County Council is currently considering a proposal to streamline impact fees and add an EMS fee. However, municipalities have not adopted many of these fees, including the School Impact fee passed in 2021. On Monday, March 28, the County Council voted to end impact fees unless the municipalities agreed to adopt the proposals.

Impact fees are collected when issuing building permits to help build the infrastructure required to serve the new residents who have and will continue to move into the county.

"Beaufort County and the municipalities within the County have spent months, and in some cases years, discussing the need to adopt new impact fees for schools and EMS and renew/update existing fees," said County Council Chairman Joe Passiment. "Lack of participation and cooperation by Hilton Head, Bluffton, Beaufort, and Port Royal has led Beaufort County Council to consider eliminating all existing impact fees and abandon its efforts to adopt school and EMS impact fees."

Impact fees provide funding that maintains the fiscal health and services of the School District and County Government. They include School Impact Fees, EMS Impact Fees, Road Impact Fees, Parks & Rec Impact Fees, Library Impact Fees, and Fire Impact Fees as outlined in the draft Intergovernmental Agreements provided to each municipality.

A new construction home buyer's average monthly mortgage payment would increase by approximately $100 if all fees were adopted.

Suppose municipalities decide not to follow the County Council impact fee plan. In that case, the council is considering eliminating impact fees and placing the entire costs of new development on the backs of existing taxpayers. The council would consider increasing property taxes or taking on sizable debt liability through bonds and loans to fund the expansion of required infrastructure and facilities.

Beaufort County contracted with the firm Tischler Bise to assist them in updating their impact fee ordinance, which was originally adopted in 1999.

Currently, the county is broken up into a number of different zones, and fees are not proportional to current areas of growth.

The proposal has EMS (Minus Hilton Head) for the entire county. Parks and Recreation and Library would be broken into a Northern Zone and a Southern Zone. Fire would have two zones as well, Northern Zone and Bluffton. Hilton Head has its own Fire and EMS funding. In 2021, Council established the South of the Broad Service Area – School Impact Fees on residential construction only.

A discount for affordable housing units is included in this proposal. Developers and builders would pay:

• Housing designed for Area Medium Income (AMI) under 60% would pay no impact fees
• Housing designed for AMI between 60 and 80% would pay 60% of the impact fees
• Housing designed for AMI over 80% would pay all impact fees.

See Impact fee figures for specifics on impact fees.