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Legislators back Coastal Greenway with words, funds
Annual meeting July 12 on St. Simons
greenwaymap
When completed, the 155- Coastal Georgia Greenway will provide bicycle/pedestrian paths from Tybee Island to St. Marys, and link up with trails in South Carolina and Florida. - photo by Map provided

The 20-year effort to build a bicycle-pedestrian path through coastal Georgia from Savannah to St. Marys has been given a boost by the 2016 Legislature.

The Georgia Department of Community Affairs received $100,000 to pass on to the Coastal Regional Commission, as project manager, which will oversee an engineering study to verify the 155-mile route linking South Carolina to Florida through Georgia’s six coastal counties. Already, 24 percent of the route is existing or funded for construction.

The engineering study will update current cost estimates. (Completion of the project is estimated to run between $50 million and $60 million). It will also make recommendations to complete the project in four phases within 10 years.

Issues to be addressed include major bridges, railroad crossings and existing natural, recreational and educational sites that will become trailheads to access the trail.

In addition to the funding, the legislators approved Senate Resolution 730, which provides a joint House/Senate resolution encouraging the Coastal Regional Commission and other entities to support implementation of the Coastal Georgia Greenway. Sponsors of SR 730 were Sen. William Ligon, R-Brunswick, and Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah.

SR 730 recognizes the economic, health, recreational and environmental benefits from the trail, and it encourages the Coastal Regional Commission to oversee implementation of the greenway in collaboration with the Department of Transportation, Department of Natural Resources and Coastal Georgia Greenway, a nonprofit organization.

The Coastal Georgia Greenway Inc. will have its annual meeting at 6:30 p.m. July 12 on St. Simons Island, at Neptune Park in the Casino Building, Room 114. The public is invited to attend to learn about the project.

"My view of the greenway is this is an absolute win-win situation for the counties along the coast," state Rep. Jeff Jones. R-St. Simons Island, said. "I support all the ways of getting it built. We need to figure out a way to make it happen. It’ll more than pay for itself. It will have a huge economic impact."

To learn more about the project, go to http://www.coastalgeorgia%20greenway.org.

Hickson is volunteer CEO of Coastal Georgia Greenway Inc.

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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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