City Council - workshop

There, okay.

Good morning, everybody.

Happy Labor Day. Successful weekend as far as I can tell, except for a little bit of rain Saturday night, or a lot of rain Saturday night. Thank you for being here. This is our September 8th City Council workshop and regular meeting. We have a full agenda today. On the workshop agenda, three items, beginning with the medical clinic event at Grand Strand Brewery, and I believe Dr. Sandsbury is here. Good morning. Good morning.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for inviting us today. Fortunately, a lot of familiar faces for me as a Myrtle Beach native here in the crowd today, which I like to see. And I did say in the booth this morning, I've yet to come to a city council meeting where we didn't talk about golf carts, so I'm glad to see that is on the agenda today as well. Okay, so I want to share with you this exciting adventure that we've been on for really the last several years, hopefully finally finding its place here in town, and that is the Coastal Community Health Clinic. So we are a team of three, which you can go ahead to that slide.

Do you have a clicker there?

Clicker. Oh, I got my own clicker. Okay. All right, perfect. I will tell you a little bit about my team. I want to share our mission and vision. talk to you about the site that we are proposing, and then tell you finally about our fundraiser this Saturday.

So this is my team.

I expect one of these folks to come dashing in the door during this discussion, and the third was called, unfortunately, to the operating room this morning, so they left me by myself here this morning, but here I am. So Dr. Kilgore is a graduate of Grand Strand. I know many of you know him. He was in our transitional year and also our internal medicine residency programs. and currently serves as the program director of the hospice and palliative care fellowship program at Grand Strand. Dr. Aird, who was also the chief resident of her program, she has a background in public health. She's one of our core faculty for the anesthesia residency program at Grand Strand. And then myself, as I mentioned, a true Myrtle Beach native. I am proud to have been born and raised here, brought up in Myrtle Beach Public Schools, and doing the same for my children here as well. I was the first chief resident at Grand Strand back in 2015, and never planned to stay, but here I am many years later. And I currently serve as the program director for the internal medicine residency program. So my program has 39 residents. Grand Strand has 174 residents and fellows total right now, which is a lot of people. It's about a third of our medical staff currently. And we are hoping to find an avenue to connect those folks and their brilliant brains to our community. which we feel like is just a piece that is lacking right now. And hopefully we can do that with this clinic. So I do just want to read this because I think it is important and very valuable to what we're doing. So our mission statement. to provide compassionate, high quality, and equitable healthcare to individuals in a culturally responsive environment while educating and inspiring resident physicians to deliver patient-centered, high-value care with a mindset of social responsibility and community partnership. And again, what that means is taking our residents who are already here, bringing them into our community and working for us, and really treating a different side of the Myrtle Beach and Horry County community that they don't see in the hospital. And then our vision statement is a healthier, empowered community where all individuals have access to quality care and where the next generation of Horry County physicians is trained to lead with service, empathy, and excellence. So at Grand Strand, as you probably know, we are very, very good at training excellent physicians, and we're also very good at exporting them out of Horry County. So we want to do the opposite of that. We want to keep them here. So our proposed location is the current site of the health department, which you all know is this beauty on 21st Avenue. So she's old, but she has very strong bones and a lot of future functionality for us. It is actually a 7,000 square foot building. It's about double what we were looking for. So we really would like to envision kind of a partnership with the city, the county, where we share this space. I mean, space is valuable. And so really to do our functioning, we only need about half of this building. And so our asks are really for you all to help us finalize that lease so we can kind of hit the ground running on future work for this clinic. We are always seeking funds. So if city council is able to help us with that, We would appreciate that, too. I know that's not what I'm here for today. But we have our first fundraiser this Saturday, which I wanted to formally invite all of you to join us at. And I'll show you the flyer in just a moment. And then just your continued help, helping us identify employees from the community to work in this clinic, helping us continue engaging in partnerships with our residents so that they know you, they see you. And again, they continue to feel that connection with our city. Grand Strand is providing us a lot of assistance with this project, not just with physicians staffing with the residents in the clinic, but also with advertising and marketing, point of care labs on site, and also x-ray services will all be provided for free by Grand Strand. And our goal for opening will be Q3, 2028. But as you all know, it is never too early to start fundraising. So we are having our first fundraiser around the corner at Grand Stream Brewing on Saturday. It's really all afternoon, kind of from 3 to 8, and there will be a band out there playing. Grand Stream Brewing is doing a number of different efforts with us to help us raise funds that day. And we're hosting a cornhole tournament. Believe it or not, there is a person in this city who, for a job, runs cornhole tournaments. And we have hired that gentleman to help us that day. So we're hoping to bring in many teams and some additional funds that way as well. And then we'll have several community partners out in Nance Plaza. The goal there was to advertise free services for the folks in the community. And then we have widely distributed this all over the internet, socials, et cetera, for the past several weeks. So we hope to have a big crowd out that afternoon. And again, hope to see you all there. Questions for me? That's my last slide. No sign of Dr. Kilgore, so at some point he might come in here this morning.

