[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to First Friday with Georgetown County. I'm Jackie Broach, public information officer for the county and I have some really exciting guests on to share some important information with you this week. First up, we have Emmy award winning filmmaker Bill Wisneski who is going to be traveling from California later this month to, to join us for a very exciting event in Andrews which is the home place of his grandfather who a lot of people may remember, Mr. Lee Parsons. Next up we'll have Georgetown County Planning Director Holly Richardson who is going to
[00:00:45] Speaker C: be talking with us about a couple
[00:00:46] Speaker B: of really important issues including some updates with the Unified Development Ordinance, better known as the udo, and the new wetlands protection ordinance which is, which was recently put into place. It's now my pleasure to introduce documentary filmmaker Bill Wneski.
[00:01:02] Speaker C: Thank you for, I'm doing great. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me again.
I, I appreciate it. I know your schedule must be busy and I can't believe it. Your trip is just a few weeks away now.
[00:01:14] Speaker D: I know. Getting so excited.
Yeah, I've been doing the research and it's going to be a lot of fun and pretty impactful. You know, it's big that I've been talking to my mom and she's so excited and it's been a good bonding thing for us, you know. So it was like I think 15 years ago that my mom had ended me the sponsor things from my grandfathers. I'm kind of the family archivist, I guess, you know, because I've always been interested in our family history. And so there's something they have and a lot of it I have and my cousin has a few things. So this is one of the boxes that I had then went through and found this article about my grandfather.
That was information that was new to me and it mentioned this time capsule. This was 15 years ago. I thought, wow, you know, it'd be great to go someday and see this time capsule open.
And then about a year ago I started looking into it and contacted Andrews and they didn't know about the time capsule. And it's been a couple months. They were looking, trying to figure it out and, and then stumbled upon, you know, Georgetown found an article that had mentioned the time capsule that you all had and connected with you. And then, and sure enough, you know, the time capsule was in there but we had not fully confirmed whether the film was in there, what was on the cell.
And again, like, you know, I'm a documentary song maker. I made a dozen films. I had no Idea that my grandfather had made any documentaries.
And so it was just a real kind of aha moment. Like wow, you know, like he, he had done so many things, but I folded, you know, his footsteps in a way that I didn't even know.
And you know, I have a 16 millimeter film camera that, you know, I've had for many years that I knew that he went around the world and he filmed things, but I had no idea that he actually edited together a project.
And so we had no idea what was on there.
You know, my mom was joking. I hope it's not just artistic, you know, shots of the town because he was likely to do things like that.
So wow. To see it. And the ears voice was really colorful.
[00:03:32] Speaker C: It's funny that you, you didn't know that he had done films and documentaries because you sent us this photo of him from when he was much younger.
And I mean he looks like the stereotypical ideal idea of a Hollywood filmmaker or a producer.
[00:03:46] Speaker D: No. Yeah, I mean he was the classical renaissance man, you know, a writer, a poet, a photographer, gourmet chance.
He was very talented in artistic. And we knew he shot, you know, film throughout the world. Like we week he went to Africa and we have film that he shot, you know, when he was in Africa, all over Europe and things like that. But I, I didn't know he ever did anything with it beyond just film it and, you know, have it available to show on a projector or whatnot. So yeah, it was news to. To all of us in the family that he had done that and created something out of it. So pretty cool.
[00:04:32] Speaker C: And your grandfather of course was Lee Parsons and he obviously lived in Andrews in 1976. Was he from there or did he find his way?
[00:04:41] Speaker D: So he was a star of the football team in Andrews High School and they went on to Furman College there and then was in the military, was involved in the war, had a career after that, and then became a brother in politics and was the press secretary for Senator Maybanks of South Carolina and did all kinds of things. You know, childhood with the vice president Barkley during the chairman administration on a couple tours. And politics was his life for a big part of it.
[00:05:17] Speaker E: Wow, what a story career.
[00:05:19] Speaker D: Yeah. Then he went into. He founded a company, American Textiles, which was an exporter of fabric basically for fashion industry.
And that's where he really used to be the world traveling, trying to make these connections to sell us made fabric at the time throughout Europe mostly.
So yeah, he was quite the man.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: And he of course moved Away at
[00:05:46] Speaker E: some point during his life.
[00:05:48] Speaker D: Yeah. So he got the jobs in D.C. basically they moved. So my mom was raised and I'll figure this out before my presentation what the exact years are.
