City Council - workshop

you Thank you.

Good morning. You got quiet early. Welcome to our June 23rd workshop, followed by the regular meeting of City Council today. Dr. Rinder is under the weather this morning. I don't know that he will join us, but that's a possibility. The workshop today has one item on the agenda, and that would be our Resolution 2026-11, the Myrtle Beach Downtown Alliance Mid-Municipal Improvement District Discussion. I think this conversation is probably long overdue, So, hopefully, we can come away with a clearer idea of what direction we're going in. I ended in a preposition. Sorry about that. Where we're headed with the Middle Beach Downtown Alliance and that we're on, as much as we can be, sort of the same page. Don't know what that page is going to be, whether it's going to be number 2 or number 36, but we'll figure it out. So, Fox, how do we start this morning?

Michelle has a little PowerPoint here, a couple pages, and then we'll just kind of open it up and let it go for a conversation, see where the conversation takes us.

I'll be really brief. You guys have heard this all before. The Municipal Improvement District was put in place to do exactly what the title states, to improve a district. The Municipal Improvement District at 10 Mills generates just over $793,000. We provide the MBDA through this district and this agreement $1,477,000, of which the $793,000 is from the 10 Mills assessed in the district. I'm just providing you with a breakdown of those funds, and I suppose this discussion now is for council to decide whether or not you want to assess those 10 mils and how you want to, whether or not you want to approve that resolution to assess it. Now, either way, I have to say this. Whether you decide to assess the 10 mils or not, you need to adopt the assessment role. You can adopt the assessment role, and you can amend it, to say that you're not going to assess any millage this year. But the assessment role itself needs to be adopted until you decide later on if you want to do any kind of formal breakdown of the bid.

As you point out, Michelle, the assessment, the MID, provides only about half of the funding that goes to the Myrtle Beach Downtown Alliance from the city. In addition to the 1.5 million, if we'll round, the MBDA also receives $250,000 in accommodations tax money to help pay for the events that they organize on the city's behalf. And in all total, it's a little over $2 million that the MBDA receives from the city.

Not all of that is from the city.

That's right, there's $350,000 that has been contributed towards the operation of the downtown ambassadors as well.

And another 50-some thousand dollar grant to make up that difference.

Correct, thank you. If council, after this discussion, at the end of the regular meeting, decides to approve the mid-roll and not assess any millage, that just leaves a deficit in the MBDA's budget.

Correct.

Council?

Okay. Jason's here if he wants to ask any questions. He has a presentation as well that he queued up and we can share it.

Good morning, Mayor and members of council. I could start off with a presentation if you'd like just to go over a few things and then open it up for questions afterwards. This diagram here is an artist rendering of the downtown area that was generated in the 2020 development supplement, the supplemental development plan, development framework. that James Lehman and his group put together that was adopted in 2020. This is in concert with the downtown master plan that was approved by city council in 2019. This essentially creates the visioning document for the downtown, this component of that married with the downtown master plan. In that visioning document, it talks about the downtown being the front porch of the Grand Strand, the heart of the city of Myrtle Beach. But it also talks about a walkable, livable downtown that's really well connected in the amenities that serve folks living in downtown. What we've assessed from this document is that in order for downtown to be a viable place to live and have business, that it's going to require on the order of about 3,000 more individual units or homes, based on the assessment done in this particular document, to make it viable, to make it sustainable. In its current state, it's not. And that's kind of the reality that we're living in in downtown. Now, I've kind of come to the conclusion over the last couple of years that downtown is really two downtowns. It's a place for tourists, but it's also where the locals used to come and gather once the tourists left. And I feel that that part of downtown needs to come back. And part of that is living in downtown. Part of that is inviting residents to come back and enjoy what downtown has to offer. And it is changing. It's changing every day. Every day that I walk the streets and drive the streets, I see changes happening. There's short-term rentals being built on the south end of the mid. there are improvements on broadway street that are happening there is improvements on ninth avenue of course that have been happening oak street's realignment all of these things contribute to a ever-changing downtown which is what the community has asked us for right they want downtown to be different than it is today that's what the vision kind of espouses One thing I want to point out is that our mid is much larger than other bids or mids of comparable cities. When I look at Virginia Beach or if I look at Raleigh, downtown Columbia has two mids. They have the downtown Main Street mid, and they also have the Vista mid. Those areas are much smaller than the mid that we're operating in.

By geography? By geography. Not necessarily by... dollar value of a sense of property.

Just geography. So acreage-wise, we're about three and a half times to four times the size of an average mid, which creates challenges in its own right. We can't focus in the entire mid all at once. It's very difficult to do that. So we started the block program, which I'll go over in a moment, to actually concentrate our efforts in a very small geography, more consistent with the size of a regular mid, to make sure we really hear what the Residents and business owners are asking us we started in November with ocean Boulevard between 9th and 16th Talk to those business owners regularly got their input submitted those plans to city management back in January and started block 2 in February and submitted those plans recently, so I'll get into more details on that moment and To give a comparison speak here, but the area that I've shaded in blue here represents a typical size of a mid compared to the area that we're working in. And this is not even the entire mid. The mid goes down to 12th Avenue South. It also goes up to 21st Avenue North. So the area that you see here is about a third, maybe a half of the size of the mid that we're working in. So you can see that we're working in a very large area to be able to keep it clean and to help the city keep it safe. The MOU in simple terms, we have to identify needs and challenges, that's explicitly MOU. We have to do capacity assessments of what the community's capable of being able to do, and then also tracking data. Those are very key points that are listed in the MOU that we need to do. We also have to create events and programming and supplement the safety and cleanliness and build momentum. Those are explicitly written as well. The city has an obligation to plan and fund with our assistance the capital improvements in the public realm. Also to set policies, several of which that I would love for this body to adopt so that we can continue to move forward. And then we have a shared responsibility in planning and research and mitigating risk for new development. One thing that I, in my research, is that we know that downtown is economically distressed. It has been. It's been federally designated as an opportunity zone. It's been federally designated as a new markets tax credit zone and also federally designated as a hub zone. For those of you that have worked in government contracting, you understand that the hub zone gives advantage to businesses to get no-bid contracts with the federal government.

Jason, can I stop you for just a minute? Let's go back and talk about safety and cleanliness. Let's get into a little bit of detail. Talk to me about that. Supplementing safety, what does that mean? Are you talking about using the Ambassador Program? to supplement safety. I know they do a lot of the cleaning for us because I see them doing it. So I'm curious is when we talk about supplementing safety, what does that really entail?

So supplementing safety, at least in the way that we're defining it through the gold caps, is to be eyes and ears and to let folks know if they're violating an ordinance, for example, that they're going to be warned by the gold caps. We're not enforcing it, obviously, but we do warn them that if they're violating somebody sleeping on a bench or somebody riding the bike on the boardwalk, Those are things that we will warn them on but we can't enforce it, right? That's the police department to do the To enforce the ordinances that exist We'll report it to the police if there's an infraction happening We'll call the police directly or they will contact them directly to actually get some action happening so the eyes and ears are really important part of that safety net and that we think the gold caps provide and because it's real time, they're out there a lot and they do see things. They also see if there's other violations of ordinances, whether you have something that you shouldn't have in your business or things like that. They can report those things as well, but they're mostly reporting, they're not necessarily enforcing. On the cleanliness side, just to kind of go down that rabbit hole for a second, they are also supplementing what the city's doing. There's a shared responsibility to clean the downtown. The city has an obligation to do their part. We have an obligation to do our part. I'm of the opinion that the expectation is higher than the two together can actually meet. And so we can get into that in greater detail later. I actually have a slide in the end here to talk about that a little bit.

Good, because I'd like to get into that detail.

One thing that I have learned is that through some of the work that we've done on the planning mostly and working with the city on the advanced residential plan, Dan, which is more of a supplement to the advanced plan for the A&I district, it really covers the entire MID. And so, but we know that our vision in the future of downtown matters through that. And a lot of that's gonna be happening through catalytic development or large-scale development that's going to happen. The work on Oak Street, in my opinion, that investment that the city's making on Oak Street and the surrounding streets around that, it's gonna create shovel, excuse me, thank you. It's gonna create shovel-ready properties that developers will look at as great site control, and they will also look at it as an investment that's already made that offsets their cost. It doesn't mean that it's going to cover all of the incentives that they may request in order to do a large-scale development that could occur there. But it does mean that we have done the investment that actually makes it attractive, which is important. Kind of give you an idea of how we kind of came to these conclusions. We think the goal of redevelopment is really to reduce risk for private investment, right? Part of that is infrastructure. Part of that's doing street improvements. Part of that's making shovel-ready properties. There's lots of things that can happen. What we hear from developers often is that they would like site control, like they would like to know what they can build on their property or somebody else's property. They would certainly like to know what's happening with their neighbors, right? If they want to do a nice large-scale development, they would like to know what their neighbor is going to be allowed to do or not do. I think that's an important piece of that. The design guidelines and the advanced residential plan cover kind of guardrails so that they can't just build anything next to another development, right? It gives us the right guardrails. Certainly don't want to restrict property rights. That's not what we're suggesting. But to give some guardrails so that there's some level of expectation of what might happen in the future.

Well, how does that dovetail into our own zoning code?

I think it's a strong tie. I've worked with Ken and his team a lot over the last couple of years looking at design guidelines and the advanced residential plan. There are pieces in that that could be baked into the zoning code. We've also worked with Kim Lee Horne a couple of times, talked to them about the intent of the design guidelines as well as the advanced residential plan. The idea is that we want to make the advanced residential plan and the design guidelines malleable so we can change them if we need to, but still have the concrete pieces in the zoning code that allow that to happen. So it may be baked in a zoning overlay. That's one of the things that's been suggested to kind of control the character of downtown. It's something that we think is important to make sure it's codified in some way. I don't know if that answered your question. It did, and thank you.

Jason?

Yes, ma'am.

When you're meeting with potential developers, what are some of the things that they're specifically asking for in relationship to locating in this community? What are some of their concerns, or what are some of the things they're looking for specifically?

