Terms Used In South Carolina Code > Title 4 > Chapter 25 - Regulation of Building Construction

• Affordable housing: means housing affordable to families whose incomes do not exceed eighty percent of the median income for the service area or areas within the jurisdiction of the governmental entity. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Agency: means an authority, board, branch, commission, committee, department, division, or other instrumentality of the executive department of state government, including administrative bodies and bodies corporate and politic established as an instrumentality of the State. See South Carolina Code 1-6-10
• Appeal: A request made after a trial, asking another court (usually the court of appeals) to decide whether the trial was conducted properly. To make such a request is "to appeal" or "to take an appeal." One who appeals is called the appellant.
• Appropriation: The provision of funds, through an annual appropriations act or a permanent law, for federal agencies to make payments out of the Treasury for specified purposes. The formal federal spending process consists of two sequential steps: authorization
• Assessment: means an assessment voluntarily agreed upon by a majority of the owners of real property within an improvement district and representing at least sixty-six percent of the assessed value of all real property within the improvement district. See South Carolina Code 4-35-30
• Capital improvements: means improvements with a useful life of five years or more, by new construction or other action, which increase or increased the service capacity of a public facility. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Capital improvements plan: means a plan that identifies capital improvements for which development impact fees may be used as a funding source. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Clerk of court: An officer appointed by the court to work with the chief judge in overseeing the court's administration, especially to assist in managing the flow of cases through the court and to maintain court records.
• Continuance: Putting off of a hearing ot trial until a later time.
• Corporation: A legal entity owned by the holders of shares of stock that have been issued, and that can own, receive, and transfer property, and carry on business in its own name.
• Developer: means an individual or corporation, partnership, or other entity undertaking development. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Development: means construction or installation of a new building or structure, or a change in use of a building or structure, any of which creates additional demand and need for public facilities. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Development approval: means a document from a governmental entity which authorizes the commencement of a development. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Development permit: means a permit issued for construction on or development of land when no subsequent building permit issued pursuant to Chapter 9 of Title 6 is required. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Equitable: Pertaining to civil suits in "equity" rather than in "law." In English legal history, the courts of "law" could order the payment of damages and could afford no other remedy. See damages. A separate court of "equity" could order someone to do something or to cease to do something. See, e.g., injunction. In American jurisprudence, the federal courts have both legal and equitable power, but the distinction is still an important one. For example, a trial by jury is normally available in "law" cases but not in "equity" cases. ^{Source: U.S. Courts}
• Fee payor: means the individual or legal entity that pays or is required to pay a development impact fee. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Governing body: means the governing body of a county. See South Carolina Code 4-35-30
• Governmental entity: means a county, as provided in Chapter 9 of Title 4, and a municipality, as defined in § 5-1-20. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• impact fee: means a payment of money imposed as a condition of development approval to pay a proportionate share of the cost of system improvements needed to serve the people utilizing the improvements. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Improvement district: means an area within the county designated by the governing body pursuant to the provisions of this chapter and within which an improvement plan is to be accomplished. See South Carolina Code 4-35-30
• Improvement plan: means the overall plan by which the governing body proposes to effect improvements within an improvement district to preserve property values, prevent deterioration, and preserve the tax base. See South Carolina Code 4-35-30
• Improvements: means recreational facilities, pedestrian facilities, sidewalks, storm drains, or water course facilities or improvements, the relocation, construction, widening, and paving of roads and streets, any building or other facilities for public use, any public works eligible for financing pursuant to § 6-21-50, and may include the acquisition of necessary easements and land and all things incidental to the provision of the above. See South Carolina Code 4-35-30
• Joint committee: Committees including membership from both houses of teh legislature. Joint committees are usually established with narrow jurisdictions and normally lack authority to report legislation.
• Jurisdiction: (1) The legal authority of a court to hear and decide a case. Concurrent jurisdiction exists when two courts have simultaneous responsibility for the same case. (2) The geographic area over which the court has authority to decide cases.
• Land use assumptions: means a description of the service area and projections of land uses, densities, intensities, and population in the service area over at least a ten-year period. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Level of service: means a measure of the relationship between service capacity and service demand for public facilities. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Life estate: A property interest limited in duration to the life of the individual holding the interest (life tenant).
• Local planning commission: means the entity created pursuant to Article 1, Chapter 29 of Title 6. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Owner: means a person twenty-one years of age or older, or the proper legal representative for a person younger than twenty-one years of age, and a firm or corporation, who or which owns legal title to a present possessory interest in real estate equal to a life estate or greater (expressly excluding leaseholds, easements, equitable interests, inchoate rights, and future interest) and who owns, at the date of the petition or written consent, at least an undivided one-tenth interest in a single tract and whose name appears on the county tax records as an owner of real estate, and a duly organized group whose tax interest is at least equal to a one-tenth interest in a single tract. See South Carolina Code 4-35-30
• Partnership: A voluntary contract between two or more persons to pool some or all of their assets into a business, with the agreement that there will be a proportional sharing of profits and losses.
• Project: means a particular development on an identified parcel of land. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Proportionate share: means that portion of the cost of system improvements determined pursuant to § 6-1-990 which reasonably relates to the service demands and needs of the project. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Public debt: Cumulative amounts borrowed by the Treasury Department or the Federal Financing Bank from the public or from another fund or account. The public debt does not include agency debt (amounts borrowed by other agencies of the Federal Government). The total public debt is subject to a statutory limit.
• Public facilities: means :
  
  (a) water supply production, treatment, laboratory, engineering, administration, storage, and transmission facilities;
  
  (b) wastewater collection, treatment, laboratory, engineering, administration, and disposal facilities;
  
  (c) solid waste and recycling collection, treatment, and disposal facilities;
  
  (d) roads, streets, and bridges including, but not limited to, rights-of-way and traffic signals;
  
  (e) storm water transmission, retention, detention, treatment, and disposal facilities and flood control facilities;
  
  (f) public safety facilities, including law enforcement, fire, emergency medical and rescue, and street lighting facilities;
  
  (g) capital equipment and vehicles, with an individual unit purchase price of not less than one hundred thousand dollars including, but not limited to, equipment and vehicles used in the delivery of public safety services, emergency preparedness services, collection and disposal of solid waste, and storm water management and control;
  
  (h) parks, libraries, and recreational facilities;
  
  (i) public education facilities for grades K-12 including, but not limited to, schools, offices, classrooms, parking areas, playgrounds, libraries, cafeterias, gymnasiums, health and music rooms, computer and science laboratories, and other facilities considered necessary for the proper public education of the state's children. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Service area: means , based on sound planning or engineering principles, or both, a defined geographic area in which specific public facilities provide service to development within the area defined. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Service unit: means a standardized measure of consumption, use, generation, or discharge attributable to an individual unit of development calculated in accordance with generally accepted engineering or planning standards for a particular category of capital improvements. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• Settlement: Parties to a lawsuit resolve their difference without having a trial. Settlements often involve the payment of compensation by one party in satisfaction of the other party's claims.
• System improvement costs: means costs incurred for construction or reconstruction of system improvements, including design, acquisition, engineering, and other costs attributable to the improvements, and also including the costs of providing additional public facilities needed to serve new growth and development. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920
• System improvements: means capital improvements to public facilities which are designed to provide service to a service area. See South Carolina Code 6-1-920