City Council - Regular Meeting

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Good morning. Good morning. Everybody survived the snow. Much better than a hurricane. Welcome. This is our city council workshop for February 3rd, 2026. Glad you're here today. We have a lot of items to talk about on the agenda, beginning with an introduction of a potential lobbying group. The Talon Group, I believe, is here digitally with us. Good morning, gentlemen. How are y'all? Good morning. Morning. Can you introduce yourselves, please?

Good morning, Mr. Mayor. My name is Scott Tally with the Talon Group. Hi, Scott. Who else? I'm Eddie Talon with the Talon Group. Good morning. I'm Katherine Richardson with the Talon Group. Can we turn that up a little bit? Good morning. Can you hear me now? It It's on our end, I think. Patrick, can we elevate the sound on that? Katherine, we can only see the top of your head. There you go.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, as you know, we're in the process of seeking a representative for our lobbying firm in Colombia. We talked with the group last week. We're talking with the Talon Group today. I will turn it over to you and let you talk a little bit about what it is that you do and what you can offer to the city of Myrtle Beach.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council. We appreciate the opportunity to come before you today. Again, my name is Scott Tally. I live in Georgetown County. Uh, prior to moving to Georgetown County about two years ago, I served in the South Carolina legislature as a member of the House for eight years and then more recently as a member of the South Carolina Senate representing Spartanberg and Greenville counties uh for eight years. Upon leaving the Senate, um, I've joined the Talon Group. Obviously, we have two of our other team members here today. Uh Katherine is in Colombia already uh today for some budget hearings that we have for some clients. Um Eddie started the Talon Group several years ago. I'll let you talk more about uh that in just a minute, Eddie. Um we have a variety of clients that we've assisted at both the state uh local and federal level uh including uh the city of Spartanberg and one Spartanberg um its local chamber economic development affiliate. Um I think that once you hear from Katherine and Eddie and their experience um we believe that we are well situated to help the city. uh we we have a good grasp of how uh things work in Colombia on both the House and Senate side. We have built good relationships with stakeholders. Uh and when I say that, I mean not only those that are serving in the legislature now, but key staff members um and others that have been influential in helping us be successful for our clients over the last several years. So um we're excited about this opportunity. I'll leave it at that for my team members to introduce themselves as well and then we're happy to take any questions that you might have.

Katherine, go ahead.

Good morning again. Um, thank you for taking the time to talk with us. We're excited to talk about the possibilities of of helping you. Um, before I joined the talent group in um, 2020, I was at SLED for 24 years. I was over our governmental affairs and our public information office. So, I've had um a lot of state agency experience and since I've been with the talent group, we've done a lot of economic development, tourism, some hospitality, education, utilities, and etc. some other things. But we've really enjoyed building relationships with key stakeholders. I know Scott already mentioned that. Those were literally the words I was going to use because that's what we do. We'd like to work with our clients to build a strategy and um accomplish your goals and thank you. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Good morning. I'm Eddie Talon. Um I founded the Talon Group in 2006. Little background on me though. I'm from Florence. I'm not far from you guys originally. Um I'm from Florence and um after serving in the in the Air Force and then going to college um I went to work in law enforcement uh in Florence. I started the first narcotics division in Florence and um then I was with SLED and actually worked quite a bit in Myrtle Beach Ori County area with SLED while I was there. Um, I retired from sled as a lieutenant um in uh 91 at which time I went with Ryan's restaurant group and I started a a um loss prevention department for him and ended up being the vice president of internal audit and loss prevention. 2006 we sold out and that's when I started uh the Talon Group and I was doing security consulting mainly in the uh security area in the um in the silo of of restaurants national chain restaurants. I was the the president of a national association of chain restaurants with um all the uh vice presidents and directors of security for the big for the big chains and then I I think I lost my mind about 2010 and I ran for the house of representatives and got elected. Um so I spent 10 years in the House of Representatives. I was the the chief whip. uh for the Republican caucus and then I was the assistant majority leader for my last four years. I spent 10 years there and upon leaving there in 2020 um I reorganized the um the talent group and

we became a consulting and and governmental affairs group at which time Katherine came on. Katherine was a a a great lobbyist uh for for SLED. She was there and got a lot of things done and what a wonderful person to to to join our group. And of course, I've known Scott Tally for for years and years and years. And when he decided to leave and he wanted to join our group, it was probably one of the best things ever happened to us. We feel like that we are pretty well diversified as far as working with the legislature. not only the legislature but but the staff people there that that do so much of the work for the legislature. Um we have contacts all over the state and um and and feel real good about about what we're able to do and what we could do to help Myrtle Beach.

Well, thank you all. A couple of quick questions, turn it over to council as well. What's your take on the current legislative session? there was a surplus of funding there. Apparently, some earmarks are back on the on the table. What do you think is going to happen in Colombia this year?

Well, we we hope that's the case, Mr. Mayor. Um, I remember serving uh in the House when we first had a competitive grants program that uh later became what was referred to up until last year as the earmark program. Um we've worked hard with our clients on that process and obviously uh we're we're like everybody else expecting that last year would be similar and then obviously the first part of May as the Senate was working on a final version of the budget. That plan changed. Um it does seem that that process is returning in some form this year. We had communications with certain members of the House Ways and Means Committee um as late as yesterday um on requests for certain clients. Um obviously when there's uh money, we used to joke in Colombia when there's money, the budget's a harder process because everybody has asked. When there's no money, it's an easier process because there's no request and it's just bare bones and trying to get things done. But I do think the legislature recognizes that there are um key elements in local communities that require state investment. Our experience um and I say this as a former member but also working on behalf of clients is that there are things the legislature likes to see. They like to see u public private partnerships when possible. They like to see investment of local dollars on certain projects depending on what those details may be. And obviously from a state perspective, they're looking at return on investment. Um so with those things um on behalf of other clients, we've been successful in the past in securing funding, Katherine mentioned, for um utilities that we represent, for municipalities that we represent. um for nonprofits that we've represented. Obviously, that's something that may or may not be different this year based on what we're hearing in Colombia, but

hopefully that will be back um because we we believe in our clients. We believe in their mission and we've been successful in taking those requests to Colombia showing that it does have a return on investment not only for the local community, but for uh the state as a whole. And obviously what you do in Myrtle Beach um clearly impacts the state as a whole from a revenue standpoint and the dollars that are brought in. Thank you. Scott, what are some of your other municipal clients and do you see any conflicts potentially?

Um I hate to talk all the time teammates here, but y'all chime in whenever. But um so the the other municipality that we work primarily with is the city of Spartanberg. Um that's a new client that we took on last year. Prior to last year, most of the work at the U Spartanberg level was was managed and maintained by an entity known one as one Spartanberg. uh that entity um like I referenced before is the Chamber of Commerce entity, but it's also the local economic development and tourism arm for Spartanberg County. Um there are certain asks that the city has and um that's why we're doing something a little bit different. We still represent one Spartanber and are heavily involved in their economic development efforts. Um your question is is very fair as far as conflicts. I don't think there are any conflicts. Uh, one member of our team that is not here, she's actually on an airplane right now, is Carol Stewart. Um, Carol and Katherine work hand in hand, but the way we've always operated is that we have an assigned lobbyist for each of our clients so that there are no conflicts. Carol is the registered lobbyist for the city of Spartanberg. Obviously, Katherine is here in hopes that this relationship works out and that she would be our designated lobbyist for the city of Myrtle Beach.

Great. Council, any questions?

Uh, yes, Mr. Mayor. Um, to to any one of you, by the way, uh, my name is Bill Mccclure. Um, let's just for a minute assume that we decided that we would like to retain you. What would be the first thing you would do? Uh, I'd get in the car and drive up Highway 17 to meet with uh your staff, members of council, learn your priorities, um, give some feedback on how we might go about addressing those priorities. I think all of us have good relationships with members of your local delegation to Colombia. U, but that would be the first thing I do. We don't we don't come to this presuming to know. Obviously, we've done some research um based on recent elections and what priorities were stated at that point and obviously watched some interviews and things since that time, but um we want to learn what we need to do to help you and then come up with a plan like Katherine said to address that involving not only your local stakeholders um but leadership in Colombia that may not be from Mory County but certainly would play a role in helping us be successful on your behalf. Thank you. Anybody else?

Yes. Um, my name's Debbie Connor. Thanks for being with us this morning. One question that I would have is once you see our priorities and you feel like perhaps moving beyond the state and moving to federal ask for dollars at what how would you handle that knowing we are retaining you just for work in Colombia?

Yeah. And and if you have partners that do that specific work in Washington at the federal level, um that would be, you know, somebody that we would obviously want to stay in close communication with. Uh there may be funding requests that the city has that federal government could match um or obviously leverage what state or local funds were available for federal match. We're monitoring the the federal process for some clients right now and it's our understanding that their appropriations ask and that process for submission will begin later this month. U but obviously Congressman Fry um was in the House when I was in the Senate. We have a good relationship. We have um several state agency clients and other clients that are located in his congressional district. So we maintain good relationships with um him as well as key members of his staff. But there is some overlap and some some interplay there between what we'd be doing at the state level and at the federal level. And we do have the ability to assist at the federal level as well, not only with the congressman and his staff, but with both of our US senators as well.

Thank you. briefly talk about your relationships, your strength in the House and the Senate, your experiences on the Senate side. Are you as strong with your House relationships as you are with the Senate?

Yes, sir. Uh, Speaker Merrell Smith and I both got elected to the House at the same time back in the year 2000. Uh, we maintain a good friendship. His wife and my wife attended, uh, Walford summer camp together for a number of years and remains friends. So, um, we have a good relationship. Uh, chairman Bruce Bannister is my next door neighbor in lot five at Clemson on football Saturdays. We tailgate together, uh, there and have a good relationship um, as well. and other members of the House that I knew not only from my my service in the House previously, but also working um with House members um in the Senate um to you know your local delegation um and I've worked with Case Britain on many things. We remain friends. He he comes down and visits. Uh he has a love of the game of golf like I do. So, we do play golf on on the coast from time to time. Um, and then obviously more recently serving in the Senate. I was on both the judiciary committee and and Chairman Rankin uh appointed me subcommittee chair numerous times and on education with Senator Henry uh who allowed me to serve as a subcommittee chair on that committee as well.

Can you briefly I don't want to prolong this. Can you briefly describe how you communicate with your clients? what's your typical communications like?

Uh, that's a great question. And depending on what what day it is and what's going on, it's a lot of in-person communication. It's a lot of over the phone communication. It's text communication. Um, for most of our clients, obviously, we have a a point person. Uh, we spend time uh personally um when not in session. And then uh as as the session begins and things start moving and things come up in meetings, obviously it becomes more of a who can we get in touch with quickly and and get an answer to and a response. Um we also do set weekly calls um with our clients. We try to do those. Most of them take place on Monday or Tuesday to kind of go over what happened the week prior uh but then also talk about plans for the week ahead. We usually get the legislative schedule uh finalized on Monday. We know what subcommittees are meeting, what bills are being taken up in those subcommittees. We then can obviously inform our clients about what we think matters to them, what's important, and then amongst our team, we can sort of divide and conquer and make sure we've got those things covered. Like I said, Katherine, I know, is already in Colombia today for some budget meetings that are coming up. I've got meetings with certain members of the legislature on both the House and Senate side on behalf of clients tomorrow before they go into session.

Great. Thank you very much. Council, any other question? Have one question. Mike,

I'd like to go back to the communication part. Um would you be if this council were to uh retain your group for uh our services uh would you be inclined to uh make sure that every member of this council is uh aware and and provided the information that you might would have available instead of maybe just uh communicating with one. I realize it's kind of difficult to communicate with seven every time, but make sure by either by email, whatever, that we all receive the same information that one person is receiving.

Yes, sir. and and I made a point to to make known that I I live in Georgetown County um on purpose if you know y'all wanted me or any member of our team to come before council either in person or via this means uh to talk about something specific that was going on in Colombia or just to sort of give an overview of of what we're seeing uh happen or what we think will happen then we will absolutely make oursel available to do that however the council desires. Thank you.

And I might say that that we do that with several clients. We attend their board meetings um automatically and and then those that ask us to come and give an update um we'll someone will be there to give an update on what's going on and answer any questions that the council or board may have of us. Great. Thank you. I would say send us a proposal, please. Do you have any questions for us?

No, I think um back to the the um councilman's question earlier, you know, if given the opportunity to work with you, then we will find time immediately to to come and sit down in person and and learn more about priorities, talk through some strategies, thoughts. Obviously, the session is um underway at this point. And while it seems crazy, May will be upon us sooner than we know it. And so, um, you know, time is of the essence whether we're working for you or somebody else is working for you. I know you know that. But, um, we will get something over to you. We appreciate your time this morning. Thank you very much, Scott, Eddie, and Catherine. One more question.

One last question. Uh, Scott, actually, this is for Katherine. Um, Katherine, uh, if we do retain your group, uh, we were told that you would be our lobbyist. And so my question to you is uh how many other people will you be representing? In other words, what's the size of your portfolio? Would you have two additional clients or would you have 30?

No, no, I don't I don't have two. I have um about eight other clients. One of them I I register in two ways because water and water and sewer. So it's eight total. But I take each client very seriously and truly try to customize um my strategy to um my clients needs. I'm always happy to come and visit you. Um I do that. You can ask Eddie and Scott. I love to go in person and meet with you and update you and keep you a breast and um you know just really build something that we can accomplish together. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. Katherine, did you take over for Human? Human actually hired me. Great. He did. I was an intern in his office in college and then um when he retired, I I was over the I became I got a promotion. I was over the office. Great. Yeah. I've worked with Human several generations ago. So, yes. Yeah, he was he was a great guy. Great guy. All right. Well, thank you for taking time today to be with us. We'll look for a proposal very shortly. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council. Thanks so much. Congratulations on your election. The jury is still out. Thank you.

Great. Well, thank you. Thank you for putting that together so that we could do that seamlessly. That was very nice. Um, legislative priorities. Moving ahead with that, Fox.

Yep. There's a Wait for Patrick to pull up. Is just a two slide. This is just an idea starter just to get because as they said the time we're February 3rd, May is before us. We got to council's got to set his priorities. I understand we don't have a lobbyist at this point, but this is just next page. There we go. Um just possible items to start the conversation. I'm sure you guys have council has other um issue or concerns, but these are just a laundry list that we put our heads together to come up as possible items. happy to talk about it or just put it on reserve.

I I know that fire station number one is in the hopper. Seven is down the road a piece. Uh infrastructure east of Kings will certainly become a a subject probably more next year than this year. Um west of Kings is something we're already doing and we need to continue to have conversation about. I'm not sure what we would do with the convention center, the sports center. uh the Pelican Stadium improvements. We all got a tour of the stadium and I think everybody will be pleased with that when they see it. April 14th is the first home game, the opening home game and I think they're planning an event on April 13th as well to invite the public in. Um a playground at Chapen Memorial Library. I would put Chapen Memorial Library on that list actually. Uh that's something that the community has spoken up and said we would like to have is a an expanded or new library and the library would like to stay where it is at the moment and not move downtown. Um boardwalk expansion and renovation. Certainly those would be uh opportunities for us in the future. And then a water line is not um terribly sexy at the end of the day, but it's something that is a part of our basic infrastructure.

Anything else? Critical.

Critical is correct. And I would say going back to the convention center um sports center, I know it says TBD, but it's something I think we really do need to start thinking about. in one of the comments that the um talent group um said, you know, kind of um return on investment from the state and um perhaps we need to move forward and this might be for other budget discussions, but talking about having a a good assessment. I know we've done an assessment in regards to sports tourism, but you know, do we need um multi-purpose space for the convention center um something to allow some expansion in our capacity there? Um to attract more groups. Um and that seems like it would be something that, you know, the state might be interested in, especially since it is a return on tourism dollars. Anybody else?

