City Council - workshop

you do you . . Thank you.

Good morning. Welcome to the middle of July, the melty part of the year. We're waiting on Dr. Rinder to return to the dais.

I don't know that I've heard from Mike Chestnut this morning. I think Mike probably will be here at some point.

Thank you for being here this morning. This is the July 14th Myrtle Beach City Council workshop and regular meeting. We have a couple of items on the workshop agenda, one of which is reasonably dense. And let's begin with that, if we may. Matt Pivarnick, Jimmy Gray, Stuart Butler and friends. The Myrtle Beach Area Collaborative.

Yes, sir. Does the chamber? The chamber's here, too, and so is Visit Myrtle Beach. You'll hear from all of us. Thank you. I got my quarterly lecture from Jimmy Gray. Isn't Jimmy Gray fantastic, you all? But I got my quarterly lecture about being brief, and he even threatened me, said if we go too long, they're not going to have us back. So I'm going to talk fast this morning. And I just want to start by, again, every single time, just thanking you all, city manager, but especially our... elected leaders. It's so courageous for you to be our leaders in these times. I tell people all the time, you know what, we have a great council and it feels really good to have a great council. So I just want you to know that I appreciate your wisdom and I especially appreciate the time that you all are willing to give to us to impart that wisdom. I'm excited for you to hear from our entire team today. I think they're all going to be fantastic. But I will just give you a nod that I have a favorite topic that you're going to hear about today, and that's you're going to hear about the Grand Strand Young Professionals. So many... of the things that we're building in this community in the future that we're building, really it's for the next generation and then the next generation. I mean, so many things that I think I work on on a daily basis, there's a chance that I won't even see it come to full fruition. And so having them involved in the attraction and retention of talent in this community is really important. And you know what? Quite frankly, we're building the future for them, so they really should be part of creating that future. Their mission is very straightforward. I mentioned it. It's attract and retain young talent. I think a lot of times people look at it and they view it more as a social group, and social is an aspect of it. That's pretty important, right? My guess is that most of us, if we're married or have kids or grandkids, it started with some sort of a social interaction. And so that's really, really an important part of it. But we're looking for ways to engage them, raise them up, deploy them, build our next generation of civic leaders. I hear quotes all the time. Things like I wish the coastal students would stay. Or I want my kids and their kids to come back. They won't come back or they won't stay here. But the thing is is that we say that and we wish it but we don't necessarily have a strategy to deploy to make sure that we're building that future and that we're doing something about the quotes that we're saying. You guys know this because you've all been intimately involved with the Collaborate 2031 strategy. Our median age is 49.7 in Horry County. Newsflash, that's high. I think BJ's gonna show you what the US is, what South Carolina, North Carolina, and five other communities are. And our young professionals growth is 4.9%. So I'm here to say that I think Grand Strand Young Professionals, or GSYP as you'll hear it called, is a really big deal. It's really important. As a matter of fact, I think it's critical. So I'm just gonna finish by reminding you, I'm very proud of these and reminding you of our core values, what we live by, I'll be fast, passion and love for the community, almost obsessive, collaboration, shared wins over credit, vision, future focused, integrity and ethics, non-negotiable, excellence and quality in everything we do. And I think I'm turning it over to Randy after me, so I will flip it over to Randy. Any questions for me? All right, thanks, thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

We continue to be good stewards and do smart investments of your funds that you entrust with us, and we'll now present those investments made on your behalf. So looking at January through March tourism development fee, we invested a total of $6,813,425 to reach non-South Carolina visitors out of state. If you look at the chart up there, digital and social search, we invested 12.2% of those funds. those two categories and if you add TV and outdoor and print the total equals twenty six point four percent for all traditional advertising general consumer promotions came to thirty eight point four percent these are activations events and trip promotions and we also had our visitor guide production costs in that number this time Group sales, international and golf, the three specialty markets, equaled 16.8%. We hosted a lot of trade shows like Rendezvous South in the first quarter. Creative and content development and research was 13.7%. Destination publicity was 4.3%. And air services at 0.2%. Moving to January through March accommodations tax, we invested a total of $286,229 to reach visitors more than 50 miles away. Air service is at 0.5%. Digital and social search is the biggest investment at 17.6%. And then you add TV and outdoor and print. That equals 33.9% for all traditional advertising. General consumer promotions are at 34.6%. Again, those are activations and trip promotions, visitor center and call center services, and visitor guide distribution and production costs. Group sales, international and golf, the three specialty markets equaled 20.6%. Again, hosting those trade shows in the first quarter. Creative and content development and research was 6.9% and destination publicity was 3.6%. Are there any questions about any of the numbers? We did give a packet to Michelle with all of the accountability reports and they will be posted on our website today.

Any questions?

Okay.

Now Stuart Butler's coming up.

Good morning, all. Good morning. Glad to be here today. Alrighty, so I want to start with some exciting news. You know, our community was sometimes tough on ourselves, sometimes critics, and we don't celebrate the wins. So I'd like to take a minute and celebrate a massive win. There's an organization called Resonance Consulting. They're a placemaking organization that consults with a lot of destinations across the country. And every year, they put out a report. They look at hundreds of metrics in every city, I think over 355 DMAs in the country. And they rank order them. And this year, they actually bifurcated it into two groups, populations above 500,000 and populations below 500,000. That's our DMA. They're calling that small cities. We actually ranked, the Middle Beach area ranked number five in the nation of small cities for a combination of livability, lovability, and prosperity. Places people wanna live, places people wanna visit, and places people want to work. This is a massive achievement, and it's a testament to the work you guys have done and the whole community has done. Let's not stop there at number five. Let's chase down the likes of Savannah and others to get that number one position. I'd love to see our social media warriors in our media cover things like this a little more often than focusing on the negative. We should be very proud of that. I think there's obviously opportunities, especially on the prosperity side. That's what Collaborate 2031 is trying to address. We also recently got some good news back again from our friends at Longwoods International. This is the national leader on measuring ROI for destination marketing organizations. We typically will select a campaign each year and give them all the information, how much we spent, what the creative was, where we targeted, who we targeted. And they, through a combination of surveys and digital metrics, they'll measure the impact that had. They'll compare folks that saw our ads versus people that didn't see our ads. For 2025, we looked at a spend of about $8 million during the summer targeting families and leisure travel. According to their data, not our data, for every dollar that was spent on that campaign, there was over $130 received in revenue back to our community and over $20 in taxes. Do the math on that, it's over $160 million in taxes from an $8 million spend. I'd say that's a great ROI, actually second in the nation, only to one large Western country area that has a lot of casinos. Let's look at what's going on in the economy right now. We've talked a lot about K-shaped economy. We've been talking about it for the last couple of years. It's real. It's having a massive impact. Doesn't seem to be slowing down too much, although there are some indicators recently prior to the war breaking out again. Folks with money are spending it and are traveling. Folks without money, they're just not traveling. That's the problem we face. This is some data right here from Bank of America. They looked at spending by income, and they looked at airlines, lodging, and cruises. And as you can see, the bars on the left are the lower income folks. On the right are higher income, and it goes from left to right. It goes from airlines, lodging, and cruises. You'll see the lower income folks are looking for value. They're choosing increasingly cruise lines versus flying. or staying in hotels locally. This is a problem for our market because we have a disproportionate amount of low-end economy products, as we've talked about. This creates some downward pressure. This is ad data here locally, what we're seeing. I'm gonna start from the right. This is between income levels. You'll see there's a distinct K shape between what spending is happening. This is revenue on the right. It's demand in the middle, meaning how many people are actually looking. The bright side of this, I'd say, is the chart on the left here. This is supply. We've actually seen an 8% total decrease in total hotel room supply in our market since pre-COVID, since 2019. There's fewer hotel rooms to fill. But what this is showing is the hotel rooms we're losing, many of which the city has bought or is being bought by outside developers, it's low-end inventory. It's getting replaced by higher-end inventory. This is a positive for us, another thing we should be celebrating. Let's look at the data. This is our Q1 report. This is ATAC's data for Q1. This is about what we expected. We were down. We were down in Q1 for A-tax collection. Now, we did normalize this and look at what was this in 2019 adjusted for inflation. So this isn't number to number. It's actually adjusted 2019 to real dollar value. We're about flat with 2019 in A-tax. But we are down year over year. We expected this. We talked about this, that we were expecting this last time. Primarily driven by Q1 gas prices and the K-shaped economy. TDF, this is slightly brighter news. We're about flat year over year with TDF. I'm also pleased to say that some folks have said, well, TDF's going to grow as population grows. That's true to a degree, but what I will say is when we look at who's contributing to TDF, this is the 110% sales tax, only 17% of folks live within the city. So still 83% of folks live outside the city. It's benefiting the city of Myrtle Beach. And again, if we look at normalized data, For 2019, we're up fairly significantly. That's great, but I'd also remind you that our businesses, our hotels, our restaurants, their cost of doing business has also gone up. Insurance has gone up. Cost of goods has gone up. So we can celebrate that growth, but it also doesn't mean that everyone's thriving. When I look at occupancy, there's some more silver lining here. Although we're down about 3% Q1, we're actually beating our projections pretty significantly. We're over 5%. We've been bending the curve. We've changed our strategies directly to attack the downward pressure that we're facing. We'd be crazy not to adjust our tactics because we know the world is different than it was previously. We're going to continue to do that. Here's our summer outlook. I will say up until the last, if we'd had this meeting a week ago, I'd have been a little more optimistic. I think the war flare up in Iran is not good for us. It's not good for anyone, but what it does is it creates pressure on gas prices. We've already seen another 10% jump in the last couple of days. That's really bad for us. Gas prices are probably the biggest pressure point we have right now. The higher the gas prices, the fewer people that come here. So we're probably gonna restate some of this performance based on recent activity. But I will say anecdotally, Q2, which we'll be reporting on in a couple of months, and Q3 have been beating expectations, in part because of Mother Nature's being cooperative. I know there's a water shortage, but that also means more sunshine, means more visitors, and gas prices actually dropped a little more than we expected, so that was good. July 4th was tremendous success. We'll have more data on the full week of July 4th later this week, but I can tell you occupancy for Saturday was up 13% year over year, and a lot of our businesses are reporting they had very, very healthy 4th of July. And I want to give a special shout out to our law enforcement for keeping everyone safe during that busy time. I can't say the same for every destination around the country. There was a lot of challenges, especially with young folks around the country over July 4th weekend. And we got through without any major incidents. So congratulations to and thank you to the whole team that works on public safety. So what are we doing to try to bend the curve? Well, there's a couple of basic things we're doing. And I'd be happy to sit down with any of you individually and walk through individual tactics. The first is just shifting who we're targeting. We're looking at things like school start dates. That's shifted earlier in the year, especially for a lot of our target markets. So we're shifting to areas based on where their school is getting out. We're looking at folks that are closer by. We're really focusing on our core markets. So we pulled out of some of our further destinations and putting more money into Georgia and into North Carolina, Georgia was very helpful They did a moratorium or a holiday on gas tax and that really we saw a big spike in Demand as a result of that people aren't traveling as far. So obviously we're targeting people Closer in we also did some cool targeting earlier in the year around taxes we knew that folks because of the big beautiful bill were likely to get more tax rebates And we did see that play out. And so we were targeting people at the moment they found out what their tax rebate was. And we're trying to say, hey, a great thing to spend that extra money on is a trip to Middle Beach. And folks did that. The other thing we're doing is focusing on value. We don't want to be a cheap destination, but we do want to be a family-friendly, value-driven destination where dollars can stretch further. You compare... a five-day holiday in Myrtle Beach and all the things you can do, all the amazing attractions and restaurants and retail, obviously the beach, you can have a much more affordable vacation here than you can in, say, Orlando or Disney. And so we're really focusing on that message and working with our partners in lodging and attractions and retail to try to drum that message home. Finally, I did want to talk about some more positive news. This is something else I'd love for the keyboard warriors and our media to focus on a little more. Myrtle Beach is going through a renaissance. It's quiet. It's sort of happening without people noticing. But we're tracking over 80 major developments right now in the region, from hotels, restaurants, attractions that are occurring, either coming online now, breaking ground now. And these are a few that I'm excited about. We are seeing that decrease in economy product. A lot of it is turning into boutique or high-end flag product. It's good. It's really good. We should celebrate this. Here are just a few. Margaritaville, CAB just approved the walk over there. They're hoping to break ground. in the summer. That's an Innisfree Hotels project. If that goes well, I'm sure they'll be bringing in more. We've got the Coretta that's coming. Used to be the Beverly, down near the Cabanas in Myrtle Beach, turning into a really high-end boutique. This is Lark Hospitality. They have a lot of really nice boutique hotels in the Northeast. Really attractive for international travelers. We get a lot, Bob was telling me earlier that a lot of his group travel and international travel really want high-end boutique unique experiences. So the Coretta, we're hoping can fulfill some of that demand. And then yet another addition to Broadway at the Beach, Burrs and Chapin and that team are doing a really good job of recruitment. Obviously, we just saw Old Smokey and Yeehaw Brewing open a few weeks ago. And now Big Fish is coming. It's in the Old Liberty restaurant right across from Old Smokey. So we're going to have some major cornerstone restaurants and attractions there, which is great. As you know, Broadway at the Beach is our number one visited attraction and destination in the region. So we're very excited. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have at this time before I hand it over to DJ.

