Author: Paul Gable

Wasteful Spending at International Technology and Aerospace Park

The Myrtle Beach Planning Commission amended the development plan for the International Technology and Aerospace Park at Myrtle Beach International Airport last week to provide for additional uses on the property.

The uses added are for medical offices and overflow parking for special events.

Much of the ITAP land was purchased from the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base Redevelopment Commission over 15 years ago with grant funds received from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Grant assurances signed by Horry County Department of Airports at the time of receipt of the funds require the land to be used for aviation purposes.

It is difficult to see how medical offices and overflow parking fit into the category of “aviation purposes”. It is conceivable that the city’s amendment places the county in violation of grant assurances given to the FAA.

However, such a violation would be just the latest in almost two decades of mistakes and wasteful spending on that piece of property by Horry County and other public agencies.

Initially, the land was intended as the site on which the, then planned, west side airport passenger terminal was to be built.

After the west side terminal project was cancelled in 2007 because of skyrocketing costs and numerous other miscalculations by county officials, county council and staff searched for a way to avoid paying back to the FAA the $5 million federal dollars spent on the land purchase.

This search led to the birth of the idea to build the international technology and aerospace park.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held in 2011 complete with grandiose pronouncements by local officials, including 7th District Congressman Tom Rice (then chairman of county council), of the economic development and “5,000 jobs” the park would bring to Horry County within a “couple of years.”

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International Drive Battle Continues – Update

Update

The most important decision in the Administrative Law Court hearing yesterday was no decision.

Administrative Law Judge Ralph Anderson declined issuing a restraining order from the bench to stop construction on International Drive. Anderson said he needs more time to study the legal points argued and will issue a ruling later.

Meanwhile work to construct a road bed continues on International Drive.

Since work on the roadway began after Anderson ordered a state permit to be issued in August the issue of stopping that work became more complex because a federal permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was also issued.

Anderson said he doesn’t know if he, as a state judge, has the authority to issue a stay on a federal permit.

It’s a pretty sure bet he doesn’t and work will continue on the road bed for at least 30 more days as an appeal of Anderson’s August decision winds its way to the S.C. Court of Appeals.

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Not ready to give up their obstruction attempts, the Coastal Conservation League and the SC Wildlife Federation are taking the battle to federal court with a new lawsuit filed against Horry County, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Horry County Council Must Make Final Road Decisions

Social media has been alive with comments about the possibility of some dirt roads currently maintained by Horry County being removed from the county road maintenance system.

This stir among citizens began after Horry County Council voted to pass third reading of an ordinance last week establishing procedure to remove roads from the system not considered of “material benefit to the general public.”

The problem is not the apparent end result the ordinance seeks to accomplish. The problem rests with the procedure established to reach this end.

Along the way to final passage of the ordinance, Horry County Council was removed from the decision making process.

Initially, the procedure to remove roads read: “The Director of Public Works and the County Engineer will evaluate all roads, unless previously formally dedicated, within the county maintenance system to determine if these guidelines are met. Any road that does not meet the standards below shall be forwarded first to the Council member in whose district the road is located for input into the Director’s and County Engineer’s determination, then forwarded to county council for removal from the county maintenance system.”

By final reading of the ordinance, the language had changed to the following: “The Director of Public Works and the County Engineer will evaluate all roads, unless previously formally dedicated, within the county maintenance system to determine if these guidelines are met. Any road that does not meet the standards below shall be removed from the county maintenance system upon authority hereby given to the administrator.”

The guidelines referred to above are as follows:

1. Maintenance of road must be of material benefit to the general public.

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Horry County Council’s Cowardly Road Decision

Horry County Council took the coward’s way out from making potentially controversial decisions when it passed third reading of a county road maintenance ordinance Tuesday night.

In passing the ordinance, council shifted the decision making process to county staff on which roads currently maintained by the county should be removed from further maintenance with county tax dollars.

The excuse is the county is maintaining some roads that are actually driveways or serve no public benefit.

There’s no question taxpayer dollars should not be spent on private driveways or other roads that do not generally benefit county taxpayers.

But what exactly is a public benefit?

In the past, county council allowed private gates to restrict access to public roads in the Myrtle Trace sub-division. Those roads were paved and maintained by the county but restricted to use by sub-division residents only.