Again, I would add the library to that potential list of things that I've got made a note. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Um, we'll look to hear from the Talon Group and see what their proposal is hopefully later today or tomorrow. The Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce quarterly update. We have Matt Pavarick, Jimmy Gray, and Stuart Butler here in the audience today. Matt,

mayor, council, city manager, team, staff, uh really appreciate you guys giving us this opportunity. Um I will tell you right now, I uh one of the things that that I can just feel uh when I'm in your presence is I can feel a level of collaboration, uh from this DAS and from this body. And and I'll just say from my point of view, uh that really means a lot to us. Um I also just want to throw one little personal update out. It's pretty exciting for me. My co-workers are probably tired of hearing about it, but uh as of yesterday, my mother, my mom now has a Myrtle Beach address and so uh she will be making an official move to our area and live very close to me uh within a year. So I'm very excited about that. We've been hearing a lot. And by the way, Jimmy Gray only gives me 90 seconds up here. I wish I could have more time. And I might go just a little bit over, but not too much. But I've been hearing the word collaborate a lot lately. I mean, collaborate, collaborate, collaborate. As a matter of fact, on January 8th, I heard County Council Chairman Johnny Gardner use the word collaborate. And one of the things he mentioned is all of his years in working at Orie County, he's really never felt as much collaboration as he does right now. And he even uh called out his partnership with the city and with the chamber. And that really meant a lot to me. Um last week, our lieutenant governor, Pamela Evett, leaned into collaboration in a big way. And as a as a matter of fact, she actually said it's a key to all success, especially when it comes to community development. It felt good that she mentioned our county and our city and our region as a great example of collaboration that she has uh recognized and seen recently. Then our mayor took the stage and continued that theme and actually called out several neighborhoods, communities,

and municipalities in Ory County and talked about the fact that a rising tide raises all ships and and really just showed great leadership uh with the theme of collaboration. Collaboration is hard. It's way more easy to not collaborate. As a matter of fact, people crave leaders not collaborating, right? I mean, um I don't know about you, but every once in a while, I get hung up on a on the reels on Facebook, right? And I'll tell you, when I get hung up on the reels, I'm really not watching a lot of reels that have a lot to do with collaboration or the good stuff. I'm watching fights. I'm watching snakes bite people. I mean, just the the things I'm interested in, right? I'm I'm not watching a lot about collaboration. So, it is tough. It is tough.

I'm not sure I'd tell anybody that

it's tough to collaborate. And um and I will say a lot of people crave the fact crave anti- collaboration, you know. Um I always like to say that uh keyboard warriors, uh social media influencer wannabes, uh they don't want our community to collaborate, right? They're they're more into if it bleeds, it leads. And so, uh, I just, uh, want to tell you guys how much I appreciate your collaboration, your obvious spirit of collaboration as we are accomplishing great things in our region. I'm excited to hear from all of my co-workers today. They're all going to do a great job. Um, but but I I'm actually most excited about one in particular, and that's uh BJ Beaver. Um, and we have one of our community leaders here today in Clay Britain to talk about some opportunities for all of us to strategically collaborate together in the community. So, I look forward to that. I also just want to thank our board members for attending. Uh, several of them rolled in. I've never seen Charlie Bissery in long pants before, so this is a real treat. Uh, but I always appreciate them coming to support us and being here and showing interest in our collaboration together. Uh, so now I'm going to turn it over to Randy and Randy is our CFO and he's going to give you a financial update and then we're going to roll through this in a fairly quick fashion. But I just want to reiterate to you all how much I appreciate you being our leaders and our elected officials. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ben. Good morning, everyone. Now we're going to present the numbers, the marketing investments that we make on your behalf.

Okay. So, we're going to dive into the July through September numbers for the tourism development fee. We invested a total of 10,915,141 to reach non-S South Carolina residents uh out of state. Uh for people in the audience, the tourism development fee is a 1% general sales and use tax on sales at retail with a few exceptions within the city limits of Myrtle Beach. So looking at the numbers, digital and social search investment is at 33%. When you add television and outdoor and print, the total equals 53% for all traditional advertising. General consumer promotions came to 8%. These are activations and events and trip promotions and visitor guides. When you look at the three specialty markets combined, group sales, international and golf, that equal 10%. Creative and content development and research was 23%. Destination publicity is at 1% and air service is at 3%. Moving to July through September, accommodations tax, we invested a total of $62,611 to reach visitors more than 50 miles away. For people in the audience, the accommodations tax is the 2% state tax applied to rooms rented to guests for less than 90 consecutive days. If you look at the numbers, air service is at 3%, digital and social search is the biggest investment at 43%. And again, when you add television and outdoor print, the total equals 66% for all traditional advertising. General, consumer, and promotions are at 14%. Looking again at the three specialty

markets, group sales, international and golf, that was at 11% total. Creative and content development and research was 5% and destination publicity is at 1%. Are there any questions about TDF uh or ATAX uh investments? Do you have a total amount for each of those? A tax TDF for the quarter? Yes. So, um, TDF was 10.9 million, right? We saw that. And then, uh, a tax was 600,000, a little bit over. And then what is destination publicity?

That's all of our public relations efforts that we do with our agency as well as communications efforts. If you have specific questions about um any of the marketing investments, uh Stuart Butler will be coming up next to talk about uh visit Myrtle Beach. Um and we continue to be good stewards of your money and uh we fund it the way we're supposed to. Thank you. Good morning. Morning.

Um I've been accused in the past of being a little too positive, a little too polyiana. I don't think I'll be accused of that today. Um, I'm going to start with some good news. Our destination is finally getting recognized for the quality of our culinary scene here. You know, we talk a lot about the variety of restaurants. We here have over 2,000 along the Grand Strand. Um, but I believe we've been underrecognized for the quality, but we're beginning to see that change. And that's in thanks to the efforts of the the whole community, but not least of which the chefs that we have here. And so proud to announce today, I think some people already know this, but we we have a couple of big um chefs to celebrate right now. Jimmy made me put this one first. Um, but Heidi Bukov is the first chef with an active restaurant in the Myrtle Beach area to be a semi- finalist with James Beard Foundation. And this has been a three-year plan with our organization, working with our local chefs to bring their awareness of the Grand Strand culinary scene to to to their organization. And so I I can't think of anyone better to to be recognized first, but I hope it's the first of many. And then the other one I wanted to recognize is uh Jordan Hyde uh with Laca Eats. And I know her dad and husband are in the audience today, but she was just recognized by the state of South Carolina as a chef ambassador. She follows in the footsteps of of great chefs in our area like Jamie Dcalis and uh some others as well including Heidi Vukov. So we really are getting recognized the way we should be. And if you haven't tried uh Hook and Barrel or Laca Eats, I definitely recommend both of them along with many other fine restaurants. The media tends to focus on the restaurants that closed, but we we had about 30 new restaurants open in the Myrtle Beach area in the last 24 months. So, we got a lot of great new ones that

everyone should try. Um there's the positive out the way. Um this is the Q this is the Q3 report. So, we're looking at July, August, and September. This is occupancy year-over-year. You'll see, you know, we were actually expecting us to be up a little bit in Q3, but there was a lot of issues that that forced us to to be down about 3%. July, we saw July 4th, there was there was tropical storm that hit us. You know, that really devastated both the week before and after July 4th because the thing with storms, people see it, there's uncertainty, they don't book, but there's also a little bit of a hangover after a storm. So that that hurt July a little bit. August we rebounded. Occupancy was up a smidge. And then September it was a very active uh Atlantic Ocean season. We got hit or we didn't get hit but we had the threat of several uh large name storms especially at the end of the month. Um but it wasn't just weather that impacted us although weather is a big factor. You know, um, Brad Dean many years ago used to joke with with our board about how we can do all the greatest marketing in the world, drive the awareness, but and we can prepare as much as we we want, but at the end of the day, rain is always going to determine how successful we really are. And last year was unprecedented. We've seen four consecutive years of increased precipitation in the Mobile Beach area. You talk to anyone with an outdoor traction, they'll tell you that last year was pretty rough from a rain perspective. I think there were Pelicans had 30 games disrupted significantly and I think nine cancelled because of rain. It wasn't just that it was raining, but it was raining for longer periods and during times when people are usually out and about and doing stuff. So rain was pretty pretty horrendous for us last year. Um but it's not just rain, you know, we also have some macro factors that are impacting the destination. Uh, one of one of the interesting things is historically there's a supply and demand expectation that if rate drops,

demand increases. So if I lower my rate at my hotel, more people show up. And that isn't the case anymore. People are more selective. We have plenty of inventory. So lowering rates does not create demand anymore. It just simply doesn't. Consumers are are not responding to price the way they were. So lower rate actually correlates with with lower occupancy. It didn't used to. Uh, we also saw inflation continue to increase last year. I've got a slide with more specifics on that. And we also saw gas prices drop. Now, a lot of folks would think gas prices dropping is a positive, right? More people can travel. Gas is often a lag indicator of demand. So, if fewer people are traveling and spending money on gas, usually that means it's not looking good for the future either. So, there's actually a sweet spot between about $2.80 80 cents a gallon and 328 a gallon where we do really well. If it goes below or above that, we're usually going to struggle a little bit. Now, we weren't the only ones that struggled. Many of our friends down in Florida struggled as well. A lot of the similar factors were impacting them, but there were a few outliers. Virginia Beach is one that actually saw a slight increase in Q3. Um, myriad of factors. They did weren't impacted by as much by the weather, but they also um some of that was a year-over-year reflection of how they performed in 2024. Plus, they've invested a lot in their product. A lot of private and public dollars have been invested in Virginia Beach over the last three or four years. What does this mean in terms of revenue for the city and for the community? For Q3, we saw TDF collections were down about 4%. Um, we're still finalizing the annual numbers, the the full 2025 numbers. We're looking like we're going to come in around 2 and a half% down for TDF collections in 2025. Um, although that's not ideal. I would call that a win considering the challenges we we had a 2.5 decrease essentially flat. Um, given

all the challenges we faced. Um, a tax took a little bit of a beating and that and that was compounded. Not only do we have lower occupancy, but like I said, people were lowering their rates and despite advice not to lower rates, people continued to that compounded to about a 10% decrease in Q3 of um a tax collections. Now, for the entire year, we're looking at coming in probably around four four and a half% down for the entire year on a tax. So, I'm going to look forward here a little bit about what what we're looking at. people are indicating that they're reducing spending. Obviously, we know people are stretched thin right now, especially a lot of, you know, middle and working-class families. Um, the K-shaped economy gets talked about a lot, and we'll see that in evidence in a second. But where are people saving money? Well, they're saving money on gas because gas prices are lower, but they're also trading out. They're not flying places. They're not traveling as much. They're not spending as much on leisure, and they're not spending as much on hotels. they're trading those out so they can afford groceries. Um, and we actually see this manifest in how many, this is a stat that shows how many people in 2025, how many households actually took a trip last year compared to previous years. You can see there's a big gap. A lot of people did not take a trip in 2025. And despite demand to travel in 26, they want to travel. A lot of Americans don't have the means to travel. And so what does this mean? If we look at occupancy, I mentioned earlier the K-shaped economy. What we're seeing is higherend hotels, upscale, upper midscale hotels are doing okay. Their their their occupancy is actually staying fairly flat. But we're seeing across the nation, this isn't my beach data, this is across the nation, we're seeing that economy hotels are are down. And then if we look at this next slide, we're actually seeing independent hotels

are in impacted more than anyone else. And I know I don't need to remind you guys, but for the public, we have more independent hotels here than any other category of hotel. So this doesn't paint a pretty picture for sure. But what are we doing about it? And and what is what are we looking at? So um actually I got a couple more data points. So, first up, uh, unemployment is creeping up, especially in our feeder markets. We break it down at the state level, and we're seeing that unemployment has continued to increase, and that's not going to slow down. We're hearing a lot of rhetoric about AI, but I think 26 is the year we will see the impacts of AI on the workforce. Um, we're also seeing that inflation continues to creep up. Now, it isn't creeping up at the rate it wasn't during the pandemic, but it's it's still continuing up. Actually, it only dropped one month in the last 12 months. So, all in all, that that's not a pretty picture, I know, but we are pretty optimistic. What we're looking at for uh 2026, this is our AIdriven model. It's been 95% accurate for the past three years. So, we're fairly confident in this. We t typically beat it unless it's raining a lot. Um, so our job here is to bend the curve and try to outperform this model. But what we're looking at right now with all of these headwinds is essentially a 3% decrease again in occupancy. So our message to the hotelers is to hold the rate. Do not drop the rate anymore. It will not increase demand. It will just exacerbate the the the challenges that we're facing. But we are a little optimistic about a few things. Um, and we are doing a few things. So, there's some potential stimulation coming to the economy through the big beautiful bill. We do know that, you know, working-class folks especially could be beneficiaries of some of that legislation that just kicked in in January. We we believe and the data suggests that folks will see

larger um returns on their taxes this year, 25 to 30% increase in in tax returns, which we believe is is positive for our our consumer. and we're doing what we can to hyperarget the right people at the right time that have the means to travel. So some of the specific tactics we're pulling our marketing in a little bit. We're not going out as far if fewer people are flying. Then we want to really target our drive markets, continue to feed the the flight markets, but really emphasize places like North Carolina, West Virginia, Ohio, places we know people are going to continue to come. but also looking at things like okay if inflation is increasing more and we see unemployment in this state going up a little more but it's it's staying flat or low we'll shift budget from one state to the other or one DMA to the other so we we've really over the last five years created a very sophisticated agile targeting approach where we can shift dollars back in the day we used to have to commit dollars at the beginning of the year and then just let it ride now we don't we're we're making adjustments on a daily basis We're working with folks that um are in charge of tax returns to make sure we get in front of people when their tax returns come in and we say, "Hey, what a nice opportunity to have a vacation and what a great place to come. It would be Myrtle Beach." Um we're also working with our hotelers and and partners to create value for Myrtle Beach. You know, we do know that people want to travel and we do not want to discount Myrtle Beach. We don't want to be seen as cheap. We want to be seen as a family-friendly, affordable destination. So, we're going to be coming out in the next two weeks. I think we've got about 50 hotels signed up right now, but open invitation to any hotel out there to join in. We're going to have two offers under one deal. Um, buy three nights, get one free, and buy five nights, get two free. And so, we're adding value versus discounting. And that will hopefully not only bring more demand, but it will mean people are staying one more night or two more nights. And that's obviously stimulatory and will

lead to more spending in our attractions, our restaurants and things like that. So, I'll be glad at this point to take any questions from you. Um, but uh, you know, in summary, there's a lot of headwinds. Um, beach is well positioned. My beach will fare better than a lot of other destinations. We're committed to investing the dollars that you entrust and our community entrusts with us as responsibly and effectively as possible. We believe we will take market share in the down economy. We always have um previously and we intend to now. So we're cautiously optimistic and then I would say everyone in the community needs to pray for a drier 2026 and 2021. With that, I'll take questions.

Thank you, Stuart. You've given us nowhere to go but up. Yeah, basically that's the plan. You're projecting a 3% decrease this year. So, what do we do to overcome that deficit? What can we do as a community to make Myrtle Beach more attractive for our visitors?

Yeah, you know, we we've seen a real interesting trend and I I talked to a lot of our partners and how people are spending money and how they choose travel is has changed a lot and social media is the primary driver of this, but also artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming a driver. So what I would say is the value of the brand like the destination brand has decreased over time and the value of the experiences the individual experiences has increased. People come to places to do a specific thing usually what they've seen other people do and usually so they can share with their friends and families that they did it too. So so what our advice to everyone is to invest in the experience of the customer. Invest in the product. invest in customer service. Be Mal Beach has always been one of the most hospitable, welcoming destinations in the world. The friendliest people, that's our secret source. Now's the time to double down on our secret source, be more friendly, and invest in our product because we're competing, you know, against a stack deck. There's a lot of things we cannot control right now with the economy, but what we can control is is how people feel when they come to My Beach. do they have a great time and do they go back as advocates and tell all their family and friends and everyone on social media that they had that great time and that they should go and do it too. So that's that's us the Myrtle Beach spirit needs to shine brighter than it ever has. It does. We have a chance to reimagine Myrtle Beach this year and as this council has discussed, we'd like to improve the look and the function of the city, particularly the visitor experience east of Kings Highway. But from landscaping to lighting to all of those um soft touches that we provide as Myrtle Beach, we have a chance, this body, the business community and our residents have a chance to make that difference this year. I'd like to see that number go up to a positive 3% instead of a negative 3% this year. And

it it's on us folks to take the right steps to make that happen. Any questions? household Stuart. Um you talked a lot about targeting and the flexibility um using real time on time data. Is there one or two specific I'll call them market sectors areas that we should be focusing on. Uh an example might be sports tourism.

