Last Call from Marc

Fifty years ago, Charles Fraser was in tune with the environment long before words like “sustainability,” “organic” and “environmentally-friendly” entered the American mainstream. When he pioneered the modern development phase of the Lowcountry, the term “green” meant the color green. Sea Pines at the most southern tip of Hilton Head Island became one of the first developments to use covenants and deed restrictions to protect the environment. The homes were designed to blend in with the pine forests.

Good leaders see needs and concerns and bring people together to fix them.  My wife would say I have been blessed with this gift, I’d say this is something I love to do. I seek to serve.

Marcia and I adore living on Hilton Head Island, this beautiful place we have called home for 18 years. Both in Maryland, where I spent most of my career as a corporate planner, and here in the Lowcountry during our retirement, I’ve been involved in numerous efforts to improve our community and have developed a strong ability to bring people together to get things done. This requires a lot of listening and developing a high level of trust.

THE LOWCOUNTRY COULD BENEFIT FROM RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE TO $15 PER HOUR

The Town of Hilton Head Island and the town of Bluffton should raise compensation to a living wage — and Beaufort County businesses should follow suit. 

I know some of you cringe hearing me say that, but hear me out.

MY S.C. DISTRICT HADN’T VOTED FOR A DEMOCRAT IN 40 YEARS. WHAT HAPPENED?

In sports, the team that loses is the team that studies the game-day tapes the hardest. In the military, it’s called an after-action review. But somehow in politics, it’s different. Too often, political figures simply blame the other side — or at least someone besides themselves.

On Nov. 6, voters will head to the polls to cast their ballots in midterm elections. The most important regional item is a referendum on a 1 percent tax to fund road, bridge and bike path improvements, which we need.

At noon Sept. 10, as Hurricane Florence swirled in the Atlantic, South Caroline Gov. Henry McMaster called for a mandatory evacuation for all of Beaufort and Jasper counties. Lane reversals and supervised barricades would restrict traffic coming into Beaufort County and onto Hilton Head Island starting at noon the next day.

For my high school graduation paper, I wrote about the future of mankind. Freshly influenced by the essay “Brave New World Revisited” by Aldous Huxley, the thesis of my essay was that mankind was not meant to work in order to enjoy life — a believe that many

18-year-olds maintain today — but that we would instead invent machines to take over repetitive tasks and craft “smart apes” that would tackle more nuanced tasks, like gardening.

WHO IS TO BLAME FOR PUBLIC HEALTH CRISES?

Smoking kills. It’s a slogan we’ve heard a thousand times over, thanks to public health initiatives and staunch anti-smoking ad campaigns, court-ordained and paid for by the tobacco industry itself. If you’ve opened a newspaper lately (who does that anymore?) you’ll find stark, full-page ads that say cigarettes claim 1,200 Americans a day. And the warnings are getting dire thanks to a court ruling following a decade-long lawsuit, USA v. Philip Morris USA.

Not a week goes by that I’m not asked the question, “How can we lead these millennials?”

I am to the point now that I generally just laugh at first and then quickly answer, “You lead them like you lead others.”

That usually gets me a blank stare and then some form of a follow-up question that usually starts with, “But…”