First-time father makes good on campaign promises
By Lolita Huckaby
PORT ROYAL
Kevin Phillips, only four months into his first term as mayor of this town of 14,000-plus, is making good on his campaign talk.
When running in November against incumbent Joe DeVito, Phillips suggested the town council should consider a building moratorium to slow down the rapid development being experienced not just by Port Royal but by the rest of the county, the Lowcountry, much of the East Coast coastal communities.
After all, next door in Jasper County, the county elected officials imposed a moratorium on all commercial and residential development in the Chelsea area, on their side of the Broad River back in June of last year and it’s still in place while the county planners work on new development standards in an effort to manage growth.
Phillips, who won by 60 percent of the vote, moved his council forward on the moratorium idea last week with an ordinance to impose a one-year halt on any permitting activities for multi-family developments. The ordinance still requires a second reading, which will happen at the next council meeting in May, but the first reading passed with no opposition, so we’ll see how this plays out.
Of course, the moratorium will have no impact on the 1,500-plus apartment units already approved by the town. Nor will it impact single-family homes or commercial development planned in the municipality but it’s something … something the Beaufort County Council refused to even consider last fall when the idea was proposed at committee level.
The Port Royal council discussed the impacts of such growth at their February planning retreat, where representatives of the public works, police and fire departments agreed it was getting harder and harder to provide services to all the new developments, especially along Parris Island Gateway and S.C. 170/Robert Smalls Parkway.
Not only did the council members last week take a step towards a moratorium, they also gave first reading on a seven-month moratorium limiting the issuance of any more short-term rental permits. This action was prompted by a staff report that showed 110 number of short-term rentals now existed in the municipality – the ones they’re aware of – up from 70 four years ago.
The council considered limits on short-term rentals four years ago, when the city of Beaufort was refining their ordinance and even the county passed some control limits. A task force was formed, and an ordinance was drafted but nothing happened; the council at the time took a “let’s wait and see” attitude.
Four years later, with the growing number of short-term rentals impacting the local housing market, the council seems more amenable to the idea.
Phillips is also coming through on his campaign promise to “get tough” with Safe Harbor LLC, the multi-national marina development company that’s been playing with the town since buying the property two years ago with a promise to create a multi-million dollar “world class” deep-water marine and residential community on 317 acres of waterfront property along Battery Creek.
After much hemming and hawing behind closed doors, Phillips and representatives of Safe Harbor said in February they felt optimistic about working out differences. The ink had hardly dried on that proverbial statement before Safe Harbor came back and said, no, without some concessions, they couldn’t support the town’s request for a 20-foot easement through their property to continue the Spanish Moss Trail on the east side of Ribaut Road.
Well fine, was pretty much the answer from Phillips, who happens to be an attorney himself. The town started the process to condemn land they needed for the trail and by the way, Safe Harbor couldn’t continue to use the port property to build docks for other Safe Harbor properties until the issue was resolved.
Obviously, the town staff has been plenty busy, along with the town’s attorney who has to deal with the Safe Harbor issues, but no word yet on what the planner and town’s new planning commission are going to recommend on the way of changes to the existing tree ordinances.
At the last public discussion, council members fielded questions on how to deal with “hardship cases,” where property owners claimed the removal fees were prohibitive.
The tree-loving public is waiting to see how the town council will revise its protection ordinance which was considered one of the toughest in the state when it was passed last year.
And Beaufort city tree-lovers are also watching since the City Council in the process of updating its development code, is also looking at tree protection regulations.
One more feather in Phillips’ cap: he’s stirred up all these issues and become a first-time father.
Why can’t they just say no?
BEAUFORT – While Port Royal town council last week gave some of its citizens hope about the future of growth in their town (or at least they started on that moratorium path), down the road at the Beaufort City Council, the elected officials were busy growing the town.
The annexation of 2.7 acres on Harding Street in the Burton area certainly didn’t draw public outcry or opposition from any group except for the neighbors of what was once known as Palmetto Estates who begged the city not to approve the action which cleared the way for construction of 37 homes.
The neighbors, who don’t happen to be city residents even though past annexations by the city have gobbled up land all around them to allow development of Islands of Beaufort, Battery Shores and the Overlook at Battery Creek, urged the city to consider what all those homes on a total of 14 acres would do to an area already being threatened by sea level rise and drainage problems.
The city council delayed final approval of the annexation last month after those neighbors urged the planning staff to talk with the owner and ask him to consider selling the property, instead, to the county through the Green Space program.
Last week, after waiting a month, representatives of the developer told the city council the Orangeburg, S.C. owner was aware of the county’s program to protect environmentally fragile areas but wasn’t interested in pursuing that route.
And since the city planning staff and city planning commission had recommended approval, the majority of council went along with the request. Only Mayor Phil Cromer just said “no” and voted against the motion to annexation.
The annexation, he said, demonstrates the council’s intentions to endorse development in fragile areas.
A reminder: We’re all in this together
RIDGELAND – Fellow Island News columnist Scott Graber had some good news to share in last week’s edition when he wrote about Ridgeland Town Council’s decision to table annexation of 3,000 acres through the Chelsea woodlands for new development.
The town has been moving forward on the annexation for the past several months even though Jasper County Council imposed a development moratorium for basically the same property almost a year ago.
The annexation would have included 291 acres called “Chelsea South” where 438 single family homes are planned along with 269 multi-family homes and almost 400,000 square feet of commercial development.
There’s been considerable public protest about this annexation, right on the western side of S.C. 170 across the street from Beaufort County and the Callawassie entrance, but the Ridgeland officials appear determined to expand their town limits.
The professionals at the nonprofit S.C. Coastal Conservation League, who were, by the way, called “paternalistic puppet masters” last week by a supporter of the Pine Island development on St. Helena Island, are helping Chelsea opponents of the annexation, just like they worked with opponents fighting the development of Bay Island and a slew of other questionable development projects in the Lowcountry.
It certainly does “take a village” and more, to continue the effort of keeping this place special.
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.