That's a big category. You know what is it? But within sports tourism, uh, is it golf? U, is it more competitions for girls sports versus men's sports? That type of thing. Are there some places that we should really be focusing on? Because, as the mayor talks about, you know, we we've got an opportunity to really do something here, but if we're going to do it, let's make sure we target the right places. I guess that's

my question to you. Yeah, I mean I think it's going to take a fullcourt press. It's going to be public private partnerships that really help us move through through these challenges. Sports is a great example. You know, there's not, you know, a lot of destinations have a communitywide sports commission. We don't in this area right now. I think we should evaluate that. um we work collaboratively with our friends in North Myrtle Beach and and Conway and Myrtle Beach and the you know the sports center but there's not a a unified strategy you know and I I see us holistically as one of the greatest sports destinations in the country at one point we were head and shoulders above everywhere else um but a lot of those places have invested at a community level in their facilities and so the the gap has closed so our competition especially in North Carolina has has gotten really tight so So I would say you think along the right lines. Sports would sports would certainly be one. The type of hotel product we we have and the mix of hotel product would be another. Um new new key attractions that are really going to drive people here. You know there we do a lot of surveys around um both from visitors and residents about what would they like to see in Myrtle Beach and what their perceptions are of Myrtle Beach. They don't agree on a lot. The visitors and and the and the locals, they don't see Myrtle Beach the same way. But the one thing they always agree on is we need a large scale music venue in Myrtle Beach. That's something that's loud and clear from both sides. Um, but I think we where we're focused in how how do we not just continue to drive the summer months, but how do we diversify the economy throughout the year? How do we become recognized as the place to go for the holidays, you know, part of your holiday tradition? How do we be recognized for all kinds of sports, youth sports, and what opportunities are there to bring in more youth sports here? You know, your question about female sports versus male sports is it interesting. There's a data point that when boys travel, young youth males

travel, usually they only have an average of one parent traveling with them. When girls travel, usually the whole family unit comes. So, female sports drives a lot more revenue for the economy than male sports. So there's a lot of little data points like that that we focus on. Thank you. We we've talked a little bit about a sports commission. That's something you would recommend.

I think we should evaluate it as a community. We'd be happy to be the tip of the spear and lead that. But you know, when people come and and play baseball in Myrtle Beach or North Myrtle Beach or soccer, whatever it is, Myrtle Beach benefits. you know, we we see that we need to do this from a community community perspective because the city of Myrtle Beach on its own won't be able to compete with the Charlottes and and the regions around there. So, I think it it it requires a real concerted effort from the county, from yourselves, from North My Beach, from Conway, all the way down to the South End to say what what are the facilities we have? We we've indexed that. We know what it is, but how do we evaluate the value of coming together more cohesively with a singular strategy and what where are the gaps? Where do we need to invest community and private and public dollars to improve the facilities and our competitive nature? Um, just this past weekend, I think about the only things we had left because of the snow were were sport indoor sports stuff. So, um, it's important to us. It's our base of business, especially in the offseason. We've also talked about putting together sort of an ad hoc brainstorming group to talk about elevating the the Myrtle Beach experience on the on the entertainment side, the activity side. I think everybody knows we have a dynamic local music scene, and we need to figure out how to tap into that more. But we've got public spaces and programming, activities and events and festivals, things for not just visitors to enjoy, but locals to enjoy as well. Um, we will put a group together to talk further about that too. I think

we would love to be a part of that. I mean, our vision, our long-term goal is for for Myrtle Beach to be the most vibrant and welcoming coastal community in the country. And I think that's going to take improvement of product, but also experiences, including events. Very much so. We haven't had a next big thing maybe since before COVID. And there are opportunities. I know that hopefully towards the end of this year we'll be able to talk about um the the pavilion site a little more and and hopefully have some exciting things to say there as well. Great council. Anything else?

No, it I think it has been very difficult in the past to have events that are that are going on. It's really hard to find them. I mean, you've got to actually know where to go. But if we could collaboratively bring something together where people could go to one or two spots and figure out, well, these bands are happening here or the festivals here or whatever, it would work out a lot better. We need to consciously elevate the experience that is Myrtle Beach. And also, um, uh, Miss Connor, whenever we were in Tampa last year,

they talked about doing co-ops with the sports tourism. Um, so I I think that would work uh really well here in our area if we if we could kind of uh collaborate with you and spearhead something. Um, I think we would be very interested in that. Great. Well, thank you all. Appreciate it. I think up next is Mr. Clay Britain and BJ Biva. Good morning, council. Good morning. Good morning, Mr. Mayor.

My name is BJ Beaver. I'm the executive director of Partnership Grand Strand and excited to talk to you about our comprehensive community strategy. Before I get into that, I'd like to introduce Mr. Clay Brit. Um, I want to say I'm so happy to be standing here before you looking at your faces. It's exciting to be a part of this change and a part of what's going on here in town. I'm here today on behalf of partnership grandstand which is the foundation that was formed by the chamber of commerce back in 2021 to address specific business concerns that we had been talking about going back as far as 2017 and 2018. uh five years of hard work at partnership grandstand on those concerns has convinced the foundation that our area needs a comprehensive community strategic plan. Um as you all know over the many past decades there have been all kinds of plans. Um, I've been here actually before you on a plan uh several years ago back going back to 2017 and 2018. But the various chamber of commerces, the various cities, the county, you know, lots of people have come up with uh plans. But a community strategic plan is based on comprehensive input from all types of community, residents, businesses, governmental bodies, faith-based organizations, nonprofits, basically the whole

community. A community plan does not look at things from the viewpoint of any earlier plan or any specific stakeholders. It's based on the strategic plans of our community as we start now kind of fresh starting again looking at where we want to go. We know that Ory County is one of the fastest growing places in the United States. uh growth is very good for us economically but there are also some costs some negatives that come with that type of growth. Uh one of the other things that I think supports doing a strategic community plan at this time is we have some very great new talented leaders coming to the forefront in Ory County. David Bird with the YMCA is the kind of leader you want to hook your wagon to because he's going places. Uh, Mayor Mark Ria is here. He's had lots of experience. He knows a lot about Myrtle Beach and he is a very common sense person, the kind of leader that that I think will be a big help. Cliff Jones with the Ory County Schools is a very very committed person to collaboration. We've talked a lot about collaboration. I am amazed by the collaboration that's going on there. Jamie Weinre at CCU is about balance and about performance. He he's really going to make a difference for us, you know. When Matt Pavaret can't stick to 90 seconds, all right, when he stands up here and says he's going to, but he's a born leader and he knows how to tap

people and how to bring them forward and bring out the best in them. In my opinion, our leaders are well placed to change where we're going and what we're doing. to do their jobs well though they need a comprehensive view bringing everybody kind of into that view. So over the last six months, Partnership Grand Strand convened three chamber leaders together with six community leaders to go and find the best strategic planning group in the country. The six community leaders were Laura Crowther with the uh realtors uh Ory County government, Barry Spivey, the Myrtle Beach Downtown Alliance, Jason Green, the Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Group, Sandy Davis, the city of Myrtle Beach, Brian Tucker, and the city of Conway, John Rogers. So we reached out to get a broad group to just find the right people. We believe that we've retained the best firm to do this uh to come up with a really good strategic uh community plan and we have the money to pay for it and we're ready uh to start it. Uh we've currently identified 30 different strategic concerns. You won't be surprised to know that downtown redevelopment and afterchool child care are two that I'm making sure are on there. We all have the things that we think need to be on the plan. Uh everybody needs to be heard on this. City council will be a preeminent participator in this process.

We are very committed to to bringing you in on this process and making you a big part of it and we're not asking you to pay for any part of the plan. Thank you. Not yet. So in in some in some uh we will be keeping you in the loop and making you a part of it. BJ and I'll be glad to ask answer any questions. He's got a few comments to make here and I'll just step back and you can ask me your question.

Thank you, Clay. Thank you for driving home the need of why we have to have a community strategy. I just want to take a second to kind of tell you the why and the how. Um so our comprehensive community strategy, the um strategist that Clay mentioned is going to be led by AHA advisors. They're out of Raleigh and they've currently served communities like Asheville, Miami Dade, Cincinnati, and Chattanooga. So other communities across the country see the need to have a comprehensive plan to better for the betterment of their community. So the project is a seven-month project with five months focused solely on data analysis and community and stakeholder engagement. So, as Clay mentioned earlier, the city of Myrtle Beach will have an opportunity as residents will have its opportunities, the greater Grand Strand will have its opportunities to give feedback and help build and drive a successful strategy. We'll also go under a portion of benchmarking where we'll compare ourselves against other communities across the country. And how do we get there? focus groups, one-on- ons, community strate um community surveys, a very comprehensive way again to making sure that we're encouraging all of our residents, our business communities and stakeholders to give their input. Once that input is given, we'll be able to develop the strategy and be able to present that to you in the future. So, at this point, I'll defer questions to me or Clay. And thank you for your time.

Thank you, gentlemen. That that's good to know. I think we're excited about this. We do need that strategic plan. We need that whole city vision that we've been lacking here for a little while. So, I'm very pleased. Council, any questions? I know it took a long time for y'all to get to this point. So, we appreciate it. Great. Thank you, gentlemen, very much.

All right. I gave myself 30 seconds, so I'll try and stick to that so you guys uh can get on with the rest of your meeting. Uh thank you for your patience. A lot to report today and we we tried to whittle it down uh to just really what you needed to hear, but there's so much going on. Thank you to our advisory board members and our board members that have joined us today. Excited to have uh some C council members serve um on our advisory boards and exeicio uh capacity here once once that decision is made. But really wanted to just talk about events. Um so it's going to be a very very busy spring taking place. lots of events that we'll be sharing with you. Um, next week is GovCon. They call that in the indust industry speak. What that is short for is the Governor's Conference on Tourism. Um, that's going to be taking place over at the convention center. There's a reception that you all should have been invited to at Rip Tides. Um, and then I'll also just highlight the Grand Strand Legislative Reception, aka Myrtle Beach Night, um, in Colombia. Um, this is, uh, something that if you haven't been to, you need to you need to go to. Um, it is our chance to flex our muscles in Colombia and let the state know how much uh money and power uh comes from uh Ory County and the Myrtle Beach area in Colombia. So, I'll leave the events up there. Any questions that we didn't cover uh this morning? I'm going to take a moment and talk a little bit about one of the legislative priorities that we need to add to the list and that is the tourism development fee. We've already begun that discussion. And I know that Matt is putting together a group from the chamber side and has invited us to participate in that as well. We do need to revisit the distribution of the TDF. Stuart, don't don't cringe too much. Um, the 8020 needs to work better for the whole community and and the AD20 isn't the answer to that question. I don't know yet what the answer is, but that's what we'll talk about at this point. Stuart, Matt has offered to have one or two representatives from city council be

part of that little working group so that we can share ideas with the chamber board uh and staff and talk about things that that we can do to improve that relationship for the whole grand strand. Currently the 8020 80% is for out of market advertising 20% is for tourism related capital projects and a property tax credit when we started the TDF back in 2009 and then it was modified in 2010. We did an 88.5% tax credit that has shrunk over the years to 67% and change at this point. And we're using all of the 20% allocated for that towards the tax credit and then some. In this year's budget, there's approximately $1.2 million in extra money to prop up that 67% tax credit. That's not financially sound at the end of the day. So we need to figure out how to revisit the distributions so that we can provide for the whole community and also consider some product development in the form of capital related tourism infrastructure. Not sure quite what that looks like yet, but that's some that's a conversation that we'll have. So I've been invited to participate in this group that Matt's putting together. I I don't we can't have the whole council be part of that conversation. I know that there is a lot of interest from council to do that. Is there somebody who would win the arm wrestling competition if you put it to that?

I've been weightlifting. So,

I would obviously like to participate in uh in any of the opportunities. Um I've got uh from the promotion side uh I obviously have a background in that. uh from the legislative side. Um it's a background in growing up in Washington DC and uh having for a number of years uh with my service with the uh nonprofit organization known as the American Institute in Taiwan uh which now represents uh the United States uh in the absence of diplomatic relations. Uh had to do a lot of work up on Capitol Hill myself. So, uh, I would enjoy working with you, but we also have some very talented people here, too. So, I would leave that decision up to you.

Oh, no, no, no. We leave that decision. Leave that decision up to you all. This is This will be our call at the end of the day. You all need to make the decision about yourselves. Yes.

Well, mayor, are we looking for two or three? Well, ultimately we're looking for with this additional group to talk about the TDF. Ultimately, we're looking for three. Matt and the Chamber of Commerce have asked since they they've split, they bifurcated the chamber into the chamber side and the visit Myrtle Beach side. Did I say that correctly? And they would like to have an exeicio member, a non- voting member from city council to sit on each of those boards. And we've had interest, more more than two people have expressed interest in that already. And then the third piece would be this new group to talk specifically about the TDF. So, do you want to nominate folks? So, we can't vote today, but it it's something that y'all need to be thinking about. We'll put that on the agenda for the next meeting. How's that?

Sounds good. Thank you all for your time. Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Clay. Thank you, BJ. Thank you, Stuart. Thank you, everybody. Any other questions? Council from the chamber? Just out of curiosity, if you're on the chamber board or one of the chamber capacities, raise your hand, please. Thank you. Great showing this morning. Thank you very much. All right, you you can stay or go. It's up to you. Y'all don't want to stay. We'll we'll take a quick fivem minute break while we we dispense with They don't want to stay. We're bored.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. I like how they've got the um

Good morning.

Thank you for sticking with us after our little break here this morning. Up next on the agenda is the Market Common traffic calming update. We have a stamp update and then the Stantech study and then we're going to roll the dice. That's not terribly encouraging, but okay. Uh give you a little bit of an update on where we were. I think three weeks ago during council, we passed a motion to consider traffic calming measures and slowing down treat uh speed limits. Um so just a little bit of an update on where we were, where we are. I need some specific direction from council on what we pursue. Um so I just wanted to talk through that with you. Um, again, you know, everything that we're going to talk about here in the next couple of minutes have been comments from either the mayor or council members. Uh, and we're trying to figure out sort of what we what moves ahead to an action item. Um, how we do that, where we do that, and just again need some feedback uh from all of you.

And let me interrupt you briefly, Brian. Our input came from the neighborhood. And as you've seen in recent communications, the neighborhood has different opinions now as well. So, we're trying to resolve the issue and find the find the best solutions. So,

that that actually is going to be a really good segue and we'll come back to that as we make our way through here. Some of the easier things uh we've already tried to tackle. Uh first of all, increasing the size of some of the signs. We've already been able to do that in the core section uh of Market Common. there's been some suggestions that we maybe add some additional signs. Uh so that's still underway. Um so that that has already taken place. We've also have increased uh enforcement, increased presence from the police department uh to manage traffic. That has already been underway. I think we had 350 um interactions with folks along that stretch in the month of January. So that is already taking effect. I don't know how much greater that is than normal if that

Well, I'm I know it's a lot greater than normal. Is that just on this stretch of Pharaoh or is that the market comment as a whole? That's probably the market common as a whole. Okay. I would be curious to know about that stretch of Pharaoh. We can I'm sure I'm sure somebody can break that down for you that you want to see if we can narrow it down to this core business district section of Pharaoh. Okay,

we can we can look at that. Um the map that you have up here is uh from our public works department. Um I know that it's very small, but I'm g I'm going to walk through it uh as we go through there. Uh we have some of the speed limit signs are mapped there. The main things I want to point out. Uh those yellow dashes uh that you see are various points where where we would consider putting some type of a rumble strip or some type of texture change. I I hesitate to call it a rumble strip. I think that um that that's going to be

in in staff's opinion too disruptive, but we are trying to figure out what would meet that very very narrow bound of acceptable but not overly abrasive and that was a suggestion that came from one of the residents along that piece of pharaoh park.