Well, on the surface level, one of the things that they do look for is they want to see that a downtown is clean and cared for. That's one of the like when they first come downtown into other downtowns and other cities, they want to see that we've invested in the cleanliness. They want to see that there's activity happening. That's a big one. They want to see that we're actually moving in the direction that we're saying that we're moving in. They want to see site control, as I mentioned before. They want to see clarity in terms of what can happen around them. They want to see that there's a vision for downtown. Those are big things that they ask me for when I talk to them. And then finally, they want to know what kind of incentives are available. And I'm kind of in the same camp with Mr. Tucker that the public benefit is the number one thing that we as a community should provide as part of a development right as long as it's meeting the public benefit if it doesn't meet a public benefit i think it would be a very hard sell to say hey you know we're just going to give you money to do your development that's not what we're suggesting but a parking deck or green space that can go along with that or storm water infrastructure which i think is very important are the things that they want to know that the city can contribute to and there's a laundry list of things that it could be And there are federal and state programs that can help offset that as well that we researched as part of that research.

How far along do you think we are in this process? Are we still on the very edge of the cusp, or do you think we're quarter way, half way?

I think based on where I think we are, the planning is done. I think that there's one piece to this puzzle, and that's to understand where the funding is going to come from. So right down there under the assessments piece, under the funding capacity plan, we've been working on this since December. We think it's a necessary piece to really identify the federal and state programs that exist. and that includes grants and other provisos that might be available, earmarks as well on the federal side, to really understand how we're gonna go after that. It's one thing to say that they exist. It's another thing to say how we're actually gonna go about doing it, right? And so we have to have a plan to go after those funds. I don't think we can just arbitrarily say that there's money there and we should go get it. I think there has to be a very deliberate, coordinated effort between us, the city, and our partners that have strong advocacy groups like the Chamber of Commerce to really work together to really ask for the money the right way, to make sure that we have a chance of getting it. And there's certainly a chance that we wouldn't, and I don't wanna paint a rosy picture that all of this is free money that we can just get. That is not the case. But if we don't ask, we're certainly not gonna get it. I don't know if that answered your question.

So hopping in on that, you mentioned earlier Opportunity Zone. And I know that you and your board, your staff have worked really hard on assessments and planning, et cetera, how does that line us up to go after some of these federal dollars, specifically for Opportunity Zone, those types of things? Because as far as the city goes, I don't think we've applied I mean, we apply for federal grants, but I don't know that we've applied for development-type grants from the federal government.

Yeah, so what you'll see on the Opportunity Zone side is largely from the private side applying for those particular tax credits, and the same with New Markets tax credits as well. There are certain organizations that can handle the New Markets tax credit side, but private investors, private developers can form their own qualified opportunity funds. Part of that is to make sure that they have the tax credits to do that There are other funds out there that people could use if they wanted to try to capture those tax credits It certainly is an offset, but I don't think as from a development from an incentive standpoint that You're gonna do this with one incentive You're not gonna do it You're gonna do it with a multitude of incentives that are stacked just like a private side would stack their capital stack we would stack the private the public stack to be able to do that as well and the advice that we would give to a developer, they may not necessarily be aware of what we have. A savvy one would, but not all do. And that was one of the assumptions we made early on, is that developers are savvy about this. Some of them are, some of them are not. So there's an education piece that needs to happen of how they navigate through that, and that's something that I believe we could provide. We want to learn, we want to understand, we want to see how these pieces fit together. It's like building a puzzle, right? Every piece matters into the full picture. Just to kind of go back to this, so we did raise some private money to do a lot of this planning. In my second year here, the city contributed $300,000 towards design guidelines. We supplemented that with another $667,000 from private money that we raised to be able to do that. That created the advanced residential plan and the lighting master plan specifically. With that and the rest of the design guidelines, they're all pending approval at this point. One thing I'll note is that we do want to go after federal grants that the MBDA can go after, but the city cannot. We know that there are some out there that we can. It's not a long list. It's certainly more on the government side, and we want to assist with that as well. But the National Endowment of the Arts, we can apply for that particular grant. But it does require our plan and our policy that is consistent with what they want. Our policy existing today does not meet those requirements. I know CRC has suggested that some of those things be amended. We've had a lot of contributions into that process with the CRC. But we do believe that those are going to be necessary if we want to go after and really create an artistic environment endowment. which we think is important. Yes, sir.

Let's buzz through this.

Yeah. Our streets, our culture, and our history matters. So this is the existing that we have in downtown, right? Our streets do matter to our community. Our history matters to our community. We heard that loud and clear with every conversation we had. We want people to know that we have heard them. We want our community to know that we've heard them. Our streets do matter to them. We raised 214 in private foundation money to actually cover the Broadway streetscape improvements. That was the first year I was here. We actually did the improvements. Since then, we've seen about a 66% increase in foot traffic on Broadway Street. There's been a couple of businesses that have come in. Since then, one was under construction when I started. It opened up shortly after, maybe eight months after I started. But that street scrape improvement, the most interesting comment I heard was that they loved the pressure washing. They loved that we actually pressure washed the sidewalks. That was the number one comment that we got about the look and feel of Broadway Street is that the sidewalks were so dirty and it was such a stark contrast after it was pressure washed that folks were really excited about that. And I can't stop remembering people telling me that because it was so exciting to hear that just something so simple as pressure washing made a huge difference in the lives of the business owners down there. We launched our block program as I mentioned before. The plans have been submitted for block one and two. We'll start July. We actually had an internal conversation. We believe we can do a block every two months in contrast to what we suggested before in four months. We can overlap these things faster with some of the technology we're using to analyze data and help develop plans. And then we help research and co-author the facade grant that you've heard about already. We've worked with a lot of consultants over the last couple of years on the planning side and that certainly has helped. But I also think today matters. Like what downtown looks like today is certainly very important. Part of the cleanliness, the safety, of course, the events that happen are very important and part of that. One of the things I do want to point out is that our business engagement is part of this experience. We're building our database now. We're giving road project updates to the adjacent businesses around the area, especially those that are affected by the Oak Street and the 501 realignments right now. If we find out that there's another project happening we'll reach out to those surrounding businesses to make sure that we're communicating what's happening. To give you an idea kind of on the trash side, this is more on the cleanliness side. We have two shifts of ambassadors that do work, mostly doing cleaning. During the first shift, we pick up on an annual basis, as far as the trash cans in the mid, about 277 a year in the first shift. Second shift, on the other hand, we're picking up nearly 3,000 trash cans a year and that's all tracked we track them with the devices the gold caps carry and that's what they're doing when there's not uh city staff working in the second shift we certainly don't have a third shift so anything that happens after eight or ten o'clock depending on uh the time of the year there's no trash being picked up after those hours Litter buckets, we do more in the daytime than we do in the second shift at night. They're still pretty staggering. These are five gallon buckets of litter that they're picking up as they're walking around all day.

probably pick up some other stuff too, don't they? They do.

The amount of biohazard that the gold caps clean up is remarkable. I'm certain I don't wanna do that myself, but I would if I was asked. But the idea around it is that they do a fair amount of that. And I think it's underrepresented about the importance of doing that. We have one bathroom on Ocean Boulevard. Sometimes it's unserviceable. Well, sometimes people need to relieve themselves And a lot of that is being done by the goldcaps when it's picked up.

Let's emphasize that just a little bit more because it is so important, as you refer to it, biohazard. That's the one thing that I have recently noticed about the goldcaps, especially along the Boulevard in the heavy tourist areas, is they're cleaning up messes that I wouldn't even touch. You'd be surprised what people do in public, in daylight. I was of the opinion that maybe the city needs to kind of figure out with our own staff how we participate in that.

That's a conversation as soon as Jason's done with this.

I'm done, actually, the presentation. I'm open for questions.

Run through these, please.

The short list?

Yes. Go back to the memorandum of understanding.

This is just a duplicate of the slide that I showed before. But there is a shared responsibility. I think that's really the underlying principle. This is a team effort between the city and the MBDA. It's not the MBDA by itself. It's not the city by itself. It's the team that we need to create and continue to manifest itself moving forward.

I think my point is that what the MBDA does is significantly more than the ambassadors. That the ambassadors are one of five or six items, technically four, I think, items on the list in the MOU with one grand strand. the ambassador's cost is actually greater than what the MID generates. So the question becomes, who's funding the other things that the MBDA is supposed to do? I think we get lost in the concept of, oh, we've got to pay for the ambassadors when there are other things that we've agreed for the moment that need to be done. and we'll come back to this, but I wanna ask council specifically, where is your heartburn at this point? What would you like to see amended or changed or improved or, and I'll weigh in as well, but why are we at this stage of the conversation right now?

Well, right now, I'll be honest with you, I'm just ready to move forward with the, approve and admit and just moving forward with everything as it is right now and then can we come back later on before budget retreat or next budget and and talk about um what do we want to see changes i don't think we can do anything that's going to change things to make things better now I think things are going well. Me personally, I think so. I was riding around this weekend and Brian always, I always tell Brian about my heart starts fluttering. Sometimes I see some of the good things going on downtown and I literally was riding in my car and I started just getting excited because I see what's going on downtown. And some of the things that Jason and I are working on, Downtown didn't just get like this overnight. And we've really seen a lot. I have seen a lot more improvements in the past three or four years than we've had in the past 20 years. So we're heading in the right direction. It's gonna take some time, but I think the Goldcaps is doing their job and they're doing things that other people wouldn't do. But I don't think we're gonna change that right now. I don't think we should. I think we need to move forward with what we've got going. Can we talk about some of this stuff later and tighten up some things if we need to? I think we should. Take a look at it.

Yesterday I drove from 13th South all the way up to 82nd and I was around 9th Avenue South and I saw two gold caps and they had buckets. They were clearly walking to pick up trash, but when I saw them, they stopped with a huge group of tourists and started giving, I could tell they were talking to them and giving them directions. So that was a really good example, good timing for me to see them, but that they're doing multiple tasks. They look official, they're approachable, and they're giving people information on top of helping us make sure that our city looks good.

Yeah, I don't recall the exact number, but I know it's north of 30,000 contacts that they have with visitors.

They track that as well because it's important.

As Mike Snow tells me, they hire for personality and they train them to do the rest. So we want folks that are cordial in talking to folks about what's going on in downtown and even equipping them with information about what's happening and changing in downtown when people ask so that they can speak intelligently about it.

