‘A good crisis’: Hilton Head council candidates tackle topics crucial and lighthearted at forum

From rising sea levels to the surging popularity of pickleball, voters presented candidates for Hilton Head Town Council Wards 2, 4 and 5 with a broad spectrum of questions during a public forum Wednesday evening.

The hour-and-a-half session, hosted by the Hilton Head-Bluffton League of Women Voters, featured Ward 2 candidates Stephen Arnold and Patsy Brison; Ward 4 candidates Tamara Becker and Kim Likins, and Ward 5 candidates Stephen Alfred and Chuck Dowd.

Candidates elected in this race will serve four-year terms, from December 2022 to December 2026.

Here are some of their views:

Candidates split on U.S. 278 bridge plan

Arnold was the first to speak on the forum’s opening question: Where do you stand on the recently struck agreement between the Town of Hilton Head and Beaufort County to advance the U.S. 278 corridor project with one instead of two new bridges?

Arnold said after long periods of back-and-forth between the town, state Department of Transportation and Beaufort County, he feels it’s time to move ahead with the project.

“We’ve all been over that bridge and seen the condition of it as it deteriorates,” Arnold said. “The state and the county are ready to move forward with the bridge, and I think we should be as well. ... It’s going to be one bridge, in (the state and county’s) opinion that’s how it should be, and I don’t necessarily disagree.”

With the current span of bridges only separated by “maybe three feet” in some places, Arnold said the current construction already functions essentially as a single bridge.

Brison agreed that it’s time for the town to move on with the project, but clarified she’d prefer a two-bridge construction instead of the six-lane bridge proposed by the state Department of Transportation and Beaufort County.

“The community’s kind of tired of hearing about 278,” Brison said. “We all care about the appearance on our island, the impact on our environment, the impact on historic Gullah neighborhoods ... the preference is for two bridges, that’s the preference that I’m hearing on the island. I understand the mechanics of one bridge, but I’m very concerned about the monolithic structure.”

She also supports the project’s adoption of a traffic signal system along the corridor that could improve safety for pedestrians and bikers at Hilton Head’s intersections.

The lone incumbent among the six candidates, Becker voted against the town adopting the county’s “memorandum of understanding” last week. Despite her opposition vote to the county’s agreement as a whole, she said there are some provisions in the document that make sense, like commissioning a new independent end-to-end study of the 278 corridor and the traffic system.

Becker said it’s crucial the town withhold its municipal consent to the project until new data from the study can inform potential recommendations to improve SCDOT’s plans. She also said she’s concerned there remains no citizen or town council representation on the committee that will select the firm running the study.

Dowd, who held several positions in the New York Police Department, said the many tunnels and bridges connecting island sections of New York City showed him how crucial those connections are. He also supported more than one bridge, highlighting the potential issues that could arise in an emergency if the island’s only connection point were rendered impassable as in Florida’s Sanibel Island causeway.

But Alfred now considers the one or two bridge debate moot. The county’s plan is to move forward with a single bridge, and with SCDOT and the county overseeing the project, he said the town’s input on that aspect is severely limited.

“The issue, from my perspective, is decided,” Alfred said.

Workforce housing after the Chimney Cove ‘crisis’

On workforce housing, however, Alfred said the town is in a unique position to act quickly on its next steps.

“We all see that local governments don’t move very fast ... it’s like Ecclesiastes; the time has to be right,” Alfred said. “The Chimney Cove crisis has changed a lot, and there’s a saying in local government and elsewhere: Don’t forgo the opportunity of a good crisis.”

Chimney Cove is an apartment complex on the island for low-income renters. Recently, the owners gave tenants a 30-day eviction notice, which has since been rescinded.

Alfred and other candidates broadly agreed that the town should approach the affordable housing issue through a variety of means, including public-private partnerships similar to the town’s plan to develop the Northpointe Tract, and through funding from state, federal and nonprofit sources like Habitat for Humanity.

Many of the workers who staff the island’s restaurants and hotels may still prefer living off the island, Brison said, and the town should find ways to facilitate affordable transportation for workers as well.

“A lot of folks that are in the workforce prefer to live in their own home communities, and we should honor that,” Brison said. “That’s where they grew up, that’s where their families live, that’s where their children go to school.”

