York County recreation: Who’s in charge?

The problem with York County’s plan to exploit its recreation assets, in Tom Smith’s eyes, is right there on the page.

In a 2011 study commissioned by the county, one graph lists the organizations and departments needed to align to best take advantage of the amenities, sites and attractions the county has to offer. Each one is bracketed in a separate box – the Convention & Visitors’ Bureau, the Culture and Heritage Commission, the Catawba Cultural Preservation Project. But one player – the York County Parks and Recreation Department – is shown only with a thin, dotted outline, because no such department exists.

“That’s the missing link,” said Smith, a former member of the York County Council for the Lake Wylie area.

Smith gave a presentation of the study – completed three years ago to identify the county’s recreational needs and offerings – to members of York County’s Hospitality Tax Committee last week, as they consider how the tax on restaurants in the unincorporated areas of the county can best be used to promote the county and fund tourism-related activities.

The study highlights different needs the county could address –hiking trails, soccer fields and the like – and even proposes an overall structure for how a hypothetical parks department could operate them. But until the county has a “facilitator” to get the ball rolling, Smith said, there’s nothing to transform ideas into action.

The effects can be seen in Lake Wylie, where residents have complained that development has crowded out greenspace. A 68-acre planned development was set aside for park activities for the unincorporated community, but there’s been no development of the site since, Smith said.

“The cities have their (recreation) departments, but there’s nobody to move forward on anything in the unincorporated areas, to address growth in Lake Wylie, in unincorporated Fort Mill, or promote agri-tourism,” he said. “Without a county parks or recreation department, there’s nothing to move the whole thing forward.”

In the absence of a county department, York County collects a “recreation tax” outside the incorporated areas to contribute to the municipal rec departments, allowing residents of the unincorporated areas to use city recreational services at the same price as city residents.

County Manager Bill Shanahan said the tax is a deliberate attempt to avoid “double taxation” of county residents already subject to municipal fees.

“The reason the recreation tax was created was because the county decided they didn’t want to pay for a recreation department and tax some residents twice (when they were already paying for a city rec department),” Shanahan said.

Instead, the recreation tax tops up funding for the municipalities “so that the cities do not increase prices,” Shanahan said. “And as far as I know, that has not changed.”

But Smith told the county’s hospitality tax committee that as the unincorporated population in areas such as Lake Wylie have grown, “that formula does not work.”

“We’ve doled that off on the municipalities with the recreation tax,” Smith said. “It kind of glosses over the difference between Lake Wylie and Clover. ... You don’t want to have to drive your kid eight miles to get to a baseball game.”

Watts Huckabee, who chairs the committee, said one alternative to a separate county parks department is to set up a “volunteer PRT coalition” of all the recreation and tourism-related agencies covering York County. The coalition would include the municipal rec departments, representatives of the school districts, and organizations like the Upper Palmetto YMCA, the Convention and Visitors’ Bureau and the Olde English District. Such a group would be better able to identify the county’s rec needs – as well as opportunities to develop and promote its existing tourism assets. “A group of people who are aware of what’s happening in their city and what’s available in the county,” Huckabee said.

The hospitality tax committee is scheduled to finish meeting with agencies and produce a long-range plan by the end of 2015.

This story was originally published September 20, 2014 at 8:24 PM with the headline "York County recreation: Who’s in charge?."