Jeff Whitten

Local Columnist

I used to think Richmond Hill needed an airport like it needed a hole in the head, or another couple subdivisions built on ancient Indian burial grounds for another burst of 10,000 more transplants from you-know-where, all part of some nefarious master plan to turn the whole area into one massive and godawful Pooler.

And then I remembered I’m not the smartest guy in the room.

Maybe there’s a good reason to have one here and the least I can do is listen to the folks who think there is. Besides, I know fine folks who think it’s a winner, and far as I know they don’t have evil intent.

Even worse, as a former big shot editor of this paper I have already gone on record saying Bryan County needs a spaceport. With a ballroom. And places to hang photos of our glorious leaders with their hot model second wives and girlfriends. But no homeless or funny looking people or non-English speakers, please, unless they’re our dear leader.

I’m also of the opinion that at least a couple of the folks objecting most stridently online and elsewhere to the project aren’t from here and probably haven’t lived here all that long, but want to shut the door to future development while discounting damage to the environment made to build their own home.

That’s hardly a new phenomenon. Back when Richard Davis was mayor, he used to point out the hypocrisy of folks who hollered about trees getting knocked down yet lived in subdivisions whose existence depended on the same method.

And for what it’s worth, I include myself in the ranks of the gleefully hypocritical. Trees were cut down in the 1970s to build my wife’s house yet I whine non-stop about what the developer devils are doing to a place I’ve known and loved for decades, and its trees and wildlife and natural beauty. Traffic is awful, people who sound like they’ve got gravel in their noses move in and try to take over the place.

Worse, property taxes are going through the roof to pay for all the new folks moving in and wanting schools and police and fire trucks and ambulances and roads and toilets that flush and water that doesn’t come out of somebody else’s commode without being treated first, and they want yards built 5 feet below sea-level that don’t flood every time it rains hard and all that without having to pay a whole lot of taxes.

And trees to match the names of the subdivisions - excuse me, gardens that grow people- springing up every time a mud puddle dries up and adding to the bank accounts of slick Florida developers who discovered long ago they can make more money off houses than pine trees while paying the same taxes. Seems to me in the balance an airport might be a good thing, or the least of our worries.

That’s unless somebody somewhere can figure out how to make closing the door to growth retroactive, and make it happen 30 or 40 years ago.

Now retired, Jeff Whitten is a former editor of the Bryan County News.