Residents opposed to the county’s proposed raising of individual road usage fees spoke out Monday night during a public hearing on the issue.
Those in opposition included one Clarendon elected official, Clarendon County Auditor Patricia Pringle, who implied that the updated fee would be a tax burden.
“Since every vehicle in the county is already paying $25, this would result in a $45 road fee due to the $20 increase,” she said. “For a person with two vehicles in their home, that would be $90; for four vehicles, that would be $180 per year. If you are an elderly person or have a car 15 years or older that you may not drive that much, that is $20 you are going to be paying.”
Clarendon County Administrator said a proposed ordinance that would raise the current road usage fee - $25 per vehicle – by $20 has been discussed to address “a lack of funding for road maintenance and issues exposed by October’s flooding.”
“The original road maintenance fee was adopted by ordinance in 1993,” he said. “Subsequent to that, it was amended and raised to $25, so we have been at that dollar amount for at least 10 years now, maybe longer than that.”
Epperson said County Council is well within its rights to update the usage fee.
“If the county would like to levy taxes or create user fees for specific purposes, specifically road maintenance, and public works, it is authorized pursuant to state law Section 4935,” Epperson said.
The ordinance, Epperson read, states “The revenue must be used solely and exclusively for the construction and improvement of county roads and related drainage, which will also include the payment of salaries, purchasing of equipment for county roads and related drainages.”
“Each fiscal year, the county council will evaluate the source of the revenue and project the expenditures for such services and modify the amount to be applied against public works expenditures as mentioned in this section,” Epperson concluded. “Clearly, we have the authority to consider this as a revenue source to offset that cost of our road maintenance program.”
Epperson explained that increasing the road usage fee is the best way to respond to the problem, as levying a 1-cent sales tax would require a general election referendum.
“If passed, that tax could then only be used for specified projects, instead of general maintenance,” Epperson said. He said while residents are concerned about an increase and are asking why a 1-cent sales tax that would affect tourists as well wouldn’t be better, such monies could not be used for road maintenance.
He pointed to an already existing penny sales tax which allows the county to use funds solely for recreation and tourism purposes.
As you know, the 2015 flood impact was very hard; we had numerous county-maintained dirt and paved roads, as well as state-maintained roads, that were damaged pretty heavily,” Epperson said. “Prior to that, the county had been very diligent on its resources and its public works department, utilizing the resources where we best saw fit to maintain our roads.”
Epperson said the flood caused “some cracks in our system.”
“It showed some holes in it that we need to address,” he said. “In doing that, we have invested about $1.5 million of taxpayers’ dollars to improve those roads and make a significant investment in that. We want to maintain that investment.”
Epperson advised that raising the road usage fee is the only logical way to maintain the investment.
“You register a vehicle with the county or the state and then tax it and this usage fee is added to that bill,” Epperson said. “It’s strictly a user fee – it is not a tax. A tax applies to more than one group of people; this is for a specific group of users.”
Pringle disagreed.
“In my office, and we will be the one to implement whatever council decides, we have taxpayers complaining all the time with just the $25 road fee,” she said. “Every other year, there are DMV fees on the tax bill. So you have a vehicle that is more than 15 years old, the taxes if you are in District 1 are $18.52; District 2 are $16.48; and District 3 is $23.89.”
Pringle said the currently $25 road fee is “already more than the taxes.”
“If you add $20 more to these taxes, to me that is a lot,” she said. “It might not seem like a lot to a lot of people, but there are people who scramble just to pay their vehicle tax bill every year. To some, it’s a struggle.”
Resident Robert McFadden agreed, saying he also thinks of the user fee as a tax. He asked Epperson how exactly the $20 figure was decided upon.
“Basically, we looked at how much a $5 increase would generate, and we also looked at the potential cost to either purchase or lease two motor graders and hire two individuals to be able to go out and contract those services based on the dollars we spent during the flood,” Epperson said. “We looked at that and formulated an amount we think is sufficient enough to provide us with the maintenance we need for our roads.”
McFadden then said that, if the county gets $750,000 from “taxing it at $25 currently, which I think is the highest or second highest in the state right now, how did you maintain and how did you budget with that?”
He also asked if there was a county commission that decided on road issues.
“The Transportation Committee is a separate group that was established by the state legislature,” Epperson said. County Council has been appointed by the Legislative Delegation as the standing Transportation Committee, he added.
“They handle a separate amount of money that also can be used for road repairs and maintenance,” he said. “However, they have decided to use that money for road paving and the state roads that we are mandated to use 25 percent of that money for.”
Therefore, Epperson noted, the road user fee benefits the general fund budget, which is separate from the Transportation Committee budget.
McFadden told council that if the fee has to be “processed as a tax” by Pringle’s office, “then it is a tax.”
“However you count the beans doesn’t matter, you get the same beans,” he said. “It shouldn’t be a total increase and we, as citizens of this county, deserve to see what the previous budget was, who’s handling those, who’s getting those contracts and also some historical data on who is spending that money and what quality of contractors and equipment you are using to repair our roads.”