Quickly, have we noticed significant decreases due to Spirit leaving?

No, not particularly. It was something that we were anticipating for quite a while. We have a really good relationship with MYR. Judy and the team there are phenomenal, and they've been communicating to us that this was likely going to happen for several years. And so if you look back to pre-pandemic, We were about 50% reliant on Spirit as an air carrier out in Myrtle Beach. And so in conjunction with us, MYR and the county, and a lot of other folks in the community, we've been aggressively trying to attract new airlines. Part of the TDF dollars that we invest is to help stimulate the flight markets to attract those airlines, you know, people like Southwest that came in right during the pandemic, folks like Avelo, Breeze. And what we've seen is those folks have began to fill in the gap left by Spirit. So when Spirit closed, we were only 23% reliant, you know, that's through the math, it's over 50% reduction on Spirit. And so we're pleased to say In the long term, I think we'll be fine. And what it's actually doing, we're having some conversations right now that I can't talk about too much publicly, at least name the airlines, but some large airlines that aren't currently here are very interested in coming in to Myrtle Beach now that Spirit's not here. And so we're hoping to have an announcement on that very soon. And I think if that happens, I think we'll be just fine. But yeah, it's really not had a major impact.

Council?

Stewart, I will take you up on your offer to sit down in your office and go over all these numbers, because as you know, we have a meeting early in August, and they're going to be very important. I'm really pleased to see the way that you're targeting, especially in the closer around areas, because we have always been a drive-to destination anyway. What are you seeing now in terms, your best guess, total visitors for the year? Are we gonna be stagnant at about 18 million? Is it gonna come up a little bit? Is it gonna go down? What do you think?

Yeah, so we just got our report back from Next factor that does our study every year, or DK Schiffler, excuse me. And for 2025, we're estimating, and it is an estimate. That's not really a good, we're trying to find a good way to accurately measure. So this is a relative estimate. We're estimating that for 2025, it was 17.8, which was down. from 2024, which is about 18.2. And so keep in mind, we did change our methodology a good bit during the pandemic. So this isn't apples to apples comparisons. Pre-pandemic when we were saying we were at 20 million, that may or may not be true. These are relative numbers, not absolute numbers. So we're not sure if we're really Right where we were pre-pandemic or not, we're close. But we're still hovering around that 18 million. I think this year, because of the pressure, especially on the economy traveler, we're likely, and we're seeing this in occupancy being down about 3%. We're projecting occupancy for the year will be down about 3% is what we've been projecting. So we do expect to see a slight decrease in total visitors. But spending is still up. You know, the folks that are coming are spending more. And so I think if there's any silver lining, it's there's fewer people on the roads. It doesn't feel like it always, but there's fewer people on the roads, but they're spending more and contributing to our economy.

Stuart, when you count or when this company, whoever, counts visitors, do they count one person comes in and stays a week? They count once? Or they come in and they're counted?

counted each night that they're occupying they do they do both this is visitors this is people so if they're staying an average of two point something nights you know that's that's the number of room nights so you count instead of it being one person being counted once they're counted multiple times based on that count once it's 18 million individual people okay yeah correct And so one of the tactics we're trying to deploy right now is how do we get those same people that are coming to stay one more night? because they've already spent that first wallet. They've invested in a five-day vacation, let's say. If we can get them to stay one more night, eat in one more restaurant, go to one more show, one more retail outlet, then we can drive revenue without necessarily having to go find another person. And so we've been working with about 50 of our local hoteliers to provide a deal, which is basically buy three nights, get one free, or buy five nights and get two free. And that's been very successful.

So, if I'm hearing it correctly, slightly fewer, but spending more.

That's correct. on average say over the last four or five years our total tdf collections have been 44 to 45 million dollars do you expect that to be about the same this year yeah it's right now it's trending up a little bit it's it's great news it's slightly up it's about 0.5 percent in q1 and we haven't finalized numbers for q2 and three yet but i would expect tdf to be flat to up slightly okay yeah And think about it this way, too. If economy hotels are shrinking and premium and upscale hotels are increasing, the average amount you spend on a hotel room is going to go up. And then the folks, if you look at the income of the folks that are traveling, if they're going to come, they're probably going to have the means to splurge a little bit. And we're actually seeing it play out not just in lodging, but with restaurants. Some of our premium restaurants are actually having the most success.

Stuart, sometimes, well not sometimes, all the time as we model, our charge is sometimes to consider the downside. I think there's some concern with what's going on across the world, the straight issues. Have you guys modeled a scenario where that 20% downturn in petroleum production is an on-off, relatively permanent scenario for the near future?

We have, yeah. That's our current operation right now. We're moving forward under that assumption. We would prefer to prepare for the worst. Right now gas prices were creeping down, which we saw some lift. I think in part that's why we had a successful July 4th weekend. Right now it doesn't look good. And if it doesn't deescalate soon, it's gonna make a hard situation a lot worse for us as a community.

But you understand the question is this may be the new norm, is what I'm saying. Correct. And one last question. I had a constituent question the other day. What is the average daily population of the city of Myrtle Beach? Do you have that number? And if you don't, could you get it to us?

Yeah, I can get it to you. It fluctuates so much seasonally. You know, we can average out the 18 million people divided by 365 in, you know, and the number of room nights and sort of do it. But that's probably not appropriate. We actually had a conversation just this week about what if we took that number, but then normalized it based on occupancy rates. We could actually have a peak. We can have a median and then a peak and a minimum. So we'll get that number for you for next.

Several years ago, someone did that for you. I don't know if the name was Scheffler or whatever, but it was an interesting stat. And it approached 140,000 average daily at that time. I'm curious what it is now.

Yeah, we'll take a good look at that for you. We'll have it for the next meeting. It's a great question.

I think Bill's asking about the city limits of Myrtle Beach. The 18 million number is a Grand Strand number. It's not a city of Myrtle Beach number.

It is, but keep in mind, and we can normalize for this too, about 85% of the folks that visit the Grand Strand spend a good amount of time and spend money in the city limits. and it's close to 100% actually go through, pass through, you know, so if we're really looking at how many cars are on the road, one, we can measure that through the Department of Transport, but two, we can use that as a good number, too. And we do track cell phone movement through a tool called Zotico, similar to Placer, which the city uses, and so we can also see point-to-point movement, so where are actually people going when they're here on the Grand Strand. The vast majority of people spend time, money, in the city of Mountain Beach.

As you pointed out, you're tailoring your advertising to hopefully make a difference before the year ends. There may be other things that we can do as a community to improve that outcome. We're about halfway through the year at this point. So there are moves perhaps that we can make to increase visitorship between now and the end of the year.

Yeah, we've got to give people a reason to visit, and that's through the product, right? That means retail product, that means restaurant product, that means attractions and retail, but it also means events and festivals as well. And so I know there's an events permit right now that's being reviewed for an air show in September, and I think those are the kind of things that will move the needle. We need more CCMF-level events for sure.

No, the mayor just mentioned this, you know, locally, what can we do? And I've had the pleasure of working with Bob and his group and group sales with a couple of local initiatives that they have been tremendous in helping these people put together their marketing plans, concept for advertising. And the reason they're doing that is to say, can we get people when they're here to spend one more night, which is what we're all looking to do. So Bob, thank you for what you've been doing. Any other questions?

