Horry County Council is again wrestling with the question of how to raise impact fees to help offset the cost of providing needed infrastructure to serve the ever-increasing number of new homes being built in the county.
While county council investigates to increase impact fees, the state enabling legislation governing those fees provides the largest hurdle to overcome.
In 1999, the General Assembly passed legislation governing the imposition of impact fees by local governments with enough restrictions and obstacles to make them virtually unworkable for local government use. The development industry launched a huge lobbying effort against the law and was generally successful in making the law extremely difficult for local governments to use.
The legislation dictates how the local governments must use the money and in what time frame it must be used. It also requires commercial structures to be treated the same as homes with respect to taxing, something that makes impact fees on commercial structures an excessive burden.
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