James Island mayoral candidates see several challenges for town

James Island mayoral candidates say the town is caught between feeling the growing pains of the greater Charleston area and improving its infrastructure to support its increasing population and longtime residents.

At a Oct. 23 meet and greet hosted by community members at the Baxter-Patrick James Island Library, candidates Brook Lyon and Josh Stokes broke down their platforms without the time constraints of larger forums. The third candidate, Gresham Meggett III, was unable to attend, but some of his thoughts are below from an earlier forum.

Longtime incumbent Mayor Bill Woolsey is not running for reelection.

Candidates addressed several challenges facing the town, including public safety, overdevelopment, flooding issues, traffic congestion, disappearing green space and more.

“This town has done some things right, but we can do a whole lot better,” Lyon said. “We have watched, over the years, our island change. Traffic has become increasingly worse; we deal with overdevelopment, increasing crime and drainage issues. It’s unaffordable for many of our longtime residents to stay here and their children to buy homes here.”

Development

Rampant development is one of the key issues for every election in the Charleston area, and James Island is not immune. Despite being a small town itself, its proximity to the fast-growing city of Charleston leaves it vulnerable to unmanageable growth that exacerbates traffic and flooding issues, candidates say.

“I’ve personally seen truckload after truckload of dirt and rocks brought into areas being developed, creating drainage problems for surrounding properties both commercial and residential,” Lyon said. “This has got to stop.”

Lyon added there are town ordinances against this kind of “bad development,” but it’s often an enforcement issue, she said.

“It’s an issue that is never going to be solved,” Stokes said. We’re going to work on it on a daily basis. If the town does not have the urgency to do that and address it ahead of time, then it’s going to continue to be a larger and larger problem as we move forward.”

At a virtual forum on Oct. 10 hosted by the League of Women Voters, Meggett said he shares the same sentiments about overdevelopment on James Island.

“My family is 8th generation here,” he said. “I’ve seen the changes here like no other candidate has. The biggest problem is overdevelopment. We need to put a stop to it. All you have to do is go to Johns Island at about 7 in the morning to see what’s going to happen to James Island eventually.

“All these developers bring all this dirt and all this gravel in, and they build right next to these old houses and fill in around it,” he added. “Guess where that water runs? Right back into the old houses.”

Development along Folly Road has made it one of the most congested corridors in the Lowcountry, and while several projects are aimed at improving conditions there, Meggett said the focus needs to be on preventing similar problems elsewhere.

“Folly Road is a done deal,” he said. “Folly Road is just eaten up. What we really need to be looking at is the residential areas of James Island, because Folly Road is just a nightmare. Let’s look at smaller things.”

Transparency

James Island residents say they are feeling increasingly unheard by the town’s government, according to the candidates.

“I want residents to feel like they have a voice with the town and that their voice is actually heard by the town and acted upon by the town,” Stokes said. “And I want residents to believe their town is open and transparent in all of its dealings.”

Lyon said a big part of the struggle has been the town’s unresponsiveness to residents’ calls and communication disconnects between town council members and the mayor’s office.

“So I plan to have a monthly ‘morning with the mayor,’” she said. “We’ll have coffee. We can sit around on the porch at Town Hall. You can share your concerns with me and I’ll do everything in my power to address them, fix them and work with you in any way I can.”

In the earlier forum, Meggett said there needs to be a greater focus on residents to get involved in local politics, and that generations of apathy have contributed to the town’s greatest issues today.

“I’ve been here for 54 years,” he said. “Those of us who grew up here — we didn’t go to Town Council meetings. We didn’t think about these things, and now we’re overdeveloped, and we’re trying to stop it.”

Seven candidates are also running for four seats on James Island Town Council. Candidates include (incumbents are marked with an asterisk):