Dear Editor,

The Community Progress Council of Effingham has met each week for the past several years to discuss ways to keep up with the growth in Effingham County.

This group of business and other professionals along with concerned citizens are strongly recommending to this community that the time has come to provide our citizens with the conveniences that full service restaurants will provide.

Nothing can replace the fellowship that families enjoy when eating with church groups or taking a covered dish and going over to grandma’s house. This is what we all love about living in the South.

For business meetings or just eating out on nights and weekends, a variety of restaurants are needed that offers other options for our community. Most people that have lived here for a while recognize this factor.

For years families on both sides of the discussion have been taking their families and friends to steakhouses in Pooler and Applebee’s and other full-service restaurants in Chatham County.

In addition to long drives to their restaurants, we are using an ever increasing expenditure of our gasoline dollars. Citizens of Effingham County have, for the past 10 to 15 years, been enhancing the tax coffers of Chatham County on a grand scale.

These tax dollars, when kept in Effingham County, can be used to our advantage for improving our roads, schools or used to stabilize our increasing real estate taxes.

Because of the desirability of living along the coast along with our mild weather the growth of Effingham will continue on a steady pace.

With the upcoming opening of Lowe’s and the expansions of Georgia-Pacific, the Port of Savannah and Gulfstream, we need to take dynamic action to provide full service restaurants to serve our population right here in Effingham County.

To that end we are working to place this issue before the population for a vote.

We ask the support of the general public to insure the successful accomplishment of securing full service restaurants that can both serve our eating needs and prepare us for the inevitable growth that we are seeing today.

Charles Kea