By Paul Gable
Gov. Nikki Haley and the Atlantic Beach Town Council are scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Tuesday July 29th during a specially called council meeting.
To date, there is no official notice of the meeting, but it has been confirmed through media contacts.
The meeting is an apparent followup to Haley’s call for the Atlantic Beach Memorial Day Bikefest to end after the violence in Myrtle Beach two months ago associated with crowds for that event. Haley said she was going to meet with Atlantic Beach officials in June, but the meeting could not be arranged.
It has been reported that the meeting will be held in executive session. We don’t expect anything else of Haley who has made secrecy an art form during her time as governor.
However, there is no legal reason for holding a meeting about the Memorial Day Bikefest behind closed doors. This can only be a means to keep what is said between the two sides from public view.
After the Memorial Day Bikefest exploded in attendance in the late 1990’s there were many meetings about upcoming plans for crowd control and law enforcement held by Horry County and the League of Cities among other public agencies.
All were open meetings. That’s the best way to get information out to the public.
But, this meeting will be held in secret and will no doubt be more for the Haley re-election campaign than for any substantive planning for future Memorial Day Bikefests.
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