So I think mayor I I pointed you to to the program or the pilot effort that we made at Pepper Gettings uh of doing rumble strips. I think you agree with staff that that's too disruptive. Uh we now have our traffic engineering department looking at various thicknesses of thermoplast and seeing if we can achieve some type of an impact there. We do we are concerned that it's still going to be noisier than what it is now. So that's that's a consideration we're trying to work through. Um what I would ask for some input on right now are the locations for whatever we decide on. Where do we put those? How many of those do we put down? U and would would council be comfortable with us using using one location as a a pilot program. We would like to put down an installation at one of these areas, test it, make sure that it achieves the result without being overly disruptive. Um they they run about $3,000 to put down depending on what we end up settling on. It'll cost us more than that to mill it and pull it back up. So, we don't want to run the whole strip of Pharaoh putting them down in every one of those orange locations and then have to adjust. So, I would suggest or ask for you to consider us putting down one set in one area, test it, see what the result is, and then react or cons continue. Any objection to that approach?

Can I ask a question real quick? Yes, sir. Ryan. Um I think rumble strips that just you know $3,000 you think. Um I I know that's the estimate if we were to pull that put down the rumble the rumble strips at Pepper Gettings. That is what it cost us to do that. So it'll be something lesser than that. But it's it's going to be a cost,

right? But you know I I was thinking about this. So, I was u uh looking online, which is where we all go for apparently our information. Um, and I saw some uh that are used in municipalities and used in uh large uh parking lots. Uh they're less about a half an inch in height. Uh they're 42 inches and you can buy four for $300. Now I know you got to put them down. I don't know are they industrial strength, that type of thing. U but I you know I I understand the the noise implication, all of those other things. Uh, but I think there's got to be a middle ground somewhere where we can get people's attention uh without spending a lot of money. Uh, and I I don't know how anybody else on council feels.

That that is the the goal is to get people's attention so that they are aware that texture change alerts them that something different. Um, I'm not looking to have new shock absorbers replaced in everybody's car.

And in a parking lot, you're not doing 25 or 30 miles an hour. And that's the issue. pepperdings. Those are fairly thick little strips with an extra balloon in the middle or whatever that is. And if you're doing 15 over those, you know it. Um, those are not suitable for 25 to 30 m an hour. But we're thinking a single layer of thermoplastic applied three or four times. My suggestion is after the stop light, not before the stoplight, so that you're driving at speed through the stoplight. would give you a enough of a what was that to have an effect without being what is a traditional rumble strip which you sort of have to crawl over in some cases.

We we're trying to find the thickest single layer of thermoplast we can which is probably 125 ms. Again we would like to suggest installing that at one location. We haven't ordered that yet. We don't know how much staff time goes into that yet. I'm just making I'm I'm really more making the point that it's more expensive to pull it up than it is put it down. And that's and I got that and I also think uh just Bill's opinion, but I think a test first. Yeah. In other words, you know, measure twice and then we'll cut once.

I think that's legitimate. Either at the intersection headed west at Farah, I'm sorry, at Valor Memorial Garden. One one side or the other of Valor Memorial Garden would be my suggestion. I'll go back to the suggestion I made and and and my suggestion is that we make the length of Farah Parkway 25 miles an hour. And let me just say why I continue to support that. At one point in time on Ocean Boulevard, we had speed limit 35, 30, 25, 40, right on up through the north end of the city on Ocean Boulevard. and the decision was made to make the length of the boulevard 25 miles an hour. And what that does, it gives a consistent speed all the way through what the speed is required to be. And then people don't change speed, change speed, go up and down, up and down. So, whatever we decide on this particular item right here, I I strongly suggest that we do make the speed limit consistent all the way through Fair Parkway at 25 mph. And I get it. Some people will say, well, at the beginning of Fair Parkway is, you know, and then you get past the business part of Fair Parkway and you got that. Well, here's what's taking place now with all we're doing at at the beginning of Farah Park wave and then you get past the business section and the sports section, there's more uh there's there's far more commercial stuff taking place along with additional residence uh that's been built out there. So I think this is the time and it is very important that we we do consider and actually make the speed consistent all the way through Farah Parkway at 25 mph and then we can talk about this uh along

with that. Uh, do I think Look, we're looking at one, two, three, four, five different Was that right? One, I'm counting the orange thing. Excuse me. One, two, three, four. Four of those trips in in in that section along right there along Grand what I'll call along Grand Park through there. I think that's a little much to some extent for to have that that many strips along there. I think we could narrow that down and even go down further. I don't know what it looks like beyond what we're seeing right here to even even to the bypass or 17 bypass, excuse me. and uh and and just spread that out instead of having that all the way just like right in that particular I think if you you hit one you realize maybe then you do another one uh in that along there especially along in the curve there I think you're you can accomplish what we're we're wanting to do and also reducing that speed at the same time and of course with our law enforcement arm is to uh aggressively enforce that 25 mph speed limit. I go back to what I continue to say and I'll always say if you want to get somebody's attention, how you do that is getting in their pocketbook. And I'm a firm believer in that.

That's my comment. I can support a standard speed 25 miles an hour. I I I can't I'll tell you that right now. I think Farah Parkway is almost two miles long that there are different segments of Farah Parkway. residents concern is the the busy downtown area, the uses on the end are are different than the use in the middle. At one point before the ITAP was developed, the speed limit west of the market common area was actually 45 and it's been lowered to 35 at this point. I think you'll create more

angst and and dissatisfaction by going to a standard 25 mile per hour speed limit than you will concentrating on where the pedestrian traffic is greatest and the demand for safety is greater by lowering the speed limit.

Well, I hear what you're saying, but the experience uh that Mr. ladder was talking about about Ocean Boulevard uh where it was 25 30 35 and then they uh at at one point there an area where it was 35 miles an hour magically it became 25 miles an hour for maybe a half a mile. Uh so people are you know they're trying to adjust their speed uh and and and make decisions that way. I um I hear what you're saying and it to be at the will of council, but I just think a standardized speed would be

Let's look at Kings Highway then. For example, Kings Highway ranges from 50 to 25 miles per hour along its length. And it's based on the activity in that area, the number of intersections, the the pedestrian traffic. So here downtown, the speed limit is 25 miles hour. On the north end of town, it's 50. On the south end of town, it's 45. you I don't think you're recommending making King's Highway 25 miles per hour along its length. No, but I think

for for the very same reasons I would say let's not do that to Pharaoh Parkway. Let's address the residents concerns in the busiest downtown piece and that should have an effect on the on the whole length of the Parkway if we can rein in people's tendencies to speed through that um busy section. Two two things. To me, I have no problem with consistency. One, um I I would go with 25 all the way through myself also. But the second thing, and I'm not sure if you can answer this, the tickets that have been given out lately, were they in a specific area particularly or were they just all over random?

The only thing I'm aware of right now is the 350 number in that in that general area over the course of January. So, we'll we'll narrow down exactly. I mean if there is a you know certain area that was worse than others and you know I I would tell you they they have I I know from personal experience I've seen them all over market common enforcement has been increased. I will say that. Yes.

Yeah. I've about been hit several times down there myself. You know but um yeah I have no problem. I I do think we need consistency because people don't read the signs anyway. I mean, it just kind of is. It's the truth. And you know, you're going down the road and well, I saw 25 back there and well, I may see 25 up here or 30. It just needs to be all the way across the board in my opinion. Brian, do we know of these 300 plus were they actually ticket citations or were they warnings?

I'm working with a little bit of information. I think 320 plus were were written written tickets or something. Written tickets. Okay. Um maybe some warnings in there too, but I mean they were they were and a big part of the component of this uh is that if you look at who's getting the tickets, I think you'll find that a big majority of them are actually residents who live there, you know. So, there's a communication component to this that we might want to try to focus on.

Oh, and I would say candidly for those that live in Market Common and live along that area, um they will be the quickest to learn to slow down. Yeah. But but and that part of the concern is Pharaoh Parkway is a is a connection point between the bypass and Kings and and so you have a lot of other folks going through that area that that it'll it'll take them a little longer to learn. I I just want to make one more comment about the speed limit is I follow up on a comment you made uh mayor that uh complaints about speed being that low. I'll assure you I don't believe it will be the people who live in the market common district area that will be complaining about the speed limit being lowered. It may be people that are using Farah Parkway to go from 17 bypass to 17 business or something like that. Again, I would ask that we consider the different crosssections of Pharaoh Parkway. Um the speed limit on Meyers Avenue is 30 miles an hour. The speed limit on Pampus is 25. Um Pharaoh ranges from 35 to currently 30. You look at Coventry Boulevard, the speed limit is 35 miles per hour on Coventry. It it it strikes me as um destined to create complaints if you artificially lower the speed limit below what the what the cross-section would necessarily support. If you're going to lower Pharaoh Parkway to 25, then you should lower all of the market common to 25 because that's the main drag through. And I I wouldn't recommend doing that at this point.

And and to be to be candid, um staff's ready to do whatever council asks us to do. We we've talked about the subject for a number of times. Um you know, based on based on the numbers, based on the data, you know, we've been operating up until this point. If if At this point, we will we will we will support the will of council and go whichever direction you also choose and and it but it is subjective. I I I will point out that we don't have traffic engineering degrees on this side of the dis. That's what I was going to say. I was going I was going to say and and I would welcome president I don't think we have any on this side. Well, I would welcome um a thoughtful

So, we're guessing

a thoughtful look at it from the from the staff side with some recommendations understanding that the public is not happy with where we are at the moment in that downtown section alone. They aren't complaining about the ends. They are complaining about the downtown section. If you want them to complain about the ends, we can we can make them complain, I suspect. And I would be interested in hearing from public safety in regards to the proposed um places that you have on here in the yellow or the orange. Um does it make sense only to have them in a couple? It seems a lot seems like a lot here that maybe it's as you're coming into that specific area from either direction and not like it doesn't make sense to me where you've got lights back to back that I don't think I mean I'm sure some people can get pretty fast but if they're driving a Toyota like me like they're not going to be able to exceed this speed limit before they get to the next light. Um, and again,

so did you get input from public safety on this as well? This is that map that just went away. Those locations were were just directed by either the mayor or members of council or the community. So, I mean, it's not this is not staff driven. Okay.

I will say, let me let me point out a couple of other things uh that we can come back to. I guess I should have saved uh additional enforcement to the end or rumble strips to the end. Uh we we would strongly recommend from a staff standpoint removing uh removing the crosswalk at mean circle. It's a non-signalized intersection in the middle of that curve. That one has always been uh scary. Uh and we've had a number of near misses there. We would recommend going ahead and pulling that one up. Um to the degree we can shifting uh crosswalks to lighter intersections, especially in the curbs. Obviously, if we're able to achieve slower speeds, that helps. Um, but even even the crosswalk at Iris uh is non-salized and it's it's either going into a curve or coming out of a curve. That that one is also problematic. We're not we're not prepared to suggest, excuse me, removing that one yet, but for for Mean Circle, we would support uh removing that one. Uh we also are are in the process of adjusting the stoplight timing in that core district. Um, you know, the idea or the suggestion was to to adjust the speed or adjust the signal timing to allow those turning onto Pharaoh Parkway to wait less, which by default that means you'll have more turns of the traffic signal, which means you'll have people stopping on Pharaoh more frequently, which will by by in of itself also slow down traffic. We'll reassess once we make that change. We'll reassess, excuse me, uh, any backups or any any unintentional consequences of of changing the speed light or signal timing, but that's also part of the recommended changes. Um, I think that that's all the things I'm I can skip and talk about the traffic study, but I want to finish up on this subject before I shift to that. So, I'll open it back up to any of you all for

get us a more formal recommendation from staff if you would please about the length of Pharaoh Parkway. Um, understanding that the issue at hand from the resident's perspective is the busy event space in the the core market common area. I I'm fairly confident that I the staff's position on the length of Pharaoh Parkway is not is not going to be recommended by staff. But again, that's I'm sorry, say that again.

Converting the speed limit to 25 for the full length of of Pharaoh is is not going to be um incredibly encouraged by staff just for for the points, you know, for the points you made. I I think what I would what I would suggest is um if you all choose to proceed with the traffic study, that can be a conversation for the traffic engineers to take up and consider. Um but again, we hear the voices from the neighborhood as well. So again, we this conversation is not being driven by staff. Uh, so I mean we're we're going to defer to council's wishes. Speed limit, rumble strips, traffic, all of this. Excuse me. We will defer to council ultimately what we implement.

Well, I I hear you, but I mean either So you're saying either do the traffic study, let them tell us what the best recommendation is. I I'm not a I'm a cook. Okay. I can tell you how to make she crab soup.

It's good. you might want to deviate a little bit and put some other kind of wine cherry in it or something. But, you know, Mr. Lauder is the only one who's been in law enforcement, so I value his opinion. But I understand that 25 the whole way would be I think that would be I just think that'd be tough. But I want to hear something from those guys back there in blue. All right. Is that black? I can't tell. It's black. I'm I'm color blind sometimes. But anyway, I'm just saying I

We We can We can We can provide you a a formal recommendation or or input from staff, including public works and law enforcement. I I' I'd even like to hear that before we talk about going to spendund and or however many thousand dollars on a traffic study. Okay. And we can do that. Uh I will switch to the traffic study and talk about that just very briefly.

Okay. Um we we brought to you a traffic study proposal from Stantech last year. Uh we decided not to move ahead with that. We had them update uh the proposal went from around 109 to $122,000 for the for the basic traffic study. It does include most if not all of the major intersections and even some of the minor intersections around campus, excuse me, Howard, etc. Um, one of the things we continue to hear when we talk about the traffic study is when we do the traffic count in January, that doesn't comp contemplate the spring tourism season. The traffic engineers will tell you they they have a way of analyzing the data to look at DOT captures traffic counts all over the city all the time. So, I mean, we're we're constantly gathering traffic count numbers all over the city. What what the traffic engineers will do was they will take that traffic count in February and compare it to the DOT traffic counts in February. They will then extrapolate out when the when the DOT traffic counts in July. They will extrapolate that difference to to come up with a number. I say that to say one of the things we've asked Stantech to consider is basically coming back and providing a spot check confirmation in the busy season to say yes, what we thought the traffic count was has been verified by an actual count. So that's one add-on. Uh the second add-on and the thing that we continue to hear is once Sybrook is built out on the the far side of Coventry, that's going to have a dramatic impact coming down Coventry and Pharaoh. So, we've also asked Stantech to provide um some assessments and recommendations based on once Sabbrook is fully built out, what impact that will has, what that what impact that will have. Um those two add-ons add about $39,000 to the contract. So,

you're at about $160,000 to do the traffic study and both of those extra pieces. Um so, like some general direction from you, Councilman Chestnut, I hear you. We will pro we will provide council feedback from from the police department and from public works before we engage in the traffic study. But if we still want to head down the road of the traffic study, we would just like some feedback from council sooner rather than later. Does the term traffic study include traffic calming recommendations?

Yes, sir. I think one of the one of the concerns that staff continues to have is once the traffic engineers make us aware of an issue or or make us aware that there's not an issue, there's a certain legal responsibility that we have or or a certain liability that we have to make sure we listen to the professionals that we pay to give us their perspective. Uh and so I think once we know, we know. And then what's the what geographic area are we contemplating for the traffic study? I believe it's most all of the major roadways within the market common.

