On 10/25, at the elegant Carolina Room on Dataw Island, we met Gary Kubic, the Beaufort County Administrator. His objective for this Town Hall-type meeting was to have all of us get to know him better & cover some topics such as: the current Beaufort CO. annexation program (& its pros & cons), taxes (both primary & secondary owners), school problems, & the possibility of the construction of a Publix at the corner of Polawana Road near the entrance to Dataw. His education & background are impressive with 34 years experience in gvt. His job is very diverse- facing a populous of those north & south of the Broad (River) with divergent needs & requirements....including resort & military. Also, he said that this is a county where 40% are illiterate & where there is the lowest weekly wage. He needs to juggle his decisions to meet the requirements of ALL the county constituents. He spoke of the county annexation & how that all started & where it is going. Interestingly, it was only in 1990 that our county got zoning! So besides the development problems (with builders, etc) there are growth problems with roads (transportation) & education & health - just how population dense do we want to be???? He noted that besides taxes & death the only other certainty is ‘change.’ There have been many changes over the years & there will be many, many more. For over 30 years Bft County had no specific Development Program & builders could almost do what they wanted since the penalty was minuscule for any defiance of the laws - but now there exists a policy where the county administrator can revoke the rights of a developer - so things are under better control. However, Kubic said, “ there have been NO mechanisms in place for growth such as for roads & schools in development planning.” Just within the last few weeks there have been articles regarding developer impact fees. He stated that in other parts of the COUNTRY developers BUILD the schools! (It seems that here (in Bft Co) we are putting up schools AFTER development at OUR cost & that’s too severe a burden for those already living here). Many of his calls on any given day are in regards to the fair market value (of properties) of course that is an assessors question (not his). Then he talked of the Publix proposal on Rte 21 @ Polawana location and the local negativism - with both the pros and cons. He noted that there will be $˝ Mil generated by the facility & about 100 employees & that the plans call for a building integrated to the culture of the area. He is very much in favor of the plan as are the Councilmen Paul Sommerville (Lady’s Island) & Bill McBride (St Helena). In fact, McBride also wrote a 500 word article on 10/27 supporting the Publix project! Can you imagine our surprise when an article appeared that stated that Publix was withdrawing its plans due to the local objectors?
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