Hilton Head’s new mayor says this age group is the future (Hint: it’s not millennials)

Hilton Head Island’s newly-elected mayor was sworn in on Dec. 4 after the third runoff election for the mayor’s seat in a row. John McCann, who was serving as the Ward 6 representative on Town Council, won the race.

McCann, 78, will be mayor until 2022.

He announced his candidacy more than a year before the election, and ran on a platform of transparency and fiscal responsibility.

McCann lives in Port Royal Plantation, where he has owned a home for 18 years.

Now that McCann is in office, here are five things to know about who he is, what he wants to accomplish and his breakfast habits:

1. He has lived all over the U.S.

McCann was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in an apartment in the Bay Ridge neighborhood.

“I had a very happy childhood,” McCann said. “We didn’t have a lot of down time because we only had a three-room apartment with one bedroom.”

He lived in New Jersey and Manhattan before moving to St. Louis, Missouri, and eventually to Columbia, South Carolina, where he worked in the finance industry. McCann retired to Hilton Head in 2003.

2. He’s got some big goals for his four years.

When asked about his top three priorities as mayor, McCann said he wants to focus on workforce development, implementing a parks and recreation master plan and finding alternatives for the U.S. 278 corridor.

• Workforce development: McCann said that he plans to address workforce housing, transportation around the island and wages and benefits to support the working population on Hilton Head. He stressed that the workforce shortage isn’t only affecting the food and beverage industry, but all working sectors on the island.
  
  
• Parks and Recreation: He wants to create a comprehensive master plan that covers all the town-owned green space and where they stand in park development. He said the south end of the island needs more parks. “We need a comprehensive plan rather than just doing this piece-by-piece,” McCann said.
  
  
• U.S. 278 corridor improvements: McCann said the gateway corridor is “one of the biggest projects the island will ever be involved in.” He said his biggest concern is making sure the people who live around the highway are considered in the process, and that “we need to do everything we can to slow the traffic down.”
  
  

3. He’s changing up the structure of Town Council meetings.

McCann wants to switch the order of Town Council meetings, which happen on the first and third Tuesday of each month at Town Hall. He said he wants the council’s meeting to begin at 4 p.m. and push executive session, where council privately discusses legal matters, to the end of the meeting.

This means that appearances by citizens will happen earlier in the evening, and McCann hopes there will be less of a lull between executive session and the council’s public meeting.

McCann also said he would like council members to hold “meet and greets” in their wards once per month. He plans to attend two in each ward per year.

4. He calls people 45 to 55 years old the “future of Hilton Head.”

When asked about who he believes to be “the future” of the island, McCann said “people between 45 and 55” because they “more or less know what they want to do, where they want to be and how they want to do it.”

He said age diversity is important because it brings new energy to the island, and that he wouldn’t want to retire in a community of all retirees.

5. He and his wife have a weekly breakfast date.

This story was originally published December 25, 2018 at 5:00 AM.