Mount Pleasant Magazine Jan/Feb2016

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political campaign in November,
claiming a seat on the Mount
Pleasant Town Council by finishing
in the top two in a three-way runoff.
His prior political experience was as
press secretary from 2000 to 2002
for then U.S. Rep. Charles H. Taylor
of North Carolina.
Haney said he entered the
Council race, at the urging of his
wife, to provide a voice for the
people of Mount Pleasant.
“The townspeople did not have as
much influence as the developers and
outside organizations,” he said. “If
it’s not true that a person who owns a
modest house in Mount Pleasant
doesn’t have as much access and voice
as a person who owns an expensive
home, we’re not the democracy I
thought we were.”
Haney, who came out on top in
31 of 39 precincts in the runoff, said
one of his priorities in his new job
would be to make sure developers are
required to abide by the town’s
building regulations.
“Why do our ordinances appear
to be so negotiable?” he asked.
“We’re going to stick to the guiding
documents and regulations we have,
things like commercial property not
being rezoned to high-density
multifamily. This is not a no-growth
scenario. It’s a compatible growth
scenario.”
According to Haney, the Mount
Pleasant election was all about the
town’s ever-expanding population.
He pointed out that the previous
Council passed a growth
management plan two weeks before
voters went to the polls, “too late to
convince the public that slowing
growth was a priority.”
“Our rate of growth is not a
matter of opinion any more,” he
remarked.
Haney moved to Mount Pleasant
at the age of 5, went to high school
in Sumter, returned to Mount
Pleasant for a while in 1987 then on
a permanent basis in 2010.
Expanding on ideas he broached in
columns for two newspapers in
Western North Carolina, he
published a book titled, “When My
Cellphone Blinks ‘Roam,’ Do I Have
a Call from Italy?”
Haney, who in 1983 earned a
degree in Business Administration at
The Citadel, where he was the
top-ranking cadet at the military
academy, is working on a second
book, this one about Col. Harvey M.
Dick, former assistant commandant
of cadets at the school.
Haney and his wife, Suzette, a
teacher at Jennie Moore Elementary
School in Mount Pleasant, have a
blended family that includes two
sons and two daughters.
Jim Owens
Jim Owens, who has spent his
entire life in the Lowcountry, thinks
he has a lot to offer to the place he
calls home. A licensed construction
will Haney
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