Horry County's Need for an Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance

      -- Pam Creech

I have spoken to the Horry County Council on certain relative statistics pertinent to planning and zoning in this county.  I would like to share some of those with you.

50% of our schools are at and above 100% capacity.  Some are at the rate of 114%.  45% of our schools are from 85 to 95% and the last 5% are from 65 to 77% full.  We do not know what September will bring except that there will be many more students than these schools can handle.

Our elementary schools are now growing at the rate of 1,500 to 1,800 students a year.  Our middle schools and high schools are of course growing at an alarming rate as well.

The 2005 S. C. Infrastructure Report Card from SCDOT says that rural, secondary and local roads are deteriorating rapidly.  They were designed and constructed for truck sizes and traffic flow of the early 50's.  Driving on roads in need of repair costs S. C. motorists $574 million a year in vehicle repair.  A large percentage of our rural bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.  Our state now leads the nation in the rate of deaths on secondary roads because of the overcrowding on the narrow, deteriorating roads and a third of the states traffic deaths are attributed to road conditions or designs.  Although secondary roads make up the majority of roadways, their care has not been a priority because the state has little money to devote annually to them. The SCDOT has a maintenance shortfall of 560 million a year and its shortfall for construction is 1.3 billion.

These facts and many more factors should be taken into account in regard to every new rezoning that comes before this board because one of the functions of planning and zoning is to provide for the public health, safety, welfare and convenience of the citizens within the unincorporated areas of Horry County.

Horry County's Mission Statement is to Provide a Community Environment in which the citizens and visitors of Horry County can enjoy the Highest Quality of Life not the Highest Density of Development.

An Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance is a growth management approach that ties development approval to the availability and adequacy of public facilities and services, thus insuring that new development does not take place unless the infrastructure is available to support it. The development must demonstrate that the required levels of public facilities and services are, or will be, available to the proposed project.

---

Yesterday, July 29, I submitted a request to Council, planning staff, and the Planning & Zoning Board concerning their passage and use of an "adequate public facilities ordinance."

 

For the last seven years I have been involved with communities across Horry County and the problems that have plagued its citizens.  I have listened to residents beg for relief in dealing with horrible traffic problems, overcrowded schools, drainage, sewer issues, stormwater, unwanted commercial development, heavy density development, environment degradation, pollution and many others.  These problems need to be addressed now.  It is already too late for some areas.

 

As we look at the crisis level need for roads in many parts of the county we find that our present citizens can not even go about their daily lives in an orderly manner because of overcrowded roadways.  Many mistakes were made in the past when they were planning for our future.  There is no need to place blame; however, hopefully we will choose to grow with infrastructure in place before the developing is continued.  This will benefit our community residents as well as the future home owners that will move to our area.

 

In the past we have tried to use impact fee laws or enact legislation that would be more useful in our county.  This has not happened.  We have many problems but until now there seemed to be no solutions.

 

I believe that an adequate public facilities ordinance will address most if not all of the problems that our leaders and community activists have been wrestling with.

 

An adequate public facilities ordinance is a growth management approach that ties or conditions development approval to the availability and adequacy of public facilities and services, thus ensuring that new development does not take place unless the infrastructure is available to support it.  This ordinance is usually adopted by the local government that allows it to defer the approval of developments based upon a finding by the governing body that public facilities would not be adequate to support the proposed development at build out.  This ordinance would allow smart growth and would keep government from having a moratorium on all development.

 

It would remove the need for impact fees as such, because if the facilities were not adequate no development would be allowed unless they wished to step up to the plate and pay for the infrastructure that would be needed because of their request.

 

With our road situation throughout Horry County I would hate to see a hurricane of destructive force such as New Orleans has been struggling with.  It does not matter how many roads we pay for, the density in our neighborhoods and millions of tourists that are on our coasts could not be moved to safety in a timely fashion in my opinion and we are still passing thousands of units in rezoning every month.  This is not good planning for the future.  We need our policy makers to take a stand by voting in this adequate public facilities ordinance and enforcing it so that our future growth will be safe and something we can all be proud of.

Click here for a national Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance Survey.