By Paul Gable
It’s been four weeks since the violence that made national news erupted during the Memorial Day Atlantic Beach Bikefest and Myrtle Beach City Council remains AWOL.
With the city council missing, the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce has stepped into the breach ‘considering’ a curfew and offering to pay for more police next year.
Last time I checked, those considerations come under core responsibilities of local government. They should not be suggestions made on the other side of Oak Street.
But, nature abhors a vacuum and the apparent missing status of Myrtle Beach City Council has created a political vacuum.
As we have said before, the problems with law enforcement in the city of Myrtle Beach are not limited to Memorial Day weekend. They exist 365 days a year and, to date, Myrtle Beach City Council has apparently believed the ‘ostrich’ approach to these problems was sufficient.
Since 2009, when ‘like-minded’ business leaders decided to end the Harley Davidson Bike Week, pass a tourism ad tax to promote their businesses and donate to an amorphous collection of PACs to benefit incumbent city council members and the local legislative delegation, decision making has seemed to leak away from elected officials.
Myrtle Beach City Council has seemed comfortable playing a supporting role to decisions made by those ‘like-minded’ individuals while forgetting the job they were elected to perform was providing core functions of government to the citizens of Myrtle Beach.
Is it really too much to now ask those elected officials to step forward with ideas and initiatives to correct the breakdown in law enforcement that has become increasingly apparent in recent years?
The silence from Myrtle Beach City Council, especially over the last four weeks, has been deafening.
Is it too much to ask Myrtle Beach City Council members to look after the needs of all the citizens of the city rather than just the wishes of those ‘like-minded’ individuals?
Apparently so.
Speak Up…