It's a good chunk of market common including Coventry Pharaoh inside some of the neighborhoods. I mean it it's a very comprehensive list. One thing I liked about the traffic study proposal is that they also look at pedestrian counts, bicycle counts, etc. So, if we're contemplating changing some of those crosswalks and those types of things, I think that's that was one thing I thought additional in this that was very good. And that's that's one of the things we had a a lengthy conversation with the consultant about is their ability to use essentially traffic cam footage and AI to anticipate near misses. Essentially that they're able to identify a pedestrian from somebody riding a bicycle from somebody in a golf cart and and identify those potential miss points near misses. And so that would be highlighted in this also

turnaround time to Janet. Do you remember? I think it's six. Yeah, six to eight months is the the full length. Wow. It's not a quick process. Comprehensive. It's very detailed.

What are your thoughts about a traffic study at that price point? I hear um what Dr. Connor said about, you know, it's not just a traffic study. It encompasses a lot of different things, including safety for pedestrians, people on bicycles, all of those types of things. Um relying on uh as you said, you said, we're not traffic engineers. We don't do this. Uh so we need to rely on professionals. Uh and what always goes in my head is uh if if something should happen and liability arises, we need to have something to fall back on to show that we made a best faith effort. Uh what I don't know is what other traffic engineering firms have we consulted? Uh did we go out and get three bids, five bids, you know? Uh How did how did all this come about?

Not in this instance. We have Stantech. We we retain Stantech on contract with us and that would that is our default professional service contract for for this type of work. Okay. Um is there any problem even though I mean we've retained them? Uh well let me ask you this. What what is the retainer? How does that work? I'm not sure of the details of that kind. Okay. And and that's fine. It it also goes through the procurement process. No, no, I understand that. I understand that. Uh

but I'm also wondering uh do we need to take a little bit of time to look and see if there's somebody else out there that can perform the same function uh at a more competitive price? I mean, if they're under contract anyway and we're paying for it anyway, uh you know, that's one thing. But if we have to add on to that, maybe we can find a a more uh inexpensive way to go. And maybe not. It's just a it's a question that I think we should look at.

So, several answers, several questions in there that I'll try to answer. Number one, um we have a master agreement with Stantech. So, they are our go-to. Um we don't we don't necessarily pay them a monthly retainer. It's just as we need services that fall into their scope of work that does go through procurement. Um we will engage them. They will give us a scope of work or we give them a scope of work. They provide us a proposal. We execute that proposal. Mechanically is how that works. Uh yes, there are other traffic engineering firms that we can uh we can we can seek out. I I would I would tell you Stantech is probably the leader in that field. Um but but there are certainly others. um they have a a scope and scale that probably allows us access to more bells and whistles when it comes to the AI pedestrian interaction that I'm not sure you would get with some smaller firms, but we can certainly get additional proposals. Um again, we we understood the certain urgency here. So that's we went with Stantech and had them propose it. But

they're a well-known name. Oh, yes. In that business, so I'm not opposed to that necessarily. I I when we say traffic study though, I want folks to understand that we do have a speeding problem on Pharaoh. Um particularly in this section that is under consideration at this point. We've had a one motorcycle fatality, maybe two, I'm not clear on that, but at least one motorcycle fatality on Pharaoh in this stretch due to I think it was speeding. Um, I drive that piece with some frequency, live at the market common, am aware of the the neighbors concerns that crossing Pharaoh Parkway is a difficult thing that where the speed limit is now 30, people do 45 and 50 miles per hour and that's not acceptable.

I would agree with that. What I'm hearing from you all is is you're okay testing a particular location. So, we'll come back to you with a specific location to test and a a setup to test. We will get some feedback from public safety and from public works on the idea of of converting all of Pharaoh to 25 versus having it based on the the road the road makeup. I guess um Stantech was not able to come today. We can have them come back and present to you a more formal presentation for the scope of work. We can go back out and look for additional proposals. We have some direction on that.

Do we have the 160 in the budget somewhere? Yes. Okay. I mean my inclination would be that a that's a significant amount of money to spend just for this purpose, but the community has asked for it. Uh it is something that will um provide some answers to the question about how do we calm traffic and then the sooner we can get started the sooner we'll have the answers. I mean I I'd say let's do it. When's the LA Have we ever had a traffic study done for that portion? I we've been talking about this for several years actually.

We've we've done a number of things. U we I know we have gathered the digital feedback data and we've we've tried to analyze inhouse uh the data that we collect. We've done that over the period we we've had conversations with Stantech and with Thomas and Hutton over the years when when different developments have been proposed but but this is a more comprehensive look than what we have done so far. Gotcha. Any thoughts?

Proceed with looking at one particular location as our test for these thermoplastic strips. Um, and then staff is going to being everybody. going to come back to us. And the concept of going from 25 miles an hour all the way to not doing that and why and at the same time start the process of a traffic engineering study that could take five to six, seven months or eight. Yes, sir.

And I I I would ask us to hold off on any changes in speed limit until if we decided we're going to have this traffic study to allow that to happen before we start making decisions about changing speed limit there.

A a year ago, literally, the residents at the market common held a neighborhood watch meeting and one of the requests at that point was for a 25 mph speed limit. Four months later, the city came back and said, "We'll do 30." And that's where we are today with the 30. The residents are not happy with 30. They would still prefer the 25. My thought process is that we haven't achieved 30 yet. I'm not convinced we can achieve 25 under the current circumstances. Let's see if we can get to 30 first and then adjust downwards as needed. So, I'm I'm with you. It's not changed the speed limit at the moment, but recognizing that we haven't met the neighbors expectations so far.

Again, staff will defer to council and we will go in whichever direction you point. Thank you. Just out of curiosity, I I see some market common residents in the area. Are there any who live on this stretch of Pharaoh Parkway who are here today? Okay, thank you. We'll move on. Mayor, I want just one observation too as we're doing this uh while Pharaoh Parkway and Market Common uh has has been in front of this body and has been talked about for at least two years that I'm aware of uh if not more. Uh we also have similar issues in other parts of the city and those residents are going to expect the same service.

I I fully agree and they deserve the same services. There are what uh 67 69th those areas have have expressed speeding concern 79th. Yeah. Yes. The Marina Parkway the entire the entire length of it. So um we need to be conscious that we're a growing community that we need to do what we can to call people's attention to the posted speed limits and then to enforce those posted speed limits ourselves. So yes. So yes to the traffic study I believe.

Okay. Moving into the budget side of life asked. Um mayor, are you saying go ahead and go forward with it or are we going to get the recommendations? No, I was saying go ahead and go forward with it. I think we kind of putting the cart before the horse if we That's just me now. You want formal estimates from other companies? No, I I want to hear I thought Brian was going to go back and give recommendations or come back with something from staff more. I think we're talking about apples and oranges. Go ahead. Okay. Not necessarily apples and oranges. We can turn around staff comments very quickly.

Okay. I anticipate based on our internal conversations I I think I can anticipate what the staff comments are going to be. Um but again ultimately at the end of the day the traffic engineer is um that this is their wheelhouse and I I would imagine between public safety and even public works they will our internal folks are still going to defer uh to a traffic engineer. Um you know the the the conversation internally generally is traffic engineer designed the roads and set the speed limits or made recommendation speed limits at the outset of the market common. So so the speed limits that are there today are based on traffic engineers opinion. Obviously it's it's old. It doesn't necessarily consider some of the changes that have happened in that area. So it's good to update it. But we can still we can we can do both things. we can provide you some recommendations and we can begin the process of the traffic study. If you hear the recommendations from staff and you decide you don't want to go the traffic study route, we we will make sure there's an out um that we can we can can take. There's an exit ramp we can take. I guess what I I guess what I was kind of just looking for if you guys come back with some recommendation. Is there some things we can do right now to to sort of calm things down

if you know because you're saying that the traffic study is going to take about eight months, right? So, I mean that's we've been trying some of those things and the the residents have now expressed mixed opinions on what they had originally suggested.

Yes. So, so the the larger speed limit signs, we're already going to do that. The the all tweaking the the traffic light signals, we're already going to do that. Um, we can we can have our trial run at um some texture change. I'm not going to call it anything except a texture change at this point. We can go ahead and proceed down that path and have have a test of that. Um, you know, I think beyond that, staff would like some very clear direction from council on anything other than those things and greater speed limit enforcement. Yes. Yeah. Well, yes, we're already doing that, too. Brian, when was that last traffic study done for Farah Parkway?

I I I couldn't tell you. It's been Well, that I mean, there was a traffic study done when the market walk development was being considered right at Phyllis and Pharaoh, right? But that was a very narrow scope. um a comprehensive a comprehensive holistic look at market comment. I don't know that I don't know that has been done. Again, I would I would be remiss if I didn't say this and and somebody surprised they haven't already thrown something at me. That's why Janet's coming up. Janet has something to say. Um

getting ready to throw something at you. the the we we continue to go back to the original design of those roads uh and the original densities planned for the market common. The original densities planned for market common is a significant factor above what is actually there today. There were I mean there were originally anticipated thousands and thousands and thousands of of units in market common that you know we shifted from a or the developer shifted from a a focus on multif family apartments to single family. So with that we lost a lot of density which means the roads were designed to carry significantly more cars than it carries today. And so we we continued to to point to that and say the original traffic study contemplated lots more people on the road and you know and that's that's a big driving consideration for us.

Yeah. But on a side note that's when Jack Walker was involved in a lot of that. He believed if you didn't ride a bicycle or walk and you didn't need to go. Well, but to Mike's point, Mike Chestnut's point, let's bring a staff recommendation back at the next meeting. Okay, we can do that. And then we'll make a decision at that point about a more expensive traffic study. That's fine. Let's do Let's do that. Let's do that. Thank you. Yeah.

2021 was the last time we did some type of study in that area, but that was mainly on the traffic signals, which is how we got to the traffic signal timing that we have now. Okay. Thank you. Um, I've asked Ross Morgan and Hayward Gullage to come chat a little bit about sports tourism field rental fees as a beginning point for our budget discussion here. Um, this is Ross Morgan. Nice to see you, Ross. Yes, please. Uh, as you saw, I think recently, we did increase our field rental fees in last year's budget. Our field rental fees are more than double what North Myrtle Beach's field rental fee fees are. and just let Ross talk a little bit about what his soccer program offers and how that significant 130% increase in our own fees has affected the sports tourism world.

Yes. Uh thank you. My name is Ross Morgan. I'm a resident of Myrtle Beach. Um I work with an organization called Coast uh FA. We're a 501c3 nonprofit soccer program. In the winter months of January and February, we rent the turf fields at marketcom and the baseball fields. We've been doing it roughly since about 2012 for six weeks doing January and February renting the seven fields. Started at $5,000 rental increased over the years to 7,000. Last year with the new the fields being resurfaced, we actually only used five fields for $7,500. This year we're at five fields again, but it's $16,000. And so that was quite a sticker shock to us. Um we have quite a significant scholarship program within our club um for players and families that ranged almost up to somewhere in the neighbor of $100,000. So So we're doubling our rental over a six week period in January and February obviously is a is significant to us. So, we were asking for consideration on that.

And talk a little bit about what North Myrtle Beach charges for field rentals. Um, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, I think for our tournaments up there, it's in the neighborhood of four to 5,000. Um, I think it's increased because they've increased their number of fields. I think it's in the 7,000 neighborhood, but they have 13 fields up there. So, it's it's more more than double the difference between Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach at this point. Correct. We actually rent the fields um in April as well. We run a tournament the last two weekends in April and so we use the facility again. It's still considered the shoulder month and I think the rental for that is around $20,000 for those two weekends here or there. Here in Myrtle Beach. Yes. Okay.

So we rent in April for our tournament and then again in January and February. Are we reaching the point of diminishing returns as the field rental rates go up? Well, it was a shock to go double and so yes, it gets to a point where it will be it will be a negative to us. We probably it would be a struggle to to do that if it continues to rise at this pace. And so would you then uh for lack of a better description move your program to another location outside of the city of Myrtle Beach?

We would probably have to I'd hate I'd hate to do that because it's wonderful facility and it's it's astroturf as well. So it's but money is money. Money is money. Yeah. And at some point there's going to be a point where we just simply cannot do it. So does does that mean that there would the the program participation would decline or halt? Well, we would have the the it would significantly affect our ability to scholarship people which in turn would probably reduce things or we would have to increase revenue in certain areas whether it be for the registration for the tournaments that will decrease things eventually. It's going to hurt us. And the scholarship is for local youth.

All local children.

All local youth. Okay. I wasn't involved in last year's budget discussion, so wasn't aware that the fees had increased. Um, I can't can't speak to that, but it wanted you to be aware of the disparity between our fees and North Myrtle Beach's fees for basically the same space. And we had a last year's budget discussion, we did uh cover uh what was presented as the need to raise the fees because we were spending a lot of money down there resurfacing fields, that type of thing. Uh and that's not inexpensive. And I understand, I mean, North Myrtle Beach is just, you know, coming out of the head of Zeus. Uh I don't know how many more fields, uh be they for soccer, baseball, whatever it might be, but than we have. Uh and and so I can also um the chamber kind of talked about it today in terms of hotel rooms. Right.

Right. Uh when you have a lot of excess hotel rooms that maybe one of the first things you do is say, "Wait a minute, we got to fill it up, so I'm going to lower my price." And I don't know that that's not what is happening with North Myrtle Beach. Uh having said that though, um and just on a personal note, I would hate to see this program have to move. Uh, and so I'd like to see, you know, re-examine what we're charging for our fields. And maybe at certain times of the year, you know, the winter months, maybe we shouldn't be pre, you know, charging premium fees. Uh, but just look at it from that viewpoint. But I'd hate to see the programs move.

Well, I think we also need to make sure we're comparing apples and apples and apples. And well, that's why I said that, you know, I mean, what is I mean, what services are North Myrtle Beach offering and what services we're offering are the fields the same or

um the way I look at it the the I isolate those two things in different compartments. So, we rent the fields in April in Myrtle Beach and we rent simultaneously in North Myrtle Beach and that's during our tournament period. It's April, so it's still, you know, the shoulder season, but our consideration was for the winter months of January and February, very little uses is is being used. Those fields are not really being used. And so with the extreme increase in the in the rate, that that area was the problem for us was the January and February more so than the April.

I tell you what might be an idea to look at. Let's take a take a look at what the uh our fields have done over the past let's say 24 25 uh maybe even 23. Are we are we increasing or are we decreasing uh the usage of the field by due to the rate increase have basically saying uh has the rate increase cost us to lose or gain or or so that's something I'd be interested in seeing. Tim Yuber is here in the audience. Tim, do you want to speak to any of this?

You don't have to. He whispered, "No, Ross."

The thing the thing about it is North Beach has uh built so many fields. Um and I mean that's the direction they're going. So the fields that we currently have and I don't think we have any slated to be built anymore, right? Just maintained. Does that sound about right? Um, we don't want to, um, cut oursel off either and not be competitive. Um, I mean, we're gonna have to do some type of degree of balance here and, uh, anyway, I but I think we should look at the at the fee schedule and at the certain times of the year and stuff like that also revisit that. What I was just going to mention is we the city gives has given you $15,000 in accommodations tax money in the past several years.

Correct. And council will take up accommodations tax next year or excuse me next week at the next meeting as well. How much do you get from North Myrtle Beach? That number I don't have on me. I believe it's 10,000. And uh even for the players who use the North Myrtle Beach fields, you think they largely stay in Myrtle Beach at the at the accommodations when we run a tournament. Yeah. Significant portion of the um out of town people will use City Myrtle Beach Hotel. And tell you the truth, most of the ones that go to the fields in North Myrtle Beach actually stay in Myrtle Beach also because they don't have accommodations up there,

hotel rooms and stuff like that. Good morning. Um to Councilman Mccclure's point, we do look at and we historically have seasonality and things like that. So, and then I think from an educational standpoint, what the sports tourism team does with our rates, they're multiple buckets. So when we're talking about a sports tourism event, there is a separate rate structure for those type of events which would be the April um uses that Ross mentioned. We also have the bucket which is referred to as the community use and the process we've gone through the last couple of years is to raise the floor of the community use. It's still not on par with a significant sports tourism event. It's less. Um, and in essence, the change to the ordinance for FY25 was the elimination of an hourly rate and adopting for community use a minimum half day rate. So what that did for an effective hourly rate was that rate changed from an effective rate of $30 an hour to $37.50 an hour. Um what we've seen a result of that is it's kind of served as a catalyst for organizations like Coast FA and others to look at their programming structure and either add more youth to a field or expand where historically they may have

done a two-hour program to a three-hour program. Um, I say that to say now we're able to accommodate overall more organizations and more kids on the fields in January as a result of this. Um, Coast FA is part of this is also we have all seven fields available this year with the turf replacement complete, but we actually have two groups using styers in January and February this year where in the past we've had one and that that was an important consideration I think going through the process the last couple years as well. I don't know if that muddied it or clarified it, but

do when we set rates, do we look at what other facilities charge? What's Rock Hill charge? For example, they've got a big sports tourism. It's a consideration. Every community is unique. Every community's relationship with baseball groups, soccer groups is unique. Um here on the Grand Strand, um again, commend the use of turf here. That's a differentiator. So, that's not really a comp in a lot of really any other market. What effect or feedback have you seen or heard regarding the rate increase that just took effect last fall?

