Irritating Irreverent Irrational Politicians

Can't Live With 'Em, Can't Vote Without 'Em


Good gosh but is it ever good to be back home here on our little island, even if it is only for an extended weekend.

Good food...good friends...good weather so far, and I've even managed to make some progress in my never ending real estate investment escapades which might end up yielding me a profit before the end of this calendar year if not sooner.

That said, I promised my readers a peek at my local political commentary, something with which I've managed to make quite a stir a couple of dozen times here over the past few years.

Most recently I've been lamenting the goings on at the highest level of local government, something which we have down here on the Southeastern Georgia coast called a "County Commission."

You might have one where you live...I don't know..but if you don't consider yourself lucky, because our County Commission is IN CHARGE and don't care what we think or want between election years.

County Commissions and more specifically, the individual County Commissioners, are to normal humans like ticks and fleas are to a dog....in as much as their day to day activities make you want to jump around, shake your head, and scratch.

Don't get me wrong, they're not all bad guys, they're not ALL corrupt, and most seem to be relatively normal honest hard working people the day we vote them into office, but then things change when we hand them the keys to the near quarter billion dollar county coffers loaded with tourist dollars here in Georgia's Golden isles.

We have an unfortunate yet obvious class struggle within the borders of our county, with only one incorporated city (Brunswick) in the aforementioned boundaries, and probably 99% of the tax revenue (OK, 75%) is generated on the 11 mile by 4 mile wide island we call St. Simons.

My problem isn't so much with the so-called "commissioners" being outright idiots or thieves, it's with their insistence in weaving and wobbling into areas into which they have little business and even less expertise, and proceeding to write stupid, unenforceable, mineless laws and policies with which they later find being used to bash them in their heads and make Glynn county the laughing stock of the state...something which isn't easy to do if you've spent more than a month living east of the Chattahoochee river and south of the Carolina's and Tennessee.

The latest upheaval which caused me to pound on my computer keyboard and hit the "send" key involved our little island's tourist "Trolley Tour Services", and the plight of a nice lady acquaintance named Bunny Marshal who's earned most of her living owning and operating a reliable tour service here for the past 15 years or so.

The link to the Brunswick News article in PDF form is here...

cliff notes version of the story would tell you that other tour operators have come to town over the past couple of years and had a hard time making a living, so instead of improving their service or understanding that the market is small here they have instead elected to go to the commissioners and complain, causing the commission as a hole whole to react by doing what county commissions do best.

Avoid the subject at first, then after much consideration proceed to screw things up in entirety.

At first they're afraid of "legal action," so instead of letting the status be "quo" they take a defensive default position in which the original players lose yet the new players don't win what they want--economic success.

Then after two or three more rounds of complaints and concessions, what the public ends up receiving from our commission is not two or three options in the Trolley tour business on the Island....Noooooooo....

WE'LL PROBABLY END UP WITH NO TROLLEY TOURS FOR YOU TO TAKE WHEN YOU COME OVER HERE TO SEE WHAT I'VE BEEN RAVING ABOUT FOR THE PAST GOING ON FIVE YEARS.

That's right, according to Bunny, instead of the continuing quaint simple tour around world fameous poet Sidney Lanier's "Golden Isles" past "Bloody Marsh", Christ Church, and General Oglethorpe's Ft. Frederica, you may have to settle for...

a book from the bookstore and your own car for a self guided tour, else...

Nothing.

government...ya' got to love 'em.

Their latest assault on free enterprise has determined that "trolleys" cannot ring their "bells" while stopped in the village pier area--the place where the "tours" have originated since Methuselah wandering the desert the island has had tourists and ferry boats landed adjacent to the current pier in the days when there was no roadway across the marsh from the mainland.

"Trolleys" can only ring their "bells" now and legally annoy people as they drive down Frederica road and the outlying areas of the island.

The people standing around in the village tourist area (a place where people might actually WANT know that there is a trolley tour leaving) are officially protected from "bell ringing" according to the county attorney.

