Quality of Life Survey

At the beginning of my 2024 general election campaign, I mailed a survey to my constituents asking them to rank quality-of-life issues, and one of their top concerns was overdevelopment. Here are some of the things I’ve done to address this concern.  

A law I drafted in 2022 allows counties, with voter approval, to impose a penny sales tax to raise funds to purchase and prevent land from being developed. The stakes are high: in southern Beaufort County, if all building densities come to fruition, as they rapidly are, rooftops will double.

Using this law, Beaufort County voters approved a one-penny sales tax, for two years, to raise $100 million – 35 percent of which comes from tourists. Thousands of acres will be purchased with these funds and set aside in perpetuity as greenspace. 

The Gullah Geechee Historic Neighborhoods CDC, which protects native islanders’ land on the north end, is another way to push back. I worked with town officials to create the CDC and secured $5 million in state funding in 2022 as seed money, and an additional $1 million this year. 

Local governments have these anti-overdevelopment tools at their disposal: increasing impact fees, incentivizing the redevelopment of existing buildings, and amending zoning to decrease building densities. And to its credit, the Town of Hilton Head Island has been proactive in this area. 

This is not an exhaustive list, nor is anything a silver bullet. And it will take a sustained effort to push back against this existential threat to our unique quality of life.