Edgefield County planning commission to pursue impact-fee study after council resolution

At its Jan. 9 work session, the Edgefield County Planning Commission was briefed on a county council resolution directing an impact-fee study that state law requires before the county may impose an impact fee, county staff said.

Staff said the study is required to tie any fee to specific capital improvements and to show cost estimates; impact fees cannot be vague or discriminatory and generally apply only to new construction in the area where the improvement will be built. “Impact fees must be used to pay for specific improvement,” Staff member (planning staff) said.

The presentation stressed several legal and practical constraints: fees must fund identifiable capital projects (for example, a substation or a new ambulance), cannot be applied unequally, and generally cannot pay for ongoing operations such as salaries or utilities. Staff noted an exception-like situation for water and sewer where a specific expansion already has a documented cost: “You don't need a study when it's water and sewer and it's a very specified amount of installation,” Staff member (planning staff) said, citing examples such as Tavern Hill and Windsor where sewer expansions were used to calculate per-lot fees.

Staff discussed how an impact-fee program would be structured: the county must prepare a capital improvement plan tied to the fee, conduct a feasibility study that follows the comprehensive-planning/public-input process, and document invoices or professional cost estimates rather than guesswork. The packet included a draft RFP for the feasibility study; staff said similar studies in other South Carolina jurisdictions have ranged from about $90,000 to more than $200,000 and typically take roughly six to seven months. “I've seen some as low as 90 to a hundred thousand and I've seen some that were well over 200,” Staff member (planning staff) said.

Staff said the commission can contract with private consultants or seek in-kind help from university programs, but timelines and scope differ: a grad-student project may reduce cost but could take a year. Staff said they would solicit input from Clemson, Lander, Augusta University and the College of Charleston to see if planning departments or graduate programs could assist.

The briefing also covered geography and fairness: if the county applies a fee in one area (for example, Merriweather or the Highway 25 corridor), it cannot charge that fee to a property in another area that receives no benefit. Staff said the study will focus on unincorporated parts of the county; cities may use the study for their own ordinances but the county cannot impose fees inside incorporated towns. “But it's not overly complicated,” Staff member (planning staff) said of the process.

Next steps outlined to the commission were review and edits to the draft RFP, sending the RFP out for proposals, and returning recommendations to county council when a consultant (or other option) is selected. Staff emphasized that the council had already passed a resolution asking the commission to advance the study; no contract or fee would be imposed until after the feasibility study and subsequent council action.