Town Council - Regular Meeting

workshop um of April Tuesday, April 28, 2026. Can I uh have an adoption motion to adopt the agenda?

We got a first and second. All those in favor signal by raising your right hand. It's adopted. Um so before we get started, I just want to cover a couple things real quick. Um this is the scope of the base of the bridge Windmill Harbor through Spanish Wells. We know that there's additional work that's going to need to take place down the road at some additional locations um including you know uh Main Street, including um Gumree Road and other areas. So we we know that that is part of a of a bigger consideration, but as we're trying to move things down the road, this is this is where we are today. Um, council, at the end of this, I'd like to have real direction from us, um, so that the town manager knows what direction we're heading in, where we're going, so that we can continue to move forward. Um, and with that, I will turn it over to Mr. Orlando. Afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor, Mayor, Council, um, members of the public. uh we have an agenda in in front of us but I just want to paraphrase a little bit about what we're trying to accomplish today. I would say that the the goal of today or the reason for today's workshop is twofold. One, it's an opportunity and I'm looking around the room for him. Jared Frix is here from Bufort County and we've asked um Beer County to attend to give an update on the US 278 highway 278 bridge project. Um, we as a team, a town team, it's also an opportunity for us to be back in front of you after some months to present a draft of the William Hilton Parkway Gateway Corridor master plan. Um, and really and ultimately to hear public comment and to receive your feedback and direction for next steps. Um, quick reminder, last year, um, it feels longer, um, than that, but it was just last year that council directed me, um, to advance a coordinated master planning effort for the William Hilton

Parkway Gateway Corridor. It was provided as town council members and Buer County members coordinated efforts on the use of the 2018 Buer County referendum project funds. um for the transportation system that at the time included what we thought were the eastbound bridges and through the entire corridor. We now know that the 278 bridge project and the corridor master plan are separate efforts but but we all know they're connected. Um it's a connected system. So where is where is Jared here? Oh, there he is. Hi Jared. I didn't recognize you sitting in the audience there. What I would like to do is is two things. one, turn it over to Jared for a presentation and an update on the bridge. And when Jared's finished talking, I'd like to tee up and and introduce the master plan and the project team.

Great.

All right. All right. Well, thank you. Can you hear that? Yeah.

Okay, good. Thank you for that, U Mar. Thank you for the introduction and the opportunity uh council and staff to present. Staff has done a lot of work as you guys are are aware and the public is aware and so has uh the project the original scope of the 278 corridor project has been a long ways and now the revised portion of that. So that's what I'm here today to brief you on that. Also, um, as many of you are aware, we applied for a large bridge grant application with DOT last fall or or August, and I'll give you update on that along the way as well. I think this is a PDF, so I might need some help scrolling down. That's good. So um to talk about the project and I skipped over the first slide but basically the first slide was a update in the logo. So we've moved from the original project which was all the way from uh Moss Creek to Spanish Wells to an eastbound bridge replacement project. That's an important note. So what does that uh entail? So basically it's a change in the purpose and need which is important to our federal documents. The original purpose and need was to improve the uh structural deficiencies on the eastbound Mack Creek bridge as well as um reduce congestion along the entirety of the corridor. With the rescoped and revised project, that purpose and need has changed to basically just improve the structural deficiencies. So, we're not doing the additional widening and addressing the the congestion along the corridor. Next slide. So specifically, what does that look like? On the top is the eastbound uh bridge, the new project, and on the bottom is the the um original scoped project. And the difference is the

obviously we're replacing both eastbound bridges in the both projects. The westbound project is not being addressed in the new revised project as it was in the original. Both projects are addressing improved access to Pinkney Island. I'll get on to that in the next slide. Um, both projects are maintaining access to Hog Island and Mariners's Cove. Um, what's not included in the revised project are bicycle and pedestrian improvements. I'll talk about that a little bit more later, as well as on island traffic improvements. Um, but again, that's a good tie into what the rest of y'all's discussion is today. And then lastly is since the project has reduced its termini, it's no longer impacting the stony neighborhood. So different from the original project where there was an impact to the stony neighborhood. So this is a a look ahead a view of the impacts on Pinkney Island and I'll describe it to you. So to the the blue is the alignment of the new revised threelane bridge, eastbound bridge. Uh what's important to note is different than the existing bridges today. Both bridges over uh Skull Creek and Mack Creek touch down in the center on Pinkney Island. In the new revised plan, uh there will be consistent bridge. It will not touch down. So it'll stay elevated all the way across the island. The reason why that's important is that's that's the connection that's going to help us make improved access on Pinkney Island. So, if you're headed eastbound from Bluffton to Hilton Head, uh, and you wanted to get to the northern side to go to Pinkney Island, you would take a right. It's a right in, right out. And you can see as you take a right, it's still blue, so it's coming down a ramp to the black road that does the loop to the right is at grade. So, you would get on the loop road, it would go under the new bridge as well as the existing bridge. That's right where the bridges start to go up over the Skull

Creek. and then it would loop around to the Pingy Wildlife Refuge entrance road. Uh likewise, if you stay there for a quick second, if you were going westbound from Hilton Head and you wanted to go to the boat landing, you would come on the northern existing westbound loop, you would get a right off of that road to the entrance to Pinkney Island. You'd take the atrade road underneath and then you're able to access the boat landing. So right in right out in both directions with a loop road underneath the two bridges. So next slide what will this bridge look like in the configuration? So as mentioned this is a bridge replacement there uh the fundings when we scale back the project and looked at the funding. We're basically building a project with the funds that we have available. There wasn't any funds available for expansion and a third lane of road and asphalt. So, the only asphalt that'll be included is the tie-in at the end of the new bridge to get it back to the original alignment. So, we are building a three-lane bridge, but it will be striped for two lanes until such time at a later date in project that an eastbound third lane is constructed both on island and on mainland in order to make that. So, it will be striped for two lanes. It will be sized and designed for three lanes. Um, and an important note is to note that eventually, uh, when the westbound bridges are due for replacement, hopefully many years after I retire, um, this bridge will be sized enough such that it can accommodate four lanes of traffic. So, the goal is to size it today. This structure has a design life of 75 years, so it will outlive most of us in the room. And in doing so, we want to make accommodations that um if there was damage in the interim to those westbound lanes or if there's a bridge

replacement project that we could do that, build it with the new lane, new bridge that's built to today's standards and seismic standards. Um so it could accommodate the four lanes. So, there will be a 10-ft inside shoulder, two striped travel lanes, and then a widing um uh shoulder to the for the future lane and for a 10-ft lane once three lanes. One thing to note, and I've been asked this question a lot, well, that's a really wide shoulder. Can we put pedestrian accommodations on there? And at the very moment, the answer is no. Uh and the reason is there's no pedestrian accommodations that tie to the end of the bridge. So, if there was another project that came later that tied a pedestrian accommodation that it that that tied to the bridge to an existing um pathway or sidewalk, then that could be looked at. I know DOT's preference is that it's a connecting pathway, not just a dead-end pathway. So, uh not just on one side of the bridge, but both sides would be the preferred from DOT, but that could be a future project and a later discussion. But today as constructed um it will not have pedestrian accommodations. Next slide. So where are we schedule-wise? So this revised project um came to light in the summer of last year. Actually a little bit before that in the spring. Um remember back in 2024 we had the referendum and that was the pitch to add additional funding to make the entirety project. We had a deficit of about $200 million and we had some of that on the referendum. The referendum failed. We've got a letter from the uh state infrastructure bank and they said, "Hey, what are you going to do about that?" There was no appetite for additional local funding or DOT funding or state infrastructure bank funding. So, the decision was made to build u with the money that you have. So, at the time in that early spring, uh, it was just a

concept that was thrown out there at about 10% design. So, since the summer of last year, we've moved that 10% design to where we are today. Um, oh, I skipped over. We moved that 10% design to about a 30% design. This past fall, we hosted a public information meeting with DOT in October and then to where we are today at nearing a categorical exclusion, which is our federal um NEPA document. We're at the conclusion of that um and we're making the final submittal to do or to federal highway right now. So, we're approximately 60% design complete with the revised project. We went from 10% last year to 60% now. And I'll get back to that in a second as it pertains to the original project. So where do we think we're going from here? So it'll take us from here very specifically, like I said, we we're submitting the environmental document to federal highway. We hope to have that back in the June time frame with that unlocks the the um do not pass go allows us to go to the next phase which is rightaway acquisition and final design. So we anticipate starting rightaway acquisition. The major rightaway acquisition is Pinkney Island. So dealing with federal government and US fish and wildlife for procuring or obtaining acquiring right away along Pinkney Island. And then the finished design, we've got about a year or a little bit longer in final design. So next spring or summer, we will be finalizing the design, which then will allow us to prepare the project to go out to bid in the fall or winter of next year. And with the expectation that we'll have a contractor procured and start construction in the 1st of 2028, it's anticipated that the revised project is a 2 and a half year build. So if we get started at the 1st of 28, that would give us a summer of 2030

completion time frame. So back to the question of the original project and specifically the grant that we applied for. So, we applied for that grant in uh August. It was a a grant that we co-applied with SE DOT. The original intent was that we would hear something back in the October or November time frame. We did not hear anything back at that time. Also, there was a federal shutdown which didn't help hearing back from them. Since then, they've been open for business, but we still haven't heard anything back from them. Um, I was up in DC in February and visited Federal Highway and US DOT and I was told, "Hey, it'll be anytime, two weeks." And that was in February and we're still in April. Haven't heard back. Even Secretary Pal and his team went up the day after and visited the same contacts and was told the same thing. So, who knows uh when and if we'll hear back on the on the grant, but um what happens the question that I always get, well, what happens if we hear back from the grant? First, if we hear back with a no, uh that doesn't change anything. We have a new project with a definitive timeline and course, and we will continue that course. If we hear a yes, um it depends on when we hear that yes. So right now we're at the same level. We're 60% design. We're at the exact same spot where the old project was, the original project was when we put it on the shelf. So we put that on the shelf. It was 60% design. If we hear a yes now, we can take the new project, put it on the shelf, pick up the old project, and start working back on it again. And we pretty much maintain the the schedule that's outlined. and I just went through in a second ago. If we hear back from Federal Highway in

several months or or longer, we're going to be further along in our design and then we'd have to work back with DOT and the state infrastructure bank on a revised project schedule on the larger project. Um so we'll we'll address that as that comes, but right now um nothing stopping us from moving forward. We're moving forward with the revised project with the definitive timeline that I just outlined. And the last slide is in addition to a new logo, there's also a new website. The old website still gets you there, but you can see the new website at scoot278bridgement.com. You can find all of the information both on the old project and specifically on the new project um there on the website. So, that's the information and update on the bridge project and gladly take any questions that you might have.

I got one quick quick question and I'll let others ask. Um, if the funding was to come through in the next 30 days, right, so that we could continue. Would it still be the same two and a half year time frame to build or is that going to be expanded out? It was expected the larger project was about three years. So, it' just be a little bit expanded. But the to get it from 60% to final design and that would be the same to get it started in 2028. Okay. Any other questions from council? Sure. Hi Sharon. Hey,

thanks for joining us today. Um, a couple of questions that I have for you. Um, I'll start with ones on the last page. So in terms of the new design, how has that or has it impacted the overall cost? What are today's overall costs that you're expecting and the level of service expected to be achieved by doing this project given I'll just leave it at that.

Yeah. So the expected cost the overall project cost is $311 million. So that is where we are and that's all that funding is in hand. U the level of service. So again the purpose and need has changed from the original project. So we're really not affecting level of service as far as um congestion or at any safety intersection turning movements. So the level of service that is today will remain with this project. It doesn't do anything with regard to that. And there's one segment of the four, but one segment of the eastbound that is deficient. And that's the primary concern. That's correct.

We're replacing both segments moving forward and then doing the work to enhance the um capacity, congestion, and safety of um the areas on Pikney Island for both the refuge and the boat ramp. That's correct. That's the whole scope of the project. Yeah. replace the structural deficiencies, improve the um the entrance on and off Pinkney Island and and that's the conclusion. Yes. And I know it's a little you mentioned four lanes is so when we're looking at that design that you had up with the with the diagram. Yes, that one. Um

well, how would that work? Would the two should one shoulder be made bigger and the other shoulder smaller? if we had to go to four lanes. Uh again, four, this is not planned for long-term four lanes. It would just be in a a shortened window during construction or if anything was impaired to the existing westbound bridge. So, the travel lanes are 12 ft. So, you've got 32 feet um of expanded capacity. So, you would carve out 24 feet with a remainder of 8 ft. So, you'd have 4 foot shoulders or possibly two foot shoulders and a twoft median. Um and and that would get restriped. The bridge would get restriped as such.

So what I heard you then just clarify for me is there's not an intention for four lanes go moving forward to be constructed. That's correct. Four lanes would would be birectional. So two in each direction if a temporary if it had to happen purposes.

Okay. And then just as an aside, I know that y'all are working um hard on the transportation advisory committee and I've been watching and following those meetings. Um I am a little concerned about that. It seemed to me from watching um the meeting on the 22nd that perhaps the members didn't understand the the task at hand all of them and there were a variety of different um votes that were being taken or check marks that would be taken from each individual member

um towards the priorities. I'm concerned about that because if we have some who have used a large number I know you heard this because I heard it during the meeting too and it's it's kind of obvious. um and those who follow the rules that means the some of them it'll be skewed right you know this information is anything being done to uh address that

yes so what they're doing moving forward is they and they can go back and change anything they they haven't taken any final action they're just basically have outline of what they're working towards at this moment um but they said okay we think we understand the widening areas we think we understand the resurfacing areas but we're not fully together yet on the intersection and safety improvements. So, their task that they tasked themselves with from the last meeting to the next meeting is let's take all of the intersection and safety projects that were put forward and um re revise those and everybody make sure they put the exact uh they they came up with 14 selections. I think there was about 50 different projects opportunities. Um 14 selections and all 15 members will make their 14 choices. staff will consolidate that, give that back to them to show that they're consolidated, prioritized list, and then they'll make decisions based upon that.

Does that does that does that replace what they did on the 22nd then? Is that work being put aside and this will replace that? It's kind of in conjunction. They're kind of it's not in stone, but they kind of set the widening and the resurfacing components and now they're specifically trying to come to a conclusion on the safety and intersection improvement. Yeah. I want to I want to bring it back because that's not on the agenda to discuss today. So, but I'm concerned about I understand that. Uh but we'll need to take that up at at another time, but let's stay on track here today, please. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Yes, Mayor M. Bryson.

Hey, Jared. Thanks. Thanks for your time. Appreciate you being here. Um it our community remains concerned about the structural uh deficiencies um over the Mackie Creek section and so listening to the description of of estimated completion of the summer of 2030 and then what if the federal money comes through and then going back to the overall project which to the mayor's question that you addressed that time might be extended again at some point would SC DOT and or the county have to decide we can no longer wait on this federal grant? We're going to go ahead because we can't delay any more time in addressing those structural deficiencies. And if so, when would that be? Is it July of this year? Is it September of this year? When would that be? Because the community needs to know that we're not going to have another delay in proceeding to address those structural deficiencies.

Yeah. Firstly, that decision was made last year in the summer, June of 25. So, they said, "We don't have time to wait. Um, we've got to make a decision." And they move forward with the revised project. We still submitted for the large bridge grant because that's a once in a-lifetime opportunity to to address the entirety of the corridor. Um, if we were successful with that, DOT would DOT is responsible of the maintenance of all four bridges. um they would have to make a determination mostly driven by their concerns on whether we even accept that grant. Maybe it's a year and a half from now that we hear back from the grant and we're about to start construction on this and it may not be worthwhile. Um but if if it comes back in 6 months and we've already progressed beyond the re original project, they may have to make some temporary improvements to hold that existing MACE to deficient span um in good shape and long enough for the extended project timeline. That would be something DOT would have to consider. What they are doing is typically all bridges are inspected throughout the state every two years. They've upped that to every year. So, they're keeping a close eye on it and even if during the the revised project something happens to that bridge, they're ready to make temporary um improvements to make sure that remains open through the life of this project or an expanded project.