I do have two part. I appreciate everything y'all have done. As far as our environment has changed, we're dealing with war and everything else and travel. And so y'all have done a great job of pivoting and putting money out there for locally and regionally within the driving distance. But do you still have a game plan for long-term bringing new people here?

Yeah, I think it's a combination of things. Our destination marketing organization, Visit Myrtle Beach, without sounding too arrogant, is the most sophisticated DMO in the country. And it wins a lot of national awards for such. And what we've done over the last five years is develop a really strong approach, robust approach, but very agile so we can pivot. We used to buy things on an annual basis. Now we're, in real time, adjusting not just who we're targeting, where we're targeting, we're increasingly using flexibility and capabilities of AI, but still with human judgment in the loop to ensure that people are seeing the right message at the right time. So we've gone from sort of shouting with a megaphone to now talking individually to a lot of consumers. And so that gives us the capability to measure in real time what's happening on the ground and adjust. But then I think we're being charged by our board of directors. As you know, I have a lot of bosses And so, Jackie, you're actually one of my bosses. You sit on my board, right? One of the things that we've been asked to do is instead of just focusing on promotion, which is what DMOs historically have done, is we should be helping to steward and shape the tourism economy. And that means helping others in the community that are working on things like workforce, product development, events. And so I think watch this space. Because if we don't have great products here, people aren't going to travel. Increasingly, the consumer of today is educated. by social media and so they're not traveling to destinations as much, they're traveling to experiences. They wanna go to places where they have novelty, where they can have status by sharing it on social media and so we've gotta really double down our efforts at an individual business level and at a community level on the offering that Myrtle Beach is and the experience that everyone has. and we'll be helping our community, we'll be collaborating with our community on that effort.

We have control over the advertising, not necessarily complete control over the social media product that exists out there. We've talked with Matt about the possibility of sharing our advertising, which we may not see if it's in Washington or Pittsburgh, but sharing that advertising locally so that the homegrown folks can see what we're saying in other markets, because we won't see that automatically.

That's correct. Yeah. Legally, we're not allowed to spend money to advertise in market. Right. And so it is typically out of market. You know, increasingly we're committed to that 100%. And we're going to we're going to come back to you next report with some specific visuals. But also we're going to be committed to publishing that on our website as well for everyone to see and on our social channels. You know, it's sort of It's tough because it's not in the old days, 10 years ago, you used to have one ad that you would run to a bunch of people, right? And now because of AI, we can actually run real time creative that is dynamic on the fly. And so there might be 10,000 different ads being shown in the same market to different people based on what we know is going to influence them. So what we'll be able to do is show you a sampling of what we're doing and the strategy behind it. But I would caution us all to be like, well, that wouldn't resonate with me. And so I think everyone has opinions about what should be shown and what shouldn't be shown. What I can tell you is what is being shown is backed by data and science. A lot of testing, a lot of focus grouping, and it's the most effective it can be today, and then we'll be more effective tomorrow through the data that we gather. Anybody else?

Stewart, I just wanna say to you guys over at the chamber, I've noticed just in the past couple months, the number of family reunions that are coming here. So whatever you do in the advertising, it's working.

I'm telling you.

That's Bob's team's work. He's maybe the biggest unsung hero in our group. We don't give him a lot of airtime because when we put him on the mic, he talks longer than I do, believe it or not. But when you see a group of cheerleaders or dancers or baseball team or any kind of group, family reunion, Bob's team usually had their hands in that, you know? whether they were the lead generator, or they actually consulted with the group planner, or they worked with the property to make sure that all the needs were met. We would not have an off-season period without the sales team at Visit Myrtle Beach. We just wouldn't have it. And so they deserve a lot of credit. Thank you for noticing.

Yes, sir.

Jimmy's going to kill me if there's more questions. Thank you, Stuart. Thank you all.

Good morning, Mayor. Good morning, Council.

Good morning. Good morning.

So last time I was in front of you with Clay Britton, we talked about Collaborate 2031. We were in the very beginning phases of that. Since the last time we met, we've actually collected some data, and I'm excited to share this data with you today. One of the areas of opportunity that have come up, Matt hit on it earlier, is the resonance around workforce, around young talent, around young professionals, and how we support them in the community. So just want to share a few data points that speak to that metric. So looking at our benchmark communities, we benchmarked ourselves against five other communities as well as the US, North Carolina and South Carolina as a state. We ranked sixth in median age as well as child population. So those are areas of opportunity that we look at for the health and vitality of our community. We know that we need to work on those metrics and what we could consider low hanging fruit to work on in the near future now. Looking specifically at workforce, talking about working age population, our working age population's around 49. So that is a challenge, especially when you look at that across the other benchmark communities. And then Matt mentioned this earlier, our growth in young professionals, those 18 to 25-year-olds are looking slim as well in that 4%. growth so looking at all of that and then mapping that on top of what our residents are saying our residents are knowing noticing this as well so not all of we are we only hearing it from the data that young professionals and working age talent is a area of opportunity but our residents are saying that as well and you'll see that 71 percent of our residents agree with making some type of investment in attracting young families into our community So where we're doubling down is that Grand Strand Young Professional Group. And I actually have one of our representatives, Mr. Ritsitsinoku, who can come up and talk more about what the initiatives that they're working on inside the organization.

Good morning, everyone.

How are you?

So I'm here to tell you a little bit about the Grand Strand Young Professional Group. This group has actually been around for now 18 years. Our goal is to help the young professionals build relationships, develop leadership skills, but also become more active members of the Grand Street community. We support workforce development by creating opportunities for young professionals to build meaningful professional and personal connections, develop leadership, but also career skills through workshops and educational programs. volunteer and give back to the community, and also connect with local businesses and organizations throughout the Grand Strand. Before I move forward, though, I would like to just let you guys know we have a few of our council members here. I know a couple of them have to go, so we just wanted to let you know they are here. But we are dedicated to the work that we do. Throughout the year, we do host networking events, professional development, we throw in a little bit of wellness as well, and volunteer projects. So our goal is to just help retain the young talent in the Grand Strand, to create opportunities for the young professionals to build those lasting relationships and to establish roots in the community. Do you have any questions?

Quickly, what is the city, us, the various things that the City of Myrtle Beach actually offers and does, what could we do to engage, help build the GSYP?

first i will say anyone within the city of myrtle beach like within the organization if obviously within the age range if they would like to join they are free to attend to the events we would love to have the collaboration just any mentoring anything that we can possibly you know tour a facility that you have or anything like that that would tie in and kind of educate us more on what is going on in the city

Y'all think about that too and let us know an answer to that question if you can. Thank you, Your Honor.

Dr. Conner, you may be able to answer that. I'm always curious where our Coastal Carolina graduates, our Horry-Georgetown Tech graduates, where do they end up five years post-grad? Do we train and they leave or, that's my question.

So we have, I mean, a lot of us, actually some of our council members, they did go to Coastal and they did leave and came back because they realized that this is a great place to have a family, to have a career. So that is kind of what we're working on. We have noticed that, yes, there are some students leaving, but our mission is to, you know, retain them and create opportunities here for them.

You're spot on with saying that. And when we talk to CCU students, part of their sentiment is that they would love to stay in our community, but they're looking for opportunities. So I think as a community, we need to arm them with the local opportunities they have for their career to be able to get started. And that'll help with the retention. But there is an interest in staying here. Again, it's just going back to what opportunities they have to start their career.

Yeah, and I would say that students, at least like my group of graduates that finished this year, they apply for jobs here, they apply for jobs back home, wherever home might be, and it's about a 50-50 toss-up of where they land their first job.

And we are partnering with Coastal. For example, we have at Lake Orientations, we will be having a table there just to kind of introduce them to the Grand Street Young Professional Group and what we have to offer. So we are trying to work with them and just to help them understand what opportunities are out there for them.

And we do a lot of work with Sandy Davis with economic development as well. And I'm sure she's really involved with all of the, I would, assume with the Collaborate 2031 too.

Any other questions?

Thank you. Well now, switching hats here.

I'm also going to talk to you about Keep Myrtle Beach Beautiful.

So this is a program of the collaborative as well and we are affiliated with Keep America Beautiful and Palmetto Pride. So this actually gives us the opportunity to apply for grants to help us run the entire program. along with all of the supplies that they provide us. Since in the last 12 events we've had, we've actually removed from the city limits, 1,866 pounds of litter. And that's from parks, beaches, neighborhood, and just public places. We do have a volunteer network of 1,257 individuals through our campaign monitor who receive all of our invites to events and any cleanups that we do have scheduled. consistently right now our events they bring together 10 to 15 individuals who show up to make a difference and help us clean up our area and we do also have a total of 40 cigarette receptacles that we are working with a couple hotels in the city to hopefully get those put out throughout the area or just to update other receptacles that need to be updated

Thank you. You and I have talked about the possibility of the city, assuming some or all of the responsibility for keeping Myrtle Beach beautiful. That's a conversation we need to have, I think, at some point down the road. As you've mentioned, it's a fairly low... I'm gonna start that sentence over again. That it's not as complicated to operate as one might think.

Yes, and that's what I'm here to wrap this up and to try and close the deal. It sounds so good, we want to give it to you. So it's a really great program. It makes money, and I think it aligns with a lot of council's efforts in terms of just overall beautification. Yuritsa has got this thing. She attends national conferences, but it's a well-respected program. Municipalities in all of Horry County there keep Surfside Beach, keep Horry County, keep North Myrtle Beach. They are all run by the municipality. Ours is kind of the unicorn that is run by the Chamber of Commerce or the collaborative in our case. So our recommendation to you is to discuss this amongst yourselves and figure out a nice place for this to fit within your organization.

And Jimmy, I think I echo the sentiment of the whole council in that we encourage these young folks to volunteer to serve on committees. within the city, learn how the mechanics of local government works, and run for office. We need new blood. Always, all organizations.

Super. Thank you. Thank you, Uritza.

Are you all done? Jimmy, that's it from you?

Well, thank you. We appreciate that. It's an exciting time in Myrtle Beach. We have lots of opportunities. We need to figure out how to take advantage of them. And I think between the city's thought-provoking ideas and the new blood elsewhere in the community, we're achieving that, hopefully. So thank you.

