HEALTH: BMH expands hours at Express Care & Occupational Health Clinic. PAGE A7
AUGUST 2 - 8, 2018 WWW.YOURISLANDNEWS.COM
Alan Ours is council’s pick for new county administrator During its regular meeting on July 23, Beaufort County Council voted to offer Alan Ours the position of County Administrator. The council will now take steps to negotiate an employment contract with Ours for an anticipated start date later this summer. Ours would replace Gary Kubic, who served as County Administrator from 2004-17. Ours was one of two finalists after a nationwide search and interviews with four candidates. Two meet-and-greet sessions were held last week to allow the public a chance to learn more about the final two candidates and ask them questions one-on-one. William Shanahan, County Manager for York County, S.C., was the other participating finalist. Ours is currently the County Manager for Glynn County, Ga., where he has served since 2010. Glynn County is located between Savannah and Jacksonville, and is home to the City of Brunswick and sea islands including Jekyll Island and St. Simons Island. Ours has worked with various local governments including serving as County Manager in Lee County, Ga., Alan Ours Lowndes County, Ga., and Pickens County, S.C., and as Deputy County Administrator for Spartanburg County, S.C. His public service also includes time with York County, S.C., and Lexington County, S.C. He is a graduate of Leadership Lee and the South Carolina Executive Institute; former Vice-President on the International City-County Management Association Executive Board; and Past President of the Georgia City-County Management Association. He currently serves as Chairman on the United Way of Coastal Georgia Board of Directors. Ours holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Winthrop University. Ours is an ICMA Credentialed Manager – a designation shared with about 1,400 local government management professionals in the U.S. ICMA, which formed in 1914, is the leading association of local government professionals dedicated to creating and sustaining thriving communities. To receive the prestigious ICMA credential from the organization, candidates must be a full voting member of the organization. They must submit to a peer review process, which entails completing a comprehensive knowledge assessment and demonstrating executive experience across a broad spectrum in the field of public administration, adherence to high standards of integrity, and a detailed professional development plan to evolve over the course of their careers. Ours has been married to his wife, Elizabeth, for more than 35 years. The couple has 10 children and three grandchildren.
PRESERVING THE PAST PIHMS donates $200K to preserve historic film collection. PAGE A2
COVERING BEAUFORT COUNTY
Beaufort kids’ lemonade stand seeks to provide clean water abroad BY JUSTIN JARRETT
This is not your typical neighborhood lemonade stand. Siblings Nate and Anne-Murphy Miller aren’t peddling watered-down Minute Maid to fill their piggy banks, they’re working to make a difference in the world — and a big one at that. Anne-Murphy, 9, and Nate, 8, were inspired when Rev. John Dau spoke at Holy Trinity Classical Christian School, and the idea of Murphy’s Pucker Up was born. It started with selling their homemade recipe from their LemonAid Cart with a nebulous goal of helping to provide safe drinking water to schools in developing nations. Using her connections, their mother, Jodie Miller of Plum Productions, found a way to make that goal more feasible. She eventually connected with LifeStraw, a company that has developed filtration systems that make contaminated water safe to drink. With that, the target became more clear – raise $2,500 to purchase five LifeStraw Community filtration systems. Doing so would provide clean water to 500 students at Good Shepherd Academy in Juba, South Sudan — Holy Trinity’s sister school — for up to five years. “I don’t know if we as a family just can’t do things small, but it’s become this big deal,” Jodie Miller said with a laugh. And despite mom’s help from time to time, it remains the kids’ project, for the most part. Anne-Murphy has the marketing personality, so she’s “out front,” while Nate is the math whiz who runs the credit cards, makes change, and crunches the numbers. They’re about halfway to their goal, but a new partnership struck this week should help them make up the rest of the total. Starting Friday, Murphy’s Pucker Up will be a staple on the lunch menu at Breakwater Restaurant and Bar. The kids were in the kitchen at Breakwater over the weekend perfecting their all-natural and preservative-free recipe, which the restaurant will produce in-house and serve in a special branded glass featuring the Murphy’s Pucker Up logo. The proceeds from every lemonade sale will go toward the clean water project. “You can barely turn around without hearing something great that Breakwater is doing in the community,” Jodie Miller said. “I called Gary and Donna and explained what we were doing, and we had dinner, met, and squeezed about a bajillion lemons.”
FUN IN THE SUN Friends of Hunting Island State Park’s Turtle Conservation Project blends entertainment, education. PAGE B1
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