The new Chair of the JIPSD, June Waring, recently published a letter to the editor in the Post and Courier. The occasion of the letter was a Brian Hicks column that only mentioned the JIPSD in passing. He had claimed that the Town doesn't provide any real services, mentioning that there is another body that provides fire protection and solid waste collection in the Town. I suppose the JIPSD felt compelled to respond against the implied notion that the Town should take over the provision of fire protection and solid waste collection so that it would no longer be a "paper town."
The Chair of the JIPSD asserts that the JIPSD had to sign a contract to continue providing services to the Town's residents before the Town was incorporated. She is mistaken in two major ways. The application submitted by Free James Island for incorporation of a Town on James Island did need to make some provision for fire service. If we said that we were planning to obtain fire service from some other government body, rather than proposing to set up our own fire department, we were required to have a letter from that other body. I thought that having the JIPSD continue to provide fire service in the new Town was the best approach. I appreciate that the JIPSD wrote a letter stating that they would continue to provide services in the Town. However, if the JIPSD had refused, we could have proposed setting up our own fire department instead.
More importantly, a letter from the JIPSD is no contract. Free James Island did not sign an agreement with the JIPSD that the Town would continue to obtain any service from the JIPSD or allow the JIPSD to continue to collect taxes in its jurisdiction. And even if Free James Island did sign such an agreement, it would not be binding on the voters and elected officials of the newly formed Town. If someone had run for Mayor in 2012 on the platform of setting up a Town fire department or contracting with the City of Charleston for fire services, then if the voters elected that candidate and a like-minded Council, the Town could have gone that route.
If the JIPSD Commissioners tried to cut off services in the Town of James Island (a possibility I have considered,) we would use that letter as part of our legal response. I believe it does bind the JIPSD. However, their original charter and the laws of South Carolina governing special purposes districts and municipalities also provides the Town with plenty of legal recourse against such an abuse of power. South Carolina law requires that any transfer of service rights from the JIPSD to the Town be by negotiation and agreement. In my view, the best approach is for the voters of the Town to elect JIPSD Commissioners who will come to a fair and reasonable agreement with the Town.
The JIPSD Chair claims that the Town may use 29% of the Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) to pay for a Town Hall or anything else but 71% of the LOST money belongs to the taxpayers of the island. That statement is false. The 29% and 71% percentages do not apply to municipalities at all. A municipality is required to provide a credit against the tax liability of its taxpayers at least equal to the revenue it receives from the Property Tax Credit Fund. A tax credit is a reduction in the amount of a tax that must be paid. The Town introduced a municipal property tax for 2015 and provided a credit against the tax liability of Town taxpayers. The total credit is equal to the total amount of revenue the Town expects to have received from the Property Tax Credit Fund plus interest by the end of the 2015-16 fiscal year. The credit on each tax bill will be equal to the tax liability that would otherwise be owed to the Town. This will zero-out the tax liability of each taxpayer.
The JIPSD Chair states that I didn't want to distribute money to the people as had been done in prior versions of the Town. That is mostly false. The first incorporation of the Town, between 1992 and 1997, never used LOST revenue to mail checks. The second incorporation of the Town, between 2002 and 2004, never used LOST revenue to mail checks. It was only in the third incorporation between 2006 and 2011, that the Town introduced a program of using revenue from LOST to mail out checks to JIPSD taxpayers starting in 2008. When I became Mayor in 2010, I learned first hand that this created an administrative nightmare. No other municipality in South Carolina uses LOST funds to mail checks. No LOST funds have been used to mail out checks in the fourth incorporation that started in 2012. However, I would note that it is not simply a matter of what the Mayor wants to do. Any check writing program would require approval by Council and no member of Council favors using LOST funds to have the Town or anyone else write thousands of checks.
The JIPSD Chair claims the Town's property owners want their LOST money. There was an election in 2014 and Trent Kernodle ran on a platform to "mail the checks it is just like Christmas." He lost. I knocked on over 1,000 doors and only a handful of people told me they wanted the Town to mail checks.
The JIPSD Chair states that there is a citizen's lawsuit to get the LOST funds. Two former JIPSD Commissioners and the "former" General Counsel of the JIPSD are suing the Town. Who is that? Trent Kernodle and some of his political backers. What is he doing? He lost the election, and now is trying to have a court overrule the verdict of the voters.
The JIPSD Chair states that I have been trying to shift the supposed duty to distribute LOST funds to the JIPSD. That is false. I have never proposed that the JIPSD mail any check to any taxpayer. What I have proposed is that the JIPSD receive less of Town taxpayers' money and have the Town pay the JIPSD for services, using our LOST funds.
The JIPSD Chair states that "he don't seem to believe that the JIPSD is prevented from meddling with those funds by law." This is true, though there is no need to add the word "seem." There no law that prohibits the JIPSD from receiving payment for services from a municipality when that municipality receives LOST funds. The JIPSD has been receiving funds from the City of Folly Beach and the City of Charleston for years and both of them receive funds from LOST.
The JIPSD Chair states that I even proposed some kind of monetary exchange by which the mayor would take over the town portion of sanitation services. She claims that is unlawful. This is false. I have proposed that the Town purchase solid waste collection from the JIPSD by contract. I don't think that is accurately described as "the mayor taking over the sanitation service." The proposal made by the Town is lawful. The South Carolina Code allows for the purchase of services by one government body from another, including specifically municipalities like the Town and special purpose districts like the JIPSD. The South Carolina Constitution provides broad authority to local governments to come to mutually beneficial arrangements.
The JIPSD Chair had an opportunity to hire a new General Counsel that could provide them with sound and objective advice. She voted against that course. Too bad. Are the majority of Commissioners unwilling or unable to provide even the most minimal critical scrutiny to Trent Kernodle's arguments? Or are they complicit in this effort to promote their preferred policy of "mailing the checks" by making false and misleading claims that all other alternatives are illegal? Regardless, in 2016, June Waring, Eugene Platt, and Carter McMillan are up for election. Hopefully, in 2017, there will be a majority of JIPSD Commissioners who are willing to work with the Town on tax relief.
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