Jeff Whitten: Time flies while you’re having enjoyable… or constructing an airport

Jeff Whitten

Local Columnist

I used to suppose Richmond Hill wanted an airport prefer it wanted a gap within the head, or one other couple subdivisions constructed on historical Indian burial grounds for an additional burst of 10,000 extra transplants from you-know-where, all a part of some nefarious grasp plan to show the entire space into one huge and godawful Pooler.

And then I remembered I’m not the neatest man within the room.

Maybe there’s a great purpose to have one right here and the least I can do is take heed to the parents who suppose there’s. Besides, I do know fantastic of us who suppose it’s a winner, and much as I do know they don’t have evil intent.

Even worse, as a former massive shot editor of this paper I’ve already gone on document saying Bryan County wants a spaceport. With a ballroom. And locations to hold photographs of our wonderful leaders with their scorching mannequin second wives and girlfriends. But no homeless or humorous trying individuals or non-English audio system, please, until they’re our expensive chief.

I’m additionally of the opinion that at the least a few the parents objecting most stridently on-line and elsewhere to the venture aren’t from right here and doubtless haven’t lived right here all that lengthy, however need to shut the door to future improvement whereas discounting harm to the surroundings made to construct their very own house.

That’s hardly a brand new phenomenon. Back when Richard Davis was mayor, he used to level out the hypocrisy of oldsters who hollered about bushes getting knocked down but lived in subdivisions whose existence trusted the identical technique.

And for what it’s value, I embody myself within the ranks of the gleefully hypocritical. Trees had been minimize down within the Nineteen Seventies to construct my spouse’s home but I whine continuous about what the developer devils are doing to a spot I’ve identified and beloved for many years, and its bushes and wildlife and pure magnificence. Traffic is terrible, individuals who sound like they’ve obtained gravel of their noses transfer in and attempt to take over the place.

Worse, property taxes are going by means of the roof to pay for all the brand new of us shifting in and wanting faculties and police and fireplace vans and ambulances and roads and bathrooms that flush and water that doesn’t come out of anyone else’s commode with out being handled first, and so they need yards constructed 5 toes beneath sea-level that don’t flood each time it rains exhausting and all that with out having to pay a complete lot of taxes.

And bushes to match the names of the subdivisions – excuse me, gardens that develop people- arising each time a mud puddle dries up and including to the financial institution accounts of slick Florida builders who found way back they will earn more money off homes than pine bushes whereas paying the identical taxes. Seems to me within the steadiness an airport is likely to be a great factor, or the least of our worries.

That’s until anyone someplace can work out methods to make closing the door to progress retroactive, and make it occur 30 or 40 years in the past.

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