Lexington County recently hit a significant benchmark in its efforts to control growth, but with a third of the county council set to change over heading into 2025, it remains to be seen what its approach will be moving forward.
Late last month, council gave a unanimous final vote to enact concurrency standards. The new rules mean that entities such as public safety, solid waste and local school districts will have a chance to weigh in on whether they have the capacity to handle proposed residential developments, with the county being empowered to deny requests based on this input.
Council initially voted to move forward with concurrency last fall, working with staff over the past few months to figure out the complexities of coordinating with local agencies, and the precedents and formulas that will shape the county’s standards. During council discussion ahead of the final vote, staff said shaping and reshaping those standards will be a continuing process.
“We will be the first county in this state, making South Carolina only the sixth state to add concurrency,” County Councilman Scott Whetstone said ahead of the final unanimous vote. “And we’re the only one who has gone this far in depth with it and using it in the manner that we are with all of the tools that we are putting in.”
With growth continuing to be a divisive issue in the county, the council has instituted other measures in recent years aimed at keeping a hand on the wheel when it comes to new development. New projects bringing more than 10 houses are now limited to no more than four houses per acre sitting a minimum of 20 feet apart, and the amount of land that can be cleared at one time is now limited.
Council kicked off a months-long conflict that continues on with some municipalities when it canceled a 1978 agreement to maintain roads in the cities and towns within municipal borders. The county wanted to institute agreements that made it a requirement for new residential developments annexed into municipalities to meet county standards in order for those roads to be maintained. Most of the municipalities balked at what they saw as an attempt to supersede their authority to govern growth within their borders.
The body also got into a disagreement with the county’s own Board of Zoning Appeals over setbacks for a proposed development that ultimately led to a lawsuit.
Such tensions set the table for a June primary with no Democrats having filed to run, meaning the five summer Republican tilts for seats on the council would in all likelihood decide what the body will look like for the next two years. Conflict over growth defined the race, with the incumbents accusing local builders of funneling “dark money” to sympathetic candidates .
The election resulted in the replacement of two incumbents, with Whetstone losing to Michael Bishop and Bimbo Jones falling to Clifford Fisher. Todd Cockrell will be the third fresh face on council next year, having won the seat being vacated by Debbie Summers.
This leaves the current council members with half a year to continue to pursue their own priorities before a large swath of the roster is replaced.
Six months to go
County Council Chairwoman Beth Carrigg said the body will continue to take up issues related to growth through the remainder of 2024.
“I don’t know that it actually impacts the way that we continue with the trajectory that we’re on for the last six months,” Carrigg said of three members now being lame ducks. “We’ve got some ordinances that only have one more reading that are going to pass. I know that there are some other ordinances that we would like to see come to fruition in the last six months.”
She added that long before the election, she opted to schedule more meetings over the summer in order to wrap up things and could do the same in the fall.
As to priorities for the rest of the year, the chairwoman pointed to potential actions related to growth in the county’s more rural areas to the west.
Earlier this year, council moved to expand and tighten restrictions in a western overlay district protecting agricultural uses. With the county having recently received input from a pilot study showing how future development could deplete valuable farmland , Carrigg said council may look at further moves to protect this area.
“I think we’ll even beef up some of what is going on around Lake Murray, where we protect the watershed and the density there,” she said. “I know that there are some future thoughts that there may be some more infrastructure added around the lake for water and sewer, which would reduce the need for septic systems. That may add a different element to it if that comes to fruition. But as it stands right now, if the lake were not to change based on infrastructure, then I definitely think we add some more protections to the lake area.”
Reached by The State, neither Bishop nor Fisher said there were any potential actions on the horizon for council that they are anxious to track.
“There’s nothing I’m following, per se,” Bishop said. “I’m not there yet. So I’m not actively watching meetings or going to their meetings. I am going around trying to meet with the mayors in my area and stuff, which I know them anyway, just to let them know, ‘I’m here for you.’”
Fisher zeroed in on a general trend he sees that he’d like to correct.
“We can’t just turn it around and go stagnant and not have any growth,” he said. “They are trying to stop houses to stop traffic problems. Why don’t we just fix the traffic problems?”
Mending fences?
While the conflict over the county maintaining municipal roads appears to have largely wound down with the county having offered back the original agreement to all but three major cities and towns that pushed back, tensions remain high with Chapin, Swansea and the town of Lexington, which remain excluded. In total, seven municipalities were offered back the new agreement.
The county offered back the old agreement to Batesburg-Leesville after its mayor along with the mayors of Lexington, Chapin and Swansea sent a letter to the county protesting that they were being singled out.
