Date Published: July 11, 2006   

SC Supreme Court rules Summerville can spend impact fees

The Associated Press

The state Supreme Court ruled in favor of Summerville spending millions of dollars in builder impact fees on town projects, a case monitored by other towns considering such fees and builders who might be affected.

"This gives us some peace of mind that what we were doing was right," Summerville Town Administrator Dennis Pieper said. "Now we can move ahead with some other projects."

The town was sued by the Charleston Trident Home Builders Association three years ago, arguing the town hadn't shown the fees would only be used on projects allowed by law.

State law allows municipalities to collect impact fees to pay for services as long as the money is used in those specific areas for capital improvements like building roads, and fire and police stations.

Summerville collected $4.7 million in impact fees since March 2003. Some of the money was spent on new parks and fire trucks. The town also plans to build a new fire station with impact fees from new construction.

Master-in-Equity Patrick Watts ruled in favor of the town in April 2005. The Supreme Court agreed that Summerville had provided the necessary documentation for its impact fees.

The fee in Summerville on a detached, single-family house is $1,138.

Phillip Ford, executive vice president of the Charleston Trident Home Builders Association, said his group most likely won't appeal the decision.

"I think it's time to move forward," he said. "The town has a lot of issues with growth, and hopefully we can sit down and work on them together."

Other areas were watching the case. Berkeley County, for instance, was thinking of charging impact fees to help pay for roads around new housing complexes.

"We've been looking at that situation and have tried to handle ours to make sure we were complying," Berkeley County spokesman Al Kennedy said.

John Cone, executive director of the Home Builders Association of South Carolina, says the ruling tells municipalities they must follow state guidelines when charging impact fees.

"The state is very interested because we do not want cities and counties to ignore the law," Cone said. "It's not that we don't want them to do impact fees. It's just that we want them to do them right."

Ford says his group, the Charleston Trident Home Builders Association, gained something from the ruling as well - the right to file a lawsuit on behalf of its members.

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Information from: The Post and Courier,