So what does your 2024 calendar look like?
By Lolita Huckaby
BEAUFORT
There’s something almost glorious … liberating about starting a new year with a brand-new wall calendar.
The prospects of the next 365 days are laid out there in front of you, waiting to be filled with meetings and doctor’s appointments, birthday parties, weddings and project deadlines. True, the more sophisticated have their on-line calendars synched with watches and iPhones and other digital devices, but some of us rely on a paper calendar lying on the kitchen counter, or desktop, to tell us what the day or week schedule is like and what we should be doing.
Reflecting on the past year in this community’s calendar, who would have predicted the city of Beaufort would have wound up with a new mayor after the former mayor called it quits. And the campaign that followed to find his replacement actually lasted less than two months before a very small number of city voters went to the polls and elected another new mayor for the next 11 months.
We saw the city attorney step down in May after 36 years with some sort of disagreement behind closed doors with the mayor, the details of which we can only still wonder. The multitude of lawsuits, primarily dealing with 303 Associates plans for a downtown three-story hotel with a rooftop bar, a parking garage and a three-story townhouse project on the corner of Port Republic and Charles, are still under appeal.
Did anyone foresee the police chief announcing his retirement after three years. The announcement of his departure, effective the end of January, was done relatively quietly, considering the hubbub that often occurs when the top community law enforcement officer steps down.
Looking at the past 12 months in Beaufort County circles, who could have guessed last January we’d see the department of Administrator Eric Greenway after five years on the job. Sparked completely by the unrelenting efforts of in-house whistle-blowers, the Greenway debacle spread through the summer and fall like a virus, with departures of at least one other top administrator, quiet resignations of one or two others and investigations on two levels – one lead by a special panel of state prosecutors run jointly by the First- and 14th-Circuit solicitors and the other, by a team of out-side lawyers hired by the County Council itself to try and straighten things out.
By the end of the year, the county government had at least four individuals – including former Administrator Greenway – under investigation by the state Ethics Commission and the two legal investigations of which we’re not sure exactly the status except the state Attorney General was asked to turn the matter over to a state grand jury.
And all 11 members of County Council are still sitting although three, York Glover, Gerald Dawson and Logan Cunningham, will be up for election this year, so we have that to look forward to.
In Port Royal, we started 2023 knowing there would be a mayoral election at the end of the year. But who knew we’d still be on proverbial “square one” in terms of the Port of Port Royal property under the ownership of Safe Harbor.
In August, a representative of the international marina company and Beach Development Company of Kiawah Island finally came to a town council meeting to share some of their plans for a 200-residence phase on the site. But their presentations raised more questions than answers and probably precipitated Councilman Kevin Phillips’ election into the mayoral seat after he adopted a “get tough” attitude toward dealing with Safe Harbor.
The very night he was sworn in last month, Phillips called his council into a closed-door session and came out with a six-page letter to Safe Harbor asking for answers. Where the town’s demands will take them remains to be seen, part of the evolving story of 2024.
We’ll also see how it proceeds for Phillips’ campaign to consider a building moratorium for the town which, like the rest of the Lowcountry, appears to be struggling with growth demands. Beaufort County Council members brought up the issue one time – in November – where the suggestion was met with staff objections and the reception of a dead rat at the banquet.
Jasper County still has its nine-month development moratorium in place for large-scale development in the northern part of the county, along the Broad River, while planners and politicians try to impose some kind of controls on the growth. But further down S.C. 170, Hardeeville welcomed news of a 2,600-acre property sale to D.H. Horton for more new homes on John Smith Road, aka what was once referred to as the Great Swamp area.
And … it’s election year!
We’ll have county council and school board races to consider this year – with the controversy over book banning that occupied last year, it will interesting to see how those sentiments play into the local board elections.
We’ll have state House of Representative races as well as U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace’s 1st District congressional campaign to watch.
Fourteenth District Solicitor Duffie Stone will be up for re-election and although he took a “hands off” approach to this past year’s Alex Murdaugh trials, it will be interesting to see if there’s any impact. One prediction: not likely.
Of course, we’ll have South Carolina’s role in the national political arena at some of the first presidential primaries – February 3 for the Democrats, February 12 for the GOP – but with the enthusiasm that’s been shown, of late, for even the local election, it will be interesting to see just how low voter participation will be for those contests.
All this and more
Although it may seem like it, it’s safe to speculate it won’t be all politics in the year ahead. Sure, Beaufort residents will have another mayoral election next November, along with Council members Neil Lipsitz and Mitch Mitchell up for re-election.
But there’s the issues of affordable housing and road projects like “re-imagining” Ribaut Road and how to get the Daufuskie folks back and forth to their island. We’ve got the ongoing threat to the historic Gullah culture, as being played out on the still barren acres of Pine Island. We’ll still be facing the problems associated with rising tides and coastal erosion and developers who cut down trees to make way for more buildings.
People with guns and anger issues in our communities will still be shooting at one another, and we’ll continue to pray the innocents don’t get in the way.
Yes, there’s something to be said for a new year starting and a cute cat calendar to document it on.
Lolita Huckaby Watson is a community volunteer and newspaper columnist. In her former role as a reporter with The Beaufort Gazette, The Savannah Morning News, Bluffton Today and Beaufort Today, she prided herself in trying to stay neutral and unbiased. As a columnist, these are her opinions. Her goal is to be factual but opinionated, based on her own observations. Feel free to contact her at bftbay@gmail.com.