And you're talking about temporary improvements, not changing the weight designation for the bridge. So to reiterate what Secretary Pal said on a couple several occasions is he does not want to wait restrict that bridge. So they're prepared to make improvements to keep its weight limits still fully open. Um that's that's what he's said numerous times. So I I'm quoting him on that. So at this point, you don't know of a time period during this calendar year where a decision has to be made whether or not to continue with the federal grant application?

No, there's there's no time period where we have to make a decision. It's just whenever a decision is rendered by federal highway and then it comes to us, then we'll really have to make a decision. Um, and specifically the the stakeholders, but DOT is going to have the biggest decision- making in that stage. Okay. And I understand that you were in Washington DC meeting with Federal Highway Administration as was SE DOT. What if anything have we heard from our federal congressional delegation?

We met with so we met with federal delegation, US DOT and federal highway. I did on Tuesday and or they did on Wednesday or Monday or Tuesday. I forget specific. But so we've talked to all of them. All of them know the specifics of of this predicament and they're all speaking on our behalf. all of our federal delegation and no one had an answer. We haven't heard anything yet. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? All right, Jared. Thank you. Appreciate that. Mark, we'll go back to you.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, Jared. I appreciate it. Uh, Mayor Perry, members of council, as we begin our presentation, um, I want to express that the plan reflects a few important elements. And so, it includes your prior direction. It includes coordination with Buer County and DOT. And it includes some technical a lot of technical and engineering analysis. And it includes public input provided through what we just heard is a longer SE dot engagement public process as well as some direct public comment to to us um directly. Um what we present to you today is intended to provide a clear and aligned and implementable path forward. So, I do want to acknowledge that the Stony Historic Neighborhood is a critical part of this corridor and it has been and will remain a primary consideration in our work. And so, I just want to make sure I'm saying that because you're going to see a lot out of the presentation in that regard. We approach the master planning with the understanding that the improvements in this corridor must be handled carefully and respectfully. I do think that at least our our intent is and I believe that you will see in the current draft master plan that it establishes project principles that are aligned with your collective expectations. It avoids right of way and adjacent family property impacts. It focuses on safety, mobility system improvements and access. It recognizes the community's cultural and historic significance. And I just want to assure you and the community that this approach will continue as we refine um the master plan with you. Uh I I'm going to turn it over to Sean, but at this stage and and mayor, you said it earlier, but I want to make sure that that I'm saying it as well. We want to review this presentation. Um if you have questions along the way,

we would prefer to go back and answer some questions and and let us get through this. We have a presentation. We have a a bit of a a fly through as well. We would like to hear your feedback on the proposed master plan. I know there's public comment as well. I I consider that as as as the feedback as well. And then to please give us some direction as we prepare for additional public engagement and and and also some direction on how to bring this back to you. um the sooner we start talking to DOT about first, second, and third steps on this project um are just as important as what we just heard um from from Mr. Frillic. So, we've assembled a team. I have asked um Mr. Gillan here to introduce the team. I think that uh while we don't always do this at every workshop, we know some of the the folks and the and the the folks around the table. I do ask for this purpose that Sean slow down a little bit, introduce the the company and the principal from the company and a little bit of relevant background from them because I think experience especially on this project matters. So Sean,

thank you Mark. Uh mayor, council members, thank you very much. Uh first I I want to introduce uh Brian Kinselman of MKSK who's been the lead on this project uh over the last year and longer than that really five years. Uh he leads development of the gateway corridor master plan for us. He's a specialist in corridor planning and community-based design. A couple of projects that his firm has dealt with is the Chattanooga Riverfront District plan and the downtown Gainesville redevelopment plan amongst many others. Along with Brian is uh Jonathan Guy of Kimley Horn. Uh Jonathan is the engineering uh basis behind the design work. He's a professional engineer and he leads transportation planning and corridor designs. Uh he is a couple of the projects that he's worked on with his firm is the I45 access evaluation for Galveastston Wars and Galveastston, Texas. uh the congestion management plan in Charleston, South Carolina and the US 278 corridor study from Buford and Jasper counties. So he's familiar with this program and this this uh this corridor very much. Behind him is Jeff Buckaloo uh with infrastructure consulting and engineering or ICE as we like to call them. Uh he's a civil engineer with an infrastructure and project delivery expertise. uh he advises on the the feasibility, constructibility, and the implementation strategy. Uh he's currently serves as a program manager for the Jasper County Transportation Sales P tax Program, and he's the one that helped us uh with the cost estimates for this project for this project. Uh now over to this side of the table, our team here in House, uh Don Adam is our capital projects director. He leads the town's capital improvement program and major infrastructure delivery. Formerly w with ACOM uh managing large-scale complex transportation projects. A couple to

note, he was the project executive for the $200 million I16 I95 uh interchange near Savannah and the $2.3 billion I4 downtown corridor improvements in Orlando, Florida. So, he's used to big projects and a lot of corridor work. And then we got Jeff Netsinger. Uh last but not least, Jeff oversees the engineering functions which includes transportation in our storm water program. He supports long-term infrastructure planning and system performance. Prior to being here, he worked with Hussie Gay Bell and worked on a couple of a lot of projects. A couple to note, uh the south the SC7 Cosgrove Avenue bridge replacement um and the US 278 widening project from Simmonsville Simmonsville Road to Moss Creek. So, just a little bit of background, the folks we have working on the team, an incredible assembly of talent. Uh I'm Sean Gillan. For those that don't know, I'm the assistant town manager and I oversee various departments, but that includes the transportation and capital improvement programs and I work closely with Mark uh when we do intergovernmental coordination with the the state and federal governments. And uh I'll provide oversight of the project and policy implementation. So without further ado, I can turn it over to Brian.

Mr. Mayor, council, staff, neighbors, Brian Kinselman, senior principal with MKSK. Thank you for having me. Can you hear me now? Green.

Uh, this is a quick table of contents of what you're about to see. Uh, thank goodness, uh, Jared's here. He went through the bridge project, which is very informative and helpful. We're going to talk about our project objectives in dealing with the with the gateway corridor. It is a parkway corridor. A summary of our improvements that we're proposing. We've broken down this corridor into two bigger pieces. That is Jenkins Island to the west and the Stony neighborhood to the east. And uh also Old Wild Horse Corridor, which is somewhat tangental to the transportation issues, but critically important to the Stony neighborhood. and then analysis of how these improvements will perform. Uh what the sequencing of implementation may be, project descriptions and cost estimates, scoping of those incremental pieces, and then some of the additional transportation improvements that this town is currently working for and work looking at and will continue to do so. The project extends, as Jared had mentioned, the county state bridge project is the green bent rectangle to the left. Everything outlined in pink is our geographic uh layout for the corridor through Jenkins and the Stony neighborhood. I won't go into this because Jared's here, thank goodness. Thank you very much for that briefing. This is a summary of what Jared had just gone through in terms of the bridge replacement over time. Our objective as this master plan team is to create this future vision for what the parkway corridor looks like from the bridge to the cross island again through the Stony neighborhood and also through Jenkins Island. Our role as the consultant team working very closely with staff and everybody must know that staff has been extremely involved and extremely helpful on the professional

side of things and helping us craft this vision to help understand the local conditions, the community preservation opportunities, the character, the history of this place. This isn't just a highway out in a rural setting. This is going through established neighborhoods with a lot of uh background to them. So the town when this larger project was launched uh I don't know mayor five or six years ago it seems um the town had put together an ad hoc community committee to study and uh come up with uh principles guiding principles as to what the town would like to see in this major corridor project. These are those one is to fix the transportation issues of the corridor. That's the safety issues that exist uh for the residents, for the workers, for the visitors to the island. Not just those that live in this neighborhood, but those that have to pass through here to get to the mainland and other parts of the town. Secondly, the safety and the quality of life of those specific residents and neighborhoods and businesses that exist in the Stony neighborhood. This is a roadway and a corridor that is literally through the front yards of businesses and properties. The um the culture and the history of this neighborhood along with the rest of these uh historic neighborhoods across the Low Country and this town are significant. It's a great story. It's a great story to broadcast in every at every turn. Third is to create a gateway for the larger Hilton Head Island. As you leave the mainland, as I leave the mainland and come underneath the the bypass as soon as I see open water, I feel as if I'm on the island. I'm physically not,

but that is the experience. We all feel that that sense of arrival. Fourth is to improve with all of these roadway and enhancements and improvements uh the emergency evac routes for any uh natural occurrences that comes with the territory. So I'm going to turn this over to Jonathan Guy to speak to the traffic issues. This shows some of the annual daily traffic volume averages just so everybody understands just how intense this is from a traffic standpoint. Thank you, Brian. Council, it's great to be back here. Appreciate the opportunity to speak to you on this project. Um, as we start any project, we start at a higher level looking at the average daily traffic volumes that are published by the South Carolina Department of Transportation. You can see um the connecting islands coming across the confluence over there on page left uh where the Bluffton Parkway comes into this. And as we come across to Pikney and then of course into the Stony neighborhood, you can see that volume continue to increase from 57,000 vehicles per day up to 62,000 vehicles per day. What is important is that this is a snapshot in time. It gives you an overall projection of an estimated volume that's through there. I want to make it very clear that our analysis that we moved forward with is not based on average daily traffic volumes. It is based on actual intersection data. uh that is applied to the intersections and some of the recommendations we're going to show. But this gives you a good understanding of movement through these areas. And of one area we do want to talk about is when we get to the Cross Island and then we get to William Hilton Parkway, what happens to that volume? Well, as you all remember, uh in 21 once the toll was removed from the Cross Island, we started to see an increase in volumes. Uh and as you look at the information we have on screen here, you can see about a 5050 split. Again,

remember daily variations are going to play into that. Uh geometric conditions, certainly events like you just had are going to play into the use of that facility. But what we are seeing is that the merging of those two lines is coming together and it's getting close to being balanced. And so, uh, anything that occurs along the the section we're looking at right now, we are not, um, throttling that at a very quick pace to these other areas that we do know we have to address. Uh, and so I just wanted to bring that into a frame of reference as it's important as we continue to move through some recommendations. Volume data alone is not the basis for making a good decisions. You have to couple that with safety. And that is one of the most important things as we're looking at this community we need to address. Uh this information that's on screen right now is a snapshot of nine years of data from 2016 through 2024. Um it does uh remove some of the 2020 data because that was an off peak year for all of us. Uh but you can see two glowing spots up there uh with high intensity and that is the intersection of Squire Pope Road u and Wild Horse Spanish Wells. Those two intersections have a very high intensity for crash types uh crashes overall. Unfortunately, in this segment, we have had six fatalities, two of those being pedestrians. Uh we've had 81 major injury crashes. I'm going to talk a little bit more about what we're seeing uh at uh each of these locations that are glowing uh bright yellow at this point. A couple things to note as we look at this information. You'll see two uh two data points up here and you can see the the data plot on the screen of where each of the crashes are. But what I want to draw your attention to is two things. Time of day, that is a 24-hour period shown in the very top piraphph up there. And you'll notice the highest

concentration the 6 hours is between 12:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. So midday 2 p.m. peak hour. Think about what's occurring depending upon the day. You may have tourists who are leaving or arriving to the island. You may have people moving about their day, going about their business with uh going to get lunch. And then that also includes your PM peak hour departure of individuals who are working on the island or individuals wanting to go off island. It is a high volume of crashes that is occurring during that time frame. The bottom is dealing with severity. And so the US DOT has us look at five categories when we look at that from fatal down to no injury. Uh of the crashes at this intersection as they were coded by the South Carolina Department of Public Safety. You can see 104 the predominant amount uh are property damage only or no injury. So that tells you kind of how we are dealing with the types of crashes. Doesn't mean that they don't have impact to the intersection. It just gives us a relative scale of the overall cost to the traveling public, but also how uh damaging these crashes are and the severity at which we need to look at as we get into probable cause. You can see failure to yield rightway is a big one at this location as well as distracted and following too closely. Uh that does check out. More importantly though, I do want to draw something to your attention and that is the manner of collision. So what type of crash is that? So we have a high predominance of rear-end crashes. Not a surprise, right? We you're having the influence of both the bridges as well as the Cross Island interchange. We have 75 crashes associated with that at this intersection. And then angled follow that uh behind that at 48. You can see the severity level to the page right uh from fatal to serious injury. Notice where they are start that collection of crashes.

That is where you're going to have angle your most dangerous concentration or type of crash that you can have. Uh that's usually where we see those higher injuries come through. So 50% of your crashes at this intersection are rear end. Uh some of that is due to merging traffic and moving traffic. Angles come in at 32% of this. And then as I mentioned earlier, the distracted in attention, failure to yield right away, uh left turning movements, people turning out, that's going to influence that. And then, interestingly enough, driving too fast for conditions. Uh that can also be driving too fast for the corridor. It's not just weather related or time conditions of the day. So, please note that as we move down to Spanish Wells, and you've all been through this intersection before, and you know the congestion that does back up here, again, we look at the severity of crashes. Predominant amount is going to be no injury or property damage only with 99. Unfortunately, two fatalities have occurred at this intersection. And again, just like we saw uh at Squire Poke, we see the majority of these occurring in that 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. time frame. This intersection here, as I'm going to show you on the next slide, really gets into uh failure to yield right away and driving too fast for conditions. This intersections under the influence area of the Cross Island Parkway interchange. And so you're seeing that mixing bowl of conditions kind of begin there. Again, rear end collisions being the predominant one followed by angle and then uh looking at sideswipe distraction or same direction crashes. severity. It's all going to fall under non-colisions. That has to do with um from the two fatalities. Those are involving either objects or running off the road. Uh not a predominant crash type, but you can see uh we did have some pretty serious uh crashes at those locations. Very similar to what we saw at Squire

Pope. So, you see a very un a similar pattern by which uh crashes are occurring along this corridor. again driving too fast for conditions, failing to year the rideway and uh in attention being your predominant causational factors for crashes in this corridor.

