COASTAL OBSERVER
Vol. XXXIII No. 37
Pawleys Island, South Carolina ~ March 5, 2015
50 cents
Cleary offers alternative to governor’s road plan
BY JASON LESLEY
COASTAL OBSERVER
State Sen. Ray Cleary said Gov. Nikki Haley’s plan to fix roads is unworkable and will offer an alternative next
week in the form of his own bill that will
raise more than twice as much money
for infrastructure.
Cleary said Haley’s $400 million proposal to raise the tax on gasoline by 10
cents a gallon, cut the state’s income tax
from 7 to 5 percent over 10 years and reorganize the Department of Transportation fails to provide good roads and does
not address any growth in traffic.
Cleary is
drafting
a bill to
raise the
gas tax,
end the
small business tax
and shift
roads –
and money
– to the
counties.
“What I’m hoping the governor did,”
Cleary said, “was to throw something
out that says ‘I’m ready to talk.’ ”
Cleary said he told the governor
about his plan to raise $1.2 billion. His
bill addresses the same concerns Haley
raised but in a different manner with a
more likely chance of becoming law. “To
be honest,” Cleary said, “the governor
realizes her income tax plan is dead on
arrival. She needs something.”
Haley has promised to veto any alternative road legislation so Cleary’s bill
would need strong support in the legislature to win an override. “That’s the essential question everybody has,” Cleary
said. A workable plan to fix the state’s
roads will require bipartisan approval
to pass the Senate, he said.
Cleary said his bill turns the maintenance of over 20,000 miles of roads
over to the state’s 46 counties and provides permanent funding. “All of a sudden now, that will allow DOT to be
much more efficient and focus where
they need to be focused: the main highway systems of the state,” he said. “We
would require less money and in my
opinion less bureaucracy by eliminating all these county farm roads. There
are 15,000 roads in their system that
SEE “CLEARY,” PAGE 3
ENVIRONMENT
Opponents
organize
to fight
offshore oil
BY JASON LESLEY
COASTAL OBSERVER
Foes of oil and gas production
off the coast of South Carolina
are mobilizing to present their
arguments against seismic testing and exploration to government officials this month.
Members of the Winyah
Chapter of Sierra Club made
plans to attend a meeting of the
Bureau of Ocean Energy Management next Wednesday in
Mount Pleasant and to write
the state Department of Health
and Environmental Control to
argue against approving seismic testing in the ocean.
A second group organized by
Goffinet McLaren and Terry
Munson met at the Waccamaw
Library to represent Litchfield
Beach and Pawleys Island in efforts to oppose oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic.
“I am personally sad to know
leasing is being opened up off
the Atlantic coast,” Peg Howell
told the Sierra Club. She was
the first woman to work on an
oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico after getting a degree in petroleum engineering. She knows
the hazards of offshore drilling and the need for the government to try and balance interests. Adhering to regulations
gets challenging when workers
are on a rig, she said.
Howell encouraged people
concerned about offshore drilling in the Atlantic to challenge
it in a scientific way. “Go at it
with reasoned thought,” she
said. “Our hope is that we will
be able to present information
to reduce the amount of acreage available for leasing by explaining to the BOEM the other things that are happening in
that ocean.”
The first comment period
is the most important, Howell
said, because it’s about the environmental impact statement.
SEE “DRILLING,” PAGE 3
Photos by Tanya Ackerman/Coastal Observer
A sure sign of spring: Prom fashions
Waccamaw High students showed what the well-dressed will be wearing
to the prom this year. Models include, clockwise from left, Price Rowland,
Jada Torrance, Meagan Fitzgerald photographed by Clara Johnson; Aaron
Jordan, Hans Stoetzer, Price Rowland and Ben Hughes; Leea Whetstone,
Hunter King and Maddy Crowe. More photos at coastalobserver.com.
EDUCATION | Coastal Carolina University
SAFETY
Leader of lifelong learning departs
BY JASON LESLEY
COASTAL OBSERVER
Linda Ketron says she’s
done all she can for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
and will leave her post as coordinator for non-accredited and
continuing studies at Coastal
Carolina University April 1.
