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George's Information and Comments Growth Impact Action Committee ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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Imperative Horry County Ordinances August 2007 update additions are shown in blue text below. The people of Horry County need to insist that Horry County Council enact an adequate public facilities ordinance, establish ways for growth to pay for itself so that the tax burden on existing residents is not increased to pay for the additional facilities new development requires by such as a Proportionate Share Ordinance (click here for details) and, at least to the limited extent it helps, enact an impact fee ordinance in compliance with the S.C. impact fee statute. County Council often says it can not do things because state law precludes it. There are things it can and should do: 1. Most importantly, enact an Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO). An APFO would preclude approval of a new development unless, by the time that development is constructed, there will be sufficient public infrastructure in place to support the burden that the needs of that development require. Click here for more information on APFOs and click here to see the extent of Horry County's need for an APFO. 2. Enact a Proportionate Share Ordinance that would make it possible to allow development where all public facilities were inadequate if a developer contributes at least his proportionate share of the costs of all the the public infrastructure his proposed development requires -- financially or in kind, by such as the appraised value of his dedications or public facility construction. 3. In lieu of the above, establish ways for growth to pay for itself so that the tax burden on existing residents is not increased to pay for the additional facilities required to support new development. These could follow the lead of other S.C. counties with such as requiring all developments of 25 acres or more to be PDDs with development agreements allowing development fees, and to the extant it could ameliorate the situation, enact an impact fee ordinance that conforms with the S.C. Impact Fee statute. Summerville has successfully done so with court approval.* Lancaster County is looking at revisiting already approved PDDs to assess additional impact fees, specifically for schools. 4. Enact an ordinance to put newly constructed property on the tax rolls within one month after the certificate of occupancy for that property is issued. Considerable revenue is lost in waiting until the January of the year after it is built. Other property owners must make up for this with increases in their taxes. This ordinance is explicitly allowed in the recently passed S.C. property tax reform bills. *The July 12, 2006 Sun News reported that Summerville received a favorable ruling from the S.C. Supreme Court that allowed them to collect an impact fee of $1,138 on a detached single family house, I called the Summerville Town Hall and talked to Dennis, the person to whose line I was forwarded. On looking at the Sun News article again, I would guess that was Dennis Pieper, the Summerville Town Administrator. He said that they had imposed their impact fees about three years ago under the current South Carolina impact fee statute. When I mentioned that one of the things I heard from the Horry County government was that it felt that the capital improvement plan requirement was especially onerous, I understood him to say that the adequacy of their capital improvement plan was one of the issues that was ruled in Summerville's favor. I asked him if they had significant problems in complying with the requirements of the statute. He said that a locality just had to comply with the requirements as to public hearings, etc. I asked if the requirements were unduly burdensome. He said: "No."
We should also encourage the county's efforts to limit golf course area usage changes. If golf course owners can not economically continue to profitably use golf courses, allowing them to change to low density residential may be equitable, but they should not be allowed to build commercial properties on such land simply to maximize their profits.
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