Bluffton Today
Before I get into the topic for this week, I want to recognize some good folks from Bluffton. Larry and Judith Hughes have given exceptional service in a number of civic capacities in Bluffton and Beaufort County over the years. They were up in Columbia last week on behalf of the Clemson Extension Service, with which they have a long and productive history. Always good to see Larry and Judith.
I want to give you the facts with regard to the Heritage Classic Foundation and a bill put before the Ways and Means Committee at my request by a friend of Beaufort County, Rep. Brian White from Anderson.
By proviso, the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism (PRT) may access the borrowing capacity of the Insurance Reserve Fund to create, if needed, a $10 million revolving line of credit to insure the viability of the Heritage Golf Tournament.
This capability is a backstop to protect one of our state’s high-producing assets in case the recession runs on longer than anticipated. It provides the Heritage Classic Foundation and the PGA greater flexibility in securing appropriate corporate sponsorship after the current sponsor’s commitment expires after 2011. To be sure, the likelihood that we will need to create this line of credit is almost vanishingly remote, but the economic importance to our community and region of this event is so profound we must have a plan in place to address even an unlikely contingency.
To put some numbers on this, let me distill a study done by PRT and Clemson University in 2006. The numbers are pretty impressive. The total direct expenditures by non-resident spectators of the Heritage were just under $70 million, for a total impact to the local economy of around $80 million. There were 1,250 jobs directly attributable to the tournament, with presumably several multiples of that in ancillary and supporting businesses. The state revenue from the tournament was around $6 million, not counting what came indirectly from ancillary and supporting businesses.
In addition, the Heritage is the grandest, most effective and most efficient vehicle for showing off our incredible Lowcountry to, literally, the rest of the world. It multiplies the impact of all our other marketing to a degree that almost defies quantification.
Needless to say, I was more than a little surprised at the pushback on this. As a businessman, the idea of leaving our highest performing asset uninsured or without a hedge is somewhere between imprudent and unthinkable. My original idea was to tap 30 percent to 50 percent of the direct state revenue on the tournament to maintain and insure the viability of the asset. That will be a fight for next year.
In summary, we have inserted a proviso into the budget that will allow PRT, under certain circumstances, to extend a line of credit to support the viability of the Heritage golf tournament. This is not a line item. It takes no dollars from education or Disability and Special Needs. It is simply a contingency plan to protect one of the big engines of out local and state economy.
If you are unsure how this works, please call or e-mail and I will be glad to share details. As with most of my legislative agenda, it is about jobs, the economy and keeping more of our tax dollars in the Lowcountry.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Polite persistence pays off with stormwater fix
Bluffton Today
Today’s column is dedicated to one of our local residents named Rick McCollough, from Sun City. Rick is a good guy and afriend of mine, but he is also acommunity-spirited citizen who, when confronted with apotentially catastrophic situation, chose to fix the bad situation rather than sit back and complain about it.
The story of McCollough and his colleagues on the Phase Five Lagoon Committee is almost aparable of persistence, prudent marshalling of neighborhood resources and strategic involvement of sympathetic and effective governmental representatives and functionaries.
When it became apparent that the stormwater management system for the neighborhoods in Phase Five of Sun City was neither operating properly nor constructed to the specifications permitted by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, in 2005 McCollough helped put together a committee to petition the developer, Pulte/Del Webb, to make the appropriate corrections to bring the system into regulatory compliance, as well as into proper working order.
Rick was elected chairman of the committee and dedicated three years of effort in organizing the neighborhoods, using largely in-house expertise, and persuading the developer to do the right thing.
None of the tasks were easy, but failure to address the problems would have quickly expanded both the scope of the deficiency and potential costs of the remedy.
Stormwater management, especially in the Lowcountry, is vitally important for several reasons. First, runoff from development is the primary cause of pollution in our estuarine rivers. Secondly, runoff that doesn’t run off is called floodwater and flooding is dangerous and damaging.
The proper way to engineer stormwater runoff is using Best Management Practices (BMPs). One of the popular BMPs is asystem of lagoons or retention ponds. When ponds are not up to standard, however, they degrade our rivers and cannot protect our neighborhoods from flooding when we get extraordinary rainfall.
Rick and the Phase Five Committee documented the problem, enlisted DHEC to verify the lagoons were not up to the permitted standards and persuaded the developer to do the right thing. To its credit, when Pulte understood the gravity of the matter, it worked with the committee and paid to have the work done.
