Darryl May Candidate for Seabrook Island Town Council
I grew up not far up the coast in Wilmington, NC, and went to college in North Carolina at Duke University, where I met my wife, Susan. We moved to the Philadelphia area when I attended law school at the University of Pennsylvania, and we raised our family there. But we always wanted to move back to the Carolinas upon retirement, and we’re thrilled that we did. We can’t imagine a more beautiful place than Seabrook, where we have owned our house since 2015 and lived full-time since 2021.
For most of my legal career I was a partner at a Philadelphia-based law firm doing commercial and financial services litigation. I then went in-house at PNC Bank, running a group that managed PNC’s litigation. One of the accomplishments for which I am most proud is being part of a small team that developed a business court in Philadelphia. We worked to unite all the disparate elements of the bar to support the creation of the Philadelphia Commerce Court. The rules that I drafted for the court still stand today, 23 years later, with hardly any changes.
At Seabrook, I serve on the House Committee of the Club and on the Architectural Review Committee of SIPOA.
A brief overview of some of my positions:
- Council needs to listen to and respectfully consider the opinions of Seabrookers. A total of 30 minutes for all speakers (3 minutes each) on a controversial and important issue is not only inadequate, but disrespectful. That lack of respect is what motivated me to run.
- I am not anti-development. I am for property rights where an owner seeks to use a property that is already within Seabrook and zoned for the intended use, and meets all building and environmental requirements. But annexation and re-zoning are extraordinary actions. Annexation is discretionary, so no developer can buy a property outside of a town with the expectation that it will be annexed into the town. I opposed the now-withdrawn Yacht Club request. If a new request is submitted I would give it a fair hearing. But I would have to be convinced that any new proposal is for the public good and that promises of future benefits to Seabrookers are locked-in, binding written obligations, not vague public pronouncements.
- I think most Seabrookers are concerned, before anything else, with “the basics” — taking care of those things we need to maintain our quality of life. One is safety and security. In the past we didn’t have to think about that too much but that is changing, and we need to focus on it.
- The Town has a number of rules, such as short-term-rental rules and business-use rules, that need to, but do not appear to be, consistently and uniformly enforced. Oversight should be increased.
For more information, please see my webpage. To let me know what you think or have questions about, email me at may_for_town_council@icloud.com.
-Submitted by Darryl May