Judge blocks larger home permits for tiny community of slave descendants pending appeal

SAVANNAH — A judge has blocked a Georgia county from approving larger homes in a tiny island community of Black slave descendants until the state’s highest court decides whether residents can challenge by referendum zoning changes they fear will lead to unaffordable tax increases.

Hogg Hummock on Sapelo Island was founded after the Civil War by slaves who worked the cotton plantation of Thomas Spalding. It’s one of the South’s few remaining communities of people known as Gullah-Geechee, whose isolation from the mainland resulted in a unique culture with deep ties to Africa.

The few dozen Black residents remaining on the Georgia island have spent the past year fighting local officials in McIntosh County over a new zoning ordinance. Commissioners voted in September 2023 to double the size of homes allowed in Hogg Hummock, weakening development restrictions enacted nearly three decades earlier to protect the shrinking community of modest houses along dirt roads.

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Residents and their advocates sought to repeal the zoning changes under a rarely used provision of Georgia’s constitution that empowers citizens to call special elections to challenge local laws. They spent months collecting more than 1,800 petition signatures and a referendum was scheduled for Oct. 1.

McIntosh County commissioners filed suit to stop the vote. Senior Judge Gary McCorvey halted the referendum days before the scheduled election and after hundreds of ballots were cast early. He sided with commissioners’ argument that zoning ordinances are exempt from being overturned by voters.

Hogg Hummock residents are appealing the judge’s ruling to the Georgia Supreme Court, hoping to revive and reschedule the referendum.

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On Monday, McCorvey granted their request to stop county officials from approving new building permits and permit applications under the new zoning ordinance until the state Supreme Court decides the case.

The new zoning law increased the maximum size of homes allowed in Hogg Hummock to 3,000 square feet (278 square meters) of total enclosed space. The previous limit was 1,400 square feet (130 square meters) of heated and air-conditioned space.

Residents say larger homes in their small community would lead to higher property taxes, increasing pressure to sell land held in their families for generations.

McCorvey in his ruling Monday said Hogg Hummock residents have a “chance of success” appealing his decision to cancel the referendum, and that permitting larger homes in the island community before the case is decided could cause irreversible harm.

“A victory in the Supreme Court would be hollow indeed, tantamount to closing a barn door after all the horses had escaped,” the judge wrote.

Attorneys for McIntosh County argued it is wrong to block an ordinance adopted more than a year ago. Under the judge’s order, any new building permits will have to meet the prior, stricter size limits.

Less than a month after the referendum on Hogg Hummock’s zoning was scrapped, Sapelo Island found itself reeling from an unrelated tragedy.

Hundreds of tourists were visiting the island on Oct. 19 when a walkway collapsed at the state-operated ferry dock, killing seven people. It happened as Hogg Hummock was celebrating its annual Cultural Day festival, a day intended to be a joyful respite from worries about the community’s uncertain future.

The Georgia Supreme Court has not scheduled when it will hear the Sapelo Island case. The court last year upheld a citizen-called referendum from 2022 that stopped coastal Camden County from building a commercial spaceport.

The spaceport vote relied on a provision of Georgia’s constitution that allows organizers to force special elections to challenge “local acts or ordinances, resolutions, or regulations” of local governments if they get a petition signed by 10% to 25%, depending on population, of a county’s voters.

In the Sapelo Island case, McCorvey ruled that voters can’t call special elections to veto zoning ordinances because they fall under a different section of the state constitution.

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