Well, thank you, Dr. Sandsbury, on behalf of the city and the city council for putting this together. We've talked several times, I think. We've talked more with Tyler maybe than you, but it's an exciting opportunity. I know that I've personally spoken with Barry Spivey, who's the Horry County Administrator, about leasing a former health department building to you. We haven't talked dollars and cents, but they seem amenable to the idea, so we'll continue to pursue that as well.

Wonderful.

We think that's a great location. Had not thought about the possibility of being able to use some of that space for another purpose, so we'll have to think a little bit about that too.

Council? I think it's just good to hear that the building's in a lot better shape than I was thinking. I mean, I'm being told that there's no bad things in the walls and in the ceilings and around the pipes.

That's right.

That's a good thing. And here comes Dr. Kilmore. Good morning. There he is.

Sorry to wake you. That's okay. I just wrapped up.

Thanks for coming. We'll see you later.

There's a stack of flyers that I'll leave here as well. And please reach out to either of any of the three of us if you have any questions about our efforts. And yeah, hopefully we can move forward with this soon.

You had an opening time. When do you hope to start construction or?

We're looking at quarter three, 2028. And that is.

That's for opening. When do you hope to start?

As soon as possible with relationship to funds and PLAs and necessary legal arrangements between Grand Strain and the site.

And of course, being able to access the building. That would be the key.

We'll continue working with the county on that.

Anybody else? Your first part of the ask of the money is, if we can go back to that slide. I just want to be sure. So your initial goal was $150,000 with an additional $350,000 in total? No.

$350,000 would be our estimated annual operating budget. So we have grant work, private donations, city, county, state representative assistance. So hopefully with the combination of those things, we'll be able to keep it up and running.

So they're not asking for the 350, they're asking for a contribution to get to 350.

No, I understand that. I just wanted to know what we need to do to get there, because this is a worthy project and we need to make sure it happens.

We've also talked, and maybe you and Tyler can speak to this a little bit, about, as you mentioned, the need to keep these residents here in Horry County once they graduate, if that's the right term, for Grand Strand Medical Center. I've asked the Chamber of Commerce, the Myrtle Beach Collaborative, and Matt Pivarnix here to work with you and your staff to engage the residents and let them know that there are things to do in Myrtle Beach and maybe give them a social life every two weeks since they're working really hard at the moment?

That would certainly be appreciated. They definitely deserve a relief occasionally. We're legally required to give them a day off sometimes. Sometimes. In all seriousness, many of them will be present this weekend at the fundraiser. We would love for anyone who wants to meet these young physicians to come out and join them.

Great, we will do that. And Matt, these are the doctors. Thank you. All right, thank you, Dr. Sandsbury and Kilgore. Let me make a note that Dr. Render is not with us this morning. He had a family commitment. He hopes to join us later in the morning. Up next is the Myrtle Beach Downtown Alliance update from Jason Green.

All right, good morning. Good morning. I'm going to give you an update on our block three, which is in the middle of the presentation today from our revitalization block program. Before I get started with that, I think it's important to note that our focus is really on creating an environment where people can live, work, and play in downtown. Mayor, as you've said on many occasions, we have a very unique downtown, a very distinct downtown, and really two different areas that we have to focus on, the tourism side as well as the residential side. So our block program is revealing a lot of information from the community input that we get that I think is certainly very valuable. To give an update on our current status, block one and two, they're active as we're concerned. We've gone through and met with management, given them information relative to what we've learned from block one and two. Block three, we're in the analysis phase right now. We've shared the raw data with management. And we are still working through the planning side of that. And then block four, we are at the initial phases of it. Part of block four, at least the geography is from 8th Avenue North down to 12th Avenue South on Ocean Boulevard, back to Flag Street between 8th and Family Kingdom and then Yopon.

south of Third Avenue South down to 12th.

And the reason that area is so much larger is that we don't have a lot of density when you get south of Third Avenue South because you have more resorts. So we figured that is a good stretch for us to look at next. As far as Broadway Street community input, we had five sessions held in the last couple of months, 29 participants, about 208 individual items that were given to us as far as topics and about 32 recurring themes as part of that. To give you a breakdown of that information, the top in terms of the number of responses we received were at the bottom here. Core infrastructure, street enhancements, and clean and safe kind of wrap up the top three. But in the top five, we certainly have public art and event performance. These are fairly consistent with what we hear from the other two blocks that we've done, and we expect that to be the same as we move into block four and future blocks beyond that. Lighting improvements, at least on Broadway Street, seem to be the top improvement request, as well as the perception of safety is one of their top concerns as well. As far as what they said, this is unvarnished in terms of what we heard from the community at large. Certainly clean and safe and landscaping. This is not anything that we modify. These are the exact responses we receive. We think it's always important for council to understand what we hear. And we certainly don't want to put any color to that at all, just making sure that the community's voice is absolutely heard. So we also aggregate this information. We think it's important for numerous reasons. The first here is that your top three core infrastructure, street enhancements and clean and safe, are fairly ubiquitous across all three blocks that we've done so far. We don't expect that to change as we continue to work with the other blocks. What I think is interesting about this information, why it's important, is that this data is very valuable, because I think it actually helps us with funding requests at the state and federal level, as well as grants, as we continue to pursue those moving forward, which I'll touch on in a bit. What I think is important here is core infrastructure and street enhancements, and you'll see on another slide here, street design comes up an awful lot in these conversations, especially, I think, the Oak Street project, as well as what's happened on 8th Avenue, north as well as the section of broadway street over in front of the beach bike shop i think is providing a lot of motivation to folks to actually look at street design and what that actually might mean for their particular areas of downtown so we are getting those requests a lot in these conversations and i think it's really important to capture that as we continue to go forward As far as top 10 capital projects, Mayor, this was your request earlier to at least annotate these. I think the first five here, even though number one is street design, we actually had six streets identified as part of redesign in the first three blocks that we've done. But I think the first five of these could all be wrapped into the street design if necessary. That includes the wayfinding signage, water and drainage and landscaping and green spaces that could occur or may occur along those streets as well. Certainly six through 10 kind of wrap that up. These are more smaller requests that we've had in terms of relative cost, but I think it's important to kind of illustrate what the community's priorities are in terms of what we've heard. And these are kind of weighted based on the number of responses we get, not necessarily for these particular items, rather than just kind of prioritizing them by cost.