“Municipal residents should have equal access to county road maintenance using a standard agreement, regardless of the municipality’s size, location, or unique characteristics,” the mayors wrote. “It is neither fair nor fiscally responsible for our municipal residents to receive less service for the tax dollars they pay simply because they live in one part of the county versus another. Furthermore, it would be inefficient for each municipality to undertake road maintenance on their own.”
Citing concerns over how Chapin, Swansea and Lexington could annex developments in the county’s rural western areas, the county has continued to withhold the old agreement from them.
“Our good faith attempts to negotiate a new roads service contract with the town of Chapin has been unsuccessful to date, due in part to your unwillingness to find common ground,” Carrigg wrote in a June response to the town. “Our efforts to collaborate in no way violate your legal authority under Home Rule, as we are seeking a mutually agreed upon contract for roads maintenance and stormwater services that has a beginning and end date and a 30-day termination clause.
”The Town is certainly under no obligation to procure our services and the county is under no obligation to accept new roads into the county system without an executed agreement,” Carrigg wrote, “in fact, a contract is required for us to provide those services within the municipal boundaries, pursuant to state statute.”
“Swansea is refusing,” Whetstone noted in council late last month. “I’m not going to budge on that. They can just do without our services.”
“The town of Lexington, we’ve offered to take their developmental standards, we just like input, a seat at the table, that means a voice in any planned-use developments that have a residential component or a mixed-use development that has a residential component, where they ask us to take in the roads for future service,” Carrigg recently told The State.
Anger and confusion remain among the towns that haven’t received the old agreement.
“We’re not just trying to annex everything we can,” Lexington Mayor Hazel Livingston said, referencing numbers that show the county approves developments at a higher clip . “But the road agreements and annexation have nothing to do with each other. The road agreement is a maintenance agreement that my citizens’ gas tax is given to the county and the county should be, because they also represent my citizens, should be using the part of the gas tax that is theirs to maintain roads in Lexington.”
Nicholle Burroughs, Chapin’s town administrator, echoed this sentiment, adding that it’s difficult to move forward when a service they counted on for nearly half a century is no longer guaranteed.
“We’re extremely hopeful that we can work together on solutions,” Burroughs said. “But there has to be a mutual understanding and a mutual respect. The county can’t just dictate that they’re going to do things in a certain way or they’re gonna cancel agreements and not understand the municipality’s perspective on the other side of what we need to put in place in order to continue doing business. Our goals in a lot of cases are actually very aligned, very similar in nature, it’s just we may have a different way of doing it and different isn’t bad.”
As to the incoming council members, Bishop questioned the county’s handling of the roads maintenance agreement, noting that the agreement’s “been around forever” and is depended on by the municipalities, while Cockrell indicated a desire to find common ground.
“It would be premature for me to give an opinion on the road taxes being withheld from a few municipalities and not others because I am not acting in an official capacity at this time,” Cockrell said via email. “I will say I plan to stand shoulder to shoulder and work beside our municipalities as a team. We are fortunate to have excellent mayors and town councils within our county that we can sit down together and work on the many issues we face. We should all be on the same team to make sure we achieve the best solutions for the entire county from roads, homes per acre to more green spaces on new development. We all want Lexington to remain a beautiful place to live.”
The roads maintenance agreement isn’t the only conflict the council has had to work to resolve.
In February, Lexington County sued its own Board of Zoning Appeals, a body appointed by council, after the board approved a variance Jan. 16 for the Retreat at Lake Murray, a planned development at Highway 378 and Beaver Creek Road.
The Retreat would include a restaurant alongside a residential development, according to documents filed with a Lexington County court. County council objected to the board’s decision to waive setback requirements for homes in the development, and asked a court to review.
The zoning board would have waved a 30-foot setback requirement for homes and allowed for a 20-foot setback. The developer told the board that the planned garages and driveways would have provided enough space to prevent on-street parking.
Lexington County Council said the board did not give adequate reason for waving the setback requirement, and accused members of improperly basing its decision on the increased profitability of the developer. “The Board improperly considered that the property may be used more profitably by the granting of the variance which is a consideration that is not allowed,” the county said in its court filing.
A draft settlement agreement filed with the court calls for the Retreat to provide – at its own cost – additional parallel parking and landscaping along the roadside, and a more restrictive covenant prohibiting parking within 25 feet of the roadway, as well as more overflow parking. The county also agrees to waive its acreage limit pending a stormwater review. The county voted to approve the settlement at its May 28 meeting.
The board of zoning appeals and the Retreat developers disputed that there was anything wrong with the variance issued to the development in January, and the developer alleged county council’s vote to petition the court violated the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
Bristow Marchant contributed to this report.
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