Thank you, Jonathan. So, that's the that's the summary of the traffic information relative to the two problem intersections as I call them. What does that mean and where do we jump off from there to create improvements to help that? In uh descending order, we want to improve the level of service for vehicular throughput at these problematic intersections. That isn't moving traffic faster. That is not uh causing people. We have to protect against people wanting to go as fast as they do now through that corridor. But how do we get people through this corridor safely? enhancing the pedestrian and bicycle activity on both sides of the road into the neighborhoods, connecting all places to all places as we're building this corridor for vehicles. Provide a streetscape uh and median improvements because we are through significant neighborhoods. We need to uh again this announce the fact that this is gateway into the town of Hilton Head Island. So this is signage grading, public art opportunities, landscape median plantings. Reconfigure Squire Pope intersection. Reconfigure the Wild Horse Spanish Wells intersection. We've got succinct uh uh solutions to that. Establish a Galaguchi Heritage Park on the townowned property that is now known as Old Schoolhouse Park. and to expand upon that public open space and celebrate and announce the heritage and the culture of not just that neighborhood but of the native islander communities in the Low Country and specific to the town of Hilton Head and then construct additional eastbound travel lane construct construct additional westbound travel lane as uh as Jared had mentioned that will all marry up with the bridge construction that is happening as part of

of the county's undertaking. Now, the first trunch of these two and that's Jenkins Island. This is all of these images are looking east or which is above in these aerial views and looking up to north as we change orientation. North is up on this. You can see Skull Creek uh and the Jenkins Island portion. We're coming from the intersection. We're coming to the intersection which is part and parcel of the county's bridge project. So Cross Tree and Heinrich Circle through that intersection will be constructed by the county. Also they are constructing the connector to Hog Island doubling back if you will to give connection to those neighborhoods since the existing Blue Heron is being uh displaced by the new bridge construction. So all of that horizontal geometry, the new bridges coming into our parkway resolve themselves in a line at that intersection. As part of the town's improvements, we're suggesting that there be uh new trail and parking systems throughout this green space. By the by the green on all of these images is townowned property. Some of it's light green that's meant to be manipulated as parks. The dark green is is uh native ground, if you will. So, we're proposing that with this access road that uh DOT is proposing to Hog Island to go the other direction to the east and create another access road off of Heinrich Circle, which is a signalized intersection at Cross Tree and create parking for a potential imbarcation facility in the uh RV next to the RV resort on Jenkins

Road. also allow access, public access to the Jenkins Island Cemetery, which could also serve as a trail head for bicyclists. So, this is new road construction that takes people to a signalized intersection. It then causes existing Jenkins Road intersection, which I find to be terribly uh testing and dangerous, to be a right in, right out. Especially people pulling out trailers and boats from that resort were causing them to go to a signalized intersection and make make safe turning motions. And then the addition of an eastbound lane again that marries up with the uh the bridge coming down to the intersection. The pedestrian and bike improvements are all of the yellow lines on these diagrams. So, we're proposing in general terms on both sides of 278. There be continuous pathways. There is no pedestrian crossing as there is not today at uh Cross Tree. We're causing that pedestrian bike traffic to go underneath the new bridge, underneath the old bridge, the existing bridge. So there is no pedestrian activity across 278. Much more much much safer. And then also um the trail head and parking lot for vehicular access and bike traffic that may want to take the larger trail system throughout uh the town. Moving across the causeway into Stony. This picks up at at that causeway at the Crazy Crab, which is um which is my uh landmark, uh all the way to to Jenkins or to Jarvis Creek. The roadway improvements suggest we have we have an additional eastbound Oh, I'm sorry, I accidentally

had additional eastbound lane and a future additional westbound lane as that may be dictated. reconfigure into a continuous green tea that Squire Pope Chamberlain intersection and we've got enlargements of that. Moving further down the road, no pun intended, uh improvements to the surface intersection at Wild Horse and Squire Pope as a baseline improvement. A second trunch of improvements would be to replace that intersection with a flyover bridge which would totally eliminate that intersection alto together. So other improvements include the extension of Chamberlain Drive through Old Schoolhouse Park and make a connection to Humane Way, which now connects and will continue to connect to Spanish Wells. So automobile uh traffic is not caused to come into a dead-end condition, which we do today. There will be interconnectedness between those two intersections. And we're going to expand the median to control those left turn motions. Again, as we know today, Old Wild Horse does not allow left turns in and out. We will continue to do that. So, we're not crossing moving traffic with turning motions. on the pedestrian improvements. As with the Jenkins Island Tunch, we're going to have continuous pathways on both sides of 278. As we put in a continuous green tea at Squire Pope, that negates the opportunity to put in a a crosswalk across 278, which is not desirable. That's going to cause a pedestrian bike bridge to be constructed from town owned land to town land over 278 so that North Stony can physically communicate with South Tony E Stony and there's access to

the park to the commercial properties and there's no bicyclists or pedestrians crossing 278 at that point. Then the expansion of the park uh again what is that program? We we're not sure at this juncture. Looking forward to working with that community to again uh uh to broadcast and showcase the culture and history of the neighborhood. So now back to that first intersection, Squire Pope and Chamberlain. These are enlargements that show how these function. Again, all the yellow lines are pedestrian ways and the roadway system is in white. and I'm going to let Jonathan speak to the function of this.

Thank you, Brian. So, the recommendation here is what's known as a continuous green tea. These are popular improvements with the state of South Carolina. Uh there's one right here in Port Royal, and there's several that are being implemented and are already in place uh throughout the state on uh US and state numbered routes. And what that does is it does a couple things. It it allows for that eastbound traffic movement to continue to move uh without stopping at the traffic light which is the reason for the pedestrian bridge and we cannot have an at grade crossing there. It converts uh Chamberlain Drive to a right in right out. So we remove the conflicts for a portion of the intersection that would be there between the most critical which would be the left turning movements uh and the through movements. And then we control from Squire Pope which you can see which is to the top of the page. Um 278's running horizontally across east west controls the signal movement for that going into its own lane uh and then merging into 278 traffic. Uh that reduces the conflicts between those movements. It reduces the swidwipe uh potential for those because it is a channelized movement and it controls the lane at which it moves into. It accommodates all vehicle sizes. It also still allows for the left turn uh from 278 eastbound onto square Pope Road. And so you are accommodating the major movements based on the traffic volumes that are out there today and projected to be in the future.

Before we leave that plan, I want to point one thing out. the the gray parcels are privately held land and you can see the property ownership on those uh by the names given to us by the county auditor. All the green property again is townowned. So we are putting all of these park and pathway improvements on town ground and the corridor improvements themselves fit within the existing right of way. There is no additional right-of-way take to make this corridor work from the end of the bridge to the cross island. Absolutely. So changing perspectives on you uh just orient orient you we are looking east towards the cross island parkway. Uh Squire Pope is going to be on your left side and Chamberlain is going to be on your right side. You begin to see the the channelization of the movement. So, as we approached the intersection, you can see how the left turns would be channelized underneath the new pedestrian bridge, which is in the foreground here and then how you would turn to get onto Squire Pope Road. What this really does, uh, it allows for movements to be controlled and channelized. It adds human aspects associated with gateway features that in the traffic world creates uh, visual uh, friction which slows people down. still allows for traffic to move at a uniform speed. Uh but it uh helps to reduce some of the uh concerns that are out there considering your uh the driver types in here with a lot of visitors. Uh this helps to bring more uniformity to the traffic flow. So we continue to move traffic at a steady pace through here and accommodate that. It also allows for uh depending on time of day, more frequent calls of the squire pope movement if it's needed or longer times associated with 278. It gives us the ability to have dual progression, if you

will, of movements through there. So, it's a very uh a very unique feature with these types of intersections and works well with your adaptive system that you've installed.

While we're looking at this pedestrian bridge, uh this the design of this is a placeholder. It needs to be a signature piece of civic architecture. It needs to match what is we'll show you in a moment another bridge that is further down the line. It needs to be Hilton Head and Stony neighborhood specific from an architectural standpoint. My sense of things, it is accessible, so it's ramping. It's not steps. So, bicyclists, scooters, uh, mobility impaired folks can get up and down and over this bridge, and it all lands itself on public park land. It will be built safe enough that we could get emergency vehicles, uh, police and, uh, uh, EMT across there. But, um, uh, that is all for future design phases. But this becomes a signature piece in my estimation and it needs to be very carefully designed. And then just focusing in a bit more on the intersection, you can see uh as you get up to the signal there with Squire Pope, uh the directional movements that would be allowed for uh the continuous flow of the eastbound lanes and then stopping of the westbound lanes. Uh again to pulse traffic as it comes through here. Uh and then the left turning movements going from Square Pope uh onto 278 eastbound as well as from uh eastbound 278 onto Squire Pope Road uh accommodating all of those movements. These are some examples of what that pedestrian bridge could look like. It could be something very simple. The upper image that is uh light and airy that passes over the roadway. It could would certainly be nightlit so that everyone feels safe in crossing uh at nighttime. It could also be a green

bridge. It could be a landscaped bridge. It could make a very real statement that's literally bringing the park land that's on both sides up and over the bridge. So again, that's a whole other design uh exercise um for another day. It's now the Spanish Wells Wild Horse Intersection. As we mentioned, we've got two solutions, one shortterm and one longer term. We've called this the baseline improvements, which keeps the existing service surface intersection where it is, but brings improvements to it. Again, all the yellow lines are are pathways and crosswalks, but there's additions to these travel lanes that make this safer and give it more capacity.

Absolutely. And as previous images, you can see the green parcels highlighted are uh town-owned property and then the the gray uh is non-towned uh property. Um, two really important initial or baseline improvements that's being added here is and and many of you have sat in this congestion. I know I have uh the Spanish Wells movement. So again, Orient here 278 goes east west. Uh Spanish is Spanish Wells is going north and wild horses going south on the page. U we're adding uh an additional left turn lane. Uh we are also adding an additional right turn lane. We will have dual left turn lanes with appropriate stacking uh appropriate through movement and appropriate right turn stacking on 2278. Uh what is happening out there today looking at the analysis is you're starting to see what we call starvation of those lanes. Uh a lane is either backing up and congesting other lanes so you can't actually get in there and there might not be anybody sitting at the stop bar. This initial improvement sets up the future improvements for the larger. they work in tandem and work collectively together. Uh so we're not throwing away improvements with any of this. Uh this is all baseline information that's needed for the next phase of this as well. On the wild horse approach, we're also adding in uh dedicated right turn lane uh that we have a dedicated through movement and you'll notice that there is just a single left right there based on the analysis. Uh right now that works well, but we've added the provision there is striped out to accommodate if should we need to during construction or as volumes increase. Uh add that lane. That's an easy addition to that. Uh that can also be reconfigured uh as a planted median too to create an additional buffer for the movements we've added for pedestrian and bicyclist at this location. The data we've collected to date, we do see more uh bicyclists using this intersection than we do walkers at this time. Uh, and that's based on

recent counts of the intersection. Doesn't mean that there's not pedestrians at that location. Just we're seeing a higher predominance of bicyclist at this intersection. What you're what we're not seeing in this image is just to the right and that is traffic going off island coming off of the cross island with a downgrade sweeping left turn and business 278 merging on the right. Both, dare I say, likely going faster than they need to go. only to then hit this uh connective tissue of 278 and then the road bends again to the right. So there's a lot going on especially for those who are new to the island. So it's a confusing approach. I I've got to believe that's part and parcel to some of the accident data that we we saw here. This will make that safer, but the ultimate solution suggests that we get rid of that intersection alto together. This is what that intersection looks like in Plan View looking eastbound.

Absolutely. And as you mentioned, Brian, uh this is in the influence area of the Cross Island Parkway. Uh you can see the sight lines are diminished as you're coming westbound. Uh that is uh one of the causational factors associated with the rear end collisions we're seeing in some of the sideswipe. uh as you have the lane transitions uh you have an atypical merging condition uh and departure for the cross island where you are uh having left uh merges uh and departures and so that does cause some friction through here. It also causes both the approaches to slow down. Um, and as we've talked about, that is a separate project, but it does have an influence on this that this intersection configuration will begin to address uh for the future improvements. So now for the the hybrid clover leaf, which is the ultimate solution to that intersection, and that is to remove the intersection altogether. This suggests that moving further to the east again on town-owned property, portions of which are also in the salt marsh as well to construct a new bridge. I will say of the same architectural style possibly of the pedestrian bridge, but this is a vehicular pedestrian bike bridge. This accommodates all traffic and allows us to remove the signals that we've just described at uh at the surface intersection and uh continue the median through there. Uh so there is no uh no cross traffic movements. It's only right in right out onto um Wild Horse and onto Squire onto Spanish Wells. And those two roadways largely stay in place, end themselves at roundabouts, and then allow for this crossover bridge. Again, we can completely eliminate an intersection. If

you're going westbound and you want to go on to Spanish Wells, you stay in the right lane, you make a right turn, you go through the roundabout, another right turn, go over the bridge, you're on Spanish Wells, and reverse that for going to Wild Horse. You can see in the magenta lines, the dark red lines, the possible connector between Old Wild Horse and Wild Horse. Again, that needs to be coordinated with with the with the Stony community, with those property owners if it's desirable to in fact have that connection for economic development purposes. Uh someplace through that town ground, that can happen. On the other side, the south side of 278 is the uh connection of Chamberlain to Humane Way and it finds itself out to Spanish Wells as well. So that whole that whole park on the south of 278 is connected to Spanish Wells as well. This is what that looks like in three dimensions. This is on the edge of the Stony neighborhood, not through the middle of the Stony neighborhood, which I think is significant. This will be a I think a beautiful piece of civic architecture, and it'll be in frame by the by the uh the creek behind. Again, we've got wooded townowned property in the foreground of this. As I mentioned before that baseline improvements of the intersection largely stay as much of of Spanish Wells and Wild Horse will stay. We'll create new roundabouts and build the bridge. All of this construction bridge construction can happen while those inter while those streets and that intersection continue to function. So we'll flip the switch and go to the new infrastructure when that bridge is complete. So the maintenance of traffic gets a heck of a lot easier in this

configuration. Jonathan, anything you want to add to this?

Yeah, I I do think that the just to reiterate that point. Uh you can see the approaches uh up to the roundabout, much of that is based on the existing geometry that's out there for both of the existing roadways. Um being able to construct a project while you are not maintaining traffic reduces overall project cost. It speeds up implementation timelines. Um the exact alignment of this we are showing through the the salt marsh that would be uh adjusted as we go through the permitting process. It may slide a little bit closer this way. Uh and those critical zone lines are always adjusting. Um this does give you overall system resiliency uh with the roundabouts and allows traffic to move in a more uniform way. We now now that you've seen all of the design solutions that we're proposing at this conceptual level, we've got a fly through video that starts at the uh uh at the Bluffton bypass and flies over this all the way to um the Cross Island. So, uh sit back and enjoy the show, as they say. Heat. Heat.

Hey, hey, hey. Hello. Hey. Hey. Heat.

Heat. There you have it. I hope that helps you. Um, certainly does me understand this in three dimensions. Now, as I mentioned before, Old Wild Horse, we're proposing some improvements for that corridor as well. Again, it doesn't have u connection per se to the uh traffic improvements along 278, but it's an important residential and commercial corridor in Stony. So, right now, we've got roadside ditches. We don't we've got inconsistent pathway. Uh we need some connectivity on the east side and could use a streetscape project. So, we're suggesting that there's new curb and gutter, subsurface drainage, trail and uh pathway and sidewalk and street tree accommodations

so that this becomes a a legitimate neighborhood street. So, again, all of that exists within the current right of way. So now that we've gone through this these design scenarios, you may be asking yourself just what does this do for us? This is not a cheap undertaking. This is a very complicated project on a number of planes. So I want Jonathan's going to explain to you a little bit of the performance benefits to these improvements over time.

Absolutely. So this is a representative of both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Uh using the scale at the bottom you can see zero uh providing little to no congestion relief uh to uh the top line where we're using the term no congestion um really to define um a more smooth operations u improved safety reduction of crashes. Uh there will always be uh some level of congestion that may exist at some of these intersections. You can't make uh everything go away, but it represents a higher order of movement through uh certain intersections as you as you approach that. Looking from the left going to the right, you can see each of the different project or project elements we've talked about starting with the baseline improvements there at Spanish Wells and Wild Horse intersection all the way down to the additional westbound travel lane. uh some of their performance values that it brings to um uh to the uh overall corridor and system. Uh what it's intended to do maybe is a better way to put that. Uh and then the benefit from that. So for example, the additional eastbound travel lane, yes, does remove or reduce congestion specifically during uh the AM peak hour. uh for delay associated with that. We are not uh when you add that in combination with a continuous green tea, you're essentially moving removing a congested point or point of conflict. Uh so that's going to have an overall corridor benefit as well as intersection level benefit. Um and then carrying some of those other improvements. You can see how the flyover bridge the intersection goes to the highest level and that's mainly because we're removing the intersection, right? So you're not stopping at that location. So you're seeing the overall benefit uh and then also reduces and improves the overall safety uh as we're improving the sight lines through there, removing that signal, removing the stop, helping some of the weave through there. So the corridor gets a major benefit

from that as well.

So as I mentioned, this is a very complicated project. It's also expansive and it's uh it's cost significant dollars and have we've taken the opportunity to break this down into incremental projects so that it could be delivered over time understanding the constraints of budget maintenance of traffic maintenance of business and all the other things that play into this. So these color-coded geographies represent uh individual projects. Can they all be put together? Can a couple of them be put together? Can there's no necessarily uh chronological order to this other than I will say the first two. Let me jump right into those. These projects this is roughly a description of those incremental projects in 2026 numbers based on the master planning not preliminary engineering. This is not preliminary engineering. This is master planning and all the great good constructibility and cost estimating that my colleague Jeff behind me has put together. This is a $122 million project. So this I think needs to logically be broken down into incremental pieces. So this is the DOT project, the bridge project, and the connection over to Hog Island that Jared had made mention to and through the intersection of Windmill Harbor. The first project we've supposed to look at the at the problem intersection that is Spanish Wells and Wild Horse and do those baseline improvements. Let's put in those lanes. Let's straighten that out to the extent we can on the surface condition and that can happen independent of what uh the DOT bridge project uh brings to us.

