Oh What A Web We Weave

This is an interesting side note that has me wondering if Horry County elected officials have our citizens in the fore front when it comes to Taxes or are we in the center of the Web waiting to be economically eaten by a tax spider.

Carolina Station Developers, International Paper Reality (IPR) had Costal Carolina University do the impact study for the project. The department that did that study is headed by Gary Loftus who just won a seat on the Horry County Council (HCC) taking office in January 2009, replacing Mike Ryan who has been voting “NO” on the rush to approve the “Station” project without knowing the full taxpayer impact. He also believed that IPR was not paying its’ fair share of the project’s cost.

At the July1st, 2008 of the HCC the Horry Country School Board pleaded in front of the HCC to put off the vote for another 60 days so the full impact of the new schools in the IPR project and other new schools, on the taxpayers, could be determined. Needless to say the HCC voted and approved the project without discussion on any of the subjects pleaded at the meeting.

School taxpayer impact is said to be not an issue which is included in any impact studies, by HCC ruling, because if they were no projects such as Carolina Station could be justified. School projects are approved at the School Board meetings which are not usually attended by the taxpayers to any degree. The taxpayers, however, get to vote on the approbations bill funding the schools which will affect their real estate taxes and or a raise in the sales tax.

Now! On the front page of the July 15^th issue of the Sun News, comes word that the Horry County School Board has voted to ask the taxpayer voters for a 1% sales tax increase which will be on the November ballot. Two of the School Board members abstained from voting; Why? The tax study was done by CCU which Will Garland, School Board Chairman works for and the other Board member who abstained is Kay Loftus, whose husband Gary Loftus heads up the department at CCU that did the tax analysis study for the School Board.

Garland said he did not want to lose this tax based on any technicalities so he proposed asking the ethics commission whether or not it was ethical for us to participate. The way I look at it was not just the vote participation that had the appearance of conflict of interest but the whole process of having the study done by the husband of a board member and the Chairman of the School Board, both who work for CCU.

The test of participation should be if it smelled of non-ethical behavior than the study should have been by some other firm.

The stink is really coming from the Loftus connection, with CCU doing the School Board tax study and the Carolina Station impact study. Don’t forget what we are talking about here; Building 15 new elementary schools, 3 new middle schools, 2 new high schools, plus renovations and other construction projects over the next 15 years, totaling close to $1 billion dollars. We are talking about just building the schools, not the cost of running them, new teachers, or busses and gas.

Do you see the spider coming toward us?

At least we can get to vote on the schools which, because of the fiasco Carolina Forest IPR development and now the impact of the IPR Carolina Station, I give the sales tax increase or any other tax increase, at this time, with this economy, about a 20% chance of passing.

I think the HCC ruling of not allowing the costs of building and running schools should be thrown out and they should be part of any new proposals for future developments. The developers should include the related cost of them in the price of the housing in the project. The developers have a choice to absorb the cost with a narrower profit margin, or price the housing with the school cost included.      

Carolina Station:

As I left the Horry County Council meeting on July 1, 2008, my friend Joe said “Jack we have lived in the last great generation”.

The decision made at that meeting, approving the Carolina Station project, will cause the next generation not to be so great by leaving them with major County budget shortfalls for the next 30 to 40 years or more.

Carolina Station is a planned unit development (PUD) on 6259 acres in the Loris area off Highway #905. This is a mega development of 13,800 homes, housing 41,000 people, 3 or 4 schools, commercial business and buildings. Carolina Station will be a major size city within Horry County, being develop by International Paper Realty (IPR), and will resemble the new Market Common in Myrtle Beach.

The Horry County Council approved the project even after hearing valid pleas of water availability not being addressed and with the school board pleading for an extension so they could present the Council with a reasonable impact study showing the financial load the new schools would put on the Horry County Budget and ultimately on the Horry County Taxpayers. Since this project is not going to start anytime soon it would seem reasonable that a sixty day extension would not impact the start. 

Anybody who lives around the area and uses South Carolina roads know that the roads are barely adequate to support current traffic load and by adding the approximately 27,000 cars plus service and support vehicles along with construction equipment traffic, will add a whole new meaning to the word gridlock.

Now to be fair the Carolina Station project will take many, many years (like 20 to 30 years) to complete, so hopefully added road lanes and roads would be added, however, being County and State roads we all know how good they are in keeping up with road expansion and improvements?

That is precisely why Horry Country P.R.I.D.E.Com (Promoting Responsible investment in Infrastructure, Development, & Environment) decided to get involved. PRIDE is an On-Line group of citizens who are concerned that taxpayers currently pay more than a fair share of taxes, especially concerning Mega projects such as the Carolina Station. Usually in project developments of this size the developers tend to error projections showing net revenue to the county on the plus side. They also set aside land at inflated values instead of cold hard cash. The fact is that they have to do both.

Special interest groups such as realtor associations, builder and developer groups all have the attitude the more money they can get the tax-payers to pay the bigger their profit.

The developers, Realtors and the County Council got the upper hand at that July 1st meeting but they certainly now know there is a watchdog group, of concerned taxpayers, who by utilizing the power of their vote will soon be able say we at least helped the next generation get a jump on being  great too.