I believe it was at high school and they moved in. They lived in Connecticut for many years and he worked in New York, then in D.C.
and then after basically he was done and retired. That's when he came back to Amtrus and they retired at Andrews and lived in the house that I remember going to, which I looked up, it's still there, it's been remodeled. I want to go by and see it. You know, my great grandparents house I believe still exists. I need to look that up.
So yeah, I have the addresses of the various places the, the relatives that live, the grave sites. I have my great grandparents, Grover Cleveland Parsons is buried and Andrew Cemetery there.
And I found my great great grandparents, the cemetery not too far outside behind a church.
So that's part of the things I'm still trying to do is research all this because I'd love to go see them. But yeah, the.
A long history in Andrew going back a couple generations for sure.
[00:07:08] Speaker C: What, what's your mom's name?
What was her maiden name?
[00:07:11] Speaker F: I guess Margaret. Yeah, Margaret Parsons is their name.
[00:07:15] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:07:15] Speaker F: Margaret. Yeah. Which was my great grandmother's name.
Peggy. She knows my Peggy now.
[00:07:22] Speaker C: Okay, wonderful.
Well, we are so excited that you're going to be joining us for this premiere event that you're going to tell us a little about your grandfather. You have not been to Andrew since you were a child, I think you said.
[00:07:34] Speaker F: Yeah, 1978 I think was the last time. So the photos I found, just so you know what I'll prepare and of course I'll send you this once it's all together. But there's a great photo of me which is one of the strongest memories I have in the 4th of July parade in 1978, I believe it's me and my brother and my grandfather at the back of a trunk holding American flags. And I have a memory, a pretty strong memory of that parade, you know, with him.
And there's another one, I was there, there's a couple when I was. I think that was only two or three. The time that I went before. There's some cool photos of me with my grandfather on the Black River. You know what she talked about endlessly about his, one of his favorite places in the world, me and my cousin and him on the river. There's a couple on the beach which I also have very strong memories.
Polyxyme was one of the places that for generations, my family's gone to. To vacation, would rent a little cottage or whatnot. And so I have a very strong memory of swimming in the warm ocean, which, of course, we're not used to here on the west coast of him. Only me, you know, in the water, being nervous but excited and couldn't believe how warm the water was.
[00:08:50] Speaker C: It is definitely very warm right now for you. We've got it ready for you.
[00:08:54] Speaker F: Oh, I'm excited.
[00:08:55] Speaker C: It is 105 degrees today, I think.
[00:08:59] Speaker F: Oh, really? Wow. Okay. Wow. All right.
So anyway, those are my. Yeah, I haven't been back since then. I've only been, I think, two, maybe three times, but not since I was very young.
[00:09:13] Speaker E: Okay.
[00:09:13] Speaker C: Well, I mean, we are really very surprised that you were willing to take the trip out here to be part of this program. I mean, it's. It's not an insignificant trip. What made you want to. To come be part of this?
[00:09:26] Speaker F: Well, for one, just. I've always wanted to retrace my family, you know, history, which, you know, my. When my mom and her aunt. Her. My aunt, her sister was the first one who left, and she married and went to California. My mom followed her. And then my grandparents, unfortunately, died so young. You know, they were in their 60s. My grandfather died in blue.
That kind of was broken. And then we had a family of five. Financially, it was a real burden. Obviously, that's expensive to fly five people across the east coast, so they can't really afford to go back.
So it's a long time coming that I've wanted to retrace our steps and visit for my own kind of personal experience of understanding where I come from.
And then what I found out, of course, about the film and the documentary, it's incredibly significant to me. My grandfather's always been this kind of icon and something. I followed in his footsteps in other ways with the photography, and I'm a writer, and I'm a gourmet cook, I would say. You know, but it's just funny that the career I ended up in, I had no idea that that was something that he did.
So I'm really excited about the opportunity to come and experience that for myself and.
[00:10:44] Speaker D: Yeah. And see where.
[00:10:45] Speaker F: Where we come from.
[00:10:46] Speaker C: Well, is there anything that you would.
Excuse me. Anything that you would tell people who might be interested in coming to see this film? Some of them may have known your grandfather, so you may have played with some of them as a kid.
[00:10:58] Speaker F: I'm really excited about that possibility. I've Heard there's at least two or three have already come forward who have said that they knew my grandparents. So I'm gonna sit with them and talk and hopefully I can facetime my mom. I think to hear the stories as well would be great.
