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Port Royal mayor and attorney pitch $10 million MCIP plan to Beaufort County committee
Summary
Port Royal officials asked the county committee to authorize a 20-year MCIP arrangement that would funnel up to $10 million for public infrastructure at the Port Royal Business Park, while school officials and some council members urged caution over impacts to school district revenue.
Port Royal Mayor Kevin Phillips and the town's attorney, Lawrence Flynn, presented a plan to Beaufort County's Finance, Administration & Economic Development Committee on May 18 to re-activate a 2009 multi-county industrial/commercial business park (MCIP) mechanism and use it to fund public infrastructure at the Port Royal Business Park.
Phillips said the project has been under consideration for nearly two decades and framed the request as a way to unlock an existing, unused revenue stream. "This is something that's been in the works for almost 20 years in the town of Port Royal," Phillips said, asking the committee to consider allowing the town to capture revenues and use them for parks, waterfront access, streetscaping and a shrimp dock.
Flynn, the town attorney, explained why Port Royal is proposing an MCIP rather than reviving the old tax increment financing (TIF). He described MCIP as a vehicle that converts certain commercial assessments from ad valorem taxes to fees that the county can distribute differently. "We're simply trying to take an existing stream of revenues that the town has been unable to utilize," Flynn said, adding the MCIP approach would allow the town to assemble roughly $10 million for public projects by authorizing up to $1 million per year in distributions over a 10- to 20-year period.
The presentation traced the site's history: the property was placed in a multi-county park in 2009 and a TIF established in 2012; development and ownership changed hands several times, most recently to Safe Harbor. Flynn said the TIF had become invalid under the statute because the initial bonds were not issued in the first 10 years, so Port Royal is proposing an MCIP framework that would reproduce the original intent of funding public infrastructure without restarting a TIF baseline that would capture existing assessed value.
School board officials attending the meeting raised concerns about the proposal's effect on school revenues. A school board representative who identified himself as the chair of the school board's finance committee warned that the MCIP does not require school district consent and said the district intends to examine the proposal closely. "The MCIP is not a mutual agreement. The school district has no consent power over an MCIP," the school board member said.
Committee members asked technical questions about the MCIP boundary, proportional millage splits and precedent for other jurisdictions using multi-county arrangements. Flynn said Port Royal envisions an intergovernmental agreement that would limit MCIP distributions to specified public infrastructure projects and include a firm description of projects eligible for funding.
Committee members did not take formal action on the presentation; members agreed to seek further analysis, share materials with Beaufort County and school finance staff, and expect the town to return with ordinance language and a proposed intergovernmental agreement if the committee wishes to proceed. The item was presented as a discussion only and no vote on authorization was held at the committee meeting.
