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Island Notes: Congratulations to Gail Mullen on being selected to open a branch of Countrywide Bank on Lady’s Island. The bank is located in the same building on Sams Point Road in which Gail previously operated Mortgage Associates. Hearing more planes flying over your house than normal? To allow the Marine Corps Air Station’s 12,000 foot main runway to be resurfaced, flight operations for the period February through September 2008 will utilize the alternate shorter (8,000 foot) runway. To utilize the shorter runway requires a change in the normal flight patterns and thus residents on Lady’s Island, that in the past have not experienced military aircraft flying over their homes, have definitely noticed the difference. It is a small price to pay. A very special congratulations to Lady’s Island resident Mr. Ed Allen, who was recently presented a special award by the South Carolina EMS Association for his long term commitment to the citizens of South Carolina. Mr. Allen retired in 2007 after serving as Director of Beaufort County Emergency Management Services for the past 33 years. He is presently serving as Deputy County Coroner and is an unopposed candidate for election as County Corner in the November general election. |
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What Is The Best Use Of Lady's Island Classroom
Space? The election for the 2008 school bond referendum is over; it passed. The public schools on the island will receive about $4 million worth of maintenance and technology improvements plus $10 million for a Beaufort High School performing arts center and land for another elementary school will be purchased. That is the good news. The bad news is, on Lady’s Island, we still have overcrowded schools operating alongside schools with an excess of classroom space. If we can agree that, as a community, (1) we want to retain the concept of community schools and (2) we will strongly oppose bussing our children off the island just to fill a vacant classroom then how is the best way to balance the available classroom space on Lady’s Island with the student population? Dr. Truesdale, Beaufort County School District Superintendent has developed and recommended for consideration to the school board a very innovative and comprehensive plan for reducing overcrowding in some schools and increasing the use of the available classroom space in other county schools located north of the Broad River. She has presented these plans to the teachers, administrators and parents of the schools which will be affected by the proposed plan and requested comments. On Lady’s Island the recommended plan would, in school year 2009/10, move the 5th grade from Lady’s Island Elementary and Coosa Elementary to a specially designed “school within a school” for grades 5 and 6” at Lady’s Island Middle School. St. Helena Elementary would expand its curriculum to include grades 1- 6 versus the present grades 1-5. Following is a close look at how the plan could affect each of the public schools on Lady’s Island in regard to student population versus school capacity. It must be noted that the following projection is not intended to evaluate the total recommended plan which includes an increased emphasis on math and science, only the probable affect on classroom space. Beaufort High School. (Action – Discontinue International Baccalaureate Program) The student population at Beaufort High School has stabilized in that it reached the 1600 mark in 2002 and has remained in that range to the present. Principal Dan Durbin and his staff recently recommended and the school district approved that the International Baccalaureate (IB) program be discontinued at Beaufort High School and increased emphasis placed on the Advanced Placement Scholars Program. This action will not result in fewer students but in view of the fact that most IB classes consisted of only 6 to 8 students it will allow better use of the available classroom space, teachers and funds. Probable results: Discontinuation of the International Baccalaureate program, while not solving the problem, is a common sense solution to reduce the impact of overcrowding. It will provide additional classroom space for the present student population. Lady’s Island Elementary. (Proposed action – School year 2009/10 move 5th grade to Lady’s Island Middle School) First, it should be pointed out that Lady’s Island Elementary is a “School of Choice” with an arts infused curriculum and operates on year round calendar. Of its 429 students, approximately 42% or 180 students attend by choice versus living in the assigned attendance zone. Of the 180 “by choice” students approximately 110 of them come from Coosa (50) or St. Helena (60). Probable results: The proposed move of the Lady’s Island Elementary School 5th grade to Lady’s Island Middle School would increase the number of “by choice” students which could attend Lady’s Island Elementary School in grades 1-4 by 50 to 60 students prior to once again reaching capacity. Coosa Elementary. (Proposed action – School year 2009/10 move 5th grade to Lady’s Island Middle School) Coosa Elementary School is presently faced with 94 students over its capacity. The present 3rd grade class has 111 students. This would be the first class attending 5th grade in the Lady’s Middle School in 2009/10. Probable results: The proposed move of the 5th grade to Lady’s Island Middle School would bring the total student population under the school capacity, remove the need for mobile classrooms and allow room for 17 additional students in grades 1-4 before again reaching capacity. Lady’s Island Middle. Proposed actions include: (1) During school year 2008/9 redesign school facility to be able to accommodate, in 2009/10 school year, a pre-middle (grades 5 and 6) school and a middle school (grades 7 and 8), (2) St. Helena Elementary in 2009/10 transition from grades 1-5 to accommodate grades 1-6, (3) In 2009/10 the 5th grade of LIES and Coosa move to Lady’s Island Middle. Probable results: If every child in the 5th grade of both Coosa and Lady’s Island Elementary Schools moved to Lady’s Island Middle School in 2009 this would increase the Middle School population by 160 students. If St. Helena Elementary taught their 6th grade versus transferring to Lady’s Island Middle School this would reduce the present Middle School population by 77. The end result, in regard to Lady’s Island Middle School, would be an increase over the present student population of 83 students. Following is a comparison of the present student population of each school, its capacity and the projected student population if the plan presently under consideration is adopted.
