2 weeks Ago
Imagine going to the grocery store to buy a few essentials: milk, bread, maybe some bananas. When you get to the register, the cashier tells you that in order to buy those items, you also have to buy a 50-pound bag of dog food. You don’t want the dog food.
You don’t even have a dog. And the dog food costs more than all your other items combined. The cashier says it doesn’t matter.
It’s all or nothing. If you want to buy the essentials, you have to buy the dog food. This is the choice Charleston County is forcing voters to make with its vague and misleading sales tax referendum .
The measure inappropriately combines funding for different purposes into a single yes or no vote. When asked by residents at a public meeting in April to split the referendum into multiple questions , Charleston County Council doubled down, with one council member stating: “This is an all-or-nothing. If folks want their greenbelts, if they want interim improvements, if they want allocation funding for improvements to sidewalks and intersections, it’s all or nothing.
” That’s not a real choice. It’s an ultimatum. Proponents of the new tax claim that it is necessary to issue this ultimatum in order to fund greenbelt projects for land conservation, bike and pedestrian facilities, and public transit.
In reality, only a small fraction of the funding generated by the proposed 25-year tax would go to these important and popular initiatives. These projects are being used as window dressing to disguise the true purpose of the tax: funding the destructive, overpriced Interstate 526 extension. This $2.
3 billion, 9.5-mile highway from West Ashley to James Island would burn through at least one-third of the money collected over the lifespan of the tax. Land conservation, on the other hand, is massively underfunded with only 8% of the tax dedicated to greenbelts, the lowest allocation in the history of the program.
But the true cost of the 526 extension goes well beyond the gargantuan price tag. The new highway also would destroy nearly 40 acres of wetlands, which provide flood storage and buffers from storms. It would destroy 46 acres of the beloved James Island County Park.
It would bisect and pollute communities such as Oakland and Air Harbor in West Ashley, and plow through historic African American settlement communities on Johns and James islands. It would increase pollution of the Stono River and Ellis Creek. The list goes on.
You can review the impacts more closely with our new story map that documents the damage the extension would do to our communities and natural resources. Even though the 526 extension is the only designated priority project for this sales tax, the language that appears on the ballot makes no mention of the highway. That’s unacceptable.
Charleston County voters deserve to know exactly what they’re voting for. After all, they are the ones who would foot the bill for the next 25 years. This comes after Charleston County leaders publicly promised that none of the funding from the current sales tax approved in 2016 would be used for the extension, then turned around and dedicated $75 million for preliminary engineering and design for the project, leaving much-needed and less controversial priorities to languish, including improvements to Dorchester Road and the Main Road-Savannah Highway intersection.
Eight years later, construction of those projects has barely begun. Charleston County has shown repeatedly that the 526 extension is its only true transportation priority. If this sales tax is renewed, all other transportation projects would take a back seat to this misguided highway extension.
Supporters of the sales tax extension want you to believe that this is a one-time, all-or-nothing decision. They want you to believe that in order to pay for the things you want, like sidewalks, stop lights and road resurfacing, you have to hold your nose and pay for the things you really don’t want, like the irresponsible 526 extension. That’s simply not the case.
The 2016 sales tax will be in place until roughly 2040, and the vast majority of the projects Charleston County promised to deliver with that tax remain incomplete. Additionally, even if approved, this new tax would not go into effect until 2027. That means Charleston County residents can reject this misleading and manipulative proposal and require leaders to come back to the table with a more transparent referendum proposal for voters’ consideration in 2026 without any gap in funding.
Don’t cave to an ultimatum. Vote "no." Robby Maynor is a Southern Environmental Law Center Climate Campaign associate.
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