Generally speaking, these look to be improvements to the public space. There are some private improvements in there, but for the most part, these are improvements to the public space.

Yes, we hear mostly public improvements. That's one of the concerns that we hear, but we also hear the condition of the buildings quite a bit. So I do appreciate the facade grant, your vote on that a couple weeks ago, because I think that's very important for this community to know that they have an opportunity to improve their facades with the assistance of a grant and provide some motivation. I'm sure Devin Parks and I are very excited about that as we continue to get the applications and work with the existing building owners in downtown. We'd like to see that improvement as we go along. On the redevelopment side, we've had eight active discussions with landowners and developers, unique landowners and developers. 36 acres under consideration. This does not include the pavilion site or any work on Oak Street. These are unique individuals that are throughout the downtown area that we work in. We've connected some of those landowners with developers. We've talked to seven unique developers that we're in the process of connecting to, two active discussions right now on potential projects. And we'll have more information on that as we continue to move along. A lot of our landowners have signed non-disclosure agreements and we have as well. So we're not at liberty to discuss the details at the moment, but those conversations are moving forward. And when we have an opportunity to present those with their permission, we'll certainly do that. What we're asking for, there are some policies. I know that there's some due process that still needs to happen at the city level, but the advanced residential plan was a plan that we led a couple years ago, finished it up last year. The first one, this advanced residential plan is important because I think what it does, it helps us shape the conversations with the landowners and developers towards the vision of downtown. It talks about what we should do and what's appropriate where. It doesn't mean that we should take away the rights from the landowners. We certainly don't want to do that, but what we do want to do is make sure that the landowners understand how they fit into the puzzle of what we're trying to put for downtown and how we're trying to move these things forward. The citywide public art policy, I know the Cultural Resources Committee has been working on that as well. In many conversations about some amendments there are amendments in that particular policy that actually help us get grants Things that the MBDA can write for and things that the city can write for We are just kind of holding in a holding pattern They're waiting to write those grants because of some policy amendments and those include like an emergency action plan a maintenance plan as well as a excuse me, insurance for the public art that might be out there. Without those three things, it would be very hard for us to make a strong case for a grant. So those are three of many amendments in that policy that I think are important.

Are those amendments coming to Council?

I don't know the status of that. I've worked very closely. Tanya Gore in my office is on the Culture Resources Committee, so I do get updates regularly from her. But I know that Mr. Crutch has been working on that with the committee, but I don't know what the status of that is at the moment. The next one is the design guidelines and the overlay for downtown, something that I've been working with Ken May and his team for quite a while. I understand that the zoning rewrite has a lot to do with this. At some point, it will come to the dais for a vote at some point, but I think it's important because I think it also gives guidance on the facade grants in terms of improvements, but also for new buildings that are being built in downtown to kind of point it towards the vision and kind of the character we're creating for downtown as well. And then lastly, this is more something that I've been hearing from the community. I think folks have forgotten that we actually have a plan that we're working from. The 2019 master plan and the 2020 development framework that was created and adopted, as well as the A&I advanced plan, They all contribute towards the character of downtown, but I think folks have forgotten and the community has forgotten that these plans exist. It would be great if the body here could reaffirm the community that we're still working on that plan. And it's a plan that I think is important. I think it is a really great plan. I think with all the things that we've added, like the advanced residential plan and the design guidelines puts us in a position where the community at large has kind of final input in terms of how we shape this moving forward. And that's really the core value of our redevelopment block program or revitalization block program is to really learn from the community and help them help us shape the future vision of downtown. Funding, I've talked to Ms. Shumpert quite a bit about this, but we are pursuing some jointly, some state programs and federal programs here that we think are important. We're not unique. There are other communities going after these same programs. I think where we have a strong case for it is the data that we're collecting from the revitalization program and the conversations that we're having with landowners and developers right now. That information is invaluable, in my opinion, for grant writing and for also asking for provisos. But I think knowing what we need to go after is very important. So Ms. Shumpert and I are going to meet again on Thursday this week to really discuss some details as to how we can work together to pursue these. The last one here before we get into questions. Our board of directors back in August at our board meetings started talking about key performance indicators. These are what we think we need to measure to show if we're making progress towards a revitalized and redeveloped downtown. At the top there is our redevelopment indicators. In the middle is our revitalization indicators. And then at the bottom is our experience. All three of these things are very important to measure, in our opinion, to show that we're making meaningful progress. We had a great discussion about it. We'll probably make a couple of modifications to some of the parameters between now and October when our board will likely adopt them. But we think it's important to have a speedometer, so to speak, of how we're going to measure and how things are moving. It doesn't mean we should try to hit these things every single month or every single year, but the idea around is we need to know if we're making progress or not and what we're doing, if it's going to validate whether it's working or not as well. So having a benchmark at least to shoot for and some milestones are certainly going to be very important moving forward.

