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Commissioners address growth again
Bryan County seal 2016

The Bryan County Board of Commissioners have a clear message about growth: don’t blame them for things they didn’t vote for.

“It seems like there is a lot of growth that the county gets accused of that we’re not responsible for,” Commissioner Noah Covington said. “I’m not saying that growth is good or bad, I’m just pointing it out.”

The county’s population, which was about 7,000 in 1980, was 40,000 in 2015 and is expected to reach 60,000 by 2030.

“We only approve what happens in the unincorporated area of the county,” Administrator Ben Taylor said during a presentation on planning and zoning.

Taylor said that since 2014, the county has approved roughly 800 single-family dwellings and just eight multi-family dwellings. In that same time period, he said, the city of Richmond Hill has approved 355 single-family dwellings and 401 multi-family dwellings.

“We have to understand though that the decisions of other jurisdictions impact the county as a whole, especially when it comes to traffic,” Taylor added.

He pointed to Belfast Keller Road, Belfast River Road and Harris Trail as being impacted the most.

Ereka Akers, who lives in the Dunham Marsh subdivision, addressed commissioners about her concerns over the growth.

“It seems like more and more growth is illogical and unsafe,” she said. “Belfast River Road is basically a two-lane country road. If you try to leave at the wrong time, there’s just no way to get out of our neighborhood because of the traffic.”

Akers said that while more homes means more tax collection, she is afraid that people will stop moving to the area because of congestion.

“At least give me something I can use,” she said regarding the need for commercial development to go along with more houses. “It would be great not to have to go into the city or even to another county to spend money.”

Taylor also noted that the Georgia Department of Transportation has said it will seek bids in March of 2018 for the widening of Highway 144 and that more movement on a new interchange on I-95 at Belfast Keller Road could come as early as this fall.

“Those projects involve state and federal money, but we are staying on top of them to make sure they aren’t forgotten,” he said.

No one at the meeting spoke on behalf of an online petition started in April that called Bryan County’s growth “irresponsible” and asked for a moratorium on new subdivisions being approved. The petition so far has 662 signatures. You can read more about that at http://www.bryancountynews.com/archives/48797/.

Commissioners Chairman Carter Infinger said the county is planning to hold a series of public forums to address growth as officials streamline their long-range planning.

In other business, commissioners approved spending $118,500 to have prison crews continue to do maintenance and lawn work at various locations countywide and another $127,000 on a new dump truck for the county’s Department of Public Works. 

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Later yall, its been fun
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This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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