To allow members of the community to comment on the Dr. Truesdale’s proposal to better utilize existing classroom space on Lady’s Island this month’s survey question on the LIBPA web site (www.libpa.org) asks: Do you support the Lady’s Island portion of the proposed plan to reduce overcrowding and allow better use of available classroom space? |
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LIBPA & Chamber of Commerce To Sponsor "Meet The
Candidate" Social Event: With the arrival of warm weather and the primary election being held on June 10, LIBPA and the Beaufort Regional Chamber of Commerce will sponsor a “Meet the Candidate” social event at the Sheriff’s Camp on Chowan Creek Bluff on Saturday, May 31 from 3 PM to 5 PM. From 3 PM to 4 PM will be social and from 4 PM to 5 PM there will be a microphone in the event a candidate desires to make a short speech. We recommend you bring your own lawn chair. This will be an opportunity for our members to meet the candidates for various offices in a less formal setting and to hear their thoughts on the issues. LIBPA and the Chamber will furnish the drinks and food (hot dogs and hamburgers). Please plan on joining us and bringing a guest. |
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Just A Reminder: This is an election year and just as a reminder to our members and the community, as an organization the Lady’s Island Business and Professional Association does not support or oppose individual candidates for elected office. However, it does actively support or oppose specific issues that directly affect Lady’s Island. |
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Welcome Lady's Island News: The Lady’s Island community now has its own newspaper – the Lady’s Island News. Ms. Kim Gallant and Ms. Elizabeth Harding are the driving force behind this endeavor. This newspaper, which will be published on a weekly basis, is designed to allow the good news to be shared and provide a vehicle by which to recognize our businesses, our schools and our community. The present concept is to highlight Lady’s Island businesses through paid advertising and provide the newspaper free to the community. Businesses interested in supporting this project by placing an ad in the newspaper can obtain additional information by calling Ms. Gallant at 575-0396 or email her at ladysislandnews@gmail.com. LIBPA will support this project in every way we can and encourage our members to do likewise. In this regard, we have offered to share any articles in our monthly newsletter with the Lady’s Island News so long as the source is identified. |
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Sad News: With sadness we received word of the death of long time LIBPA member Colonel Harry Smythe, USA (Ret) on April 9, 2008 at his home in Amelia Island, Florida. Harry and his wife, Marie were supporters of LIBPA and Lady’s Island for many years. They moved from their home in Royal Pines to Florida in 2004. We offer our sympathy to Marie and the Smythe family. |
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First Glance At The Referendum Vote: The school bond election referendum is over and it passed by 422 votes. In the area north of the Broad River with 3,133 votes cast, the margin of victory was 79 votes. Areas that voted in favor of the referendum were Beaufort, Mossy Oaks, Port Royal, Dale/Lobeco, and St. Helena. The referendum failed to get a majority vote in Lady’s Island, Burton, Seabrook and Sheldon. Lady’s Island had 792 ballots cast in this referendum compared to 655 in the 2006 referendum. The actual Lady’s Island vote was 372 (47%) in favor of the referendum and 420 (53%) opposed it. At first glance, it would appear that we have reached very close to the bottom of the Beaufort County voters’ support for referendums to increase their taxes to pay for new schools. Perhaps we should find new ways to pay for these schools or start to limit the approval of new developments until we do. |
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Membership: During the first part of April, letters were sent to those members who, according to our records, had not paid their annual dues. Thank you to each of you who responded to the reminder. Starting this month members of the LIBPA Board of Directors will begin calling the last few individuals who have not paid their annual dues. In June, with regret, the names of those that have not paid at that time will be deleted from the active membership roll. |
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Foreclosures and Bankruptcy Report: April saw the number of Beaufort County houses involved in foreclosure procedures experience a slight drop from 89 to 84 home. The majority of the foreclosures are occurring south of the Broad River with only 18 cases north of the Broad River (a decrease of 1 from last month). As can be seen from the following statistics, which were taken from www.foreclosure.com, the number of Beaufort County homes involved in bankruptcy proceedings also continues to experience a steady decline.  On Lady’s Island with over 5,000 homes there are 4 involved in foreclosures and 3 in bankruptcies. We are indeed a fortunate community in this regard. |