Any other questions, council?

Talk a little bit about the Poet Laureate while we've got about 10 minutes here. the chair and i saw john come in a little while ago the chair of the cultural arts committee was here earlier mentioned a couple of meetings ago mentioned that they've redone the contract with the idea of renewing the poet laureate um i think council originally approved the contract so at this point it would be a discussion about thank you gsyp for being here today i think it's a discussion about what what did you put into the new contract and are we okay with it

Good morning, council. John Crutch, the chairman of the Cultural Resources Committee. Off to my left here and your right is Brian Schmidt. He is an economic development associate with the city as well as our poet laureate liaison, Adrienne Linscold. Adrienne, just to introduce you folks to her, she is our go-between between the committee and the poet laureate liaison. Her background is federal contracts for Verizon Wireless. She is our newest member of the committee last year. So I wanna make sure she's involved in this as well because on an ongoing basis, she is our point person. So from last time, there are not any major changes from what I gave you at the last update. I did want to entertain questions and also give you an updated timeline. So this is what I sent out to the committee earlier this week. So today being July 14th, the agreement coming to council, for any feedback or changes. If there are any feedback or changes, give about a 10 day window to staff, calendar day window. So the goal being July 24th for the posting date for the application. It will be an online only application. So there will not be handwritten works or things like that that will need to be put into either a website or an online form that will be done through Dropbox. So we can see their points of poetry that they've done in the past. September 11th at 6 p.m. will be the application closing date and time, just about an hour after work time so that people have time in case they forgot. September 21st, staff will then send the blind applications to a three-person team from the committee so they can review it and narrow it down for us. September 30th will be the deadline for the small team to meet and provide the narrowed recommendations to the full committee. And then it is looking like either October 8th or 15th, as of right now, that the entire committee will be meeting for interviews and public reading from the narrowed down candidate list so that we can provide you with our recommendation or very shortlisted recommended people for the candidates.

All right. Thank you, John. City Attorney, are you familiar with the terms of this revised contract? And can you briefly share them with us? Microphone.

I am somewhat familiar. It's been a couple weeks since I looked at it or helped draft it. Previously, it was a two-year term. We've now expanded that to a three-year term. Previously, I think the honorarium or the stipend annually was $2,000, but there was an additional amount of money available to the POET for an annual project. and i think the cultural resource committee now wants to sort of combine those pots of money into a single honorarium that covers everything totaling four thousand dollars is that correct yes sir um the cultural resource committee thought that our previous poet wasn't working hard enough so they put additional that's a joke if everybody knows how prolific our first Poet Laureate was. But anyway, for better or worse, the committee has decided that the poet should have a few additional public speaking requirements. Those are the high points. For the most part, it is 80% the same document that we had to begin with with those few changes.

To give a specific number, there are now 13 required items of work per year for the poet laureate. So that is not a total over a three cumulative year period. That is 13 per year. So our goal as a committee was to really set the standard for our region or in georgetown county for what art means to the city of myrtle beach not just art with paint on the walls not just historic preservation not just community appearance but also things like the written word be it poetry we did expand the original contract had it to where the public workshops that are done at chapin library or elsewhere were just poetry After conversation and research, we realized that poet laureates across the country do not just do poetry. They also do other forms of written word. So if they want to do a workshop on how to do a short story or how to do proper writing for another type of literary art, we do want to open that up to them too. So there's that change, but it is 13 appearances and or workshops and or readings per year so we really are setting the standard in the city of myrtle beach for what we want a poet laureate to be and we hope that other areas near us take the lead afterwards so council this is on the agenda for the workshop so that you can hear what the changes were generally in the contract do you have any feedback on that are you okay with that he's got a new timeline are we good to go i i

Two comments, one on the increase in the stipends from $2,000 to $4,000. The last time we talked about this, I had mentioned to John that I'm fine with that, but I want to make sure that there are some spending guidelines and it's not just something that whoever is selected can say, okay, I'm going to do this and off they go. And the next thing you know, they have one big event and they spend all the money. So I'm looking for some guardrails in terms of the money. The other thing, and maybe I've just missed it, but how are we promoting this to the residents of the city of Myrtle Beach. My guess is 90% of them aren't even aware of this. And I think it would be a good idea to make sure that they are.

hundred percent agree with that so um to address one by one the first issue that was brought up my understanding from the majority of council last time was um i did hear your feedback and we heard your feedback from last time councilman mcclure um the majority of council my understanding at the time was that we thought that the um the specific request from you was to have uh reimbursement receipts that were provided at the time it seemed that from the rest of council that there was a Consensus to not do that in order to not take up more staff time for that. The $4,000 isn't just for events, just to be clear. There's a lot of time, a lot of, we know what gas prices are this summer. Depends on the week, depends on the day, but they're high. So making sure that they're not coming out of pocket for those expenses. We did have, our last poet laureate did have a lot of out of pocket expenses that he chose not to do reimbursement on. So we just wanted to streamline this. This isn't a large number. They understand what they're using it for. They understand this is for each year of their time as Poet Laureate. On the second question, remind me, we just talked about a lot. are we promoting it to the general public so we are teaming up with meredith and the team from the information office to make sure it's promoted there we have some great media partners that have started attending our meetings and coming to our unveilings there as well and then all of our committee members are pretty good about sharing too i know several of you have social media pages for your elected office position any providing of publicity from your personal pages whether it's the elected office or your personal if you so choose there or the neighborhood groups, we would greatly appreciate a team effort on this.

A piece of the $4,000 was the previous $2,000, which was a stipend, an honorarium for the person, benefit of that person's role as the poet laureate. We're not breaking that out. So if they wanted to keep the $4,000, is there a prohibition against that in the contract? No. Okay.

No. So they, last time we, one of the big things we got out of the last time is we do now have a poetry box that lives, we have two. One lives in Chapin Library and then one is mobile for events. So if someone needs it for an event, we can get that to them so that people can take a poem leave a poem kind of thing so that we can publicize those the poet laureate has direct influence on that that was part of that 2000 last time this time it's going to be so we can make sure that's managed by the poet laureate they get those to us and we also work with them on that too council

John, just not to put one more thing on your plate, but have you explored foundation opportunities with regard to, I think the city of Columbia garnered $50,000 in an award for the efforts of their poet laureate. So if you have not checked on that, that might be a good thing to bird dog. Would be happy to. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

And I think the contract puts, I mean, obviously provides many more guardrails than what we'd had before. So I think it's a good job.

Our goal always, so you folks know, is to try to make the city look great, you folks look great, and protect everyone in the city. So we try to make sure with the city attorney, as well as committee feedback, Adrian, our Poet Laureate liaison, spent ample time on this too, making sure those guardrails are there. There's extensive language in there. So if someone gets out too far, we can pull them back in and make sure the city's protected. Not only is our Poet Laureate role, because this person is to understand, based on the contract, And this contract with the requirements will be with the application. So there's no negotiation this time. This is the contract you're agreeing to if you get selected as poet laureate. And they understand that. You're not just poet laureate when you're at an appearance based on being a poet laureate. When you go out to a public meeting, when you go out to Walmart at all, if there's something that happens, you represent the city first with this position.

Thank you, John. We've got about four minutes. We'll take a quick break until the start of the 10 o'clock regular meeting.

Thanks, John.

you

Good morning. Welcome to our July 14th Myrtle Beach City Council meeting.

We're pleased that you are here today. We start things off as usual with the

Call to order the invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance. If you'll rise, if you're able. I believe Councilwoman Hatley is gonna do our invocation.

If you wish, you may join City Council in standing for a moment of silent invocation. Almighty God, creator and sustainer of all that is or will ever be, accept our profound gratitude for this day and all of its blessings of life and freedom. We remember those who make our freedom possible and recognize it because of their sacrifice that our community can practice our shared and enduring values of 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's meeting. Amen.

I pledge allegiance.

Thank you. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented, please? So moved. Second. Bill and Mike, any comments from council? All those in favor of the agenda as presented, please say aye. Aye. Is there a motion to approve the minutes from the June 23rd council meeting? So moved. Mike and Debbie. Any discussion from council? All those in favor of the minutes as presented, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. All right, up next, public requests, presentations, awards, and memorials. We jump right into communications and creative services update.

Patrick Lloyd here with your communications update. July 4th was a busy one in Myrtle Beach. Thanks to all who worked and made it a successful patriotic beach weekend. Beacher nourishment is done in Myrtle Beach. The project has now moved into the South Strand outside city limits. Contractors will come back through to install sand fencing, but that will be a minimal disruption and no beach closures are expected. A flag disposal box is now in place at Warbird Park. Local Boy Scout Brady Lord put the box together as his Eagle Scout project. You can now place American flags in the box and they'll be properly disposed of. Volunteers from the Military Appreciation Committee and members of Myrtle Beach Public Works took down the Field of Honor last week. The flags will be back. Stay tuned for when. The fire department's ocean rescue teams held missing swimmer training last week. Our ocean rescue folks will continue training for other scenarios throughout the summer to keep their skills sharp. The Palmetto Pride carousel horse is now at the Market Common. You can find it at the corner of Meavers Street and Howard Avenue. Myrtle Beach is getting a new website. The vendor, Juicebox, met with department leaders last week to start the foundational process. One of the multipurpose paths in the Market Common now extends all the way from Farrell Parkway up to Emery Road. If you haven't checked it out yet, go ahead and do so. The Mary C. Canty Recreation Center now has an eSports room. Our Recreation Division and IT Department worked to put the room together for kids to enjoy playing games. The convention center, capital projects, police, and fire departments helped grant the wish for a three-year-old Greenville boy named Malachi Williams. Malachi is fighting cancer. Make-A-Wish South Carolina teamed up with Monteith Construction and the city to give him a day working with construction, police, and fire vehicles. looking ahead seasonal fireworks continue every wednesday night at nine from the second avenue pier hot summer nights is every night in flyler park until september 4th and applications are open through july 27th for the citizens police academy that's all for now hope you have a great rest of your week great thank you up next on the agenda is non-agenda items from the public and i gather a lot of folks have signed up

Let me say thank you to all of the Grand Dunes folks and others who've come to talk about the tennis center and the PUD.