Now is the time to stop commissioning new, lengthy studies and act on the problem directly, Brison said.

Becker said the town has acted in the past few years, but some solutions have either been ineffective or taken time to have an impact.

“In terms of whether or not we’ve been acting, we indeed have,” Becker said. “There was a housing study that was commissioned four or five years ago, and within it the town manager has extrapolated a strategic plan that we’ve been putting into place.”

The town has implemented some of the report’s suggestions, Becker said, including encouraging conversion of vacant commercial spaces to housing.

“Some have stepped up from the private sector and taken advantage of that, that was a little bit slow getting going but it’s taking off now,” Becker said.

Offering developers a density bonus to bring more housing units than normal onto parcels of land, however, hasn’t been as successful.

“From my perspective, that was a disaster,” Becker said. “We didn’t get from it the number of housing units that we needed, and moreover, our land management ordinance wasn’t prepared for the type of structure that was to come forward. I’m not in favor of increasing density to create workforce housing.”

Likins, who was on the Town Council when Hilton Head commissioned a 2018 study of the island’s housing needs, said the town should review that plan and implement all of its suggested fixes. Since the study was completed, she said town officials have only acted on some of the suggestions made.

Money a concern for mid-island park

While all candidates expressed support for the Mid-Island park project, careful funding was a common concern. With the base costs of all phases combined projected to be over $50 million, Arnold — even as the father of two young girls who enjoy the island’s parks — said there are “bigger fish to fry” in the immediate future.

“As others have spoken to, another large concern with building the park is maintaining the park,” Arnold said. “That’s a lot of acreage to take on. ... Before we move forward with building and going through with the entire project, I think the best thing we can do is take off bites that we can chew one at a time and move forward while we address other issues.”

The town currently has plans to rehabilitate other parks across the island, Becker said. She agreed the costs of totally completing the Mid-Island project would be high.

“The Mid-Island park will cost upwards, if not more than, $80 million dollars if it were completed all at once,” Becker said. “The idea is that it’s not going to be. We simply, for far less money than that, can clean up the park, and we can provide proper storm water drainage from Port Royal and out, so that is an important aspect of what we’re doing at that Port Royal site.”

Dowd highlighted the potential health benefits of the park project and said he’d seen data suggesting Seattle had saved millions in health-care costs through good stewardship of its local parks.

Outside help sought on rising seas

Rising sea levels pose a unique threat to coastal and island cities, and Becker acknowledged that Hilton Head’s Lowcountry neighbors in Charleston are working on a strategy with help from Danish and Finnish experts to protect the city from high waters.

“The number of companies that are involved in that have put together a comprehensive plan for sea level rise, and there are those on this island ... that were involved and engaged in that study and planning,” Becker said. “I’ve been speaking with them and working with them to better understand the process moving forward.”

Overdevelopment of land compounds drainage issues, Becker said. She proposed reducing the size of homes compared to their overall lot size, a crucial step for an island that is “at capacity.”

Alongside continued investment in beach renourishment programs, Likins said it’s time to start replacing Hilton Head’s aging drainage infrastructure.

“Our storm water system here on Hilton Head is around 60 years old now and aging every day,” Likins said. “It’s estimated that it would cost about $120 million to completely redo all of it. I think that we need to get busy, we have some work to do.”

Pickleball, the arts supported by all

Two final questions submitted by forum attendees polled speakers on their support for pickleball on the island, particularly the proposal to construct 24 new courts for the sport, and additional arts funding from the town.

Each candidate expressed their support for both, though most said they weren’t able to commit to additional arts funding from the town without understanding where the funds would go or how much is currently committed to the island’s arts programs.

With pickleball recognized as the fastest-growing sport in the country, all candidates voiced their support for more courts on the island.

“My only issue is I don’t know if 24 courts is going to be enough, it’s growing so quickly,” Dowd quipped. “As far as the location (for the courts), we can look at that, we can study it, but these have to get built.”

Election Day for Hilton Head’s municipal seats is Nov. 8, with early voting open from Oct. 24 to Nov. 5. The full League of Women Voters forum can be viewed online here.