To All Horry County Taxpayers:

(Below is a letter from Joe DeFeo, the District 3 Representative to the Horry County School Board to all voters regarding the recent approval of Carolina Station. Every taxpayer in the County should read this letter and take action.)

Dear Voters,

I am responding to all about Carolina Station. (July 1) several school board members, including myself, went to the council meeting to make one last effort to stop or delay Carolina Station… in its current form. As you may have read from the newspaper we were (as expected) unsuccessful. I have met and talked with council members over the past few months to try and change the agreement with the county. The bottom line is the schools district is getting very little from International Paper for the burdens that this development will put on the school district. We could not even get them to agree to give us the future high school land rather than having us purchase the land… They did concede to cap the price at today’s level for a few years. They also donated the land for 2 other schools. I can only tell you that this is peanuts compared to the 110 million dollars it will take to build those schools. (HCP emphasis)

Unfortunately current law provides NO CONTROL whatsoever for a school board in these developments!!! I have talked with several of our legislative delegation members about allowing school boards to impose impact fees in areas where needed in the county (or county wide). Although I have always voted against new “taxes” and have always opposed tax increases… these impact fees will not be imposed on current residents and are a very minimal impact to a buyer. It will be very hard to get this through the statehouse but… I believe it is the ONLY way to solve this problem in growing counties such as Horry County, when you look at the current tax structure.

I can only ask that you write all our legislative delegation about allowing school boards to impose these fees on future development…

Thank you for all of your concerns. I wish we could have been more succsecful.

Joe DeFeo, District 3 Representative
Horry County School Board

What happened at the July 1, 2008 Council meeting on Carolina Station…

Carolina Station gained final approval from County Council members by a vote of 6-5. Disappointing…but not discouraging. 6-5 is a far cry from the overwhelming approval developers are used to getting in Horry County.

The actual vote..
FOR: Allen, Foxworth, Frasier, Grabowski, Hardee, and Prince.
AGAINST: Barnard. Gilland, Ryan, Schwartzkopf, and Worley. Please remember to thank them.
(Council email address: countycouncil@horrycounty.org.)

With each vote on Carolina Station we made progress…
Although disappointed, we were not surprised by the outcome last night. Let’s be sure and acknowledge the progress we’re making.

1st reading 5/13 was approved by a vote of 8-3.
2nd reading 6/17 was approved by a vote of 6-4.
3rd reading last night was approved by a vote of 6-5.

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