Great News

June 28, 2010

Senate Bill 1051 becomes law!!

All of us have been closely following the progress of Senate Bill 1051 during the last weeks. There were tense times as the legislative session was nearing its end but the bill was approved just under the wire, and is now law. Today, Governor Sanford has filed the unsigned bill with the Secretary of State where it now has the full faith and backing of the state of South Carolina.

This bill was critical to all Fripp owners for several reasons not the least of which was the potential significant drop of property values island wide, and other unintended consequences such as difficulty for buyers to obtain home loans. When the Office of Coastal Resource Management (OCRM) changed our setback lines last November and refused to address our concerns in a hearing, our only recourse to prevent the decision from becoming permanent was to delay the action by appealing to the Administrative Law Court. Your Board voted unanimously to appeal and start the process of getting the OCRM decision reversed on Fripp allowing time for our legislative representatives to start the process of the exemption bill.

What this bill means for Fripp going forward is that Fripp Island will be allowed to maintain its rock revetments. It also means that the baseline will be fixed at the top of the revetment and the setback lines will be permanently fixed at 20-feet landward of the revetment. OCRM will not come to Fripp every 10 years as they do elsewhere along the coast to re-examine the erosion rates, Fripp will be exempt from that section of the Beachfront Management Act. As long as the rock revetments are maintained, and it will remain each owner’s responsibility to maintain them, Fripp’s beachfront lots will continue to have the same jurisdictional lines within which to build that they have had for the past thirty years. The threat to all Fripp owners from OCRM’s landward movement of setback lines by use of unreliable data is no longer an issue.

We have many people to thank for making S. 1051 a reality. First and foremost is our General Manager, Kate Hines. She has worked tirelessly on this effort. The Board deserves credit for taking the initiative to move quickly when short timelines were imposed by OCRM. Mary Shahid of McNair Law Firm worked with Kate and the Board and also helped Senator Tom Davis who deserves our deepest gratitude for giving us not only his time but for having the forethought to draft this bill. Representative Shannon Erickson lent 100% of her support for the bill in the House of Representatives. Last but not least our members stepped to the table, called their Senators and Representatives, not just once but many times as this bill went from one legislative body to another and into Conference.

Congratulations Fripp Island it’s a great day for all of us!

Micki McCormick

FIPOA President