Charleston County gets Phase 2 update on Transportation Sales Tax outreach; survey and poll underway

Charleston County received an update on phase 2 of public outreach for the Transportation Sales Tax (TST) program, including results from prior public engagement and how staff plan to collect more representative input over a short timeline.

A presenter told council the outreach effort has delivered 67 presentations to municipalities and community groups, maintained a newsletter list of over 1,000 subscribers and gathered just under 30,000 comments through the survey process along with about 600 project requests that together the presenter said aggregated to roughly $68 billion in identified needs. The presenter said those survey results were supplemented with a representative polling effort because open online surveys can skew toward highly engaged respondents.

Staff said they have updated and expanded the TST website (charlestontransportation.com), released a new, shorter survey that will be live through April 5, and scheduled three municipal meetings in phase 2: Mount Pleasant, North Charleston and the City of Charleston. The presenter encouraged residents to scan the QR code at presentations and to visit the website to review project breakdowns and data.

Chairman Joe Boykin praised the outreach and staff work, calling the effort "a tremendous undertaking" and commending the transparency and diligence behind the process. Staff emphasized the abbreviated time frame for phase 2 — about 30 days — and that polling will be used to derive a representative view of countywide priorities.

Next steps: the phase 2 survey remains open until April 5 and staff will conduct a representative poll to clarify public preferences before the council proceeds with allocation decisions related to the transportation sales tax.