Tag: Horry

School Board to Hear Suspended Facilities Director Grievance

Horry County Board of Education members are scheduled, at the regular board meeting Monday night, to hear a grievance filed by Mark Wolfe, Executive Director of Facilities for the school district.

Wolfe has been on paid administrative leave since late August 2018. Wolfe filed a grievance challenging the suspension to be heard in closed session by board members.

Wolfe first came to Horry County Schools in January 2014 after 23 years with the local architectural firm of Usry, Wolfe, Peterson, Doyle Architecture. He was promoted to his current position in March 2015.

According to several sources familiar with the issue, Wolfe was placed on leave by Horry County Schools Superintendent Rick Maxey after questions arose regarding how and why a contract for work on school facilities had been awarded to Wolfe’s stepson.

According to those sources, the contract was for the application of ballistic film on the windows of schools recently built by First Floor Energy Positive.

According to information provided to Grand Strand Daily, ballistic film was one of the items on a list of allowances provided for the new schools. Choices could be made from the list up to a maximum allowed budget similar to a budget provided for items such as types of appliances, counter tops, cabinets and the like to be chosen when building a new home.

According to those sources, the HCS Facilities department chose not to have ballistic film on the windows when choices from the allowances list were made for the new schools.

According to the sources, at a later date, First Floor Energy Positive, the general contractor for the new schools, was allegedly approached and asked to hire Wolfe’s stepson to apply ballistic film to the windows of the new schools with Horry County Schools paying First Floor Energy Positive for the work.

The request was allegedly made in this fashion so a contract for the ballistic film application would not have to go through the normal procurement process, according to those sources. Wolfe’s signature is reportedly on the documents approving the ballistic film application.

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Budgets - Cuts, Spending and You

Our State Legislators and Tax Increases

Horry & Georgetown Republican elected state legislators are behaving more like Chicken Little than responsible problem solvers.

We may be a Red State, but our Horry & Georgetown elected Republican state legislators still act like tax and spend Democrats. This is somewhat surprising after the message that was just sent to the “ruling class” during this past general election. Donald Trump received more primary votes than just about every Republican candidate running prior to his bid for the presidency. The populace is definitely tired of tax and spend Republicans and the establishment Republican Party. Evidently our local elected Republicans did not get the message.

No one would argue against coming up with a plan to fix South Carolina roads as they are in desperate need of repair. However, the current knee jerk reaction (the sky is falling, the sky is falling, raise taxes!), is not the responsible course of action. In manufacturing and other successful business entities, when a problem is identified, the company initiates a formal corrective action process. This process begins by clearly defining the problem and then doing the necessary homework to identify root causes of the problem. Future containment actions and corrective actions stem from the root cause analysis.

Numerous organizations within South Carolina and some responsible Republican office holders have identified the primary root causes to South Carolina’s bad roads. These root causes fall into the following categories:

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The Horry County SWA and Mis-information

A meeting today between Horry County council members and members of the Horry County Legislative Delegation evolved through many points of discussion, reached no consensus on the issue of flow control of the county’s waste stream, but did address charges of mis-information about proposed state legislation.

The flow control issue is currently being debated at the state level as Senate Bill 514 makes its way through the legislative process. Horry County currently is the only county in the state to mandate flow control of its waste stream by county ordinance 02-09. The ordinance requires that all waste generated in the county must be disposed at the Horry County Solid Waste Authority landfill on Hwy 90, giving the SWA monopoly control over the county’s waste.

The state legislation, if enacted, states that an ordinance “is void to the extent that a county ordinance restricts solid waste disposal at a permitted site outside a county’s boundaries or impedes a recycling program.”

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