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New Business: Riverside Wealth Management has recently relocated its office from Beaufort to 46 Sams Point Road, Suite C. The company is designed to exclusively serve a limited number of prominent families by clearly defining their goals and designing a long range plan that maximizes the probability of achieving all that is important to them. Founder and President of the firm is Ms. Karla L. Rossetti who, prior to founding the company, was a management consultant with Andersen Consulting’s Strategic Services Practice (now Accenture) in Chicago. For further information regarding the services available with Riverside Wealth Management Ms. Rossetti can be contacted at (843) 470 -1122 or visit their web site (www.riversidewm.com) or office. |
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Principal of Coosa Elementary School To Receive
Lady's Island Community Spirit Award:  Ms. Cynthia Keener, Principal of Coosa Elementary School, has been selected
by the Lady’s Island Business and Professional Association to receive the Lady’s
Island Community Spirit Award. This award is presented to those organizations,
businesses or individuals who, as a result of their significant contribution to
our community, have made Lady’s Island a better place to live, work and raise
our families. The award will be presented to Ms. Keener at the May 13 meeting.This coming June Ms. Keener will retire having completed 33 years as an educator with 22 of those years having been served in Beaufort County. In 1986, she began teaching in Beaufort County as a 6th grade teacher at Mossy Oaks Elementary School and in 1987 became the Assistant Principal at Beaufort Elementary School. In 1991, she came to Lady’s Island as the Principal of Lady’s Island Elementary School. In 1998, construction of Coosa Elementary School was completed and Ms. Keener was selected to be its first principal. On the day the new school opened its doors the student population was near its capacity and exceeded that capacity within 2 years. The student population continued to grow at the rate of one new class of students each year to the point of today requiring the use of 10 mobile classrooms. The school was unique in that approximately 1/3rd of the student population consisted of children of military families which accounted for a high annual rate of student “turn over”. In spite of these challenges Ms. Keener, over the last decade, led Coosa Elementary School to be recognized, based on academic performance, as the top elementary school in Beaufort County. On behalf of the Lady’s Island community, its parents and especially our children thank you for your vision, leadership, high educational standards and most of all for the love you gave so freely to each and every one of the students placed in your care over the last 3 decades. Best wishes on a well deserved retirement. |
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First Quarter Real Estate Transactions For 2008:
By Everett Ballenger, President, Beaufort County Association of Realtors, Keller Williams Realty/Ballenger Associates. Following is a statistical look at the real estate picture for the first quarter of 2008 as compared to the same period of 2007.  As can be seen from the charts above, there was quite a drop in single family home sales in the areas north of the Broad River. The drop, at close to 31%, is not small. Lady’s Island experienced a 43 % decrease in sales from the previous year. The number of houses sold this year continues to increase each month. The number of individuals and families attracted to our area and looking at the available homes has increased. What has not changed for many of the potential home buyers is their inability to sell their present home. I know some buyers are sitting on the fence waiting for prices to drop even further. Prospective buyers, who are waiting for a better deal, may want to consider this…a 0.5 % rise in mortgage interest rates for say a $200,000 mortgage, would mean an additional interest payment of $23,413 over the life of a 30 year loan! One of the encouraging signs, at the time of writing, is that there are180 pending sales in the Beaufort County Association of Realtors MLS. This number has steadily worked its way up, since the early part of this year, where it hovered around the low 100’s for months. Local mortgage companies report they have also seen a very encouraging increase in their business over the last month. Only time will tell but there is every indication that now is as good a time to buy a property as there may ever be. |
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The Dilemma Of Our Dirt Roads: by Rick Butler, LIBPA Transportation Representative One of the legacies left from Beaufort County’s bucolic past are 120 miles of County roadways made up of suspension-damaging potholes, ruts, dust and mud bogs. Lady’s Island may be prosperous and growing, but we still have for 17.71 miles of residential dirt roads on our island. In the past, these hard-to-maintain roads mostly served rural farms and fewer residents of our community. Today’s vehicles are not designed for regular dirt road conditions, and suspension repairs are costlier. Efforts to bring these anachronistic accesses up to 21st Century paved roadways have frequently been a funding afterthought, rarely funded by the County except through its share of State gas tax returns. Not