Monday, November 18, 2024
Horry County Council members approved a method for paying WestJet the approximately $583,000 it owes the Canadian airline from a deal approved by council last February.
The payment will come from accommodations tax revenue the county receives, called holdback funds, which council personally directs the expenditure of.
Hopefully council learned a lesson about attempting to buy business from this debacle.
A state law that forces rollbacks of millage in reassessment years, so local governments do not benefit from rising property values, appears to mandate a tax increase if property values fall.
That is the conundrum facing Horry County Council as it begins its fall budget retreat today.
A June 2011 opinion from the office of the S.C. Attorney General notes in its conclusion that state law, specifically sections 12-37-251 and 6-1-320, was enacted to protect taxpayers by rolling back millage when property values rise due to reassessment.
Three incumbents were swept back into office in the Myrtle Beach city election Tuesday with one council seat still up in the air pending votes from a malfunctioning voting machine.
Incumbent Mayor John Rhodes and incumbent council members Randal Wallace and Mike Lowder won re-election easily. Incumbent council member Wayne Gray trails challenger Jackie Vereen by three votes with the outstanding votes from the malfunctioning machine expected to be reported Wednesday morning.
Based on the results already in, and what I expect will be the result of the third council race, there are no problems in the city of Myrtle Beach perceived by the voters.
You have to give Nikki Haley credit for consistency. Whenever the governor comes up against a law she doesn’t like, she ignores it.
The latest comes with having her campaign reimburse the state for the costs of state law enforcement officers providing security while she is on the campaign trail.
Haley’s latest end run around state law results from a trip to North Carolina she made in June where Haley attended an event held by a foundation supporting N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory. During the course of her attendance, Haley picked up a total of $34,500 in campaign donations.
The Grand Strand Business Alliance is smothering the airwaves, in these last days before Tuesday’s voting in the Myrtle Beach City Council elections, promoting the re-election of the incumbent council members.
The basic theme in these ads is business is up, the tourism initiative of the city council is working, there is no need to change the council makeup when the incumbents are doing such a great job.
And they are, but only for a select few.
These ads take the same vein as the Chamber’s ‘Oh yeah, it’s working’ ads promoting the alleged success of the one cent sales tax for tourism promotion.
It is ironic that the Michael Hilton felony DUI case had an important ruling just days before the Myrtle Beach city council elections are scheduled.
Hilton’s DUI accident resulted in the death of a biker and serious injuries to a passenger on the bike. That it has taken five and one-half years to get to the point where it looks like the case will go to trial is a black mark on what passes for a legal system in South Carolina.
But, putting the accident itself aside for now, the long term consequences of it are pertinent to the upcoming election.
Two bombs, actually explosive stories, were thrown into the middle of the Myrtle Beach city council election race Wednesday with potentially serious consequences for the incumbents in the few days remaining before next Tuesday’s voting.
Two separate stories carrying the explosives were filed by David Wren in The Sun News Wednesday evening.
The first story dealt with two trusts that incumbent council member Wayne Gray was appointed to oversee. The trusts were established by Gray’s uncle, William Rogers, to benefit Rogers’ wife and children.
According to Wren’s story, Gray borrowed $230,000 from the trusts over a period of years and was removed as the trustee in 2007. In 2008, Gray agreed to pay $92,500 to settle a lawsuit brought against him by his aunt, Debbie Rogers Idol. And documents regarding the case are missing from the Probate Court office in Conway.
A 29 member budget conference committee opens today that will potentially address all the big spending and tax issues in Washington.
The conference committee was part of the deal that reopened government and raised the federal debt ceiling in the latest congressional standoff.
The committee is supposed to issue a report by December 13th. If that report has the support of at least half of the members of the committee from each house of Congress, the report will go to the full House and Senate for approval.
Horry County Council will conduct its annual fall budget retreat next week among uncertainty about how much revenue the county will collect from property taxes in the coming fiscal year.
This is a budget reassessment year with all indications that property in the county will have a lower assessed value than it did five years ago, the result of the bursting of the housing bubble five years ago.
Some oceanfront property is known to have sold as much as 70 percent lower in the past few years as the result of distressed sales.
The state’s Act 388 of 2007 made the point of sale price the determining factor in new assessed values on property. Lower sales prices mean lower assessed values on which taxes are calculated.
With the city elections just over one week away, the issue of the Myrtle Beach Police Department and crime statistics came up in a recent candidate forum.
This is no surprise as the MBPD and crime are raised in every city campaign, then, promptly forgotten about until the next campaign.
The incumbents gave the same time worn excuses we always hear for the number of violent crimes that occur each year in Myrtle Beach – “It’s the tourists”. I’ve recently heard a slant on that one – “It’s the homeless”.
Some tourists do come down here and commit serious crimes. I really don’t think we have any Al Capone wannabes among the homeless.
Speak Up…