Politics

Charleston County School District Budget Problems

The Charleston County School District thinks it has found a way to close the continuing $18 million projected shortfall in its budget.

School District Superintendent Gerrita Postlewait told local media money in the capital fund could be moved to the general operating fund to help solve the shortfall with no impact on taxpayers.

According to a board member with knowledge of the plan, capital fund millage would be reduced with a corresponding increase in operating fund millage.

The idea is the overall plan to shift millage would be revenue neutral, thereby prompting the claim that taxpayers would not be affected.

However, this solution appears to fly in the face of Act 388 of 2006, which limited school budget operation fund taxation.

Act 388 specifically exempts owner occupied residences, what is known as 4% property, from taxation by school districts for operating funds. Only rental or second homes (6% property) and businesses (10%) property may be taxed for school operating funds.

The state raised the sales tax by one cent, which is designated to be turned over to school districts, according to a complex formula, to make up for the loss of 4% property tax revenue from operations millage.

However, when it comes to the capital fund millage, all three classes of property are taxed.

In addition, Act 388 sets limits on the amount operations fund millage can be raised in any one year with another complex formula involved.

Therefore, it’s not just a simple reduction of millage for one fund with a corresponding increase in millage for another fund that can be made.

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Protest Planned for Grande Dunes Road Connection

Grande Dunes residents plan a protest Monday to demonstrate their opposition to a connection between their roads and roads serving the planned Grande Dunes North development.

The residents say such a connection would increase traffic, decrease security and lower property values in their high end community.

Connectivity between the existing Grande Dunes and planned Grande Dunes North communities has been a point of contention since it was first discussed after the purchase of the former Waterway Hills Golf Club by Grande Dunes owner L Star Property Management.

The residents of Grande Dunes have let both L Star and the City of Myrtle Beach know they do not intend to take this issue lightly.

A petition of over 160 signatures from Grande Dunes property owners has been presented to Myrtle Beach City Council opposing connecting roads from Grande Dunes North into the current Grande Dunes road network.

Grande Dunes residents have been promised that connecting roads from Grande Dunes North would require approval of an amendment to the planned unit development agreement that governs the Grande Dunes property. The road would require approval from the City of Myrtle Beach because it would cross incorporated property of the city.

None of these approvals have been obtained to date. However, according to several Grande Dunes residents, over the last few months, the Grande Dunes North road infrastructure has been built and is in position for connection to Grande Dunes road network.

According to several Grande Dunes residents, the City of Myrtle Beach is supposed to present L Star with cease and desist orders on Monday, stopping any encroachment onto city owned property.

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Myrtle Beach Parking Fee Lawsuit Pondered

A lawsuit against the City of Myrtle Beach for its paid parking areas along the oceanfront is being considered by property owners.

The basis of the lawsuit would be city violations of deed restrictions and covenants included in property transfers years ago.

Deeds from 1940 and 1968 in which Myrtle Beach Farms gave oceanfront property to the city include restrictions against commercial activity on the deeded property.

In the intervening years, some of that property has been converted to street ends and beach access on which the city now charges visitors to park.

According to a real estate attorney with considerable experience in the county, the deed restrictions do not go away on the portions of the property converted to public thoroughfares.

The deeds restrictions prohibit commercial activity by any “person, private corporation, municipal corporation or agency or instrumentality of government.” The land is specifically designated to be kept as a public park or common.

The city appears to violate these restrictions in several ways. The parking fees and fines are collected and disbursed by a private corporation contracted by city government. The city’s portion of the revenue goes to fund the Downtown Redevelopment Corporation, an agency created by the city.

The DRC is its own challenged organization, having accomplished little in the way of redevelopment and virtually none in the city’s historic downtown in the area of City Hall, Five Points and adjacent areas.

The DRC has set its sights on the oceanfront and rumored major new development projects that would first require the squeezing out of small business owners currently operating along sections of Ocean Boulevard.

Many have speculated that the parking fees in question will help squeeze out small business owners by limiting tourist traffic to their businesses.

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Community Violence Meetings Next Week

Horry County’s Community Violence Subcommittee is scheduled to meet again next week, hopefully to move forward on a plan to address crime problems in neighborhoods.

For its first four months of existence, the subcommittee has been stuck on compiling statistics comparing Horry County to counties in neighboring states.

I suppose that’s an approach. In the meantime, Horry County is experiencing approximately 20 deaths per month from heroin overdoses, according to local media reports, and violent crimes are on the rise.

All of the violence in our local communities can’t be tied directly to an increasing heroin epidemic that officials are beginning to acknowledge exists in Horry County. Poverty and lack of opportunities to rise above it play their parts also.