I completely agree with everything that Mr. Chestnut said a minute ago. I really do think it has made a big difference, the MBDA and the Gold Caps. Sometimes I feel like things with the gold caps could be tweaked during the year. I think it needs to be revisited quite a bit.

We're happy to.

But I have no problem with everything else, the way it's being run and everything. Let me tell you something. It takes a long time to get a community turned around when it's in a certain Greenville took what, 25, 30 years?

They're not done. And they're not done.

And we all see the social media and we're, wow, that is great. We could do that, we can do that. Yeah, we can do that. But everything takes a little bit of time and it takes commitment from everybody, not just the city, your business people. your community, your community has got to get behind it and stop beating up your community. We are in a great place and we're going down the right path. Just give us a little bit of time to get there, but we've all got to work together. So, thank you.

And I specifically appreciate MBDA's involvement in the redevelopment. I think we've gotten kind of caught up on a couple of key programs, but it's the redevelopment, the downtown, it's working with investors, developers, and helping us set out policies that can help the redevelopment even more. So I think that piece gets a little bit lost sometimes, but I think it's great.

I would submit that that's an important piece. Certainly there's catalytic development that could happen in downtown, but I would suggest that even the revitalization part, the pillar that we've created around looking at the streets, looking at the history and culture and elevating that, that creates an amenity in its own right for this community. Can you imagine if, you know, Broadway Street became like Broadway in Nashville, or, I mean, I'm just using that as an example, but I mean, that's the potential that we have. We have a history of music and entertainment in our community.

Ocean Boulevard feels much of that.

It does, and it could be as well.

It can be improved.

We have some really interesting opportunities to shape this the way we need. I think redefining or at least reaffirming that there is a vision that we're trying to achieve here could be really important for the community to hear, to make sure that we know that we're heading in that direction, make sure they know we're heading in that direction. Every bit of this work is really, really important.

And you know, even sitting here today and seeing a couple of faces of people, local people who have invested, invested in this community. I see Anne LeMay over there. I see Clay Britton over here and others. There's clearly a commitment, I think from, as Jackie said, from our community to make this happen.

And we've got to continue that because you know what? Those people in Washington are looking at us. Do you think they want to back a community that doesn't back itself? No. So we've all got to get on board and get this moving in the right direction and continue in that direction too.

I had a number since our last meeting and we postponed the resolution that would be when we started our official meeting from businesses and from individuals. The thing that stuck out to me is that about half of them felt that they were really involved in the process, especially the businesses, but half of them felt that maybe they weren't being listened to. I'm just providing that as the information that I got certainly didn't qualify as any kind of a statistically important sample. But I've always said sometimes when there's smoke, maybe there's fire as well. The other thing that I would really like to see, at least for me, I don't know how my other council folks feel about this. But a lot of the work, Jason, that you have been doing gets done and it gets funneled into staff before it gets to us. I would like us to be part of that initial process so that we're aware. Because as important as this is, our staff has so many other things that they are doing. It's conceivable that maybe a a need or a good idea kind of gets lost because other things all of a sudden take precedent over it. So I would really like council to be a little more

Maybe we ask for quarterly reports.

Well, we used to do quarterly reports. Jason pointed out at the MBDA board meeting last week that he hasn't been to us since January of 2025 for a quarterly report. So that's on us to make sure that that happens. This conversation, as I mentioned at the outset, is long overdue. We need to be in regular contact. We need to be sharing ideas. We need to acknowledge that the Myrtle Beach Downtown Alliance is so much more than the Arts and Innovation District. The A&I District, where we've invested $80 million, is not Ocean Boulevard. We are not a normal town. We've always been this sort of tourism destination where Main Street was, is, two blocks long. To Bill's point, the design guidelines were completed 18 months ago.

I don't think they've come to City Council at this point.

The MOU talks about supplementing city services. The ambassadors provide a vital need, but my question is, what happened to the temporary workers that the city used to hire, because I don't think we do that currently, to pick up litter? We used to hire from May, middle of May through Labor Day, 15, 20 people specifically to pick up litter in what we call the downtown area. Are those folks in the budget at this point? I think we've sort of swapped out what we were doing in favor of the ambassadors at this point, so we aren't supplementing what the city was providing. Brian?

No, those folks aren't in the budget. You made that comment a week or so ago, two weeks ago, maybe the MBDA meeting, I'm not sure which, and we've polled current staff and looked at HR records we don't we don't show that we have hired 20 people for litter crews along ocean boulevard um on a temporary basis so i mean there may have been and we still we still employ a couple of seasonal folks now to do beach pickup and litter pickup but it's not to the magnitude that that i think you recall so i'm not sure there's a There's a disconnect there somewhere.

Granted, memory is failing at this age.

It's no secret, it's hard to hire people right now in this environment. And for the services that you're talking about and the biohazard stuff, it's extra difficult.

And yet I know we did hire, I don't remember the exact number, but I was thinking it was north of 10 by some factor, people to do temporary cleanup work. And then they would also assist with landscaping and other things that we did downtown. So I really would like to know where those folks went because I don't think the ambassadors are literally supplementing. I think they've replaced the services that the city used to provide in many cases. It is a challenge, and you were correct in pointing that out, that it's a big mid. The municipal improvement is much larger and less focused than the other mids that you used as examples here, which we all need to keep in mind. It's so much more than the Arts and Innovation District. The merchants on Ocean Boulevard seem to like the ambassadors because they are the only official presence of the city that they see downtown we need to to work on that as well we can't hand all of these responsibilities over to you and abdicate our own responsibilities as a city for doing some of the things that need to be done to serve this large area so yes let's i'm happy to move forward at this point but we also need to keep our eyes on the things that genuinely need to be done and make sure that they are getting done?

Yeah, I would welcome a discussion, honestly, about what the expectation is. I think we get kind of jokingly refer to us as the HOA manager of the downtown. That's probably the most relevant example for the number of HOAs that are actually here. I did it for 11 years. I can tell you that it's not an easy task to be a manager of an HOA. But the idea around it is that the voices and the concerns we hear about every single day And there's an expectation that is, in my opinion, it's kind of loosely defined depending on the area of downtown. I think if we as a collective body, the council staff and the MBDA staff together could talk about what the expectation is and then figure out how to meet that, I think we'd be in a far better place in terms of lessening the number of concerns that we hear about things that are perceived to not be being done. I think perception is probably the larger part of the puzzle.

The needs of Ocean Boulevard are different than the needs of the Booker T. Washington neighborhood. That doesn't mean one's more important or less important than the other, but it's a very diverse section of geography that we've chosen to put into this MID, and we haven't looked at the whole thing consistently. You may have looked at the whole thing consistently. I'm not sure that we have consistently kept the whole thing in mind.

Thank you. First of all, the Gold Cap, from what I've observed that they do, they do a very good job of it. However, what I haven't seen or what I haven't heard or what I haven't read is the other things that you talk about that the Gold Cap do. two years ago or a little bit longer, I asked for a report on that and never received it. So, I think, you know, one of the things I think would help more than anything else with me in this body, I believe would be, I get

PowerPoint presentations.

They're great. They're nice. They're very well designed and all of that kind of stuff. But really and truly what I want to see is what actually happened. Does that make sense what I'm saying? What actually was accomplished? What is on the drawing board here? And please, Jason, don't take this as an offense because I'm not intending it to be that way. We've seen a number of presentations over the years. And you just kind of get lost in a presentation, so to speak. So what I would like to see is like old Joe Friday used to say on Dragnet, let's just get the facts. Let's see the facts. Let's see what is taking place. You talk about these experiences, these meetings, these conversations with prospective private sector people who want to come in and do something. We don't ever hear about that. And you say these things, but who are the people that are looking to do this? Who are the people? I go back to years and years ago, we had a piece of property out on the, Market Common District called the ITAP. And you made a comment about shovel ready. That brought me back to about 16 years ago when there was a gentleman from the county stood before this body and said, we need shovel ready property. We've got people knocking on the door, beating on the door, ready to come in and invest. Seems like I heard some of that about four years ago too. but never have heard who those people are. What is their interest? What are they looking to do here? How can we know what the city needs to do if we don't know what the people who are coming are interested in, what they are interested in doing? So those are just things that I think that would help. I don't know about the rest of this body, but that would help me 100%. And the other side of the coin is, I'm gonna say this, and the mid is very important. What the Downtown Alliance is doing is very important. What you're doing is very important. But I've said this time and time again, and I'll continue to say this part. We need to focus on this, but we don't need to lose focus on the rest of the city. And yes, it is important. But you know, I've been to a lot of downtowns. And all the other downtowns I've been to, they're nothing like Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach is kind of a unique situation when it comes to a downtown. But I will say this, what has taken place on Broadway, especially, and this is not the first time you've heard me say this, I think it's absolutely amazing what's taking place on Broadway. And you know what's more amazing about it than anything else?

Private sector.

You mentioned in one of the slides here about the money that the city invested in streetscape. That is a very small amount of money compared to what private sector has invested on Broadway. So my whole point to all of this, I'm all in, but I want to hear what private investors are ready to do as well. Thank you.

Thanks, Mike. Thank you, Jason. We've got some other folks in the audience. We've got 10 minutes, figuring we'll do a five-minute break at the top of the hour. I see Clay Britton. I see Michelle Plyler. Anybody? Dan Sine is here as well. Anybody want to say a few words? Good morning. Good morning. Good morning.

