County Council votes to break with tradition
By Lolita Huckaby
BEAUFORT
It didn’t take the Beaufort County Council 15 votes or five days of public debate to select a chairman and vice-chairman, but the group of 11 likewise managed to break tradition with their selection last week.
The County Council, with four brand-new members, started 2023 off by re-electing Joe Passiment of the Sun City/Okatie area to a second term as chairman. While that turned out to be a unanimous vote, it was selection of a vice-chair where division occurred and tradition went by the wayside.
It’s been tradition for the County Council members to elect a chair from one side of the Broad River and a vice-chair from the other. It’s not required by bylaws, it’s just something they’ve agreed upon for years.
Forget that. The majority of council – six of them who represent the county south of the Broad River – voted to elect fellow Councilman Larry McElynn of Hilton Head Island as vice-chair, over fellow Councilwoman Alice Howard of the Beaufort-Port Royal district.
Council veteran York Glover of St. Helena nominated Howard, pointing to the tradition of north-south leadership roles. He also noted having Howard as a vice-chair, one of three females on the council, would demonstrate diversity. His argument didn’t work even though one of the SoB council members, Paula Brown agreed to break rank and not vote for McElynn.
So much for diversity.
Not that it matters, in our days of national respect for equality. In fact, very few Beaufortonians could tell you who the County Council chair – or vice-chair is, for that matter. Many probably can’t tell you their own Council representative.
It will be interesting, and in fact, informative to especially to NoB county residents as the year proceeds to see how the new Council, with its SoB majority, responds to issues with specific impact on the northern part of the county.
Case in point: Pine Island.
Getting in the weeds with text changes
BEAUFORT – County Administrator Eric Greenway tried hard last week to separate a proposed development code text change from a proposed gated golf-course development on the northern tip of St. Helena Island.
But the 100-plus citizens who crowded the county Planning Commission meeting and spoke for almost three hours on the importance of protecting that part of the largely rural area weren’t buying it. Neither did the Planning Commission who voted unanimously to reject the county legal team’s recommendation.
Kudos by the way to Planning Commission Chairman Ed Pappas who took issue with the evening’s agenda which included a closed door session for a “legal briefing” on the issue. The veteran chairman simply said that wasn’t going to happen, forcing the legal staff which included an extra out-of-town land-use lawyer, to say what they were going to say, in public. No back room deals that night.
Several concerned citizens spoke about “transparency” after learning the county staff had been talking with the potential developers and land owners for the past year about how to get what they wanted.
But the Planning Commission’s recommendation for denial of the amendment to the Cultural Protection Overlay zoning district, which has been in place for more than 20 years, was tabled by the County Council’s Community Services and Land Use Committee Monday.
And after the Committee finishes mulling the zoning text change it will go to the full Council where the county legal staff is sure to repeat their concerns that the current wording could lead to the county being sued.
The interesting part will come we see how the Council, with its SoB-majority, will respond to NoB citizens concerned about their part of the county being over-developed.
Be careful what we ask for
LADY’S ISLAND – Practically since Publix moved across the street on Sea Island Parkway in 2014, members of the Island have been asking “where’s our Harris Teeter?”
The N.C.-based grocery chain got design approval from the city of Beaufort Design Review Board back in 2021 but the site on the busy corner of Sams Point Road and the Sea Island Parkway, became overgrown with weeds and saplings while the developers blamed the delays – when they said anything publicly at all – on material shortages.
Well, last week, work started. As did the hue and cry over extensive tree removal.
While a land-clearing permit for the project has been issued along with design plans back in 2021, the latest revisions to the building design have not been reviewed and approved by the city planners.
So who knows when those Harris Teeter doors will open. To play a little “what-if” game, since that’s a popular on-line pastime, WHAT IF the new plans, for some reason, didn’t get approved? WHAT IF that now-denuded corner sits empty for a couple more years with a big FOR SALE sign until another developer comes along to cash in on the area’s rapid growth? WHAT IF we get another car wash or self-storage facility there?
And the person who, according to rumor, lives in the tent at the back of the wooded lot can reside there indefinitely.
It’s all just food for thought on a cool January day.
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.