Secondly is to deal with the second problem intersection and that is Squire Pope. This suggests that we put in the uh continuous green tea that was described. If we put in the green tea, we've got to remove crosswalks. If we remove crosswalks, it necessitates this pedestrian bridge for a whole lot of reasons. Interconnected neighborhoods not being the least of it. So those two projects alone solve don't solve, they certainly help 40% of those accidents that some of that geometry and uh analysis that uh Jonathan has gone through. Third is connecting those two through old schoolhouse with the extension of Chamberlain Drive and the development of the uh of the Galaguchi Heritage Park on that uh publiclyowned ground. Next would be the uh the addition of of a eastbound lane and straightening out the laning, if you will, between the two problem intersections. Right now, as you come off the cross island, emerge with business uh moving westbound. You've got right lanes that diminish themselves. It's a right lane must turn right condition to go to Old Wild Horse, Spanish Wells. So, you you're to Squire Poke. You're constantly causing people to have to move over to the left. And we've got to believe that's a lot of the cause of some of these fender scrapers and the rear end accidents. But this will allow more lane and more intuitive lane configuration. Next would be the flyover bridge. This is this is uh think of this if you must in chronological order. This is going to take a while to navigate through

permitting, through design, uh, through community engagement. We suggest that as early on as possible to start that process of permitting, early design because it's got such a long lead time. In the meantime, we can help that intersection with project A. overtime replace project A with project E which is the flyover bridge which totally gets rid of the intersection. But this does have a lead time. We just heard from Jared uh the permitting and the design uh schedule involved in these in these larger infrastructure projects. Project F again is not tied to any chronology. Again, this is old wild horse. Uh that can happen virtually at any time that there is the the funding and the will to do it. Same with the Jenkins Island improvements, the new roadway connection, the cleaning up of the Jenkins Road intersection to a right in right out and addition of parking and uh development of the cemetery park. Next would be the westbound travel lane. When the county and the state build that new westbound uh uh bridge uh to the mainland, that is when this project would come online. But project D would already create the eastbound lanes, the enhanced median, the signage on that side of the road certainly. And then this project would be an expansion of that third lane as that comes online. So that's the the full buildout as the adage goes. You know, how do you eat an elephant? It's one bite at a time. And this breaks it down into geographically logical engineering projects. All understanding that we've got the

maintenance of traffic issues, the maintenance of of residential access and comfort and quality of life and also uh commercial properties continuation of business function. This is not meant to tie the hands of the town and the community. This is merely meant to illustrate that there is a way of breaking this down into subsets uh for independent funding. So is this the end of our transportation and corridor challenges in this town? It is it is not uh Gumree Road as we all know. Even with the split of traffic that we've seen in recent years from business to the Cross Island, Gumree intersection is still can be challenging. Uh uh the the the school traffic at Wilbourne is an issue as well. As we all know, dropping kids off or picking kids up. uh Wilbborne Road improvements and bus drive needs to happen. The town manager had mentioned Main Street improvements. That's uh that's underway. It's in the mix. And then Palmetto Bay Road improvements, Arrow Road, Sepine Circle. All of those are things that this council has uh has has in front of them and we understand the need to get to that sooner or later. But this will take us from the end of the bridges to uh the cross island. With that, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Manager, happy to answer any questions. Okay, that's a lot. Thank you. Um so I think personally I I'd like to hear from the audience um first. Um I'd like to hear from from our residents and those that you know are going to live with us dayto-day. So, um, we'll go to

that first and and Kim, do we have any any order set up there for comments? So, I've got five for this item and then I have four for non-aggenda items. Okay. So, so for this item, we've got five signed up. Um, keep in mind you've got three minutes, but if somebody did not sign up, we'll let you go ahead and speak today. Um, so why don't we go ahead and start with those first few that have signed up. Donald Forado.

Thank you. U I'm Don Fertado. Uh I've lived on the island on three different occasions that cumulatively total more than 25 years, initially over 50 years ago. And I currently live at the Cypress and Hilton Head Plantation. I have a suggestion regarding the configuration of the intersection of Highway 278 and Square Pope Road. I'm very familiar with the area. Uh I have substantial experience in real estate development on and off the island and I was the project manager for Windmill Harbor when it was first developed. I've served on the island planning commission and was on the town committee that created the first land management ordinance. Hilton Head Plantation is now the permanent home of about 10,000 people, slightly more than 25% of the island's permanent population. If you add other permanent residents along Squire Pope and Gunfree roads, I expect that the total number of residents who use Squire Pope Road frequently to access 278 probably constitutes about onethird of the island's population. In my view, the proposed highway 278 reconfiguration plan does not adequately deal with the intersection of 278 at Square Pope Road. The proposed plan appears to largely maintain the existing intersection configuration, at least at the turning point. I'm not talking about the widening portion of it. Both the existing and proposed configuration failed to provide an adequate acceleration lane for vehicles exiting Square Pope and turning right to go west

on 278. If you would look at the plan, you'll see it's only probably about two or three vehicle lengths. The existing and proposed westbound acceleration lane is just not long enough to permit most vehicles to gain adequate speed to merge smoothly into westbound 278 traffic except when all westbound traffic is either stopped at the light or there's very limited westbound traffic, which is not the case during most of the day. This can cause all square pope traffic approaching the intersection from the uh from from in from square pope road to back up at many times of the day. When I say all, I mean it's whether it's going uh in or out. But primarily from the exit point of view because as you as you turn right there such a short period of time, vehicles will back up who are trying to either to go straight, cross over, or turn left, but they can't because the road is basically blocked with vehicles.

Mr. Fata, we we we're about out of time. Just want to let you know. Okay. Uh in many other similar busy Island 278 intersections, there are much longer acceleration lanes for vehicles turning right on the 278 to merge with westbound traffic. There's adequate space to lengthen, in my view, the proposed acceleration lane at Squire Pope while retaining the wise and desirable proposed new pedestrian and bicycle path on the north side of 278 just west of the intersection. Okay, I'm I do have to stop you there. We'll take your we can take your a copy.

I've extended my time. You you have. I'm sorry. Yeah, apparently there's a glitch on the system, but um yeah, if we can get a copy of that, that would be wonderful. I will. Thank you. Thank you, Skip Hogland. Thank you.

U Skip Hogland, Windmill Harbor. I'm a 50-year resident of Hilton Head. First, windmill Harbor is part of Hilton Head and this will be formalized with a declaratory judgment filed by my lawyer and work with Curtis Cold Train or whoever the lawyer ends up being. Uh the town limit begins at the bridge. A limit is a straight line right and left. It's not a crooked line and it's not a backwards line. And there's much more that proves that Windmill Harbor is actually part of the town of Hilton Head. Um, I like the loop under the bridge to Pikney Island and the easy access to the Pikney Refuge. That's a great idea, great addition. Um, third, I think it's important for everyone in this room to understand that the most important part of this project is replacing the bridges 30 years past its useful life and assume safe use. Uh next, no matter what the bridge design and how fast traffic crosses a bridge, uh it's going to be like a stent for your heart and the traffic will just shift from here to the middle or the south end of the island since it's a one-way dead end. It seems that Windmill Harbor is going to be the winner on this traffic uh uh improve uh improvement. The south end will just increase in traffic, especially over the next five or 10 years. There is no fix. There is no fix from I95 um to the south end of Hilton Head. There just no way to do it. There's no infrastructure. There's no possibility. We're going to have to learn to live with it. I've learned to live with it even though I moved here for the island life and not the big city life. So, I've learned to just accept it. And if you don't accept it, you don't like it here, then you can leave. I've chosen to stay and accept it. Um, fourth, I think you will need to loop the um at the traffic light at Winmill Harbor. And I live in Wimill

Harbor and my residents at Wimill Harbor are probably going to want to lynch me after I say this, but I think we need to loop under the highway or under the bridge some way. Fix that. You miss that. And I think you need to do that. I love the light, don't get me wrong. The light has saved many lives. I mean, I we were just waiting for a t-bone and and people people and death. It was coming. So, I'm so glad that Buford County helped us and did that light that did that light. But I think we need to to design and put that as a priority because that is a that is not sustainable. That has got to be changed. As as much as I love that light, let's loop it under. And um the other thing I wanted to say about making uh uh Hilton Head, excuse me, Winmill Harbor part of Hilton Head is it'll add to our tax base. We can use more money. And guess what? We can use more money for this project that he just showed us 122 million. So let's get the money from residents like me at Winmill Harbor. Let's come to reality. Windmill Harbor is part of Hilton Head. I don't care what you say, how you look at it, what the lawyers say, that's a reality. Let's get it done. Thank you. Okay. Thank you,

Steven Bear. Steven Bear.

I'm learning the defects of hearing aids. Uh, I'm Steve Bear. I have 39 years of engineering experience, including network planning for US and overseas network and Iranian network, as a matter of fact, co-inventing wireless network planning systems. I have one patent and eight years studying the corer plan. This plan's a good start, but we're not yet ready to spend $123 million on it, and it's going to rise tremendously because there's missing parts and cost inflation. I've never seen a plan with so little quantitative backup data. And by that I mean it needs to show improvement in addition to the beauty which you've done a wonderful job on. It needs to show improvement in throughput for all that money we're spending. And when I talk throughput remember always that the peak traffic loads are two to three times what you're measuring in AAD. Your AADT gives you only 1300 vehicles per hour through there. We're measuring close to 3,000 today at peaks. So you need to do peak traffic analysis. I don't know if there's a traffic engineer in the room. I sent you 10 concerns in written comments. And I think what we need to do is work interactively with the community, not in one-way conversation as we're having here. I think you need some community experts within your committee to help steer the right direction. A lot of these ideas were thought of two or three years ago uh and they would be in place already or constructions. Seriously, consider the comments that we sent you and develop a group of options to fix the problems that we pointed out. Just like the city of Buford did with this waterfront problem, it presented a list of options and costs and pictures. For each option showed metrics, travel time, cost, and pros and cons. And Councilwoman Bryson might remember this from 2020 when the county vetoed it. The

county absolutely vetoed the fact that we wanted to see throughput costs uh and other factors. Your present method of one-way closeted planning is a tremendous waste of everyone's time and money and opportunity. We could have headed off a lot of these problems months ago. You have some good concepts, but you've missed some opportunities and you created new problems at Squire Pope. In the next month, we need to interactively meet with your experts, build on the great plan you have, fix the problems, and find ways to optimize the bang per buck that we taxpayers are going to spend. Will you allow that? Will you allow to work with your experts to maximize the bang per buck that you're going to ask taxpayers for? Thank you.

Thank you. Sorry, control panel. Um, Richard Bizzy.

Good afternoon. Richard Bizzy, Indigo Run. I just want to make three primary points today. First, January 9th of 2025, last year, Senator Tom Davis sent a letter to town manager Mark Orlando regarding the master plan for the 278 corridor. That was 15 months ago. In that letter, Senator Davis made clear that the plan should be finalized by March 31st, 2025, 13 months ago. Yet, here we are. Give new meaning to the term slow country. And the delay is not trivial. According to Senator Davis, the final plan may directly impact the design of the new eastbound bridge and could require modifications to the westbound span. He also emphasized that difference should be provided to the residents of Hilton Head since they are the most impacted parties. That principle should have guided this entire process. Second, but you deliberately avoided that by using the so-called rolling quorum to evade public scrutiny. A rolling quorum occurs when members of a public body discuss public business sequentially by way of email, phone calls, or small group meetings. some call them two by two to avoid open meeting requirements while still effectively reaching consensus that undermines the intent of the Freedom of Information Act. Every member of this town council participated in those secret meetings to keep us pesky residents in the dark. Greater transparency likely would have surfaced issues and opportunities much earlier and we would be months ahead of where we are today. And the final point, this project is estimated to cost about $125 million to upgrade the entrance to Hilton Head. Yet, the 60page report does not clearly

answer a fundamental question. How much will these improvements reduce travel time for the untold thousands of vehicles using the corridor every day? That's not a minor detail. It's the central measure of success. If we don't know the expected impact on travel time, it's fair to ask, what are we actually buying? What alternatives were considered? How confident are we on the projected outcomes? And how much will this really cost? Perhaps AI could have provided those answers and saved the town hundreds of thousands of dollars. In summary, the town is significantly behind schedule. You all know it. The process lacked transparency. You all know that. And the plan still does not clearly demonstrate how it will improve daily travel for thousands and thousands of commuters. That's not a foundation for confidence. It's a reason for concern. Thank you.

Thank you, Christopher Cliff.

Um, I'd like to start by saying I'd like to compliment the the team. I think the presentation is excellent. um found it thoroughly interesting to read um and they've amplified a few points today. So I think we've got a great starting point. However, I do have a couple of uh comments issues I'd like to mention. I don't understand why they've not used 2025 data. It's readily available. I've got it here going all the way back to 2018. The other thing you'll find if you look at the data, this is SC DOT data. Whilst the number of vehicles coming onto the island is either declining or at best holding its line, the number of uh vehicles crossing the Cross Island Parkway is accelerating. And the split isn't roughly uh 47 53. It's more like 55 going on to 60% is going on Cross Island Parkway. And it's not my data st. And I've got that data to 31st of March 2026 if you want it. Um, so the other thing I'd like to say is that um, this to me is a beautifification uh, project masquerading as a traffic operations improvement project. It's quite clear that the the the two aspects of this whole plan uh that will really improve uh traffic flow are the most contentious and certainly the most expensive and they're not new ideas. Anybody that's been involved in these various task forces going back to 2018 will say this is all that's it's almost like deja vu. I've heard all this before and I've seen it all before. uh the only big difference is the costs are substantially greater and probably more realistic. The the other aspect of this whole uh plan and of course everybody has their

own idea of what a plan is about um needs to be addressed. I think if you go down this road you're going to significantly change the impact upon visitors to the island. you're going to significantly impact the ambiencece of the island and what you're going to create, you're going to take away that cultural aspect and that hazard ad hoc approach and replace it with a a sterilized American approach anywhere approach. And what I think the the objective which isn't being explained, the hidden objective, it will actually attract more tourists. It's a tourism project and you get more traffic, you'll increase your congestion problems. And we all know that the major congestion problems are the traffic lights. A previous speaker said the Wimblewell traffic light has saved many lives. That's flatly incorrect. SCOT made it absolutely plain and um Steu Rodman will confirm this that the corridor of Wiml Harbor is not a hazardous traffic uh issue. Uh there is no gain in terms of safety from the Wimbled Harbor traffic lights. That's a fact. It's not me, it's it's them. Um so

sorry sir. Oh right. Sorry. So anyway, I just like to say on a positive note, I think it's a great step forward. Uh but it's a bit deja vu and the cost is just absolutely horrendous. Thank you very much. Thank you. That's all I have for this item. Okay. Excuse me. My sister sign me up. I I was just getting ready to ask if there was anybody else in the audience that would like to come up and speak for three minutes. Okay. Come on up. Come on up to the microphone. Good evening everybody.

Yeah. Now, uh, what I see in here is really awful because what's going to our neighborhood is nothing but a bunch of bricks, monuments, you know, and it's not going to slow the traffic down. Um, 61 years old. I've been on all my life. And you know I come here and I prayed s John pray and I pray what we need to do and let's see a way and I have asked question let's see a way if we can get through them gates to open up some floodway where we can get on and off this island. Every time we come up here, we talk about the same thing. How we going to widen the roads in our neighborhood? That's no good. And infestation that what I see up there now, oh, it looks really beautiful, but it don't look like me. Don't look like me. Come on. Uh, piggy back off the young man. I look like attraction for tourists. Not a black guy like me. I used to walking across the road. I can't walk across the road no more. And with that, I definitely can't get cross emergency to get to my mama. How I'mma get to stop traffic, you know. Come on, guys. That's not right.

