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Richmond Hill extends moratorium on permanent signs
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Crissie Elric
Bryan County News
Updated: Apr 6, 2013, 9:00 AM
Published: Apr 5, 2013, 8:33 PM

A moratorium on permanent signs in Richmond Hill will continue into May after a decision Tuesday from the Richmond Hill City Council.

During its regular meeting in City Hall, the council voted unanimously to extend until May 8 the current sign moratorium on permanent signs in the city. Council member Russ Carpenter noted temporary sign permits are still being issued.

The moratorium was originally intended to only last 60 days, but City Manager Chris Lovell said Thursday the council approved the extension due to requirements that must be taken when implementing a new ordinance.

Those requirements include advertising the changes and holding two public hearings and two readings of the changes. The first public hearing is at 7 p.m. Monday, the second is at 7 p.m. April 22. Both will be held at City Hall.

"It really doesn’t do any good to re-do the sign ordinance if you don’t extend the moratorium because we would be flooded with permit requests based on the old (ordinance) — assuming the people didn’t want the change," he said. "So in order to preserve the intent of cleaning up the sign ordinance, we extended the moratorium until we could get it in place."

The moratorium was put in place in February because city officials wanted to make the ordinance easier to understand and to better define what a sign is in the city.

Lovell said the council will hold a first reading of the ordinance at its April 16 meeting. A second reading and vote is scheduled for the May 7 meeting.

In other business:

* The council approved a bond resolution for the Richmond Hill City Center along with a new intergovernmental agreement between the city and the Richmond Hill Convention and Visitors Bureau.

* The council approved a request from Leon Saxon for a text amendment to include a jewelry store, at 8756 Ford Ave., in a commercial zone.

* A request for building elevations at the Suites at Station Exchange was approved.

* An alcohol beverage license request from William Edwards Jenkins was approved for on premises consumption of beer, wine and liquor at a proposed bar called Flashback.

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Later yall, its been fun
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Ted O'Neil
Updated: May 23, 2018, 6:03 PM
Published: May 23, 2018, 6:05 PM

This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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