Don’t be fooled by claims that Charleston County’s Nov. 5 sales tax referendum is a pro-greenbelt package. If voters approve it — and we urge them not to — the important work of creating new parks and conserving land would take a step back, especially compared to neighboring counties.
Let’s look at the facts. It’s true the county’s proposed $5.4 billion sales tax would set aside $432 million for greenbelts, more than the 2004 and 2016 referendums combined ($222 million and $210 million, respectively). But the new sum represents only 8% of the total raised, which is less than half as much as the 17% in the 2004 tax and down from 10% in the 2016 tax.
Not only is the percentage smaller, but the increased sum doesn’t come close to reflecting the increase in real estate prices. The cost of land and housing in the Charleston area has risen more than 250% since 2004, while the proposed increase in greenbelt funding is up only 95%. The proposed level of greenbelt funding in the Nov. 5 referendum is only about half of what the county would need just to tread water.
Charleston County’s watered-down approach to supporting greenbelts stands apart from our neighbors, which recently have increased the percentage of their transportation sales tax that goes to greenbelt work; Berkeley and Dorchester included such funding for the first time in their successful 2022 referendums.
Also that year, Beaufort County voters approved the state’s first greenspace sales tax, which will raise $100 million solely for conservation projects through May 2025. And this fall, voters will decide on a longer-lasting transportation-greenbelt sales tax, $50 million of which would go to greenbelts. That new tax also allows for spending outside of the county, and Beaufort spent $1 million from its greenspace program to help protect the 4,400-acre Gregorie Neck site in Jasper County. Meantime, Jasper voters are taking a similar vote on a tax that would spend 20% of what’s raised for conservation over the next 15 years.
As Charleston conservationist Dana Beach noted in his recent commentary, the decreased support for Charleston County’s greenbelt program comes despite its remarkable success and popularity. That success is reflected in the county having more permanently protected space than all but one of South Carolina’s other 45 counties as well as the county’s success in attracting $214 million in other governmental and private conservation dollars while spending only $179 million on the greenbelt program since 2006.
Despite that success, our growing population and the continued growth of development beyond the metro area mean the need is as great as ever to open new parks and preserve sensitive lands. If anything, the county’s financial commitment toward meeting that need should grow in proportion to its sales tax program, not shrink.
We have been opposed to the county’s proposed sales tax extension ever since it became clear that much of the money — perhaps more than half given financing costs and likely cost increases — would go to the single-most controversial and misguided road project in the county’s history: the extension of Interstate 526 to Johns and James islands. But even those ambivalent about the wisdom of building that ought to pause at the polls and consider the smaller slice going to greenbelts.
If this sales tax proposal fails Nov. 5, as it should, County Council is expected to try again in 2026. And as council members consider that, they should consider the obvious: increasing the slice of the pie that goes to popular projects, such as new parks, land conservation and water access, and decreasing the slice for projects many people don’t want at all.
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