We appreciate that. I will preface that comment by saying that council as a body has not had a chance to speak about this either. as full of questions as you may be too. So we appreciate that. We will do an executive session so that we can chat about that with staff and the city attorney at the end of the meeting. But until then, understand that I doubt we're going to have an answer for you today, but we have similar questions, I think, to yours. non-agenda item session is 30 minutes now. There's another 30-minute section at the end. There's a five-minute time limit per person. So if you use all of your five minutes, only six people are going to get a chance to speak. So let's be as efficient and judicious with that 30 minutes now, and we'll come back and do 30 minutes later. I understand that there are comments and suggestions and we're happy to have them. So let us begin with that admonition in mind that we've got 30 minutes right now and 30 minutes at the tail end of the agenda as well, if there are still comments and you're still here.

Jennifer?

Good morning. Good morning.

I attended the Planning Commission last Thursday. I'm not going to speak to the agenda item on that because there are plenty of others here who will be happy to do so. Instead, I want to speak to the blatant actions of the Planning Commission to stifle the voice of the residents. Only one member of the public was afforded an opportunity to speak on an issue that had drawn a standing room crowd of concerns at residence. Only one person got to speak on it. When challenged on the lack of public comment and not enough seats to accommodate the crowd, the residents were informed that they could always just watch it on the streaming video. Streaming video. This is an excuse that I've heard used to explain why this council doesn't have meetings that are more conducive to the residents of the city to participate in. They can just watch it on a streaming video. Live streaming of meetings and recordings of the same can certainly work to keep residents informed. For example, they hear Mrs. Hatley lament about how long change takes while watching her actions as she consistently obstructs change when it comes before this body. They can watch Mr. Louder being a pontificating bully towards the other members of this council as he opposes anything that isn't self-serving. They can watch Mr. Rinder sidestep and tap dance around every pledge he made to the residents wanting the mandate of last November. Residents can observe all of this. They can be well informed of your actions. but they have no opportunity to voice their approval or opposition to them. If the availability of this chamber is the issue behind why we're not having evening meetings because there's courts or whatever, okay, that's not an excuse. It was proven during COVID that these meetings can be held in other facilities such as the Convention Center. Changing to a new city website can take time. Installing a new ocean outfall can take time. Changing the time that one city council meeting a month is held should not be that big of an obstacle for the city staff to do. We have the recreation centers. We have the train depot. We have all the other city-owned facilities that could be used for an evening meeting. What it will take is courage, leadership, and a consensus among all of you to simply flip the switch. I urge you to flip the switch. Give more residents a voice. Unless, of course, you want to mirror what the Planning Commission is doing, and that's not your agenda. Thank you.

Thanks, Alex. Jennifer.

Terry Springs.

Good morning, my friends, Mayor and Council, staff. When I found out about the tennis courts, there was a fire that started burning in me. Immediately spoke to Dino Thompson, Dan, immediately spoke to Dino Thompson and Dino reminded me, as I played on those courts many years ago and my kids grew up on those courts, that that court was designed by Arthur Ashe. That court also held the first Grand Slam tournament with Connors and Ash and Nastassi. It was nationally televised. The first pro exhibition with Stan Smith was played there to a crowd of 1,000. And later, Roscoe Tanner, Tom Gorman, Yvonne Gouligan held a two-day event there. There's a lot of history and they are the only clay courts in the city limits of Myrtle Beach. But let's get to the legality of all of this. I started digging around and I think there was an interpretation of city code and ordinances versus following the city code and ordinances. The PUD is a map and it's legally binding and it's not just a concept or a guideline. Only city council can change a zoning district. When you talk about ERUs, right now with the clubhouse, and the 11 courts, or seven, you've got 11 ERUs. If you're going to develop that and put up 31 houses, you're talking about doubling and tripling the ERUs. This is a major change. This is not something that goes before the planning board. This is something that comes before council. All in all, I have all of the laws here, I mean, even state law. State law says that any amendment to a zoning district must be adopted by ordinance. That includes a PUD amendment. And staff cannot bypass council by calling a zoning change a subdivision. This is not a subdivision. This is a change, a large one. The tennis property is part of the official PUD, Changing it from tennis to housing is a major zoning change. City law and state law says that only city council can approve that change. The Planning Commission cannot approve the subdivision and the changes to zoning districts. i would hope that the city of myrtle beach would make sure that the law is written the law is followed exactly how it is written and thank you very much for your time thanks terry jennifer toya marshall

morning good morning thank you so much for your time this morning my name is joya marshall and i am a resident of the city of myrtle beach i also was a tourist before i became a resident eight years ago for 20 years so i have a 28-year history here in the grand strand my husband came after we graduated from high school every year since 1979. So we do have a big and broad history here with the city. We would stay up in North Myrtle Beach for our family vacations every year for two weeks. However, we would come down to the city every single day to enjoy the activity and the safety and the fun that was offered here. We decided to move here. It was our dream to move here, and our dream came true. We built our house, and this is where we will stay for the remainder of our day. I'm a volunteer at Fresh Brewed Coffeehouse. I'm a giver. I have much empathy for people who don't have anything. I started with taking clothing to fresh food during the winter in November because it was a cold winter here. And I wanted to make sure that shoes, coats, hats, gloves got on the backs of unhoused people. It started just with that. Then I joined a group who made food every Sunday. We have made food for the unhoused every Sunday for the past 32 weeks. Not one Sunday has been missed. This comes out of individual volunteers. There are no groups. There are no supporters. It comes out of individual residents' pockets. Last week, we had someone come, a family, who donated 120 hot dogs and condiments and side dishes and desserts. They were gone in less than an hour. The first time I came and served soup during the winter for 65 people, it took 28 minutes for that pot of soup to go. I also work with other volunteers every Friday at Fresh Brewed. We serve as a post office for over 500 unhoused people. Three people come in and we spend four hours organizing mail and passing it out to people who need documents that have been stolen. Medicare information, billings, letters from their families, This is a haven for people who are in the worst situation that anyone could be. Yes, are there people who have mental illness? There are. Are there people who have abuse and substance issues? There are. Are there people who have simply lost their jobs and lost their housing and don't have any place to go? Yes, there are. I've seen them walk through the doors. I know who they are now. I know their names. We need an emergency shelter here. The city broadcast a message on Facebook a few days ago about the heat. We have no cooling centers here in Myrtle Beach. We have no hydration centers for the unhoused or our tourists in this sweltering heat. It just doesn't seem right. So I would like to ask each of you to look inside of your heart. And think about these people who have nowhere to go, who sleep somewhere that we would never want to sleep because we have a roof over our head and we have foods in our bellies every day and we have clothes that we can afford to buy, not clothes that we have to go get on a daily basis because they can't afford to wash them. They can't go anywhere for a shower. So I implore you to come in to Fresh Brewed any day of the week. We'd be happy to have any of you to come in and visit with us. The young people get it. They get this place. They think it's a cool place. I just took a 20-year-old with me yesterday who's been in Myrtle Beach for three weeks with a family move. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, and I'll subtract my comments from the total 30 minutes here. We appreciate what you're doing with Kate and Fresh Brewed. We met last week with all of the other municipalities and Horry County service providers to talk about improving the services we provide to those who are in crisis mode. The issue of homelessness does not follow jurisdictional lines. I think it's safe to say that Middle Beach bears the majority of the responsibility for providing services, but we're working with the county and the other jurisdictions right now find a better way. It's safe to say that the demand far exceeds the supply of the available resources. And one of the things that we will try to do as we move forward to find a better solution is to make sure that we're actually helping rather than sustaining people in an unhoused or a crisis situation. The sooner we can provide assistance and relief, the sooner they will get back to a stable situation and not maintain themselves in that unhoused or crisis situation so thank you we're aware that it's an issue we're working on it very hard at this point so we appreciate it and and thank you for what you do and for what kate does so we'll subtract them two minutes from my comments on that jennifer john brayer brie that's an a at the end it's i think it's two e's

Mayor and members of the City Council, thank you for this opportunity to speak today. I come before you because I believe this Council has both the authority and the responsibility to ensure that the City's own ordinance are followed when significant changes are proposed to an approved plan unit development. Today, the subject is the Grand Dunes Tennis Club. which has operated on its current site since the 1980s, long before the Grand Dunes PUD development was ever created. According to the PUD ordinance, this property was designated a recreational use area. For years, the Grand Dunes developer provided updates to this council and continued to identify the tennis facility along with the marina and the golf courses as one of the Grand Dunes key amenities. However, it's not just the Grand Dunes amenity. The tennis club has been a vital part of Myrtle Beach, hosting top-ranked international and national professionals. It's the center for all of Myrtle Beach, all residents, and a key attraction to tennis-playing enthusiasts. Last week, the Planning Commission approved a subdivision application that would replace this important recreational facility with 31 residential lots. The decision was based largely on the conclusion that the project complies with the PUD's equivalent residential unit, or ERU requirements, I respectfully disagree with the conclusion that ERU track compliance alone answers legal questions. The ERUs measure development density. They do not determine whether a PUD designated and well-developed recreational facility may be converted to a residential use decades after the amenity was constructed and integrated into the PUD. The decision, in my opinion, is inconsistent with South Carolina's planned development district statutes for local governments and the city of Myrtle Beach's zoning ordinances, which require that a proposal like this, which materially changes the overall character of the PUD, be processed through the city's PUD amendment process. The Planning Commission may have the power to approve subdivisions, but not the power to change South Carolina zoning laws. Article 19, for instance, of our own zoning ordinances state that planned unit developments shall provide for and ensure the preservation of adequate recreational facilities. This is a mandatory language. During the planning commission meeting, I did not hear an explanation of how replacing this longstanding recreational facility with 21 homes satisfies that requirement. Nor did I hear an explanation of why the city's PUD amendment procedures, which exists for significant land use changes, were not followed. The Grand Dunes PUD specifically requires the developer to provide the council, this council, with biannual updates on anticipated land development. If redevelopment of the tennis track had been anticipated, one would reasonably expect that proposal to have appeared in those updates to this council so you could evaluate its impact on the approved master plan. It was not. This is about more than one property. It's about preserving confidence that the city will follow the procedures established by state law and its own ordinances whenever significant changes are proposed to an approved plan unit development. therefore i respectfully ask the council to publicly identify the legal authority under which this application was processed as a subdivision rather than as a putt amendment if that authority exists it should be clear in the public record if not i ask the city council take necessary corrective action before irreversible facility demolition and residential construction occurs thank you for your time thank you john

Mr. Bre, I need to ask you a question. And for complete transparency, I do know John very well. I happen to know a lot of you. It's my pleasure. We all know him. You mentioned the requirement of the owner of the PUD to biannually submit a document to the city that anticipates future development. Did I understand you correctly that that may not have happened?