Thank you, Jason. If you slide back one slide for a second for me. You've got long-term residential as one of the key performance indicators. I continue to advocate that we also need to track new growth in short-term rental indicators since your district is so large and includes literally 30 blocks of Ocean Boulevard. That's right. In the definition of downtown, we wish we had a different word besides downtown, but apparently we don't. But it's 12th Avenue South to 21st Avenue North to the west side of Kings Highway, and then with a dogleg into the Arts and Innovation District. It's more than what most people think of as downtown Myrtle Beach. Again, 30 blocks of Ocean Boulevard is part of this plan, and we need to keep that in mind as well. The new, I think it's a 19-unit housing subdivision that's occurring on 12th Avenue South is just outside this because it's on the west side, about half a block off Kings Highway, so it's not counted. But there are, I think, nine new homes that have been built or are under construction, and then another eight available lots just off 12th Avenue South bringing residents. RESIDENTS TO THE GENERAL AREA, NOT WITHIN THE MBTA'S DISTRICT, BUT WE'RE COMING ALONG THERE TOO.

I THINK THERE'S ONE OPPORTUNITY TO TRACK NOT ONLY WHAT'S IN THE MID ITSELF BUT ALSO WHAT'S ADJACENT TO THE MID. SO I THINK WE CAN SET UP THE GEOGRAPHY TO TRACK WHATEVER WE WANT AND YOU BRING UP A GREAT EXAMPLE THAT EVEN IF IT'S MID ADJACENT IT CERTAINLY IS GOING TO HAVE AN IMPACT INTO DOWNTOWN. and how people are living in downtown and how they're working and playing in downtown as well. So I think it's important for us to track that as well. And we can set up the geography in our system to be able to track anything that's occurring in those areas as well.

Okay, thank you. Council? Apparently not.

So Jason, one of the things that stuck out to me at the beginning of your presentation specifically about your feedback that you had gotten was safety perception. So it wasn't necessarily the people in that area feeling unsafe, but it was the perception maybe of their visitors and others. And were there constructive thoughts from folks specifically about perception in that area?

Well, I think it's at least from the conversations that I've had. So there's certainly the notes that people write, and then there's the conversations we have while they're writing the notes. So what it feels like, at least for folks that don't find themselves in downtown very often, there is a perception of that it's unsafe. But for folks that are working and living in downtown, it's quite the opposite in some cases. However, on Broadway Street specifically, with some of the dimmer lighting and some of the activity that sometimes occurs on Broadway Street, it does create a perception that it's unsafe. uh... depending on the aggressive nature of some of the individuals or not i think it's important for us to these capture what they're saying uh... and see if we can address it in some way i'm not sure that the immediate by itself can address some of these issues i think it's gonna require the partnership and maybe even you know work the ongoing work uh... with the city and county on certain things but uh... i i think it's important to hear what folks say we have residents that live adjacent to broadway street literally like on the back alleys of Broadway Street that live adjacent to that alley or Holder or Myrtle Street that comment about these sorts of things. And I think it's important for us to capture that at least. Doesn't mean we have a plan today, but I think it'll help us develop a plan later if we have a better understanding of what the folks are actually telling us.

I thought it was interesting that they suggested a police foot patrol. Broadway is busy enough that that may be a viable thing to consider.

Yeah, it's getting busier. I've noticed that the foot traffic has gone up quite a bit. There's been a few additions of businesses on Broadway Street that have actually helped us increase the foot traffic over the last couple of years. And I think with that foot traffic, it's also brought other activities that are happening on Broadway Street that certainly need to be monitored.

And there are more tenants coming. I don't know that they're public at this point, but there are more tenants coming. Street lighting, St. Cooper is part of the... Extension of the work that's been done there has upgraded the street lighting I think on Broadway Street specifically, but you may be talking about on the Second rows if you will off Broadway Street Yeah, there's been some concerns about the alleys on the backside, but also as you get farther south on Broadway Street There's an opportunity for so many hands to lighting And then we've had a discussion about Seasonal lighting sport lighting if you will I know that during the holiday season from December through March basically Broadway Street is Sport lighted the the palms of the trees are wrapped and the poles are wrapped and all that fun stuff Are we revisiting that mr. Manager about how we can? Do some festive lighting year-round we are We are okay anybody else

Let's get back to the reaffirmation that, hey, we have a plan. That's a great idea the more I think about it. We do need to remind people, not just our residents but our businesses, but also the potential businesses that might be looking at us from the outside to know what's going on. And in the it seems to build category, maybe we can take advantage of our creative services folks who do a great job and put together something that can be available online or be available to be sent out or just to keep it in front of everybody because the idea that we have a plan is a nice thing but let's keep it in front of them and then I also like the tracking of where you are. I know you've been in front of us many times, and some of our questions are, okay, fine, please show me what's going on. I think a good tracking mechanism, a KPI, that could be made available to us, I think is a really good item to have. It also would be good Again, for the general public, our businesses here, and then businesses on the outside that may want to invest with us. I can even see the Chamber being part of this. So kudos to you.