Pulte’s reputation was protected and the Sun City Community Association was spared the expense, around $500 per rooftop, of making the repairs.
Your representative was privileged to work with this fine group of folks in the capacity of facilitator and encouraging advisor. My 20 to 25 hours of phone calls and meetings over the course of the project pales in comparison to the literally hundreds of hours put in by Rick and members of the committee.
If you want to learn more about this inspiring story, go to www.myschh. com/lagoons and read the details. In addition, if you live in one of the Phase Five neighborhoods, go to the site and copy completion documents from the engineers and DHEC. They will be useful if you want to sell your property.
Also, Rick has also offered his phone number, 705-1919, if you have questions or concerns. I would suggest you call and simply say “thanks” for a job well done.
We also need to commend this paper for its handling of this story: no victim; no villain —just accurate and timely news. It’s an increasing rare commodity and I, for one, appreciate it.
Today’s column is dedicated to one of our local residents named Rick McCollough, from Sun City. Rick is a good guy and afriend of mine, but he is also acommunity-spirited citizen who, when confronted with apotentially catastrophic situation, chose to fix the bad situation rather than sit back and complain about it.
The story of McCollough and his colleagues on the Phase Five Lagoon Committee is almost aparable of persistence, prudent marshalling of neighborhood resources and strategic involvement of sympathetic and effective governmental representatives and functionaries.
When it became apparent that the stormwater management system for the neighborhoods in Phase Five of Sun City was neither operating properly nor constructed to the specifications permitted by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, in 2005 McCollough helped put together a committee to petition the developer, Pulte/Del Webb, to make the appropriate corrections to bring the system into regulatory compliance, as well as into proper working order.
Rick was elected chairman of the committee and dedicated three years of effort in organizing the neighborhoods, using largely in-house expertise, and persuading the developer to do the right thing.
None of the tasks were easy, but failure to address the problems would have quickly expanded both the scope of the deficiency and potential costs of the remedy.
Stormwater management, especially in the Lowcountry, is vitally important for several reasons. First, runoff from development is the primary cause of pollution in our estuarine rivers. Secondly, runoff that doesn’t run off is called floodwater and flooding is dangerous and damaging.
The proper way to engineer stormwater runoff is using Best Management Practices (BMPs). One of the popular BMPs is asystem of lagoons or retention ponds. When ponds are not up to standard, however, they degrade our rivers and cannot protect our neighborhoods from flooding when we get extraordinary rainfall.
Rick and the Phase Five Committee documented the problem, enlisted DHEC to verify the lagoons were not up to the permitted standards and persuaded the developer to do the right thing. To its credit, when Pulte understood the gravity of the matter, it worked with the committee and paid to have the work done.
Pulte’s reputation was protected and the Sun City Community Association was spared the expense, around $500 per rooftop, of making the repairs.
Your representative was privileged to work with this fine group of folks in the capacity of facilitator and encouraging advisor. My 20 to 25 hours of phone calls and meetings over the course of the project pales in comparison to the literally hundreds of hours put in by Rick and members of the committee.
If you want to learn more about this inspiring story, go to www.myschh. com/lagoons and read the details. In addition, if you live in one of the Phase Five neighborhoods, go to the site and copy completion documents from the engineers and DHEC. They will be useful if you want to sell your property.
Also, Rick has also offered his phone number, 705-1919, if you have questions or concerns. I would suggest you call and simply say “thanks” for a job well done.
We also need to commend this paper for its handling of this story: no victim; no villain —just accurate and timely news. It’s an increasing rare commodity and I, for one, appreciate it.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Tax penalties based on average wealth is unfair
Bluffton Today
We had something of a calm spell this week as far as calls and e-mails on local issues are concerned. This is probably for the best as we had a pretty intense week of working over bills in committee, especially those related to jobs and job recruitment.
One bill in particular, H4478, received a lot of attention as it will potentially become an allencompassing job enticement act that will describe how we recruit companies from small engineering shops all the way up the scale to the next Boeing or BMW. As we arrived at Section 16 of the bill, there was language that raised big red flags for me. The cost/ benefit aspect of this bill was based on an area’s “ability to pay” as opposed to more rational or equitable criteria such as average weekly wage.