Let's find a way that we can come a different area. We got to get through them gates. I've asked question. Nobody can answer that question here today. And I'm 61 years old. Nobody answer that question. Why cannot we get through the gates to get traffic moving? Come on now. What's the problem? The people behind the gates come and talk about how they can make fancy way to get home. Hey, come your back door. There's a bridge. Talking about spending all this money. It's a lot of money for that project. Talking about dollars I ain't never seen before, heard before. Come on. Ain't nothing but a few community houses on Stony. What I going to do today impacting me? That's impacting me to get into my mom, my cousins. I have to go a almost a mile. Come on. That ain't right. Y'all got to think about it. Y'all pray. Y pray on this the end of God.

Yeah. Thank you, Johnny. Yes, sir.

Yeah. William Stewart, I wish I had come up before I let these other guys. You guys did a good job. I mean, seem like I should have came first and you could have backed me up. But what's going on? Best thing to solve all this traffic problem. bring you a road right through Jarvis Creek to the cross island that was suggest to the Tiger Hilton Head in the first study y'all did but it was kick under the can nobody seemed to know about that do suggest to the town of Hilton Head to aliviate the traffic problem through the stony community is to make a bridge And it was agreed on. But like my man say, Windmill Howard punch a big blow to the whole thing. Actually, windmill control Hilton Head. Yeah, right, dude. This man present on the 22nd a plan with the crossover bridge. He couldn't tell me where it start, where it end, the capacity for motorized vehicle. He was telling me it's wide. It's sturdy. Give me some dimension. And now you sitting up here showing your whole plan. Like you guys say, they professional on breaking meeting down, getting a little bit hair, getting a little bit hair, and bring it all together. We never wanted this crap. And apparently it ain't as easy as they think. I've seen Master Ward one. Master Ward one, two, and that humongous book you got. I should have bring you up there and drop it and say trash that

too. Yeah, drop. That's the third one of those I've seen since I've been dealing with this island. So, if it was so easy to do, what make you think you got to figure it out? You're just smarter than the other guys. No, you're not. Now, you

Mr. Stewart, Mr. Stewart, please don't please don't do that. Don't don't don't attack. Well, he's the one feeding us to the wolf just like your guy you got work in the gi community cuz he's putting all these I've seen this guy at two meetings, three meetings and this is his plan and we're saying no. But he said he designed it with Bluffton and everywhere else. So this is on you, bro. Okay. Get it right. It ain't right. Thank you. Anybody else in the audience want to come up and make any comments? No,

I'm just gonna say one thing. I I didn't prepare anything and I wasn't planning to say anything, but thank you for the opportunity. Um I just My name is Tammy Gore. I'm from Indigo Run here on the island.

Um and I just went to a meeting where uh Sheriff Tanner was the speaker. So I just wanted to mention a few things that he said. Um, Squire Pope is the most dangerous intersection in Buer County. Um, that that's directly from from Sheriff Tanner. The population in Buer County is 210,000. Um, the police um monitored 275,000 vehicle trips on average in a single day. Um, and we know that that number goes up and down depending on the season. Jasper County is the fastest growing county in in the country. Um and the bottom line is that growth is accelerating and the number of vehicles that are going to be traversing throughout Buer County including Hilton Head um is also uh accelerating. So my concern, the bottom line of all this is my concern is that using the 62,000 vehicle count perhaps is shortsighted. That's all I wanted to to bring up. Thank you. Right. Thank you, Dick.

My name is Dedric Advocat. I live in Dearon Lane in Hiltonet. I want to thank Mr. Mayor, town council members, town manager and administration. And I think we have quite some brain power in the room to um to think about this this all these issues. But um today I'll be the elephant in the room and I'll bring out some practical um things that um we can address in the short term. And so um I've mentioned this many times but maybe um Kimberly Horn can take note of it and there some are actually right in our face. So, um, as Skip mentioned, the the loop around, um, the westbound loop is something that we is a serious solution to to the Wimble Harbor issue. Secondly, the the light and the lights in general. We've installed the adaptive traffic management system, which is not perfect. It should be a full um green stream around the island, and it's it's doable. we have to maybe find some other consultants and I think it's something to be addressed. So you can have a fully adaptive traffic management system that uh creates um the traffic flow and traffic flow interacts with safety. If you have to constantly stop and go, you increase the propensity for accidents, which brings me to the report at the time that was published uh by uh the sheriff tener maybe a year ago where he said that about 80% of accidents are caused by um people driving too close to each other. And so there are variations of that. I mean, you spelled it out in that that report, but

many other places in the United States um put chevrons on the road that spell the distance on the road of where you have to be with your car um visa v the car in front of you. And I think it's something to at least experiment with and we can start that process on accidentrone areas and see where that takes us. It doesn't cost a lot of money to put that in. Maybe it's a DOT issue that needs to be addressed. Um, the other thing that also needs to be addressed, and I think we need to be firm as a town with DOT, otherwise it's not going to happen, is the merge from the Cross Island Parkway bay westbound onto 278. Right now, it used to be a two-lane entering into a two-lane, and that was abandoned because of the left turn into Spanish Wales causing accidents. But if you look at the traffic pattern now and you see the backup uh around 3 4:00 right now, it it's it's something that is so easily to solve and I would like to encourage Kimberly Horn to take a really good look at this and to see if you can't solve that problem. I mean I do like the ideas of the bridge and everything else which is long term but in the short term we can do a lot of things. Lastly, one more thing. What we indicated with the first study that we've done is to have an actual traffic simulation model. Now, you guys are really good at that. Um, videos, all that kind of stuff is really great, but it doesn't show us what really happens. So I encourage the town and Kimberly Horn and MKSK to build a it's not that complicated. If I put my mind to it, I can do it. But to

build a traffic management traffic model system. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Um council, Mr. Alfred,

first I want to congratulate Mr. Kinselman and Mr. guy and their firms for the work that they have done and the designs that they have come up with. Uh I find them very very impressive. Uh but under underlying the matters that have been presented to us today uh to me are two assumptions. One, we have unlimited money and unlimited time. I don't think we have either of those. And I think we have a lot of pressing concerns that uh impact this community uh in terms of tourist, in terms of uh businesses that need to get their workers here, get the opportunity for employees to to be on the island as well as residents. So there there is a diverse group of of people who are very concerned with where we are going to come out on this and to me what they are looking for is primarily two items. One of which is u can we get on and off the island more rapidly and can we do so without just as many fender benders and other collisions as we have. make it safer, make it quicker. Given that we uh do not have unlimited time and money, I am very much interested in uh seeking a determination as to what projects can be done with the anticipated level of money that we think uh our legislative delegation may be able to obtain from state appropriations. uh they have been requested to think about uh funding as I understand it in the $ 30 to $50 million range. Uh we don't yet at least I don't know how likely that is to occur and at what

dollar level. But if we pick a a number in that range that our town hall staff believes is is reasonable, what projects can be done for that and what impact would those projects have on the safety and travel time factors. uh I I would be very reluctant to uh commit and perhaps actually expend millions of dollars uh on projects that don't have much of an impact either on safety uh or on travel time uh just to be able to say well we're doing something on this. So that that's my primary concern is what can we do uh with the anticipated level of money that would have a significant impact on time and travel. When we think about things that that are going to be put off to future years, I get very concerned. Uh and the reason is is is that it becomes if you don't do it as part of the major project, it becomes very easily to keep putting it off and never get it done. And I'd hesitate to see what what the prediction markets might show as to the likelihood that if if we don't do the Spanish wills uh over overpass

within a short period of time, will it ever happen? And I'm afraid of what those prediction markets would see. So I think we need to focus on what can we do uh that has a significant effect and what type of schedule would we think about if we wanted to do the remaining projects? What type of schedule would we think about in terms of time and where would that money come from? Thank you. Other comments other Steve? Um,

well, most of you know, all of you know how I feel about this project. Um, we had some comments from I'm glad you did that, by the way. Brought the public into it first. That was that was really nice. And I think Mr. Fidado brought up um Scarpoke Road and all of you know that I'm happy to see the the fly over and you know that I've been pushing hard to try to get some kind of a frontage connection for Square Pope Road and eliminate that light as well. Another comment from the audience was about how much time do we really are we really saving? What kind of time travel savings are we having? Of course, we're going to save some time. Do we know exactly what the time is? No. Can we find out? most likely. But for me, I think it's more about saving lives. You know, we've lost some people at these intersections. And someone else stood up and and also said it's the most dangerous intersection in Buer County, and that's Square Pope Road. So again, I reiterate, let's not leave behind that intersection. Um we do need some additional someone spoke about acceleration distance uh deceleration distance. Uh but we all know that if if we delay we pay and um you get that paralysis through analysis comment that all of us have heard of before. And so moving tiny parts of this project forward in my opinion um some of it absolutely that's going to overlap we should do that but we need to look at that as this is a chunk we need to find this cash and we need and need we need to get going. Uh if we delay we're going to pay guys. Uh, one question for who put the the the numbers together, and I know they're

preliminary numbers, but these numbers that were put together, did they have no interference, anticipated interference, or precise interference? Can you explain the question again what you mean by interference? Utility interference. Excuse me. Utility interference. Oh. Oh, yeah. Utility interference. We we used um because we did not have design uh level information, storm drainage need to be at the need to be at the microphone. We used a contingency of 15% of the flat construction cost to assume utility conflicts, relocation, etc. Yeah. So, we put 15% on the construction cost.

Thank you. I was just wondering if it was uh so I want to I want to stop there for a second because um I agree it's about safety and I'm going to make this statement. I've made it before. Um, for our previous town manager to have lost his son there is just a tragedy, right? That's that's an awful thing. Um, and for us not to do something about that to prevent it from happening again is also an awful thing. Um, we know that that I mean you you look at the project scope A through FG, right? It's $125 million. You take out that portion of it, which is years down the road, probably outside of our lifetimes, that's another $25 million that's out of the project. So, we're roughly at $100 million. We're talking about to Mr. Alfred's point, $30 to $50 million coming in from u the, you know, from the state if we can get that over what time, right? Because there's the timeline of design, engineering, approval. What does all that look like? Um, we know there's something else that you know there there's a referendum that may may or may not work. We know that we're looking at additional ways to to come up with with funding. So, I think, you know, the question is what is the project scope? You know, if if it's a $100 million and we can get $50 million from the state, I mean, I think we've got to have it all on the table, but but we've got to look at all those funding sources and we've got to be ready to move forward with that. And and I guess Mark, I would ask you right now, um I I and I don't want to talk about the future budget, but are we looking to earmark funds for some of this in in forthcoming budgets?

Well, I'm not sure I understand your question because that that should be answered by you. Well, right. Right. I've been sincere as a director of council. It's not it's not meant to be aloof. It's meant to I need some direction on where the dollars come from. I

But as we're looking forward, what is the dollar amount that that we have alloc that we have earmarked? Not earmarked, but you know, kind of said this is what we're looking at to spend in these troubled areas on roadways. Is it $11 million? Is it $5 million? I don't have I I can't remember the number off the top of my head. Okay. But there's So there's money there is the point. Yeah. This this project's separate, right? my budget proposal that will be made to you in a in a in a couple weeks includes some soft costs for a couple of these intersections as your marks. But but for us to come in and show that we're we we're bringing money to it with other parties as well is where I'm going with that. Um

mayor, if I may before we start talking about money, because I think that's a big piece of this. It is. Can we before before we do that because there's a number of elements to that that I want to give credit to. Can can the rest of us comment on what we've just heard and then circle back to that? I think that might be I was trying to have a a quick conversation with Steve as to what you know what elements he thinks we need to have on there now.

Well, you know, it's all about do you have the cash? Well, can we find the cash? Because I think it all needs to happen at once. I really do. I mean, I I I think we have the cash to go ahead and do something with Spanish Wells right now. I think we have the cash to uh to do something a little a little something with um Square Pope Road, but I think design of the entire thing needs to start. Um and I and I beg everyone not to leave the most dangerous intersection in Buer County out of the loop. And let us all not forget if this is designed and built properly with these feeder roads, Wild Horse Road, a frontage road, Chamberlain Road, this is an economic boom for this for this community. Um, and we've had those discussions. So I really I really personally feel that way that there's some great opportunity, commercial opportunity for that community because of what we're doing.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You Yes. you at the beginning of the meeting you you said very clearly I wrote it down that you're looking for clear direction here yes

okay so I I appreciate you wanting to have a conversation around money since Mr. Desimone brought it up Mr. Mr. Alfred has brought it up, giving us a respon a time to respond to the money question I think is important um outside of putting the town manager on the spot. So, I'm going to take some time and respond to this if I may. Okay. Um you know, we need to face some facts here. Um yeah, $125 million is a lot of money, but when you start breaking these projects down, we can afford them ourself. We just borrowed $80 million or some of $80 million to fix the beach. We're talking about lives here. We're talking about saving lives here. So, we've got bonding capacity. We got money that we pledged a couple months ago in a bond deal that we haven't spent. So my mind is to me I think we look at this in chunks and today come away with some amount that we can say to Mr. Town manager hey let's move and squ is an intersection we want to do fine I think Spanish wells is important as well I mean you less than 20 million doing those two we can afford that if we can get money from the state great but the bottom line is like Mr. The town man just said at the beginning himself, this is implementable. It's a big word that he used. It's not implementable if we're waiting for others to tell us if we got the money or not. So finally, I mean, all these years we've had conversations with the county and the state about what needs to happen. And finally, we are controlling our own destiny. We can't hide behind the county said this or the state said this anymore. this is us. So, let let's deal with it while we got it here in front of us. So, I'm

comfortable with $20 million saying, "Mr. Town Manager, let's look at that over the next couple years and see how we can get there." That's my response to his comments. Awesome. Perry. Okay. I think I think without a doubt you have to you have to break that egg on that long-term design that Mr. Kinsman was talking about because we can't push that down the road, right? you push that design down the road. You could call this $222 million. So, okay. Hang on one second, Mr. Orlando. Okay. Yes. Yes, sir.

I apologize if that came out wrong. I will say that in the room. I'm not making a snide comment. What I do need from the full council is is a little bit of an understanding and I think it's really really important at a workshop where we're all sitting around a table and we can have a good conversation is I'm going to continue to ask what are we funding because I think that is the first and foremost the the most important question. Um this this will take the rest of my career probably to fund. Um but there are different ways to fund a project. First and foremost, federal, state, regional, local, right? We know that the layers of funding are there. Our dollars on on our own have to be compounded, right? Have to be leveraged with other dollars. Jared's talking today about a potential federal grant on another bridge. We know that the delegation has talked with us publicly and said hurry up and put a master plan together um so that we have some confidence in what we are trying to fund and so you know tiff district referendum dollars and we have just for clarity um through the transportation advisory committee I believe it's called the the the the next referendum group we have placed for clarity as a reminder the intersections of Squire Pope Road and Spanish Wells Road and some other system improvements. Right. Um in the referendum list for consideration. Miss Becker was asking those those good hard questions to to start the meeting. We do have some some what I'll call funds. The GEO debt. We just borrowed 35 million. We use some of it for fire rescue. the way you've laid that out. We we did borrow we borrowed $19 million for for beach, but that was a beach source. We know that we can go talk with DOT about funding. We know that delegation will help with funding. We

know that as this master plan is in place, we will have to bar none help the lats group, the committee, the group that you all are a part of and and we know regionally through the MO to prioritize this project so that again when we look federal and when we look state dollars, they know that it's a priority in the region. And so, um, it's strategy. Funding is strategy. And without the master plan in place or without the schematic of what we're funding, there's no strategy for me to go obtain the funding. So, I I I want to get us focused. Mr. Alfred asked the question, you know, my first thing I wrote down was prioritize projects A through H and use funds that are reasonable to improve the impacts. I think based upon the project scope, we know that those intersections are the two most important projects. Um, and and one more thing to say, we we did receive some really good public comment today.

Um, our goal has always to not been to not impact any properties beyond what have already been impacted out there. So, what we're trying to do is balance. And I think if I could ask you today, focus on the master plan components and I think a subsequent follow-up needs to be additional public input and and funding.