In fact, I'm meeting with Ray and Robert Whitehurst on Friday to discuss not only that, but also the grants and provisos that we think are important.

The MBDA plan is the whole MBDA district, 12th South to 21st Avenue North. The Arts and Innovation plan is a tiny subset of that whole MBDA plan. And I think, to Bill's point, we've lost a little sight of the bigger MBDA plan.

Yeah, and the advanced residential plan, to be clear, kind of picks up where the A&I plan left off and does the entire downtown district from 21st to 12th. It was an important study to be done. One of the key aspects of that study was to tell us what the availability of land is or underdeveloped land in downtown is. which is somewhere around 400 or 500 vacant lots or underdeveloped lots in downtown. They're tiny. Some of them are a tenth of an acre. Most of them are between a quarter and a half an acre. And certainly you have some bigger lots as well. But when you start looking at the total density of acreage available, it's about 220 acres that's either undeveloped or underdeveloped in downtown, which I think is an important way of shaping how we drive this forward, whether it's new commercial or new residential areas Certainly residential is going to be an important part of our viability, but knowing where the land is and how we engage with those landowners is going to be very important. Certainly one of the critical pieces that we need to address.

Yeah. Adding to what Bill had brought up, I agree with the revisiting the downtown vision plan and specifically like having a, matrix of what were the key goals, what have we accomplished, what have we started and what hasn't been started, kind of what we've done, what we've completed and where we're going next to see if there are any changes that need to be made to that as well. Any adjustments, because plans always need to be adjusted.

I have never seen a plan that has survived first contact.

I think that's it. Thank you, Jason.

Thank you. Thanks.

Up next, we have a CMIST plan unit development update from Charles. And for my benefit, I should know the answer to this question. Roe or Rowell?

Rowell. Good morning, everyone. During the zoning rewrite, we've been doing some analysis of some of the PUDs we have in place. The one before you today had a revision date of 2006. This is just a brief presentation and some direction from you guys, which would be helpful. The putt itself consists of a little over 12 acres.

There we go.

This is the area. There are other properties that are involved in the overall ownership, but to be involved, you have to be touching, and some of those properties actually extend past Kings Highway. The PUT itself was supposed to be completed in March, 2026. And in our zoning rewrite, we've kind of looked at some of these underperforming PUDs and it would be helpful for us in reviewing the zoning rewrite that we got some, a little bit of direction from council and your comfort on this. Overall, the PUD has not completed any of the public improvements. It's not started any of the buildings that it stated that it would in this PUD. But I think one of the bigger considerations in this PUD is the fact that as the city's advanced in the last zoning rewrite, which was in 2014, we have improved upon our zoning code that a lot of the things that are asked in this PUD that is existing are common now. So that being said, There we go. In full development, we should have had over 1,800 units in this PUD. I think one of the biggest things that I've known, go ahead. They catch up? I think one of the biggest things that I've done in a review on this is that when it was rewritten in 2006, they were acknowledging the conditions of some of these properties and where they really sat. So some of the points that were made in this presentation is the fact that they were aware of the conditions of some of these properties, the evaluation that they were willing to accept to improve those or actually restarting the building of those properties. The CMS itself has an association, which is still in existence. However, we are under different ownerships. I think the other consideration is in this amendment, which is, I'll go back a slide. 11.4, the city does have the authorization to do modifications to this PUD. It would be staff's opinion that the best position for this PUD would be to be disbanded and then moved back into an MUH zoning classification. Due to the acreage, this is one of the larger PUDs on the south end, and I think the other major factor is this is something that hasn't seen any type of movement in well over 20 years.

Let me ask the question, Charles. In our PUDs, isn't there a part in there that there's a certain time frame that work is required to be at least started, correct?

Correct. So this thing was designed on more of what we call a completion date. So you can see at the top, it had nine phases. Eight and nine were scheduled to be done simultaneously. But phase one had a completion date of September 28, 2008. The whole thing in general was supposed to be wrapped up by March 2026.

And so what I think I just heard you say, that there's nothing been done.

There has been no shovel work on our end. I've done probably for about a year and a half, we looked at evaluations of this PUD. We've had conversations with different ownership groups or involvements in this property, and it just hasn't moved forward.

So phase one hasn't been done?

One through nine have never been done.

That's where I'm headed. Help me understand this, you and Ken, whoever. If in fact nothing has been done, so why does the PUD still exist?

