Beaufort Co. Council wants all residents to pay impact fees. Here’s why it may repeal them
Beaufort County Council is considering repealing all impact fees if other municipalities don’t agree to enforce them in their jurisdictions soon.
The council voted 7-3 with one abstention to repeal the fees at its March 28 meeting followed by an 8-2 vote with one abstention to refund school impact fees collected since the fall when they were enacted.
Impact fees are used as a way to make new development help pay for itself with the money supporting new infrastructure. The fees are collected when issuing building permits involved in building new infrastructure to serve residents who are moving into the county. Ideally, this keeps the cost off residents in parts of the county that aren’t being developed as rapidly or at all.
While the county has imposed all these fees, including the school impact fee that was passed last year, Beaufort, Bluffton, Hilton Head and Port Royal’s fees do not mirror each other — meaning residents living in unincorporated parts of the county are paying more than they would elsewhere and likely helping fund construction in areas they don’t live in.
During the meeting, District 5 Councilman Brian Flewelling made the original motion to repeal school impact fees and return money that had already been collected, calling it unfair the residents in unincorporated parts of the county were the only ones paying the fee.
This prompted District 7 Councilman Logan Cunningham to amend the motion to repeal all fees, saying this would give municipalities time to approve their own impact fees before the repeal would be read and voted on the required two more times.
Residents living in unincorporated Beaufort County currently pay the schools impact fee, a parks and recreations impact fee, a library impact fee, a roads impact fee, a fire impact fee, and a boat ramp impact fee.
While some of these fees, such as the roads fee, are imposed on all residents with the help of agreements with municipalities, the county wants the impact fees to be uniform throughout the entire county. County Council is also calling for the addition of an EMS fee. Hilton Head would not be included in the EMS fee because it has its own EMS not funded by the county.
If all fees are adopted, a new construction home buyer’s average monthly mortgage payment would increase by about $100.
“Beaufort County and the municipalities within the county have spent months, and in some cases years, discussing the need to adopt new impact fees for schools and EMS and renew/update existing fees,” County Council Chairman Joe Passiment said in a county news release. “Lack of participation and cooperation by Hilton Head, Bluffton, Beaufort, and Port Royal has led Beaufort County Council to consider eliminating all existing impact fees and abandon its efforts to adopt school and EMS impact fees.”
If the municipalities do no follow suit on the county’s impact fee plan, the council may vote to eliminate the fees altogether. This change, which has already been approved in an initial vote, would have to be approved in two additional votes.
The county news release said if the impact fees are eliminated it would place “the entire costs of new development on the backs of existing taxpayers” and council would consider increasing property taxes or have to take on debt “to fund the expansion of required infrastructure and facilities.”
The current impact fee ordinance was adopted in 1999 and the county hired an outside firm to help update it.
