COASTAL OBSERVER

Everyone agrees there was something improper about the natural resources element of Georgetown County’s comprehensive plan.

“The extent of strikes and inserts in the revised draft creates something that is no longer the Planning Commission’s original recommendation,” Monica Whalen, staff attorney for the S.C. Environmental Law Project, said

That list of goals and objectives for protecting the county’s natural resources was adopted unanimously by  the commission in 2022. It was amended by staff and County Council members after a retreat in January 2023, removing items that they thought were outside the county’s purview, such as improving shellfish beds, or would create additional expense, such as managing conserved land.

The council tabled the element before it received the second of three required readings in July 2023. It voted last month to bring it back.

“The long delayed and revised natural resources element is on your agenda for the third reading tonight improperly,” Duane Draper, who chairs the citizens group Keep It Green, told the council this week.

The Planning Commission last month voted to ask the council to formally remand natural resources, the last of 10 required elements of the comprehensive plan to get the required 10-year update, for its review.

Draper and Cindy Person, chief counsel  for Keep It Green Advocacy, said it was the commission version that should come before council.

“It was improperly before them,” Jay Watson, the county attorney, said.

The commission met before the council had voted to restore the natural resources plan to its agenda, he noted.

“What started out over two years ago as a very collaborative process of writing the natural resources element with input from a variety of community stakeholders has turned into a quagmire of improper procedure,” Draper said.

The council voted this week to send the natural resources plan back to the commission. Its members will review the 2023 revisions, and any new proposals, and hold a public hearing before voting to send a recommendation back to the council for final approval.

State law requires all local governments to adopt and maintain a comprehensive plan with 10 required elements.

Whalen and Person point to the section of the law that says “all planning elements must be an expression of the planning commission recommendations to the appropriate governing body.”

The original draft “and unauthorized revisions were the subject of various official actions, some of which we believe were procedurally improper,” Person said.

Council Member Bob Anderson said he was concerned by the objections raised by the S.C. Environmental Law Project.
“I was shocked by what was said,” he told his colleagues, holding up a copy of Whalen’s letter. “I’m kind of in agreement with these folks.”

“I disagree with the legal opinion expressed in that letter,” Watson said.

Details of that disagreement should be discussed in an executive session, he added.

Council Member Stella Mercado asked if the commission will review both the original draft and the proposed changes. Holly Richardson, the planning director, said they would.

If the commission ignores the changes, how can the council make amendments, Mercado asked.

“This body is the legislative body, not the Planning Commission,” Watson said. “Ordinance is law. A plan is not law.”