adding a park and nature center, likely would not begin until next year, Greenway said.
The renovations, he said, are “far more effective than having to build a facility somewhere else.”
The proposed contract with Haig Point still describes the ferry’s embarkation spot as Buckingham Landing. The contract says it will operate there “until a permanent solution is complete.” The company also plans to make some improvements to its Buckingham Landing spot: new landscaping, more indoor terminal space and coffee and vending machines for guests.
The Buckingham Landing spot was always supposed to be temporary. Officials were previously looking at a new, permanent location on Pinckney Island.
After a year of delays — the county has cited the planning of the U.S. 278 reconfiguration, the COVID-19 pandemic and a large turnover in county staff — Beaufort County agreed last November to seek proposals from ferry companies that could operate out of a new, short-term location.
Three companies responded, according to the agenda for Monday’s meeting:
▪ Haig Point: $259,000 annual cost
▪ Island Head: $417,500 annual cost
▪ Poseidon Ferry LLC: $3,856,378 annual cost.
While Beaufort County is moving toward awarding the contract to Haig Point, Tom Taylor, the lawyer representing 22 Buckingham Landing property owners, says the county needs to move the ferry terminal to another spot.
“If the county insists upon continuing this nuisance, these owners will have no choice but to seek legal redress,” Taylor’s letter, addressed to Council member Stu Rodman, says.
In a phone call with a reporter Monday, Taylor said the residents of Buckingham Landing have been “misled into believing the politicians were going to do something about this. It’s terrible.”
He said he doesn’t believe the county is seriously considering another permanent location.
Called Monday, Assistant County Administrator Jared Fralix said Haig Point was the most qualified company that responded to the county’s request and the company wants to continue operating out of Buckingham Landing.
The County Council needs to decide if it’s satisfied with the company’s proposal or if it needs to look for other locations, he said.
Potential lawsuit over ferry location
In his May 14 letter to Rodman, Taylor, who previously served as chair of the Beaufort County Council, wrote that he was hired by 22 Buckingham Landing residents who “have watched with growing concern and anxiety” as the ferry ruins “the neighborhood and [causes] significant particularized injuries to many of them in the form of property devaluation and emotional stress.”
Despite repeated warnings from residents, the letter says, Beaufort County has supported the “expansion of businesses” in the Buckingham Landing area, causing the neighborhood to become overrun with cars and people.
Taylor’s letter says parents “live in daily fear” of cars striking their children. The situation, the letter says, is “outrageous and unacceptable.”
Although the neighbors were assured by the county that an alternative embarkation site would be built, “that seems to have proven false,” the letter says.
Taylor told a reporter Monday the residents are considering suing the county for creating a “legal nuisance.”
Haig Point’s proposed contract with Beaufort County can be found here.
This story was originally published May 17, 2021 at 1:18 PM.