Well, it's an ordinance. So until that ordinance changes, that's what needs to happen. I think one of the steps in the zoning rewrite is this would be an improvement of that 12 acres in a sense of reviewing that zoning map and how that zoning map could be updated more correctly with the correct zoning classification. We have some of these PUDs on file right now that may have had some movement that have not fulfilled their agreements. That can be a continued evaluation if you'd like for us to go down that route. But then this one in general is a good example of something we have on the books that hasn't moved, that's been sitting there for about 20 years that we should probably reevaluate.

I would suggest that we move forward with doing away with this putt altogether. Because obviously it appears to me For whatever reason it may be, and I'm sure there's a handful of reasons out there, but since the existence of the PUD, nothing's been done. Correct. And so I would say it's time for us to move to do away with the PUD. And secondly, I think it's time for the city to start taking action against property owners owner owners on these properties to improve them or Bring bring those property before this council for rule to show cause Because some of that that whole area right there It needs TLC bad that's just a nice way of putting that so You know I keep talking about this brand keep talking about this brand and again You know, as I've always said, brand's not a T-shirt. It's not a logo on a ball cap or anything else. The brand is what our visitors see when they come here. And so that's a perfect example of what they don't need to see.

I completely agree with Mr. Lauder on that, dissolving it as soon as possible. How many owners are we talking about?

It would be a staff's review. I mean, we're doing a zoning rewrite at the same time, so it's just us digging into files to see what's been moved and what hasn't. I think it's best to do an analysis overall to see large land masses that haven't been addressed in a long time.

Charlie, would you go back again? You said there was a staff recommendation that we go back to MUH or whatever. That's their recommendation. What's behind that?

Sure. Most of the abutting properties are surrounding that zoning classification or MUH, but if you look at the overall MUH zoning classification, a lot of the requests that were made in this PUD are in line with the MUH zoning classification in existing terms, whether it be building height, sidewalk requirements, setbacks all those a lot of those really kind of fall in that realm most PUDs have a request for setback reduction that's kind of the premise of it but in this case most of the asks in this PUD were in line with the exit which what we call our existing MUH zoning classification at this time thank you thank you hang on one second I got a question or two will removing the PUD zoning designation

Encourage redevelopment in this area. Do you think I'm asking for an opinion?

I as far as my opinion the scenario best case is a clean zoning classification regardless of who would come in at some point, you're gonna need to either redo this PUD as it currently exists, and or if they're selling off parcels, they'd have to come back in and disband this PUD. So basically we're kind of taking a step ahead of any type of progress, which kind of short term, any requests coming forward from the developer or someone interested in the properties.

So it potentially clears the slate, if you will, to the thing that's not been done, but you can start over with whatever the underlying zoning is. It's a clean reset What sort of time frame are we talking about the zoning rewrites not going to be due until? February or March at this point if I heard that correct that may be wrong about that What kind of time frame we would need to take this back to Planning Commission?

you know public or do a Like two staffs on that, and it comes back to you guys for two hearings. And then are you aware of any?

Middle of November. Okay. We could have this done. That helps. Are you aware of any interest in any of these properties? I stay out of that. Okay. I got to stay clean. Got to ask. Anybody else? Would you recommend doing it as soon as possible, middle of November, rather than waiting until the zoning review? There's nothing changing between now and then.

We can only hope someone's interested.

Maybe that'll help with it. Thank you. Thank you.

That's it for the workshop agenda. We've got about 17 minutes before the start of the regular meeting. Council, have we got any other issues? We'll take a 15-minute break, and we'll come back at 10 o'clock. How's that? Thank you.

you Thank you. you you you Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you for being here. I hope you had a great Labor Day holiday weekend. It's Tuesday. It feels like Monday. This is September 8th. It's our regular City Council workshop and meeting day. We've done the workshop, and it's time now for the meeting. Let me say that Dr. Render is not here. He had a family appointment this morning, but we'll try to arrive once that commitment is over, so we'll look for Dr. Render in a little bit, I think. If you will, please. rise for our invocation followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Let us take a moment to pause and reflect. As we gather to serve the people of Myrtle Beach, may we be guided by wisdom, humility, and a deep sense of responsibility. May our discussions be thoughtful, our decisions measured, and our actions grounded in what's best for our community. As we navigate the opportunities before us, maybe do so with clarity of purpose, openness to collaboration, and respect for differing perspectives. Let us remain mindful of the privilege it is to serve the impact of our choices and the shared goal of strengthening the quality of life for all who live, work, and visit our city. With gratitude for these responsibilities, let us proceed with our work. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,

Thank you very much, Councilwoman Conner. Up next, we have the approval of the agenda. Council, you've got the agenda before you. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Bill and technically Jackie. Any discussion from council? Any discussion from the public?

Good morning. I do have a concern about an ordinance being placed onto the consent agenda. While this one today may seem very routine in nature, I just think it's not a good precedent for an ordinance that's going to affect the city's laws or regulations to not receive the attention that it deserves being part of the regular agenda. I would encourage one of you to request the removal of that to the regular agenda. Thank you.

I know that we don't do zoning ordinances on the consent agenda, but I'm not sure about a regular ordinance being on the consent agenda. You can put whatever you want on the consent agenda.