Interestingly, the Myrtle Beach Police Department is hosting a forum called “Facing the Heroin Epidemic Head On” at the Recreation Center on the former Air Force Base Tuesday August 16th beginning at 6:30 p.m.

When local community activists went before Myrtle Beach City Council nearly six months ago asking for help in combating community violence, Mayor John Rhodes blamed the activists for the problems and said crime was decreasing in Myrtle Beach.

The activists were also told they were ‘hurting tourism’ by focusing on community violence problems.

A raging heroin epidemic will hurt tourism a lot more. Maybe that’s why the Myrtle Beach forum will address the problem next week.

While local governments have begun to address the community violence problem, at least acknowledging it exists, a local group of pastors has been holding meetings in various communities around the county. This seems to be the most intelligent approach. It does seem logical to learn about community violence problems from those most affected by them.

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Fact Checking the Conservationists on International Drive

In the August 2, 2016 edition of the Sun News, an “Other Voices” letter about the International Drive project, written by Amy Armstrong of the South Carolina Environmental Law Project, Dana Beach of the Coastal Conservation League and Ben Gregg of the South Carolina Wildlife Federation (Conservationists), appeared in the Opinion Section .

This letter claims the delays in paving International Drive are not due to Conservation efforts. In that letter, the Conservationists make many pernicious and blatantly false claims. The letter demonstrates that the Conservationists view their readership to be woefully uninformed and gullible to gargantuan proportion. In fact, they may depend on that.

Let’s fact check those claims, based on an Administrative Law Court Ruling issued on July 7 this year and other resources so that a factual voice of our community can be heard.

The letter claims Horry County “reneged” on an earlier contractual agreement and “pressured” DNR to remove their requirement for bear crossings. Law Court: “Petitioners attempted to support the need for bear tunnels based upon the inference that but for the nefarious negotiations between Horry and DNR between 2010 and 2013, the bear tunnel requirement would not have been eliminated from the permit. But Petitioners failed to meet their burden of proof in this respect. As explained above, the change in DNR’s position occurred as a result of a significant decline in the existence of bears in LOB. Furthermore, the director of DNR unequivocally denied that any such underhanded dealings took place between Horry and DNR leading up to the 2013 agreement. The Court found his testimony highly credible and persuasive”.

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More Legal Problems for Horry County Police Department

A recent lawsuit filed against the Horry County Police Department and individual officers highlights the systemic problems within the department.

While there have been more sensational headlines of sexual harassment of victims by HCPD detectives and a general breakdown within the entire detective division, this lawsuit demonstrates the attitude that is at the heart of the problems in the department.

The case is Brian E. Little v. Horry County Police Department et al. Case number 2016CP2604670.

In the pleadings, Little, the plaintiff, claims he had a building and a recreational vehicle vandalized by neighborhood juveniles.

In filing a report about the damage to HCPD officers, Little provided the officers with photographs from a security system on his property.

According to the pleadings:

HCPD officers did nothing.

Little, then, approached the mother of one of the juveniles and obtained a signed statement from the juvenile admitting to the damage, which he provided to police.

Again, nothing was done by HCPD.

Approximately two months later, Little’s property was vandalized again and, again, HCPD did what it does best – nothing.

Ultimately, Little began passing out circulars in his area about the vandalism to assist a neighborhood watch program. While he was passing out the circulars, little was approached by HCPD officers telling him he can’t pass out his circulars. Little complained to the officers that HCPD was doing nothing and, ultimately, they arrested Little for harassment.

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NMB Council Blinks on Tourism Tax

The North Myrtle Beach city council decided Friday that the voters would have a say on whether or not a tourism tax to benefit the NMB Chamber of Commerce will be imposed within the city limits.

The decision occurred during a public workshop on whether a local one-cent sales tax should be charged on sales within the city. At least 80% of the proceeds of the tax would go to the NMB Chamber to fund tourism marketing and advertising expenses that should be a responsibility of individual business owners.

The concept of a publicly elected body taxing citizens for the benefit of private businesses is abhorrent in any scenario, but, not allowing the voters a say in the process, as is practiced in Myrtle Beach, borders on dictatorial.

At least for now, the NMB Council nipped in the bud the question of whether to impose the tax by supermajority vote of council members, the way it was made law in Myrtle Beach.

NMB Mayor Marilyn Hatley alluded to a January or February 2017 time frame for a special election referendum question on whether to impose the tourism tax, but council would have to pass an ordinance on the tax before the referendum question.

