Daufuskie cop vs. golf cart at wedding? Really?

Despite the lovely beaches and the friendly locals at Daufuskie Island, about 40 of us will never return. We were with a wedding party and contributed tourist money for four days. However, a local sheriff left us feeling unnecessarily humiliated.

He ticketed two golf cart people for having “open containers” (beer cans) early one evening. We were traveling maybe 15 mph with passengers from age 91 on down – all made to wait about 20 minutes for his procedures.

Yes, we understand the law. However, if Beaufort County wants tourists, this action certainly does not encourage any of us to recommend the area.

Fix Beaufort County 911 immediately

Having been in emergency services and emergency management for 40 years, I find it inconceivable that Beaufort County Emergency Management has not planned for any disruption of the E911 system.

Since 2001 and especially since the 2013 Presidential Policy Directive, PPD-21 Critical Infrastructure Resilience, it is a shared responsibility of states and locals to prepare for and recover from communications systems disruptions. This system should have been the focus of the Emergency Management organization’s planning.

Disruption of any kind of E911 would seem to me to be a paramount planning issue, that should have been addressed when the county E911 system was installed.

Additionally, it’s hard to believe that the Emergency Operations Center was not activated, to bring in the necessary departments to address the outage and have public information officers notify the public of the failure of the equipment to receive cell calls to 911. That is what the EOC is for. That it took 12 1/2 hours to notify the public is not acceptable in this age of instant news media and the Emergency Alert System.

Surely, we cannot plan and exercise for every event, but E911 is extremely critical to public safety and needs immediate attention.

Bluffton heroics not really heroic

Your recent article discussed how the Bluffton mayor and council intervened (over the approval of the Planning Commission) to stop construction of new houses, which would have caused the removal of a tree buffer at Hampton Lake. This was a tree buffer that had been shown on master plans for the community and part of the promotional material.

This story describes action by the developer to ignore its original plans, disregard the wishes of the community, and ask the Planning Commission to “rubber stamp” what was clearly not in the best interests of the Arbor residents and Hampton Lake community. Of course, the developer now threatens to use the property for commercial use.

It is unfortunate that these one-time heroic efforts by political leaders need to be done due to the lack of strategic town planning and total disregard for current residents by developers and town officials. Unfortunately, one-time efforts are not a replacement for sound town planning and respect for residents.

Cardinal must go

I agree with columnist Marc Thiessen that the Pope should accept Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s letter of resignation.

According to a Pennsylvania grand jury report, Cardinal Wuerl moved predator priests around the Dioceses of Pittsburgh when he was the bishop there, and silenced victims with settlements that included confidentiality agreements.

The fact the current Pittsburgh bishop said there was no cover-up shows that the church just does not get it. Action must be taken to stop this culture of protecting the priests and not the children.

Cardinal Wuerl must resign to show the church does care for the children.