School board member raises spectre of pedophiles in mobile home park rezoning fight
Plans to eventually build a new RV park along Gibbett Road in Bluffton are rankling some neighbors who fear the move will change the heart of their Pritchardville neighborhood.
Surrounded mostly by single-family homes, an RV park could attract a transient, possibly criminal crowd to an otherwise quiet area, argues Beaufort County school board member Evva Anderson, who has lived across from the property on Gibbett Road for 26 years.
"If anyone in this room believes that someone driving an RV is not a pedophile or a criminal -- I'm not saying they all are, but pedophiles like to hide out in RV parks and places like that," Anderson told Beaufort County Council on Monday night.
"So that is a concern for me with the children that I have in the house," she said. "I'd rather have a community, quite frankly, of homeowners who have some pride in ownership across the street from me."
But the family behind the plans and county leaders scoffed at the generalization this week.
Instead, they contend a family-friendly RV park would dramatically improve the lakeside property that is now home to more than a dozen aging or dilapidated trailers.
"I just can't understand why you'd be against this," County Councilman Brian Flewelling told Anderson on Monday night. "I would think anything on that property would be an improvement over what's there now, and that'd be good for everybody."
A DANGER?
The fight over the 36-acre property along Huggins Hollow Drive just off Gibbett and May River roads began last fall.
Bluffton resident Andrea Hubbard and Steve Huggins, Hubbard's cousin and owner of the six-parcel tract, considered a way to improve the property without selling the land that has been with their family for a century, Hubbard said Wednesday.
An RV park for traveling families fit the bill, but required the duo to apply for a new zoning classification that permitted such developments. That change has been approved by county staff and was endorsed by County Council at the second of three votes on Monday.
It was that application that first caught the attention of Anderson and nearby resident Michelle Mancini, who lives on Rainbow Road.
"The crux of this particular rezoning matter is that the choice of zoning is the lesser of two evils, rather than something that makes sense for the area," Mancini wrote to county leaders late last year.
Anything other than single-family residences just won't fit with the surrounding homes, Anderson and Mancini contend. Big, heavy RVs would clog the narrow Gibbett Road and endanger neighborhood children who walk to bus stops on the road's shoulder, where there is no sidewalk, just across the woods from Pritchardville Elementary School.
The pair also contends a park or campground could attract "transient" people with less than civil backgrounds -- a fear perpetuated by dozens of news stories across the Internet about sexual offenders who live in trailer parks. Two registered sex offenders live in the Stoney Crest Plantation Campground less than two miles from the proposed RV park, but no residents of the existing trailers are registered offenders, according to the state's sex offender registry.
"Of course I want progress" beyond the existing trailers, Anderson said. "But not in a negative way right in the middle of a residential neighborhood ... The reality is that people hide out in places like that.
"You don't know the neighbor next door is not going to molest your children. I understand that," she said. "Yes, it's harsh, but any place there's a lot of transient people, it's a lot more dangerous for people."
ONE MORE VOTE
Assertions about criminal activity are ridiculous, Hubbard and some county leaders say.
"I just cannot believe she would even say something like that," Hubbard said. "This is going to be a plus for them. How could you say you want to keep what's there? It sickens me ... It's terrible."
Councilman Tabor Vaux and Flewelling agreed, noting there's little basis to generalize about RV owners. Both also argue rezoning the land is better for the future of the community, protecting against more dense development or other commercial uses.
"I don't want the same thing that everything else in Bluffton is with cookie-cutter houses or trailers," Hubbard added. "We're trying to do something where there's nothing like that around."
Anderson, Mancini and Councilwoman Cynthia Bensch, who represents the area, intend to continue fighting the rezoning.
The issue will be up for a final vote and public hearing at the council's meeting at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 25.
At the very least, neighbors need more time to examine the proposal and understand the consequences of the zoning change, Mancini and Anderson said.
"I've learned from being on the school board (that) sometimes you've got to take a minute and breathe or sometimes you do things without enough time to process," Anderson said. "Then there are very unintentional effects. Then you have to go around the backdoor and fix the effects."
Follow reporter Zach Murdock on Twitter at twitter.com/IPBG_Zach and on Facebook at facebook.com/IPBGZach.
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- Several tenants confirmed for final stages of Bluffton Promenade development, Nov. 4, 2015
- Bluffton weighing May River Road annexation proposal, Aug. 18, 2014
This story was originally published January 13, 2016 at 7:22 PM with the headline "School board member raises spectre of pedophiles in mobile home park rezoning fight."