Politics

Select Committee Recommends Continued Funding of Coast RTA

The Select Committee on Coast RTA voted unanimously to recommend to county council that funding of the bus agency be continued with additional controls.

That decision was made at the committee’s fourth and final meeting Monday night. The recommendation was adopted by committee members along with 20 findings of fact about the failed shelter project and suspended intermodal center project.

Failure, especially of the shelter project, falls predominantly on poor program management at Coast RTA with some blame also attributed to the Grand Strand Area Transportation Study (GSATS) and SCDOT, according to the findings.

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SNAFU on HCSWA Board Appointment

After seeing notice of a proposed nominee to the Horry County Solid Waste Authority (HCSWA) Board of Directors, it appears that everything is back to normal on Hwy 90.

As we have recently seen with Coast RTA, oversight is the single most important function that an appointed board should exercise over the public agency it is associated with.

Otherwise, you can wind up owing hundreds of thousands of public dollars to state and federal agencies because of poor program management leading to failed projects.
To be fair, in the case of the HCSWA, it is much more the wasting of millions of public dollars on lobbyists, attorneys and public relations firms because the board fails to say no to wasteful management recommendations.

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Horry County, Coast RTA and Light Rail

With a new direction beginning at Coast RTA, it would be a good time to look at all potential mass transit within Horry County.

Horry County owns the 14 mile stretch of railroad and right of way between Conway and Myrtle Beach as well as the former Y track and air base spur.

If the county and Coast RTA are genuinely interested in looking at all mass transit options for the future, this section of railroad should not be overlooked.

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Coast RTA Fires Myers Rollins – Updated

BREAKING NEWS By Paul Gable By a vote of 6-2, the Coast RTA board of directors fired General Manager Myers Rollins this morning. Board members Lily Jean Johnson and Ivory Wilson voted to oppose the firing. The Coast RTA board has been struggling with difficult issues concerning management leadership over […]

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Gingrich, Myrtle Beach, Oil and Interstates

Myrtle Beach Budget Retreat-Must Be the Water

It must be the water at Pinopolis because the City of Myrtle Beach budget retreat provided plenty of unusual highlights this year.

From $125 per year library cards to major surgical procedures under the city healthcare plan being shipped off to Costa Rica to the Downtown Redevelopment Corporation having a new secret plan for the pavilion site, the budget retreat had its moments.

Police Chief Warren Gall actually admitted that his force of caped crusaders does not do as effective a job of policing the south end of the city as it does the city’s north end. For anybody familiar with the city and its politics, that’s not news. In fact it’s quite obvious.

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Coast RTA Select Committee Findings

As the Select Committee on Coast RTA considers its findings to report to Horry County Council, several items from the reams of information collected by the committee stand out.

While Coast RTA General Manager Myers Rollins told the committee several times that the project was “contaminated from the beginning” because SCDOT administered the project grant under the wrong set of federal guidelines, this mistake alone did not cause the project to fail.

Had Coast RTA completed the shelter project by the end of the second contract extension, this SCDOT mistake would have probably gone unnoticed. Coast RTA submitted and was paid on 13 invoices from 2007 through 2010 even though the wrong guidelines were being used.

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The Governor’s Race and Casino Gambling

The desire for casino gambling has never left the minds of certain players along the Grand Strand.

In 2009, this group put its initial support behind Gresham Barrett in the governor’s race. Remember the $85,000 funneled to Barrett that was part of Coastal Kickback?

It only takes the signature of the governor on an agreement with a Native American tribe to bring casino gambling into the state. Both state and local governments are not part of the process.

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Bobby Harrell vs. Alan Wilson – An Uneven Fight?

The ongoing legal challenge over whether S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson can use the State Grand Jury to investigate ethics violation allegations against S.C. House Speaker Bobby Harrell will go a long way to answering the question of whether Harrell is the most powerful individual in the state.

Attorneys representing Harrell challenged Wilson’s right to investigate Harrell during a March 21, 2014 hearing before S.C. Circuit Court Judge Casey Manning.

Should Manning rule in Harrell’s favor, he will effectively establish in law what has been long established in fact, namely, S.C. legislators are above the law.

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Select Committee on Coast RTA Considering Final Report

The Select Committee on Coast RTA members have until Friday to come up with preliminary statements for consideration in the committee’s final report.

Charged with assessing the failures of a shelter and sign project and an intermodal center project, the committee must conclude whether the failures of the projects point to systemic problems within the management of the agency. It must also make a recommendation on future funding of the transportation agency by Horry County Council.

During its third meeting April 21st, the committee concentrated on new information received over the last two weeks about an Intergovernmental Agreement with the City of Myrtle Beach, a resolution by the Coast RTA board, the Coast RTA/SCDOT shelter project contract and a contract between Tolar Mfg. and Coast RTA for the shelters and associated equipment.

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Unresolved Issues Remain with Coast RTA Shelter Project

The third meeting of the Select Committee on Coast RTA will have to obtain some answers to several unresolved issues regarding the shelter and sign project before the committee can begin to finalize a report.

Despite fairly lengthy presentations by Coast RTA and SCDOT at the second meeting of the committee, held on April 7th, the number of shelters Coast RTA managed to install for use by its passengers remains in question.

While Coast RTA has maintained all along that it purchased 73 shelters total and installed 15 of those shelters, 10 shelters installed in the City of Myrtle Beach appear to be used for purposes other than those for which a $1 million grant was received by Coast RTA from the Waccamaw COG GSATS in 2005.

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