Why is the Greenville County road maintenance fee $25?
Question: Why are we still getting charged a $25 road maintenance fee on our Greenville County vehicle taxes? It was determined that it was an illegal fee over a year ago.
Answer: On November 15, 2022, Greenville County Council passed an ordinance allowing a $10 increase to the road maintenance fee, bringing the total fee to $25. That fee is uniformly imposed on all owners of motor vehicles required to be registered in the county by the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles.
As previously reported by The Greenville News, the County imposed an annual $15 vehicle fee in 1993 to pay for road maintenance. It increased that fee to $25 in 2017, the same year a telecommunications fee to enhance the county’s public-safety communications network was also approved.
In June 2021, the state Supreme Court ruled that the annual $14.95 telecommunications fee charged to property owners in the county was invalid.
As previously reported by the Post and Courier, the court ruled the fees were invalid because they didn’t solely benefit those who paid for the services.
However, state lawmakers passed Act 236 in June 2022, which made the practice legal and effectively nullified the court ruling.
In November 2022, the county council ultimately moved to increase the road maintenance fee because the budget for road infrastructure didn’t meet the demand for repairs and maintenance. According to an analysis report conducted by Infrastructure Management Service, Greenville County’s more than 1,800-mile-long road system was underfunded at its annual level of $12 million.
The report, included in the ordinance, estimated that $18.8 million to $21.3 million is needed annually to maintain the county’s road system.
We want to give our readers the opportunity to have their questions about Greenville County answered. Email your questions to rbonds@gan-nett.com.