Beaufort Co. Council delays vote to repeal ‘unfair’ impact fees. ‘We need more time’
After seemingly rushing an ordinance that would repeal all impact fees in a move to put a deadline on municipalities joining in, the Beaufort County Council voted 10-1 Monday night to table a final vote on the change until its June 13 meeting.
Council members said the postponement should give the county and municipalities enough time to work through any remaining issues or concerns surrounding the fees and have the towns and cities sign intergovernmental agreements to begin collecting fees in their jurisdictions, the original intent of the ordinance.
Although this decision was delayed, council members voted 9-2 to terminate its school impact fees less than a year after they were first put in place and return the money it had collected from developers and home builders to property owners.
The change comes on the heels of a lawsuit against the county related to the school fees because, like some other impact fees, municipalities were not collecting the same fees in their jurisdictions. Council members also cited lack of support from the school board and the fee being a double taxation.
While the county has been collecting impact fees — which are designed to make new development pay for itself by charging fees on building permits and the money going toward new infrastructure — in unincorporated areas, municipalities have not been collecting all the same fees in their jurisdictions. This has caused impact fees that are supposed to be proportional where most development is taking place to fall mostly on developers and home builders in unincorporated areas.
It is the county’s responsibility to collect the impact fees, but it cannot collect them in municipalities, including Beaufort, Bluffton, Hilton Head Island, Port Royal, and Yemassee, without an intergovernmental agreement giving the county consent to do so.
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. Those living in certain muncipalities do not.
Multiple council members and public comments have called this unfair.
County Council is also calling for the addition of an emergency services 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.
A communication breakdown?
At a meeting last week between county, town, city, and school officials, it seemed a lot of municipalities were frustrated at the lack of communication among the leaders and not having a seat at the table when planning what projects would receive funding. Beaufort County administrator Eric Greenway protested, saying he’d been communicating with managers in each of the places about the impact fee studies since 2018, pointing to a stack of emails he’d printed.
“I have to have some cooperation and communication back,” he said, adding that the meeting “got the ball rolling” and he should be able to bring a satisfactory proposal back to county council by the June postponement.
“If we can’t... you all will know we’ve done everything we can,” Greenway said.
Council chairman Joe Passiment said “we learned some thing that we were lacking in communication about.”
“Giving a timeline and deadline to support this is pertinent,” he said.
‘An equal playing field’
Councilman Logan Cunningham, who first introduced the idea of repealing all impact fees last month after an ordinance to repeal school impact fees was introduced, said the “biggest reason (he’s) butted heads with people on impact fees is because (he) believe(s) it should be an equal playing field.”
He said council has been making progress with municipalities toward reaching intergovernmental agreements that would have impact fees be collected fairly throughout the county.
“I think it’s moving in the right direction, but I think we need more time,” Cunningham said before calling for the third and final vote on the ordinance to be moved to the June 13 meeting.
Cunningham later added that the deadline of the ordinance may be a “strong stance” but the discussions and issues with the fees have been ongoing for decades.
“That would be when I was still in high school and some of these things have to get accomplished,” he said.
Majority of other members agreed to postponing the vote, saying it would give municipalities the time they need to work through the issues they have with the fees now and agree to start collecting the fees.
Councilman Mark Lawson, who was the sole opposing vote, called the ordinance a “knee-jerk reaction” in an effort to “strong-arm” municipalities into collecting the fees in their areas.
“I think we’re on a slippery slope putting a timeline on something like this,” Lawson said. “ ... I think this was the wrong way to go about doing it. Our citizens think we’re actually about to repeal impact fees and that’s the furthest thing from the truth.”
Importance to residents
Four residents spoke during public comment, majority in favor of keeping impact fees.
Louis Poindexter, who sits on the board of directors for the Bluffton Township Fire District and read a letter written by the board, said they were against totally eliminating fees because it would “give developers a free ride and that’s not fair to taxpayers.”
He also noted fire departments benefit from funding through impact fees, such as building new fire stations, and without that funding the millage rate would likely rise.
Carolyn Smith, who is a resident and landlord, said council had moved too quickly on the ordinance and needed to have a plan before going any further.
“I keep thinking you’re wanting to lower housing (costs) but if you take this fee away what impact is it going to have on property tax?,” she asked. “If my property tax goes up, rent is going to go up, then everything else goes up.”
A local builder who’s lived in the county for 43 years and worked as a builder in the area for more than two decades said he was representing his clients and called for council to repeal the impact fees.
He took issue with the fees only being place on people in unincorporated areas and how it can effect people who have owned property for an extended amount of time or inherited the property and are later taxed an “exorbitant” fee.
“We need to think seriously about reducing or finding another way to gather this money,” he said. “To put the impact fees on the back of unincorporated Beaufort County residents is unfair.”
This story was originally published April 26, 2022 at 2:14 PM.