Um, by and large, nothing we didn't anticipate. I mean, anytime anytime fees go up, I wasn't this is the first I'm hearing the specific amount for Coast. I'd have to dig into the the invoice a little bit more on that to better understand it. But my initial sense is it probably has to do with definitely there was an increase where I coast in the past I believe I want to say maybe rented for two hours an evening per field and now that is that has doubled. If you want to look at just the amount of time on per field that is absolutely true the amount of time has doubled. So we don't mean to put words in your mouth or your mouth, but we're forcing them to use more time at a higher rate. In essence, yes. Um it was and again that the conversation with that was this is sustainability. um to turn the lights on, the initial search to turn lights on just for two hours versus spreading it out, charging for four, scheduling staff, etc., etc. So, that all factored into the sustainability of the operation down there at Styer specifically.

I I just and that's their point is the diminishing returns. As the rate goes up, the the participation potentially can go down. So, that could impact. I couldn't speak to coast, but overall we've seen the number of kids using the facility go up this winter. Anything else, gentlemen? Any council? Any other questions? Just wanted you to be aware of the disparity rates between Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach for the same basic space. So, what's our takeaway? What are we going to do?

Well, think about it. Um, you can you can do anything. You can do nothing. You can um ask for more information from the sports tourism side of life. You can ask to revisit the rates in this coming year's budget. Uh, you know, sports tourism doesn't technically pay for itself, but then neither does the police department, the recreation department. Um, most of the city doesn't technically pay for itself at the end of the day. Thank you. Thanks, guys.

Michelle and Marlo, did you have something specific planned to kick off this budget discussion or are we on our own? No, I'll make this brief, but I thought that it would be good for you to open your budget discussion with an idea of where we are right now. And uh you know, really Matt and Stuart set it up perfectly for us. They are talking about Q325. Well, for us that would actually be Q2 26. So, I've actually taken it on through December of this year, and I want to show you exactly where we are at this point. And I know some folks might look at it as a as a bad picture, but I think we've got a fairly good story to tell. I'm going to start with our general fund right now. Um, the revenues in the general fund are really coming in as expected. I have a nice little box up there that tells you what makes up the major revenues for the general fund. That is a property tax, business license, tourism transfers, and other services. We've talked about this a number of times. And everything we see here is is coming in coming in as expected. This is your property tax, your business license, and your other sources. Now, the tourism transfers. I want to look at at what's been happening with our hospitality fee, our hospitality tax a tax local and state and the tourism development fee. If you look on this chart and you see to the left the yellow blocks, those are showing you where the precoid high collections for those revenue sources are. The diamonds you see there were the COVID highs. you know, the the highest point we reached while we were coming

through the COVID recovery. And then the X's to the right were where we ended FY25. Now, don't worry about the the steep slope to the right. That's where we are 26. We're only halfway through. So, you know, we've got a ways to go. My point being, though, that if you look where we ended 25, it's still well above your pre-COVID peak. And it's not terribly far off from your COVID highs. Yes, it is going down. Yes, we are seeing these decreases, but I really look at that more as a as a normalization. It's not going to go all the way back down. Prices have increased. Things have changed at least in the the drivers of the cost on which we earn this tax. The question is going to be what happens for the rest of this year. So, I've looked at the budget for 26 and compared it to what our actuals were at 25. And in reality, our budget for FY26 is 3.3 billion higher than what we actually collected in 25. And I don't expect to end the year well above what we were in 25. Not from what I've seen. Not unless we see some great increases here for December coming up, the spring, good summer. January hasn't been great with freezing wind weekends and and here now this the snow. So, we know we're going to hit a bump here. Let's see what happens for Easter and then May. But if we do not recover, if we do end the year, let's just say at $3.3 million that we already see being down.

I've got here what it could do to your fund balances on those funds. You could see that we could see some further reduction in the fund balance if we continue to spend the funds as budgeted. Now, I'll tell you these fund balances are still strong in your local accommodations tax, hospitality fee, and hospitality tax. You don't see any impact on your state accommodations tax or your tourism development fee because those funds typically end the year at a zero balance anyway. However, you will see that impact carry over into your general fund. Why? because the balance of the revenues from those funds actually goes to the general fund TDF. It's been mentioned earlier today and I talked to you at retreat that there was actually a $1.3 million deficit between tourism development fee collections and the credits that were provided to our taxpayers. However, we balanced the budget without that. We managed to make it through the year. If the tourism development fee does not pick up, we could have an additional deficit of $1.6 million. I have gotten

top of the 1.2. Correct. And that would be one that would really be felt in the general fund. I've looked at the not on top of it be instead of 1.2, it's 1.6 or is it 3.8? It was actually a 1.2 two already with our estimates for 26. However, we accounted for that so that there will not be any correct negative impact on the fund balance. The deficit yes is 1.2 1.3 on 1.6. However, your feel the 1.6 in the general fund. 1.2 is growing to 1.6. Okay. It's not 1.2 plus 1.6. 1.2 plus 1.6. You are saying that.

Yes, I am saying that. Okay. Yes.

Okay. That's unless we get more TDF in because I've already begun to see the tax credit numbers for this year. And we are at this point in the year, we've given out nearly $100,000 more in tax credit than we had the prior year at this time. I've got the the detail of the general fund balances here. I'm not going to go into all that with you, but even with that impact, we are still going to be at around 30% unassigned fund balance. It'll still be healthy, but it could be better. Uh tax increment funds. I think I wanted to take a minute to talk a little bit about the the tiffs. We have the uh air base tiff and we have the oceanfront tiff. with the oceanfront tiff. I've got here a detail from 2018 to 25. I wanted to explain a little bit how tax increment fund works. I know that a lot of you have been here and have heard this before. There are some new folks that that don't necessarily understand how tiffs work. So with the downtown oceanfront tiff, the district is created and all incremental revenues that are earned in that tiff are set aside to pay for the improvements in that district. When we issued the first debt, I think it was back in 2009 10 for the boardwalk, the tax increment district didn't quite have enough money to pay for that immediately, but it began to. You'll see in 2018 2019 we were covering the debt service. So move forward to the expansion of the tiff to include more of the downtown and the addition of the

debt to the acquire the property on the east side of Kings and to do some of the improvements and the infrastructure. Now, what I want to show you is if you look at the top rows here, let's say for the budget for FY26, let's start there. We anticipate getting 2.6 million or more in property tax revenue to fund the debt. The actual tax incre increment debt for that district is going to be 2 point or 3.2 million to service that debt. That's the principal and interest it's going to cost us. Now, there's additional debt that we're paying for with we will eventually pay for with this. Now, that is the infrastructure, the streetscape, the roadways, the work that you're seeing done in the in the district right now. We issued limited obligation hospitality bonds for some of that. So, I wanted you to see the debt service for both the TIFF bonds and the limited obligation bonds total $6.2 million. At this point, we're we're collecting like 2.6 million. So, what we're actually having to pay out, what's actually being um how it's being supplemented for this year will be $3.6 billion. Now the revenue that we have for this fund because of the way the bonds are issued because it is a tiff district because much of the money is proveso funds you cannot take that money and spend it anywhere else. It's not available to be allocated to another area in the city. The only thing that would be available to be allocated to other areas in the city really would

be that $3 million in hospitality that we have dedicated as a gap payment. Now as we move forward and that tax property tax grows as there is incremental growth in the district that will shrink and eventually much like you'll see with market common next the tip district should pay for itself. It is paying you know that that is the share that it collects to pay for itself. With market common, we had to supplement that revenue in the beginning too with some other funding source until the collections the tax collections grew enough to cover the debt service. That's pretty common in a tiff district. That's why they're set up the way that they are. Now, I do have up here that the utility bonds we issued. That's additional investment. But the water and sewer projects, those were replacing utilities that were originally put in the ground in the 1920s and 30s. they were going to need to be replaced anyway. And the storm water infrastructure again needed to be put in place. Does anyone have any questions so far on this one? I just wanted to make clear that that we're not out here spending a lot of general purpose funds that could be used elsewhere. and allocated to other areas in the city to do our downtown redevelopment. Now for the market common, yet another tax increment financing district. This one though is is really nearing the end. It's been one of our more successful and I hope to see that that happen in our

other areas. But right now we are collecting for for 26 we expect to collect between 17 $18 million in property tax revenue. The debt service on that is less than $3 million at this point. The balance on that debt service is almost 27 million. That will be callable or we can actually pay it off in October of this year. However, when we had the mediation agreement with Ory County School District and Ory County Schools, we agreed to finish up $28.5 million worth of projects in the air base and then hopefully dissolve the district in 2028. We will be able to do that. Um, we've got 26.7 million in debt outstanding. There are 13.5 million in projects still outstanding. the the funding available estimated at FY26 is only about 38.8 million and we're going to need 40 million. So, we're getting very close and as long as we move those projects along, we will be able to close that out in 2028. Your enterprise funds, um enterprise funds are performing well. They're performing as expected this time of year. No real surprises. Uh we are going to have to look at the water and sewer uh rates for FY27. We've got our um consultant confluence working on that right now. the as you all know the cost of infrastructure is just insane with the water and sewer projects between the steel between the concrete the it's tripled almost you know quadrupled at times in certain components but as someone said they're not the sexy projects but they're the necessary projects I'll add just one last little note um

our health insurance fund self insurance fund and our RH at this point are all doing well we think we the RH um catchup funded by next year. So, we're in a very good place with those. It appears at least through December that the increases that we implemented on health insurance have us on the right track and holding our own right now. Weird question on the RH. We're no longer offering that as a choice for our employees. We'll get you a chair. Can we can we go back to that or is that completely out of the question?

I don't think it's completely out of the question. It's it's just a matter of you know what we want to fund and would it be you know would you want to retroactively implement that back to when it was originally stopped or would it be a new benefit that you would you know want to put in place that would make that would make a lot of the difference. I and haven't had this conversation with anybody here, just was curious based on the feedback from Conway's recent actions and feedback from our own staff. It's a nice benefit as somebody who has the ability to take advantage of it. It's a nice benefit, but it's not something we're currently offering.

Correct. If council would like for us to look into that, it it'll it'll take a little work. We might even have to work with our actuary. I would just like direction if you want us to look at it. I'll I got two shaking heads here. What about that side of the line? So, and for those who don't know, the RHA is the retirement health reserve account. Is that correct? Health reserve account. Um for employees who retired after 20 years of service, the city put a fund of $100,000 available to them for medical expenses in retirement. or if you served 15 years, you could have a fund of 15, sorry, $50,000 available for health expenses afterwards. Uh we discontinued that because it's a it's a it's a rich benefit. It's an expensive benefit to provide and yet it is one of those things that makes you realize how valuable working for the city of Myrtle Beach can be to you as a servant of the public here.

Right. We recognized that there was no way that we can continue to fully fund health insurance for an employee at retirement, particularly on a plan as rich as ours as we are self-insured. Therefore, any of those larger losses and claims, you know, affect the bottom line for us. The um the alternative was to set up these health insurance reserve accounts so that folks would have something to cover insurance between retirement and and Medicare age. I I don't have an a strong opinion one way or the other. It would be interesting to see if it's feasible. If it's not feasible, I understand that, too. So, anything else?

Let's see if it's feasible just to take a look at it. Doesn't mean we're going to do it. Okay. So, we provided that with hopes that it would um spur some conversation. We really would like some direction from from you before we really before I get in there and really start putting these numbers together. I ask you please provide your direction now so that we can make sure that this budget truly reflects council's wishes and priorities for the next year

and and we've talked about some things to to include and I assume assume you're working on some of those maybe. Um, are there things individual council members would like to see included in the budget discussion? This is the this is one of the opportunities you have or certainly the earliest opportunity you've got right now to say I would like to see this considered in the budget. Mayor, I'd ask um earlier Brian um in the year we were last year we were talking about um housing rehab program. I really want to I think we're I I think we need to somehow resurrect that program. Um and I missed that. Resurrect which program? Housing rehab program?

Housing rehab. Okay. I don't remember the number of houses we had, you know, went through before. I want to think there was 20 or 30. And somehow we got away from that program. Nobody was at actually running it in the past few years. Am I right? and we started moving those funds to do other things with it and not housing rehab.

We can focus on that. I think you know internal conversations around that program couple of limiting factors. One of which Michelle mentioned rising cost of of any type of any construction thing right now. Uh it has been a challenge. Uh what we found in the last couple is um we get into what seems to be a very small minor renovation and it turns into something else. It ends up using all of the money allocated on a given year. Um the constraints of that system are also have been a challenge. Owner occupied versus non-owner occupied and looking at the folks that need the work the most um and getting them to express interest in the program. So there's lots of things to that. We've had conversations, Kevin Weights and I have had conversations with with different partnering organizations that we may be able to leverage organizational bandwidth, if you will, um to to do to do more with that program or to do more in that space. But it is problematic in terms of qualifying for the program. It's problematic because of the cost of the renovations. Um, so we can certainly include that in in budget request and we can figure out from a staff level what the best way is to utilize what money we have.

I'd like to see is included in somehow work towards that.

I have something that you would think might be small, but I think it's actually pretty big here in the number of beach accesses that we have. Um, I think we need to do a refresh of our beach access areas. Um, including like getting rid of rail railway ties. Um, those seem to be especially if you have a low seat seated car, it's very difficult to navigate. Um, and some need some resurfacing. So, I think maybe starting on the south end and working our way up. Um, I think they're utilized heavily by residents and our visitors and they just some of them have a lot to um they need some some help.

We do the dune crossovers on a regular basis, doing five or six or seven dune crossovers every year. But you're talking about the paved parking areas. I say paved because they're not. they are in slag I think it's slag and and it's also pvious to allow for storm water to drain through so that we don't have to fine pipe storm water somewhere or another but I fully hear the cross tie thing as somebody who drives a low car too

and I think looking into thinking of the beach access and um some conversations around um you know having at least one area that we could have a test run at some real accessible um beach chairs. I know I never got my father never got down to the beach in his last years because we couldn't get him down there. And so looking at the possibility of that. I know that that is, you know, presents a lot of challenges, but I think we've heard from people over multiple years um how important it would be to have a place in Myrtle Beach that is really accessible to the ocean.

And Dr. Connor, you're talking about the mobile wheelchairs for lack of a better description, a mat, big wheel, right? Yeah. Which Yeah. has been brought up. I know the the beach advisory committee has some opinions about that, but I I think they're old opinions.