I'm Lawton Benton, born in Myrtle Beach in 1960. I'm a lifelong resident of the Myrtle Beach area. I'm a landowner in Myrtle Beach. I'm a business owner and proud to be a part of the Myrtle Beach area. On March 25th, 2021, the city of Myrtle Beach and One Grand Strand signed a memorandum of understanding in the Myrtle Beach Downtown Alliance was formed. The MOU is clear in defining the roles of each organization. I would like to read just one paragraph of the MOU that summarizes the essence of this unique public-private organization. It's in the section two part of the MOU and it's the first paragraph. And it reads, the MBDA and the City of Myrtle Beach shall strive to cultivate an ideal partnership that features transparency with regard to roles and expectations, is built on foundations of trust, respect, and understanding of one another's unique strengths, identifies mutual goals and opportunities for collaborative problem solving, and enables each party to remain proactively involved in projects and initiatives that impact downtown Myrtle Beach. As we move forward with downtown development, the two separate entities with the same goals must always strive to work diligently together to make downtown revitalization a reality. And I'd like just to share with you a personal, my personal interaction with the MBDA. As chairman of the Chapin Foundation here in Myrtle Beach, I reached out to the owners of the Presbyterian Church and we saw a picture of it just a few minutes ago. And as we all know, it's in a really sad state of repair. Anyway, I reached out to the owners of that property to see what the foundation may be able to do to help them move forward with their redevelopment. The owner was very gracious and he actually said, come back to us with a proposal and we'll talk about it. The first person I called was Jason. with the MBDA. Jason was able to sit down with us. He brought in consultants to help us look at different ideas and thoughts. He brought in financial people to help us come up with performance that we could look at to see if it was even a viable option for the foundation to even pursue. He met with us on several different occasions. When we went back to the owner of the property, Jason met with us. I know Jason not only met with us, he also met with the owner after us. He was real instrumental in trying to introduce that owner to people around town to help him make some acquaintances and connections with downtown So I know that Jason is involved in trying to move downtown Myrtle Beach in the right direction. And I think with that one particular project, for me, shows the importance of the MBDA. When you're a person like me that doesn't, when you meet with an owner like that and you're not sure how you move forward, where do you go? And we have that here in Myrtle Beach now with the MBDA. In closing, I would just like to say that the MBDA is working. As we've heard from council today and other people around town, what we're trying to do is working. Councilwoman Hadley has it right. It's not gonna happen overnight. It takes time. And I think the wheels are turning in the right direction. And I personally wanna thank City Council and staff for your support of the MBDA. And also we look forward to your continued support in the future. Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning. First thing I want to do is to thank each of you for all you're doing for our city to make it a wonderful place. You guys put in the real time, day in and day out. People like Michelle over here have been very helpful to what we're doing, the city manager, Brian, everybody. We appreciate all of that. But first of all, I want to tell you that I was not born here because there was no hospital. But I spent my life here, 10 or 15 years in Columbia. But one of our longstanding and thoughtful community leaders, Lawton, has spoken eloquently about the hard work that went into the memorandum of understanding between the city and the MBDA. And one grand strand was involved in that. We raised, we actually spent almost a million dollars of private sector funds getting the right people to come and tell us what needed to be done in this particular downtown. I stand here to tell you that since Jason Green took over for the MBDA, the MBDA has worked tirelessly to fulfill its duties under that MOU. We depend on the city to do its side of what's under the MOU. After more than two years of dedicated research and analysis, now, right now, the MBDA stands ready to deliver to you, the decision makers here, you're the decision makers as to what's gonna happen a very efficacious and well-suited plan for getting the developers, private sector developers, ready to do the things that need to be done downtown. Part of those have already been generated, part of those we're ready to generate over the course of the next couple of months. Based on experience with Jason since he went on, I'm sure that he will speak clearly and simply to you on what needs to be done downtown, how much it will cost, and what the return on that investment will be for the taxpayers who are putting up this money. But it's for you, the members of city council and the city executives, to consider the wisdom of the MBDA's plan and to modify it as you see appropriate as it comes to you, and then balance that against the costs and benefits of the other needs that this great city has. And all I want to say about that is that You are the right council to give the right decision there. We believe in you and we think this process is gonna be a great success for our downtown. But like all of you have said, it's not gonna be tomorrow, it's coming. Be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Michelle, I called you out. Do you want to say anything? You don't have to.

I just want to thank you all for your support and I really think that you could attend an MBDA meeting. They are open to the public. They're published to learn a little bit more about what we're doing. And I am thankful for the events and marketing because OMA was having to do that with no staff. So we are very thankful to Jason and we do that joint ATACS application with them so that we're still having the events on Ocean Boulevard. I think that it serves the entire city, definitely the downtown. You measure redevelopment in decades, not years. So thank you, and just thank you for your support.

Thanks, Michelle. The Platter Park events are light years ahead of where they have been recently, so that's great. Council, anybody else? We've got five minutes. Let's take a break until 10 o'clock then. How's that? Thank you.

Good morning. That goes there.

Good luck. I know. Council people.

Run, Debbie, run.

I did, but it's weird. Sorry.

All right.

Good morning. If we could call this meeting to order, please.

You want me to whistle?

Can you do that? No, I can't. No. Do it.

I've always wanted to learn how to do that, but I can't get my fingers.

I suggested to Buddy Stiers that we could just call a meeting and stand around and talk and maybe get more things done. All right, it is Tuesday, June 23rd. This is the regular Myrtle Beach City Council meeting. Thank you for being here today. We appreciate your presence. If you'll please join with us, stand if you are able, for our invocation followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Almighty God, creator and sustainer of all, that is and will ever be except our profound gratitude for this day and all of its blessings of life and freedom. We remember those who made our freedoms possible and we recognize it because of their sacrifice to our community and can practice and share our endured values and varied expressions of faith, civic duty, and respect for all. We gather today to render our public service in a proper manner and perform our civic duties in good order. Therefore, we solemnly invoke divine wisdom and guidance in this day and meeting. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice

Again, good morning. We have an agenda before us. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented? So moved. Mike and Debbie. Any comments from council? Any comments from the public? All those in favor of the agenda as presented, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? We have minutes before us from the June 9th regular council meeting. Is there a motion to approve the minutes?

So moved.

Jackie and Mike. Any discussion from council? Any discussion from the public? All those in favor of the minutes as presented, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Public requests, presentations, awards, and memorials. We have four things on here that should be of interest to everybody. First, we've got a proclamation recognizing the 50th anniversary of High Steppin' Country. Meredith is coming forward.

I believe Christopher Butler should be here. So if he's here, come on down. And this is a new one to our long list of proclamations that we've gotten to do over the years. Hi, Chris.

And this is the family. Great. Awesome.

All right, today we are honoring the 50th anniversary of High Steppin' Country, July 2026. Whereas High Steppin' Country is the longest-running live show on the Grand Strand, and whereas since 1976, High Steppin' Country has delighted audiences with high-energy entertainment, including country favorites, gospel, patriotic medleys, and more at Lakewood's Theater by the Sea. NWRES High Steppin' Country was founded five decades ago by the late Philip Perry and continues today under the direction of his daughter, Carla Malden, and daughter-in-law, Rhonda Perry. NWRES, the show's legacy includes choreography from Emmy award-winning talent, Mallory Graham, who led the production for 33 years. And whereas High Steppin' Country has been a launching pad for young performers with show alumni going into Broadway, television, and film. And whereas for 50 years, High Steppin' Country has entertained residents and visitors alike, becoming a cherished tradition in the Myrtle Beach area. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that the city of Myrtle Beach hereby recognizes and celebrates 50 years of high-stepping country and extends appreciation to the performers, directors, choreographers, and supporters who have contributed to five decades of success. Signed and sealed this 23rd day of June, 2026. Excellent.

Congratulations. 50 years. This was so well-written. To sing as well, too. Oh, wow.

I'll let Rhonda do that.

Where's she at? Or Chris. He's amazing. One, I want to thank Chris for spearheading this. That's amazing. And obviously to my parents, Phil and Gail, who were acknowledged here for starting this 50 years ago. And just so you know, this is my sister and sister-in-law who have carried this torch for over half of its life, for 50 years. So... That's a real recognition. And of course to our company Lakewood Camping Resort for continuing to allow us to do that and maintain our theater. And we're so grateful to you for this honor and acknowledgement of this 50 years and of course Lakewood for nearly 70 years. And I don't know, there's nothing really to say, right, beyond that other than High Summit Country has been a launching patch. They just said it right here. I'm sure you all know who Josh Turner is, right? Got his start right here. We gave him his first job. It's amazing. And there's dozens more who have been on Broadway, as this thing said, and films, TV. and to get recognized by the city for our longevity and ability to keep this thing going and what we hope that we bring to the city, to the Grand Strand in general. Just thank you.

And thank you. Thank you. That's great to know. Thank you very much.

Absolutely.

Can we take a photo, like, with you guys in the background?

Absolutely. That's okay. Good to see you, ma'am. Thank you. Yes, sir. Good to see you. Yes, sir. How do we want to do that? Thank you, sir. Stand right here.

Come this way. Thank you.

Quick.

All right, thank you again. Hi, Stefan Country at Lakewood Campground. We have a proclamation recognizing July as Parks and Recreation Month, and we have a lot of our parks folks here today. Come forward.

315. All right. That's a good showing.

You can come in this door if you want.

Oh yeah, there's some side doors to come on in.

Come in this door.

A good showing from Parks and Rec. All right, we are celebrating National Parks and Recreation Month in Myrtle Beach throughout July. Whereas the Parks and Recreation Department provides fundamental programs crucial to the health and well-being of all ages. And whereas parks, green spaces, trails, playgrounds, athletic facilities and recreational programs provide opportunities for residents and visitors to be active, connect with nature and engage and enjoy time with the community. NWRES, Parks and Recreation Services, promote physical and mental well-being, environmental stewardship, social inclusion, and lifelong learning. NWRES, the Myrtle Beach Parks, Recreation, and Sports Tourism Department, is the second largest department in the city, overseeing four recreation facilities, Chapin Memorial Library, 25 playgrounds, 144 beach accesses, 653 acres of green spaces, 47 miles of trails and walking paths, and 180 permitted special events. And whereas the City of Myrtle Beach is committed to providing exceptional parks, recreational amenities, community events, and programs that enrich the lives of residents and visitors. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that the City of Myrtle Beach hereby declares the month of July as National Parks and Recreation Month and encourages all residents and visitors to explore outdoor activities, participate in programs, and enjoy the benefits of parks and recreation and what they bring to our community. Signed and sealed this 23rd day of June, 2026. Thanks.

Thank you very much. Myrtle Beach would not be Myrtle Beach without the things that you do. So y'all are the best.

Thank you for recognizing July's National Parks and Recreation Month, and thank you for the continued support. I think all of us recognize and understand that we could not do what we do without your support. I do want to recognize part of our team that's here today. This is a small portion of our team. These guys work night and day to maintain and operate the facilities that we have, and they do a tremendous job. So thank you guys. I appreciate your hard work. Everyone that's here listening, please take the time to get out, not only in July, but all the time and enjoy the tremendous parks and recreation facilities that we have here in the city of Myrtle Beach. Thank you. Thank you, Doug. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I made you walk the line. Thank you.

