When McIntosh residents voted overwhelmingly last month to repeal a 2023 amendment to allow larger houses on the Sapelo Island neighborhood of Hogg Hummock, a majority of the five-member county commission said they got the message loud and clear.
“I know there’s three people on this board that is ready to put this to bed,” Commissioner Henderson Hope said at post-referendum meeting at which the commission imposed a 30-day moratorium on building on the island. “We are ready to stop the bleed. This thing needs to be over with. The taxpayers in this county has spent an exorbitant amount of money to get through this.”
Taxpayers have spent more than half a million dollars in legal fees in two lawsuits related to the controversial zoning decision.
But there’s been little evidence since then of county action to put acceptable zoning in place for the last Gullah Geechee community allowing larger houses threatened to usher in gentrification.
On Monday, however, commissioners received a Hogg Hummock zoning proposal via email from Gullah Geechee descendant and Hogg Hummock resident Reginald Hall. Titled “Hogg Hummock Zoning Ordinance Drafted By, Of, and For Members of the Hogg Hummock Historic Community” the proposal suggests limiting house size to 1,400 square feet and height to 18 feet, similar to restrictions in place before the 2023 amendment increased the allowed size to 3,200 square feet and height to 37 feet. Interior stairs would be prohibited.
Despite sea level rise and increasing issues with flooding on the island, the document limits how high off the ground buildings can be built stating that the “elevation shall be no more than one foot higher than the minimum height for the FEMA-designated flood zone in which the property is located.” The proposal includes numerous other zoning parameters including allowable uses and an official name change to the Gullah Geechee preferred spelling of “Hogg Hummock.”
The proposal was drafted in a 1.5-hour Zoom meeting Sunday that about 15-20 community members attended, according to Andy Desmond, a Hogg Hummock resident who collaborates with Hall and was on the video conference.
Hope had asked for such a proposal at that post-referendum meeting.
“Well, I would love to see what the people of Sapelo are proposing,” Hope said. “I think if we could get something like that out of them that opens the door for us to negotiate this thing out and make it applicable to them.”
In the email accompanying the draft ordinance, “The Hogg Hummock Community Ordinance Draft Coalition” asked the commissioners to “consider and adopt this replacement at its next Special Called Session, now scheduled for February 20, 2026.” They also requested up to two hours of public input and a straw poll to be taken of those present at the meeting.
Hope and Commissioner Roger Lotson did not respond to a request for comment about the coalition’s proposed zoning. Christopher Jarriel, the third commissioner who pledged to stop the spending on legal fees, declined to comment but indicated his assessment of the proposed zoning was that “there are things that are workable but also some that are not.”
Civil rights lawsuit continues
Meanwhile, a civil rights lawsuit related to the rezoning could become active again. Shortly after the 2023 Sapelo rezoning passed, residents sued the county claiming the measure was unjust and discriminatory. Represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore LLP, they alleged violations of their constitutional rights to due process and equal protection as well as violations of Georgia’s Open Meeting Law.
That litigation, Bailey, et. al. v. McIntosh County, has been paused for several months to allow mediation and the referendum. Private talks in December failed to produce a settlement. A joint status report filed Friday by both sides asks for the litigation to restart.
“The negotiations between the parties have not been successful and mediation has been
terminated,” the attorneys wrote. “A stay of this matter is no longer necessary as any further negotiations among the parties can take place simultaneously with continued litigation efforts.”
Senior Attorney Miriam Gutman of the SPLC said she expects the judge to reopen the case soon and that litigation will continue on all claims.
Gutman previously suggested incorrectly that some claims would be moot after the referendum. But because the referendum only repealed the amendment that defines the Hogg Hummock district and didn’t replace it with anything or touch another section that summarizes the land uses in Hogg Hummock, the residents’ claims can continue.
Attorney Ken Jarrard, of Cumming-based Jarrard & Davis, who represents McIntosh County in the lawsuit, declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
Josiah “Jazz” Watts, a Sapelo descendant and One Hundred Miles Justice Strategist is frustrated by the county’s apparent inaction.
“So if three commissioners have said, ‘We heard the people, and we are going to work and come to a resolution,’ but the status report says basically, nothing is happening, my question would be, ‘who exactly do the people need to be talking to, or the SPLC needs to be talking to in order to get to get actual movement?'” he asked. “Who is actually in charge of McIntosh?”