BASE Updates Brunswick Planning Board on Regional Growth Issues
In December, BASE was asked to make a presentation to the Brunswick County Planning Board regarding ongoing housing demand. The Planning Board has seen increased calls from a small faction of citizens to “stop development” in the County.
As we explained to the Planning Board, Brunswick has seen remarkable growth—and will continue to over the coming years. This is due to factors like substantial in-migration as well as the recent major jobs announcement. If the new battery plant creates 500 jobs, where will those employees live? In addition to providing housing for retirees, the County has the land and infrastructure to provide housing for workers across the region.
We believe it is critically important that Brunswick continue to invest in jobs, infrastructure and housing to the benefit of the entire region.
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We citizens are not calling for a “stop to development”. We are asking for a stop to Over-development. By that I personally mean, large national/international investors coming in to poor rural communities and buying up large acreages of land so that our regular citizens cannot access it and building these homes that are being marketed as “luxury homes” in poor communities which are lacking healthcare, within food deserts, have roads which cannot meet the influx of citizens, etc.
I do not appreciate you speaking for us or calling us a small faction of citizens. You should learn the history of our community and meet with the citizens and you will see that we need better paying jobs and more infrastructure such as roads, small businesses, healthcare providers, ETC. first. We need affordable housing . We are at capacity with luxury price points. Your organization does NOT represent Brunswick counties best interests for future growth or the well-being of its citizens. Please feel free to email me if I have misinterpreted anything you’ve said.
As someone who moved here 1.5 years ago from the North please STOP cutting the trees and building houses upon houses! We moved here for the beautiful lands which are being destroyed. We moved here for peace and quiet and it’s nothing but construction and traffic from it. The biggest issue is the schools cannot keep up with the housing growth. The school buses are so over crowded some kids sit on the floor and it takes 2 hours to get home from a school 10 minutes down the street. We need to let the area adjust before you keep shoving in houses. Please don’t distroy the quiet and peacefulness that drew us to Brunswick county.
No. I don’t agree. There are buildings for businesses that are sitting empty. There are businesses who can’t find help to stay open on a daily basis because they aren’t businesses who pay 40 thousand a year and up. You can’t afford to live as a single person in Brunswick county for less. People who work seasonal or tourism jobs are not going to live in another county and drive to Brunswick for a job paying less than $15 an hour. Why would they do that? The people who came here to retire aren’t working. I’ve been here almost 30 years and I bought a house built in 1987. I moved here because I couldn’t afford to live in Wilmington where I grew up. If I was buying today, I would have to buy in Pender or Columbus county because I couldn’t afford to live in Leland. The way it’s going, I will still be paying out over $300 a month in taxes and insurance after my house is paid off. With the economy in the tank and everything you see, hear and touch is priced through the roof, I will be working until I die. That wasn’t my plan when I invested in this county by buying a home and working in Brunswick for almost 30 years. I’m being priced out of my home. The infrastructure is crumbling. The hospital emergency wait time is one full day. Doctors are scheduling months out. Daycares are full with waiting lists years long. Schools are busting at the seams. I live in-between Leland’s only highschool and middle school. Huge numbers of residents have toxic well water and contaminated land, I am one of those residents. What is happening to our wildlife eating and drinking from toxic land and water? You are romancing people to move here and not being transparent about key factors. Schools, medical, clean water, blue collar jobs, infrastructure and so on. Putting a billboard on my land warning people about these things is starting to look like the only answer since it’s not being addressed by the county. Fix the problems before adding thousands of people to add to it.
Have you taken the time to come listen with any of the actual residents of Brunswick County? If you had, you would know that what we’re asking for is smart development. Not the nearsighted, short -terms gains. You would also know our concerns are about the negative impacts of this irresponsible overdevelopment on our existing communities and irreplaceable ecosystems. We’re seeing it and living it now. Quality of life needs to be considered for everyone here, not just the people you think might move here. We don’t have the infrastructure here to support what we have today—there are vulnerable communities with dirty, polluted water and some with no running water at all. Clean running water, by the way, is a basic human right. The continued overdevelopment here means the destruction of our irreplaceable wetlands (NC loses 80,000 acres a year), clear-cutting trees and forested areas for housing developments, increased nuisance flooding, worsening droughts, higher contamination of fresh water aquifers, added strain to surrounding ecosystems, and exacerbates the effects of coastal erosion.
I grew up here and while I appreciate that people love our area and it’s appeal, please stop ruining it and taking away all the things we love. The locals feel like we aren’t being heard and the wildlife and small town life is being destroyed for greed. The traffic is becoming terrible, even just going into and out of our neighborhood. The beautiful forest we used to love exploring with our kids to learn about nature and wildlife in our backyard has been cleared and all we see is dirt piles and construction vehicles. How sad. It’s driving locals away because the area we loved is being absolutely destroyed. It makes me sad to think that our kids won’t be able to put on their boots and go climb trees or explore forests unless we go to a park with has laws to keep that from being cleared too, thank God for that. Please stop destroying our area. We do NOT want it. We are crying out for it to stop. Even the people who moved here as transplants are begging for it to stop. I have only heard cries for stopping the development,.not asking for more as you stated.