Local Politics

They Can’t See The Forrest For The Trees


As I’ve said many, many times before here on the ole’ blog…I’m really just a simple southern boy—I even call myself a “Redneck.”

I make self effacing statements like this in part to remind myself of where I come from, not where I’ve been in the world or even where I might be going.

The past couple of years of my life have been spent doing things which I never even really thought about doing in the years prior to moving to our little island here on the Georgia coast.

Acting and working behind the scenes in the local community theaters; writing thousands of words for public consumption each day, and even more words for my books that I’m working on; and finally these two dirty words:

POLITICAL ACTIVISM

I love to give the politicians Hell, both local and national, in a polite, rational, reasoned sort of way.

Last week it was a letter to US Senator Saxby Chambliss, and this week it’s our local Glynn County commissioners Cap Fendig, Uli Keller, and Tony Thaw which have come into my crosshairs.

Two of these three suspects are life long residents of the Golden Isles, and apparently for that reason they, like many other local government officials and some residents, take what we have here for granted.

They want to CHANGE everything.

They want to SPRUCE THINGS UP more than just a little.

Heck, they want to TEAR HALF OF EVERYTHING DOWN, no matter how beloved and historic it might be, and replace it with new bricks and mortar.

Then they want to pave over what’s left with asphalt, and plant a few new trees along the edges just to make people like me feel a little better.

Case in point, the waterfront area down by what we call “The Village” here on the island.

“The Village” was originally all there was here on St. Simons Island. Up until the 1960’s it contained the only hardware store, pharmacy, grocer, and other retail shops on the entire island. Today it has mostly been relegated to a collection of little shops selling trinkets and T-shirts to tourists.

Adjacent to “The Village” is a place called the Old Casino, and adjacent to that is an Olympic sized swimming pool sitting less than twenty yards from the Atlantic Ocean, with a beautiful view of Jekyll Island.

I bet we have the only public swimming pool between Key West, Florida and Auburn, Maine sitting in a position like that. I also KNOW that where pools exist in other similar venues that people are paying big bucks to join swanky private beach clubs in order to get access, and dodging their way through interviews with snobby membership committees and having to wear designer clothes and valet park their Volvo’s while waiting in line to get in on Saturday afternoon.

Not so here in Georgia.

Our elected idiots want to close the pool, fill it in with dirt and concrete, and build a park on top of the area. The excuse is that the pool isn’t used very much, and it costs too much to operate.

No WONDER, the dang thing is hardly ever open, and they refuse to generate any revenue with it because the county recreation department is only in the business of mowing the grass on soccer and softball fields. Apparently no one can swim down at the administration building or something.

Our scuba dive club in Atlanta was BEGGING to rent facilities like the one we have here to conduct training and classes, and all we could ever get was the use of shallow moldy facilities in a defunct health club.

This pool is 15’ deep for God’s sake, but NooooooOOOOOO, you don’t think that the county could rent it out for swimming and scuba classes rather than letting it sit idle for most of the year?

This year they opened it in JUNE, and closed it LABOR DAY, and then it was only open something like Tuesday through Saturday for about four hours each day.

It makes my head want to start spinning…

Next we come to this morning’s real topic of concern…the so called “Old Casino.”

The Old Casino is not really a casino in the gambling sense, what it was built as was a library, county offices, a visitor’s center, and a movie theater. Again, it’s a late 1940’s vintage structure which sits adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean (about 50 yards away.)

After having to tear down the adjacent New Casino building three years ago because of poor maintenance and neglect, the county recently decided to get off of their butts and spend a little over $3,000,000 on a total renovation and enlargement of the facility.

The movie theater had been long ago outdated and converted into a space used for plays and concerts, with the addition of two dressing rooms on the backstage area sometime in the 60’s or 70’s. In recent years the space had been rented by the local theater company for a ridiculously low price of $3,000 per year, and they agreed to manage the building and pay the annual utilities.

By manage the building, it might be better said DOMINATE the building—locking it up and refusing to let any other entity use “their “ stage.

I personally spent a miserable 15 months dealing with the self important ingrates that called themselves "a theater company," so I know what I'm talking about here, and when I retired I resolved to make sure that their dominance of a facility owned by the public would not continue in the future

(It might be fair to say that I have a very large axe to grind here...heck, I've got a trunk load of axes....)

Any way...This latest renovation using SPLOST tax dollars saw a massive expansion of the backstage area, additional room in the wings of the stage for actors and handling of set pieces, new seating, an orchestra pit, and state of the art lighting and sound systems.

So good so far.

The problem is, as I said earlier, I know the politics and personalities behind the theater company which is expecting to march back into the renovated building and once again sit astride the stage after a 14 month absence, and it was just made public that they’re yet again expecting to negotiate a sweetheart deal on the lease.

I did a little checking around in anticipation of this situation developing, and here’s the text to the letter I wrote this morning to The Brunswick News, with similar wording being directed by E-mail to the three county Commissioners:

The Wednesday headline in this newspaper stating “Commissioner balks at fee” caught my eye, and upon reading further into the article, I was almost ready to personally visit Commissioner’s Thaw and Keller to give them a simple, short answer to their questions about the renovated Casino “being for public use and not a commercial enterprise.”

We’re not talking rocket science here ladies and gentlemen, because all our good commissioners have to do is pick up the phone and call the Ritz Theater in downtown Brunswick to find out that the proposed $75 per hour rental rates for the renovated Theater space are quite acceptable.

Auditoriums in Savannah and Jacksonville cost even more.

Further, I believe that meeting rooms made available at a rate of $25 per hour compare favorably—in fact they are a bargain—when compared with other similar facilities here on the island.

I, personally, resent our elected officials spending over $3,000,000 of hard earned taxpayer funds on a building, and then not expecting to operate the renovated facility in a fiscally responsible manner.

Remember a building called “The New Casino” that was torn down a few years ago because of the inept maintenance and management practices of previous county administrations?

Maintenance and utilities cost money—at least at my house they do—and I don’t care if The Island Players or the Jamaican Bob Sled team is allowed to use the building, as long as the Glynn County taxpayers at least break even in the process.