That's the other part is she's not really able to travel anymore so I'm going on her bath as well and to be able to make those connections and hear the stories about my grandparents because again I was really young when they passed away so you know, fill in some gaps and to better understand who they were for sure. So I'm excited to meet anybody who know knew them. I may have, my mom doesn't know if I may have second cousins and other relatives you would think who could still be in the area that might hear about it and I would love to meet them and other just see the town that you know. My, my grandfather traveled the world but Andrew was home. He was very proud of where he was from. He was very proud of the low cut trees, you know, he loved to talk about of the food. I'm very excited to get some southern, you know, cooking in which I did grow up. My grandmother and my mom are both, you know, great cooks. And so the connect on that side of it as well would be really significant for me.
[00:12:18] Speaker E: We can't wait to have you here. Bill, thank you again so much for joining us.
Up next we have Georgetown County Planning Director Holly Richardson.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Holly, I know that you are always just so busy in your office, but you have two really important things going on right now. So we are going to be talking today about an upcoming update on the Unified Development Ordinance. Did I say that right?
[00:12:45] Speaker C: You did.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: And the wetlands ordinance.
So where do you want to start?
[00:12:52] Speaker G: Let's talk about the UDO first.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Okay. Because there is a meeting about that coming up soon, right?
[00:12:58] Speaker G: Yes, August 31st at the Georgetown Library at 5:30. We haven't even hot off the presses. We haven't even advertised it yet. So you're hearing about it first.
Some of you may remember we had an earlier meeting at the library. We did some small groups and this will be another meeting sort of along that same format. But we've got a lot more information to present to you now.
Some maps and some text and some topics that we've been working hard with the consultant on. You haven't heard a lot from us, but it doesn't mean we haven't been working. If you'll remember, this is our zoning ordinance. So the regulations that talk about where uses can go in the county. What the setbacks are parking requirements, where you can have curb cuts and connections between developments and all those kind of things.
This ordinance addresses all of those. This was a recommendation from our comprehensive plan process from the land use element that we update those ordinances that that have been out of date and some of them have been around for 20 plus years. We're adding some uses that haven't been added before and some new graphics. Some of it'll just be a cleaner look, a reorganization, but some of it's brand new info. So on August 31st at the library, our consultants called Inspire Placemaking will be here and we'll make some presentations and have some time for you to sit around tables in small groups and look at those changes and give us your input and your feedback.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: And this, of course, is a topic that is of incredible interest to a lot of residents. I remember the last meeting we had on this at the library. It was packed. You had a full house.
So are we expecting pretty much more of the same for that? Do you expect interest has remained high?
[00:14:36] Speaker G: I hope so. Like I said, it has been a while since that last meeting and a lot of the work has been going on just back and forth between staff. It's not been the most exciting kind of work. We've literally been reviewing text and marking and making changes back and forth and proofreading.
But I hope that the interest has stayed there and I hope we'll get that same kind of turnout. We were really pleased with the group we got last time and the feedback that we received.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Okay, great. So hopefully we'll have lots of people come out and just learn more about this and all the hard work that you and your staff have been plugging away at.
Anything else you'd like to say about that or do you want to transition straight into the wetlands ordinance?
[00:15:14] Speaker G: One more thing, just reminder that we do have a separate webpage up. If you go to the county's webpage and go to the planning department, there is a link to the UDO if you want to kind of remember what we talked about before, look back at the survey results. All that stuff is cataloged there. And after we have this meeting, all that information will go there as well. So you can always go there to check on updates and see what the newest info is.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: That's wonderful.
Good information to have and be able to kind of review because I know I've forgotten a lot of it there.
[00:15:44] Speaker E: There is so much there.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: All right, so I know that the wetlands ordinance has also been occupying, I believe Quite a bit of your and your staff's time.
So talk with us just a little bit about that. For somebody who is not already familiar with it, tell us about the wetlands ordinance.
[00:16:02] Speaker G: Sure. So we're calling it the wetlands protection ordinance and it is also part of the zoning ordinance.
It's going to be part of the new udo. The difference is that planning commission and county council as well felt like that this was urgent enough that it warranted sort of its own path. They didn't want us to wait on the update of the whole zoning ordinance because clearly that is taking some time and it's a big undertaking. And, and the wetlands ordinance has taken some time as well. But we've kind of been working on it simultaneously with the UDO updates so that this could be ready ahead of that whole process being done. And it is something we've been working on for well over a year.
