While the members of the governor's Quality of Life Task Force agreed their work won't solve a crisis, they say the 26 recommendations in the report released Thursday "will bear great fruit for South Carolina in the long term."

Most of the suggestions mirrored Sanford's campaign theme of changing the way the state does business. "The status-quo in government cannot serve the long term needs of the state," the report said.

Panel members included conservationists, businessmen and real estate executives, and their ideas were as diverse as their backgrounds.

ADVERTISEMENT Click here to contact us.

The task force suggested creating a model ordinance that counties and zoning boards could use to encourage these types of neighborhoods instead of sprawling suburban developments that can eat up to 200 acres of undeveloped land a day.

The group also wants to cut out some levels of appeals for permits issued by the Department of Health and Environmental Control and Office of Coastal Resources Management.

Right now, an administrative law judge holds a hearing before these agencies can hear an appeal. The task force wants legislators to consider allowing appeals to start directly at the Circuit Court level.

The panel also wants smaller schools located in the heart of neighborhoods.

The report said lawmakers should work with the Education Department to reduce the minimum number of acres needed to build a school. The task force would set limits of 500 students at elementary schools, 700 students at middle schools and 900 students at high schools.

"New public schools in South Carolina are increasingly massive facilities far removed from the communities they serve," the report said. "Some students spend more time on buses than they do with their families."

Other suggestions by the task force included:

- Spending more money on maintaining highways than building new ones and looking at adding turning lanes and passing lanes that cost less money.

- Working with North Carolina and Georgia to assure the state has better control of water flow in its rivers.

- Supporting legislation to stop so-called predatory lending, or loans with excessively high interest rates that often target the poor.

- Encouraging public transportation systems in the state's metropolitan regions.

- Increasing the importance of the South Carolina Conservation Bank by giving half of the money raised by the real estate transfer fee to the bank instead of the quarter of the funds currently earmarked. The bank helps preserve rural landscape by allowing property owners to sell their land to parties interested in conserving the property or selling the development rights and keeping the land.

--From the Friday, February 7, 2003 online edition of the Augusta Chronicle