Lexington County dumps road agreement with its towns, cities. Their officials are miffed
Lexington County is canceling an agreement that requires the county to maintain roads inside city limits, part of a struggle with municipal governments over new residential developments that exceed county standards.
The vote at Lexington County Council’s December meeting would mean the county won’t take responsibility for any new construction inside the county’s cities and towns if those developments wouldn’t have been approved had they been built in the county.
That will be the case going forward even if the roads themselves are built to county standards but the wider development doesn’t meet standards, such as how closely together houses within a development can be built.
The 6-3 vote by the county council cancels an agreement Lexington County has had with its municipalities since 1978. Council members Glenn Conwell, Todd Cullum and Debbie Summers — all of whom represent districts in the more developed Cayce-West Columbia side of the county — all voted “no” on canceling the agreement.
Those supporting the move said it won’t affect existing roads maintained by the county, but would ensure uniformity in any new developments.
A draft letter to be sent to the county’s 15 incorporated communities gives 30 days’ notice of the end of the agreement, and invites town officials to discuss a new agreement. “It is anticipated that a new agreement will include a provision where Lexington County reserves the right to accept or deny acceptance of any roads and drainage within the municipal boundaries if the residential development does not meet Lexington County zoning development standards,” the letter reads.
County council members who support the change say it’s necessary for Lexington County to better shape its future development.
“I want to see if we can fashion a new agreement that would be better than something that was adopted when I was 13 years old,” Chairwoman Beth Carrigg said in proposing the cancellation of the agreement at the county council’s Nov. 1 meeting.
But Cullum said canceling the agreement would leave cities that may not have their own road maintenance crews in a tight spot, essentially requiring them to enforce county standards even when they don’t fit with their own communities. He also argued it was unfair to residents of those municipalities, who could be denied county services despite also being county residents.
Councilman Scott Whetstone said the county has to control growth and development that puts additional burdens on county resources, something that has been a major focus of county policymaking in recent years. In 2021, the county put in new restrictions to limit the number of houses in a development, require a traffic study from developers and better road access. The county has continued to revise its rules for new subdivisions, including factoring in the impact on different agencies and local school districts.
Whetstone pointed to a planned housing development in his district that could be built if the property is annexed into the town of Swansea, outside the county’s jurisdiction.
“If they annex property and do totally the opposite of what we’re trying to do, they don’t take the burden,” Whetstone said. “It falls on us, our public works, our fire, our EMS, our sheriff’s department.”
“You make it sound like the county pays the entire bill and the cities do nothing, and that’s not true,” Cullum said.
Councilwoman Charli Wessinger pointed to a recent study that determined most county-maintained roads are expected to deteriorate over the next decade. That report showed 38% of roads in Lexington County are currently classed as “fair” or “poor,” and 12 county-owned roads have even “failed.”
“In another 20 or 30 years, that number is going to quadruple if we take in more roads in municipalities that are not up to our development standards,” the Chapin-area councilwoman said.
Some towns may not have the ability to maintain new roads on their own if the county won’t. “I am disappointed that this was not handled collegially from the outset,” Cayce Mayor Elise Partin said in a statement. “Cayce citizens pay taxes to the county for maintenance of roads, so it’s not fair to them for the county to abdicate that duty in any form, or any other responsibility they have. This is not a task the City can take on because we do not collect taxes for road maintenance. The county does.”
Lexington County allocates road maintenance funding from C Funds distributed by the state from gas tax collections. The most recent county budget allocates $6,250,650 for C Fund spending.
Lexington Mayor Hazel Livingston said she disagreed with how the county went about the cancellation, but that the town also needs a collaborative relationship with the county to address road and development issues.
“We look forward to re-negotiating and reaching a new agreement with the County in the days to come, and remain hopeful that our counterparts on County Council will take a more collaborative approach in our future work together,” Livingston said in a statement to The State.
While West Columbia has responsibility for a “very few” roads inside the city, Mayor Tem Miles said his main issue was that the county would unilaterally cancel a mutual agreement that had been in place. “As long as I’ve been on this earth.”
“It makes me suspect what other agreements they might unilaterally cancel,” Miles said. “There are longstanding, widespread relationships on things beside the road deal, and it’s bad form to just cancel it and then say ‘we’ll negotiate something else with you’ after.
“I’d heard they were butt-hurt about a bunch of things, but they didn’t call and say ‘let’s sit down and talk’ about the things they wanted to see in this relationship. We just got a letter they were canceling the agreement.”
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