We must pay attention to what’s going on in our backyard

By Gene Ceccrelli CONTRIBUTOR

I have been closely watching the development projects in Hardeeville. The flood gates are opening up for massive home building and rentals, especially on the east side of Argent Blvd. opposite Sun City’s Sgt. William Jasper Blvd. entrance/exit, and along Hwy. 170 (Okatie Highway) from the north end of Argent Blvd. heading southwest toward Fording Island Road.

I keep wondering how long this massive clear-cutting of trees and displacing of natural wildlife can be sustained. And the question that I ask (and have yet to hear any elected official answer) is, “How much water can the Savannah River supply to South Carolina and Georgia?”

One would think that there would be regional concerns about this, and that government leaders would be talking to each other about it.

The City of Hardeeville had two public hearings Feb. 2 on two major development projects within approximately a half mile of each other, proposing more than 800 rental units between the two of them. I spent about four hours at these hearings and made the following statement toward the end when the mayor called for public comments:

My issue here is with development and this mad rush to build a glut of houses and rental apartments concentrated in a small area of Hardeeville, AND if there is sufficient infrastructure to support it.

Let’s take water, for example.

Rapidly developing areas of Georgia and South Carolina rely on the Savannah River to provide clean drinking water, to flush toilets, to irrigate our properties, and so much more. Will there be enough to go around in the future?

Or is it: Build first … and find out later? What about the traffic on an already overcrowded and dangerous Okatie Highway?

If you put a hundred traffic lights on 170, it does nothing to reduce the volume.

Instead of encouraging alternative means of transportation (like bicycles, walking paths, etc.), in the public areas outside of private developments (for real inter-connectivity), it seems as if some of our elected officials are okay with increasing our dependency on cars.

The “Share the Road” signs on Okatie Highway are a joke. Riding a bicycle on 170 or 278 or on Argent Blvd. is like a death sentence.

The conditions that existed 10, 20, or 30 years ago were a lot different than they are today. And present circumstances should be what government approvals are based upon. Will there be a need for more police, fire, and EMS workers … and facilities for same? Will the developers pay for their salaries and benefits?

Can private sanitation handle this growth?

When I asked about school impacts, I was told that this is not a concern down here. Huh?

I will send this statement to the Bluffton Sun for publishing – hopefully, on the same page where Mayor Sulka once reported that developers own more than 90% of Bluffton. And if I had any drawing talent, I would include a cartoon of our elected officials with their hands bound, watching developer equipment rip out thousands of trees with fleeing wildlife. The caption would read something like: “Look! Our hands are tied!” Gene Ceccrelli is a resident of Okatie.

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MEETING from page 1A

“Citizens should feel part of the process, and then everyone will feel they are part of the end result.”

Pastor Bennie Jenkins from First Zion Missionary Baptist Church is also the police department chaplain.

“I’m going to present a solution working toward the harmony. We need to have this discussion about injustice, stereotype about police officers, just to bring about harmony and understanding, and to promote dialogue,” he said.

Babkiewicz began the meeting by saying the panel wanted to hear about the community’s experiences and how changes can be made.

“Too often you’ll see statements being made across the country from law enforcement leaders, but it ends there,” said Babkiewicz. “We don’t want to have it end there. We don’t want to just make a statement. We want to sit here and talk this out.”

Frazier noted that the Bluffton community is able to engage in and have a conversation about the elephant in the room.

“We have seen these instances of brutali- ty that have occurred in our society. In each instance, it leads everyone to ask what do we do different?” she said. “Why does this continue to happen? What are the issues and circumstances surrounding it? And we ask questions, and some people are afraid to tackle the serious issue.”

Bluffton resident Erin Dalia, a mother of five, felt after the meeting was over that there was really good discussion with a lot of basis for change, a lot of ideas.

“I think it starts with the kids, and that representation matters. Our kids aren’t seeing people of color in every position. I have five children, four of which are black. And all of them have been in the AP honors, gifted and talented, programs here in the area. And they are just one of a few,” she said during the meeting. “Sometimes I wonder if the reason that I chose those classes is because I as their white mother have pushed this. It needs to start at the bottom. My 10-year-old son is currently the only black boy in his gifted and talented class in his elementary school. He hates it but he doesn’t want to leave it. He says some of the other black kids in his grade don’t talk to him because of where he is.”

As a former educator, Frazier acknowledged Dalia’s concern.

“I would often have, if not zero kids in my honors or gifted classes, maybe one or two black kids. It wasn’t that they weren’t capable of doing it. What we found was that they would group students based on their testing scores,” Frazier said. “When we looked back at the data for some of the issues, we would pose that we know that testing itself is biased. How do we remove barriers that exist early on that will separate them and give them a feeling of being better than other kids?”

Toure said it is up to individuals to act.

“Bluffton is doing a lot better than a whole bunch of other communities at the moment,” he said. “I say this all the time: good people must stand up. We want someone else to be the hero, or the she-ro. You must be the hero or the she-ro, but we tend to run from that discussion of race and ethnicity. (When) you see injustice, remove it with your hands. And if you can’t do with your hands, then speak out against it. That’s what we could all do. And that’s something simple.”

Larry Edwards, founder and executive director of Edwards Mentoring and Social Services in Acworth, Ga., is a Bluffton native, and worked in New York City for 18 years. He sees the bigger problem as having to do with privilege.

“I’ve been in every one of your situations, the only black kid in a predominantly white school. Self-hatred is real. Black-on-black is real,” he said. “The problem is, with the privilege, you haven’t dealt with inequality in the benefits that a certain group gets from the privilege. There’s a certain level of accountability that we all have to own when it comes to privilege. It’s deeper than just starting with the children. Your self-esteem is established based on how you can look at somebody and devalue them. Until we stop doing that, we are going to keep having these meetings.”

Maybin had similar concerns.

Please see MEETING on page 12A