The Land Use Element of the Georgetown County Comprehensive Plan is online and your input is needed to make this plan a good plan for our future.
The listening session is online and you can hear some concerns that were raised about the new plan.
The speakers were few but all raise important points that need to be incorporated into the final element. All the elements of the comp plan should speak to each other and at present they do not and this is a huge misstep as this 10 year guide does nothing to lead us into a future that aligns with community input that largely remains ignored.
Failing to plan for affordable housing on the part of the county is now an emergency to spend the funds and that is why the rush is on to get the LUE passed and as speakers noted, the public input they already received was ignored.
Don’t believe me - only 3 planning commissioners even showed up for the listening session. Why?
While affordable housing is a major focus of the land use element, it fails to recognize the land and water connections that are vital to sustainably develop in an area constrained by water and wetlands and susceptible to flooding. The health of our people and quality of our waters are intrinsically linked.
Most importantly, the plan does little to honor the framework - Preserving Character and Culture. This is a great concept that REQUIRES - meaningful conversations and community engagement.
Special emphasis areas in Pawleys Island - slated for affordable housing focus and density increases do not honor the culture of the Gullah people who are subject to gentrification and displacement. Murrells Inlet has similar issues where the new residents are welcome and existing communities have been ignored for decades.
YES we need new quality development but should it be at the expense of cohesive communities that have been underserved for decades? Are we honoring our culture when we ignore it?
The county has not updated zoning to align with the current plan and ignored doing so since it was completed and we have zoning that has not changed for over 30 years. If they had updated zoning as required by state law, that follows the comp plan our zoning would have been updated years ago.
Water quality is not considered in the LUE and our creek continues to degrade. Land development practices are the leading cause of water quality impairments. We are all connected to the CREEK!
Degradation starts in the Watershed and goes downstream! Our fishery and local economy depend on the quality of our waters. We are reaching a critical point that needs to recognized before we set ourselves up for much higher costs of restoration.
On another important note, sea level rise is only considered for NEW development in the Southern sections of the county. Now would be a good time for Georgetown County Government to recognize the GLARING error that ALL areas of the county will be impacted. Why did they leave this important part out for other areas?
The NEW Land Use Element can be reviewed HERE.
The plan now is to use the NEW future land use maps and increase densities that do not align with community goals to protect our creek or honor culturally significant areas on the Waccamaw Neck or the Historic District of Murrells Inlet.
The next steps include receiving comments from the public which will likely not last long since the county is pushing hard to get the plan approved by June.
A workshop with the Planning Commission to be determined, sometime in March. Then a public hearing to adopt the plan.
Please make sure you get your comments in to help guide our future that respects land and water our culturally significant communities and does not ignore the issues we need to address before creating additional problems in our community.
Don’t delay. Send comments to landuse@gtcounty.org