To the Editor:
The Bluffton Sun article (April 18) on the proposed denser than Manhattan development on a 300-acre national Heritage Golf course is insanity driven by greed obliterating common sense.
You don’t need advanced degrees in many areas to conclude this is a lose-lose proposition to the residents of the bucolic Bluffton.
Traffic is already bad on Bluffton Parkway and on Rt. 278. By adding 300 homes, apartments, retail stores, assisted living units and others, will the traffic get worse or better? By paving and building extensively, will the drain water issue into May River get better or worse by washing pollutants into it?
Will school overcrowding get worse or better, especially since the voters rejected the tax increase for school capital expense? Would crime rate go up or go down with more residents crammed in?
Would we require more police and fire protection or stay the same? Who pays for those capital and recurring costs?
Would we not require sewer treatment plants and drinking water distribution upgrades since those capacities are not unlimited?
Answers to those questions would easily confirm that the Bluffton residents would have to endure unaffordable high taxes with a poorer quality of life.
With all the developments already going on and by adding this dense proposal, Bluffton would soon look like a New Jersey suburb of New York City where a blade of grass is a park and the rare sighting of wildlife is a squirrel. Please contact Beaufort County councilors to oppose this insane development.
Art Gopalan
Bluffton
To the Editor:
Our country desperately yearns for truth and trust. That said, please bear with me.
Developing trust includes character, reputation, morality and truth. Webster defines character as “a complex of mental and ethical traits that individualizes a person.”
Character and reputation are closely intertwined. Character is what a person is to himself, reputation is how a person is perceived by others.
The foundation of morality is to know truth and truth suggests conformity with the facts (Webster’s). Further, Google says that the six pillars of character and ethical values are trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship.
Yet political parties, politicians, world and business leaders, the media and individual internet participants continue to attempt to shape their comments often with misleading information, sometimes lies, to support their position. Fake news, disinformation, incomplete and alternative facts challenge us and cloud our understanding and judgment of right and wrong.
God created us but we are responsible for creating our own character and reputation, good or bad, thus influencing those around us, positively or negatively, including young people and children, our nation’s future. So why do we continue to allow these falsehoods to influence our society?
Character shapes who we are, what we believe and who and what we accept. Are we living the six pillars of character building everyday in our lives? How might others rate our reputation? Are we doing our best, setting the right example, reflecting truth and trust in our life? Are you?
Earle Everett, Bluffton