I don't know. I think the last one that I'm aware of occurred like in 2023, so I don't know if one occurred in 2025. My point was, though, that every time they have presented in the past, they've always identified the tennis facilities as a key amenity. In fact, one of the presentations in 2013, clearly, 13 and 17 clearly identified on a list of here are all the key amenities for Grand Dunes that listed the tennis facilities. Okay, thank you. And so the idea of the updates was to provide council saying these are forecasted development areas. And this is what we plan to do in the tracks.

I understand that. I just was curious as to whether you felt it was not submitted. Yeah, I believe it was not. All right, thank you.

Any other questions? We'll ask that question as well. Thank you. Jennifer?

Dale Oakley? Possibly.

Good morning, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Dale Oakley. I'm president of the Grand Strand Tennis Foundation and a very proud member of the Grand Dunes Tennis Club. I started playing tennis much later in life. I'm not gonna tell you how old I am now. I can honestly say that it has truly improved my life. Tennis is one of the few sports that can be played for a lifetime. At Grand Dunes, we have children as young as four starting out, and we have adults every age enjoying the sport, players in their 80s, and even a few that are in their 90s. They're still active. That kind of community is what we will lose with this change. Through my role with the Grand Strand Tennis Foundation, I also work closely with the tennis organizations at the state and regional level. I want to share a few important facts about tennis. The United States Tennis Association, or USTA, continues to invest in tennis facilities across the Grand Strand because they recognize this area as a critical to the future of tennis in South Carolina. In fact, South Carolina currently ranks sixth in the nation in active tennis court refurbishment projects. Tennis is also an important economic driver for Myrtle Beach. It brings visitors to our community, supports local businesses, and provides residents with a healthy, active lifestyle. The USDA has set an ambitious goal of reaching 35 million players by the year 2035. That goal cannot be achieved without preserving quality tennis facilities here in the Grand Strand. If the Grand Dunes Tennis Club is lost, more than 500 members will be displaced. They won't stop playing, but they'll be forced to compete for limited court availability at other facilities. that are already busy. Facilities throughout our area, I'm sorry, more importantly, they will lose a place where friendships are built, families connect, children learn, and seniors remain active and healthy. I respectfully ask you to look beyond this proposal and recognize what is truly at stake. This is not just about preserving tennis courts. It is about preserving a community asset that promotes health, strengthens our local community, supports tourism, enhances the quality of life for hundreds of residents and families. Please help protect this irreplaceable facility for today's players and for the future generations. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Jennifer.

Doug Ralph.

Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to address the city council this morning. I attended the planning commission meeting last Tuesday where the plan to convert the so-called tennis track into 31 single family homes was discussed. And I don't think that was the appropriate venue for such an important issue for our Grand Dunes community and frankly for the city as a whole. i question how something so important can be approved by nine non-elected volunteer members of the planning commission as a minor change in classification with very little advance notice and not treated as a major change in the pud which needs to be thoughtfully considered by city council not disparaging any other work that the planning commission does The tennis complex at Grand Dunes is not just some generic amenity that should be so easily converted from recreation to residential use. Myrtle Beach would be losing a facility in the tennis complex that has some historical significance. The tennis courts have actually been there since the 1960s, so some 60 years. The original owner of the tennis facility was a group of professional players, including Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, and Roscoe Tanner, through their agent Donald Dell. There is a picture hanging in the tennis facility today of the whole group. One of the previous speakers has talked about the professional tournaments that have been held there back in the day, so I won't repeat that. Today, there are hundreds of people that play on those tennis courts each week from both Grand Dunes and the broader community. Tennis is a growing sport with national participation up 54% since 2019. Playing tennis also has a positive impact on longevity of 9.7 years according to a 2018 Danish study, the highest among all sports evaluated. COB, Steve Armstead, Taking the grand dunes tennis facility and it's 10 courts out of the myrtle beach market represents about 20 to 25% of the existing tennis capacity equivalent to taking about 20 golf courses out of the greater myrtle beach market. Zeroing in specifically on the Grand Dunes communities, the tennis facility is an important recreational space and facility. It is one of the main reasons why my wife and I chose to retire in Myrtle Beach and buy a home in Grand Dunes 14 years ago. It continues to be marketed as a key amenity to attract people to the community. And in addition to the 10 tennis courts, the facility has the only fitness facility that services a number of the Grand Dunes subdivisions, including Golf Village where I live. It would be a real shame of the city allows these tennis courts with 60 years of history to be plowed over and the lives of hundreds of residents to be turned upside down all for the purpose of building 31 more houses and the money that some investor in California is going to make on that. This is an area of the city that has already exploded with new houses, condominiums, and apartments in the 14 years that we've lived here. I would implore the city's leaders to take a more thoughtful look at the redevelopment plan that was provided in the Planning Commission meeting last week. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Doug. We've got about six minutes, give or take, at this point. Jennifer?

Kate Curran.

Kate Curran, thank you for your time this morning. I'm here today because there was a huge push on social media asking people to show up and talk about their support of expansions and possibly creations of shelter. And I think all of you know that this is, apparently has become my life passion, whether I like it or not. So a woman named Miss Manor was murdered by her, apparently by her abuser in Conway. And so there's been a huge social media push to support the expansion of the women's shelter by New Directions. And I was here after the workshop that was done by New Directions proposing the expansion, and I did not speak during the workshop because of etiquette, not because I didn't have something to say. I spoke about my concerns after, during the appropriate time, which is during the public comment period like right now, not during the workshop. That would have been really uncouth. So I still have concerns because, you know, Ms. Manor was murdered by her abuser. She was experiencing domestic violence. But New Directions does not take people in that are experiencing domestic violence. And I know this firsthand because the women, typically women, end up in my building. And I'm the person that's calling, trying to find somewhere for them to go so that they're not sleeping outside in fear. Running for their lives is what it feels like. They're crying. We're the ones. that are calling and putting them up in motels if we can afford it to keep them safe. Calling Joey over at Echo and saying, hey, you know how you created a domestic violence shelter? Echo did because there is nowhere for women to go. So there was a push, so I'm here, because what we need is not what we have. We need this, and New Directions is doing this. And they're doing this probably well. I send people there every day. I'm not in a fight with New Directions. I'm just pointing out that what we need is this, and there's different parts of that, and they're doing this part of it. Do we need more spaces for women? Yes. Homelessness for women is on the rise. Veterans homelessness is on the decline because our government threw money at it. Youth homelessness is on the decline because our government threw money at it. I don't know if I said rise, it's declined, those two, tired. But more women are becoming homeless and it's economics. It's lack of family support. It's lack of community support. So, you know, should new directions expand? Sure. If you want program beds and more beds for women, yes. 22 emergency beds for women, yes. But as Joya, who I didn't know was going to be here to talk about this today, pointed out, I have over 500 people that are at least insecure in their housing getting their mail at my coffee house. The post office thinks me. So, you know, I've been in my space for over 16 years watching. I don't want to go backwards. I don't want it to be street reach. But I want something, and I know that there's conversations going on. But I implore you, do your homework. They don't take domestic violence victims, but their tax return says that they have domestic violence services. Question what those are. Question what they are. You've figured out what we need, and then you make us, the resources out here, make that happen. But you're not asking questions. I asked to continue the conversation and I heard from one person. So I'm next door, come see me. Thank you.

The Family Justice Center, which is in or near Conway, is specifically a domestic violence shelter. It is new. It did not make our funding round this year, but I believe there is general support from the city for that. I'm aware of the social media push for a domestic violence shelter, and to Kate's comments, that's not what New Directions is. The Family Justice Center is that domestic violence shelter. Got enough time for one more at this point?

Yep, we have one more. Randall Wallace.

I wanted to come to you on it. Y'all are probably going to talk about this a little later, but I'm almost certain. This has been a tough weekend with Senator Lindsey Graham passing away. And I wanted to come up and just ask y'all to consider, and I'm going to go talk to the County Council tonight, naming something in his honor. I can't think of anyone who has been a better friend to Horry County and to Myrtle Beach than he has. And you see down the list, beach re-nourishment, stormwater ocean outfalls, I-73 permits, dredging the Georgetown Port, or the Charleston Port, which is out of our region, but here close by. I work on the Georgetown Port, the Dillon Inlet Port, community development block grant money. And while I was active with the Municipal Association and the National League of Cities when I was on council, And I want a committee to try to save that during the Bush administration. It's actually when I had the opportunity to work with Joe Biden, of all people. But the Republican senator that they were working to try to save that program with was Lindsey Graham. In the Myrtle Beach Airport, when we had the situation with the terminal, there were two members here that were here then. We got into a big fight with Horry County, and I didn't do it with as much flair, but occasionally I did vote six to one on that issue. And Lindsey Graham called me himself, and not to side with the city or the county, but to say, what is going on down there? I've got $40 million allocated for this airport. That's how in tune he was to the needs of Horry County and this state and local government. All you had to do was read the comments the Municipal Association and the National League of Cities made about working with him all those years. And so the reason that I thought it was important to come today so soon is that Any decision to honor him, if we could do it in the next six months, would be great, while his sister is still the United States Senator, and while that staff, largely almost all of which has been with him the entire time he served in Congress, going back to 1994. they would still be in place to be able to be a part of it. And he loved Horry County. The last victory speech he gave a month ago, the one place he mentioned in that speech was Horry County and Myrtle Beach. So I would appreciate it if y'all would consider that, and I appreciate your doing that. Thank you.

Thanks, Randall. That's our 30 minutes of non-agenda comments from the public. We've got another 30-minute section on the agenda after the regular portion of the meeting. If you feel like you'd like to stick around, we'll have that other window that opens up. But that's all the folks who had signed up at this stage. As I mentioned at the outset, we're listening to you. We have not had a chance to have the conversation that you're requesting that we have and respond. So that's on our list today. Again, thank you for being here. You're welcome to stick around for the agenda as it proceeds. It's a fairly short agenda. And again, if you would like to chat more at the end of the regular agenda, there's another 30 minute time block budgeted on this agenda. With council's blessing, we'll move on. There is no consent agenda item today. On the regular agenda, Madam Clerk, second reading of 26-47.