a penny of any approved County transportation bond issue money has been allocated to paving dirt roads. Countywide, this has meant that only about 7.3 miles of dirt roads will have been paved in the current four year funding cycle which runs through FY 2008. Three miles of those paving miles will have been on Lady’s Island. Roads that were paved included Honeysuckle lane, Fiddler Road, Chickadee Lane, Flycatcher Lane, Wood Duck Lane, and Carolyn Drive all of which are located inside the Quail Run community. The cost of this project was $1,008,617. The other major area on Lady’s Island which is scheduled for paving as part of the 2006-2008 paving program is the Academy Estates area behind Beaufort Academy which includes Woods Lane, Varsity Street, Alumni Road, Faculty Drive and Mayfair Court. In the present cycle, paving one mile of dirt road cost roughly $350,000. In the next funding cycle, the cost of paving one mile of dirt road is projected to be over $500,000. At the present rate of dirt road improvement funding, and road building cost inflation, even with no additional dirt roads being accepted by the County, some Lady’s Islanders will still be fighting their rutted roads an entire lifetime from now. This long term outlook has led to increasing interest in how paving priorities are decided. Which roads get paved in each funding cycle is the purview of the Beaufort County Transportation Committee’s 11 members, who use an arbitrary point scoring formula to prioritize the meager paving moneys available every four years. The Committee’s 11 members have been working for almost two years to perfect a new point system for rating these paving priorities, but have not yet agreed on a new formula. One key consideration is the “connector road” issue -- if a community or grouping of residential streets with many homes is connected to the nearest paved road only by a dirt connector road with one or no houses on it, under the existing formula that community will likely never see their access road paved. The Beaufort County Transportation Committee ‘s Lady’s Island representative, Mark McCain of Dataw Island, has indicated that efforts to adopt a new point system will be made at the Committee’s mid-May meeting . Lady’s Island residents wanting to provide input into this decision may deliver written comments (Attention Transportation Committee), no later than May 10, to the County Engineer’s office where Ms. Maggie Hickman, who graciously provided data for this report, and is Secretary to the County Transportation Committee will arrange for their delivery. |
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Reflections: by Cindy Keener, Principal,
Coosa Elementary School After 33 years in the education field it is with a mixture of elation and sadness that on June 30, 2008 I will join the world of the “retired.” With my last day as principal of Coosa Elementary School rapidly approaching, I would like to share some reflections and thoughts regarding public education in general and Coosa Elementary School which I have had the privilege of being associated with since the day it opened its doors in 1998. On the surface, educating children does not look much different than it did in 1970 when I first began my teaching career. Buildings, books, pencils, desks, children, and even teachers all look similar to the non-educator. The changes that have occurred are those inside the buildings, inside the children, inside the teachers. Technology infusion, teaching, learning, “living/family” styles, and the growth in populations all over the nation have made an impact in what goes on inside the buildings. Beaufort County educators have seen growth in area populations, observed changes in student test data, and experienced monumental global changes in technology usage. Our school board and new superintendent have gone to the community seeking a process and timeline to respond successfully to these events. As the school community, we are obligated to participate in these discussions and debates with experienced and trusted educators. This change is necessary to continue academic growth for all our children. To be successful, any institution, public or private, needs to change. This is not a profound mystery or revelation! If the status quo remains, an institution declines. Change is difficult… especially if the status quo is comfortable. We at Coosa Elementary could be very comfortable, but the success that Coosa has had comes from the willingness, talent, and enthusiasm of the entire school community. Change is a never-ending process; the only constant is that it’s necessary. Some changes are small, some large. All of the changes are what make us unique and when focused in the right direction, with the right people, make us successful. Over the years, each new change implemented, as well as the decision to discontinue a previous change, all have their “cheerleaders and their nay-sayers.” Site-based management, school-wide program implementation, specific staff development, specific classroom structures, all offered change and growth, all had their place, all were important, all evolved into something else. This evolution is the essence of growth. It’s the change that’s essential. As I prepare for personal changes in my life, I know that the Coosa Elementary school community will also prepare for a new phase of leadership and change. The words of Heraclitus are as appropriate in 2008 as when he first spoke them in 475 B.C. “Everything changes but change itself. Everything flows and nothing remains the same…You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go flowing ever on.” One thing that has not changed is my sincere appreciation for the privilege of being involved with the parents, children and Lady’s Island community for the last 17 years as together we searched for the best way to prepare our children for the future. Thank you! |