Clarendon County Council Chairman Dwight Stewart told McFadden that “all that information is available.”
“All you have to do is ask,” Stewart said.
Pringle said she understands the impact of the flood and the need for road maintenance, and that she understands the need for an increase, but wonders why the county cannot gradually raise the user fee in the next few years.
“Last year, we had more than 29,000 paid vehicle taxes in the county; with just the $25 road fee, that was about $725,000 the county has taken in,” she said. “Over the last 10 years, that’s about $7.25 million taken in just from road fees. That additional $20 will be about $580,000 more. So now you’re looking at about $1.3 million per year just for road maintenance.”
“I understand that we need to increase it, but to increase it that much in one year instead of maybe stepping it up over time, I wonder why we cannot do that,” Pringle continued. “We know we are going to get questions. We already know that we are going to send them to Mr. Epperson or (Clarendon Controller) Mr. (Lynden) Anthony to explain to them why their tax bill is up. They are going to say that our roads never get fixed; no one is ever out here We are going to get the same complaints.”
Pringle said a $20 increase in one year would be equal to about an 8 millage tax increase for vehicles.
“And yes, that does include motorcycles, and every registered vehicle, except those exempted through the state Department of Revenue,” she said.
She said an increase of $20 per year would also “give Clarendon County the highest road fee in the state of South Carolina.”
“I checked through the state Database of Taxpaying Abilities: Anyone can go online and look,” she said. “Some of the county road fees are $15, but they exempt senior citizens from that.”
Neighboring Orangeburg County does not charge a road fee, while neighboring Lee County’s is about $30, currently higher than the one Clarendon has.
“Of our surrounding counties, none of them are over $30,” Pringle said.
Stewart asked Pringle what solution she saw for the problem.
“I was thinking about the 1-cent sales tax, but I just heard Mr. Epperson say that additional tax could not be used for that,” Pringle answered. “I’m not sure, but I think it is something that the council should come together and decide.”
Epperson said a new 1-cent sales tax on prepared food or beverages, in addition to the 9-cent sales tax the county already has, would “put us among the highest in the state in sales taxes specifically on prepared food and beverages.”
“Based on that, I think the road usage fee is the best option for us; it gives us the flexibility to use it effectively,” Epperson said. “It’s about $142,500 per $5 increase. We intend to use it on road repair and improvement to roads, on construction projects as well as equipment and material, as well as salary for a project supervisor to help maintain this program."
Epperson said he is working with the Public Works Department to implement a road maintenance program.
“We’ve never had one before; we’ve just kind of gone at it as we saw fit,” he said. “The flood has caused us to re-evaluate our situation and be able to maintain our roads going forward.”
Epperson said the county currently maintains 675 roads, both dirt and paved, which equates to about 370 miles.
“Because of our limited resources, we haven’t been able to maintain the majority of those roads like we should have,” he noted. “So basically over the years, we have had to only attack the ones that are heavily travelled and used.”
Stewart said he felt a new sales tax would burden residents more than the user fee.
“I’ve got five cars, and two of them I probably put less than 2,000 miles a year on; but at $20, it’s a little over 6 cents per day,” he said. “I was thinking about the sales tax, and if a person spends $10,000 a year on sales tax items, then instead of $20 a year, we are talking about $100 a year. I think that would push the burden on folks a little more.”
Resident Ray Adams said he also has five cars, but doesn’t think he should pay extra user fees for them.
“Two of them are classic cars, a 1965 Mustang and a 1965 Chrysler, and they get driven very little; every so often you go out to a car show or you go out and cruise a little bit,” he said. “With five cars, we have two drivers. Now, how can I possibly drive five cars at once? Why can’t we get taxed on how many people actually drive the cars? You tax the first two cars per fiscal year. Charge me $40.”
Adams said he doesn’t mind paying a usage tax.
“But I have lived here 15 years, and I have yet to find a county road,” he said. “Every time I see a dirt road, it is someone’s driveway. Where I live, it leads to people’s houses and dead-ends. So don’t tell me you’re fixing my road. You’re not. You’re fixing someone’s driveway.”
Adams accused council of not maintaining roads, but “(pacifying) people who complain that they can’t get down their driveway.”
“It doesn’t do me a doggone bit of good,” he said.
Stewart disagreed.
“It’s not quite like that; we do have thought processes in place on which roads we have been able to maintain,” he said.
Councilman W.J. Frierson said the situation with the roads is “much better” than it was when he came on council more than a decade ago.
“Back then, we maintained 594 miles of road in this county; I heard the number tonight – 370 miles of road – so we’ve made improvements,” he said. “When I came on, it cost us half-a-million dollars per mile to pave a road. We only get a million dollars from the state in C Funds each year, so you could only do two miles per year. And you still have to buy gravel to maintain the dirt roads. What we’ve done over these years, anybody can see that there has been tremendous improvement from where we started to where we are now.”
