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Hearing garners positive feedback
Residents turn out to share thoughts, see plans for Hwy. 144
144 hearing 1
Bryan County Administrator Ray Pittman, left, talks with a Georgia DOT engineer at Thursdays public hearing on the proposed widening of Highway 144. A large number of residents attended the hearing, where they were able to gather information from DOT engineers about the project, as well as provide input. - photo by Jeff Whitte
Jeff Whitte
Bryan County News
Updated: Feb 22, 2014, 3:31 PM
Published: Feb 22, 2014, 3:33 PM

Frank Biezenbos has driven Highway 144 just about every day for the past 19 years.
Thursday, Biezenbos drove the few miles east from his home in Strathy Hall to the County Administrative Complex to attend a public hearing on the proposed widening of 144 and give state engineers his two cents on the project.
In short, he’s for it.
“It’s going to be a good thing. It’s going to save lives,” said Biezenbos, who knows first-hand the dangers the heavily traveled road poses.
He was on his way to work one morning when he was involved in a wreck in front of Strathy Hall. He said his pickup was hit by a drunk driver.
“It totaled my truck, totaled his car,” Biezenbos said as he filled out a DOT comment sheet. “If the road had been four-lanes at that time, it would have averted that accident.”
And Biezenbos, a retired Gulfstream worker, was just one of dozens of South Bryan residents who attended Thursday’s hearing to learn what the proposed widening will mean for them.
Most seemed pleased with what they heard, officials said, about the project to widen 144 from two to four lanes along a five-mile stretch running east from Timber Trial Road to Belfast River Road.
The work is expected to cost around $18 million and take about 30 months to complete once contractors start moving dirt.
While some details seem fuzzy, the DOT says right of way is being authorized this year and will be bought in 2015. And it appears actual work could begin on the project as soon as late 2016, though officials say there could be delays.
But that seemed a minor issue Thursday.
“You’d be surprised what they like about the project,” said DOT District Engineer Karon Ivory. “I haven’t heard much negative about it at all.”
Not that everybody liked what the DOT has planned. Joe and Margaret Lawrence’s home fronts Highway 144 across the street from The Cove condos. Joe Lawrence, who is retired military, said he had three issues.
“No.1, cars end up in my yard periodically when they run off the road. So when the road is closer to the house, I don’t want them coming in through my front porch,” he said.
“Also, my septic tank field is right in front of the house, so that will have to be relocated. And also, how close in are they coming?”

Read more in the Feb. 22 edition of the News.

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Later yall, its been fun
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Ted O'Neil
Updated: May 23, 2018, 6:03 PM
Published: May 23, 2018, 6:05 PM

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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