If this sounds familiar, it is because this same language is found in the Education Finance Act of 1977, which has bedeviled Beaufort County’s financial relationship with the state in paying for public education. The intent of the act was to equalize the burden of school finance among the various counties of the state. It is not unreasonable that more prosperous counties might pay a somewhat larger proportion than poorer counties to support the public schools. Unfortunately, the part of the act called “the Index of Taxpaying Ability” has evolved over the years to the point where we in Beaufort County have found the portion of state dollars returned to us has dwindled to effectively nothing. I have a hard time believing that was the intent of the legislation. Unfortunately, the “ability to pay” criterion is not isolated to education.
Needless to say, your representative took serious exception to Section 16 of H4478. In fact, after 45 minutes of discussion in Ways and Means, it was decided to omit the section completely. I am always a little surprised to have to explain to my legislative colleagues about the wealth distribution in Beaufort County. There are certainly a number of wealthy folks in our county, and they contribute a great deal to the community. However, the overwhelming majority of residents in our area are middle class working families, retirees, and active military. To give us a tax penalty based on an average wealth is simply unfair. If Bill Gates happens to attend the sold-out performance of May River Theater’s “Pal Joey,” then each person in the auditorium would be worth over $100 million on average. That’s an extreme example, but that is often the perception we are facing.
On a positive note, H4478 does include a tax credit for solar electric generation and high efficiency equipment. I will keep an eye on those features and keep working them forward.
The budget gets started this morning and I will be in Columbia five days this week. As we dissect the budget, I always pay attention to how each piece will affect Beaufort County, District 118, and also what might be called the greater good. In all my years of work in the legislature, there has rarely if ever been a sliver of daylight separating those three constituencies.
We had something of a calm spell this week as far as calls and e-mails on local issues are concerned. This is probably for the best as we had a pretty intense week of working over bills in committee, especially those related to jobs and job recruitment.
One bill in particular, H4478, received a lot of attention as it will potentially become an allencompassing job enticement act that will describe how we recruit companies from small engineering shops all the way up the scale to the next Boeing or BMW. As we arrived at Section 16 of the bill, there was language that raised big red flags for me. The cost/ benefit aspect of this bill was based on an area’s “ability to pay” as opposed to more rational or equitable criteria such as average weekly wage.
If this sounds familiar, it is because this same language is found in the Education Finance Act of 1977, which has bedeviled Beaufort County’s financial relationship with the state in paying for public education. The intent of the act was to equalize the burden of school finance among the various counties of the state. It is not unreasonable that more prosperous counties might pay a somewhat larger proportion than poorer counties to support the public schools. Unfortunately, the part of the act called “the Index of Taxpaying Ability” has evolved over the years to the point where we in Beaufort County have found the portion of state dollars returned to us has dwindled to effectively nothing. I have a hard time believing that was the intent of the legislation. Unfortunately, the “ability to pay” criterion is not isolated to education.
Needless to say, your representative took serious exception to Section 16 of H4478. In fact, after 45 minutes of discussion in Ways and Means, it was decided to omit the section completely. I am always a little surprised to have to explain to my legislative colleagues about the wealth distribution in Beaufort County. There are certainly a number of wealthy folks in our county, and they contribute a great deal to the community. However, the overwhelming majority of residents in our area are middle class working families, retirees, and active military. To give us a tax penalty based on an average wealth is simply unfair. If Bill Gates happens to attend the sold-out performance of May River Theater’s “Pal Joey,” then each person in the auditorium would be worth over $100 million on average. That’s an extreme example, but that is often the perception we are facing.
On a positive note, H4478 does include a tax credit for solar electric generation and high efficiency equipment. I will keep an eye on those features and keep working them forward.
The budget gets started this morning and I will be in Columbia five days this week. As we dissect the budget, I always pay attention to how each piece will affect Beaufort County, District 118, and also what might be called the greater good. In all my years of work in the legislature, there has rarely if ever been a sliver of daylight separating those three constituencies.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Hilton Head must win ‘marketing arms race’
Bluffton Today
Thomas Viljack is a friend of mine. He is also a builder and developer who has done a number of interesting projects around Old Town Bluffton. Thomas is also from a military family and is always informed on armed forces issues. Recently, he brought to my attention a matter involving apparent mistreatment by the federal judiciary of a group of Navy Seals. While I rarely get involved in federal issues, this one seemed so patently unfair it must be an exception.
Since our community is privileged to be home to many veterans and active duty service men and women, silence on this matter would be insulting. Consequently, I invited Thomas to Columbia, we wrote a resolution in support of our Navy Seals and placed it before the General Assembly, where it passed unanimously and expeditiously in both the House and Senate and is on the way to Washington. I have personally sent copies to Congressman Wilson as well as Sens. Graham and DeMint.