When that issue was exposed in the media, Horry County Attorney John Weaver attempted to justify that it was perfectly legal to restrict access on public roads.

Ultimately, Myrtle Trace residents agreed to remove the roads from the county system and maintain them privately. But, that decision only came after the roads were repaved with county tax dollars one more time.

Council member Al Allen was correct in his criticism of county council being taken out of the decision to remove roads from county maintenance.

It takes a majority vote of county council to accept roads into the county road maintenance system. Why should it take a decision of only a few members of staff to remove roads from that same system?

Allen said the idea behind county staff making the determination of which roads to remove from the county road maintenance system was to take the politics out of the decision.

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Helping Vets and Families on Route for the Brave

Three men from the Helping Hands for Freedom charity recently completed the Route for the Brave, a 3,091 walk across America.

Staff Sgt. (ret.) Patrick Shannon, a two time Purple Heart recipient and Bronze Star recipient, David Roth, a 20-plus yr. vet of the Indianapolis Metro Police Department and Kevin Winton, a 20-year math teacher in Indiana, were the participants. They walked from Atlantic City, NJ to San Francisco, CA in four months.

Planning for the walk began as an idea from Roth three years ago. Roth saw his stepson go through multiple deployments with the Navy and the adjustment process, especially with the kids, that those deployments caused.

The purpose of the walk was to raise awareness for Gold Star families and to raise funds for the construction of a House of Healing and PTSD Center for military families.

During the walk, the Shannon, Roth and Winton attended 150 events, held along the way, to help with the fundraising.

“All the people we met and seeing the country from the ground up at a slow pace gave us a new appreciation of the diversity and strength of average Americans,” said Shannon.

Helping Hands for Freedom was created in 2008 by Shannon and his friend Rod Smith. While recovering at Walter Reed Army Hospital from injuries suffered in Iraq, Shannon would go bedside to bedside talking to fellow soldiers about their concerns. The one constant that came up was the family.

“In recent years, we, as a country, have been more aware of the sacrifices made by our troops,” Shannon said. “However, the families of those service members, who must make adjustments and sacrifices also, are often forgotten.”

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Our Social Security Checks

The Social Security Check is now (or soon will be) referred to as a: *Federal Benefit Payment*!!! The government is now referring to our Social Security Check as a “Federal Benefit Payment.”

This isn’t a benefit. It is our money paid out of our earned income! Not only did we all contribute to Social Security, but our employers did too. It totaled 15% of our income before taxes.

If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that’s close to $180,000 invested in Social Security. If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both you and your employers contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you’d have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved!

This is your personal investment.

Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you’d receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month. That’s almost three times more than today’s average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the SocialSecurity Administration. (Google it -it’s a fact).

And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you’re 98 if you retire at age 65)! I can only imagine how much better most average-income people COULD LIVE in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts.

Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger * Ponzi Scheme* than Bernie Madoff ever did.

They took our money and used it elsewhere. They forgot (oh yes, they knew) that it was OUR money they were taking. They didn’t have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them. And they didn’t pay interest on the debt they assumed.

And recently they’ve told us that the money won’t support us for very much longer. (Isn’t it funny that they NEVER say this about welfare payments?)

But is it our fault they misused our investments?

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Community Violence Subcommittee Identifies Programs

The Horry County Community Violence Subcommittee made some headway toward connecting with citizens at its meeting Tuesday.

Committee members discussed restarting Crimestoppers in the communities, re-establishing school programs to learn decision making to counter drugs and crime and a 311 information system for Horry County.

Horry County Council member Johnny Vaught, who attended the meeting, told committee members he believed the discussion was a positive step toward identifying recommendations to report to council.

The meeting featured lively discussion among committee members for the first time since the committee began meeting last spring.

The committee also heard a presentation by 15th Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson regarding the heroin epidemic affecting Horry County.

Richardson told committee members the Horry County Coroner’s Office currently handles an average of two heroin overdoses per week resulting in death. Richardson said Horry County is a center of distribution for heroin which originates in Mexico, travels to the New York metropolitan area, then to Horry County.

Richardson began a pilot program for 5th graders in Conway Elementary School to teach about the dangers of the use of opiates and proper decision making to avoid this choice. The program is expected to be extended to seven schools this year.

The committee plans to develop a questionnaire to be circulated among neighborhoods to allow citizens to identify their major concerns about violent crimes, drugs and other issues affecting their lives.