The dynamics of a special election, with its traditional minimalist draw of voters, still allows the Chamber a better than average chance of winning the tax vote if a referendum is held.

But, it is better than in Myrtle Beach where the voters have no say at all.

The North Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce was established nearly 20 years ago with the specific goal of drawing additional tourists during the spring and fall shoulder seasons.

Funding for the NMB Chamber came from membership fees and the 30% of accommodations tax revenues collected in the city.

According to sources familiar with the Chamber, in recent years it has added employees and expenses, thereby eating up its funding.

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Greed is Good Fever Strikes North Myrtle Beach

It appears ‘greed is good’ fever has struck in North Myrtle Beach as the city considers implementing a one-cent tourism development fee (tax) to follow in the footsteps of Myrtle Beach.

If there is one governmental entity I wouldn’t think other governmental entities would want to copy, it is Myrtle Beach City Council. But, never mind.

The North Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce wants North Myrtle Beach city council to copy Myrtle Beach city council in implementing a tax on private citizens to pay for business marketing.

The Chamber evidently believes the money belongs to it rather than to the citizens. Consider the following quote by former Chamber board chairman Bill Griste in a letter to North Myrtle Beach City Council.

“We feel that leaving this significant and large amount of marketing revenue unused would not be a wise move for the City of North Myrtle Beach, nor would be good stewards of this resource.” Bill Griste

Think about that quote for a minute. The resource Griste is talking about is money in the pockets of citizens – A “significant and large amount,” according to him.

Being good stewards apparently means taxing the citizens to pay for the marketing costs of private business. In other words, the Chamber advocates corporate welfare as good stewardship of private dollars – A very interesting concept in a supposedly conservative area.

By that logic, allowing citizens to keep any of their hard earned money, instead of taking it all in taxes, means the government is not being good stewards of the resource (private dollars).

Sorry, I forgot, these aren’t “taxes” they are “fees”. It’s irrelevant that they are charged on the purchase price of items at the checkout counter.

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Myrtle Beach Parking Fee Problems

It is quite possible that Myrtle Beach City Council is collecting parking fees in areas that restrict such activity.

No, this is not about the federal grant for beach renourishment. It is potentially a lot more serious.

A review of deeds from 1940, 1968 and 1992, in which Myrtle Beach Farms gave land to the city along the oceanfront brought to light some interesting deed restrictions and covenants.

Most interesting is a restriction on all three deeds that says, “…property shall not be used for commercial purposes by any person, private corporation, municipal corporation or agency of government.”

Collecting fees to park is certainly a commercial purpose, especially when the city has seen fit to outsource the collection to a private, third party corporation.

Many of today’s street ends, especially in the south end of the city where parking fees have been charged for a number of years, came from land that was given to the city in these deeds.

The restriction on commercial activity appears to include the boardwalk area also.

Unfortunately, Myrtle Beach City Council is going to continue with its current practices until someone forces them to change through the courts. Remember the helmet law?

A lawsuit would be very interesting, however. Can you imagine the city having to refund parking fees it has collected for a number of years if it is established in court that the deed restrictions were violated?

This could have an obvious effect on the Downtown Redevelopment Corporation, an agency of dubious value, which uses parking fees for funding.

Another of the restrictions and covenants makes the possibility of a lawsuit interesting.

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Community Violence Subcommittee Stuck in Neutral

For the last three months, the Horry County Community Violence Subcommittee appears to have been stuck in neutral rather than moving forward to address the problems of violent crime in communities throughout the county.

In its last three meetings, Community Violence Subcommittee members have been discussing collection of data, both demographics and crime, from various websites in order to compare Horry County to counties from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

Will this data collection and comparison help?

One assumes what is happening in communities such as Burgess, Poplar, Socastee and Racepath is more important than what is happening in Chatham County, Georgia or Orange County, Florida if the goal is to counter crime and its effects in Horry County.

(If the goal is to complete a report on how Horry County stacks up to other counties in relation to those statistics, then the current work of the subcommittee is on track.)

It would seem that meetings with pastors and other community leaders as well as parents and citizens would yield better information about what the problems are and what the community can do to counter those problems as well as what help it needs from sources such as police and other government agencies.

At one time, Horry County had effective Crimestoppers, D.A.R.E. and community policing programs that have fallen by the wayside in recent years.

The committee is currently scheduled to make a report on its progress at the September 26, 2016, meeting of the Horry County Public Safety Committee. At that time, it plans to present a survey form, presumably developed from its data mining, for citizens, at least in designated high crime areas, to fill out and return.

After receiving the completed survey forms, there seems to be some desire among subcommittee members to meet with citizens and leaders in various communities in the county.

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