Second reading of ordinance 2026-47 is authorizing the sale of 515 9th Avenue North, pin number 444-0101-0033 and 444-0101-0034 to Reef Labs, LLC. Yes, this is the second reading. This is the sale, as the clerk read, to 515 to Reef Labs.

which is trans perfect. There have been no changes since first reading. However, there is a Scrivener's error in the ordinance I need to bring to your attention. Put it on the dais this morning. If you look at line, I believe it's, I'm trying to find my note here, 32. That's right, one. There's an address on there that says 915. It's supposed to be 515. So we have that corrected. I have it corrected on the electronic version as well. This is the appraised value. And as I said, there's been no changes since this reason.

Do we need to verbally correct that scrivener's error, or is it good with the amended version that's on the dais?

It's a scrivener's error. You can do either one. The manager's making you aware of it, and you are approving the ordinance.

We have a valid copy on the dice. Yes. Okay.

If somebody wants to make an amendment to make it official, that's fine, too. I think the record is clear what we're doing today already.

Okay. Any discussion from counsel? No. Any discussion from the public? We need a first in the session. Oh, we need, sorry. Is there a motion to approve?

Second. Second.

Debbie and Mike, please. Any discussion from council? Any discussion from the public? This is one of the properties on 9th Avenue North. This business started out in the HTC Aspire Hub. It's part of a global business, as I recall from the discussion the last time around. They've grown to the point where they need their own building. They would like to be in that vicinity. So they're purchasing one of the buildings that the city purchased and renovated or partially renovated at some point along the way. Again, any discussion from public? All those in favor of second reading as presented with that correction noted, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Thank you.

Jennifer, second reading 26-48.

Second reading of ordinance 2026-48, improving the execution and delivery by the city of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina of a lease between the city as we saw and CoCoFlow Innovations Incorporated as leasee with respect to building located at 517 9th Avenue North in the city of Myrtle Beach.

Similar to the one we just had, there's been no changes. This is the building that used to hold the DRC and hold the Economic Development Office. This is another business that was in the Aspire Hub that is looking to be there. This is a five-year market-raised lease. No changes since first reading.

Is there a motion to approve second reading?

So moved. Bill and Mike?

Any discussion from council? Any discussion from the public? Again, this is a new tenant in a previously city-owned, well, the building is still city-owned, a new tenant in a building on 9th Avenue North bringing people downtown. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. We have a first reading of 26-49.

First reading of ordinance 2026-49 to amend section 11, special requirements, section 13, public improvements, and to include appendix one into finalized Seaside Farms PUD ordinance.

Good morning, Mayor, members of council. Good morning. The amendments here before you today are one to add actually a display for the parking requirements and then to amend Section 11 and Section 13 in regard to public improvements. DOT had a few issues with the first initial public improvements, so they had to go back and readdress those. The applicant is here today to speak to those, but that's the gist of it.

Do you have a map of the location? This is the first time we're seeing this.

Located on the corner of Pine Island and Robert Grissom Parkway. Area photo, actual zoning map, so it's on the Seaside Farms PUD. Proposed layout of the apartment complex with the commercial on the front on the corner of Pine Island and Grissom.

The appendix change is going from a 10 foot to a five foot sidewalk.

That's where DOT came in and would not give the approval to extend the 10 foot sidewalk. Also, in lieu of that, they're putting a public transportation shelter The Appendix J map, you really can't read it, but that's the installation of the turn lane. And Appendix K is an example of the shelter. The sidewalk they were able to extend along the boundary of their property could not go all the way down Pine Island Road. That's where DOT had their comments. Then there's your Appendix I, which is just a chart for the parking requirements.

Just because I'm curious, go back to the sidewalk, please, and explain. I'd love to have a 10-foot sidewalk in lieu of a five-foot sidewalk.

Initially, their plan was to run a sidewalk from Robert Grissom all the way down to Highway 15. That's a state-maintained road. They've got the open ditches in there. State wants those open ditches to maintain, so there was not enough land to put even a five foot sidewalk along that portion of the roadway there is some sidewalk on the other side of the street in some areas but not on that side and that's where dot would not give the sign off on the installation of the sidewalk all the way down from grissom to pine island but they would allow in conjunction with the development of the property to go from the furthest point of the property up to robert grissom so the proposal for a 10-foot sidewalk

did or did not take into account whether or not there was room for a 10 foot sidewalk?

That was the proposal that was put before us and then going through the process is whenever DOT did not get on board with that, which is why they're back here before us today asking to put the five foot sidewalk and the bus station and the turn lane.

Was there a proposal at any point to pipe the ditches?

DOT may not be on board with that. As I stated earlier, the applicant, I really don't want to be the salesman for someone's proposed public improvements. In a perfect world, it'd be nice to have a 10-foot sidewalk, particularly along these streets. There's only so much that we can require as far as the public improvements. I think the cost of ditching all of, piping all of that ditch would have gone well above and beyond their public improvement requirements.

Council?

Yes. Mr. Mayor? Yes. I believe that this was before council sometime back, correct?

It was. Yes, sir.

And I thought there was discussion where the entry off of Pine Island or right there, I thought there was discussion about moving that entry further into Pine Island Road to prevent traffic back up going in and out of this project?

There was. If you remember, there was an entry off of Grissom, which required turn lanes, and that was originally proposed as a primary entrance, which then got moved to Pine Island Road and slid away from the intersection further down Pine Island Road to avoid that conflict.

Show that previous map again. Yeah, but the previous map that you had up there just a minute ago doesn't show that. No, not that one, that one. Bring that one in. There's one you just showed where that entry, it wasn't, it was like a- Along the red line.

Keep coming.

Right there. Now, that entry there is the original entry that's been there forever. That's correct. So that's not the entry that you're using? That's correct. Okay, well, show again then the map where the... Okay.

This was the original proposed main entrance, but DOT did not sign off on the entrance on Grissom Parkway. So now that's a right in, right out coming on to Grissom. DOT then made them move the main drive down here to the furthest most point of the property.

Can you put that pointer on that so I can see?

I'm trying to guess.

It's not showing up.

It just ain't showing up to you. The move?

Okay. Well, that looks almost right there next to those apartments there. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Okay. Okay. That's what I wanted to check on. All right.

Thank you. Mr. Macon, can you go back to the rough out one more time? The rough out with the old entrance in there. I can visualize on that better.

No. Go forward. Go forward.

One more. Keep going.

Keep going.

One more.

No, got to keep going.

There. Well, actually one more. Oh, no, that's it. That's it. With the pointer, point out the new entrance to us, please.

I'm going to kind of come off the wall here. The new entrance will be right here.

The new entrance will be at that bottom.

Right at the corner where the line. Corner.

The end of the red line where the new entrance will come in. The other entrance coming off the top up here is going to be right in here on the Grissom, and that's going to be a right in, right out only.

That was initially.

That was initially the proposed main entrance, but DOT did not give the sign off on that and gave direction to go further down Pine Island, which therefore we went in and put in the turn lane to enhance the flow of traffic even better through that possibility.

Well, point where the entrance is on Grissom, the right in, right out, throw that thing away. can't see. It doesn't show up on the... That's a really bad pointer.

Right there's my dot, so if you... Yeah, there you go. Great. Right down in there is where your main interest, is where your new interest will be.

You're right in, right out. Okay, good.

Rich, now that you've got that vision in your head... Got it. Not for long. There's the new entry right in, right out. There's the lower entry, which is the full entry, and then we're putting a turn lane in for access to that. It's still pretty close to the intersection.

So will the new entrance, main entrance, will it be directly across from the entrance to the other side, to those other apartments? So the turn lane is usable for both on Pine Island?

The turn lane is only going to be for the right-hand turn.

Okay.

The apartments have a gated. Yeah. The apartments have a gated entrance.

Chef, is the issue...

It's going to be close. It's going to be pretty close to it.

Is the issue with the not being able to do the 10-foot sidewalk and piping a capacity issue for DOT or whatever with the flow? In other words, a ditch drains better than a pipe.

Really, two things. One, they weren't willing to grant the encroachment because they didn't want the piping in lieu of the open ditch. And the second thing was it required the expansion of the right-of-way. Yeah. Obviously, the developer controls the expansion of the right-of-way on their property, which they're doing as part of the improvements. They didn't control the acquisition of any additional right-of-way beyond the boundary of the property. When we had the initial discussions with staff, it made sense that connectivity from Grissom to Highway 15 would be a great thing, but without additional right-of-way, there's no way to make that connection.

Thanks.

Mm-hmm.

Is that the same reason why the sidewalk doesn't go all the way down to the intersection at Pine Island?

Correct. You could not put the sidewalk in beyond the property line without an expansion of the right of way because that would require piping of the ditches that were there.

Are there any plans to improve Pine Island Road in the near future? It's a state road. Correct. That answers that question.

Well, the hope is that this project would then initiate some additional development. As we move down Pine Island, the new projects would be able to do the same thing, contribute additional right-of-way, so eventually Pine Island would have that additional right-of-way.

We are currently in discussion with one of the major property owners on further down Pine Island Road into those properties. The old one's track used to be zoned as Norman's Mobile Home Park. We're talking with those folks right now as possibly subdividing that off into different parcels. And so we may see some development coming out of that. But that's a discussion that started about three or four months ago.

And Ken, this is all multifamily?

Yes, sir. Except for the front is going to be the front side. It kind of stands on the right side. It kind of stands up on its own. That's going to be a commercial commercial component.

Okay. Okay.

Just out of curiosity, either of you, do you know the estimated value of the public benefit?

Yeah, the estimated value of the public benefit required was about $390,000, and either scenario, the original proposal and this proposal, it's more than double that on what they're actually spending.

Okay.

Thank you. Chip, is this phased or is it going to be done all at once?

All the multifamily is done at once. The commercial out parcel is a separate project altogether, and that will be based on demand when that comes.

Any other discussion from council? Any discussion from the public on this first reading, 26-49?

I'll make a motion. Oh, I thought we did. Did we not do that? No.

Second motion. First and a second. Any discussion from council? Any more discussion from council? Any discussion from the public? Alex?

Was there a traffic study done in conjunction with this development? Because it seems like a lot of density going in there, especially once the commercial is released for Pine Island. If there's no left turn lane, that's going to back up traffic quite a bit.

There is a left turn lane. There is a left turn lane. There is a left turn lane on Pine Island.

Into this new development?

No, onto Grissom.

On to Grissom. What I'm saying is I'm going to back up people turning left into this development on Pine Island.

And there's a left on Grissom in both directions as well.

I'm not talking about Grissom. I'm talking about turning left into this development off of Pine Island. That's the main entrance. There's no left turn lane. The additional lane is a right turn lane for people heading east on Pine Island to be able to turn right into. There will be a right turn lane. They've mentioned nothing about a left turn lane for people driving in the opposite direction. So I have to go back up.

I think there's a median there. Is that not correct?

Yeah, there's a substantial median there.

So I don't think they're planning to cut the median.

No, I think what Alex is talking about, if you come off of Bob Grissom onto Pine Island or you're coming down Pine Island toward Bob Grissom and want to make a left turn. Is that what you're talking about, Alex? Is there a way we can make that right out and right in?

Was a traffic study done to adjust how the intensity would affect Pine Island?

That's his question. Yes, that's the basic question.

There was not one required because it didn't trigger anything.

And I understand what you're saying, Mr. Lowder.

If you were coming from Highway 15 headed towards Grissom, a left-hand turn lane which would cross both the existing Pine Island and the new turn lane to get into the project. And that in itself is why there was no proposed left turn lane coming from Highway 15.

So we could make that a right turn in and right turn out?

I think you've got to have a full access turn, and we didn't want that to be on Grissom. So the full access came down to Pine Island.

And that's why they moved the entrance down because of the traffic.

Further down, correct. Initially, the...

Full entrance was on Grissom. That's when DOT said, we're only going to give you a right in, right out, but you can move it down to here. In regard to Mr. Fogel's comment, I'm not that much of an issue raised because right at that intersection of Pine Island and Grissom, there is a traffic signal. So that's what's going to halt that traffic coming from Grissom to Pine Island all the way down is you are going to have those pauses where that traffic light is going to be stopped. And those would be your times too. I'm on that road a lot. My mechanic that I go to is right across the street from there. And it seems to flow pretty good. Trying to get into the, I have never seen, as you said earlier, driveway for the other apartments, you can kind of see it just on the bottom corner right there, which is probably 200 yards at most from where the new drive is at, and I've never been for any major delayed left-hand turns into that property.

And I would agree with that, Ken, and I will say this, that most of the traffic backups that happens there is when the service vehicles are supplying the commercial property there on Highline Road when those 18-wheelers were trying to back in down through there. That's when the traffic held up more than anything else.

I did find I understand Alex's question about the left turn lane moving to the west on Pine Island from, yeah. I don't know that the right-of-way is big enough to add an extra lane there as well.

I mean, we're already pushing it by getting the additional for the sidewalk. And then you'd be talking about acquiring properties on both sides of the street if you wanted to go to that center turn lane. But I think the proximity to the traffic signal is what DOT is acting on and why they did that.

But to answer Alex's specific question, no, there was no traffic study. DOT did not require traffic study. Any other comments from the public? All those in favor of these changes in Ordinance 26-49 for the Seaside Farms PUD, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you.

Thank you, Castor.

Jennifer, motion 26-78.

Motion 2026-78 to appoint and reappoint two members to the Myrtle Beach Housing Authority.

The term of John Stack has expired. He does wish reappointment. The request also is to appoint George Oldroyd to fill the term of Dorothy Green. That term ends December 9th of 27. If Mr. Stack is reappointed, his new term expires December 9th of 2030. Is there a motion, Council?

So moved. Second.

Phil and Debbie, any discussion from Council? for the appointment of John Stack and George Oldroyd. Any discussion from the public? All those in favor of motion 2678 to appoint two members to the Myrtle Beach Housing Authority, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Motion 26-79, please.

motion 2026-79 to declare certain vehicles abandoned or derelict pursuant to the authority of article 41 of title 56 south county code of laws 2001. we'll wait a moment while the vehicles are shown on the screen is there anybody here who represents any of these vehicles or has an interest in them motion to declare second

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion from council? Any discussion from the public? The vehicles are towed by the city's towing company. They're held, somebody correct me if I misstate all this, they're held for a period of time. And if they're not reclaimed, then the towing company has the ability to sell them and reclaim its costs. So we're not spending a bunch of money to have these abandoned or derelict vehicles removed. The towing company is taking care of that. There is a reclaiming period, but before we get to this point, The vehicles have been stickered with a bright red sticker for at least seven days, and that sticker serves as notice to the owner of the vehicle that, hey, if you don't take care of this vehicle, it will be towed away from wherever it may be. Many of those vehicles are addressed when the sticker is applied. What you see here are those that people literally have said, I really don't want this anymore, and I'm not going to fool with it. Is that close?

The bank wants it.

All those in favor of this motion as presented, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. All right, so we have another 30-minute time block on the agenda that says non-agenda items from the public. I don't have anybody else signed up. I think we have three executive session items, one of which is related to the subject that many of you spoke about earlier today. As I indicated, I don't expect an answer today, but we've got similar questions to you. If there's someone who We'd like to speak at this point. We've got a little time to do that and we'll be happy to listen to you. We'll take a couple over here, please.

Good morning, Mayor, Councilmen, Councilwomen, City staff. My name is Dwight Hunsaker. I attended last week's Planning Commission meeting and afterwards I felt compelled to draft an email I was gonna send each and every one of you but then I heard about this open forum and I thought why not discuss it face to face and the gist of the email had to do with what the first gentleman this morning talked about and that's just the overall forum of the Planning Commission it's involvement with the public, etc. We as citizens of Myrtle Beach want what is best for our city. We understand overall demand has increased for housing given the recent growth the city and the county have experienced. We also accept the rights of the property owner and the associated freedom to do as he may wish with his property. as long as it's within the laws, ordinances, zoning regulations, et cetera, that have been legislated. I would like to expand on the comments made earlier by the gentleman who spoke first during the first non-agenda public discussion period this morning. I feel it was important to inform you that all the posted signage on the land tract under consideration regarding this public meeting held by the Planning Commission made it very difficult to learn the details of the meeting. Meeting purpose, date and time of the meeting, location of the meeting, Now, there was a QR code associated with the signage that one could use to learn more about the meeting. I clicked on the QR code. It takes you off to Never Never Land. It takes you to some I don't know what website that has nothing to do with Planning Commission, the city of Myrtle Beach. You guys ought to check that QR code out sometime. It's somewhat comical. The postage signage did include a phone number, but when I called it during normal business hours on a non-holiday workday, it rang a general city staff office number which went unanswered during the first several call attempts. From strictly a signage perspective, it made one wonder if the city was purposely making details of the meeting very difficult to ascertain. After repeated attempts of calling the number, I did finally obtain the necessary details of the meeting. I informed the staffer who answered the phone that high public attendance was likely. I asked how many people could be accommodated within the proposed meeting room slash location. I was told the room could hold 75 people. Given the lack of a priori knowledge of this development, the timing of the first Planning Commission meeting on the topic of the Grand Dunes Tennis Center, coupled with the follow-on July 7th Planning Commission meeting, which was immediately following a three-day holiday weekend, and those planning meetings were scheduled such that Council did not have an opportunity to hear of this, between the two Planning Commission meetings that took place on this topic, a perfect storm was created at best, or perhaps just perfect timing on behalf of the applicant, his site developer, and or city staff in terms of scheduling. As such, I'm requesting confirmation that appropriate action be taken. Please confirm the correction of the public meeting notice of signage that is used to inform the public of these quote unquote public planning commission meetings. As the gentleman suggested this morning, let's find alternative meeting locations for those times when high community interest is expected and the public attendees can be appropriately accommodated. And then lastly, as counsel, please review and discuss more fitting bylaws, covenants, ordinances, et cetera, and put forth for counsel approval, providing the public a greater voice in planning commission public meetings. Thank you for your time and attention concerning this matter. Thank you, Dwight.

Anybody else? Going once, going twice.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I was supposed to present at the workshop, but I missed it. Is it okay if I do it?

And what's the subject?

It's the Palmetto Pride thing.

Oh. How long will it take you?

Like five minutes, about.

Can we ask you to come back at the next workshop? Is that horribly inconvenient?

When?

The 28th.

The next workshop?

Yes.

That works for me, because I do need the big screen, and I could have that then.

If we can, we'll ask that you come back for the workshop on the 28th. Okay. Super. Thank you. I'm familiar with the email traffic on this. Thank you. Thank you. All right, hearing no other pent-up demand at this point, we have, are there any council communications, communications from city boards, commission members, CFO update, assistant city manager updates? Fox, anybody? All right, so we've got three executive session items today. The following are invited to attend the entire discussion. Fox Simons, Will Bryan, Brian Tucker, Josh Brugger, Michelle Schumpert. Well, obviously, Bryan is no longer with us. And Josh is on vacation, I believe. Michelle Schumpert, Marla Bell. Marla's not with us either today. Meredith Denary and Amy Neuschafer. The first item, motion to go into executive session to discuss potential contractual negotiations regarding a large concert event. The second item, motion to go into executive session to receive legal advice relating to pending litigation with North Myrtle Beach. And for that item, we will invite Janet Curry, the Public Works Director. And the third executive session to receive legal advice relating to a subdivision application with the Grand Dunes PUD. Is there a motion to go into executive session on these three items as described?

So moved.

Any discussion from council? Any discussion from the public? All those in favor of the executive sessions as indicated, please say aye.

Aye.

Shall we do it in here or in there?

I need it in there.

In there. We'll be in there. Thank you again for being here today. We will go into executive session for these three items. It may take a while. Good afternoon. If you're still with us, the Myrtle Beach City Council met in Executive Session to discuss three items which were enumerated as we made the vote to go into Executive Session. We are now coming out of Executive Session. Is there a motion to come out of Executive Session?

So moved. Second.

All those in favor of coming out of Executive Session, please say aye.

Aye.

City Council met in executive session, took no action. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye.

Aye.