Eye on Port Royal

Four candidates vying for two spots on the council will face off in a candidate’s forum Oct. 29 at Port Royal Elementary School, hosted by the Beaufort Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Incumbents Vernon DeLoach and Mary Beth Heyward face competition from two other candidates, Sally Germer and Julia Peters, in the Nov. 3 election.

The two at-large seats will go to the top two vote-getters.

Beaufort Gazette editor Jeff Kidd is slated to moderate the forum, which begins at 6 p.m.

Broad River Holdings, LLC, has asked Port Royal to rezone four lots on Drayton Drive to allow higher density housing, including duplexes.

At a Beaufort-Port Royal Joint Planning Commission meeting Monday, three residents urged commission members not to recommend the zoning change for 1712, 1714, 1716 and 1718 Drayton Drive.

Current zoning allows only single-family residences and requires lots be 5,000 square feet larger than in the proposed rezoning.

This agenda posted below is also available at http://media.islandpacket.com/smedia/2009/08/05/13/090812cm.source.prod_...

The agenda posted below is also available at http://media.islandpacket.com/smedia/2009/08/05/13/JointMunicipalPlannin...

Port Royal Elementary will soon get a new partial fence around its soccer field and picnic tables in the school garden.

Second-grade teacher John O’Connell secured a $1,000 beautification grant through an education association to spruce up the area, he said.

O’Connell will work with other teachers, students and community members to build the partial wooden rail fence near a drainage ditch at the soccer field. Volunteers will paint the fence blue, one of the school’s colors, and plant trees nearby, O’Connell said.

Fiscal year 2010 doesn’t start until July 1, but Port Royal council members already have begun thinking about what to add to — and remove from — the town’s budget, which now stands at $4 million.

At a Saturday retreat, council members heard funding requests from 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone and Chief Public Defender Gene Hood, as reported in Tuesday’s Beaufort Gazette, and from each department manager: fire, police, building and codes, public works, administrative and legislative.

As the revision of Port Royal’s comprehensive plan continues, the plan steering committee and town officials are asking residents to complete a survey about life in Port Royal and how they think it could be improved over the next 10 years.

The survey is available in paper form at Town Hall, 700 Paris Ave, and also online at the town Web site, where residents can also submit photos of Port Royal and find information and updates on the comprehensive plan process.

The doors of the Lowcountry Estuarium are closed to visitors until April — but that doesn’t mean curator Bob Bender is taking time off.

Work soon will begin on renovations to the space at 1402 Paris Ave. The estuarium board will meet Tuesday to decide among four bids for the twofold update to the museum, Bender said.

The e-mails flew between Port Royal residents Monday evening.

“Have you voted yet?,” they asked. “Please vote!”

The vote was to boost Port Royal in the “America’s Coolest Small Towns” contest on the Web site for Budget Travel, a monthly magazine that highlights tourism getaways and destinations.

The Port Royal Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee took another step in mapping out the town’s next 10 years at its Thursday meeting — almost literally.

Consultant and project manager Denise Grabowski broke the 20-member steering committee into three groups, then gave each group a map of the town with its growth boundaries marked. Different areas of the map were broken out, and the groups discussed among themselves a few broad points about the development and land-use patterns already present in each area.