Get to know your Council Candidates
On April 6, Folly Beach voters will choose three Council Members to represent their interests for the next four years. Seven candidates want your vote and you will be bombarded daily with campaign literature. Rather than add to the rhetoric, I have sought to give you a feel for who the candidates are as individuals so you have a clearer perspective of why they say what they say. To avoid bias, the interviews are presented in the order in which they were conducted. Ladies and gentlemen, I present your candidates for City Council.
DJ Rich
Rich came to Folly Beach in 2003 and “hasn’t looked back.” He was at Clemson majoring in business management, but was eager to get some “real work and life experience.” His grandmother, Florence O’Donnell, had been a Folly fixture for years, operating the “Sanitary Cafe” on Center Street back in the 1970s and Rich spent much of his childhood here. “I knew it was where I’d end up making my home,” he said.
Rich was general manager at a restaurant, but like most folks in the food and beverage industry, he wanted a place of his own. In 2005, he and his grandmother took over Planet Follywood on Center Street, where you can find Rich most days if you want to talk politics, which he’s happy to do.
Rich said he was becoming more and more concerned as he watched a City Council so consumed with in-fighting that it couldn’t get any legislation passed. “I was constantly having to watch what they were doing in order to protect my business,” Rich said. “It was time to either put up or shut up.” So Rich threw his hat in the ring.
It did not seem to Rich that Council members were prepared for meetings. “After a while you ask yourself, ‘If I’m doing more homework than they are, why aren’t I on the Council?’ It just went from there.”
Rich said decisions are made too often without public input. “Let’s get public input before we hire consultants,” he said, citing the recent traffic study that he said cost taxpayers $40,000.
Trash and litter is a major concern for Rich and he thinks Folly Beach should set up its own recycling center, which he believes would pay for itself within a short period of time. “Why should we constantly be begging County for more pick-ups and more bins. Why should we let them come out and make money off of us?”
Rich serves on the Accommodations Tax Committee and received the “Good Neighbor Award” in 2009 for organizing “Follypalooza” and “A Taste of Folly” to help Center Street businesses in the off-season. He said he will bring common sense and a can-do attitude to City Council.
Rich can be reached at 475-9787 or at planet_follywood@yahoo.com.
Paul Hume
Hume was living in Wisconsin, but felt the lure of the sea. He had been up and down the East Coast from Florida to Virginia looking for the right place to settle in. After one night in a house behind what was then the “Purple Pelican,” Hume and his wife leased an off-season beach house for six months. “That was 13 years ago,” Hume said, “and we’re still here. It’s easy to get hooked on Folly.”
Hume has served on the Planning & Zoning Commission for six years and has thought about running for City Council for some time. He said what pushed him over the edge was when Council was discussing a smoking ban and one member said “. . . there’s precedence for individuals to give up their rights” for the collective good.
“The answer to Folly’s problems is not us who live here giving up more of our rights,” he said. “We already have more laws than we probably need. Whether it’s parking or garbage or noise, we have the ordinances. Enforce them!”
The “anything goes” attitude people have about Folly could be changed using a common-sense approach, according to Hume. “Take litter, for instance,” he explained. “What if we were to issue a bunch of tickets one week-end and have a story in the Post & Courier – “$72,000 in Litter Tickets Written at Folly Beach” – or undercover cops issuing tickets for littering?” He said it would not take long for people to see the light. “We would not have to do this over the long run. Perception is reality. Folly would no longer be considered the place where you can get away with anything.”
Hume said not much can be done about the 14,000 cars that squeeze their way onto Folly Island on a summer weekend short of putting up a gate. “We don’t want to live in a gated community,” he said, “so we need to come up with a way to deal with the problem.” One of his suggestions was to take two photos of violations – one of the infraction and another of the offender’s license plate – so when he shows up in court he can’t wiggle out of paying his fine.
Hume said he would bring to the job his experience on the Planning & Zoning Commission, a pragmatic, common-sense way of looking at issues, and the ability to help move things forward.
Hume can be reached at 588-2605 or humep@bellsouth.net.
Susan Breslin
Breslin got to Folly Beach the way most folks do – by accident. She came to visit and kept coming back. In 1995, she bought a house on E Arctic. Although she worked for many years as a city planner in New York City, Breslin pointed out that she was raised in a small town and feels very much at home in Folly.
Breslin said she is running for City Council because the priorities of the City are off-balance. “The needs and interests of the residents ought to come first and far too often are coming last, she said. “
It troubles Breslin that Folly is losing its sense of community. She said 80% of the houses on Folly are assessed at 6%, which indicates they are either second homes or rentals. “I would like to bring more good neighbors to Folly Beach by marketing it as a place to retire or raise a family.”
She would go after policies unfair to residents, such as parking permits only for property owners, requiring residents to purchase garbage containers from the City, and charging excessive minimums for water consumption. “Folly Beach is full of small households that use only one-third of the water they are charged for and generate only a tiny amount of garbage.” She said it is not fair to treat them the same as vacation rentals that make completely different demands on City services.
Festivals on Center Street have become a way of life on Folly and are sometimes portrayed as necessary evils. Breslin would reshape them so they are less of an inconvenience to residents. She said these festivals help only some of the downtown businesses and they do not keep taxes from going up. “Center Street businesses don’t pay accommodations taxes,” she said, adding that it is A-tax money that keeps taxes down.
Another concern is lack of code enforcement. She said it is distressing how many good rules are not enacted because Planning or Council members say “What’s the point, it won’t be enforced anyway.” She would hire an Enforcement Officer to make Folly’s codes and regulations meaningful.
Breslin said she would bring to the job experience as a city planner, two years on the Folly Beach Planning & Zoning Commission, and a conviction that the needs of residents are best served through open government. “City Council doesn’t even know what’s going on sometimes. The City should be open about its business,” she said. “The City belongs to us.”
