New Tax Crashes Into West Ashley

Be careful driving through the parts of West Ashley’s St. Andrews Public Service District, it may cost you more than just your life.
And that’s got some bigwigs across the state more than a little concerned.
Last week, the five-member PSD commission voted unanimously to begin assessing accident response “fees” for when its fire department has to respond to auto accidents.
Fees would range from $300-$1,000 and would be assessed to all drivers involved, leaving it up to the insurance companies and courts to figure out who’s at fault and who should pay. But the fee would only be assessed to drivers who are not residents of the PSD.
That means that someone could live in West Ashley, but in the City of Charleston (think: green trashcan), and get in an accident, bust up their car, and then sometime afterward receive a bill from the PSD.
Go to the PSD’s website, and the mission statement reads:
“The mission of the St. Andrews Public Service District is to provide every resident of our District with the highest quality fire protection and emergency response, environmental services, and street lighting in the most economical and professional manner. We pledge to provide these services in a friendly and cost efficient manner for our residents.”
“Just running a half-million or million dollar fire-truck out to the scene of an accident, even if just sits their idling and spinning its lights, takes a lot of energy and fuel and costs a lot of money,” said commission chair Charlie Ledford.
Ledford said he had some questions and misgivings about the move, but wanted to support his staff and be on the same page as the rest of his commission members.
Ledford said the PSD could raise its millage rate, but that could force more residents to annex into the city, further cutting funding.
Close to 30 fire departments across the state are able to assess similar fees, according to district manager Christie Holderness, who also admits the number of states that banned some form of this type of fee, has climbed to 18 states.
St. Andrews Fire Chief Mark Schrade and Holderness both said the fees aren’t a way of generating extra revenues for a district seeing its property tax base slowly annexed into the city.
Rather, they both said, it was a means to recoup some of the money the district has had to spend on accident calls since it joined into a automatic response system and pact with other area fire departments.
Schrade said the volume of calls for service, thanks in large part to the response pact, has more than quadrupled. In 2008, four years before the pact went into effect, his department responded to 980 accidents and mishaps, according to his stats.
But 2012, the first year of the pact, that number grew to 5,300.
The increased demand for service, along with a shrinking tax base, was compounded by the recession and the state’s General Assembly voting regularly to not pass on as much funding to local governments.
And it may be in the legislature that Schrade, Ledford, and Holderness may find their match. Already, state Sen. Larry Grooms (R-Bonneau) has proposed a special one-year law amended to the state’s budget package that would block all levels of government across the state from enacting this kind of fee.
“Aw, man, I heard about this,” said a conflicted state Sen. Larry Martin (R-Pickens) Friday, reacting to the PSD commission’s vote. “There’s no telling what will happen when you start a la carte charging for services.”
Martin chairs the Judiciary Committee in the Senate and would be the likely starting place of any future statewide laws regarding crash taxes or responder fees.
He said he was worried that situations may arise in the future where passersby don’t call 911 when needed for fear of costing those involved in an accident additional expense in the hundreds of dollars.
Schrade countered that people would have the “common sense” to know when to call and when not to.
Martin said that he didn’t relish the possibility of getting into local governments’ business, and that the legislature may have pushed localities into a corner by reductions in state funding.
Martin also said that if Grooms’ special one-year law fails to gain traction, it was too late in this year’s legislative session to address crash taxes.
Schrade worried that Groom’s provision could shutter large numbers of rural volunteer fire departments across the state.