Now here's the text to what I wrote last Thursday which was published Friday in the print edition and here on The Brunswick News Website

I have a few questions for the so called "authorities" of Glynn County.

If I, as a private citizen, buy myself a nice shiny bronze bell and further, I happen to park myself and my bell adjacent to the trolley stop on St. Simons when I'm visiting the area, can I ring my bell whenever I want to?

Or does the local government require that I have to have license and/or a permit to ring my bell?

If noise is a problem in Village and the balance of the SSI waterfront, I'd like to know what measures are being taken to eliminate or minimize the sounds of construction as the new pool and other renovations are taking place.

Maybe I should offer my services ringing my new bell to cover the noise that the jackhammers and backhoes are making over the next year if you would like to pass another resolution to that effect.

Finally, using the same convoluted logic, one could not help but wonder how long it will be before some atheist tourist or local "activist" gets a commission resolution and a legal decision to make the local churches buy a permit else stop ringing the bells in their steeple towers for the same petty reasons Trolley company owners are dealing with today.

I think that that says what needs to be said on the matter...How about YOU?

One Man's Trash

Another Man's Treasure...


I've really had it right up to here (pointing to the top of my ever greying, ever balding head) with trash services here in Glynn County and the City of Brunswick.

In a little over three days I already have trash overflowing out of my ears and coming out of my butt here at the new house on our little island (located in unincorporated Glynn County), and I also have a virtual landfill on the unpaved ally side of my property over in Brunswick that the head of the Brunswick Sanitation Department has been promising to remove since May.

The problem seems to revolve around government mandated monopolies--in one case one hired by Glynn County, and the second actually operated by the City of Brunswick.

Since Glynn County is the entity most recently to cause their property tax owners to fall victim to this scam bullshit malfeasance, I'll talk about them first.

It seems that a few years ago the County Commissioners noticed there is a bit of a problem with dumping of household garbage and other refuse on private property and along the highways and other "public" property.

Rather than enforcing the existing littering and dumping laws on the members of the "public" which were guilty of causing the problem, the elected County assholes morons Commissioners decided to pass the responsibility and associated costs of their purported solution on to the private property owners of Glynn County.

They did this by hiring a private company to do the trash collection at homes and businesses which did not have dumpsters or other means of refuse disposal already in place, in the process adding the cost of the service to the land/property owner's annual property tax bill. (Our condo had dumpsters and it's own service personnel on site so we were exempt from this mandate.)

No if's, and's, or but's, about it, now if you own a house in Glynn County you will have government mandated trash service...even if your house is unoccupied, burns down, or due to it's condition, is otherwise un-occupyable.

Of course there was a huge public outcry and lots of gnashing of teeth, but in the end the government won out and, as a delayed result, today I had my first experience with Southland Waste Systems and their rocket scientist employees.

Yesterday I found from out my neighbor that Monday was "trash day" here on my street and further, that I had to make sure that my company/county supplied trashcan was not over filled--the lid had to close.

No problem...so far so good...

I had a trashcan sitting beside my garage when the moving truck drove up on Saturday, and we'd produced lots of trash since then so I seemed set to take advantage of the service that our landlord was paying for.

Only problem was, what my well intended neighbor did not tell me was that my "curbside" service was not actually at our house's "curbside."

Imagine that?

Oh yeah..the GOVERNMENT is involved, and that means that the meanings of ordinary words are never what you would normally expect them to be.

Evidently, by "curbside" service here in Glynn County, they mean some "curbside" other than MY curbside--a curbside that their giant truck can drive up to and pick up the can with some kind of manipulator arm to do the dumping with.

Any way, a little after noon today I noticed that the truck driver and his assistant busied themselves spending at least five minutes moving back and forth outside my driveway entrance avoiding my trashcan, even having the extra man actually exit the air conditioned cab of the truck to pick up and empty a few recycling containers, but when the dust settled and Pat came home from shopping we found that OUR TRASHCAN WAS STILL FULL.