Thank you, Dustin.

Appreciate it.

Seriously, thank you for all that the Parks and Recreation folks do. They're sort of the unseen, unsung heroes of the City of Myrtle Beach staff. Meredith, we have something very special here today. I was at the Myrtle Beach International Airport for the Coming Home ceremony a week ago Sunday, I think, for Robert here. Did I say that right? Yes, Robert, who's the son of Vinnie, who's a former Myrtle Beach police officer. So we're keeping this in the family today. Please.

And that's one of the reasons we're doing it. And thank you to Carol for alerting us of what happened. And Vinnie, thanks for helping me write this. So we had your son here today who's here all the way from Germany. So this is in honor of Specialist Robert Dorio for his heroic actions in Germany. And it was a pretty long story, so I summarized it the best that I can. All right. Whereas Specialist Robert Dorio, a graduate of Saucasty High School and member of the United States Army, has demonstrated exceptional courage, selflessness, and dedication while serving as a combat medic. And whereas on October 22nd, 2025, during a multinational military training exercise near Erding, Germany, local police officers, unaware the exercise was authorized, responded to reports of suspicious activity and encountered military personnel using blank ammunition as part of the training scenario. And whereas during the resulting exchange, police officers fired live rounds wounding a German soldier when Specialist Dorio, the only medic on site, responded without hesitation to provide critical medical treatment and care to the injured German soldier. And whereas Specialist Dorio's swift actions and dedication to duty helped stabilize the wounded soldier for transport to a hospital. And whereas in recognition of his heroic actions and extraordinary bravery, Specialist Dorio was awarded Do you wanna say this? Okay, I meant to double check with him. Here we go, forgive my German. Ehrenkreuz der Bundeswehr in gold. We can all look that up, which is the German Armed Forces Cross of Honor in gold. On April 27th, 2026, by the Federal Minister of Defense of Germany, one of the nation's highest honors for valor and distinguished service. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that the Myrtle Beach City Council hereby recognizes and commends Specialist Robert Dorio for his heroic actions, extraordinary bravery, and distinguished service, and congratulates him on receiving the Erin Cruz Der Bonsoir in gold, signed and sealed this 23rd day of June, 2026. Robert. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Vinnie, do you want to say anything?

Go Army.

We're just proud of our son and happy to have him home for a little while before he goes back over. As you should be. He's here for about two weeks, I think, and then he goes back.

He happens to leave this Saturday. Okay. All right.

Well, thank you for your service, Robert. Congratulations. Robert did ask if he had to say anything, and the answer was no, so he was happy about that. All right, up next we have the Communications and Creative Services update, if you will please.

Hey City Council, Erin Bolling here with your communications update from our very own patriotic promenade. Beach Renourishment is in its final stages in Myrtle Beach. Here's a reminder to check the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers live tracker. The project is on pace to wrap up in Myrtle Beach next month. The lights on Ocean Boulevard are up. Crews installed them last week. You can see them from 9th Avenue North to 16th Avenue North. Just in time for summer, the flower baskets are back along Ocean Boulevard. American and state flags are on the boardwalk. This patriotic display goes from Plymouth Park to the First Avenue beach access. It joins other America 250 displays like the banners in Nance Plaza and the Market Common, and the temporary art installation in Nance Alley plan to go up soon. The city celebrated Juneteenth over the weekend. People gathered at Charlie's Place for music, food, and community. The historic Myrtle Beach College School Museum and Education Center celebrates 20 years since the grand reopening in 2006. Everyone's invited to come out to the celebrations from noon to six this Wednesday. National Waste and Recycling Workers Week was last week. Thank you to everyone with Myrtle Beach Solid Waste for keeping our city clean. Whispering Pines Golf Course has had a hole-in-one ever since the renovations last year. Since the course reopened, each month has hit a new record for rounds played. Congratulations to Myrtle Beach Fire Captain Dwayne Wright for retiring. Captain Wright was very visible within the department while he oversaw recruit training for six years. The planes at Warburg Park are looking fresh again after getting cleaned and repainted. The roundabout is back open. Summer camps are back at Mary C. Canty and Pepper Gettings Recreation Centers. Kids are spending the summer enjoying fun activities to keep them busy. Looking ahead, join us for the unveiling of the Palmetto Pride Carousel Horse. The ceremony will be at the corner of Howard and Nieder Street, July 1st. And with Independence Day coming, here's your reminder that fireworks are only allowed on private property with the property owner's permission between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m.

that time frame extends to 12 30 a.m on july 5th no fireworks are allowed on the beach that's all for now have a great rest of your week thank you very much the flags on the boardwalk look very nice i've not seen the lights in person but have heard feedback about those i was at juneteenth on saturday had a nice crowd for that over at charlie's place so a very busy weekend here in in myrtle beach Up next, non-agenda items from the public. Do we have guest speakers today?

We do. We have four today. Dan Martin.

How you doing today? Good morning. Morning. Hi. I've just got some, the Country Music Festival, and comments on that, and everything I've heard y'all talking about, Jason and everybody about the MBDA, sounds like a job for them, especially in supplement safety and identify needs and challenges. I took on something to help the people that can't get to these events. Americans with disabilities, handicapped, try to help people get to the event. And I ran into some roadblocks during that. And I brought it up, I have brought it up, and I thought everybody needs to know about it and somebody can get on the job and hopefully make something happen to help people get to these events. Not everybody can walk a mile, two miles, three miles. And I brought it to the attention of the police And I was instructed to do a certain route, which was a way, and then have people walk across 17. Some people can't even do that. I was driving a golf cart and driving people the first day right up to the entrance. Never had a problem. And the second day, I was approached by a, bicycle police and said, I couldn't do that. I wasn't allowed in there. And I know they had the parking at the mall, the old mall, and they brought people over that way. But some people from the north side and the South Side in hotels didn't have that opportunity. They had to get there the best way they could. And thank God there were people in other carts that were doing this to help people. And the police were concerned about payment. There was no payment. This was volunteer work. And I was very aware of that, but From what I was instructed to do, it did not work. And I was told by, I believe, a Stephanie, maybe, at Nance Plaza that was stationed there. And I asked for the... She said I needed some permits and all this other stuff. And I... I don't agree with that because I don't have to have permission to help somebody. And so I just wanted to bring it to all your attention so we could help these people get there and get back from there. Because after they closed Ocean Boulevard, it made it even rougher to get back. And when you couldn't even get a cart in, so they had to walk and sit down, walk and sit down. And a lot of them had to walk to their hotels. Because we didn't have enough help. And it just sounds like the MBDA is probably the one that can handle this. So I just wanted to bring it to all your attention. And I have already talked about it. And I'll be glad to answer any questions. But I just want to try to help the people and have the facility available from both sides, not just one side. hopefully hopefully the next they're talking you're talking about doing another event maybe during bike week which i think is great and hopefully we'll have enough enough entrances and excess excess and stuff like that so we can get these people safely to their back to their hotels or wherever they're staying It was a very great event. Kudos to the safety. The incidents were down. Everything was great. Just like to put it in your court, Mayor. Super. And I appreciate everything you've done.

Thank you, Dan. And it is something that we can talk about as we plan for the next one so that we can provide some transportation for the folks who literally can't walk. So let us work on that. Yes, sir. Super, thanks, Dan. Yes, sir. Jennifer.

Alex Vogel.

Good morning.

Good morning. Morning.

When we want to go from darkness to light, typically you have a couple of different choices. One would be like a dimmer switch that you can turn and gradually get lighter. And the other one's a switch. You can just flip it and you get the change that you want. Last November, the residents of the city flipped the switch. Since then, this council has had the opportunity to flip the switch several times And you've not only not flipped the switch, some of you have actually stood in front of it saying, don't flip it. You insult us when you say some things take time. Some things do. But some things can flip a switch. You need to do that. Thank you.

Thanks, Alex. Jennifer.

Jared Hendricks.

Saw you recently.

Yes. How are you?

Doing well.

I'm glad I can finally make one of these. Usually I'm teaching, so some are nuts. I can finally get out here. But I wanted to bring up the issue of the golf cart parking, because I'm one of those people who do go to the beach a lot and use the golf cart parking around the areas of 65th, 66th area. And I know this topic has come up. since McBride was mayor. I mean, we've been through probably four mayors and three city managers of should we allow the golf carts to be parking in the grassy areas of the beach accesses. And since then, it's always kind of been allowed. We've let it go, even though it's been brought up. And I think Myrtle Beach has actually been probably the best city in the state, coastal city in the state, when it comes to access for the beach. personally around that area of them 66 and i know that grassy area is very well defined on the north end and south end of the beach access same with 64th now 65th i know on the north end you've got a fence line or landscaping there which defines the city property all the way down to the dunes on the north end i believe excuse me the south end of that beach access, it's not where maybe a yard merges in and maybe there's some confusion there. And of course you got all the avenues down 48, 38, et cetera. That grassy area's actually been a great asset for the city when it comes to providing efficient parking and access to the beach. And my concern is if you take that away, well, you're gonna take away a lot of access. Now, if the goal is to have less people using the beach, well, that will be accomplished because the golf carts will park in the parking spots and take away the parking spots for the cars. So you'll have less people. But if you really wanna maximize that use of the beach accesses, I'd say do what the last three city managers or two city managers and four mayors have done. and continue to allow that parking for the golf carts. It really is, to me, the most efficient use of that space. It's nicely landscaped. We have drainage there. I remember one, someone brought up, maybe we should extend the parking spots all the way down to the dunes. I think that would be a terrible idea. I love the green space down there. It's not always being used, but it's well utilized by the golf carts, and I think it's just a problem that doesn't need fixing. I think it's a good use of our space and I hope the council continues to allow it.

Thank you, Jared.

Thank you.