She doesn’t like the words
resigning or retiring to describe
her decision. “There’s no real
name for NEXT!” she said. “I
need a little time to figure out
what the next is.”
Ketron brought her adult education program called CLASS
(Community Learning About
Special Subjects) under the
Coastal Carolina umbrella in
2004 because she thought it
was time to institutionalize
it. She began it as Senior Semesters in 1993. After about
18 months, the classes moved
to Brookgreen Gardens and
was renamed Campus Brookgreen while Ketron was coordinator of volunteers. When she
left Brookgreen in 1997 to open
Art Works in the Litchfield Ex-
Tanya Ackerman/Coastal Observer
Linda Ketron started her adult-ed program in 1993.
change, CLASS soon followed
with 10 courses and about 90
students. It had grown to 80
courses with 600 students by
the time CCU came calling
with a new facility on Willbrook Boulevard and an op-
portunity to make the program
permanent.
As she leaves 11 years later, Coastal’s OLLI program is
the second largest in the nation with 400 classes at four
SEE “KETRON,” PAGE 4
PAWLEYS ISLAND | The Madeline Foundation
Guard units
from five states
join disaster
recovery drill
The skies over Georgetown
County will be humming with
military aircraft this weekend
as the National Guard conducts a multi-agency disaster
preparedness exercise in cooperation with local emergency
personnel. Operation Vigilant
Guard will test relationships
between civilian, local, federal
and military partners in simulated emergencies.
The scenario for the exercise involves landfall of a Category 4 hurricane similar to
Hurricane Hugo in 1989, moving through the Palmetto State
into North Carolina and causing widespread destruction.
Georgetown County will be
a lead player in the exercise. A
mobile emergency operations
center will be set up at the
county airport. Scenarios will
include the collapse of a major
bridge, a rescue from a building
hit by a tornado and airlifting
casualties from water.
— JASON LESLEY
Inside this issue
Special needs program runs afoul of zoning
BY CHARLES SWENSON
COASTAL OBSERVER
A program for special needs
children that had planned to
move to a Pawleys Island beach
house this week is now reviewing its options after receiving a
cease and desist letter from the
town zoning official.
“The board is meeting. We’ll
talk to an attorney,” said Peggy
Wheeler-Cribb, founder of the
Special Needs Madeline Home
Foundation. She planned to
bring children from a special
needs program she started at
First Baptist Church in Georgetown to her home on Pawleys
because it has outgrown its existing space.
That house, owned by
Wheeler-Cribb’s son, Darwin
Wheeler, is zoned for residential use. In a letter last month,
the town zoning administrator,
told Wheeler the tea room and
gift shop fundraising activities
of the foundation violated the
zoning rules.
Tanya Ackerman/Coastal Observer
Fundraising teas began in January at the house.
Wheeler-Cribb said the teas
were all prepared off the island and brought to the house,
where guests made a $25 donation. “I don’t even have a stove
in the house,” she said.
And the gift shop, set up by
her niece, sold donated items,
Wheeler-Cribb said.
“These two activities are
commercial,” Joanne Ochal,
the
zoning
administrator,
wrote last month. She works
for Georgetown County, which
provides building and zoning services to the town under
contract. “You may notice that
there are several consignment
shops on the Waccamaw Neck
and they are all in commercial district, not residential districts.”
Ochal also told Wheeler the
Madeline Foundation’s plans
for “day care programs, camps,
after school programs and respite care” would violate the
residential zoning.
Wheeler-Cribb said her
church-based program has
been holding camps on the island for 12 years. “They get to
play in the ocean and the sand.
In the summer, we have family
day once a month,” she said.
On her wall, she has a
framed copy of a letter from the
former owner Zaidee Lee Brawley that outline summer camps
for boys and girls held in the
summer of 1933. The cost was
$45 for two weeks.
The special needs program
SEE “SPECIAL NEEDS,” PAGE 5
Kennedy’s next step: A
12-year-old said it wasn’t
bravery that led to the decision to amputate her leg.
SECOND FRONT
Sports: Warriors win two
gold medals at state wrestling
finals.
PAGE 20
Crime ...................................7
Opinion................................8
Crossword........................ 12
What’s On ......................... 13
Classifieds.........................16
Sports................................ 15
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