Had a chance yesterday to speak with Luke from the adaptive SER project on two subjects, well, three subjects technically, but two that related to what you're talking about. One of those is he has 700 feet of beach matting, that roll out mat that he is willing to give to the city of Myrtle Beach. At this point, we have half a dozen, seven, eight fully ADA accessible beach accesses that have the properly sloped ramp all the way down to the beach. I would suggest that we try putting that matting at those fully ADA compliant ramps. According to Luke, the state doesn't let you extend it to the water. you extend it, you know, to the edge of the dunes basically, and that gets people onto the primary beach. Um, he says that it needs to be maintained every week or so, every week or two weeks just to be free of sand. And we have a full-time beach supervisor who could add that, I think, to their descript their their job duties. Um, but that's a a test run that we could try at those half a dozen fully accessible ramps, beach access points if council is so inclined. And

he's talking about if you're just taking the mats to the the dune threshold, for lack of a better description. So the maintenance there is is basically to make sure that they're just not encumbered with a lot of sand on top. Yeah, mother nature moves sand around. Just make sure that the that the mat still functions as a mat instead of a sand pit. We we do a lot every morning of beach cleanup. And by the way, we do a heck of a good job doing that, but is that something that we could make part of those duties if you do it uh just to

I'll defer to staff. Pro I would say probably not. Most of the beach cleanup they're doing is is motorized. It's mechanized. They've got a a beach. I just thought if if you're going to have three, four, five, maybe a half a dozen areas, that's not a lot of areas to maintain. It's not. And that's why I'm thinking the beach supervisor can check on it weekly.

I will say this about that bill. Not trying to take away anything there, but if you take a look at some of the photographs that are taken by our beach cleanup personnel on a regular basis, especially in the in the and I'll call in the season and even even this time of year. I mean, it is absolutely amazing what their challenges are.

I agree with you. Every day they go out there at I think it's around 4 in the morning, maybe 3:00 in the morning. And and I'm not talking about one load. I'm talking about multiple loads of stuff that they pick up off that beach. And and uh I don't know. I'm I'm not a big person on adding something to somebody's already job that they're just about overloaded with to start with. So I'm I'm not opposed to that by any means, but some other direction.

Yeah. I I don't know that the the current cleanup crew has the ability to add that to their mix. I would I would say that they're the trash can picker upper, the recycling can picker uper, it's a little vehicle that picks it up and throws it over its shoulder. Um, they don't need to get out of the vehicle to dust off a a beach bat, I don't think. Go ahead.

My boss always says when I asked, I asked for and it cost when I asked and I don't disagree with that. But let me say this, um, two couple of things. I I've uh in my neighborhood there the one-armed bandit truck with the uh it picks up the trash can. It seems to be working very well. Uh I don't know how it's working out through the rest of the city, but I understand we only have one of those right now. Is that correct?

Have we had enough time to look at that to see if we need to uh add an additional add additional trucks? because in in in what I've seen, especially where I work, one person operates that truck and there's no getting off and on the truck and and uh and it works both sides of the street if I understand. Uh that's just something we I would like to take a look at. The the other thing uh and I hear this and it has to do with and I'm I'm not throwing anybody under the bus here. I'm just saying I believe there's areas that we need additional manpower in or or personnel. Let me put it that way. Uh uh in permits, building permits. Uh it's I I just hear that there's a kind of a bog down getting permits because of the amount of permits that are coming in. It may be what we need there too is additional personnel to help in there. uh construction services with inspections and stuff like that or do we have the staff we need to keep up with the with the amount of construction that's being done? I mean, some of the frustration may be we may be creating that frustration. I don't know, but it just seems like to me we need more. We need to look at focusing more on helping these things move through a little faster if it's possible.

We've definitely heard that we need to be more businessfriendly. And my third thing is one thing that I keep harping on all the time that one time we had a full-time person working on potholes and I don't think we have that anymore. We need we need actually two things. We need somebody that dedicated or if if if everybody looked for potholes like I do, we could keep two people busy uh fixing potholes. And and I want to say this about that. When when our when our residents drive up and down the street and and they run over pot over potholes or our visitors run over potholes, you'll hear you'll hear as much about the street, the condition of the street just like the striping we're going to talk about. Those are things we can do that when you talk about that image of Myrtle Beach, that is a very important image of Myrtle Beach is to is to fix these streets. So what what I would suggest we do is because I'm firmly believe we have hundreds of vehicles on this in our streets every day. If we as a whole were reporting potholes and and and especially um sight triangle issues that maybe we wouldn't need to do what I'm getting ready to ask for. But and and I get it. Sometime when you ride that street, ride that street, ride that street, after a while it's it's you don't you don't even see it anymore. Or maybe you just don't want to see it. I don't know. But my part point here is I believe that we need somebody dedicated to driving these streets on a daily basis, identifying these these pothole issues, identifying where

streets need to be remarked, restriped, and and we go back to a full-time person operating that pothole truck and and get these potholes fixed on a on a on a timely basis. other than waiting till you get 20 or 30 and then try to start working on them then. But if we did that on a daily basis, our streets would and our would look a lot better and they would we our people driving on them would appreciate it a lot better. Brian or Janet, do we not have a full-time pothole person? I I was think we didn't have a full-time person anymore.

No, we do. We have we actually have two. We have we have the patch truck driver and somebody with the patch truck operator. Last year we struggled to keep those positions full. Um so and we had some maintenance issues with the patch truck itself. I mean we we have we have what you think we should have. We have a dedicated person for potholes and we have the patch truck. Um, so it it last year we had a struggle like I said maintaining the equipment and keeping the position position full, but we actually added that second person to the patch truck last year. Right. Okay.

I I do also agree that we need to take a serious look at the sight triangle issues. It's more than just the sight triangle, but the visibility at certain intersections and find find a solution to that. We've talked about that for decades and we just need to find a solution to that. I don't know. I I I just write down a lot of a budget issue, but there's potholes there. There's potholes there. And I don't know what the real challenge there is, but I think part of the challenge is sort of a conversation we've started to have with respect to striping is city roads versus county roads versus state roads. Um, you know, in and

well, where are we spending city dollars? You know, every street in the city or every street the city owns. And again, we don't we we we have not caught a 100% of the potholes. We we we trust the public will tell us where there's pothole and we we get it fixed pretty quickly. Uh I think the ones we find and selfinitiate are probably a larger number than you might think. Um, but I mean that that's a continual process and the weather the last weekend is going to create some more

population. I don't disagree with that. But going does follow up what you just said, Brian. When when it comes to whether it's a state road, whether it's a county road, well, what I think there just needs to be conversation on, okay, well, it's your road, but we're going to fix it. You're going to reimburse us the money, those kind of things. Yeah. I I fall on the side of if it's inside the city of Myrtle Beach, we need to make sure that it's maintained to the that's our responsibility. If we can get somebody to pay for it, great. But otherwise, it's still our responsibility.

And and two two points to that. Number one, that is a shift from where we've been. So, it'll take us time to adjust to that. When it comes to potholes, if we see a pothole or if a if a if a resident points out a pothole on a road that's not ours, we do go fill it. As far as self-initiated filling of a pothole, we we we generally stick to a city street versus a county or state road. But if someone calls and points out a pothole on a road that's not ours, we do go ahead and fix it.

And the caveat I would add to that is publicly owned. I'm not sure that we need to go fix private streets, but Okay. Um, I guess this is going to be directed towards Michelle and it's not gonna it's not probably not going to be a popular one here um for the community anyway. What is the scenario going to look like if we do not vote to um shore up the TDF shortage? I saw that vote.

Yeah, it's a very good question. Um, it means that there will be fewer funds to do all of these things that you are asking for us to do in the budget next year. It means it's going to be that much more difficult. Means that there will be other things cut to accomplish these goals if it comes from the general fund. And not only that, we already see, you know, I've told you where our fund balances are in hospitality taxes and fees. They're they're coming down. We could shift priorities. I mean, you can shift what you use some of those funds for. You know, they're all restricted, but roads certainly are one thing we can maintain. So, you shift that money to do that. But the population of 4% property owners in the state is only going to continue to grow. If you listen to to Wright and Waters Group or or Mr. Fenny, they're going to tell you that between now and 2040, your population over the age of 65 is going to grow over 30%. Those are going to be your 4% property owners. And that segment of our population is going to continue to grow. And I don't see at what point the TDF will again outpace the growth in the TDF will outpace the growth in that population.

And that's one of the reasons we need to revisit the 8020. But I think what Jackie was asking is if we do not rebalance the TDF and we continue to use all of it plus some to pay for the property tax credit, an option would be to reduce the property tax credit. Oh, absolutely. That that is the only way to to balance that. Reduce it or cap it? I reduce it. I think both probably, but I mean if everything stays the same like underwater everything. $3.2 million that we have to supplement it next year. That's significant.

And Mr. Mccclure, what is your definition of cap? Uh setting an amount uh that we're comfortable with that we would have every year and spreading it across. Okay.

And I think there are two ways to look at a cap and I don't know one, and I'll defer to Fox and the attorney here on this. We're at 67% at the moment in terms of what we provide as a credit to our 4% property owners, our owner occupied homes. 67% isn't the 88.5 that we started with, but it's still a healthy benefit. as we continue to grow, have more of those rooftops that we must provide the credit for, maybe that credit does decrease a little bit and set a cap that if it's not 67%, maybe we shoot for 60% at the end of the day, which is a an effective tax extra tax burden for the property owner. But the other piece and this is where I'll defer over there is we currently provide that to all 4% homes regardless of value regardless of the amount of the credit given back. Can we cap that say at a home valued at no more than a million dollars for example and what sort of savings would that provide? We may not be able to do that but what if we could what sort of savings would that offer? There is no mechanism in the count in the current legislation that would allow us to do that. It has to be equally uh distributed among the taxpayers. So the owner of the $2 million house gets a 67% credit just like the owner of a $200,000 condo.

And that's where the difference the striking difference between real cash and percentages comes into play. this whole this whole idea of the 4% when this came about is right before I got elected to city council and the whole whole process all along. It makes no difference whether your home's worth $100,000 or $50,000 or a million dollar. You got the same tax percentage credit

is one or the other. And I will tell you that you you you put the three different homeowners together and they'll tell you yes. Um it obviously a person who owns a million-doll home, their percentage that they get in in the uh credit is larger than a person who owns the percentages is the same. The real cash is different.

Yeah. But at the same time, they're paying the same percentage of tax, period. It's just based on the amount of the value of the home. So, at the end of the day, it doesn't make any difference about all of that. with me if we're going to have this as it is that it it stays as it is that whatever that percentage is whether it's 67% or whether it's 50% it remains the same across the board because that's the way it was set up to be done to start with

and I realized that that 88 or 80 I think when seemed like to me it was 80% may have been 88% But I know that that has significantly dropped. But at the same time, it's it's like the only example I know how to use is one that's been used for 100 years. You got a pie. If there's only four people getting a slice of that pie is pretty big, but the the more people that reach in for that slice of the pie, the the smaller the slice is going to get. That's just common sense. And that's what we're faced with. And so that's what everybody needs to realize going forward. We're going to try to work this out. But at the same time, it may be that that slice you that pie gets a little smaller as we go along. You know, I don't know how many uh I just don't have a lot of faith in the state uh doing a whole lot with this myself. And I'm not to say that it couldn't happen, but to be honest with you, I I just don't see it. And uh I I hope that we can get that worked out. But if if we don't and it stays the same, then we're obviously going to have to reduce the size of the that slice of that pie is going to get a lot thinner.

But but consider all the people that have moved here were paying a heck of a lot more where they lived. Oh yes. Yeah. So I mean this is still a great value toward the people have moved here. and and the current residents that have lived here a long time. So Michelle, when's the last time that we changed that percentage, 10 years? A long time.

It's been a long time, isn't it? Maybe five years, six years. I have to look back. I've got it all in a detail that I can give you. But I will say this, even if the legislation were changed, okay, it's something we're still going to have to monitor because of the the influx of people to our state, to our county, to our area in particular. And that coupled with the impact that it has on the the assessed value of the homes, it's something we will always have to monitor and work with regardless of what the split is. Act 388 is a wrinkle in there, too. So,

good. You're having the financial people do a look at the TDF. I am. And I should have that first draft by Friday. And um it it was going to be useful for us regardless of of what happens because they're going to provide us with number one the growth estimate for the next you know till 2040 of the TDF and what the expected growth of the population of the 4% residential owners are. So those dollar figures will be valuable in in whatever way we have to calculate that other budget wants or needs or hopes. I Yeah, I have a few things that I want.

I got a couple. You got a couple since you're on. Okay. Well, while I'm up here, you and I are going to agree on one. Okay. Go for it. Uh that uh uh Mr. Chestnut, or should I say Chef Chestnut. His picture was not presented to us today with these other people, but we'll we'll get that correct. Okay.

But the the housing rehab uh program that really is worth kind of digging into and seeing what we can do. And so I would like to see us address that. Um I'm not sure how we do this. Uh this recently uh this year uh the city provides a for education uh reimbursement for people that go to further their education. Uh and I guess uh uh Fox was explaining to me that uh over a number of years the money that was set aside uh they never really used all of it. But then all of a sudden this year the money that was set aside and they cut back the money that was being set aside based on history which common sense that's what maybe what people would do. But the problem that happened was they cut back on it and then all of a sudden we have employees that that you know want to further themselves, enhance their education, which does help us. And so we ended up being short, but uh in talking to uh staff, they were able to find a little extra money to cover this shortage this year. But I think we need to to figure out uh if we're going to provide this program, how we you know, we don't want to get somebody who is thinking about taking uh accounting 102 second semester and now doesn't have the money uh for the reimbursement. So that's something uh to look at. Um you stepped up, give it to me.

I did. I thought I would I would just like to sort of explain your surge in interest in this. So in the prior year we you know it as a benefit to our police and fire we allowed them that to get increased pay based on degrees that they earned. So if you get a bachelor's degree or a master's degree regardless of what it's in they get a bump in pay. Police officers the same. I think that's why you see the interest. So we will pay for their education and then we will also give them a raise. Um I think that's a great thing. I don't think it's a negative thing, but at the same time, uh, that's that's all the more reason to actually have some sort of limit on what we will pay for in the coming year unless council wants, you know, just that left wide open and that's up to you to direct us. I think I think the issue that Bill is raising and that staff raised as well is that they did not have the ability to project, oh, I can pay for this semester and I can pay for next semester that all the money got spent in one semester and there you were shut out the second time around. That's an accounting issue that we ought to be able to solve at some point along the way.

Well, that could be you just sort of reserve. You go ahead and earmark. If someone got through the first, you earmark for the second. And if they for some reason don't go for the second half, that gets opened up for someone else. And I think Michelle, I think I've talked to you about this tuition assistance and something that I've had experience with and I think a couple of things are important. One that um do we we give them the money? We reimburse at the beginning of the semester. completion or upon completion completion. Okay. Satisfactory which is good. Yeah.

And satisfactory continuation to the degree. Um also do we allow out of state tuition or for pri or very high cost private? I'm thinking you know ensuring that unless it is something that's not offered in state. Yeah. Okay. equivalent to instate tuition. There's a I forget what the dollar amount is. Okay. Annually 5250. So, if you're in state, it's going to go further than out of state, but yeah.

And the amount of money that you can receive additionally if you do have a degree is $1,000 or is it 1,500 or two? It's one of those. th000 for associates, 2,000 for a bachelor's and 3,000 for advanced pass for an advanced degree and that's limited to positions for which that additional education is a benefit to the city. That's correct. And we should point out is it is it or not?

Well, And I understand that. Okay. And there's a requirement that whether it's police, firefighters, or you know, somebody from the convention center that just decides uh that they their contract with us is that they have to stay for a certain period of time or they got to pay us back. So, we're not just giving them an education. and they say thanks and go on about their

the the tuition reimbursement is available to all of staff. The extra benefit in terms of salary bump is available only to those for whom the additional education is a benefit to the city.

Just police and fire. Okay. Then just police and fire. Okay. Well, I would like at least for the budget to as we move forward to work on that and address it. Um, we talked about Pharaoh Parkway today a lot and and and speed calming. Uh, we also need speed calming in other areas of the city. So, I would like to see uh the uh digital electronic speed calming devices. Uh, I'd like to see uh at least three more purchased. I know that they're not cheap, but at the same time, they're not that expensive. Uh, and I'd like to see them uh, at least a couple of them deployed up on the north end uh, specifically Marina Parkway that I'm very familiar with.

They're how the rough ballpark estimate there less than $10,000 a piece. I say 10 more, $100,000. I would be overwhelmed and happy, but okay.