I think I probably get the credit and or blame for this. And there are a number of issues here. I would rather deal with a hurricane on a regular basis than talk about parking, frankly. The 2015 parking solution defined where parking is allowed. It's technically not legal to park on the grassy spaces, and we write tickets elsewhere in the city for people who park illegally. Some of the residents on Ocean Boulevard complained about the excess parking in the grassy areas, but also because there were some vehicles other than golf carts parked in those areas. I think that's a rare thing for vehicles other than golf carts to park there. We ought to be able to find an easy solution for this if it's a matter of changing a rule so that you can park on the designated grassy areas at this, that, and the other street end, great. But it comes down to an issue of fairness. If we're writing tickets for somebody else for doing something that we're not writing tickets for here when it's literally illegal to do that. We just need to follow our own rules and enforce the rules across the city fairly. So I think there's probably an easy solution to it. Let's just say, yes, you can park if we have to put little stakes in the grass so that you know where the limits are. one of the challenges is that not all of the grassy area belongs to the city at some of those street ends some of it is private property too but the rule has existed since 2015 when the parking solutions such as they were were implemented i've heard that there is additional parking available but that certain street ends are more popular than others but let's let's find a way to either designate those spaces where parking in the grass is allowed for golf carts with city decals only, and then keep an eye on those. But just to allow the rules not to be followed here when we're enforcing the rules elsewhere doesn't seem fair at the end of the day. So let's find a solution. I think we can do that fairly easily. Anybody else? Okay, we'll work on that. Thank you. Jennifer?

Ophelia Ansari? I'm sorry if I said that wrong.

This is my first time here, okay? So good morning, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Ophelia Ansari, and I have been resident of Moodle Beach for the past eight years.

You can pull it down.

I am speaking today because I care deeply about our community and about maintaining the high standards of safety that have made Myrtle Beach a wonderful place to live. Recently, there have been several incidents at Coastal Grand Mall that have raised concerns among residents and shoppers. Earlier this year, there was a reporter assault involving juveniles inside the mall. More recently, there was the dirt bike incident that received local television coverage and drew significant public attention. I understand that law enforcement investigates these incidents and that those responsible are held accountable. I appreciate the work of our police officers and first responders who work every day to keep our community safe. My purpose today is not to criticize anyone. Rather, I would like to encourage continued attention to public safety and prevention efforts. Many residents, employees, and visitors spend time at the mall and other public places throughout the city. including myself that I do go to the mall to take my granddaughter who is five years old to the indoor playground. So we deserve to feel safe while shopping, working and enjoying all that Myrtle Beach has to offer. As a resident, I would like to know what additional steps, if any, are being considered by city leaders, law enforcement and community partners to help prevent similar incidents in the future and to maintain public confidence in the safety of our community. I believe Myrtle Beach is a great city and I want it to continue to be known as a safe and welcoming place for residents and visitors alike. Thank you for your time, your service and your commitment to our community. And I really appreciate anything you can do to prevent more of these incidents to happen in the mall. Thank you.

And we would agree with you, I think. I would assume, and if not, I will request that we chat with the mall management and see what assistance we can provide. I know that they've got a juvenile rule. Not everybody follows the rules. Okay, thank you. Anybody else?

Nope, that's it.

Okay.

We have a number of items on the consent agenda today.

Good morning. Yes, there are six items on this morning's consent agenda for your consideration.

Excuse me.

First item is motion 2671 to approve a donation to the Myrtle Beach Police Department from the 15th Judicial Circuit Solicitor's Office. Solicitor's intervention program in the amount of $2,500. The funding will be used to support the Junior Police Academy in August of this year. The second item is motion 20-2672, authorizing the city to accept a grant awarded in the amount of $1,590 from the PD Healthcare Coalition. There is no match for that donation and it'll be used to provide some travel expenses to the emergency management coordinator. The third item is motion 202673 to accept a grant in the amount of $108,770 from the U.S. Department of Justice Patrick Leahy Bulletproof Vest Program. There is a match of 50% of $108,770 in the police department budget for bulletproof vests. The fourth item is motion 202674, authorizing the city to apply for and accept, if awarded, a grant of $1,915,230 from FEMA, staffing for adequate fire and emergency response program for the purpose of hiring 12 firefighters. This is part of the 2472 that we talked about, I think, at the last meeting. The next item is motion 202675, authorizing the city to apply for and accept, if awarded, A grant in the amount of $131,470 from FEMA to the Firefighters Grant Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program. There is a match of $13,150 in the fire department budget. This is to replace outdated thermal imaging sensors and auto pulse units. And finally, is to authorize the city to enter into an agreement with Horry County Schools concerning the School Resource Officer Program. The agreement calls for one SRO at the following schools, Myrtle Beach High School, Myrtle Beach Middle School, Myrtle Beach Elementary, and Myrtle Beach Primary. Horry County will reimburse the city 50% of the SRO salary at Myrtle Beach High School and Myrtle Beach Middle School. Myrtle Beach Elementary and Primary School SROs are funded through a state grant. Thank you.

Motion to approve consent agenda as presented.

Second.

Debbie. Refresh my memory, Fox, if you would, on the two fire department grants. Is that for the budget year that starts July 1, or is that for a future budget year?

July 1.

Okay. And we've got money set aside to match those grants if we need to?

For the second one, yes. The first one, if we get it, we'll have to budget accordingly.

If we get it, it would be a good problem?

Yes, sir.

Okay. Any other discussion from council? Any discussion from the public on the consent agenda? All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. Moving on to the regular agenda, Madam Clerk, Ordinance 26-46.

Second reading of ordinance 2026-46 to amend the Myrtle Beach zoning code section 1407 table of uses to add video and other media productions as a permitted use in the downtown commercial C7 zoning district.

Good morning, mayor, members of council. Been no changes since first reading. We'll be glad to review with y'all again if so desired. Please, if you would. We'll get a motion. We've got a motion first. Second.

Jackie's second.

Who's the first? Mike. This is a request to allow video and other media in the C7 downtown. We currently allow this in the A Zone, I mean the amusement district, the entertainment district, light manufacturing district, and the warehouse manufacturing district. Planning Commission recommended approval unanimously. The old what used to be the old glass building downtown.

Just the layout.

Very unique design with what they're trying to bring downtown with the big nice storefront is what was being proposed. There's the definition of your video and other media production, and you can see where it's currently allowed in four other zoning classifications. We also have an event space definition, and they had an event space included in their area as well, and that's currently allowed in the C7 district. Okay.

Thank you. This is on Broadway Street. Yes, sir.

And a great improvement for Broadway. Yeah.

Any comments from council? Any comments from the public? All those in favor of the second reading, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you all. Have a great day.

Thank you.

We're working on it. Madam Clerk, first reading of 26-47, please.

First reading of ordinance 2026-47 is authorizing the sale of 515 9th Avenue North, pin number 44401010033 and 44401010034 to Reef Labs, LLC.

Thank you, Jan. Good morning, Mayor, members of council. Excited to present the opportunity. We've talked to you all about this in the last couple of months. We do have a proposed buyer for 515 9th Avenue on one of the city-owned parcels there that was acquired back in 2018. The official buyer is Reef Labs, as you can see here on the ordinance. That is an associated entity with, I have to look at the official title the whole time. TransPerfect Translation International, Inc. It's Jim at TransPerfect. That's generally the common day-to-day conversations. TransPerfect is a really great story. Jim came back to Myrtle Beach or relocated to Myrtle Beach a number of years ago. He began operating in the HTC Aspire Hub. You heard from Jenny last week about all of the great things happening at Emerge. Jim has been, Jim and his folks have been a part of that community since day one. They outgrew the space at Emerge fairly quickly and were struggling to find a place. They ended up renting another office space a little further outside of town and missed the community. So they came back a year or so ago and we dislocated some city staff, sorry Devin, to make room for TransPerfect in a city-owned building there. They have now outgrown that space at 517 and would like to buy the property next door, which is at least twice the size. We have had the property appraised, appraised for $550,000. That is the proposed sale price, as is, where is. Obviously, Jim is here. Jim's happy to talk about what they do, because most folks don't know what they do, but what they do and why they want to be downtown. But I will let you get it in the record and we can go from there.

Do we have a motion?

So moved. Second.

Any discussion from council?

They're taking the property as is, basically. Yes, sir. And so they're going to obviously do some upfitting. Looking at that property, best guess, what are we talking about? Another $300,000, $400,000, maybe more?

Don't start talking until you get here, because they're just going to make you repeat it once you get here.

It's nice to meet you.

So we don't have an exact number on it yet. We'll do something that's cost effective down there. But the goal is to build an office space that's exciting that people are going to want to come into. And they're going to allow us to attract the kind of talent both from Myrtle Beach and from all over the world that we want to relocate here. Roughly our kind of rough back of the envelope estimate is 300 to 500 K We don't know exactly what that number is gonna be I still got to work with some local contractors to figure out what that's gonna be But that's the ballpark and it's gonna be a really cool urban style like loft Office environment that will show really really well It'll help us hopefully have everybody have an awesome place to come into work every day where they're excited

Yeah, it's more techie, casual, like Silicon Valley, but not Silicon Valley here. Sandy Valley. I like that. That's what I was getting at, that you're not just buying this property, you're paying

the the appraised value for it uh but now we're going to you your company are going to continue to improve the property which only helps us improve the area and we're going to do so quickly like this is not an investment property or anything like that that we just want to sit we don't care like this needs to be our home so as soon as we're we have an agreement like we will begin the process of of upfitting it uh and bringing people in life down there so it will not sit empty

Jim, tell us a little bit about your division of the company, what you do, and what you see your growth is going to be. Sure.