Breslin can be reached at 588-3026 or breslins@att.net.
Pennell Clamp
Clamp is a native South Carolinian who bought a home on E Ashley 15 years ago and now lives on Oak Island. “I was retired and had a lot of time on my hands,” Clamp said, “so I started sitting in on Council meetings and saw things going on I didn’t agree with.” What bothered Clamp most during his three-year observation period was the way he saw Council throwing money around. His research showed an annual budget that had soared from $2.2 million in 2005 to $6.1 million in 2009. In the same time period, Clamp said the number of City employees increased from 21 to 56.
“I’m not a Conservative or a Liberal,” Clamp said. “I’m a realist.” Clamp ran a business of his own for 20 years and said the City should be run like a business. It should be effective and efficient and there should be accountability. “City Hall doesn’t sell anything or produce anything. They have to rely on money coming from taxpayers in order to exist. You have to be prudent when you are spending someone else’s money. You have to spend it like it was your own money.”
An admitted “numbers freak,” Clamp would go over the budget line by line, something he said many Council members neglect to do. “You can box me up and send me to Bull Street if I ever vote for a tax increase,” he said, adding that while it’s not possible to foresee an emergency that might necessitate a tax increase, “We should turn over every stone and make sure we’re lean and clean before we ever ask the taxpayers for more money.”
The fragile nature of Folly’s environment and ecosystem concern Clamp, who said there should be zero tolerance for abusing, misusing, neglecting, littering or otherwise disrupting the land, beaches, waterways and marshlands of Folly Beach. “There is no excuse for anyone not living in harmony with our environment and ecosystem,” he said.
Clamp, who currently serves on the Board of Zoning Appeals, said he would bring to the job a substantial business background, a true interest in the community, the time and inclination to crunch the numbers, and a talent for good, honest, debate. Referring to recent issues with City Council, he said “We need to work in harmony in the interests of the 2,200 people who live on this island.”
Clamp can be reached at 518-3620 or pmc5242@aol.com
Laura Beck
Beck became a full-time Folly Beach resident in 2001, but has family ties going back three generations to great-grandparents who lived on E. Cooper. “I have history here and understand the changes the island has been through,” she said.
Beck is the only incumbent City Council member in the race. She won a Council seat in 2006 after serving four years on the Planning & Zoning Commission and wants to remain on Council to work on issues such as the zoning rewrite, the traffic study, and litter problems.
Work on the zoning re-write still has a long way to go, according to Beck. She said the City has yet to articulate a vision of what the island should be. As an example, Beck used a Hurricane Hugo analogy in which the entire beach is wiped out. “What do we want Folly to look like if we have to rebuild? We don’t want a cookie-cutter approach,” she said. “We need to get creative and also make sure proper design standards are put in place.”
Regarding the traffic study, Beck said she relied on the advice and opinions of the experts. She favors the traffic circle at Center Street and Indian Avenue that she said would make it easier for West side residents to exit the island, a median on Center Street to insure pedestrian safety, and changing stop signs on Second Street to provide for “an alternative method of going from North to South.” Beck said she would also change the direction of stop signs at several E. Ashley intersections to slow traffic on that street.
Folly Beach recycles at a higher rate than most places, according to Beck, and although she has not looked at the cost issues, she said options to consider include taking care of our own recycling, hiring someone other than the County to pick it up, or contracting for pick-up on the summer weeks the County does not come out.
Beck said what distinguishes her from other Council candidates is her ability to look at proposed legislation “through the eyes of an attorney” and her status as a parent with young children. “I bring balance to Council. Parents and younger people have different issues and a different focus.”
Beck can be reached at 843-224-1063 or dukesbeck@yahoo.com.
Bob Hatcher
Hatcher is quick to admit that his first hurdle will be to convince Folly Beach voters that he actually lives on the island. While it’s true that he owns a house in South Windermere, his home on E. Arctic is his legal residence. In fact, Hatcher met his wife at that same house in 1947. “This is my home,” Hatcher said. “What happens in Folly Beach is important to me.”
Since he was retired and had the time, Hatcher began attending Council meetings and was frustrated at the lack of communication. “I felt there were things I could do to help wrap things up, a better way of asking questions to prompt thoughtful responses rather than the ‘Hey, dummy, you’re doing it the wrong way’ attitude I saw.”
What concerns Hatcher most is that Folly doesn’t have a set of current zoning codes and ordinances. He said people are reluctant to buy homes or invest in Folly Beach because they don’t know what’s going to happen. “Having a moving target is not conducive to growth,” he said.
One of his strengths, according to Hatcher, is his willingness to do his homework. He has read the new Zoning Ordinance -all 278 pages – and he reads the budgets each year. “I can promise you that when I sit down, I’ve read everything that’s available because it affects me and if it affects me, it affects the rest of Folly Beach.”
The City does not do enough on a day-to-day basis to insure that Council members have the information they need to make informed decisions, and it is not doing enough to communicate with its citizens, according to Hatcher. “You hear residents talking, they’re unhappy with this, unhappy with that, but they’re actually frustrated because they don’t know what’s going on.” He cites as an example, the new Folly River Bridge, which will have a huge impact on some residents. “The City should sit down with these people and say, ‘Hey, here’s what’s going on.’”
Hatcher said he would bring a substantial business background to the job. He has a degree in Economics and has managed budgets and the logistics of managing resources to get the job done. “Some members act like they’re running for re-election at every Council meeting,” Hatcher said. “I’m going to work real hard to be an effective Councilman for four years.”
Hatcher can be reached at 588-2415 or roberthatcher@comcast.net.
Joel Flores
Not available for interview.
