Clover schools want higher impact fees. Could help come from their biggest rival?
The Clover School District wants higher impact fees, to make home builders and buyers foot more of the bill for new schools in a growing community. Help could come from an unlikely place — the district’s biggest rival.
“It’s actually a friendly rivalry, but we’re always competing to be No. 1 in academics and athletics,” Fort Mill school board Chairwoman Kristy Spears told the York County Council last week. “They don’t want to compete with our taxes.”
Spears, along with Fort Mill School District Superintendent Grey Young, came out Oct. 20 for a more than two-hour debate on fees in Clover. So did several Fort Mill district residents, who argued Clover should get the same benefit Fort Mill gets from its impact fees.
“This is growth paying for growth,” said Fort Mill resident Scott Couchenour.
The York County Council will decide in coming weeks whether to change the $4,000 per home charge on new construction in the Clover district. Fort Mill is a pivotal part of that decision, as the only other school district the county has allowed to charge a fee on new homes.
But there’s no guarantee that what works in Fort Mill will carry over to Clover.
“It’s not a one-size-fits-all for every community,” said Councilman William “Bump” Roddey. “You have to do it collectively, with all the tools in the toolbox.”
Fort Mill and Clover schools grow together
As the two large communities in western York County, York and Clover schools have tense athletic and other rivalries that go back generations. The past couple of decades, though, a new type of competition has emerged. Fueled by population surges in Fort Mill, Tega Cay and Lake Wylie, both the Fort Mill and Clover districts have become academic powerhouses.
State test scores released in September compared English and math results for grades 3 to 8, plus science in grades 4 and 6. Fort Mill was No. 1 in every grade for English and science. Fort Mill topped the list in three of six math grades. Clover finished top five statewide for every math and science grade, plus half of the English grades tested. Clover beat Fort Mill in two math grades, including a best-in-state score for sixth-graders.
Those results are similar to ones from the past several years. They’re also similar to scores for high school students.
“We live in a fantastic county,” said York County Council Chairwoman Christi Cox, responding to officials from both districts last week during the impact fee debate. “Who else has one and two? And I like that y’all fight with each other. I’m ready to get Rock Hill to be three, and York there.”
York County gives different amounts to Clover, Fort Mill
As the Charlotte region has grown, more residents flocking to those districts have created growth pressures. Fort Mill has opened two new high schools, and a host of lower grade schools, since 2007. Clover has its second district high school under construction, along with an elementary school.
Impact fees, a charge on new construction that builders pay when they pull permits, are one option to pay for new schools. Builders factor impact fee costs into final sales prices.
York County approved an impact fee for the Fort Mill district in 2018 at more than $18,000 per home and $12,000 per apartment. A state-required study found those were the highest amounts the district should be allowed. Two years later, Clover came to the county with a study allowing for $15,035 per home, $7,430 per apartment and $9,842 per mobile home.
Instead, York County approved fees at $4,000 per home, $1,976 per apartment and $2,618 per mobile home.
This year, Fort Mill came back with a new study. York County approved fees of $29,640 per home and $20,796 per apartment. Those figures, again, were the maximum amounts allowed. Clover brought its own new study showing maximum amounts of $21,387 per home, $10,239 per apartment and $16,125 per mobile home.
At the first of three readings needed to change a fee, York County Council proposed $7,000 per home, $3,459 per apartment and $4,582 per mobile home. A public hearing is set for the council’s Nov. 17 meeting.
Questions of Fort Mill and Clover fee amounts
Spears, who despite the “love hate” relationship between rival districts was the first to speak last week on Clover’s behalf, points to the almost $80 million collected in Fort Mill school impact fees since 2018. The $7 million generated the past six months is up from about $3 million the district would’ve gotten without its most recent fee increase.
“It has been a significant benefit to our community,” Spears said. “We’ve built one whole school. We’re building parts of other schools.”
The debt millage rate in Fort Mill is far lower than it would be without impact fees, she said. It’s about double the millage rate Clover has. Couchenour pointed to York County’s current study to start its own impact fees to fund public services.
“If we’re going to nix this one, or cut it that much,” he said of Clover school fees, “I would recommend we do not have staff waste their time and waste taxpayer dollars to look at those impact fees.”
Both school boards and numerous residents advocating for the higher fees in Clover see the Fort Mill fees as a proven way to offset growth costs, said Fort Mill resident Angela Sanford. That’s compared to a relatively small group of home builders and property owners who spoke against them.
