Hilton Head’s natural assets can’t speak for themselves; we have to stop development
Hilton Head development
I must respectfully disagree with my good friend Bruce Bartow’s recent letter calling extensive future development on Hilton Head “a reality that all residents need to come to terms with.”
Development — especially the rampant type threatened now — is an act of man, not an act of God like hurricanes, daily tides, weather, etc. The whole idea of Hilton Head, from Charles Fraser on, including the founding of the Town itself, has been to restrict development to a sustainable pace and maintain it in proper balance with the incredible natural beauty of this place — bays, sounds, wetlands, marshes, beaches, forests and the beautiful wildlife that all this makes possible.
Our natural assets can’t speak for themselves, and it’s up to us to protect them and hold our leaders’ feet to the fire if necessary to ensure that they restrain developers from irresponsible and destructive projects. It’s a struggle that will never end, so long as people want to make a quick buck and move on — leaving us holding the bag.
Hilton Head’s multi-faceted beauty is a big part of the property rights of the rest of us, and with population of 40,000 we’ve had all the major development that the land can stand.
Henry Sanders, Hilton Head
No bridge to St. Helena
No, no, NO! No bridge from Hilton Head Island to St. Helena Island. We people on the north side of the Broad River do not want Hilton Head’s traffic being dumped onto St. Helena Island. Hilton Head Island needs to solve its own traffic problems without involving Beaufort County north of the Broad River.
Roger Elmore, Beaufort
Beach parking
After strongly suggesting for many years that the town charge for parking at Coligny Beach, I was pleased to see that a parking fee had been implemented. I was disturbed to hear that there would now be a free alternative to that fee, complete with transportation!
The beach is our greatest asset and again you are giving it away. Restaurants don’t give away food and the zipline is not free. That is because they have expenses and want to continue to provide a quality experience. Free parking for Coligny Beach pretty much guarantees that the experience will not be a quality one. And the resulting litter and damage will again make the front page of this paper.
Please reconsider this decision.
Linda Farrenkopf, Hilton Head
Listen to experts
The town council will soon need to decide what to do about the current ordinance mandating masks in all public facilities. The decision is obviously rendered more difficult for them given the actions of Beaufort County and Bluffton. In order to provide some perspective on this situation, allow me to share an excellent piece of advice I received a long time ago: When you have determined that people know what they are talking about, listen to them.
In this case, it means listening to the virologists and epidemiologists , not people insisting on their “right” to go mask-less and infect others, nor neighboring municipalities who have unwisely chosen to drop their mask requirement. When these scientists with massive expertise tell us it is safe to do away with the masks, let’s do that. If they tell us we need to keep wearing masks for the short term, then that’s what we should do. It’s quite simple when political considerations do not infringe on public health issues.
Kevin Kelso, Hilton Head
No more masks
It has been well over a year since we first heard “14 days to slow the spread” of COVID-19. Hilton Head town council is going to take up renewing the mask requirement. Here are 5 reasons to not renew it.
1) The latest “super spreader” events, Easter and the Heritage, did not have the increases in COVID-19 that the experts had feared or predicted.
2) Everyone who wanted the vaccines has had the opportunity to get them.
3) The odds of contracting the disease after taking the shots is rare. And most of those have been mild cases.
4) The fear of a drug-resistant strain has not materialized.
5) If a person wants to wear a mask, they certainly can.
John Myer, Hilton Head
*Editor’s note: Both of the above letters were sent before Hilton Head town council voted to allow the mask requirement to expire on May 16.