I'll try to do this super quickly because it can be a long story. So I came to TransPerfect, it's been about 18 years ago, to build out the e-discovery and digital forensics practice group. So if any of you have ever had the pleasure of being sued or been under a litigation hold, what my division does is we come in and we collect cell phones and emails and all the electronic records that are gonna be potentially at issue in litigation. So that business has been fantastically successful, started in New York, but now we're all over the world. I moved down here in 2020 and As part of that, basically I've been looking at ways that I can run this big global business better. So an idea that I've had for a long time was to build a software platform that's very flexible on which a business like ours or any complex large institution can basically build workflows and manage data, connect to all kinds of external data sources, in order to integrate all the company's operations into one platform. So I'd wanted to build it for a while, and finally in 2020, I decided it was time to start building a prototype, hired someone down here, you know, kind of did like a little work interview to see how we'd work together. It worked out great. So three years ago, three and a half years ago, decided to build it. sought out office space, found Emerge downtown, which was a no-brainer, and I know that you guys have put, the city's put a lot of money into it, HTC's put a lot of money into it, but having that kind of space that's available that makes it so that I can just start operations from day one and just start working was a godsend. So, yep, started it three years ago, had built out that platform, launched it March of this past year, so three months ago, moved all of my company's operations over to it, and now we'd be in the process of improving the platform, and a year from now, we'll start looking to license it to external customers and start driving a lot of revenue through it. So that's a whirlwind, really quick approach of what we've done. I hope that made some sense. Number of employees you're going to bring tonight to Ebony North? So right now we have like 10. I think that the future is really bright. There's a couple of other teams within the company that we want to relocate down here and start hiring and scaling up. So realistically, I see in the next two years being at 25. And then I think three to five years is where we probably hit 50 employees. And honestly, if this does what I think it's going to do and what I intend for it to do, that number goes up pretty substantially. So that's roughly what we're looking at. Like, I think we have hopes and dreams that this is a very, very large success and is a very, very large employer. But I don't want to quite get ahead of myself, kind of take it one step at a time. So TransPerfect is probably 12,000 globally. On my team, I probably managed like 700 or 800 globally. So we have had a lot of conferences in Myrtle Beach. We always bring people down. It shows very well. Everybody asks about how they can live here. So we're having another conference in the fall. In September, we're going to bring our rising stars in from all over the world, which is people who have worked with my team for about two to five years and we think are like kind of the future of the company. And my hope is we'll have that space ready to go and show in September or October when they come down so that we can attract and convince some of them to stay and make that their home office.

I just think it's exciting to see a space in our in that particular area that is very activated because we have a lot of spaces that are empty or not utilized with people. So bringing people downtown is great.

And we need more. I mean, it's, you know, to retain people, it's like we need restaurants and bars and coffee shops and ultimately places where people are gonna live and shop for groceries. Like if we can have that kind of vibrant downtown community, we can retain people. And I think if you squint, you can see it. But our job is to like, hey, let's create an awesome office environment, like open it to the public as much as we can and just bring life downtown. So bring people that are going to go to restaurants every day and bars and that kind of stuff.

as we discussed the dichotomy between what we think of as downtown and then all of ocean boulevard which is also in that downtown arms reach i mean this is three blocks from the ocean yeah we don't have a typical downtown it's five or six blocks deep broadway street is our de facto main street and that's the challenge that the mbda faces their scope is much broader than the arts and innovation district but this is a great start

Cool. Thank you. It's been really great to work with you. And whatever you guys need from me that I can help, we're here. Because I think we all have the same vision.

Thank you. Thanks for helping us get this piece of property back on the tax roll. Yes.

And I will say we've been working with Jim and his team for months and months and months and months at this point, but as you heard, he's been a little busy. So getting through the public launch of the project has stalled the conversation some, but we felt like they are the absolute right mix for downtown. They bring the activation. They obviously have the innovation. And it's a great story. Oh, yeah.

Any other comments from council? Any comments from the public? All those in favor of this first reading, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries. All right. The second and first reading is to lease property adjacent to the building that we're just agreeing to sell for the same purpose, basically, I think. Want to talk a little bit about that? Oh, I'm sorry. I got ahead of myself.

First reading of ordinance 2026-48 is approving the execution and delivery by the city of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina of a lease between the city as Leesor and Cocoa Flow Innovations Inc. as Lee C. with respect to building located at 517 9th Avenue North in the city of Myrtle Beach.

If we sell 517. 15 to TransPerfect, then TransPerfect will move out of 517, which leaves a vacancy, which Cocoflow would like to fill. Again, good story. Cocoflow's a bit of a different story. Bernie is also here with Cocoflow. I'll have him say a word here in a minute. Don't know if you want to get a motion on the floor, or I can go ahead.

Is there a motion to approve?

So moved. Second.

We have also been working with Cocoa Flow now for a couple of years. Howard initially brought, Howard Walde initially brought Cocoa Flow to us as a living lab, one of the initial living lab, first, second, was it the first? Very first living lab partner that we had in that program. They worked with Parks and Rec. And Ryan in particular, I made Ryan hang around for a little bit just in case you all had questions. Our Parks and Rec staff and Coco Flow and Bernie and his team worked together to launch a new customer engagement platform that our Parks Department is using live today. So we have actually put that technology into use. Coco Flow and Bernie's team built the platform there. Bernie is continuing to grow his company, wants to have a corporate footprint in Myrtle Beach, and that 517 is the ideal place for that. Bernie has also been very, very involved in the HTC Aspire Hub and the Emerge community since his arrival. Shockingly, Bernie and I just met for the first time just a couple of weeks ago, but I have heard Bernie's name for years at this point, so I was glad to finally meet him. I'm happy to talk through this. I will say there's one correction that will be made between now and the second reading if we get to second reading. I think what you have on the ordinance says it's a three-year lease. It's actually a five-year lease. We will clean that up. I recognize that. So that was my error, but we'll get that part of it cleaned up. But otherwise, it is materially the same term.

Thank you. Any discussion from council? Any discussion from the public? Does Bernie want to say anything? I don't know that it's required, but he's certainly welcome to.

Bernie always wants to say something.

Okay. Tucker's been calling them all out.

Yes, sir. Appreciate it.

I don't have anything prepared, but I'm happy to fumble through this. First off, good morning, Mr. Mayor, council members, city executives, and staff. And, yeah, my name is Bernie. I'm the founder of Cocoa Flow Innovations, which is the company behind RecPlus. RecPlus is a modern software platform that helps cities run their parks and recreation departments. And yeah, first, simply put, I just wanted to say thank you, everybody. Thank you to Mr. Fox. Thank you to Mr. Tucker, Mr. Jordan, Mr. Parks, Mr. Waldie, and especially Mr. Ryan Caputo, who was instrumental in helping us understand the Parks and Recreation landscape a little bit deeper. But more importantly, he helped us understand what it truly means to serve your community. So thank you, Mr. Caputo. And yeah, you guys are the first. You were the first a few years ago. Mr. Waldie, through the Innovation Lab, took a chance on a young company with a big idea that technologies that cities use to run their Parks and Recreation Department should not feel outdated, should not feel fragmented, and should not be expensive. And because you all said yes, we were able to deliver a modern alternative and a more connected system in this sector. And because you said yes, REC Plus has grown and spreading across cities across the US and into Canada as we speak. So our partnership is exciting. It means a lot to us. And we want to be here, so we want to plant our flagship, our headquarters, right here in this city. We are committed to this city. We want to bring conferences and events similar to Mr. Eisman had brought to this city. And more importantly, we want to continue to embed ourselves deeper into the community. A recent example, we partnered with the city. We co-hosted a football clinic for kids ages 6 to 12 years old. It's a free clinic. We brought in coaches from high school, D1 all the way to the pros. So well attended. It was a great turnout. And that's what our partnership means to us. And our mission truly is to try to be in communities around the world and make them feel alive and in motion. So that means kids in or on fields and families and parks and communities and recreational centers. Our software is just a tool, but the real product is a more connected, more active community for you guys. So I'll close with this. A FEW YEARS FROM NOW, WHEN REC PLUS IS IN COMMUNITIES AROUND THE WORLD, WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO SAY THAT OUR STORY THAT I'LL TELL IS THAT IT ALL STARTED RIGHT HERE. SO THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME. THANK YOU.

I TOLD YOU HE ALWAYS HAS A WORD. THANKS, BERNIE. ANY OTHER QUESTIONS?

ANY COMMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR OF It was the ordinance. 26-48, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. Resolution 2026-11, Jennifer.

Resolution 2026-11, approving the Myrtle Beach Downtown Municipal Improvement District Annual Assessment Report for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 2027 and other matters related thereto.

Motion to approve. Second.

Who? Mike Nutter for the first. We'll give Bill the second. How's that? Discussion from council? Discussion from Michelle?

As we discussed this morning, this resolution allows you to adopt the assessment role for the Downtown Municipal Improvement District, assessing the 10 mils of tax in that district.

Council, any comments, discussion? This was the subject of our workshop this morning. Any comments from the public? All those in favor of the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you.

Thank you, Michelle. Good job. All right, motion. Jennifer, motion 26-77.

Motion 2026-77 is to appoint, reappoint one member to the Air Base Redevelopment Authority. And? Rick Hussey was recently appointed earlier this year, actually, and the term was very short, apparently. He was filling an unexpired term. He does wish for reappointment. The next expiration date would be 2030 for that.

Motion to reappoint. Second.

She said it. You pick.

Jackie and Mike, first and second.

Any comments from council?

Who's the second? This, the reappointment. Is there any confirmation that goes with this? I know that we have two members now. It can't be confirmed because the Senate's not in session, as I understand it.

Huss, he was confirmed. They went into session before they got the letter for...

Perfect.

Who was that?

Ed.

Ed Carey. Ed Carey. We're waiting on the confirmation letter for him. Okay.

Any other comments from council? Any comments from the public? All those in favor of this motion to reappoint Rick Hussey to the Myrtle Beach Air Base Redevelopment Authority, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? We have on the agenda another opportunity for non-agenda items from the public. Anybody wish to add anything to the conversation today? Hearing none, we'll move on. Communications from city board's commission members? Communications from city council and the city manager?

Ryan's got something. Briefly, our next workshop is scheduled for July the 7th. Next week is July the 4th and there's a lot of folks taking time off and we're gonna be very busy with the 4th of July holiday. The one thing we have right now is the Keep America Beautiful program from the Chamber. We'd like to cancel the workshop on July the 7th and just move that item to the 14th, which is the following week. That's the only thing we have at the moment.

And given the schedule of next week, kind of felt that... We can add some other things to the July 14th workshop so that it's not barren. We can fix that problem.

That's what we're, we don't have anything for the 14th, or we'll move.

I know. Jimmy, what's your issue? We're due to give you our quarterly report. We're due to give you our quarterly report on the first, it'll be the first Tuesday of the new quarter, so if we could do that the 14th, that would be great.

We can do that. We can do that, just get with me. I didn't realize that we're at that time.

All right, we'll move. We're all moved up.