“Who benefits from these public services?” Sanford said. “The residents of York County. Who should be first and foremost on the mind of the council members when making decisions? The residents of York County.”
Pushback against higher Clover school fees
Not everyone draws so straight a line between Fort Mill and Clover, and some of the reasons are financial. The millage rate, a number used to generate property taxes based on assessed value, varies among York County’s four school districts. The higher the millage, the higher the taxes.
York is at 93 mills for schools, followed by Fort Mill at 86 mills, Rock Hill at 52 mills and Clover at 46 mills. Those numbers don’t show an overtaxed community that Clover and Lake Wylie proponents of higher school fees describe, Roddey said.
“It says that there’s taxing capacity in the debt service millage department,” he said.
Fort Mill, the largest of York County’s districts by enrollment but the smallest geographically in the state, is flush with housing but has relatively fewer areas where large businesses could come to help balance the tax base. Clover, meanwhile, has not only more open space but also sites like Catawba Nuclear Station and the planned QTS data center as pillars of its tax base.
Then, there are school bonds. Since 1983, Fort Mill district voters approved 10 referendum ballot questions for a combined $926 million. The school board approved $70 million more under a prior state law that bypassed a referendum vote. Voters only turned down one referendum in that span, a $65 million decision in 1998. Voters approved a $48 million bond the following year.
Clover, meanwhile, passed four school bonds in that span. They combine for $315 million, with nearly half of that amount coming from a 2022 bond to build Lake Wylie High School. Clover district voters have turned down two bonds at a combined $219 million.
Taxes, bonds and impact fees have to work together to determine who pays a fair share for school construction, Roddey said.
“It’s not oranges to oranges or apples to apples when we’re looking at Fort Mill,” he said.
Fairness in Fort Mill, Clover impact fees
Many Clover district residents don’t see it that way.
“You’ve given it to Fort Mill gladly, for your own districts,” resident Amanda Hauser told the council. “Please give it to us.”
The Clover district waited five years ago until the Fort Mill fee passed and was upheld in court after legal challenges from home builders, said former Clover school board member Sherri Ciurlik. Clover used the same consultant to study fee amounts. They made the same pitch to York County.
“Same survey done, same company, same every method done to approve an impact fee,” Ciurlik said, “and ours was gutted.”
Vance Stine, who spent a decade on Clover Town Council before moving to York, sees impact fees as a choice home buyers can make in determining how much they’re willing to pay. He doesn’t see why the county would grade areas differently in allowing the fees.
“It’s really confusing when you give one district 100%, and then another district 20% or 30%, and then the district in the county seat gets zero,” Stine said. “I don’t get that logic.”
Three years ago, the York School District asked for an impact fee but was denied one. Council members voted against adding a fee for York when the district took an all-or-nothing stance, Roddey said, rather than agreeing to a smaller amount like Clover did.
Stephen Halstensgard, who grew up in Fort Mill but built a home in Clover, said he’d gladly pay a higher impact fee and that fees won’t stop growth in either community. Several residents said they never saw anything about impact fees when they bought homes. The fees were part of a final price they could either agree or disagree to pay.
“In Fort Mill, impact fees have little bearing on the desire of those moving to the area,” said Winston Martinez, a 19-year Lake Wylie resident. “Homeowners are simply paying the fee associated with their choice of residency.”
York County Council to decide on Clover school fee
There are plenty of comparisons between Fort Mill and Clover, but the final decision will come down to what the county believes is best for the Clover district. Several Council members still want solutions to exempt some people from impact fees, like property owners who want to build one home on generational family land.
Councilman Tom Audette has timing questions, like how Clover schools could use new impact fee revenue for existing projects. Lake Wylie High, for instance, is under construction and set to open next year.
Despite a flood of public support for higher impact fees, Councilman Tommy Adkins has plenty of emails from people opposed to them too, he said.
“I’ve gotten just as many in favor, for, as against,” Adkins said.
Huckabee, who said feedback has been decidedly in favor of higher fees, sees the question in Clover as similar to the one he answered with a vote already on Fort Mill fees.
“I agree with the four people that voted for the impact fee (in Fort Mill),” he said. “I was one of them. I agree with your reasoning behind that impact fee. I also think it applies to this particular impact fee.”
Questions like exemptions, tax impact and construction spending were just as much a part of the Fort Mill decision as they are now to the Clover one, said Clover school board member Matt Burris. He’s hopeful the end decision will be the same, too.
“Those are all things that I completely agree with,” he said. “Every bit of that applies to Clover, just like it applies to Fort Mill.”
