No and Yes: Two views on Charleston County’s 2026 ballot questions

Editor’s Note: Here are differing views on three ballot questions being considered Nov. 3 by Charleston County voters seeking to extend penny sales taxes for roads, parks, schools and public transportation.

NO: Stall the ballot questions

By Fred Palm | Vote no on all three Charleston County ballot questions as they are presented on Nov. 3: the sales tax, the bond and the school tax. Ask Charleston County Council to come back with a better plan.

Waiting costs little because the current half-cent tax is projected to keep collecting into 2027. Rushing costs 25 years without a viable path forward. A functional county road system serves everyone — businesses, residents and visitors alike. This 2026 ballot measure fails that standard.

Roads. Council sponsored a “Best of Charleston Roads” contest, spread the funds around to produce a list of road projects and asked voters to fund it. Assumed congestion could be knitted away with individual fixes that might add up to a functional county road system.

It never ran that list through the available regional traffic model kept at the Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments to find out. That model counts traffic, turning movements, crashes, freight trucks and bike and foot traffic – and it looks ahead to 2050 growth.

Council measured single intersections instead. Fix one choke point and the traffic collects at the next. The drive time is minimally improved. Congestion is locked into the landscape. The county has chosen a funding and project-selection method without demonstrating that it will deliver the needed transportation performance. Roads get $2.7 billion of the $4.25 billion.

Road flooding. Roads go under on high tides and heavy rains. The council failed to overlay high-water flood mapping, increases in tidal flooding and storm downpours that will take roads out of service and undermine roadbeds, which will generate additional future congestion. A county road under water is a road out of service, and ours go under on high tides and heavy rain.

Transit. Transit gets $860 million. Bus travel time is the same as cars on congested roads. Put a bus on a road that does not work and the bus runs late and off schedule. Drivers stay in their vehicles. Transit and land preservation deserve their own vote. Voters should say yes to what they want without buying a road list to get it.

Education. On Oct. 28, 2024, five school trustees outvoted four others and committed the Charleston County School District to the Union Pier tax district. For 30 years, the district gave up property tax education revenue to finance real estate development on the peninsula. The Post and Courier put the district’s deferred share near $345 million. A district that could afford to give away that much did not say it was short. Now the district asks for $1.25 billion. Flooded school roads and buildings are left unaddressed creating another planning error in need of correction.

Nothing stops. A no vote does not end roads, buses, schools or land protection. It sends them back for more work putting roads against traffic and water, what each school access needs and splits the take it or leave it voting requirement.

Vote no three times. The council needs to try again and get it right.

Fred Palm of Edisto Island is a retired professor of oversight and investigations at the John Jay College School of Public Management and a former executive director of the Association of Inspectors General.

YES: Build on transportation sales tax for public transit we deserve

By Charlton Brownell | On Nov. 3, Charleston County voters will head to the polls to vote again on whether to approve a new half-cent sales tax to fund transportation and land conservation projects.

This proposal differs from the one voters rejected in 2024 in a crucial way: the controversial $2.4 billion Interstate 526 extension isn’t on the ballot. Revenues would go toward road widening, intersection improvements, pavement management, public transit, bike/pedestrian infrastructure and the Greenbelt land conservation program.

We [at the Charleston Climate Coalition] support this referendum, but do also see the missed opportunity here to build the public transportation system we need. The tax’s transit allocation would merely maintain the current service level and fund incremental improvements, such as bus stop enhancements, some fleet growth and implementation of the 2024 Downtown Transit Study. This necessary infusion of cash would keep CARTA alive and healthy, with some concrete steps in the right direction, but isn’t enough to build a transportation system befitting of a world-class city. We hope others will join us in voting yes, but also in working to achieve a larger, more ambitious vision.

What would that look like? Our answer is building upon the forthcoming Lowcountry Rapid Transit (LCRT) to North Charleston to provide rapid transit service to each population center: West Ashley, Mount Pleasant, James Island and Johns Island. With last-mile bike/pedestrian connections, you could travel from each of these areas quickly to downtown and each other.

In the medium-term, this could be achieved most affordably via Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), though our transportation planners should continually evaluate the optimal form to serve our growing population. Buses would be frequent, and would take advantage of priority signaling and dedicated lanes where possible. They would also be electric, free of the planet-warming greenhouse gases and air pollution intensifying our storms and summer heat waves, and free of the volatile price of diesel fuel.

If this sounds fanciful, it isn’t. Our Regional Transit Authority, the Berkeley/Charleston/Dorchester Council of Governments (BCDCOG), already recommended these corridors for Bus Rapid Transit in its 2018 Regional Transit Framework Plan (except for Johns Island, which we recommend they evaluate). It’s just waiting for the money.

Paying for it may not be as far-fetched as it seems. We’ve already funded one spoke of the system, the LCRT. We simply need to continue doing so. And we, county residents, might not even need to pay for half of it. This has been the case with the LCRT, which has received 60% of its funding via federal grants. This type of cost-sharing is common for large infrastructure projects. Federal sources are similarly covering a majority of the cost of the Battery Extension (two-thirds), and the state covered the majority of funding for the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. There are a range of sources outside of the county that could foot most of the bill for these additional BRT lines.

We could also bring in outside assistance for the local match. For example, why not let tourists foot more of the bill? The county has room to raise its accommodations tax and still be within the state-mandated limit. There is an argument to be made that rapid transit would provide tourism-related benefits as required by State law for use of those funds by providing access to tourist destinations. Governing municipalities could also create TIF [tax-increment finance] districts along the proposed transit corridors. This is a method of capturing future property tax revenue increases, in this case resulting from proximity to transit, to fund upfront infrastructure costs.

Reliable, rapid transit between downtown and our suburban population centers could alleviate traffic congestion, reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution, and make transportation more affordable. Many don’t realize the savings that can come from a version of Charleston that invests in public transport, but anyone who likes holding on to their money should pay attention. In this Charleston, you wouldn’t have to pay the “parking tax” of $500 to $1000 per year to park downtown at work, or that $50 Uber to get to the airport, or any of the other costs associated with owning a car if you didn’t want to (which add up to around $10,000 per year on average).

Finally, this version of Charleston would be, dare I say, fun. You could hop on a bus on the way to work with a dedicated lane, zoom past all of the cars, and relax while someone else drives.

We hope this transportation sales tax passes. CARTA needs the funds, we need high-quality roads, and our climate and wildlife need the greenbelt program and its land conservation partners to keep doing their indispensable work. But we also need to build a much better transportation system. Join us in saying yes to this transportation sales tax and then building on it until we have the public transportation we deserve.

Charlton Brownell is a program manager with the Charleston Climate Coalition.