One of the first things the late Cornelia Walker Bailey told me in 2012 when I met her on my first of many trips to Sapelo Island was that she had seen plans dating back to the late 1960s to build a causeway from mainland McIntosh County to the island her people had inhabited for nearly 200 years. She told me she was glad I could see her island but I could tell she was on the fence about tourism to the island. On one hand, it was a source of income for her family, but it wasn’t that simple, she said. Cornelia was the resident griot, or storyteller, of Sapelo and she was very protective of this magical place. Her book God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man was my guide to understanding a little about the place I was lucky enough to visit, thanks to the generosity of my late friend Sonny DeSoto. Very few people have been to this isolated enclave of Geechee culture and if you are lucky enough to have been, you have an immediate appreciation and understanding of the need to keep it as it has always been. It’s magical in its isolation, its lack of modern convenience, and most of all, in the spirit of the people.
I don’t know about any causeway plans as of this moment, but what I do know is that the McIntosh County Commission has been raising property taxes for at least the last 8 years, creating a hardship for the community of Hogg Hummock [aka Hog Hammock] and while people on and off the island have been protesting this, it’s fallen on deaf ears. The exorbitant property valuations have coincided with the building of large modern vacation homes, interspersed among the small vernacular cottages that have defined the community over time. The desire now, and what the commission just approved by a vote of 3-2, is for many more of these unwelcome homes to be built by the wealthy few who can afford them. With values of the majority of these properties sure to be north of a million dollars, the taxes for people on the island will only get higher and therefore untenable. A real concern is that the county will eventually condemn properties for those longtime residents who can’t meet the growing tax burden and flip those properties to eager developers who care nothing about the history of this place. Only time will tell.
The people of Sapelo are very independent and very resourceful, but this is a problem that those skills may not be able to solve. I understand that part of this is due to the fact that descendants and heirs are willingly selling their property here, so that has to be considered, but to those who wish to remain here, not in the shadow of some short-term-rental McMansion, there should be a covenant that allows them to pay the rates of taxes they’ve always paid. Ultimately, no development would be the ideal scenario, but short of stopping that, which seems impossible now, there must be a compromise. Please share your thoughts with the McIntosh County Commission, or even the Governor’s Office, if you’re so inclined. Apparently, the governor spends time on the island, so I’m sure he’s aware of these issues.