And I'm the one who did it. Obviously, I set the agenda, and the reason why I did it, it was very uncontroversial last time, so we just... That's what we did.

I appreciate the concern, Alex. It is something that council, I think, can do, although I don't know that zoning... I think we've excluded zoning, if I remember correctly, but I'd have to look that up to be sure. If no one has an objection, we'll leave it on the consent agenda. Any other comments from the public? All those in favor of the agenda as presented, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Approval of the minutes from our August 25th council meeting. Is there a motion to approve?

Motion approved. Second.

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

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. Public requests, presentations, awards, and memorials. We've got a proclamation declaring the week of September 20th through the 26th as Adult Day Services Week. Meredith.

Good morning, Mayor and Council. I have Courtney Burdick here with Active Day Adult Services in Myrtle Beach to accept this proclamation today. Adult Day Services Week, September 20th through 26th, 2026. Whereas Adult Day Health Services are one of the fastest growing segments of the healthcare market, offering a cost-effective alternative to nursing home placement. And whereas Adult Day Health Services are designed to meet the needs of adults with functional or cognitive impairments through individual care plans. And whereas as America's population ages, many families desire to keep older loved ones at home, and adult day health services allow the older individual to remain independent while offering the caregiver a much needed rest. And whereas adult day cares provide social activities, transportation, meals and snacks, personal care, therapeutic activities, and respite for families. And whereas September 20 through 26, 2026 has been designated Adult Day Services Week in honor of the 4,600 adult day centers nationally that help more than 260,000 Americans daily. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that the City of Myrtle Beach hereby designate September 20th through 26th, 2026, as Adult Day Services Week in Myrtle Beach and applauds the services provided by organizations such as Active Day of Grand Strand. Signed and sealed this 8th day of September, 2026. Courtney?

Thank you. Courtney, congratulations.

you guys taking this time out this morning we are very excited for this adult day services week is something that our members and staff look forward to every year so we appreciate being recognized here and thank you guys so much and if anyone would ever like to come take a tour of the facility we're right on 38th avenue north thank you very much yes ma'am

All right, next up on the agenda is the Communications and Creative Services update from staff, please.

It's been a busy Labor Day weekend, I will say that. Hopefully everybody had a good time.

Hey, City Council, Chastity Pendergrass here with your communications update. Public Works crews are taking down the military banners this week. They'll be available for pickup September 16th through October 2nd. Labor Day weekend was busy in Myrtle Beach. The first day of fall is Tuesday, September 22nd. Hundreds of people came out for the eighth annual Waves of Praise Gospel Fest. Day one took place at Charlie's Place, with days two and three at the Old Pavilion site. After listening to residents, park staff updated the playground design for McLeod Park. The smaller design that keeps the trees is a hit. Emerge hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the opening of the 5,000 square foot expansion of the HTC Aspire Hub. The new and updated signs have been installed along the boardwalk. The fire department's opioid response team hosted the annual International Overdose Awareness Day event in Chapin Park. Congratulations to the fire department hockey team for winning their game against Columbia Fire. In addition to beating them eight to six, both teams also raised $2,500 for a family in need. A retired fire department lieutenant got to tour the new fire station number three. Danny Johnson served the community from 1971 to 2003. And we've been highlighting, if you see something, say something across the board. Whether it's a lock fix at a playground or a shower at a beach access, say something. The public can email info at cityofmyrtlebeach.com to give us a heads up. Looking ahead, Poet Laureate applications are open through Friday, September 18th. Friday will be busy with 9-11 events, starting with the MBFD 9-11 stair climb. It starts at 846 in the morning at the Yachtsman Resort. That's open to the public. You can also be a part of the annual stair climb at Crabtree Memorial Gym in the Market Comet. And everyone is invited to the city's 9-11 Remembrance Ceremony as we mark 25 years since the attacks. It starts at 11 at the Unity Memorial in Warbird Park. That's it for now. I hope you have a great rest of your week.

Thank you very much. Up next, non-agenda items from the public. Madam Clerk, who's up?

Jim Demere. Did I pronounce that correct? Probably not.

