COASTAL OBSERVER

Words are important, especially when talking about an effort to form a municipality in the Pawleys Island-Litchfield area, Sheriff Carter Weaver said.

“I don’t want to be part of any misinformation, period, or misrepresentation. Those are two issues that I’m truly concerned with,” Weaver told the Pawleys Island Rotary Club last week. “I don’t want any misinformation going to the public, especially from government. We’re better than that. We should be better than that, and damn it, if you can’t trust us, who in the world can you trust?”

The Pawleys Island Litchfield Municipal Study Group is moving ahead with its effort to hold a referendum on incorporation even though its initial plan to have the sheriff’s office continue to handle law enforcement for the new town didn’t get Weaver’s support.

The only way that it would’ve worked out would’ve been to have a “Plan B,” Weaver said.

“If my community looks at me and goes, ‘we know the risks, we’re willing to take them,’ I will sign any letter that says I will support this endeavor for two years,” he said. “They haven’t done that.”

State law requires that the proposed town, which would cover the 29585 ZIP code, show it can provide “a substantially similar level of law enforcement services” to what currently exists in its application. 

Weaver declined the study group’s request for a letter stating law enforcement would continue at the current level under a new town based on its current plan.

Andy Hallock, who stepped down as chairman of the study group this week, debuted the plan for a new town at the Litchfield Beaches Property Owners Association annual meeting last May. It outlined a town where the primary services would be planning and zoning. Other services would be outsourced or continue to be provided by Georgetown County.

The group included police protection among the services currently provided by the county that would continue.

Although the sheriff has county-wide jurisdiction, Weaver said he is not obligated to serve as a municipality’s contracted police department.

Members of the study group argued that current residents in the Pawleys Island-Litchfield area pay for the sheriff’s office’s services already. 

Weaver said the area the group wants to incorporate involves 18,000 residents who use most of the resources from the sheriff’s office.

“There’s got to be a Plan B. You’ve got to tell people what the possibilities are and how much the real costs are that are involved in this endeavor,” Weaver said.

Hallock had previously said the town of Pawleys Island is the model.

The island, with a year-round population of fewer than 150 people and peak summer population of nearly 5,000, has a budget of $2.58 million without a municipal property tax. That compares to the proposed municipality’s budget that will yield a $1.2 million surplus without a property tax with a population of 16,400.

The town’s biggest expense is its police department, but it also receives coverage from the sheriff’s office when its four officers are off duty.

Weaver announced to a crowd at St. John AME Church in January that the sheriff’s office received a proposal a month earlier from the study group’s lawyer, Ginny Bozeman. The letter offered the sheriff’s office $600,000 to provide law enforcement.

At the industry standard of $50 per hour, Weaver said round-the-clock deputy coverage would roughly cost $438,000 a year.

The standard is a ratio of 1.5 deputies to 1,000 residents, Weaver said. That’s about 27 deputies for a population estimated at 18,000.

The sheriff’s office has a $16 million budget for the unincorporated areas of Georgetown County, which is 814 square miles.

He said the city of Georgetown alone has 18 patrol deputies. The police department’s personnel costs approximately $2.2 million. Equipment is $534,000. The fleet cost is $2.4 million.

The proposed town should budget $5.1 million to fund law enforcement, Weaver said.

“I’ve been doing this for 40 years. I haven’t done it correctly for 40 years but damn, I think I know what I’m doing,” he said. “But I also know when I don’t need to be in business with people who I don’t need to be in business with.”

“The income and the expense is all one big effort that I don’t know that we have all the answers to from any side of the issue,” said Kathi Grace, a Rotary member.

The study group started collecting signatures on a petition for a referendum last May. It has 2,700 signatures, which is about 600 more than needed, on a petition to the S.C. Secretary of State’s Office for a referendum.

Along with the signature petition, it has also completed a geography, population and proximity study and service feasibility study, which is being finalized. The group is waiting for additional information on personal property assessed values.

Law enforcement is “pending” as Bozeman requested information last week from the sheriff’s office to “address the issue.” 

“The problem is, there’s several other things that they have to provide South Carolina other than 2,000 so-said signatures,” Weaver said. “Those signatures are not saying ‘we want to incorporate today.’ They’re saying, ‘we want this on a referendum.’”

The study group formed while Georgetown County was working on a new land use plan. It went public after the plan was approved by the Planning Commission.

The study group says the county’s new land use plan will increase residential development in the area.

“You’re going to incorporate and just pick and choose what government function you want to provide to the people who now rely on you for quality of life issues,” Weaver said he told Hallock and Jim Register, a member of the study group who will now serve as interim chairman. “That doesn’t work that way.”

It’s a legal issue, he reminded the club, and words matter.

Weaver issued a letter last year to the study group that said the sheriff’s office won’t enter a two-year agreement to provide “the same number of officers, working the same scheduled shifts and performing the same enforcement services” for the proposed municipality.

“I knew that I needed to cut off all contact,” he said.

Weaver cited four reasons in his letter: legal authority, limited resources, financial considerations and municipal autonomy.

“I have to be very careful of what I say, and I have to be very careful that anything I say does not contradict the four reasons of why I have opted out of participating with the incorporation group,” he said.