‘Worth it’: Council voted to waive fees for flood victims despite complications

For Horry County Council members Johnny Vaught and Cam Crawford, the council passed a resolution Tuesday night to help people survive.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, nearly 2,000 homes were damaged by standing flood water in homes. Even two months after the storm hit, homeowners are submitting building permits to rebuild their homes. And up to now, they were required to pay a fee before the permit will be given. This fee can total to a few hundred dollars, depending on the work.

Council passed a resolution to waive this fee for people who are rebuilding after the flood through January 31, 2019, despite not receiving a staff and infrastructure and regulation committee recommendation.

“A lot of people didn’t have flood insurance because they weren’t required to,” Vaught said. “These people are not coming back to improve their property, they’re coming to survive.”

The resolution only affects the fees associated with repairs from the most previous flood. Residents repairing their homes are still required to apply for the permit, they just won’t be charged. If a homeowner does more work than just getting their home back to its pre-flood state, they will also be required to pay the fee.

Assistant County Administrator Steve Gosnell said that the county will do its best to make sure the fee waivers are not abused by people trying to save money on home improvement projects.

County Administrator Chris Eldridge said that staff’s hesitations were purely due to practical matters. He said that the more than 160 people who already paid will need to be refunded and inspections will still need to be done.

The county will refund the money to people who already paid their fee, but the money will go to whoever paid the fee. In many cases the contractor is the one who actually pays the fee, so the money won’t be immediately going back to the homeowners.

Losing the fee’s revenue for a couple thousand homes is fine, Eldridge said, but he cautioned council to think about the precedent. If a large hurricane damaged the entire Grand Strand like what happened in October to the Florida Panhandle, the county may not be able to afford to waive all those fees.

“Council, keep that in the back of you minds so if somebody says ‘you did it before,’” he said about potential damage in a future storm. “But that’s a different issue where you could have thousands of homes and commercial properties damaged.”

Council member Paul Prince agreed and said in the future council should revisit the issue and create a plan for future storms.

Vaught said in this case the benefit of helping people recover from the flood is worth dealing with the complications.

“I feel very strongly that we should take whatever steps it takes to be sure we don’t charge someone on top of the good Lord already putting them out of their house,” he said. “I don’t think this county should charge them an extra building permit fee.”

This story was originally published November 14, 2018 at 12:22 PM.