Okay. All right, so we will cancel this workshop on the 7th and move what was scheduled for the 7th to the 14th. Please remind me that you need to be on the agenda for the 14th.

And to wrap up a conversation, we do need some direction from you all on the golf cart parking scenario. We, to your point earlier, and to the point of the comments made, this has been an ongoing topic for a number of years. I think, Mayor, somebody made the comment that we have let it go. And that is true. Technically, that's a violation and they should not be parking in the grassy area per the law. We have let it go in lieu of or in effort to find a more permanent fix. Permanent fixes really aren't that easy. All the beach accesses are different. Getting access into there safely is not that easy. We've been able to let it go. We have had no safety issues. Our folks monitor it to make sure it doesn't get out of hand, but that's neither here nor there at this point. We need a path forward. We have a handful of options. Number one is to try to figure out a way to amend the ordinance to allow it, if that's what you all want. recognize that's not gonna be a simple fix because there's gonna be a different solution probably at every street end. There's probably gonna be some kind of funding commitment to make access more formal in those areas. So it'll be a little different. Number two, obviously continue to not allow it. To date, we have not written any actual tickets. We write written. I can't speak today. Is this your last meeting? No, we're not going there. We have written warnings and we continue to write warnings. But if you want to stay the course, we will transition to actually issuing citations and tickets. Number three. We can convert some of the street end vehicular parking spots to golf cart parking only parking spots and probably add some extra spots. We would lose vehicles, but roughly speaking, we can add two golf carts for every one vehicle we lose. We just need some direction from you all on how you want us to proceed.

Let me take a shot at it. And I don't know whether the cure is in a resolution or in an ordinance. It'll be an ordinance. It is in an ordinance, okay. I think there are only a handful of street ends that have the option for parking in the grass. I don't think it's the 140 street ends that exist.

It's 12 to 18, my guess. 10% of the street ends. Let us identify those. They're identified. Let us identify...

what we think the maximum number of parks could be of golf carts with decals and that um let us i don't really want to tear up the grass i don't want to put gravel or pavement down to that point to that point recognize when we formally make this parking area it's gonna have to be safe we're gonna have to check all of the liability boxes to make sure that we are getting in and out of that space safely

not crossing the sidewalk. I mean, there are a lot of other boxes that are gonna have to be checked to legally do that. And that's good. And we have started that process.

And to define it in some way without tearing up the, without us uprooting the grass and replacing it with hard surface of some sort.

Do our best.

And then... unless it's changed and i did not catch it at some point along the way i think we only allow one golf cart per parking space we allow two motorcycles per parking space but i think under city code we only allow one golf cart for parking space and that's another one i would not encourage you to change you want to say two two golf carts i think if we want to re-stripe it here let me add this part right here about that okay

The problem with allowing when two motorcycles show up, it's usually two people, two motorcycles show up together. You allow a place for two golf carts, one golf cart to show up and another golf cart to show up behind it, and then the golf cart in the front is stuck until that person comes. So I kind of agree with Brian on that. I don't know we should go to a two golf cart per parking space.

Well, that's another one that we're not enforcing then because you go down Howard Avenue in the Market Common and there are two and sometimes three golf carts in a single parking space.

We're happy to start enforcing that if you would like.

I'd rather just say that you can put two golf carts in a parking space.

We can do that too. If that's the will of council, that's what we'll do.

We need to take a look at the so-called grassy areas. Yeah. If you look at Beach Drive from 77th Avenue, the ocean access, and you go down to 82nd Avenue, all of those beach access areas where you could park your cars, you have four spaces or maybe five total spaces for automobiles. But you have easy access, and I understand the safety, Brian, and we can do that. We can take a good look at that. But you've got fairly easy access. I don't think you need to put down gravel or anything else and just decide how many carts safely should be parked in there and market appropriately. Like I said, if we got 12 to only 18 beach access areas, I know there'll be some boxes we have to check, but...

And I will say it specifically in that Beach Drive stretch, be prepared that we may not be able to reconfigure those areas to allow parking, golf cart parking.

What looks like public may not be public along Beach Drive.

It may not be public and it may be so tight through there that there's not a good way to legally allow golf cart parking in that stretch especially.

And some of those, the only way currently that you could get into the grassy area is down the sidewalk. Correct. Which is not a good idea. Which is the beach access. It's a problem. It's a problem. Yes.

But let us find a solution. Yeah. We just wanted to follow the rules, basically.

Mayor, let me ask also, you had brought up earlier, we were talking about the public restrooms. Just keep in mind, are some of these areas places where we might look at for a public restroom?

Probably not in the residential area, because I don't know that any of the identified spaces are gonna be in the commercial areas, but that's a good thought.

The answer is yes.

You'd have to go to the bathroom in the residential areas too.

If that is the direction you all want to go, then the grassy areas could be used as public restrooms. Again, that's a decision you all get to make.

Because you do have a lot of people crossing 17 from Del Webb, Grand Dunes, going down to the accesses in the residential areas.

And again, I'm sorry, go ahead.

I'll just say this. We have a large demand for parking all along Ocean Boulevard and the street ends, whether it's on the south end or the north end. If there's a way that we can increase the ability for folks to come to the beach, If that means creating some golf cart spots and normally where golf carts wouldn't be parked, I think we need to go that route. We just need to figure out how to do it. If you say you're looking for some guidance, the guidance is figure it out. That's the only way I know how to put that. Just bring it back to us and let us just look at it. Right, wrong, or in between? As long as I can remember, there have been people going up there, parking up there and all over, as a matter of fact, with golf carts. And so there again, it adds more ability for folks to go to the beach other than in a vehicle.

And Councilman, we agree with you. And that has been a solution up until recently. Another thing is... We've come up with a more formal solution.

If we're going to designate that area for golf carts, it needs to be for golf cart parking only, not motorcycling. Decal golf cart parking only. Mopeds and ATVs or whatever.

Well, we will try to figure out how to, I mean, obviously there's not going to, we would not allow, I don't think we would allow traditional vehicles in that grassy area if we... We'll have to figure out how to not allow mopeds or not allow other things, but again, that's another variable that we'll have to.

We'll go to work on. In a perfect world, this would come back to us on July 14th. No, sir.

Of this year? No, sir. No way. I don't know that everybody appreciates the complexity of reworking this ordinance to allow it at all. We need to do a real inventory of what it's going to take to park in which areas. So my next question to you is, and I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this question, but in the sense of fairness, Mayor, as you pointed out earlier, do we start actually writing tickets or do you want us to continue writing warnings?

Warnings. Warnings.

Yeah, I lean towards warnings, assuming that people pay attention to them.

They won't now, but in the first time.

I'd like to change the subject. Okay. Brian. Let's take our time and get it right. Understood.

Brian, I understand today is your last meeting with us. Yes, sir. And I just want to publicly thank you for all you've done for the City of Myrtle Beach during the time you've been our Assistant City Manager. Thank you. Some people may not agree with everything, but there are a lot of people who agree with a lot of things. And just like everything else that happens on this seat right up here, we have people who agree and we've got people who disagree. But at the end of the day, I believe you have provided a great service to the city of Myrtle Beach, and I appreciate everything you've done, and I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors in Lancaster.

Thank you. Not Lancaster, but in South Carolina tomorrow.

Thank you.

Somebody get Brian a tissue, please.

Hander will be missed.

CFO update? It's on the agenda. I saw this, and I haven't had a chance to read this in detail, but this is very helpful and looks great.

Yes, thank you. That is one of the things Marla actually put that together. It's just something we wanted to do that would be easy to read, a quick reference for the public to review our budget, and then if they have questions, of course, they can reach out to us. We've also got the major budget document pretty much done. We were just waiting on today to see what happened to the MID because, of course, there's discussion of that in the budget document. Hopefully we are going to finish our review of that and send it on to the printers and it will be out within a month at the latest to have for you to be able to actually look at the full document and share it if you'd like. Thank you. And I will say thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for the budget. You guys make it a much easier task than it could be. with your input, your guidance. Yes, absolutely. Your questions, the direction you give us. Without that, it's very difficult for us to pull a budget together because it is your budget at the end of the day. And what we want it to do is reflect your goals and your direction for the city. So thank you. I appreciate even more input in the future.

Well, and we appreciate all that you do to make it happen for a $380 million budget. Thank you. We haven't talked about this, but I don't know that we've done this ever, maybe, but in early fall, can we plan a budget-y type discussion?

I would absolutely love to do that, yes.

But like middle of September-ish?

That sounds great. And it would also be a good time for us to kind of do, I think we should have kind of a feel for where the audit is going to land, so we could give you sort of an update on that for the year end, and move that into the budget conversation.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Thanks.

I skipped council communications, anybody? All right. Fox, do you have anything? I said what I was. All right. We're good. We have two executive session items today. Thank you for your presence. We appreciate you being here. We're actually ahead of the normal schedule at this point. We have two executive session topics. The following are invited to attend the entire discussion. Fox Simons, Will Bryan, Brian Tucker, Josh Brugger, Michelle Shumpert, Marla Bell, Meredith Denary, and Amy Neuschafer. The first is a motion to go into executive session to discuss contractual arrangements relating to lease of city-owned property at 505 9th Avenue North, and we'll invite Devin Parks to that conversation and to the next one as well. Motion to go into executive session to discuss negotiation with Horry County and private sector relating to formation of Maldick County Business Park to encourage commercial development within the city limits, and also Devin Parks for that. Is there a motion to go into executive session for these two topics? Second. First in a bill, second. Any discussion from council? Any discussion from the public? All those in favor of executive session, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. We will go into executive session here or there?

I encourage everyone to go vote today.

Second one's in there. First one could be in here. The second one needs to go in there. Let's just do them all in there.

Why don't we just do it in there? We'll just do it in there. Yes. Good afternoon. We met in executive session to discuss the two items that were listed. City Council took no action in executive session. Is there a motion to come out of executive session?

So moved. Oh, goodness. Mike and Jackie.

Motion to adjourn. Any discussion from City Council? All those in favor of the motion to come out of executive session, please say aye.

Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Motion to adjourn.

Second.

We have a motion to adjourn. All those in favor, please say bye.

Bye. Bye.

All right, sports fans.

All right. No seven.