Aiken County government, school officials promote penny tax in North Augusta (2024)

Thursday morning was a big push for the renewal of both Aiken County’s and the Aiken County Public School District's one-cent sales taxes, with area leaders one by one promoting the power of the penny before a packed North Augusta Chamber of Commerce.

North Augusta Mayor Briton Williams; Aiken County Council Chairman Gary Bunker; and Dr. Corey Murphy, Aiken County Public School District’s new superintendent, were three quarters of the Chamber’s panel Sept. 12. The other fourth being Mike Budney, who heads up Savannah River Operations at Savannah River Site.

But even if Budney had no sales tax to promote, he did outline the economic impact that SRS, even as its missions have changed over the decades, continues to have on the region– including the population growth here that has been met with those very projects the others touted as having been funded by the penny sales tax.

It was the Chamber’s annual “state of our community” session, and it gave those present a wide-ranging update that started with one of the area’s largest employers (expect SRS to add in the next five years some 9,200 workers to its current on-site workforce of 13,400) and ended with the city of North Augusta’s hope for voters to approve a projected $48.9 million in penny sales tax collections at the ballot box this November – that’s the city’s cut of the full $264 million that this renewal of Aiken County’s Capital Projects Sales Tax is expected to generate between 2026 and 2033.

Aiken County’s Bunker credited the penny tax with keeping the county’s millage rates level over the past decade by bringing in revenues that, as a sales tax, are in part generated by those living outside the county.

North Augusta’s Williams recapped how the city has expended its penny tax collections since its inception in 2000, including those projects funded by the current cycle – approaching $37 million generated since 2018 and that has gone or will go toward the city’s new Public Safety headquarters and the recently completed first phase in the downtown Greeneway connector, among other things.

The city’s wish list for the next cycle, if that renewal is approved, includes several million dollars for park improvements, infrastructure investments and Public Safety needs.

But this November’s ballot isn’t limited to Aiken County’s ask – Aiken County Public School District is also asking for a renewal of its own one-cent sales tax, the current round of which expires in February.

Should voters give their approval to the school district’s renewal, projected at $398 million over the next 10 years, with as much as 90% of this bonded out for immediate use (should the voters also say “yes” to this ballot question), the top priorities are big refurbishments of four existing Aiken County schools, including North Augusta Middle School, plus the construction of another elementary school for Area Three.

Neither state nor federal dollars are usually viable sources of funding new buildings, Murphy said, and districts are heavily reliant on local funding to keep up with building maintenance and, confronted with growth, building construction.

Aiken County grew by almost 5.5% between 2010 and 2020, and current estimates put the county at having grown another 4.9% since then.

In North Augusta, these numbers are even more pronounced: census data reveal the city grew by more than 14% between 2010 and 2020. The current estimate is that city grew another 6% in just three years.

So, population has gone up. So has cost of construction.

A decade ago, the cost to build North Augusta High School was about $72 million, Murphy said. Today, it would be about twice that. For an elementary school built to standard in 2014, it was $8 million. Today, with rising construction costs coupled with security updates, it’s more like $40 million to $50 million, he said.

Highland Springs Middle School, completed in time to open for the previous school year, cost $51 million to build.

The ideal, he added, also acknowledging the impracticality of it, would be a lump sum $1.8 billion to have new buildings districtwide.

“When you start looking at numbers like that and looking at the fact we’ve refurbished all or replaced all the high schools except for two in the community, then you definitely need to be looking at compromise,” Murphy said.

Without state and federal funding to help with buildings, the district has had to balance routine maintenance with the need for more – or even just new versions of the existing – schools, all of this with what’s typically been a $20 million annual maintenance budget.

Which has led the district to accrue nearly $230 million in deferred maintenance costs, Murphy said. “That is a path that, you can do it for a while, but eventually you need to collect money.”

Aiken County Public School District is hosting an information meeting on the sales tax renewal at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 15 at North Augusta Middle School.

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