06 | May | 2024 | The Aiken Chronicles

Part 2 of the Capital Project Sales Taxes series.

By Don Moniak
May 6, 2024

At its Tuesday, May 7, 2024, public meeting, Aiken County Council will vote on a resolution to move forward with a County voter referendum, to be placed on the November 2024 General Election ballot, for a one-percent Capital Project Sales Tax (CPST). Title 4, Chapter 10 of South Carolina law (Title allows for the imposition of one-percent local option sales taxes (LOST); of which the CPST (Article 3) and the more cumbersome “Education Capital Improvements Sales and Use Tax Act” (Article 4) are two provisions of LOST being applied in this year’s referendums.

The CPST referendum, if passed, will provide tax revenues of up to $264,066,386 for specific capital investments projects and general capital project area; i.e. water, sewer, traffic control, and stormwater management.

As reported in More Than Pennies: The Confluence of One-Percent Sales Tax Referendums, this will be is the fifth one-percent Capital Project Sales Tax voter referendum since 2000 (thus the acronym CPST-V), the second referendum during a Presidential Election year, and the first time county voters will have both a CPST referendum and an Aiken County School District’s capital projects one-percent sales tax referendum on the same ballot.

Council’s resolution (Figure 1) includes appointment of a six-person Sales Tax Commission that “must be established to review the suggested list of projects to check for appropriateness under State law and reasonableness of need to the County.”

The members of the Commission are listed as

“Mr. Andrew Marine, Mr. Brett Brannon and Mr. Shane Bagby (Aiken County representatives), Ms. Nora Sanders (Small Towns representative-collectively), Mr. Reggie Ebner (City of Aiken representative) and Mr. Austin Taylor (City of North Augusta representative).”

The resolution begins:

“Aiken County and its municipalities have identified several critical capital project needs.”

In this case, “several” is equal to 166 line items ranging from projects as specific as individual new facilities to project areas as vague as “stormwater improvements.” Funding requests by jurisdiction range from $0.2 million to $127 million (Table 1). (The complete list can be found on pages 88-97 of Council’s Agenda documents and in footnote 3)

The costs per line item range from $500 for a park sign in Windsor to $14 million dollars each for City of Aiken Water system and Sewer system improvements. (1)

$14.7 million of the Aiken County funding requests are for the paving of 27 unpaved County roads ($10.7 million) and resurfacing of 50 paved County Roads ($4.7 million). (2)

Jurisdiction	Requested Funding	# of Line Items
Aiken County	$127,576,423	59
City of Aiken	$79,659,733	18
City of North Augusta	$48,633,586	22
Town of Burnettown	$2,397,851	11
Town of Jackson	$1,224,598	6
Town of Monetta	$210,000	4
City of New Ellenton	$2,031,040	9
Town of Perry	$256,260	5
Town of Salley	$270,889	13
Town of Windsor	$206,000	12
Town of Wagener	$1,600,000	7
Totals	$264,066,386	166

Table 1: Breakdown of requested CPST funding requests by jurisdiction. Complete lists are in Footnote 3.

Figure 1: County Council CPST Resolution for May 7, 2024

Footnotes

(1) Adding the requested $8 million for replacing the existing well and septic system in the City’s Beverly D. Clyburn Generations Park brings the City’s projected utilities department funding requests to $36 million—just over 13 percent of the total CPST referendum package.

A request for an additional $5 million for Generations Park is designated for is also scheduled to receive another $5 million for “Tennis, pickleball, and volleyball courts and other features based on an updated Master Plan and community needs.”

(2) The County Road paving program identifies 27 roads on an A-List and 25 roads on a B-List that will be used in the case that any A-list road project cannot be completed.

Resurfacing includes 11 county roads outside of subdivisions, including Old Tory Trail, Powerhouse Road, Brier Patch Lane, and Anderson Pond Road; and 39 roads within four of Aiken County’s neighborhoods near the City of Aiken—Braeloch, Gem Lakes, Quail Hollow, and Foxchase—and one near North Augusta—Lakes and Streams.