Tenk GAWD! St. Helena’s Gullah/Geechee Cultural Protection Overlay District Upheld AGAIN!

Gullah/Geechee Nation ♦ December 10, 2025 ♦ Leave a comment

Tenk GAWD fa de @protectsthelena Fam ya! The majority of the Beaufort County Council members voted to uphold their original votes from September 22, 2025 (6-4) which upholds the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Protection Overlay District (CPO) law for historic St. Helena Island, SC in the Gullah/Geechee Nation!   Logan Cunningham (who is now running for Nancy Mace’s congressional seat) made the motion to rescind the votes in order to go forward with a development agreement which would have included the very thing that the CPO does NOT allow!  Paula Brown seconded the motion.  Tom Reitz stated that he voted with them due to the money that was being offered in the agreement and David Bartholomew claimed he was voting to rescind because as an attorney, he wants to save the taxpayers from the litigation that the destructioneer/developer has against the county in spite of the fact that citizens stated that if the actually law is not upheld, the citizens can and likely would sue the county.  So, there would be litigation in any case.  Beaufort County has already spent a tremendous amount of taxpayers money to fight against the two lawsuits and these repeated attempts to violate the law!  Fortunately, the rest of the Beaufort County Council members realize that changing the law for one person’s project would set a precedent that would allow every destructioneer/developer to circumvent that law.

We want to thank the 6 Beaufort County Council members that continued to uphold the law and were not moved by money offers-St. Helena Island Councilman York Glover, Tab Tabernik, Chair Alice Howard, Gerald Dawson, Joe Passiment and Mark Lawson.  In addition, we want to thank all of you that continue to stand up to protect the Cultural Protection Overlay (CPO) District for St. Helena Island, SC in the Gullah/Geechee Nation.  Historic St. Helena Island would have already gone the way of other Sea Islands had their not been a vision to protect the Gullah/Geechee culture of the island back in 1999.    Tenk GAWD fa St. Helena wha da de epicenter of Gullah/Geechee culcha ya!

Happy Holy Days!

www.SaintHelenaGullahGeechee.com
www.ProtectStHelena.com
www.GullahGeecheeNation.com