Tag: Atlantic Beach

County Council Kicks I-73 Decision Down the Road

Horry County Council again dodged making a definitive decision on the I-73 contract with SCDOT at its special meeting Wednesday.

Instead of voting to cancel or go forward with the contract, council voted to defer a final decision until the end of the year.

In the meantime, council has asked the cities to step up with funding for the project or the county would be forced to cancel the contract by December 31, 2019.

In simple terms, the county does not have the ability to fund the up to $25 million per year currently promised in the contract. SCDOT has asked for $12.5 million in the first year, but plans to bond against $25 million per year in future years.

The City of Myrtle Beach continues to cloud the truth by saying the county can fund the contract with its hospitality fee revenues from the unincorporated areas. This is not true.

With the county now banned from collecting a 1.5% hospitality fee, the municipalities and the cities collecting their own hospitality and accommodations taxes, the county has no more than approximately $10 million it can designate for I-73.

In order to reach the $25 million per year called for in the SCDOT contract, Myrtle Beach would have to pledge approximately the same as the county, $10 million per year, and North Myrtle Beach, Surfside Beach, Conway, Loris, Aynor, Atlantic Beach and Briarcliff would have to combine to make up the remaining $5 million.

I don’t believe any of that is going to happen. Not only would the cities have to pledge the funds each year, there would need to be an intergovernmental between the county and the municipalities formalizing those commitments and each party would need to sign the contract with SCDOT.

Those are the details of what needs to happen to keep the SCDOT contract alive. However, there are other details that make keeping the contract more disturbing.

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Changes Needed From City Elections

City elections in three local municipalities could bring much needed changes to the way those communities work for their citizens.

Those three communities are Conway, Atlantic Beach and Myrtle Beach.

Below, we have highlighted the candidates we believe are most likely to bring new ideas that will lead to much needed positive change for those municipalities.

Conway

Mayor and three council seats up for election.
City council member Barbara Blain-Bellamy is continuing to build momentum in her attempt to unseat incumbent Mayor Alys Lawson.
Blain-Bellamy is well known to Conway voters. She has been elected to city council three times and has led the ticket each time. This is not an outsider attempting to unseat an incumbent mayor.

Blain-Bellamy’s message of finding new ways to ward off the influence of gangs and crime in Conway’s neighborhoods and listening to the concerns of citizens throughout the city highlight her message.

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Missing in Atlantic Beach

(Ed. Note – Filing for municipal elections opens next week. Grand Strand Daily is going to pay special attention to those in Atlantic Beach and Conway, two communities that are missing opportunities but, ripe for change.)

Driving through the streets of Atlantic Beach yesterday, I was shocked by the dearth of people and cars.

Atlantic Beach is probably the only oceanfront community on the Atlantic coast in mid-August with almost empty streets and a nearly empty beach.

The only cars in sight were those parked on the empty oceanfront lots by people either patronizing the local parasail business or enjoying the quiet beach.

The approximately four block oceanfront has only a couple of small buildings breaking up otherwise empty land on what would be the first and second rows of commercial establishments in other beach communities.

The avenues running from Kings Highway to the oceanfront and the cross streets connecting them have a number of empty lots. Empty, often overgrown lots only minutes from the beach!

Atlantic Beach could be a modern case study on missed opportunities.

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More Atlantic Beach Problems for Nikki Haley

Gov. Nikki Haley’s recent trip to Atlantic Beach continues to garner negative headlines for South Carolina’s top elected official.

The governor failed in her attempt to have a “frank” discussion with the Atlantic Beach Town Council about ending the Memorial Day Bikefest.

After a short opening address by Haley in which she reportedly promised to help Atlantic Beach return to its glory days of pre-integration prosperity, Haley was met with silence from town officials.

However, that was not all that occurred during the meeting.

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Nikki Haley and Atlantic Beach Bikefest – Updated

The entire meeting took all of approximately 15 minutes – a complete waste of time.

To her credit, Haley refused to meet with the Atlantic Beach Town Council in executive session after arriving for the meeting, so a short open-session meeting resulted. A minor victory for freedom of information.

Haley addressed council for a short time, during which Haley said she would help Atlantic Beach return to the prosperity it enjoyed in the 1940′s if it would end its Memorial Day Bikefest.

Atlantic Beach Mayor Jake Evans said the town would appreciate any help that was offered, but Memorial Day Bikefest would continue.

Meeting adjourned.

You have to wonder what this was all about. Couldn’t there have been advance planning between Haley and Atlantic Beach officials so they actually accomplished something?

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Nikki Haley to Meet with Atlantic Beach Council

Gov. Nikki Haley and the Atlantic Beach Town Council are scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Tuesday July 29th during a specially called council meeting.

To date, there is no official notice of the meeting, but it has been confirmed through media contacts.

The meeting is an apparent followup to Haley’s call for the Atlantic Beach Memorial Day Bikefest to end after the violence in Myrtle Beach two months ago associated with crowds for that event. Haley said she was going to meet with Atlantic Beach officials in June, but the meeting could not be arranged.

It has been reported that the meeting will be held in executive session. We don’t expect anything else of Haley who has made secrecy an art form during her time as governor.

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SCGOP In-Fighting

Nikki Haley Says Time for Memorial Day Black Bike Festival to End

In town for an annual Hurricane Preparedness Conference, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, referring to the Memorial Day Weekend Black Bike Festival, “It’s time for that festival to come to an end.”

Haley said the state can let the people of Atlantic Beach know “we will help them with tourism, we will help them in any way to strengthen their community, but we are not going to promote any events going forward that do any harm to the citizens of South Carolina and that’s exactly what happened…”

Haley made her comments at a press conference held after a one hour meeting with Myrtle Beach Mayor John Rhodes, Horry County Council Chairman Mark Lazarus and other officials from around Horry County.

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Election Confusion in Atlantic Beach

It looks like the Town of Atlantic Beach is trying to outdo itself in the upcoming municipal elections for town council.

The best show in town, with a 2010 listed population of 334 and maybe 100 or so registered voters, is election follies.

The S.C. Supreme Court anyone who has been resident in Horry County for a few years knows Atlantic Beach elections occur in the theater of the absurd. Election challenges on ridiculous premises routinely make it all the way to the Supreme Court before they are settled.

This year the show will be better than ever. This year Atlantic Beach has two elections with two different municipal election commissions, one presiding over each.

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Horry County Adult Entertainment

Stripping Away Adult Entertainment

The Horry County Ad Hoc Committee on Sexually Oriented Business Legislation meets Thursday with the probable result that committee members will forward the county’s proposed new adult entertainment ordinance to full council with recommendation for approval.

The new ordinance, written by an attorney from Tennessee who specializes in this type of ordinance, would govern the 11 adult entertainment establishments, eight strip clubs and three bookstores/novelty shops, in the unincorporated areas of the county. It would establish new setbacks and minimum distance requirements from such things as schools, churches, houses, other adult establishments and the like.

If the new ordinance is forwarded as written and council approves two more readings of it (it has passed first reading already), all 11 of the current establishments in the unincorporated county areas would be out of compliance and subject to being closed.

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May Bike Rallies Issue Rises Again

The May bike rallies were a topic of discussion during the Horry County Public Safety Committee meeting Thursday when county Public Safety Director Paul Whitten disclosed the county lost approximately $190,000 policing the two rallies this year.

The amount of the loss drew raised eyebrows from several committee members who called for a full discussion before county council.

That the bike rallies cost the county money should be no surprise after the contentious debate over vendor permits earlier this year.

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