There is currently a misperception that your representative is trying to raise your taxes, specifically the sales tax, from 7 percent to 8 percent. This is not true. I am not trying to raise your taxes. I cannot state it more plainly than that.
What I have done is this: I have entered a bill on behalf of the town of Hilton Head Island and the Hilton Head Island/Bluffton Chamber of Commerce to allow Hilton Head to have a local option sales tax. What does this mean? If the measure passes the Legislature and is signed by the governor, then Hilton Head may hold a referendum to decide whether the voters wish to impose upon themselves an additional penny sales tax in addition to the 7 percent already levied.
The reason the town and the chamber have asked for this local option sales tax has to do with the fact that the future prosperity of Hilton Head and surrounding communities is tied to the number and quality of visitors to our part of the Lowcountry.
For years, competing resort areas have dedicated marketing dollars at levels that literally dwarf what the local chamber can raise and spend. The fact that the Hilton Head area has managed to maintain its market share is largely a testament to the excellence of the product we have, and to the extraordinary effectiveness of the Hilton Head Island/ Bluffton Chamber of Commerce. Bill Miles and his cadre have done great things with comparatively modest resources. It is no surprise that they are perennially rated either the top chamber in the country or among the top three in the country.
However, all of our principal competitors have raised the stakes with massive infusions of marketing resources. There is something of a marketing arms race among destinations around the world. This comes at a time of vulnerability for us as our flagship promotional event, the Heritage, is facing sponsorship questions. Also, many of the resort communities on the island are maturing into buildout and are therefore marketing less aggressively.
Considering these challenges, it is not surprising that those entrusted with the future prosperity of the Hilton Head area would look seriously at whatever might be added to their defensive arsenal. A local option sales tax is one possible weapon.
Consistent with the tenets of home rule, this tax will be only happen with the consent of the governed. I’ll have more on this as it develops.
Thomas Viljack is a friend of mine. He is also a builder and developer who has done a number of interesting projects around Old Town Bluffton. Thomas is also from a military family and is always informed on armed forces issues. Recently, he brought to my attention a matter involving apparent mistreatment by the federal judiciary of a group of Navy Seals. While I rarely get involved in federal issues, this one seemed so patently unfair it must be an exception.
Since our community is privileged to be home to many veterans and active duty service men and women, silence on this matter would be insulting. Consequently, I invited Thomas to Columbia, we wrote a resolution in support of our Navy Seals and placed it before the General Assembly, where it passed unanimously and expeditiously in both the House and Senate and is on the way to Washington. I have personally sent copies to Congressman Wilson as well as Sens. Graham and DeMint.
There is currently a misperception that your representative is trying to raise your taxes, specifically the sales tax, from 7 percent to 8 percent. This is not true. I am not trying to raise your taxes. I cannot state it more plainly than that.
What I have done is this: I have entered a bill on behalf of the town of Hilton Head Island and the Hilton Head Island/Bluffton Chamber of Commerce to allow Hilton Head to have a local option sales tax. What does this mean? If the measure passes the Legislature and is signed by the governor, then Hilton Head may hold a referendum to decide whether the voters wish to impose upon themselves an additional penny sales tax in addition to the 7 percent already levied.
The reason the town and the chamber have asked for this local option sales tax has to do with the fact that the future prosperity of Hilton Head and surrounding communities is tied to the number and quality of visitors to our part of the Lowcountry.
For years, competing resort areas have dedicated marketing dollars at levels that literally dwarf what the local chamber can raise and spend. The fact that the Hilton Head area has managed to maintain its market share is largely a testament to the excellence of the product we have, and to the extraordinary effectiveness of the Hilton Head Island/ Bluffton Chamber of Commerce. Bill Miles and his cadre have done great things with comparatively modest resources. It is no surprise that they are perennially rated either the top chamber in the country or among the top three in the country.
However, all of our principal competitors have raised the stakes with massive infusions of marketing resources. There is something of a marketing arms race among destinations around the world. This comes at a time of vulnerability for us as our flagship promotional event, the Heritage, is facing sponsorship questions. Also, many of the resort communities on the island are maturing into buildout and are therefore marketing less aggressively.
Considering these challenges, it is not surprising that those entrusted with the future prosperity of the Hilton Head area would look seriously at whatever might be added to their defensive arsenal. A local option sales tax is one possible weapon.
Consistent with the tenets of home rule, this tax will be only happen with the consent of the governed. I’ll have more on this as it develops.
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