Rural and Critical Lands board rejects county’s plan to swap protected land for development
Beaufort County’s plan to swap land out of the Rural and Critical Protection Program to build a library and ball fields faces an uphill battle after the program’s board rejected the proposal Thursday.
The county proposed a land swap that would take protected land out of the Rural and Critical Lands Protection Program and replace them with land elsewhere. In exchange for 60 acres off the Okatie Highway, known as the New Leaf and Evergreen tracts, the county is offering two parcels of land — the old Camp St. Mary’s, a former Catholic camp, and nearly 10 acres of land off of Bluffton parkway next to Eagles Field.
However, the Rural and Critical board voted to send a recommendation against the swap the the County Council.
“It’s [the swap] not advantageous to this program, this board or preservation interests,” said board member Beekman Webb, when he made the motion not to recommend the swap.
The motion passed unanimously with one abstention.
The board rejected the proposal for two key reasons: public perception and the conservation values of the properties in the swap.
“This potential deception of preserving and then flipping it for another reason later is very troubling, and I think it will undermine the faith and future public support of the program,” board member Stodd McEwan said. “Clearly, the land we currently are talking about has far greater conservation value than the proposed land.”
The board scores properties considered for the program on a scale of one to 10 — the higher the number, the higher the priority. Camp St. Mary’s received a 5.57 and the Bluffton Parkway parcel a 3.625. In 2016, when it entered the program, the New Leaf parcel received a conservation score of 8.4.
Because Camp St. Mary’s and the Bluffton Parkway parcels are smaller and are owned by the county, which puts them at less risk for development, their scores skewed low. Conversely, because the New Leaf tract was scored in 2016, when it was under threat of development, its score skewed higher.
However, the land swap isn’t dead. Its fate still rests in the hands of the Beaufort County Council, because the Rural and Critical Board is only a recommending body. The next, presumably final vote on the swap will be during the Jan. 23 County Council meeting.
The swap will need a super majority of eight votes to pass, meaning no more than three council members can vote against it. Councilwoman Paula Brown, who attended the Rural and Critical board meeting, said she would not vote for the swap.
Considering the recommendation against the swap and that only three other council members would need to join Brown to kill it, it seems unlikely to pass.
The county staff was strongly in favor of the land swap.
“There are no winners, no losers,” said Chuck Atkins, Assistant County Administrator for Development & Recreation. “It’s all about the highest and best use of the resources that we have. And our ultimate goal is to be good stewards of the county’s resources.”
Atkins said that a library is still panned for the Sun City-New Riverside area, one of the fastest-growing parts of the county, regardless of whether the land swap happens.
“This is really not a conversation about whether there should or should not be a library there,” he said. “We’ve got three point something million dollars already collected for this library.”
The swap was first proposed in November year when the county staff brought it to the council before the Rural and Critical Board had the opportunity to study the proposal.
It wasn’t until nearly a month later, on Dec. 8, that the Rural and Critical board was presented with information about the swap. But because no survey of the parcels Beaufort County is offering had been conducted, the board decided it couldn’t make a recommendation without first seeing the properties. That tour of the properties occurred last week.
This story was originally published January 13, 2023 at 12:39 PM.