Just so we can focus on it. Um the the last thing, you know, we talked about uh handicap and beach access, something that's near and dear to me. Uh is that uh handicapped golfers and especially our veterans. Uh we have we have a you know some good programs sponsored by PGA Hope uh that that work with these people. U they it it does a lot of good for them. they get into the game of golf. Uh it it actually has changed some lives. Uh but then once you do that, you know, they want to go out and play. So how do they play? Well, the the way they play is you you have to have specialized golf carts. Uh and that is something uh in our own owned golf course at Whispering Pines. We don't have uh CCU. Uh Dr. Connor, they just got one uh out at the Hackler course. uh with a big dedication there. That was really uh kind of nice. So, I would uh I would like to see us put uh money in for three of these carts. Now, uh I don't have all of the information for you. So, I'm giving you the number of three. Uh I'm told they cost somewhere between $32,500 and $35,000. and there may be uh some special uh maintenance requirements for them that might bring the cost up a little bit. Uh I'll get those numbers for you, but I really would like to give a consideration for that. Um if we're going to be an open accepting community, that's one of the things that we want to do. And and oh by the way, uh for my veteran uh brothers and sisters, but we also have people with handicaps that you they were never veterans. They were they may be just born that way and they want to play golf too. So it doesn't just

serve them. It serves our handicap community. So those are and I'll be getting you some more Michelle, but those are the things off the top of my head. I didn't realize they were they got theirs through a grant. So they did I didn't realize they were going to be that expensive. Maybe there was a grant opportunity for that. What if we added one a year and achieved three, four, five in that manner? whatever council feels and and the city that we can afford. Okay. Back.

Yeah. Um, two things. Um, we talked about this one time before and I don't remember where I know we didn't do it. So, um, one was a I'm going call it a leaf truck or a vacuum truck or I I just still think that there's there are places in in the communities where, you know, it's public right away that just looks bad that, you know, nobody takes care of it. Um yeah.

Yeah, the the um the um vac the um street sweeper is going to clean up some that's you know the stuff that's in the streets, but at the same time there's rightway that's just not being taken care of. Um and I'm I'mma throw one out there and we've talked about it before. 21st Avenue, you cannot walk on the sidewalk. um all the way down um from Carver Street to to the um county complex without having to step out. Um if you're not careful, you're going to have to step in the road at some time. Um it it just looks bad, guys. But I'm just telling you, I've had complaints from people telling me, "Hey, Mike, I want to walk my dog and just walk the circle the neighborhood, but I can't do it because when I get to 21st, I just can't. It's just not safe."

I'm just saying we need to look at it and we're talking about looking at our neighborhoods and stuff and that's part of it. We we've had the conversation with staff. The street sweeper hits my street every once every two weeks. I don't have any trees on my street. There's no reason for the street sweeper to ever visit my street. Maybe once a year, but there are places in town that I don't know that do see the street sweeper on a regular basis. And I've asked for them to look at how that can be better deployed.

Well, in these these places, I mean, it it was it goes beyond the street sweeper. I mean, it really needs some attention that we need bodies. Um, so the other one is, um, came across my desk the other day. Um, somebody asked about the potential of having a stage at Charlie's Place, something similar to maybe something similar to what we have at Chapman Park. I think the, you know, with the loss of the jazz festival in the community, I think more people want to see other events go on in at Charlie's place and is the possibility of doing something more permanent there that you know, you would get other events planned there.

Hadn't thought about that, but that's a good idea. I think we've early in the day, if you're still with us, we talked about bringing some life back to the community and one of those ways would be to tap into our local music scene, which is spectacular. Yeah. Um, but I I like the idea of putting some sort of permanent stage in Charlie's Place. Okay. Um, that's all I got right now. So, mayor, I have two other things. These are really big projects that go for it.

A while to do and one you've mentioned already um the library I think looking at um seriously looking at an expansion or even a new building near the same location. Um and then also um really taking seriously a serious look at activation of the piece of property next to the road center that we own. um and what that might look like either as a um venue, you know, a multi-purpose venue um that would also potentially support um the convention center or sports tourism or both.

I believe y'all were presented last year some options for that property. I I don't think park space was one of the options that was considered whether passive or active. I don't think it was on the list, but I would add to our thought process potentially some park space there. Maybe something where there's not a lot of cars coming because last couple of times I've been to the convention center, there's no place to park. But um we clearly are doing good business there. Anything else,

Debbie? Anything else? Okay, couple of quick follow-ups and see if anybody has a second round of third round of ideas. We talked about the beach mats. I would like to see us figure out a way to to bring the beachgoing wheelchairs back in some capacity. Not that I we have staff to distribute them. We don't. But the adaptive surf project has been doing that with volunteers and the response has been good. But they don't have the volunteers to meet the demand that exists. Luke points out that all of the other jurisdictions along the Grand Strand offer beachgoing wheelchairs. We don't. Granted, the smaller ones offer just one, but some of the larger ones offer more than one. Whether it's the chair and umbrella rental people of the lifeguards that handle that, whether we create a check out box system with a an app that people can go do it. Luke is willing to donate 10 chairs at roughly $1,500 a piece if we can figure out how to make them available to the public, which is going to require some brainstorming on our part, but certainly that speaking of beach parking, we've added a thousand homes at Dell Web with no thought at all about where those folks are going to go to the beach. I don't have a solution for that. There's nothing on the ocean front to be sure, but maybe there's something oceanfront adjacent or, you know, twice removed that would provide some additional beach parking, particularly on the north end of town. South end of town's still got a little bit of access, but um the north end of town is where we've seen population growth in the last couple of years anyway, with no forethought on our part about how to get those folks to the

beach. controlled growth.

Yeah. Um, talking about trash trucks, I know that there are some communities that have a truck that is 2/3 solid waste and one-third recycling. It's partitioned off so that they pick up both recycling and solid waste on the same trip and don't have to make two trips. Granted, it'll fill up more quickly, so I understand that. But would be curious to know whether that's a benefit by having vehicles that can do that in one circuit instead of two circuits. I don't know the answer to that question, but would be would be curious to see how that works out.

And then sidewalks. We've had recent discussions about some additional places where sidewalks may be in demand. Um, we're budgeting currently $200,000 a year for sidewalks. Michelle, okay,

I'm sorry. We do, but we also have a line item that's 1445 1,445,000 that's for multimodal transportation. Um, that also can be looked at as a sidewalk or a bike path. I mean, we'll have to to talk with Janet and those folks and decide what the priorities are. What did we contemplate using a million and a half dollars for

Janice getting your steps in today? Yes.

Good afternoon. Um, over the years we had a number of requests for multi-purpose paths, sidewalks. So we created this multi- um modal project in our CIP so that we could have larger sums of money to complete these projects. For instance, Oak Street in the Seahawk district, 79th Avenue multi-purpose path, Third Avenue North from um Broadway to 501 and Broadway to Collins. So, we're making these um connectivity points throughout the uh the network and we also worked with our bike and ped committee to come up with these projects because they are very instrumental in helping create that framework. Right now, we're designing Highway 15 to go from around Third Avenue South all the way to Harelson. And that would be a multi-purpose path. So, with these lengths, these projects are are rather expensive. So, I would venture to say that the amount of money that she mentioned is probably going to be uh used in that construction activity unless we um do some additional locations.

Are you talking about building uh it was over a million plus for 79th Avenue? Sure. Yeah. Are we talking about building the Highway 15 this year, this fiscal year? Um we're in the permitting process. We're trying to work with DOT um around the Huitt Plaza location, but as soon as we finish the permitting and if we have the funding available, we can move forward on that. Well, you while you're looking at that um that section of Highway 15 boundary, the Fifth Avenue South,

right along where that new part complex has been built there. I I don't know what the answer is, but every time we get a rain, people have to walk around the sidewalk because it'll be that deep. And I'm not talking about a heavy rain. It don't have to be a storm. It just be a pretty good rain and then that whole section of that sidewalk there just about as underwater. Yes, sir. And with this project, we're looking at drainage as well. Um there will be some piping in certain locations with Highway 15. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. And then as we I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, you do. Go. She's here. Yeah. I

I just had a question since you were talking about sidewalks and I think me and Brian talked about this before. Um, how do we do sidewalk repair? And I'm I'm gonna mention a spot and we talked about it before up on the north end right here where Coaster Outdoor I believe it is. There's a sidewalk. It's been like that for eight months. Understood. Is this And I've seen I'm I'm going to tell you why why it caught my eye again. I saw um somebody in a motorized wheelchair. Mhm. And I was going coming back south. Did they get air? I I'm I'm wondering how they got by.

It's It's right there where the Fridays is. The Fridays that it closed up and between that and Crave. Okay. And I actually talked last year to Fox about that. But I think what the feedback that we got was that it uh that particular sidewalk is county. Is that correct? Well, city on Kings Highway State. State. Okay. State. So, I just asked I mean because I mean even you go down Grien Parkway now, right? There's cones everywhere.

Understood. So when we do have a location on a road that is not owned by the city that we have a sidewalk issue on, we respond within 24 hours and we make sure that we put a cone

to safe up that location. Um then we have a communication with DOT uh about that repair and normally when DOT comes through and does their road work, they do the sidewalk work. You may recall not too long ago when DOT uh resurfaced Gryom Parkway from pretty much Mr. Joe all the way to Harelson, you noticed that it also included a number of sidewalk repairs, curb and gutter, all that. Um so they make it a complete project when they come through. I will tell you that um Robert Gryom Parkway from I think it's 29th all the way to um over the bridge is supposed to be uh resurfaced in 2026. So I would venture to say that a lot of the sidewalk work associated with that corridor will be restored in that time period. I I get the sense that we don't really care. We don't really care whether it's a state road or a city road. We need to fix the hazard, make the repair. If we can be reimbursed, great.

Is that Am I speaking out of school? Oh, that that's I'm just saying that we we the people don't see that. I mean, they don't know that they're county sidewalks or are state sidewalks. They're just going to look at us and say, "Y'all ain't doing a good job at keeping the sidewalk." I mean, I do understand that perception. Certainly continue the conversation. Say, "Mr. State, you've got a sidewalk issue here. When can you fix it?" And if the answer is 18 months from now, we need to say, "Well, we're going to go ahead and fix it if with your permission."

So, normally we would have to receive permission through an encroachment permit and um with that encroachment permit when we perform the maintenance we assume the maintenance thereafter. Wow. Yeah. We're not the only city I've was a meeting with Rock Hill. There's we have to have some conversations with DOT about getting re some sort of an agreement. This is not unique to Myrtle Beach. This is happening all across the state and it's challenging. It would be great to have a lobbyist on board to help us with the conversation. There is something moving through the general assembly this session that where the the state DOT South Carolina owns more roads than other states do

and they're interested in devesting giving back those those roads to the local jurisdiction if the local jurisdiction will have it. And there is some one-time money attached to it. There's not permanent money attached to it, but there is some onetime money attached to it. I would and recognize it's not just the sidewalks, it's the the pavement, the road surface, the potholes that you're mentioning on these state roads, as well as the drainage systems that are under there. So, it's a very comprehensive right-of-way matter that we have. I I noticed the look on our attorney's face. So, did I

I was watching Brian Tucker's face. I was I uh so I would just like to hear from our attorney and he's not ready to do that. I would rather discuss this in executive session. Good enough, Mr. Louder. Good enough. I just I just happened to notice a look there that like maybe we need to talk about that. So, okay. Thank you, sir. Other issues? Um,

the job. Anything else we need to talk about at this stage? Michelle, what is money? If you go there, I'm getting up. I don't know what it is. We don't have any. Um, I just need direction. If this is if these are your priorities and then we're going to build the budget around this

right now we I said if these are your priorities this is what we will focus this budget on going forward. Um we have asked our team to give us a baseline budget current year only and then these would be service level changes or enhancements. Think of anything else we need to know rather quickly. Um, I would say over the next month I'll be finishing gathering the revenue estimates that I hope will allow me to project the budget. Well, let me Michelle and I I think we all understand that and I think we've all presented a a lot of a pretty extensive wish list.

But in reality is we would like to see all those things take place, but are we going to have the money to do that? I'm not sure. So, we're just throwing ideas out. We just these are things that maybe that we would like to see. So it just comes down to a point, okay, what can we afford and what we can't afford. And it's all it's Mike's theory about money. You do what you have to do and then if you have some left over, you do what you'd like to do. And so that's kind of like where we got to be. So anyway, I just I know I'm I'm I know just think about what I asked and a couple others have asked. It's a pretty big price tag. So I understand that.

And some of this is general fund discussion. Some of this is CIP projects. It's across the board. I understand that. Um, where are we on the striping conversation?

That might possibly be a question today. Patrick, can you pull up that slide? Trouble seeing it, sir. I had trouble seeing it on my Well, it it's it's more for my it's more for my benefit than yours. Um, so we have um as a as a part of our normal process, we were ready to go to bid for our annual striping contract. So we are currently out to bid right now for our normal striping contract. Um, that bid is due back in and and Janet will correct me if I misspeak. I think February the 17th.

So after February 17th, we will have identified a contractor that can do the work. uh we have a slated slated scope of work that those contractors are bidding on. That is the scope of work that's been developed over the course of the last year based on field assessments by staff. Once we have the contractor on board, if we need to adjust the scope, we can adjust the scope. If we need to adjust the budget to meet the scope that you all want, we can do we can do that also. Um, we added a component to this bid that that requires them to do the work in 30 days. So, it would be done by the end of April theoretically. We're not real sure what that's going to do to the price tag. Normally, they have several months to do the work and we're asking them them to compact the schedule so we'll get a really good understanding of what the time constraints do to the budget. Um and so that that's so theoretically right now we will be able to finish this particular set of streets by the end of April. Once we get through midFebruary and we open the bid have a contractor on board we can adjust this specific set of intersection. So I would ask you to study that list. I can

send that. I don't think we've seen that. I I can well I can print that for you or send it to you and you can look at that and see if it you pull one off, put one on or we can add to it and just it's just it's just money. And this this is money that's in the budget currently. the 240 the 240 some odd thousand is in this year's budget for this for this I would suggest that we go to bid in August or September so that we can do the work in December, January, February assuming weather is not a real factor

and that's that that's generally the the issue is we don't get a good response in the winter months because it's very difficult to do the striping in particular in this colder season. I understand paving has to be above 45 degrees or something like that. The the the striping needs to be in that. I mean because again the same you and I conversation we're still heating heating the asphalt to to accept the thermoplast. So that temperature is still a a huge driver in the timing. I understand the rationale behind going well we can do it in we could do it in the fall. Um I I think that would maybe more doable and Janet hadn't yelled. Don't forget how many of these are state roads.

Yeah. And and then we have that same conversation. Yeah. That's part of this conversation, too. So, we are making progress. We have a path forward that delivers finished product by May 1st. Um I I realize that's bold. I'm I'm excited that we've made the progress we have. Good. Thank you. Anything else? Oh, sorry, Mike. We'll do it again in a week. Is that right? Do what again in a week? Meet again. Yeah, we're meeting again in a week. In a week. Okay. Yesterday was Groundhog Day. So,

but we can we can continue to bring budget ideas to their attention so that they can tell us no at the end of the day. So, for a little bit. There is a there is a time when it's going to be this is it forever hold your peace. We understand. So well thank you. Um anything else you'd add is we want to go around the horn here at all about had all the fun. I understand hard copy of what you presented today and get one we can print them out. Jennifer's got we have they're all in the shared folder. We can print them out. Okay. That'll be good. I think I put one on render spot. There one over there. There was, but there was Michelle had an edit on the cover page that I

I got you. Okay. I was asking for my friend too. So, thank you all for your patience. I just want to shout out to city. We got an email from shout out to city services and um fire and police for public works for all their efforts over the very cold and snowy weekend. Folks did a good job. I saw a lot of police cars out and about and saw fire trucks making some runs and I I'm not aware that we had anything significant as a result of the snowstorm. Am I is that my am I incorrect in thinking that? I think it was you know minor stuff for the most part

water that came out yesterday but that was the extent of it. The buildings came out well. Thank you all. So good. Thank you for your patience. We will adjourn. Bye. Thanks.