Three new members of Mount Pleasant Town Council spoke to the East Cooper Democrats last week. Their collective message was a sobering one.

All agreed the town's economic and budget prospects are dire.

Heavy dependence on new construction impact fees and sales taxes, all linked to an entrenched real estate development economy, have assured revenues will fall behind expectations.

Backing up against a historic commitment not to raise taxes, the Town can't continue to do all the things it has traditionally done. Bills being considered in the South Carolina Legislature to allow newly sold real estate to be assessed at less than its full value may cost the town millions of dollars more in tax revenue.

They listed several major commercial properties now sitting empty.

No business license taxes, no sales taxes and ultimately lower property taxes can be expected from those properties.

It's clear these new members of council are getting a lot of phone calls and pressure. They want economic development, but the town has picked a tough time to go into that business. Nobody wants 'smokestacks.' When Boeing's executive's chose a location for the offices of their 80 member executive team, it went to Daniel Island.

There was some hope those Executives would buy houses in Mount Pleasant. It's clear that nothing has been able to dislodge the centrality of residential development from people's understanding of the Town.

They talked about the importance of the Town's pending road projects, one of which will apparently be receiving a substantial grant from federal stimulus funds, the only economic bright spot in the presentation.

Even with President Obama's initiative bringing jobs to our town, the Democrats weren't cheering. It was bleak overall.

One member complained that the town had built a lot of parks and facilities when the economy was good that it really couldn't afford now. They suggested the town would have to consider if it could afford to mow the medians of its roads this summer, which cost half a million dollars

Nobody suggested more roads could wait.

It was clear that at the core, Council is still considering attempting to pursue to sell houses, build roads at any cost plan for the future of Mount Pleasant. It's almost certainly originating in a lot of phone calls from real estate agents, developers and builders increasingly desperate to bring back the 'good old days.'

They have little else to do now but campaign for tax breaks for their industry, and roads to make their property more valuable .

Our Town Council needs to hear from the rest of us. They need to hear that wide roads to empty lots and empty houses aren't as important as our parks and recreation programs. They need to hear that 1000 empty houses are enough for quite a while.

They need to hear that the good old days they were elected to restore wasn't the real estate boom of 1998, but the sort of community of neighbors that once existed in the Old Village where people earned their livings in ways other than by building homes for people they haven't met.

Council can't represent people they don't hear from.  You should make sure they hear from you.

(William Hamilton (www.wjhamilton.com) is an attorney who lives in IÕOnVillage.)