Y well I wanted to to at least touch on the conversation about funding because there are Alex to your point. Yes, we can, but there are additional resources that that exist for us to to fund this project. But but we'll take it back to the scopes and and focus on that and the elements that we're looking at that we agree with or don't agree with. So, Miss Becker,

thank you and um and thank you for your comments and y'all who made comments um from from our residents. Thank you all. There were some great comments um and thank you to the entire team MKSK and all of y'all for the for what you put together. It is beautiful, right? And there's nothing wrong with enhancing the aesthetics of the island. And that if that's a part of it, it's a great bonus. Um, but it's not really what we're here to talk about. What we're really here to talk about is the improvements um that we need on the island first and foremost for safety. And that's what this really um for me does. the congestion piece um we can we can get around to talking to and it does look depending on how how you pick and choose that we can we can see improvement and that's that's a really good thing and I'm going to ask Christopher if if you would please you have that 20 256 data will you please leave a copy for us so that we can

perfect even better thank you so much for that all of us please

yes of course all of us Um, thank you. And and I have a number of of points that I want to make sure that I get to. Um, but the funding is important and Jared, thank you for your patience and y'all for your patience as I kind of leaned into that transportation advisory committee and how it's moving along because from what I've seen, I do have concerns. We have put together a list of projects that were important to us and we've sent them forward and we have great representation on that committee. But what I'm not seeing is that our projects are receiving the same type of um um priority. And part of the reason is because of the votes that were taken. And that's why I specifically asked we need a correction there so that those votes so that all of our projects can be properly evaluated um in the context of the hundreds that are out there to be looked at. So So that's why I drew that in. um the funding if that referendum were to pass is important to us. Um if the referendum were to pass and we didn't have our projects on there, then that doesn't sound so good to all of us or any of us in this room. We've been there before. And as we look at $122 million roughly at this point, 123, God knows, um you know, keep in mind that 80 million of that could have been solved with the last referendum. And so all of those points are really important as we look forward. And the next step with that, and I see or I thought we had um a county representative um in the room for a while with us, but I'm curious is how much of money will the county come up with to help us within the portion of this project that

is not on town land? We're talking about a third lane going down a piece of road that's not county town owned road or within the town limits. Sorry, skip. Um and therefore there's there needs to be a conversation about the Buer County share in our um development of a plan for a third lane going down 278. Additionally, within the notes that we reviewed, there's the relocation of the ferry um possibility um who's picking up that tab. And when you do that, if that moves out to Jenkins Island, there's road enhancements that are part of our plan that ought to be born by the county. That's their that's their ferry location. And so I want to make sure when we're talking about funding and I think it is important um mayor that we are talking about it but I want to make sure that we're talking about it. We're itemizing what it is um that we're paying looking at and we're going to pay for and where that can be shared among all the parties that are benefiting. Um and I'm going to go through a list here and and I would love to make it really really uh nice and neat and I may backtrack on a couple of them. Um, as you all know, as we've spoken over time, um, about this project, I have made an absolute hardline statement for me that as we're talking about the road that would come off of Chamberlain and go down by Humane Way that the Humane Hilton Head Island Humane Society cannot be hurt. That road is used by volunteers to walk our dogs and and it has to be a priority to keep them safe. And I know that a number of different considerations on how we can protect um the animals, the humane society and our volunteers has been part of our ongoing

conversation. Um and I want to make sure that it stays first and foremost in everyone's mind as we as this project gets developed um and designed. So having said that, there were a couple of other places that I was looking at and I don't want to leave them out. I'm not sure I understood if there was a change in the entrance and exit to tenantala. And so just clarification as we move along with regard to that. Um and so that that was I think the there was another one too and I don't see it. um oh on and on the other side of the road the entrance and exit and we've had this issue before when we talked about road development um corridor development to Curry Printing and the law firm and I know there was some discussion and some concern about about that um driveway cut there. So, I want to make sure that we're focused in on making sure that we don't harm the businesses on our island and that we don't harm our humane society. Okay. So, speed reduction. A lot of what we talked about today seems to me that speed reduction continues to come up as a a theme and we all know the faster you go the more likely you're going to have all sorts of accidents distract and you combine that with distracted driving and many of the things that you might you know as you look at the types of accidents that we're having that you might say are part and parcel of why those accidents are happening. So, in the past, we've talked about what's the likelihood that SCOT would reduce the speed on 278 and and I've heard a variety of different things, but the one that think that sticks in my mind is the comment that well, the more improvements we make, the more likelihood, and they're going to see that we can raise the speed limit. And I want to make sure that we are putting ourselves in a position where that does not happen. And

in fact, the speed limit that is currently established should be reduced. We're trying to create a parkway. We're trying to create safety. And we're trying to lessen the um amount of accidents regardless if they're fender benders. And God help us. And we pray for each and every one of them, the lives that have been lost. So um speed reduction in my opinion needs to be a part of this conversation with SC DOT. Um some of that hopefully uh will help with the movement. I had questions on here. y'all were so good at explaining some things. Um, and the movement of the cars was was very helpful that conversation. So, thank you. Um, because that kind of related um, for me to personal driving habits. So the size of the bridge, the bridges that we're talking about, the span, both the pedestrian span, how wide that would be. I don't know the answer to that and I don't need an answer right this minute, but I would be very interested and I want to know what the size of those bridges are with with regard to width, especially the one over Spanish Wells because it's not only car traffic and I assume one way, one lane, one lane. Well, that's important, right? So, that's why I'm asking, is it one lane, one lane, or is it two lane, two lanes? And then we mentioned it's pedestrian access um across that bridge as well. So, um when we go back to the beautifification, the aesthetics enhancing our community, that's important to me. And I know y'all have heard um whom I've spoken to with regard to the bridges. Hilton Head is well known. Our brand is part and parcel of our environment. And so to a and I think one of our um resident speakers spoke to this or this is not for tourists. This is not

for big city life. This is not cannot be my humble opinion for continuing urbanization of um Hilton Head Island. And therefore when you look at a bridge if there must be a bridge then the design that was included and thank you for including it of the living um forest that lines the bridge so that in essence you don't really feel as though you're driving under or over a bridge. You really feel like you're driving into the environment into the landscape which to me speaks Hilton Head. It says Hilton Head all over it. I don't know what it costs. I don't know what other people's opinions are, but I'd bet you if you took a survey of residents that they would agree that our environment in that aesthetic with regard to um landscape is is very important um quite more than any type of concrete that we might want to consider. Okay. Um someone mentioned um something about the bridge alignment and that there was concern that anything that we would do as part of the C corridor would therefore somehow and this might be a question for Jared his initial gut reaction and you don't even have to answer me just a question um is that anything you heard today would that in any way impact the bridge design. From what I see, I don't really see that, but I'm not the expert. So, I would want to collaborate with you and make sure that that's true. Um, and I hope it's not because um this is our project. Y'all can um in addition to that, I heard someone mention that we're behind schedule, that we've been given a

timeline by others. Again, this is Hilton Head Island's project. Well, our timeline is our timeline and we as a council have the responsibility, huge responsibility to get this right. And so for anyone who's thinking that we're not bowing to someone else who has dictated to us a timeline, they ought to think twice. Hilton Head comes first and this council will use every consideration and good advice and opportunity to make sure that we get it right for whatever dollars get spent are spent well and planned for the future. And in and in saying that I want to make sure that I point out my personal preference. This is our project and some reason we're limiting ourselves to Spanish wells and I absolutely believe Spanish wells is incredibly important and everything coming up to that. But we heard here today and we've heard previously how important the cross island connection is and how that cross island connection itself is in essence part of the huge problem. So why in the world while we're sitting here talking and planning aren't we considering one of the most important elements of creating a better roadway? I mean I could extend that down to Gumree Road. We know it's dangerous and to Mark's good point with regard to budget. There are dollars that he has at least presented as opportunities to review some further some of the roads further down the road. But I I I do not want to stop at Spanish Wells. I think we need to incorporate that cross island drop off, especially in light of the fact that we now have North Point being built and we know that's going to add another

stressor to that road. And so to stop is just um let's talk about it. And I'm going to be very forceful in continuing to make my position known. Um, next on my list was there was an a rep a um reference several times and I think in some of the literature that we reviewed adapted s signal upgrade 278 to 95. That was something that was promised a few years ago and we haven't seen it coming into fruition. But as it's being incorporated in these discussions, I want to make sure as I said before, whose share of the pie is that? That is Buford County. That is others. That is not in terms of costs things that we should be um considering as part of our bucket of um money. And there was and I'm confused because there were a couple of conversations about it. The signal at Windmill Harbor, it's been controversial. I know how much Windmill Harbor people have wanted this and fought for it and how hard the county worked to try to get them something that they felt was important to them and would provide some safety to them. But um there might be some other opportunities there um that does the same thing but also enhances the traffic through that area. And if that's the case and if that's in our bucket list of things we're designing and ultimately considering how it's going to get paid for, perhaps we could collaborate with the county to make a better um a better arrangement there. Um and then we've heard um time time frame lead time frame lead time and I guess most importantly at Spanish Wells and uh my colleague um Steve D. Simone is absolutely right. We should start that today. And I think

I've said in the past with that preliminary solution that's roughly $5 million. We should have started that six months ago when that when that was first um talked about. So if I had to prioritize money is everything and I get that and we're going to have a conversation about money. We have to do the full Spanish Wells project. We have to get that started. we have to begin that project now in terms of design design all the environmental um aspects of it um and the and the rest I don't know a project on here that's not important but if I had to and I won't do it this moment so I know um coming out of here um Mark that you had asked for direction I think we need to prioritize so as money comes in we know where we're heading But um in doing so, it should be based on safety. Spanish Wells, Squire, Pope, um access roads, uh down and third lanes and that sort of thing can certainly fall to the bottom. Um but if they're essential for the future, they should be on the list in any case. And let's see, um last thing I want to mention, and it goes back to your to your funding. There's a lot of places that we can look for funding tiff areas. We can look for um other grants, etc. But when we took that b when we voted to take that $35 million bond money, this was not part of it. And I'm going to make it really really clear for anybody who had forgotten what we agreed to. And yes, I agree this is a CIP

project in in sorts, but what we agreed to was that we would buy land acquisition. We would be buying down density and more land. And if we're worried about all this stuff that we need to do because of all of the traffic and congestion and overpopulation happening on this island, over capacity, many regards, then we ought to be buying land and preserving it from development. And so I'm not going to entertain as long as I'm here. And if I'm not here sitting on that other side, you'll hear me say it. We ought to be buying land. And that money was intended to buy land to preserve the um environment on the island and to make sure that we manage growth in a responsible way for the future. And so I think that's all on my list. I thank you for your patience and I look forward to further conversation here and hopefully this isn't our last time to chat.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Hunter.

You so this meeting has been a long time coming. It's been feedback that I have provided that I wanted to get this out uh for the public to see and get feedback. And I appreciate Mr. Mayor that we did hear public feedback prior to our comments. I think there is a lot of gold in those comments and I'd like to see us follow up on some of those items, especially the data um and some of the improvements that um will go together well uh with this design. Uh there's a lot of to unpack here. Um and so I'll do my best to to go through this. I do want to make a couple of comments. I also am concerned that the scope stops at Spanish Wells and that we're not including Gum Tree and the Cross Island. Um, you know, whether it's a 50/50 split or a 60/40 split. I mean, that is an important component to uh managing the traffic on the island. And I understand that you can only bite off so much at one time, but that's going to be an important piece for us to um look at in the future um if we're going to solve our transportation related issues. Um I don't know if we it would be helpful to go to page 48 where it lists all the project descriptions A through H and it shows the dollar amounts. Yeah. Um and then I I'll just make some comments. Um, I like the idea of the continuous flow. Um, I I think it's great. Um, however, again, because we've stopped the scope at at um, you know, at Spanish Wells that we are going to be uh, continuously flowing and then stopping uh, you know, at at a stoplight there. So again, I've I've made that comment, but I think this is more about uh taking the pieces and prioritizing

and also breaking down some of these projects even fuller. Um and I think the the focus should be on the intersections and I think a lot of us are in agreement there. Um so for project A, you know, getting that done quickly and early, we we have money. I'm I'm sure that we can cover that. Project B, uh, in regards to Squire Pope, you have to do both of the components. So, you can't break that down. You got to have the overpass for people and bicycles, um, if you're going to make the change. What's amazing is that continuous green is only $800,000. That's the inexpensive piece. Uh, which I wish we could do tomorrow, but you have to have a way to get people over um the intersection. So, we we'll have to do the pedestrian bridge. In regards to project C, there are two components. There's the park, and I'm all for the park, but if I was going to prioritize, I'd put that, you know, down the road. Um, and the extension of Chamberlain Drive to Spanish Wells, I think, is a great opportunity for residents. we figure out back roads to use like Main Street and Jarvis Creek to get off of 278. And I think having another opportunity with this Chamberlain Drive with the caveats and making sure that you know the main society isn't impacted is a way to take traffic off the main corridor. So I think focusing on that um which is not that much money um would be important. Project D uh for Squire Pope. Um if you look at the costs, you know, pathways and all that work, that's really expensive. I mean, it's almost expensive as the road. It's it's really incredible. So that of that $37.6 million um getting the eastbound travel lane um

is $20 million, but the pathways are 16.4. So, is there a way to prioritize the roadways first there and do the pathways later as you're thinking about how much money you have and how how the money will roll in. On project E, um, you know, that's you have to pull all those pieces together. Uh, you got to have the roundabouts in order to do the flyover. Project F. again, old wild horse streetscape, really nice economic development. You know, that can be longer term. Um, in addition to that connector road between Old Wild Horse and Wild Horse, I you know that I've said I don't um I I don't understand quite what the benefit is yet on that and or understand the traffic flow between those two roads to really have a strong point of view, but that could be something that perhaps could be done later on in the process. uh Jenkins Road uh project G. I agree with Miss Becker and I have been saying in these meetings that we got to get Buford County to help pay um especially um the extension of that road on the other side of 278 up to their um land that they own that they may have as an imbarcation center. Why should we pay for that? Um so we should be looking to them for money as well. And again, that's something that you know it doesn't have to be done now. that could be done later. And then uh project H, I don't know why we're planning the three lanes going westbound. Uh the only reason we're doing three lanes uh on the eastbound is to a line up to the bridge and if the westbound bridge isn't going to be done for another 20 or 30 years, why are we putting that in there? And so that's kind of my thought process. Uh but um the the money part, even though we're not supposed to talk about it, you

know, I'm going to talk about it. um you know is really important and you know there's a lot been a lot of conversation already about the number of tools that we can use and we need to explore all of them um because without a clear funding plan this is just a concept and it's not reality and the analogy I'll make is the Mid Island Park got a master plan that c you know I think it was $80 million there's no funding for it and it just sits on a shelf and so we need to uh you know rally the troops in regards to finding the funding and all of the mechanisms uh in order to get this done because I agree with Steve you know if we just keep delaying it it's going to be more expensive and we have experience with that with the bridge and we can see what has happening has happened um I have a question that doesn't need to be answered now but it's this lead time issue um on some of these uh construction projects as they touch the marsh and such. What kind of lead time is that? And building that in so we can prioritize getting that lead time work done um so we can see this come to reality. And the last piece is I know that um the town manager and the mayor went to the DOT. Um that was one of the reasons why they um wanted to um have the timeline that we have now because they wanted to put together a plan that they could get feedback on from the DOT because you don't want to build a plan and and spend a lot of time and energy on it if they look at it and go, you know, this isn't going to work. So I'd love for you to share what the DOT said in regards to what we're showing today.