We started with a model ordinance from an environmental group and staff tweaked and made changes and met with different groups. We met with foresters, we met with environmental groups, we met with engineers, various other people who gave us feedback and made changes, recommended changes. We held numerous workshops with the planning commission and later with council, even a joint one with both groups to look at the difference. But our main goal here was preservation of wetlands. Basically we looked at not only adding requirements for the filling of wetlands, you know, jurisdictional wetlands are handled by other agencies, by federal and state agencies, but non jurisdictional wetlands sometimes kind of fall through the cracks. And we live in the low country. We have a good bit of those wetlands. Of course, not just on the walk of my neck, not just the beach areas, but we're surrounded by rivers and wetlands and marshes and we want to protect, protect them. So we added some fill requirements and we also added a buffer.
Before that, the only setback we had was a 15 foot setback off of saltwater wetlands. Nothing for the freshwater wetlands. If you can meet state and fed requirements, you could build up to the edge of a freshwater wetland.
So this adds not only a undisturbed buffer off all those wetlands, but it also adds a setback to keep structures further away to add some protections. Now we've got a pretty good list of exemptions and we've talked about those with council and you know, if lots are already existing, those lots were not created with the idea of a 25 foot buffer off the wetlands. So it may not support development at that time. And we want to allow those people to be able to use the properties that they own and that they currently have. But this is going to kick in for new developments so that we can afford as much protection as we can to, you know, our natural resources, basically.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: It sounds like you guys are going to have some balancing to do, and I feel like that is so much of what your department has to manage and tackle. You're always trying to balance the needs of the community, of property owners and, you know, of preserving our environment. And I just want to say thank you for all the work and the consideration that you all put into that. You really do work hard, and I see how much thought and effort goes into it, and I don't think a lot of people say that. So I did just want to take a minute to say that.
[00:19:11] Speaker G: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: Is there anything else that you would say about the wetlands protection ordinance?
[00:19:17] Speaker G: The ordinance is passed now.
You can find it same place up on our website. Go to the planning department page and we've set up a section on the wetlands. You can link right to the ordinance. So review it, take a look at it. If you have questions, if you have technical questions, let us know. You'll probably be hearing more about it as new projects come through. And I will say, you know, we do have some projects that were already in the works and the ordinance gives allowances for those. So there are going to be some new projects that are going to come in under the old. But as we get newer projects in and this ordinance kicks in, I really think you're going to start seeing a difference in terms of what subdivisions look like and how they kind of develop in other areas beside the wetlands and stay further away from the wetlands we have. That's certainly the intent.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: I'm sure that we will get some questions as these come in under the old rules about why that's happening. So thanks for letting us know about that.
You heard it here. There may be still some developments coming in that will follow the old rules, but the new rules will. Will be the. The law of the land soon, I guess, for, for everybody. So, Holly, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for all this great information.
And we, we will definitely see you on the 31st for that next UDO meeting. I think that's going to provide a lot of really good information for the public.
[00:20:34] Speaker G: Thank you so much.
[00:20:36] Speaker E: That's it for this month's episode of First Friday with Georgetown County. Thank you for joining us. As always, I'd like to leave you with a list of upcoming events.
First off, I hope you'll join us for the premiere of the 15 minute documentary pulled from the 1976 time capsule, which will debut at 5:30pm on August 18th at the Andrews Library, 105 North Oregon Avenue. Make sure to come early to meet Mr. Wisneski and share any memories you may have of his grandfather Lee Parsons. Then save the date for our next time capsule program on September 15th at 4:30pm at the Georgetown Library. Archivist Julie Warren will review in detail all of the exciting items that were pulled from the time capsule on on July 4th Georgetown County Council will have a special meeting on August 11th at 5:30pm in council chambers to give final reading on a measure that would let the public vote this November on whether to put a 1% local option sales tax in place.
If passed, this sales tax would give property owners a rollback on their property taxes. We'll talk more about that on next month's podcast in September.
County Council will have its regular monthly meeting on August 25th at 5:30pm find agendas, minutes and more
[email protected] council the Planning Commission will meet on August 20th at 5:30pmn. In Council Chambers.
An exhibit open at the Southern Georgetown Community Library through August 29th will allow visitors to explore the unique stories of children during the Holocaust.
Titled Stars Without a Children in the Holocaust, the exhibit offers a glimpse into the lives of Jewish children during the Holocaust through a selection of drawings, poems, letters and toys. It is on loan from the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust.
Waccamaw Regional Tennis center at Stables park will have a ribbon cutting to celebrate its recent expansion on August 22nd at 10am Come early at 9:30 for coffee. For more events and activities, check out our online
[email protected]. thanks again for joining us. See you in September.
