COASTAL OBSERVER

A shakeup in the U.S. presidential election will be felt in Georgetown County, where a group assembled by the Chamber of Commerce is preparing to pitch a pair of 1-cent sales tax referendums to voters in November.

“It’s challenging in a presidential election year anyway,” said Beth Stedman, the chamber president. “The committee has discussed strategies and ways to cut through the noise to get the message out.”

President Joe Biden’s announcement over the weekend that he was withdrawing as the Democratic Party nominee in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to spark new interest in the race with former President Donald Trump.

“That’s a big factor,” said Kim Fox, who led the committee that campaigned successfully for a capital projects sales tax in 2014.  “I’m not sure if it’s positive or negative.”

She owns Fox Marketing and among the volunteers working with the committee to support a new capital projects tax and an additional 1-cent local option sales tax that will be used primarily to offset county property taxes. Those will be added to the 6-cent state sales tax.

County Council this week gave final reading to ordinances that will place both measures on the ballot.

The capital projects tax is expected to raise $104 million over eight years. That will fund a list of 22 priority projects. Any additional funds or reductions in the priority list will be used to fund a list of 19 contingency projects. All the projects will be listed by name, purpose and estimated cost on the ballot.

“We hope people will understand what this means to the community as a whole,” Stedman said.

Under state law, public funds, property or time may not be used to influence the outcome of a ballot measure. County officials can explain the sale tax proposals, but cannot advocate for them.

The chamber board voted to support the two sales tax proposals this week. 

The local option sales tax was an easy decision, Stedman said. It will be used to offset taxes on real estate and personal property, such as vehicles and boats.

“That’s going to be putting money back in property owners’ pockets,” she said.

There was more discussion about the capital projects tax, but she said the board agreed the infrastructure improvements are important.

From her office in Litchfield, “you just don’t get that there are people in other parts of Georgetown County aren’t able to use the water from their wells, use their septic tanks, have fire projection. We take those things for granted,” Stedman said.

Eight of the priority projects are water and/or sewer.

The board didn’t think the added tax would affect business, she added. “It’s still less than what some of our neighbors to the north are paying.”

Georgetown is one of three counties in the state that doesn’t have a local sales tax. In Horry County, the tax is 8 cents with Myrtle Beach adding another penny. Charleston County is also 9 cents.

About 40 percent of the tax revenue is estimated to come from nonresidents.

Getting voters to approve a tax increase will involve educating them about the projects and their benefits, Stedman said. Tidelands Health is supporting the effort through its marketing department. It lobbied to have $1.04 million included in the capital projects list to widen the road in front of Georgetown Memorial Hospital.

The Coastal Carolina Association of Realtors is also involved, Stedman said. It got a presentation on the proposals last month from the county’s director of Administrative Services.

Stedman said she worked on a local option referendum in Marion County when it was first permitted by state law in the early 1990s.

“That was back in the day when we were still buying poster paper and markers,” she said.

Tidelands Health is creating a website for the sales tax campaign, Fox said. It will include a feature that will allow voters to calculate how much they will save on property taxes under the local option sales tax. She hopes that will also encourage them to support the capital projects tax.

“I would hope that it would be a buy-in across the county because it addresses many of the concerns that have been raised over the last few years,” Fox said.

The campaign also wants to ensure that voters know what’s on the ballot questions before they get to the polls and know that they have to scroll to the end of the ballot to find them.

“Part of the challenge on the education side is if you vote a straight party  ticket you still have to scroll down to the bottom of the ballot,” Stedman said.