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How To Best Fund Our Schools:
By D. Paul Sommerville, Lady’s Island Representative, Beaufort County Council Beaufort
County voters recently approved their 5th school bond referendum in response to
the 6 requests for additional funds to build more schools. It is not a question
of will there be another similar request in the future but only a matter of
predicting when it will be necessary. Rather than to simply continue asking the
good Beaufort county taxpayers to dig into their pockets a little deeper I offer
it is time to look at alternative methods of funding school construction,
specifically – impact fees for schools and multi-county industrial parks.Most of us know that under current SC law, local governments are prohibited from assessing impact fees for schools. This is because the state homebuilders association wrote the current law to accomplish that very thing. Their logic seems to be that if new residents are charged a reasonable fee for the impact they have on schools (either due to their own children or the children of the multitudes of service workers they require and attract) they (the homebuilders and realtors) would sell fewer houses. I question that and conversations I have had with Beaufort (as opposed to state) home builders and realtors lead me to believe that they are not all in agreement with the state association’s position. Impact fees for schools are commonplace in the south and west (in other words, growth areas like ours) and are rising like the price of gasoline. School impact fees have risen 88% between 2003 and 2007 and look to go higher still in 2008 and beyond. The average impact fee for schools in Virginia in 2007 for a 3 bedroom $200,000 home was $17,602. In West Virginia it was $10,655. In Maryland it was $7,462. In California it was $4,907. In Florida it was $4,574. These numbers are averages of jurisdictions within each state that charge school impact fees. Not all do. Those of us who are responsible for the Beaufort County school budget have been making lots of noise lately to our state legislators about our crying need for school impact fees. Lobbyists for the state homebuilders and realtors associations have been fighting us every step of the way and winning. In an effort to derail what is fast becoming a grass roots movement to allow local governments to charge school impact fees here in South Carolina, lobbyists for the state realtors and homebuilders have written a bill they call RID (Residential Improvement District). It is billed as an acceptable alternative to school impact fees. It is not! Essentially, what RID does is allow school districts to issue bonds and amortize them with additional taxes on properties within the RID if and only if these additional taxes are authorized by each and every property owner within the district. If we made Lady’s Island a “residential improvement district” what do you think the chances are of getting every property owner to vote yes to raise their property taxes? Simply stated RID is political smoke posing as a solution to a very real problem with the hope that we the voters will not read it close enough to know the difference. Anyone asking for my vote in the June primaries or the November general election had better support school impact fees and not RID (which, by the way, we need to be “RID” of). I mentioned two painful reasons we were recently forced to ask the voters for $162 million dollars for school construction. Lack of impact fees is the first and failure to use multi-county industrial parks is the second. So what, you might ask, is a multi-county industrial park and what on earth does it have to do with the school bond referendums. The concept for multi-county industrial parks has been around for quite a while but is a bit more complicated than impact fees. Multi-county industrial parks were authorized by the state legislature. It was designed as an economic development tool. The basic rules are (1) they must involve more than one county and property contained within them, (2) must be commercial and (3) the various pieces need not be contiguous. One of the key benefits to these parks is that any commercial property can be placed in a multi-county industrial park. For instance, if a commercial entity is considering locating in a county covered by a multi-county industrial park agreement, property taxes can be abated by placing the property in a multi-county industrial park and a fee-in-lieu of property taxes can be negotiated. This is attractive to the commercial entity owner who saves on property taxes and it makes our county competitive with other locations throughout the country who are attempting to attract that business to their area. What