Absolutely. We'll go back to we'll come back to that in a minute. Miss Bryson,

thanks very much. Um and and I'll say right out um Miss Tuner and I did not compare notes, but you're going to hear a lot of similarity. Um surprise surprise. So, first of all, um thank you to the team to put together all this information. It's very helpful. Um a lot for us to chew on. Um and uh but we've heard a lot of these ideas over the years. So that helps us, but it also helps to put it in one package now. Um I I do agree that um we need to to address the connection to Cross Island. We can't do that now. We've got to focus on this, but we can't forget that. Um especially when we look at the mergers coming off the island uh toward the bridges. Um those mergers are of great concern to me. uh we'll fix some with the intersection focus on Spanish wells but we won't fix it all so we do need to do that um so in in taking a look at this I'm going like okay how do I decide from this list what to focus on where to get the money from so as others have said I'm focused on public safety not just vehicles but bikes and pedestrians throughout the corridor second of all we've heard and I totally agree it's the intersections causing problems um it's not you know the bridge itself except for the structural deficiency that we need to address um but but it's the intersections so yes those should be the first ones we we address square Pope and Spanish wells uh wild horse I agree with that for traffic flow and safety as well um thirdly I wanted to make sure that we address the impact on the Stony community um and I'm glad that in looking at this that we've been very mindful of property location and ownership and trying not to impact the Stony area anymore. In fact, to improve it. Um the one question I have is about the addition of the third lanes going

both east and west. Uh because we don't have data in this report about what if any of that property is impacted. We do have data from the last proposals of FC DOT about that. And if that's the assumption that we need to make, we need to include that in this as well. Um, then the next one that I looked at is the source of funds. Who's responsible for these funds? Is the town responsible for coming up with all this money for these plans or where do we get money from? What are those sources of funds? And the last thing that I think we ought to include in this is some timelines on priorities. I think Miss Toner just talked about that and that is if we uh if we look at prioritizing something and safety is the first issue that's one way of prioritizing it but how much is it going to cost us to do which safety ones when and so what's the timeline for adding buckets of funding to address those um critical issues at what point. So with that I had broken down the projects as well. Um and and so what I had done to say first of all I want to address the intersections. Um project A is a Spanish Wells the baseline U and I see that's 4.2 million and project B um is um square Pope road and that's 14.4 million. That's a total of 18.6 million. That's doable. We can do that. um we can go ahead and get started on that. Um I do have a couple of technical questions about Square Pope Road um and also Spanish Wells. I'll come back to then I said okay we need some connection um because and Mr. Kinsman will like my question again. I I live in HHP. I want to go play pickle ball. I'm coming down square Pope Road. How do I get to Old Schoolhouse uh park if you've cut off my

access coming straight across? Um and so not just for that reason and I appreciate um my neighbor that lives in the Cyprus talking about Square Pope Road and the acceleration lane and I think we need to address that as well. Um but at any rate um I want to add next project C um because that makes that connection through there. It also gives some more honor back to the Gulla community. Um, and I would not put off the park now. I would include that um, in this planning. So, if you add projects A, B, and C, um, that's 24.3 million. Then I would say, let's go ahead with project E, the fly over at Spanish Wales. I've never been a fond of the flyovers coming um east west if you will, but that flyover based upon the design that we have before us works for me and I think will work for the community. And I do like the bookends of the pedestrian um passageway on one side with that fly over on the other side. Those would be excellent architectural and aesthetic bookends for that area entrance to the island. Um, so I would put uh E next and then that gets the total to 59.8 million. We've talked about Mr. Alfred said, "Well, what if we can get 30 to 50 million?" See, I'm getting pretty close to your number right now at 59.8 million. Um, and then the other the next area that I would add is the F area, Old Woret Connection. Um, a little bit later, but that's what I would add next. um and that um gets us to 64 million. Now, what have I left out? What I've left out is the additional third lane um from um the new bridge connection. I

think that's SE DO's responsibility to come up with that money. If they want to have all three lanes on the bridge, three traffic lanes on the bridge, they need to come up with the money for the third travel lane going from the west to the east. That's why I've set that one aside. And that is $37.6 million and does include the pathways as Miss Tuner talked about. And I would differ with her on this. If we're going to put in a third lane, we got to have the pathways. I would not separate those. Um then um that also leaves out um the um the westbound third lane and I agree. Why are we including that now? Um we ought to put that with whenever SC DOT is going to do the the westbound bridge sections. So I would leave that out for now. And the other one that um that leaves out is project G, the 7.8 million. And I agree that that should be Buford County's responsibility to come up with that funding. Um the town has the land that would be our contribution and the county should come up with the funding for those improvements. That's the way I would separate that out. So the revised total that I have based on the projects that I would prioritize in that order, A plus B first, A plus B plus C second, A plus B plus C plus E third, A plus B plus C plus E plus F 4th. That totals 64 million of the 122.8 million. And I think that addresses the focuses that we've talked about, safety, traffic flow, fix the intersections, add um respect for the Gulla community through there, and find sources of funds. Now, where do I get the money from? This is what I would do. Break it

down this way. I would ask our our local delegation to the state to find us the funding for A plus B plus C. Now, And then I would ask for a second trunch of money from the delegation for the construction part of E and that we go ahead and find our funds for beginning design on that project. That's how I do that. I said before I would ask SCOT to fund the third lanes, the eastbound now and the westbound when they get ready for the westbound bridge project. And then the other source of funds that I would suggest that we look at is tiff money, especially for improvements Wild Horse Road and Old Schoolhouse Park.

That's how I do that. Awesome. All right. I would just if I may add that I think that's a very good analysis, Miss Bryson, and that I would uh substantially agree with it in spite of the fact that the way you read it, it sounded like a geometry class. Mayor, if may I ask I was almost a math major in college. Thought they were talking. Mr. Brown.

I was just going I was just going to ask for some grace um if if we might um email Mark and um copy uh our priority list so that we do not each have to do the exercise that that we just heard of. I think I'm pretty much aligned. I'm fairly certain much of that is what I said. However, I'd like an opportunity to outline it in writing to you,

Mr. Hey, one more thing, Mr. Mayor. Um, as I mentioned, um, I'm I'm excited about the fact that we're having a discussion and and it's our discussion. Okay. And um, by one second, if you might, Mr. Bear, Mr. Bear, Mr. Bear, I I I do want to get with you later on. I I want to get with you later on because I want some of your ideas. Um I I I want to sit with Mark and talk about to see what we can do. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Sorry.

No worries. Um so by by my count here this evening, I've heard Mr. Desimon uh speak on the opportunities in the historic neighborhood of Stony. Um I've I've heard Miss Bryson speak to it as well. I I want to make sure that each and every one of you have the opportunity to respond and react to my suggestion that I'm about to make the in the in the spirit of implementation. Okay, that's where I am. And we've drawn a lot of pictures, pretty pictures, and a lot of plans for a lot of time. And the conflict with the historic neighborhood members always comes back to empty promises, broken promises, and just doing nothing at all. As we master the plan, I think we have to take the moment to help them master the plan. and as well. They need to understand what they can do 10, 15, 20 years from now, generations down the line. That's important. Very important. We have not had that conversation. We've had a conversation about if we're going to take 10 ft of your property or not. We've not had a conversation around future opportunities and what that may look like for the historic neighborhood. So, what I'm suggesting is that the CDC take a lead role in having those conversations. Okay? And I got to remind some of us that have been on council when the CDC was established and those that are new coming on, CDC was not established to buy up property and make it green space. That that was not the intent of

the CDC. The CDC was to come in and help these historic neighborhoods get to a better place. and and that can be unpacked and that can be done. But what I don't want to have happen, that's why I'm asking you guys to respond to this is we've asked about transparency. We've asked to have conversations out loud in front of people. We're doing that tonight. So if you don't agree that the CDC needs to play a pivotal role and a lead role in getting community members to a better place, then please say so tonight. I agree with you and it needs to change to the EDC.

Fair enough. I I agree as well. Um economic development is an essential component of the CDC. Um and and I've said out loud before the town owns some property um in in Gulla neighborhoods and we ought to take a look at that property and find out what's the best use for the property. Um and we have economic development as one of our strategic goals. So those to me go hand in hand and that's why I think part of this I think I mentioned the reason I would go ahead and add project C and the park now is because that's a way of honoring um the Sony community and the heritage there rather than leaving that for later and and I would like to hear what the CDC has to say about some of the aspects of this master plan.

Mr. Yes. I like the uh EDC uh description as you know I'm a big proponent of economic development and um yes I clearly understand that purchases made uh by the CDC as it is today are for economic development purposes and I look forward to seeing what those plans are. I will also just add real quickly that everything we've talked about tonight is partially economic development um as well. So I I want to I want to go through if if I can move on.

May I respond to not sure if other people are also interested in responding to uh Mr. Brown's question where he asked each and every one of us to respond and so um in doing so um I'm not sure exactly the extent or what you're specifying with regard to the CDC involvement with the master planning as it relates to this project that we're here to talk about today. Um, so I need clarification on what that means. And one of the things that it was always my impression that the CDC was to be involved in was preservation of the land, the culture, and the history. And in doing so, perhaps the purchase of land for green space is important. the purchase of density so that folks can stay on their land without feeling that economic pressure is um important to that conversation and I don't want it to be lost if I'm wrong correct me but I think that that was a big portion of why we are here today with having that nonprofit corporation as part of our town um as part of our town also two things when we talk about this. I'm really concerned that we're being asked this question and what I really want to do is turn the question to the members of the Steuart family who are here and people who we've worked with for eight years more than that with regard to this project and because we're talking about this today. How does this relate into your life? When you sit back and you talk about being able to get across the road to see

your mama, she needs you especially. And you talk about those things that are important to you and your family. Does a park do it for you? Is that what you're asking? Is that what people are asking for? The park. So, if the park element is a piece of this that's important to you, then that's the part that I want to hear from y'all. M Mr. Mayor, with all due respect, um, no, I want to hear from all of the community that's involved. I don't want to hear from just one person.

That was the whole point of my question. The the point that I'm trying to make, and I think it's it's consensus here is what I'm hearing. I I apologize that you're not on board with this, Miss Becca, but what I'm hearing say that do not put words in my mouth. What what I'm hearing from council, I would like for you to retract what you said. We want to have that conversation with the community members through the CDC. And the point I'm trying to make is council can't keep getting in the way of that. I don't think we're getting in the way of it. That's the point.

I think we're looking for collaboration from the entire community. And I don't know if whether or not this is the conversation with regard to the to the to the items here, the eight items, or if this is another conversation. So, I need clarity in terms of what it is you're referring to. But I also want to make sure That is cleared that I did not say what you just said. I said I am in board with making sure we're having a conversation with regard to a master plan. And in fact, if we think back not too long ago when we were talking with regard to the LMO, I specifically said that um a master plan is a significant step forward in terms of making sense of the land that was under um um part of the conversation at that time. So, we have people in the audience and I want to know what they're thinking. I want to know what everyone is thinking. Well, I I I want to I want to I want to pull it back for a second because we're we're getting away from the scope of this meeting and that is to

the question was out of scope. So to outline the elements that we're we're here to support that can move forward to town council. There are additional conversations that will come out of this meeting that we'll have. Okay. Are we talking about the corridor here or are we talking about something else? I just want clarity. I don't know what the question was for. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be responding to, but and when no matter what I respond to, I'm not going to sit here today and respond without having a conversation with the people that it impacts. Does it impact me? I want to know from the people and the entire community that it impacts, not just one. I think the question was expanded. I'm not I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just saying that that I think that is under another forum. I agree with that.

Okay. So, that that's where I'm going with this. I want to get back to where we are because we've gone through the projects right A to A to H and and we did have some good comments um that were made and you know I think that that we're pretty much on board that I think Miss Tunner did a great job of outlining I think everybody did actually but outlining but I think we need to understand a little bit more how we can break down each one of these items and and for me FG and H are are are outliers at this point in time. Um, you know, and I say F only because I think that CDC needs to be a big part of that to figure out EDC, CDC, whatever. Um, needs to be a big part of that conversation. Um, the other two are further down the road. But how do we plan for this? What are the time constraints? Where do we need to put the dollars first into what areas? What is engineering? What does the master plan look like? How do we do all of it? Um, it's not about, you know, we're going to have a million dollars here, we'll put it over there. No, it's it's within C. These are the aspects that we need to look at. Project D, this is what we really need to look at. It's not $37 million, it's $15 million. I want to break those down a little bit more to be able to really identify the areas so that we can make a better decision. Um, and it goes handinhand with funding. you know, what is it that we can do immediately to to increase safety and and also keep our workforce here? Um, so those are the elements that I'm looking at and I also want to incorporate a little bit of the the 25 data, right? Where is that? You know, how does that affect everything? Does it make any changes to what we're looking at? Um, so there's there's good information there, but I think expanding a little bit because, you know, from what from what I wrote down, and correct

me if if I'm wrong, you know, it's pretty much let's get that flyover bridge in because that's the biggest changer to really making all of this work. So, is that where the focus starts with or is it with Squire Pope and Spanish Wells? How do we do it? What is the staging? What is the best way for us to look at it in a sense that gets the job done? You talked about broken promises. You know, fortunately, we've got eight years of information that we've gone through to learn about this, if not more. So, putting it all together in a flow that works well is good. I just think it needs to be broken down a little bit more after having these conversations tonight. Am I Am I incorrect in that thinking, y'all? Mayor, I think we need to ask the town manager if if he has gotten what he needs from us after today's workshop because I'm not sure whether he has or not. I think it's a good question to ask.

And and again, this is exactly where we need to be because we're not ready to bring it to council yet. And and you know, this is trying to understand where everybody falls in, what needs to be modified um to get it to a point where we can look at it and go, I'm in on that. Mayor, I agree with you in in terms of breaking it down in that way because these are BR categories and we know that within each there are a number of elements that may impact the overall project. It may be impact the the cost estimate and what it is that we're really focusing in on. Would that require then um short of the answer the question that was asked of our town manager? It sounds to me as though that would require a next conversation uh meeting to be set up so that we can get that that detail so that we can again workshop it.

Right. And I would still like to hear what the DOT said. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm totally totally got sidetracked on that. So, we did we did have a call with them.

Yeah. Go ahead. I I I'm just waiting to to try to jump in and pack and really unpack and then then pack all of this. First and foremost, moving forward, I I think I'm pretty close to having everything I need. And I think every time we've been at the table, we've learned a little more and got a little better. Um, so I'm going to ask you all some questions before we leave today as well. You know, advancing this project in whole or in part, right? not just the priorities of the letters, but the design components itself. M Mayor Perry, I I was pleased when I heard you say to Mr. Bear as he was leaving, it might be a a good opportunity to pick up and take a look at some of some of those comments. I I think they're they're great. Some some are very doable. Some some make sense. Um I think the data has been assessed a lot more than than than known. I see these two gentlemen over here, especially Jonathan Guy, who who I will say um I I respect the most in in this business in South Carolina that I've ever worked in. And so I appreciate that he's still at the table with us after this this long. And I know that he's connected and aligned with a lot of DOT projects and knowing what what they need to make the projects uh viable. First and foremost, this is not our street. And so this is really hard because it's not our street. It's a US highway 278 system in the DOT network and so everything we we work on has to be justified by then. So to Miss Tunner's uh question, good question was what occurred at the meeting with SC DOT? And just for clarity, we we recently had a team's call with SC DOT and we we talked through right we didn't pitch them this. We talked through some of these project components based upon the feedback we've received all of the various um

preferred alternatives. I haven't said that word out loud in a while of the preferred alternatives that we've viewed in the past and really where we are today. Um, I was upfront with them. I said, "I haven't put this in front of you publicly. We haven't heard a lot of public comment. We're trying to make sense of this post the referendum dollars on the bridge and not in the corridor." Um, as we got through the presentation, Mayor Perry was with me, uh, Mr. Kinselman was with me, a few of us. Here, here's what they said. They're supportive of the guiding principles. They appreciated that the guiding principles were what they were. Um, and the top leadership with the exception of Justin Powell were on were on the screen and in the meeting and said that they believed that the project principles were were well done and that this project was was aiming towards very well those those guiding principles. So I was happy to hear that as a as I call a recovering planner. I I was happy to hear that DOT is thinking the way our principles were were laid out. And these are not new principles. They're principles that even I've inherited for the most part since since I've arrived here. Um they they supported the corridor plan. Well, they didn't say this was a technical analysis and a and an approval. They said that there is great general support of the corridor plan. It was well thought out. Um it solved the issues. It it addressed uh flow. It addressed safety. It improved intersections. It added a place-based value to the community and and to the island. Not just the neighborhood, but the whole island. And not just the whole island, but the neighborhood. We talked a little bit about that. Um, they said be careful when advancing concept to design. So we we now know that, you know, the the dash line through the great point about the the DOT property and and through the Humane Society, we say there's very little impacts, but as you start getting in design, be open-minded that you're going to en encounter some things you don't know