A final report from the committee is due to county council in early 2017 with recommendations for making our communities safer.

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Environmentalists Spin International Drive Issues

It appears that a last ditch effort by the environmentalists to confuse the facts about paving International Drive is in motion.

Several recent reports in local, state and social media show the Coastal Conservation League and its allies are in spin mode about what is really happening.

After Horry County announced it was starting work on the International Drive road bed so it would be ready to handle emergency vehicles in 40-60 days, a post on the South Carolina Environmental Law Project Facebook page stated, “Yesterday we filed a notice of appeal and a motion for stay in our Bays & Bears case after we learned that Horry County began clearing for the construction of International Drive on Monday.”

Continuing legal action by the environmentalists is no surprise. This case has gone beyond the issues involved to a mano a mano showdown between the environmentalists and county officials.

However, it appears that the only avenue left for legal action by SCELP and the groups it represents is challenging the permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in federal court.

For the time being, Horry County has the necessary permits in hand and is using county employees for the work on the road bed.

The spin on the issue, however, started with the second sentence in the post, which read, “Still excited by the bulldozer photo-op, County Officials “told it like it is” about the whole project: hundreds, even thousands of new homes to be built along the road. So much for the public safety and emergency access invocations during the March trial.”

The post was apparently referring to a comment Horry County Council member Paul Prince was quoted as making to The State newspaper.

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Horry County School Board – Staff Disconnect

An ongoing renovation at North Myrtle Beach High School demonstrates an apparent disconnect between responsibilities of Horry County School Board members and the staff employed to carry out board decisions.

This is not a new problem. It dates back approximately 15 years to the time that former Superintendent Gerrita Postlewait effectively neutered the board with a policy governance system that allowed the board to be little more than a rubber stamp for staff decisions.

Many of the board members at that time deserve their own share of the blame for voting to adopt the “policy governance” system.

The school board is elected by the voters to set school district policies. It is the job of the staff to carry out these policies.

Last year, some senior staff members did all they could, including a public disinformation campaign, to keep First Floor Energy Positive from receiving contracts to build five new schools in the district.

Ultimately, the board voted to award the contracts to First Floor over considerable opposition from staff.

This year, the North Myrtle Beach High School renovations demonstrate the disconnect remains.

In 2015, the Horry County School Board approved a specific list of renovations to the school with an overall budget of $21,086,340.

According to District 1 school board member Holly Heniford, that list of renovations has apparently been reduced in some areas and increased in others without board approval.

Additionally, a line item for “Fire protection installation” appears in one area of the budget while a line item for “Fire alarm replacement” appears in another area of the budget with the cost for each line item, $1,055,130, identical. Is this not a duplication of the same work?

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Zika Virus Case Confirmed in Horry County

The first confirmed case of travel related Zika virus in Horry County has been reported in Plantation Point.

DHEC officials notified the county yesterday.

Nearby Florence County also has one reported case of travel related Zika virus.

In most instances, Zika virus is not fatal, but can be very damaging to fetuses.

According to local officials, Horry County has been working on a plan to combat Zika virus for approximately four months. In the case of Plantation Point, the county has reportedly been going door to door with information, eliminating areas of standing water and using foggers on properties.

What everyone should know:

Zika infection during pregnancy is linked to birth defects. Pregnant women should avoid or delay travel to areas with Zika.
Zika is primarily spread through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito.
Most people infected with Zika don’t even know they have it. People usually don’t get sick enough to go to the hospital.
In most cases Zika is not life-threatening.
The best way to prevent Zika is to prevent mosquito bites. Tips include:
– Apply EPA-approved insect repellent.
– Wear pants and long-sleeve shirts that cover exposed skin. In warmer weather, wear lightweight, loose-fitting clothing that covers exposed skin.
– Use screens or close windows and doors to keep mosquitoes out of your home.
– Remove standing water in and around the home. This includes water in cans, toys, tires, plant saucers, or any container that can hold water.
– Cover trash cans or containers where water can collect.
See a health care provider if you develop a fever, rash, joint pain, or red eyes during a trip orwithin 2 weeks after traveling to a place with Zika, or if you have had sexual contact with someone who has traveled.

Citizens with questions can call the county’s road and drainage hotline at (843) 381-8000 for more information.

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