places like Greenville County, South Carolina recognized and we in Beaufort County failed to catch, is that one of the hidden benefits of using the multi-county industrial park concept is that it removes property from the tax rolls for purposes of the Education Finance Act (EFA) formula computation. For those of you who may not know, EFA money is 55% of the sales tax money we pay to the state for schools. Use of the multi-county industrial park concept is why Greenville County which has Michelin, BMW, skyscrapers and three times the population of Beaufort County has an “assessed property value” of only 94% of that of Beaufort County. To put it in perspective, in 2007 Greenville County got back about $160 million in EFA money for its schools. Beaufort County paid in about $130 million dollars and ended up owing the state over $2 million using the current EFA formula. Obviously, part of the solution is for the legislature to change the formula for allocating school funds to avoid such obvious inequities. We, in Beaufort County, are beginning to take a very serious look at the use of multi-county industrial parks. Not just for school funding purposes but also economic development. At the same time I ask you to join me in urging our state legislatures to pass realistic legislation which authorizes school impact fees. I offer that it is about time we took a serious look at something other than the simple solution of the raising property taxes. |
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We Must Do A Better Job Of Spending Your State
Tax Dollars: by Tom Davis,
Candidate For District 46 State Senate Seat As
chief of staff for Governor Mark Sanford’s office, I helped put together
executive budgets that were built around the simple, common-sense notion of
running government more like a business.A big part of that effort was supporting programs which were helping to improve our quality of life, raise our income levels and create new jobs for our local communities – while eliminating wasteful programs which were merely pouring your tax dollars down the drain. We spent countless hours poring through each and every dollar the state spends, but our efforts to protect your investment in government were blocked each year by lawmakers looking to protect their pet projects. As a result, state spending skyrocketed by 41% over the last three years, a growth rate twice as fast as the national average. A few days ago, the State Senate had to face the consequences of their massive overspending in previous years. With revenues declining in large part thanks to lawmakers’ failure to adopt the governor’s common sense budget recommendations, choices had to be made. Unfortunately, the Senate faced those consequences by passing a budget that severely punishes Beaufort County. Other counties were protected and we got shafted. For example, the Senate budget does not provide Beaufort County with one red cent in Education Finance Act funding. Not one penny. And our county’s transportation needs were once again ignored, as was additional funding for the Conservation Land Bank. For Beaufort County, schools, roads and land conservation lost out big. The Senate’s budget also cut funding for marketing tourism, a $16.7 billion annual economic engine that creates $1.1 billion in tax revenue and thousands of local jobs, particularly in Beaufort County. Every dollar South Carolina spends on tourism advertising produces $2.80 cents in revenue back to the state – an almost 3-to-1 return on investment. Of course, the Senate’s decision to cut funding for our county’s schools, roads, land preservation and tourism marketing becomes even more perplexing in light of what it ended up keeping in the budget. Specifically, the Senate voted to preserve an $18.5 million legislative slush fund known as the “competitive grants” program, which last year spent money on the following so-called “economic development” items: * Lexington County “Doo-Da” Festival * Gaston, S.C. “Collard Festival” * Anderson County “Great Southeast Balloon Fest” * A thirty-minute TV documentary promoting Jazz to young viewers * An Elvis impersonator for Ridgeville, S.C. * A new “deep fryer” for Kingstree, S.C. I have nothing against Elvis or fried food, but to pretend that these are worthwhile investments of taxpayer resources is ridiculous. Spending money on these frivolities may have helped politicians get re-elected (which is the whole point of the slush fund), but in no way is this sort of spending justified considering the legitimate needs that exist in our state. This year’s cuts in funds that should be going to Beaufort County for schools, roads, land preservation and tourism marketing would not have been necessary if legislators had not grown state government spending by 41% over the past three years. Who are the legislators who recklessly spent your tax dollars and refused to put funds into a rainy day fund? Well, as the saying goes, “you can look it up.” My service in Columbia as the governor’s chief of staff – and a big part of my campaign for the State Senate – has been focused on restoring common sense to the budget process. And it has been focused on changing how Beaufort County gets the short end of the stick in Columbia year after year. In the upcoming primary election on June 10th I hope you feel my qualifications combined with what I hope to accomplish in Columbia are worthy of your support and vote. Editor’s Note: The above article was provided in response to LIBPA’s invitation to Ms. Ceips and Mr. Davis, as candidates for the District 46 state senate seat, to provide an article for this month’s newsletter. |