about at this level. Um, and we know that everybody at the table knows that as we as we design projects. um they appreciate very much that Hilton Head Island is forming and framing their own opinion of a project and a corridor that we've had a lot of opinion on but seem to have just been asking people if they liked what we thought over time. They appreciated that we've taken the lead and the ownership to say we are going to come up with a position and an opinion and we're going to try to move this project forward. Um they asked about our willingness slashability to help and I put quotes here from my notes fund this project. They did say it's going to take many sources, many layers, many streams at all at all levels and all angles. Um I shared with them that we're I'm going to propose to you in a budget um the FY27 budget proposal as an initial investment to the soft costs on some of these intersections again in whole or in part. Um, I don't know if it was the baseline Spanish Wells Road or the the the the bridge over Spanish Wells Road, but I did let them know that we have approximately a million dollars in soft costs plus or minus um out of the out of some recent uh debt proceeds. Um, and that they'll know more when we provide collective support for the master plan. I think we know this and I keep I keep getting back to and I I don't want to appear and I I feel like I I might have and I apologize that I don't want to talk about money today. I do because without money there's no project but without the project there's no money. So is it's vice versa. Um if I designed the project for the dollars we have we wouldn't be in here. And if we don't design a project for the long term, how do we know what to fund first, second, third, and 10th? And so

what I heard today, and I appreciate Miss Bryson's question, do I have what I need? Yes, there there's some there's some answers, right? We already know some of the answers. The acceleration as you come off Squire Pope Road onto westbound William Hilton Parkway, as I keep trying to call it, not US 278, the the longer the acceleration lane, the easier it is to accelerate, the more you're in someone's front yard in a property taking. And that is something that that I'm not proposing to you and I don't want to propose to you. And so I would just ask at some point I'll I'll circle back on a lot of these things. Speed, we've already requested 40 mph. They have said yes technically. Um we just have to make sure and I think that's as low as they'll go, but Becker makes a good point. Speed, right? Speed kills. Um we have to lower the speed through the corridor and calm the traffic. Humane society, all those things. We we can pack this up. We had a lot of good public feedback. I think has helped um you mentioned the meeting that with Mr. Bayer. I think that would be helpful. I would like to be there. Um uh and I'm going to ask you all u in whole or in part because once we know that u once we know what the real concept looks like I would like you to allow me to figure out a funding strategy and simply by identifying every single source of potential funding is important. We have that in a draft format. I know it's not for today, but as you know the a non-technical explanation, it's the kitchen sink.

We have to find dollars at every angle and we have to put a it it's a new formula, right? I'm not sure we want to hear this, but we have to hear this.

Um, it is a new formula to fund projects like this. If we have an opinion, we have to put our own dollars. And if you put your own dollars and you have the the the resolution that I would like to achieve from you at some point, then the DOT, LATS, the federal highway, and everybody in between will start having more confidence that this is what we're trying to accomplish and we have to put our own dollars there. So, um I don't think we have to put $40 million of our own dollars there. Um, but I think that it's more significant than some soft costs on two intersections. Hence why Dave Bird is not in the room today. Our finance director has already started to advance establishing a tax increment finance district. I would say that those dollars wouldn't just be ours alone. We would ask you for county to be a partner in other other folks to be a partner in the tiff district which we've had and other places have had significant success with. So stay tuned. But I need to get out of here today with some some decision or at least strong direction of whole or in part and then I can bring it back to you with some better confidence.

So you I'll I'll start it off um by I support it in whole. Um I think we need to see the design, the layout and all of that to really to make those decisions and how it moves forward. Um, but I agree with you and without knowing the costs, without knowing the elements, without knowing all of it, right? We can always scale back, but we've got to move forward with it because I it's it solves an issue. It solves many issues and it's something that we've been looking to do for a while. I'll accept I'll take any other comments. Before we comment, I just want to make sure I get clarity on

the next steps as far as holding in part like what does that look like, Mr. Lando? Can you help us with that before we respond? Yes. Pull up the Excuse me. Pull up pull up the master plan. It's somewhere close by this Brian probably. Well, there you go.

That's whole. So, the intersection treatments, the access points, because what I would like to do is start honing in on bringing this forward to you for your consideration and approval at some point. Maybe we're 60, maybe we're 90 days away. That's what I was asking. Okay. Yeah. All right. That's what I want. Okay. It's not It's not approval. It's just to give him that direction what he needs to do. Yep.

I.e. continuous green bridge baseline turns on Spanish Wells to get started. uh three lanes on the island and I hear the points that DOT and you know at the end of the day I do believe DOT needs to um and we'll work with them and the state to to help fund this this has to I keep you know this the same point there's some others that need to help fund this project I guess I'm still not 100% there so okay just bear with me so if the answer is in whole then what what are we doing next with the exception of understanding the pieces a little bit Well, I mean, what that's it?

Yeah. If this is it, plus or minus a couple modifications and and we'll talk and I think meet with Mr. Bear and and help understand some of those those good comments that were provided. Um, I would bring it back to you maybe in a setting like this, maybe at a town council meeting, um, with some of the answers that you've asked me today and some clarity on prioritization and some clarity on uh, funding strategy. I won't know what funds I can find until I go look. So, I don't know how to put a schedule on that, but I'd like to bring this back to you in about 90 days max. Does that help? Long answer. I apologize.

Okay. I'm uh, I'm a full, you know, the whole thing. I'm afraid if we peacemail it, we'll never get to those other sections. However, at a minimum, you got to remove the H uh at a minimum. I agree with that. Um and so the other ones that I made comments on um like Jenkins Island and such, to me that's funding, uh you know, and that gets into the funding strategy and the prioritization of how um it's going to be uh laid out. Mayor Perry, I have a question. So, if I if and when we bring this back, when we bring this back, don't show H.

See, we put H on there for the future because if they build a three lane bridge, I would prefer that we do the work to make sure that the any right-of-way work for right now, I would hold it. I would hold it there, but I would have an asterisk or whatever by it showing that it's future. Okay. Consideration. that that helps.

I think um I think we have a lot of momentum and if you if you stutter, you're going to lose it. And so I think we need to build on our momentum. We need to ask for $125 million and see where we can find it. And if we come up short and then Miss Bryson has a has a great layout and that's how we handle it. Um and hopefully we don't have to fall back on on that. But um but that's a good strategy. Mayor, I do have a question that we have kind of this pending thing with our local delegation.

Um and and I know the state's getting ready to try to figure out how to adopt a budget. Time's coming up for them. Um and so is there something that we need to do sooner? You know, I'm always going to ask this question to to be able to uh take to be able to not miss the opportunity that our state delegation has given to us to help us with some funding. I don't want to lose that opportunity if we have something that's right there. I don't know what there is and when that is. Um if we look at this whole nine yards, if you will, the 122.8 million, um and it's going to be so many days down the line before we can put that together. um then are we going to miss this funding cycle with the state budget because they're not doing earmark. So um that's my question. I don't want to miss that opportunity.

Yeah. Yes, ma'am. You want to address?

Yes, sir. And if if you help me if I miss any points, I have briefed in person Senator Davis and some of the local delegation including uh Representative Bill Herb Kersman um less than 30 days ago. They are not surprised by the number. They are not surprised by the corridor. Um I won't put words um for them. Um but they they are aware of the concept in my opinion. Um supportive, extremely supportive of this concept. They know that I'm coming to talk to you today. They're in they're in session. Um so Senator Davis couldn't be here. Um and so Miss Bryson, members of council, they're not surprised. So, if if they're up there doing the work, um I don't think there's anything else other than what I've already done on many fronts. Um other than what I've done, I don't know what else to do. I have great relationships, as we all do with them. They know we need the funds. They know this is a priority of the town. Um they won't be surprised by the number. They already know it. They're up in Colombia working on our behalf. And

I'll also add that Weston Newton and Jeff Bradley are aware of it as well. just mindful of them getting ready to adopt a budget and where's where's our money in that budget? That's what I'm concerned about. I would say that the ask has been made. Yes. Okay, Becker.

Sure. Thank you. So, um, no, not in whole. And there's a lot of reasons why we just spent three hours and had a conversation and I heard at least three I think maybe even more people include the concept that we need to extend to the Cross Island Parkway. There's nothing in this that talks speaks to that. But within this there are elements that are controversial in terms of responsibility. Are they necessary at some point? Yeah. But here's the problem I have. I I don't want to tell you go do these things. Leave things that we've mentioned that were important that we've agreed on are important that essential to solving some real problems undone, unsaid, not included. And then I also don't want a bundle of money that's being put together to address these that won't address that. And some of this shouldn't be addressed by our dollars. Um, and I also um am asking and I asked before for 24 hours or a time frame to be able to email you in writing my priority list. I heard two people say give theirs and while I appreciate them and mostly agree, I want to put mine on paper to you. Um, and again, we talked about the idea that within these broad concepts, there are smaller concepts. And if I'm worried and talking about the dollars and where they're coming from and how they ultimately get spent, I need to know within that category the elements that perhaps aren't essential. And I also want to have more certainty that when those dollars come in, and I know there will, and I know there's many layers, and I appreciate that, and it's it's a process. I want to know which

projects are being addressed first. For instance, I think that we know and I will agree that um Spanish Wells has a has a and I think I said this before. It's project A. It's 42. I hate using these numbers because I realize they're soft numbers and they're and all of the rest. So, I'm not relying completely on it. Just saying project A something that we should do yesterday. And so I wouldn't want you to wait. I would say that if there's monies available, perhaps because it got written into the um bond agreement as a CIP project, perhaps that's an appropriate way to use some of those funds, making sure that we don't use all of those funds so that we can still purchase land so that we can control development. So those are some of the reasons that I can't tell you in whole. I mean, I'm I'm those are there's arguments here. We had a conversation about it. The idea that we're now blindly there saying, "Oh, yeah, go ahead and do it." is is mindboggling to me, frankly.

Well, I think we're trying to get get to the point where we conversions. It's not that we're trying to understand more of the entire project list so that we can make those better decisions. That's the way I understand it. Well, that's that's why I suggested a few moments ago that perhaps we need a next conversation meeting to be able to to do that and and I'm would be pleased if we did that before um so that we could weed out better understand what you're asking us in part or in whole. So I'm in park. Okay. Okay.

Design design has a way of bringing out deficiencies. And your question about the cross island although we know there's an issue. This this road design will expose that deficiency in that tie-in. Sure. But will it be part of what we've talking about as a full-on project? Is that part of the whole? It doesn't seem like it is at this moment. It seems as though it's a thought for consideration. I can tell you it will have to be addressed. I appreciate that and I agree. I just want more formality to this process than we're having right now.

Mr. Brown, I didn't answer because I want clarity. Now that I've gotten clarity, I want to make sure that I'm giving him clear direction in whole. All right. Any other comments? No. Okay. Great. One one over here. Yes. I have a comment. I do want to say thank you implicitly for your time and your and your and your guidance and feedback. And I and I cannot uh leave here without saying thank you and how much I appreciate this great team.

Great. Y'all, it's been a it's been great. But um we do have public comment on non-aggenda items and Kim, you said you had four people signed up for that. Yes, I I have three now because did Mr. Avocat leave? Yes. Okay. One second here.

Skip Hogland. Skip Hogland. Winmill Harbor. I'm running as your watchdog mayor to end the following crimes to help you pay for our bridge corridor and these intersections. Chamber 8 million tax money illegally used and issued violating federal law. Town foyer violations on chamber tax use in Canada in the millions. 600,000 tax funds issued to seps dredge harbor town an HOA expense state constitutional violation. $500,000 in tax funds used for heritage golf sponsorship reserved for corporations. Tax violations of citizens use of a POA to speak three minutes for others under state law. Alan Perry committed criminal fraud with Bill Miles to try and hide millions in tax use by our chamber in Canada. Town lawyers Colrin Alfred Finger Gruber committed criminal contract fraud for drafting the chamber DMO contract. lawyers overcharge legal fees and and and they committed malpractice and I'm recommending uh they both they all get sued for malpractice. Town DMO and chamber in violation of IRS 501-C6 tax codes and tax evasion. Town is in violation of of a tax code. town is a violation of South Carolina carol Carolina constitutional law issuing and using tax money for private purposes that's not for the public reason benefit and purpose and good all council members use tax money to become chamber members that was illegal in a severe conflict of interest the chambers operated illegally and criminally with town council assisting and facilitating the chamber violates all members to see how all members dues and tax funds are used u under the South Carolina nonprofit corporation tax All rolling quarm used by council to evade public oversight.

Town DMO websites hilton island.org hilton Headgolf Island.com is tied to an illegal criminal operation with a low country golfers association in the chamber. Both must be sued by the town on taxpayers behalf. Many many a tax committee members hand selected who support the chamber. All chamber members, all in conflict, all recommended the illegal criminal use of tens of millions of tax funds. And worse, all council members broke the law by unanimously approving chamber funding to commit many state and federal crimes and violating taxpayers who trusted them. This behavior by our officials is not sustainable and will eventually result in your removal. Use these millions to pay for the dangerous intersection, not more illegal chamber tourism funding that's done on the internet for free. We don't need to spend $10 million a year. Technology, social media, AI. Wake up. Stop wasting our money and put it towards we need it. Fix that intersection. Fix the other things you're talking about. Stop this insanity with Bill Miles. I mean, it's crazy. You're funding this guy. He's making $800,000 a year. $2 million house, an employee, a nonprofit employee of the chambers. Ridiculous.

Thank you, Mr. Hogland. Richard Busy.

Oh, now it's good evening. I'll be very brief. Um, and I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I guess I will. Uh, I would urge this council and the mayor to give the residents of Hilton Head who work full-time the opportunity to react and comment on this grandiose plan. One council member when I first suggested that said, "Well, you know what? If nobody shows up, well, that's not the issue and that's not the problem. If that if that were to happen, so be it. You've tried. You've put it out there. You have two budget sessions coming up next month with a 5:00 pm start time. And for the life of me, for the life of me, I do not understand why you, Mayor Perry, will not allow the council to express your views on this. Several council members, more than several, have said to me privately, "Yeah, we we'd be okay with a later start time. Alternate. I mean, it's not that difficult. Do a 3:00 and then do a six o'clock the following meeting. The vast majority of town councils in this state start at 6 p.m. 3 p.m. is an outlier. And mayor, for you to tell me years ago, quite frankly, that well, that's the way it's always been, that is not a legitimate answer. And you know it, and I would urge you to at least have one or two sessions on this issue at six o'clock instead of three o'clock. Thank you. Thank you,

Brenda Armstrong. Hi, I'm Brenda Armstrong and I live at um Marsh Point um off of Gum Tree. Today I'm here to have a little bit of a grammar lesson for you guys and it's going to c it is called um the five W's of the town council. Who are you? Who elected you? Who do you represent? Was it the residents of Hilton Head Island, the short-term owners, or the yearly visitors? Because right now I think that some of you are siding with the latter two groups. You have forgotten but the residents that you elect that elected you did will not what what promises did you make to get elected to the seat that you now hold? Are you keeping those promises? what uh that made you uh that made the town residents as your first pri as your first priority? Or have you turned to what you think is the best choice for the residents of Hilton Head Island? despite what the residents want. You all can decide that. Where

where do you see the town in two, five, or even 10 years? Will every inch of the free land be stripped and replaced with another larger than life home, hotel, or maybe even a car dealership? You don't know. Or will the last remaining open space be kept just as an open space, not a park, but truly an open space full of wonder and beauty? When when are you going to make the decision to listen to what the people want? Yes, there will be differences in opinion, but unless you let the people know that you are truly listening to what they have to say, then they will then you uh then you have failed as a group. Why is this important? Because you as a group are not held to a higher standard than anybody else in this room. It's just that the people saw and heard something that attracted them to you to vote for you. They voted for you into the seat that you now hold. I just have to ask each and every one of you. Are you still that person? Thank you.

Thank you. That's all we have. All right. So, great meeting. Thank you all for your comments. Thank you for your time. We are adjourned.