City of Folly Beach, SC Town Council Meeting November 14, 2006
on November 15th, 2006 at 2:08 pmOn Tuesday night, Folly Beach had their Council meeting. Here is a brief overview of the items discussed:
-Changing the recycling pickup on Folly Beach (currently it is on Wednesday but they want to change it to Monday—members agreed this would benefit all but are uncertain if Charleston County Council will allow it to be changed. Council will contact the County and see if feasible).
-Council granted the Marsh Grass Festival the sum of $700.00 and the Folly Association of Business the sum of $6000 based on the Community Promotion Foundations’ Recommendation for the distribution of Community Funds.
-Increasing the fee of water and sewer tap fees. They want to increase the tap fee for water to $750 per house. The Major was fine with this but was against the huge increase for commercial owners. Commercial owners would have to pay $22,500 to tap in! He indicated this was wrong. The end result was that the final decision will be postponed to a future meeting.
-They postponed the vote that would grant a variance for 114 West Cooper. Currently there are two separate dwellings on the property which is zoned R-2. The current owner from Asheville wants to build an additional home not to exceed 1600 square ft. Originally the property had three buildings but 25 years ago the main house burned down. Council members had mixed feelings regarding giving homeowner a special exception and how to deed it correctly to restrict future owners from exceeding the footprints of the properties. Council requested the owner to show proposed house location and drawing.
These were just a few items that were discussed but the brunt of the meeting was about the moratorium. Citizens were asked to speak at the beginning of the meeting regarding their thoughts and feelings. About six citizens spoke out against the moratorium. Most of the speakers were builders but there was a homeowner who recently purchased 1 Hudson Street who is now stuck in a situation where he won’t be able to build but will have to pay a mortgage each month.
When Council discussed the moratorium, the Major immediately spoke out against it stating that we can’t restrict homeowners & we will be as bad as Connecticut in regard to their eminent domain situation. Other Council members indicated pros and cons of the moratorium.
Pros:
Current ordinances are 30+ years old. They are out of date and don’t include floating zones or overlay districts. There has been extraordinary rapid residential and commercial development and growth and they feel it will continue. In order to facilitate responsible growth, they want to reexamine the city wide goals, plans for transportation, traffic, parks, public recreational resources, storm water drainage, water quality management, educational resources…to insure the “highest quality of life fro the residents of the City.†The City has requested consultants to come in and assist in the creation of zoning districts and development standards. One member indicated why couldn’t they handle updating the books—why seek an outside source. Another member indicated you go to a neurologist for brain surgery and you wouldn’t go to a general physician for brain surgery. People spealize for a reason.
Cons:
Charleston County and Sullivan’s Island both updated their books without having a moratorium but this also caused them to have several lawsuits since they were constantly changing ordinances.
Impact on the real estate market (this is unknown—they need a crystal ball in order to see what type of impact it will have)
Loss of revenue from the permits usually submitted during this time (but another Council member indicated this money will be recaptured once the moratorium is lifted and there is a flood of applications)
Building brings in workers who purchase gas, cigarettes, Subway sandwiches and purchase food at local businesses including Berts
Laura Beck is a huge proponent of the moratorium as far as I could tell. She spoke at great length about it but she did indicate that she felt R-1 properties shouldn’t have the moratorium.
Aaron Pope indicated he rec’d 15 plans since yesterday which will all be approved if they met the criteria. He said in 2004 they rec’d 11 applications for single family homes from Jan-Jun, 12 applications for single family homes in 2005 during the same months (Jan-Jun) and this year he has received 10. He originally said this year he rec’d 22 applications but a fellow Council member said 6 of these were duplex applications.
Basically the moratorium will impact new development/construction. It is defined as a project in which an entirely new facility is built from the ground up. No application for plat approval, subdivision approval, rezoning, approval of the Design Review Board, demolition or building permits for new single family, multifamily or commercial structures shall be granted for 6 months. An applicant can, at his or her own risk, proceed with acting upon development permits and approvals during the duration but they will be subject to land use regulation amendments and might run in to conflicts.
The end result was that the moratorium was struck down. This is just an overview of the meeting and hopefully you find it useful.
For more
information on Folly Beach South Carolina Real Estate visit:
