City Council - workshop

Good morning. Welcome to our August 4th City Council workshop. We do a general workshop at the first Tuesday of the month to talk about things. We've got a fairly short agenda, but a lot of larger subjects today. But let's start off with something happy and fun. We've got a pinnacle bank check presentation to support the Vietnam Memorial at Warbird Park. Is Tommy Chapin here today?

Oh, yeah.

Hey, Tommy, how are you? So how do we want to do this?

Meredith is on her way down.

Okay.

And Aaron McKnight.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. I think we were all a little delayed from the rain today. You can see Tommy's check doubled as his umbrella this morning, so it actually worked out well. I have Tommy Chapin here and Aaron McKnight, if you want to come stand over here from Pinnacle Bank. Many of you know that, geez, for maybe a year now, we've been raising money for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Oh, that works, too. That's great. That's great. Yes.

And Pinnacle Bank are great partners of the city of Myrtle Beach. We are at $97,000 right now to help pay specifically for the Vietnam veteran statues at the memorial. Those three statues will be installed this fall. We hope to have them by Veterans Day. And Tommy here and his team at Pinnacle Bank really stepped up to the plate and donated $50,000 towards the Vietnam veterans. So they're here today because we wanted to thank them.

Tommy, would you spin that around so we can see it too? Hey, Erin, good to see you. Haven't seen you in forever.

Would you like to say a few words?

Now, is the $50,000 in addition to the $97,000 or is the $97,000 including the $50,000?

It is included in the $50,000, yes. And we have lots of nonprofits and things, especially those who are part of our military appreciation committee, step up as well to donate here and there. But this is a huge help to help us pay for those statues that are going in. And it really became a community initiative where people just wanted to be involved in this memorial because, of course, the Vietnam War touches many of us in one way or another. So Tommy, would you like to say a few words, or Aaron?

yeah so the city is a great partner of pinnacle bank and uh we're really honored to be able to be associated with the memorial and uh thank everyone that uh served our country

Well, thank you, Tommy. And Erin, thank you very much. We greatly appreciate the contribution. And you're anticipating, Meredith, that the statues will be here for the Veterans Day? Yes.

Yes. Hopefully early fall. So fingers crossed. Last time I spoke with the artists was at our Memorial Day ceremony, the grand opening of the Vietnam Memorial without the statues. But I have had some sneak peeks. They're coming along, and they're pretty amazing. They look really, really nice.

Excellent. All right. Well, thank you again very much. Thank you, Aaron. Thank you again to Pinnacle Bank. Tommy and Aaron, good to see you this morning. Our next agenda item for the workshop today is a Whispering Pines update, and Chip Smith is here.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council, for allowing me to be here. As I do each year, I just do a brief presentation on Whispering Pines and what the year's been like and where we're headed with it. Just a brief recap, we went into a project Last year, starting around Memorial Day to renovate the golf course after 60 plus years of operation and greens being renovated once in that history, we decided to take on a project with your approval to renovate the greens, put in a new pump house and pumps to replace the old equipment that was there, as well as all new irrigation heads. And as we moved into the project and called in quite a few favors from different vendors, we were able to stretch that dollars for that project out into quite a few other things. And if you go to the next slide. You have a clicker up there. Oh, sorry.

Let me go the right way here.

There you go. As you see, we started off, as I said, to redo greens and a few other items, but we were able to redo greens, tees, and fairways, so we regressed the entire golf course in simple terms. We were also able to put new carpet in the clubhouse, interior painting, new entry sign, a new owning outside, and then new sand and drainage in the sand traps there. So we stretched that dollar out pretty good and got a lot out of it. I think I said before when I was there, I did some research on another project in New Jersey that had done a similar type of renovation, and they spent about $7.5 million to do what we spent $1.5 million to do, so we were pretty pleased with that. There's a new sign, which most of you have probably seen driving by. I think it really gives us a good statement coming out of the airport, and it says, Welcome to the golf capital of the world. We work with Golf Tourism Solutions to utilize their trademark logo on that, so we have good presence out on the highway now. The other thing that's probably that we're most proud of is the comments we've gotten back from our guests that are playing there and visiting. The one you see on the screen right now is from someone that played golf starting in Pinehurst and worked their way through Myrtle Beach. If you read the part down at the bottom that's circled, it basically says, Whispering Pines, best conditions of the week. Yes, go play. They played a number of golf courses up and down the Strand, and at the end of the day, they deemed us as the best one they had played condition-wise. That's a long way from where we started 14 years ago with conditions of the golf course. The next one is from a golf writer out of Canada who came down, visited a lot of golf courses in Myrtle Beach, and again wrote up a little article on Whispering Pines. And what I've pulled out of that is this course should definitely be on your list if you want to know on your next golf trip. So again, I think we've come from being an also-ran golf course to a golf course that's gaining a reputation each and every year now. So we're very pleased with that. This is some results from being back open. We opened back up September 1. So as we know, our fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30. Our rounds were down slightly during that time period, during that year, but we were closed two months out of that fiscal year as opposed to one month out of the year before. The numbers are almost even with being closed 30 more days. So we feel like we're tracking on the right direction. And then revenue, we're actually up in revenue. Again, we're at a 30-day deficit on how long we were open, but revenue is up for that time period. Spring revenue was up double digits each month. Revenue was up 18% for the first month when we opened back up in September. January was up 54% over the previous year. And then if you compare numbers of September through May, leaving the summer out, you'll see that our revenue was up 1.6 million versus 1.4 million. and that's a 15.48% increase. So doing a comparative time point, we feel like we're tracking on the right direction and doing very well with rounds and revenue. We continue to have north of 70% of our rounds with local play. We've continued to hold our rate with locals and I think we're the most competitive force around with local rates. So we do have outside play from the tourists that come in to Myrtle Beach, but the majority of our play is serving the citizens of Myrtle Beach and Horry and Georgetown County. And then finally, what I'll say is, Future improvements that we're looking at includes doing some improvements to the practice facility and possibly putting an indoor simulator and putting area in an area in the clubhouse that's really underutilized at this point. And if we move forward on those projects, that will be expense of my company, Atlantic Golf Management, not something I'll come back to city council for. So if that's all I have, if anybody has any questions or comments, I'll be glad to try to take them.

Council, I've got a few things to ask, but you all want to start?

Chip, I'd just like to say thank you for what you've done for our golf course here in Myrtle Beach since the time you've been managing that course.

Thank you. It's been a great relationship with all you guys.

Chip, if I may, we were in danger of closing this golf course. Mr. Chestnut, you remember back in 2009, 2008, and some of us went to the mat to try to keep things going. But at the time we were experiencing roughly a $250,000 net operating loss. So that was with probably 35,000 rounds played. Thank you for pumping things up. And also what escapes here often is this isn't just a Myrtle Beach effort. You know, you see a lot of county folks out there playing. It's expensive to play at some of these golf courses, and you kept it reasonable, and it's a really nice municipal course. And I think we're all proud of what you've done. And again, you obviously know what you're doing. So let's keep that partnership going.

Thank you. I will say that we're here day after day. This is the best condition it's ever been in. So we're pleased with that.

Chip, what do you have planned for the 100th anniversary of golf, which will be this coming year?

So we're leaving that up to Golf Tourism Solutions a little more than us. They're doing it as a community. I think they came in and did a presentation to you guys a month or so ago. And I think coming back with more concrete plans coming up is my understanding. But we'll participate in whatever efforts they endure as a community. So we'll definitely be part of it.

I want to be sure that we are doing that because what you have done is fantastic. This is a tremendous golf course. And when you look at 45,000 rounds a year, that's a lot of use on that course. And to be able to keep it in good condition says a lot about your company and your management for us.

Well, that's 45,000 rounds with a few months closed. We'll push 55,000 to 60,000 rounds in this fiscal year. Wow. Yeah.

I remember 14 years ago when we were in the other meeting room over there at City Hall talking about this. You're on a five-year lease with the city?

I was five to begin and rolled into 10 more. So we have a few more. I want to say maybe three left on our lease.

Okay. And we casually talked about is 10 long enough to do those things that need to be done at Whispering Pines? We haven't talked about it here. I don't know whether you want to raise that subject now or not.

I'd like to come back with a concrete plan on the future moving forward because I would like to talk about an extension beyond this. There's a lot of moving parts out in the market right now that involves Whispering Pines and the whole market. But yeah, I'm interested in the future of Whispering Pines.

Great. And I hear people who are flying in or out of the airport make Whispering Pines their first or last stop. Is that correct?

That is. I may have told you and Dr. Rinder, there are days where I go in and I go sit in the restaurant to do work because I can't get in my office. It's full of luggage. um because people get off the plane and they can't check in their hotel to three o'clock and it's 8 30 in the morning so we store their luggage for them they go play and then by the time they finish it's time to check in so yeah there's days it's just impossible to get in there so it's a it's it's good to be near the airport

Super. Well, thank you, Chip. The courts looks great. I'm not a golfer, so I can't attest to any of that. But congratulations. Anybody else on council?

Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. We look forward to having you come back. Just have a good day. Thanks again for the partnership.

Yep. Up next, golf court, golf court, golf cart parking, which has been a hot subject this hot summer.

Brian Schmidt with me. Good morning. He's done a lot of the background work on this, as well as Steve Robertson, the contractor with our parking, to help put this presentation together. I think really to start, I think we heard council pretty loud and clear that y'all wanted this problem fixed. You wanted to maximize the parking at the beach accesses and we have done that. And so I'm gonna try to keep it brief. I can give you as much detail as you want, but really where we're at and where I think we can go pretty quickly. This chart that's up here, Brian put this together and it's got all the beach accesses and the parking that each of the accesses right now as it pertains particularly to golf carts. or to parking places. Currently there are 198 to 228 parking places at the beach access right now. And so that was after we started enforcing the ordinance. And so that's what it went down to. And if we implement all the changes that we're proposing, we'll get up to close to 522. And so it's a pretty significant increase. It over doubles where we're at right now. Really at high level, as you can see, and it's color-coded there, the ones that are darker, like 51st, we can get 30 golf carts in there, 65th, 30, 66, 35, 82nd, 35, and so those are some of the big ones. Some of them, we just can't put any there, either because of the slope, landscaping that's gonna be too much to move. One of the other challenges, that we really wanted to address was people not driving over the sidewalk to get to the beach access to get to the parking and so obviously that's a safety issue and so how could we provide the parking without folks driving over the sidewalk and so we believe we can do this relatively inexpensively with the help of public works and a little bit from prst to get it done our proposal is to take eight parking spaces collectively from all of the beach accesses and i'll show you an example of one of the beach accesses here in a minute which will allow golf carts to get into those areas to park and so it's we thought total with all those beach accesses that's really not a big ask eight parking places and So right now there's 670 public-metered parking places between 34th North and 82nd North. There are almost 3,000 golf cart decals, which is a lot of golf carts up there, are throughout the city. Again, removing the eight parking places, you can see the revenue loss. We believe the trade-off is worth it to be able to add these spots. Then, once we take these golf carts out of the parking spaces that they're in now, it potentially can free up cars to be able to park there and potentially some additional revenue to offset any of the potential loss. Really, the big thing on this is moving a little bit of landscaping, some of the bollards, some of the trash cans, and some of the signage. I'll show you a picture of that here in just a moment. It would require coming back with a minor ordinance change. Amy Neuschafer and I have talked about this a little bit. We think in legal terms a pretty easy change to the ordinance would allow us to allow the golf carts to park in these grassy areas. Let me show you 66 for an example. This is one of the ones that I would say probably has the most work, and it's really not all that much work. But as you can see at the top picture, looking at the beach access there from the parking lot, the trashcan that's there on the left will have to be moved to allow an entrance there into that grassy area so that the golf carts can park. And then over on the right side there, that's one of those parking places that we would um take and that would allow the golf carts to get in there to park and we'd have to move meredith's new signs and we'll do them nicely meredith i promise but we'll get those moved and that will allow folks to get in and out because right now um our prior to enforcing the ordinance um they're driving over the sidewalk there to get into those spots and so this will allow um entrance and exits from those spots without having to drive over the sidewalk and so again this is one of the ones that probably has more work and it's really not all that much work removing the bollards a railroad tie and some signage indicating that the golf carts are permitted to park in there is that one of the deep trash cans yes and so that's yep And then, so 65th is another one where we can have quite a bit of parking. The problem currently where you see the dotted line up there is there is no barrier between what is city property and what is the homeowner's property there. The suggestion would be putting something similar to what's in the picture there with suppose driven into the ground with rope or something to delineate what is public and what is private property. Purchase-wise, it's probably one of the greatest expenses, which probably really isn't gonna be all that much in the grand scheme of things. At 65th, and so again, just to put this back up here, we can talk about any of the beach accesses you want. I wanted to keep it high level. Again, we heard you loud and clear on what you all want, and so I think us doubling the spaces, we could get moving on this pretty quickly and come back to you with an ordinance change, but if anybody wants to talk about any of it. Particulars on why or why not at a beach access, myself or Brian or Steve, one of us could do it. I know up in the 80s, just real quickly, we just put some curbing in up there and so that required tearing out some of the curbing which,

not really my favorite thing to do but you know there's some things that that we could do but I think this will accomplish what council has asked when I saw these numbers when we got our packet I was really pleased and surprised really of how many spaces we could create and this really I mean the bulk of the folks poke bringing their golf carts to the beach our residents so I This makes our accesses much more resident friendly, which is something that we needed to do. Right.

I've said all along that the golf cart parking in those areas up there, parking on the grass, has worked better than 10 years or longer. And to try to take away that from the folks who use those areas to park golf carts just didn't make a whole lot of walking around sense to me. And I believed all along that the thing that could be done, we could continue to park there. And all we had to do was just make a couple simple, well, maybe not so much simple changes, but make changes that would allow golf cart parking to continue there. And I'm glad to see this because, I understand that people have private property there and there's things done that are going to be done to change that. The golf cart won't encroach on their private property. I understand that completely, but to try to take away all that, just because of that, I didn't think that was the way to be headed either. So I'm really, really happy to see that we're going to continue to allow our folks to park on the grass out there. And the other side of that is, if we were to stop parking on the grass, then they would have to park in the parking spaces. And then that just takes up a lot of parking spaces that vehicles could park there. So at the end of the day, this is a great decision to continue to allow the folks to park on the grass. Thank you.

I appreciate all the hard work you've put into this because it has been a need and it's been a need for a while. And I'm pleasantly surprised the amount that you were able to get. So I know that this is gonna, our community, our residents and stuff are really gonna be happy about this. Thank you.

You're welcome. Good job. Thanks, ma'am. You're welcome.

Josh, again, I think we all appreciate the thoughtful effort. gentlemen and ladies put in on this, but a larger question with the increase in volume that we've seen with golf carts and low, what do they call them, low speed vehicles. Have we had any increase in accidents with regard, and if so, what can we do to help iterate that? Because I have not seen or read about, you know, you hear about horrible things, one in North Myrtle Beach and one here and there. have we been for okay i get it knock on wood but uh just if you would just be mindful of age limits of folks driving and that kind of thing the basics that we can employ to help keep our community and the the drivers and the riders safe that's my primary concern happy for the golf cart spaces but you know got to look at the big picture too yes we do and we have not had a great deal of Problem is what I'm hearing.

Correct.

Great.

Thank you.

And just for the golf cart, just in talking to Steve and talking to Brian, most of the time the beach accesses, there's a few days a year where they are completely full, even with the golf carts. And what we have found is people are very territorial. They like to go to a specific beach end. And so hopefully this will be able to accomplish a lot of that and kind of get back to the way that things were.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Great job.

A couple of quick questions, and I'll start with a hard one. This is what we consider the residential area, even though there's commercial mixed in, and the other part of town is not all commercial by the end of the day. Did we look at the rest of the city and the street ends there? The issue arose because we weren't enforcing the rules here, but we do enforce it in other places. So we need to be fair across the city. So I'm glad this is a legal solution to the problem. My question was, did we look at the rest of the street ends? Yes, we have.

Oh. Yes, we have. And Steve will sort of explain the profile versus.

yeah when we looked uh steve robertson so i managed the parking uh here when we looked at the whole city when we started doing this and we had to start enforcing on the north end we did look at the south end there's not near as many golf cart spaces available on the south end uh only on emergency beach access as most of them and we we cured that two years ago yeah so

That's the first one. And that, that was my point. We don't allow it. Yes. We don't allow it. Yeah.

We, we have, we have wrote almost the same amount of ticket. We've wrote probably more tickets on the south end than we did on the north end because we were dealing with the residents and we wrote warnings up there to try to appease everybody.

Yeah. And then in terms of signage, what do you anticipate saying that golf carts need to be neat and how do you anticipate doing that?

Uh, part of it's gonna be a public information campaign from Meredith's folks. Um, I'll just say if we stay out of the way, it seems to police itself. It really hasn't been an issue up there when they were parking in the grass. They seem to self-police themselves and not block each other in and not park sideways and everything else. They seem to... for the most part, it takes care of itself. And so really trying to limit the signage since we just really cleaned it up up there and really, you know, golf cart parking permit in this area or something along those lines indicating where, you know, folks can go in and out of. But we want to try to keep the signage as clean as we can.

Golf cart only parking.

Yes.

Anybody else? Mark, where I work, we have a beachfront parking lot and better than two-thirds of that parking lot is for golf carts, and we don't have spaces marked off for golf carts. We have vehicle parking. We don't have spaces marked off for vehicles. But what I've seen for the last, as long as I've worked there, that people understand people need to park, especially with golf carts, and they do really well about parking up close to each other and not you know taking up extra space somebody can get and i think that's what's been taking place up there all along so i think it'll work it i believe too it'll work itself out just and the big question how quickly can we make that happen we'll get started right away on it now that and we will come back with an ordinance change um it should be pretty pretty simple so the next meeting or the one after that we should be able to get that and be two readings and we can get the ball rolling okay

Thank you. Okay. Thanks, guys. Okay. Well, it's only 927. I set a record.

Street lighting agreements.

I'm trying to be efficient.

I might bog down here.

Okay. We may bog down here a little bit.

Yeah, this is the kind of, well, Doug Holder's group comes up to kind of walk through this presentation. This started many years ago. So we put together a group to look at it, and Doug's going to kind of give a summary with some help from, I see Courtney and Lori in the audience as well, and some legal help to kind of see where we're at and see where we want to go.

Morning, Mayor. Morning. Hey, Doug. City administration. So the mid was brought up years ago when they were developing Market Common. The owners wanted to have a better look upon the area. So they looked at lighting and they wanted to enhance lighting. So the city of Myrtle Beach has a very kind of just plain lighting structure. They wanted to go with a heritage collection, which is a more aesthetic lighting. So they put the MID together to be able to finance this thing. So it was the reimbursement of whatever our city lighting standard was as opposed to the enhanced lighting. So the residents will pay the difference in the lighting. So if one unit is 40 bucks and the standard lighting is 13, then the residents are gonna pay the difference in the lighting.

And it's more than just the fixture. There are more street lights there than in the rest of the city. It's not just that the fixtures are different. It's that there are literally more fixtures.

The reason why is the lighting that they picked shines 360. Regular road lights shine down on the light, so it shines on the sidewalk. The footprint hits more of the roadway and the sidewalk. These heritage lights shine 360. Steve if you can talk a little bit more into the mic some of the people in the back are saying they can't hear you okay so that's that was a reason why there was more lighting is because the way it shines as opposed to a roadway light I didn't mean it no no that's fine so I'll go ahead and show you what like the mids are the areas that how they're included So there's Mid-A and Mid-B. Mid-A is the green highlighted area. So that's the sweet grass, the businesses and areas in that area there. They pay from Kings Highway to Myers Avenue. So the lights along that route is what the Mid-A is responsible for.

Mid-B is the purplish kind of highlighted area.

They pay from Myers to US 17. That's the route. So that was written into the mid-agreement. Now, that's the thoroughfare that they pay for. Now, there's other areas. We can talk about the money if you guys want to come up and talk about the money. But that's what A and B basically generates right there. And that was established, obviously, in 2003. The other areas that have contracts... with lighting agreements is Grand Dunes. That's a master association, so they pay all the lights, the difference in the cost between the standard and the upgrade. They pay all of Marina Parkway, Grand Dunes Boulevard, part of Ocean Boulevard, and throughout that little trail right there. And there's a breakdown of the areas on the bottom left of what they pay. And then Pine Lakes, they pay the lights on Granddaddy Drive, the difference between the standard cost and the upgraded cost. And that's the route from Grissom Parkway. If you've ever been to Pine Lakes, there's like a brick kind of pedestal. They pay that area there. So while they also pay the internal lights, they pay throughout the neighborhoods. back up here. Grand Dunes, all the way to Marina Track, Siena Park, all the different areas within Grand Dunes, they pay that. And then within the boundaries of Mid B and Mid A, they pay the internals. So this Mid is just talking about the major roads. Everybody does pay internal lights or pay for the internal lights. And you can see what the cost generates there for Grand Dunes. 152,000, Pine Lakes is 6,000. And those are the internal street lights. So everybody, like I said, everybody pays internal along with the major roads. And that's what it generates right there from the revenue. It's not revenue, it's we pay 100% of the lights. The city gets the bill from Santa Cooper. then we bill the individual neighborhoods for the difference in lights. So if we were to get rid of this mid and the internals, we would have a deficit of that much right there that we're not having come in from the neighborhoods of the reimbursement. So that's the, all of it combined, thoroughfares and internal.

If I can jump in for a second, if I'm right, the market common mids A and B figure there of $123,000 is just for Farrell Parkway, Coventry and Myers.

Right.

That's it. And then you go down to Grand Dunes and the thoroughfares there is 152,000 and Pine Lakes is 6,000. For just the thoroughfares is $282,000. Just a thoroughfares if you were to incorporate the thoroughfares and the internal streetlights You're looking at five hundred and thirty four thousand dollars, and I understand that Where in the cost here are the internal streetlights for the market common area? Well you see them buried under the internal street got mid-sea you have the sanctuary Bell Harbor Center point PUD is also all the internal streets. I

So we're clear again, break out the thoroughfare numbers, the common thoroughfare numbers versus the internals. For what area? For all of them.

You can go back to that big chart. Go back to the big chart, Doug, or go forward to that one.

So for the main thoroughfare, the total cost is $282,000. That is not inclusive of the internal streetlights. That is just the main thoroughfare.

Hey, talk slowly, and I can't find that. Is that number up there? Because I can't read it.

Yes, sir. It's directly below the first two tables.

I apologize. Doug, can I ask you a question real quick? That would be good. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. Under the internal lights, you've got Grand Dunes Heel Track. What the heck is that?

That's south of 62nd. So when 62nd crosses US 17 and goes from US 17 to Marina Parkway, that's the development.

That's kind of the Del Webb area?

Yes. I don't have a laser pointer, but.

There's a pointer on that, Doug, if you, the top button. It doesn't work when you point it to the screen. Well, we got a new one. There you go. Ooh. Wow.

So here's 62nd from US 17 to Marina Parkway. It's this area right here.

Okay.

That's a hill. I don't know, the developer called it that and the name just stuck.

Yeah, could have been a better name for Grand Dunes. Because in the Grand Dunes PUD documents, right, it lists six different tracts of land, and that wasn't in there, and I was trying to figure out what the heck that was.

We just stuck with it. I don't know why we did that.

That's fine. I know what it is now. I did notice, though, on the internal when you were listing some of the neighborhoods, specifically for the Grand Dunes PUD, and if you bring that slide back up, the big slide.

Well, that's Grand Dunes there.

Right. No, I want the lighting cost, the big Next one. That.

That one there?

Right. So you've got Siena Park, Castillo Del Mar, Bell Harbor, Grand Dunes, this track. You've got Del Webb out there. You have Papillon. Remind me, what is Centerpoint?

Centerpoint goes back to the Market Common area.

Okay. All right. Okay.

So that would be that blue area, I guess blue or purple area to the right, the large track. When they created the mids, they called that Area B or Mid B, but that's also Centerpoint PUD.

Other neighborhoods within the Grand Dunes PUD, east of the waterway in the not in the gated communities like cypriana park they're not even listed there they won't be if they're if they're private roads and they're not i don't i thought the i thought cypriana park all the roads were turned over to the city once you said gated it's it's a private road right no no no cypriana park is not gated

Oh, the front part. Yeah, off of 62nd.

No. Cipriano Park is a neighborhood off of Grand Dunes Boulevard. I happen to live there. And so if you can come back, just keep coming.

North of 82nd.

It's right off of Grand Dunes Boulevard.

Right here?

Yes. Down in that general area. So... The Cape is not listed, that type of thing?

We haven't taken that road over yet. Okay. In Cipriano Park, I think we're taking over Phase 4. We were waiting for final construction on that. I think there was a few lots still in there that we were waiting for to be developed. Okay, all right. So that's on the docket. Cape's on the docket.

So then once we take them over, that's another cost? Yes, sir. To look at?

And same with the Marina Parkway or the Marina Track. Right. All this area through here. Right. All the way down to the Marina.

That will be also. So potentially a year from now, if everything stayed the way it is, the total cost of about $500,000 would increase to some bigger number. Is that correct? Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Any questions or anything that kind of clarification on?

I've got a bunch, but go ahead, Phil.

Just one question, and it relates to Councilman Bill's question. Michelle, a number of 572,000 is somehow stuck in my mind. Is that a projected increase from the 534 in these documents that you had mentioned earlier as a proposed increase from additions?

I don't recall that, Councilman Render.

It was 572 or 574 as a projected cost, all inclusive, graduated from some smaller number.

That's correct. I believe that is inclusive of a 5% increase year-over-year of Santee Cooper rates increasing. Additionally, these numbers do not include the property that the city owns in Market Common. This is just what we are requesting for reimbursement of costs. So this number is not inclusive of the entire MID because the city does own some properties down there. I think about 15 acres, if my memory serves correctly.

So you believe that's where I got that number from? Yes, sir. Okay, thank you.

Thanks, and it's nice to see all this on a map, actually, Doug. And I've got a range of questions, so bear with me while I figure them out for you. At the end of the day, we have the MIDS to pay for a higher level of street lighting in these neighborhoods and commercial areas. The Market Common certainly has a commercial area, and one of those MIDS is paying for the higher level of street lighting in the commercial area. We're also paying for a higher level of street lighting on the thoroughfares, which is $282,000, which would seem to be kind of a no-brainer to say the city probably should absorb that cost rather than the residents at the end of the day. If that higher level of street lighting is good for the Market Common and Grand Dunes, why wouldn't it be good for the rest of the city is my underlying thought process that we should elevate the whole city. And then I live at the Market Common, obviously, and I drive Pampas Drive on a regular basis. And I know that the higher level of lighting on Pampas in front of Horry Georgetown Technical College is not in any of these mids so that city is picking up in fact it's a higher level of lighting in front of hgtc on pampas than is throughout the mid that we're paying for so there are examples where the city's picking up the cost of additional street lighting that is comparable to or even greater to the level of street lighting that the residents are being charged in these various neighborhoods That's also true, I think, although I don't have quite the same comparison, in the new street lighting that's been added downtown with the Arts and Innovation District streetscape construction. I was on 8th Avenue North yesterday after attending a meeting at the train depot. in a block and a half there are nine street lights on that 8th avenue north extension that will provide a higher level of street lighting than we offer anywhere else in the city and the city's picking up the cost for those and that's true on broadway street where the street lighting has been increased on 6th avenue north where the street lighting has been increased so we're acknowledging through our additional lighting levels that the city is installing where we have new construction or on pampas drive where we finally converted those to underground utilities that that higher level of street lighting is good and the city is going to pay for it so we're not charging anybody for those so from a fairness standpoint if that higher level of street lighting is good for half the city, 60% of the city, why wouldn't it be good for the whole city and why don't we strive for that higher level of street lighting at the end of the day?

I don't think the lights on Broadway are the heritage selections.

They're not, but there are more lights than we would provide in a regular neighborhood, in a commercial district. The number of lights themselves is greater.

The number is, yes. The number is greater. But the cost per unit is less than the heritage collection.

I fully understand that. But I would imagine that the higher level of street lighting is a piece of the reason why we've done that.

Let me understand. So higher level meaning more lights per or higher quality, more aesthetic lights. Neither, believe it or not. There's ornamental lights and then there's placing more lights.

When I say higher level of lighting, I mean higher level of illumination, literally more light in the area.

As one of the folks who was here when soon after Market Common became a place, I will ask you to remember that the developers came to us with Grand Dunes. The developers came to us and requested this higher level of lighting. It wasn't that the city of Myrtle Beach said that these folks deserve a higher level of lighting or that this should be some standard everywhere. At the time, this was requested of us, and that was the concession that the developers made in order for that to be affordable for... not only those residents, but the rest of the residents throughout the entire city.

And I understand that I was here for that process. You used the words concession that the developers made. Well, the residents and the businesses, the property owners are actually paying it. The developers aren't paying that. The folks who own the real estate are paying that at the end of the day. But we've, over the last 20 years since this mid was, the mids there were created and the Grand Dunes area has developed, obviously we've adopted that higher level of street lighting and by higher level of street lighting it's not just the decorative fixtures because i realize there's a cost difference between those but it's also the actual illumination is greater when you have more street lights at the end of the day we yeah just as long as we separate out the number of street lights compared to the ornamental street lights we're not putting those heritage

on Broadway and stuff like that. And those are, like I said, those can be anywhere from 38 to $40 a unit. The ones that I think we're putting down Broadway and they are designed to show the light on the footprint of the area they're trying to hit. So we could put more up. If we put lights that are cheap, more cost effective, more of those, we can still probably cut the cost in putting the heritage collections up.

Those are just... Pampas Drive has similar lights and it's not in any of the mids. The Pampas Drive section where it was converted to underground utilities most recently.

I don't know if, I don't know if, or if Georgetown is paying for that or not. I'm not, I have to look at that.

That would be a great question. I'd love to know the answer to that. I'm not aware that they are. You had mentioned, Doug, can you go to the, sort of towards the end of the last, or second to the last slide, please? You talked about neighborhoods, and talked about converting neighborhoods, keep going, that one right there. Establish neighborhoods into new lighting. This would require underground conversion. That's $3,000 per foot, which is about $15 million a mile. to do that, because all of these lights that you're talking about are underground fed. They're not a fed above ground. So underground. So this is it's a very costly endeavor. And I don't we haven't done calculation of Ramsey Acres, Booker T, our own pine lakes, the avenues. I have no idea how many miles we're talking about.

And I understand that and appreciate that. And that's a really valid point. At the end of the day, the all decorative poles I'm not sure that you would consider the ones that are on Broadway Street, 8th Avenue North, as decorative. They did a conversion in that area. But it is underground.

But to convert it, now that area was being redesigned anyways, but to convert overhead to underground, there's your...

The last point I'm going to make, if you go to the next slide, you talk about, you mentioned the commercial sections of Market Commons. And that's a policy decision for this council to make. The challenge is that was done in a MID, which is totally different than what we did at Grand Dunes and Pine Lakes. That was under the contract. We learned from the MID to the contract. And so if we were to do, if this council wanted to address those commercial sections, as you mentioned, we would have to get into the MID documents and figure that out. And we have sort of started that prior to this conversation and it's becoming challenging to do that. There's a lot, because we have an agreement with a developer. For example, the developer was Lucadia. Who's the property owner now? Is it the 4,500 house owners or is it the HOA? I don't know the answer. We don't know the answer to those questions.

But the HOAs bill the individual.

I understand that, but there's legal issues there that would have to be vetted, unwound possibly, and I'm certainly not in a position to talk about legal stuff with the attorneys here, but it's more complicated.

I do understand that, and I realize that there's a big difference in the way they're funded between the north end and the south end. I've got two mid questions, though, for somebody. The mids at the Market Common specifically charge all property owners, commercial properties, 6% properties, and 4% property owners. So we're charging the residents with that MID, and yet in the MID for the Myrtle Beach Downtown Alliance, we've specifically excluded the residential property owners.

That's a great question. That's one of the many complexities that we've discovered as we were going through this. That is an astute observation there. Yes.

And then part two of that question is we just approved the MBDA mid-roll. Do we have to approve a mid-roll on an annual basis for the other mids? We talked about that as well.

No, a number of years ago, we had an attorney give us an opinion that we did not have to approve a rule on the market common. Being a streetlight, I guess the streetlights versus an actual assessment as in property taxes, every year you set your millage. You're not setting a millage with this. You're just charging the cost of the lights. Like every year when you do your budget, you have to set your property tax millage.

Okay, and I understand that. That's a legitimate explanation. The MBDA mid is the equivalent of 10 mills, and this is not a millage-based assessment.

Correct.

I do understand that. All right, so my thought process and why we're having this discussion is for you all to think about this. We're not going to make a decision today, but think about it, is that if it's good for the Market Common, if it's good for Grand Dunes, if it's good for Pine Lakes, why wouldn't that elevated level of street lighting be good for the rest of the city? Is that something that the residents would support, the businesses would support? We're charging residents at the Market Common through the mids for street lighting on public property. The extra street lighting doesn't really benefit me, even though I live at the Market Common, but it benefits everybody who drives through the Market Common, whether it's on Farrah Parkway, Pampas Drive, the residential streets. The street lights are just that. street lights they're not yard lights at the end of the day they are lighting public property in every instance that's the reason they exist why are we charging residents the extra cost for that and then back to the one mid question for y'all's consideration too at the end of the day the mbda mid is timed it ends in 10 years we either need to renew it or stop it in 10 years these mids have no expiration we're paying for this indefinitely at some point so just thought processes um i would see that since you can break out how much we're paying for the thoroughfares at the market common and the other areas that would be an easy thing to say gee the city really should pay for that instead of the resident who lives five blocks away from that um that's 282 000 from uh easy to say it's hard to hard to split that out and the simpler solution not the cheapest by any stretch of the imagination would be to over four or five years just absorb the cost all of these costs and let the city pay for them and then work towards improving the street lighting in the other areas of the city where there is not this level of street lighting in other words make all of myrtle beach equivalent to the the level the standard that we've established through the market economy there's a lot there where you start absorbing that means all the taxpayers are absorbing those street lights um

And then you have that equity issue. And then you talk about going, you know, $15 million a mile. That's a lot of money.

Yeah, I'm not going to the underground utility side of life. I understand that. And there's a way to do it without going to the underground utility side of life. Not to this extent, but to improve the street lighting in other parts of the city.

Well, are you talking about when you say upgrade, are you talking about taking down the wooden poles and putting up? Potentially.

Yeah, it's a great question for Santee Cooper. Can you make it look better and brighter in the neighborhoods? Yes.

I'm just, wow. Let me just say one thing. You can make it brighter with existing lights. You can just put a higher wattage bulb in there. Most of them in the older lights are HPSs, which are high pressure sodium bulbs. They're not really efficient. Once they burn out, they'll put them LEDs, but we can up the LEDs. But I will tell you every time that we, have a light burn out and it replaces with an LED, we get a phone call. So it's almost a seven to one ratio of people complaining it's too bright as opposed to it's not bright enough.

It really is that kind of a ratio. And it's a valid conversation to have. But we're charging residents for something that benefits more than just the residents at the end of the day.

And the argument can be made that the residents are paying for ornamental lights, and it does benefit them by property values increasing, because when you ride into a neighborhood that those ornamental lights are there, it does give it a certain aesthetic view.

And I can say that too, but I don't know there's any real way to quantify that at the end of the day.

It says aesthetics, that's all. Can I ask you a question? That's why the developers came to us in the first place, to petition us for that. One question.

Suppose whether it's in the Grand Dunes or in the Market Common area, residents say, you know, this is all well and good. But at the end of the day, we really don't want to pay the difference in the ornamental lights. Santee Cooper, can you come in and just replace them with standard poles and lights?

I've had that conversation with an engineer from Sandy Cooper. Based on his word to me that they would do it, they would replace them. They would pull out the ornamental lights and put plane lights in. No cost.

No cost.

That's what I was told by one of the engineers, yes.

Something to consider.

Again, just a conversation that I think is overdue. We've had the mids for coming up on 20 years.

Not quite. 23. 23 years.

So the mids have been around for a long while, and we've charged a tremendous amount of money to the residents for lights that in most cases don't actually benefit them. They were the convenient person to charge for them. But just a general concept. I was thinking the total dollar amount would be more than $534,000, whatever it was. That's it.

Mayor Sands. I'm sorry, Michael. No, go ahead. No. I was going to say, since I don't believe Solomon sits upon this bias right here, it would be helpful to me, and this is really good stuff. I'll probably learn more than I have in 20 years, but would it be possible to get some form of white paper generated by staff giving us written down pros and cons of the different areas of concern that have been expressed here? cost, alternatives, public sentiment if possible. I mean, this is a big deal, and this council above all wants to be fair to all the residents, but I need to be properly armed with all the information that's available, including opinion from staff, and outside folks, if you find that easily to obtain. I just don't feel like I have a grasp of all what's going on here or the unintended consequences, I should say.

I think we can. I think it's going to take some time to draft that. This is a complicated, that's what we're talking about. This isn't the tomorrow decision. This is maybe next year's budget. When you talk about MIDS versus contracts, it gets complicated quick.

Again, I didn't consider that. The $15 million a mile is what hits me in between the eyes, but that's just part of it. Anything you can do to shed more light on a a general understanding of this. Thank you. No unintended.

And I would be interested in us, in regards to assessment of areas that don't have lighting. There are a lot of areas that don't have lighting or very minimal lighting. And so it concerns, I think we just need to be really thoughtful in regards to this because I think that we've got, you know, if we take on an extra half a million dollars for a certain type of light and then think we're gonna add another or more in lighting in other areas and at compounds. We're talking millage rate, potential for everybody to pay for upgraded lighting in certain areas and maybe not in others. I just think we need to be really thoughtful and I like Dr. Rinder's recommendation on a white paper on this. Mr. Lauder, I've been dying to hear from you.

Okay. One more question and I'll be quiet at this point. On this chart, down where it says center point, which is a big chunk of the market common, the year established is 2022. How's that possible?

What slide are you talking about?

No, the one you were on. It's the year established column in there.

Colonel Streetlights.

Oh, that's the, okay, the individual dates are when the roads were taken over.

Senate appointment, there are so many neighborhoods in Senate appointment. It may have been the last year. We have to go back.

Yeah, I've got, I mean, I've got that. Ask me a particular, and I'll tell you.

So that's what, that's what that indicates is when the roads were taken over? There's so many neighborhoods in Senate appointment.

Right away dedication. Yeah, I got every date.

Okay. Okay. So it may have been the last date that we had on there. Cause there's some that would be before 2022 and. Okay.

Yeah. Center point. It should not have a date of 22. That's probably the last, the last road that we took over there. Okay. Actually bell Harbor face six was, uh, 23.

The dates listed on this are the dates that the lighting agreements were put into effect. So these lights could have been out there prior to 22, but that's when the first lighting agreement was signed by the Master POA, I guess, at Centerpoint. At that point, we did go back three years and retro bill for those streetlights for all of Centerpoint PUD.

And that's what my memory was, because I think I was in the room when this happened, that we managed not to bill CenterPoint for the mid-costs for 10 years, 12 years, 15 years?

It was quite some time, but we did go back three years.

And we went back and caught them up. That's why that 22 date stuck out.

That's just the date that the agreement was signed.

Okay. So we've been charging them correctly since 22, but we didn't before then. But we did go back for three years, back to 19 probably. Okay. Just food for thought. um i know that there are a lot of residents here we and council generally would not welcome residents comments at this point but if you're a resident of the city and you're here for the street lighting discussion raise your hand if you would please thank you And again, we don't typically take public comments during the workshop sessions. Food for thought as we build a budget for next year. Is this a subject that you want to address both from a, hey, we're charging the residents and the businesses for these extra lights? And B, would it be good to look at improving the lighting in the areas where this extra level of lighting is not already granted?

Just one additional clarification question, Doug. Mid-C. Okay.

Mid-C is the only one that's written a little different, because Centerpoint PUD bills for internal, and then there's Mid-B that bills for the thoroughfare. Ah, okay, okay. mid-C bills for the thoroughfare and internal. So I think that came after Centerpoint PUD and mid-A and B, that they tried to combine the two. So if anybody was looking at the paperwork, they would probably think, why am I paying for internal and the lights on the road? Everybody's paying for internal and the lights on the road for A and B. So it was written different. So if you just have that one perspective, you wouldn't be clear on the overall picture.

Okay, thank you, thank you.

And that kind of factoid in a white paper would be helpful. And we may differ on this, but we just need as much information as we can glean.

It's going to take some time.

Yeah, it's not a tomorrow thing by any means.

Myrtle Beach wasn't built in a day.

It's going to be a thick paper you can put yourself, read yourself to sleep at night.

Thank you, Doug. Anybody else?

Yeah, Doug, that was good work. It really was. Thank you, Doug. Thank you very much. Thank you, Courtney.

I apologize for calling you Steve earlier. No, no, I'll answer to anything. I don't know why I have Steve on my mind. He looks like a Steve. Steve? I don't know.

I'm bad about that, too. That was all that's on the agenda today?

I thought we were very efficient, Mayor. I thought we'd spend a little bit more time on a couple of those topics than we did.

Anybody have any issues? We've got a couple of executive session items. We appreciate your attention and visitation this morning. Anybody else have anything else going on? We all got dressed up for nothing. Here we go. We've got three executive session items today. The following are invited to attend the entire discussion. Fox Simons, Will Bryan, Josh Brugger, Michelle Shumpert, Marla Bell, Meredith Denary, Amy Neuschafer. Motion to go into executive session to discuss employment of candidate for open police chief and assistant city manager positions. A motion to go into executive session to discuss compensation of associate municipal judges, and we'll invite Chief Judge Onijan for that. And then a motion to go into executive session to discuss proposed contractual negotiation with the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce regarding the tourism development fee. Is there a motion for those three executive session items?

Second.

Mike and Debbie, all those in favor of going into executive session after a five-minute break, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Out here? Out here? Yeah.

Okay, so you're good? I'm good.

met in executive session to discuss oops where'd everybody go oh we gotta get jennifer back hang on a second Good morning. We met in Executive Session to discuss the three items as described. Is there a motion? We took no action in Executive Session. Is there a motion to come out of Executive Session?

So moved. Mike and Bill.

All those in favor of leaving Executive Session, please say aye. Aye. Motion to adjourn. And a motion to adjourn. Second. All those in favor of adjourning, please say aye.

Aye.

That's all right. It won't hurt. There's no distinction in the FOIA for a workshop.

I don't think so.

Not spelled out, it's a medium. Thank you.