By Lolita Huckaby
BEAUFORT
It’s been two weeks now. Beaufort County ballots have been counted, election results certified and political signs almost all gone.
There were few – if any – reports of polls malfeasance and the results, at least in Beaufort County, showed the 75 percent of voters who showed up wanted the same County Council AND Beaufort City Council members to stay in office.
The irony of this election is the majority of county voters, who returned incumbents to their posts, rejected the proposed one-percent transportation sales tax on the grounds of an orchestrated campaign organized by the Beaufort Tea Party of “we don’t trust those in charge.”
So, incumbents get re-elected, a transportation sales tax which would have paid for road repairs, more sidewalks, paved roads and an improved bus system, gets rejected. Safe to assume complaints about traffic issues are going to continue.
The County Council is already scratching its collective head about what to do next after receiving notice from the State Infrastructure Bank, SIB, that the $120 million set aside for the U.S. 278 bridge project, officially the William Hilton Parkway Gateway Corridor, might not be available if the county can’t come up with the $190 million needed for the local share (part of which was money coming from the sales tax … which didn’t pass).
The council members considered, even before wording for the referendum had dried on the proverbial page, what IF the referendum didn’t pass, were they gonna have to consider … dare we say … a property tax increase?
Council members last week almost unanimously said, “nope,” no property tax increase on our watch. So how will the eastbound Mackay Creek bridge, which has been listed as structurally deficient by the S.C. Department of Transportation, get fixed?
Well, council members agreed, maybe they should just turn the problem of a “deficient” bridge back to its owners, DOT. In the meantime, the council said it will be “exploring options.”
So much for the seven years the County Council and Hilton Head Town Council and a whole bunch of consultants spent debating on how to improve not just that bridge but the whole roadway system connecting the island to the mainland.
A worse-case scenario thrown out during the Council meeting was handing the project back to the state engineers and letting them come up with a repair plan that very well might include closing one side for repair, then the other side. Meaning, traffic on and off the island could be narrowed to two lanes for a couple of years
Scary … a situation traffic nightmares are made of.
Councilwoman Tab Tabernik suggested, during last week’s discussion of “what next,” the council perform an “autopsy” of the election results. They could start by looking at the precinct results of the sales tax.
It might come as a surprise that with a 10,000-plus margin, the sales tax did pass in 28 of the 126 precincts, all south of the Broad River. All but one of Sun City’s 10 precincts supported the tax, some by very close margins but the support was there. Those folks are tired of the increasing traffic congestion and were willing to spend an extra penny sales tax to pay for improvements.
And right across the road, in Jasper County where voters voted yes on their sales tax referendum.
An autopsy might be valuable on the election results. But they might find out, as Councilwoman Alice Howard said, “they just don’t trust us.”
Time might be better spent trying to regain that trust.
After 40 years Heritage Days parade goes single-lane
BEAUFORT – During last week’s County Council meeting, a group of about 40 St. Helena Island residents sat quietly waiting for the elected officials to discuss the future of road projects.
They were present to complain about a more recent road issue – the partial closure of U.S. 21 (Sea Island Parkway) during Penn Center’s annual Heritage Days parade.
The Saturday parade, which is part of a three-day festival schedule on St. Helena, saw U.S. 21 partially closed this year, by order of the sheriff’s department.
At one time, the festival committee, which celebrated its 40th anniversary this year, started the parade at the St. Helena Elementary School campus and moved west along U.S. 21 to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, turning left to continue down to the Penn Center Campus.
This year, Sheriff P.J. Tanner, after meeting with community leaders, announced one lane on U.S. 21 would remain open and the parade could use one lane to reach MLK, which would remain closed until 1 p.m.
County Council Chairman Joe Passiment made it clear to those who waited over an hour to address council that this was Tanner’s decision, not the council’s.
But those who addressed the council accused officials of sacrificing their traditions to the rights of an increasing number of motorists along the single route to and from the islands, including Fripp, Harbor, and St. Helena, all which have seen rapidly increases amount of traffic.
In past years, Tanner said in a later interview, the numbers of complaints received about traffic stops along the roadway have increased tremendously.
“You’re not talking about just an hour-and-a-half parade stopping traffic. You’re talking about another hour and a half to clear traffic,” the Sheriff said.
It’s all another sign of the times.
One more thing about those monkeys
YEMASSEE — As the national media, looking for something to focus on rather than the Nov. 5 election results, brought attention to the growing town of Yemassee and the 43 research monkeys that escaped there, maybe you wonder about the timing.
Was the Alpha Genesis Primate Center employee blamed for not securing a gate at the research facility on some sort of protest mission? Who knows? How many conspiracy theories can we tolerate?
In truth, the history of the Yemassee monkey farm and Morgan “Monkey” Island, is a rich one and fully outlined, back in 2019, by former Beaufort Mayor David Taub, who once ran the research operation. Taub wrote about the history in a two-part series published in The Island News in February, 2019. If you’re really interested in this interesting part of Beaufort history, find it (https://bit.ly/3CCghHt and https://bit.ly/4exm525) and enjoy the read.
Suffice to know, the history of Lowcountry research monkeys is now open to the public. Probably gone are the days when locals knew someone who had one of those monkeys, kept it as a pet and had great stories to tell about it.
To date: the monkeys are slowly returning. As of Sunday, six remain free. No reports of “attacks” on residents have been recorded.
Congresswoman Nancy Mace, R-SC1, has launched an investigation into operations at the research facility.
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.