No note, no gentle reminder, no nothing, just a can full of trash from moving and another week to wait for the next scheduled trash service.

Here's what I'm going to do.

First I'm calling in to the local Radio talk show at 7 AM tomorrow morning to tell my story.

Next I'm calling my county commissioner.

Of course all I expect to hear is lame excuses and promises to do better in the future, but in the end I will probably be told that it is my fault for not asking my landlord how far down the block and on which side of the street to place my trashcan.

I vaguely remember hearing talk show callers in the past complaining about having to have their trashcans 12 feet (or some other random number) from mailboxes, telephone poles, other trash cans) but it didn't occur to me until the damage was done.

What total bullshit.

I live on a cul-de-sac with a one way 12 foot wide strip of asphalt (which badly needs repaving by the aforementioned "county officials") that wraps in and out around giant Live Oak Trees and islands of vegetation.

My house apparently sits in a position where a $7 per hour employee would have to actually exit the air conditioned cab of the 500' long garbage truck in order to retrieve my trash can sitting adjacent to the road anywhere on the frontage.

God forbid that Southland Waste Systems should employ some smaller trucks or hire people to grab hold of an errant but innocently misplaced trashcan every now and then on some of the older narrow inner island streets here on St. Simons.

As is typical with any solution provided by the government, it's ONE SIZE FITS ALL, DAMMIT.

And is also typical with government, the customer is NEVER RIGHT.

Do I have a second on that motion?

All in favor?

Those Opposed?

The yeas have it...

(Next on my agenda...the City of Brunswick's abysmal "Insanitation Sanitation" Department.)

More Public Mischief

I have an opinion on everything…


Last Wednesday some ignorant moron lovely local citizen had a letter published in our local newspaper, The Brunswick News, expressing his belief that our little island airport should be closed.

His basic argument was threefold.

(1) The airport is unsightly.

(2) Airplanes are noisy. (duhhhhhh)

(3) Finally, given the validity of reasons (1) and (2) above, it was abvious that the County owned land the airport occupies could be put to better use as a park and green spaces.

Within five minutes of reading the letter, I wrote the following missive which was published last Friday in the letters to the editor section:

I would like to take this opportunity to offer my rebuttal to a recently published letter promoting the closing of the McKinnon St. Simons Airport.

First, I want to remind everyone that, void the actions of some supernatural or extraterrestrial forces, Glynn county’s land area hasn’t changed much since the early 1900’s when the airport was built for the US Navy.

I assert that, since all of Glynn County is not already covered with concrete, the idea of closing the airport to regain land for other public uses is dubious and renders mute the argument that the size of the airport property “detracts from the natural beauty of OUR island.”

I invite the people that want to complain about living around the airport to put their own money where their mouths and keyboards are. If they don‘t like the airport, let them buy the entire island, thereby truly making it “THEIR Island.”

I would be remiss to not remind them that, upon closing “their airport,” that they will then also have to subject themselves to the risks of not being able to get a ambulance jet or helicopter to come to their assistance when and/or IF the time comes.

Finally, while complaining about “the increase in air traffic…especially the large rent-a-jets”, I again remind the public that the airport was here first. If you didn’t want to vacation around or live in a building next to a lively operational airport, then you, your ego, and your checkbook should have gone elsewhere.

Instead of closing the airport, why don’t we all just vote to buy dump trucks and fill in the marshes and creeks?

After all, there’s a bunch of extra land out there for “public use” if you look for it hard enough…

Maxwell Raymond
SSI


I don't actually recall the name of the muttering old Curmudgeon the mis-informed gentleman that wrote the original letter, but I'm fairly certain that my response made his head spin around.

(By the way, I write my letters using my Nom de Plume “Maxwell Raymond” not because I'm afraid of public opinion, but because of personal differences which I have with the newspaper’s editor…and I believe that he probably wouldn't publish anything I wrote if he knew it was me holding the pen.)

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