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Catherine Ceips - Our hardworking Senator: by
The Friends And Supporters Of Catherine Ceips Even
before deciding to offer for public office herself, Catherine Ceips had
burnished a reputation for diligent constituent service.For years she oversaw constituent service matters for her friend and mentor, the late Congressman Floyd Spence. Catherine became known for her hard work and enthusiasm for helping people solve problems, and was later asked by Spence’s successor -- Congressman Joe Wilson -- to lead his office as Field Director as well. In 2002, Catherine was elected to the S.C. House of Representatives, where the insights she gained working alongside Spence and Wilson helped her to ensure that her constituents were better served than ever before. When our Senate seat was vacated last year, Catherine stepped up to meet the constituent service needs of ALL of Beaufort County while we were without a Senator, and after the election has continued the tradition of providing the best constituent service in the state. My goal is simple,” Catherine says. “I want to give the people of Beaufort County the absolute best representation anywhere.” Catherine Ceips was born in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, and learned the value of public service at an early age, and was heavily involved in her community, her church and her school. Catherine attended the University of South Carolina and received her degree of Bachelor of Science in Health Education in 1976. Catherine’s mother was a school-teacher, and instilled in Catherine the importance of public education which led Catherine to put her health-education background to work as a teacher herself. In 1986, Catherine married the late Dr. Richard Ceips. Catherine worked as a teacher until she and her husband Richard opened their business, Sea Island Ophthalmology. Catherine has also served as community services director for the Medical University of South Carolina. For more than two decades, Catherine has been a leader in the Republican Party, inspired by fiscal conservatives like Ronald Reagan. “I passionately support lower taxes and responsible spending,” Catherine says. “I believe the most important thing any government can do is let taxpayers keep more of their hard-earned money.” During her service in the House and Senate Catherine has been a leader in the fight against illegal immigration, cutting taxes and reducing spending, and bringing much needed reforms to state government. A key piece of legislation that she authored which became law was the bill to criminalize human trafficking. This important legislation is but one part of the larger illegal immigration problem facing our nation. Many of the same individuals that facilitate the entry of illegal immigrants into our country also traffic humans for use in forced labor or prostitution. South Carolina was the first state in the Southeast US to successfully pass a human trafficking law. Catherine has also authored other significant illegal immigration bills, most notably the provision to restrict tax dollars to legal contractors or sub-contractors working on government projects or contracts and incentives for employers utilizing the Federal E-Verify system. Catherine’s record on protecting our unique quality of life here in the lowcountry is outstanding. This year alone she has authored and co-sponsored several significant pieces of legislation to protect our environment. Partnering with Congressman Wilson, Catherine has encouraged adding the Port Royal Sound to the National Estuary Program. That designation would bring with it added federal dollars and recognition for that important waterway. She has also authored a bill to phase out the use of phosphates in cleaning products used in South Carolina. By limiting phosphates in our water supply, this bill will protect both our drinking water and the natural resources that abound in our local marshes, creeks and rivers. Since she was first elected in 2002, Catherine has had the privilege of honoring local students with a special scholarship. As a member of the Republican Women’s Caucus a $1,000 scholarship was started in her name to support education in South Carolina and honor local students. This year Catherine has the opportunity to present two $1,000 scholarships to deserving students. Applications will be available in high school guidance departments or directly through her office with a deadline in late May. Interested students can call her office in Columbia (803-212-6032) or send her an e-mail at ceips@scsenate.org to request a package. Catherine is honored to serve the citizens of Beaufort County, in Columbia. If you require any assistance, please contact her. Editor’s Note: The above article was provided in response to LIBPA’s invitation to Ms. Ceips and Mr. Davis, as candidates for the District 46 state senate seat, to provide an article for this month’s newsletter. |
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