It's Deamer. Good morning, Mr. Mayor and Council Members. Thank you again. I was here about three weeks ago, and then I spoke about the golf cart parking issue. I've largely been back at my home state of Texas and came back a few days ago and enjoying the beautiful weather, as I know we all are. Essential to enjoying our beautiful weather, though, is also to be safe. If you'd like, I have some copies of a presentation you all should have in your inbox I sent last night. I can share them with you. Give them to the clerk. And I haven't been over at my house very much because it's under construction right now. They just started the framing. There have been numerous safety issues on Beach Avenue between 77th and 82nd Avenue, which is where my house is. The enforcement of existing laws is extraordinarily important for community safety. I totally support what's on the agenda for adopting the new ordinance that prohibits parking of golf carts All mopeds all the new vehicles that we have around unless it's in a designated area But the problem is we're not currently enforcing existing laws and and if we don't enforce it to council members louder's comment earlier that impacts our brand and And I'm not just concerned about our brand for visitors who are important and I want them to come here. I'm concerned about the brand for our residents and preserving the value of our residential homes. So over the weekend on 81st Avenue and Beach Drive, on both Saturday and Sunday, you have pictures of golf carts parking within a few feet of stop signs, as well as in the case on Saturday, a car behind the golf cart, totally obstructing the stop sign. This is on the grass next to a resident. Again, Sunday, the same thing with a different golf cart. They were within almost eight feet of the stop sign, so it's not visible. Two things occur then. As a resident, I have to walk in the middle of the street to get to the beach. Second, cars coming down don't know there's a stop sign there. When my wife and I have called parking enforcement about this previously, they came, but their response was, people just throw these tickets away and they're not collected. So that has to change. Okay, what has happened is enforcement of this issue is what's gotten us in the problem with golf parking in the first place. People became accustomed to parking on the grass and then when you enforce the law, they're outraged now because they don't have their preferred parking. That's the problem. So please, the Myrtle Beach Code prohibits parking within 30 feet of a stop sign. So it's visible. In this case, both days, these three vehicles all were a few feet of that. Please tell the police department parking enforcement to enforce this ordinance. Because if they don't, who cares if you adopt another ordinance to not park on the grass and don't enforce it, right? That is a big part of our brand, to be safe here in this city. You also see, I have a picture in the presentation that on August 10th, just general parking at 82nd Avenue beachfront. When a truck parks there, the spaces are only about 10 feet deep. It extends 12 feet into the beach drive roadway. In this case, and it's the only truck that's at that site, it's actually blocking the emergency entrance to the beach. Okay, that is not just a safety issue for me as a resident of 82nd Avenue, it's a safety issue for every person, including visitors who are on the beach because the lifeguards and the EMT folks can't get to the beach. So, What I want to see, I saw there is a revised plan, I got it from the HOA, Clark, who is not our HOA, but he shared it with me last night, to now put 20 parking spaces for golf carts at 82nd Avenue. I request that you put none, at least until you upgrade the parking that's there now to accommodate vehicles. Or another suggestion is turn all of those spots into golf carts because they're small enough they won't interfere with encroaching on the roadway or the access to the beach. So I also want to point out to you that with the 78th Avenue redesign that just got completed, there's now 20 spaces for golf carts there. Our neighborhood of five blocks from 77th to 82nd has 25% of all of the parking from 32nd Avenue all the way up to 82nd. That is a grossly disproportionate share in what is exclusively a residential community. So please don't put another 40 spaces, even in the revised plan, which is lowered, in our area.

Thanks, Jim. I think your time's up.

Thank you. I got 28 minutes seconds left.

Oh, do you? I started late. I started earlier.

Okay. Anyway, so please address these issues first, and I support the approval of the ordinance today. And again, we are a resource in our community. We'll work with the city to come up with a plan that's acceptable for Beach Drive. We are not the same as Ocean Drive. Thank you.

Thank you. And I won't try to address all of those issues, but yes, let's take a look at the enforcement of the stop sign thing. The distance from a curb cut or a stop sign, I think depends upon the speed limit on the street. The disproportionate number of parking spaces, the street ends are not all the same size. The street ends vary in width up and down. And it is the neighbors, the residents who are utilizing those parking spaces of the city. They're much more so than visitors who are utilizing those parking spaces. But thank you. And we'll take a look at that and ask Josh to do that. Jennifer?

Chair McVeigh?

I quit drinking several years ago, so don't bring that up, okay? It's a problem I've been dealing with for a while. Well, I see a lot of happy faces up here, and I want to wish you all and everybody to the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce. That's not a good way to start, but I'm here to ask for changes in the TDF, and for me to ask for you all to keep the chamber out of this, would just be a pipe dream. They control everything that's done in that bill. Brad Dean invented that bill. I had a meeting one night with John Rose over a bottle of vodka, and he explained from his view how it all came about. It started one block up, stayed up there. And then when I came here to speak, every seat was filled with members of the chamber or people that worked for the chamber that were here and a couple other people and myself that were opposed. So I know you've got your hands full. And there's people here that have made a living off the chamber. The chamber shouldn't be running Myrtle Beach. I'll give you a town where it doesn't run. It's a place called North Myrtle Beach, the Einstein of city councils. The last time they voted on it, which I spoke against it up there, you all know landslide votes because you're all politicians. The vote was 3,050 against the bill, just like ours. and 188 for the bill, just like ours. Now, in percentages, that's 95% against and 5% for. Now, that's a landslide. They understood what they were voting for. They didn't want to give away all their money, 80% of their money, to the chamber. They want to be in control of their own money. So they voted it down resoundingly, and it's never come back up since. This bill is so out of line and so messed up. John Rhodes and I drank about a half a bottle of vodka 15 years ago and laughed about it. He said, you know, it's what they wanted and that's what they got. Now, John was one of their boys. They kicked him to the curb, of course, if you all remember the politics of that. And there's a lot of people, not just you all, but the county and everywhere else that are greatly influenced by the donations that are given by people other than just the people in the community. I want to offer my services. I want to be on any and all committees that negotiate this. My background is this, I have 65 years of 100% of my income from tourism, 100%. I've negotiated with Fortune 500 companies. I've negotiated with lifeguards, bartenders, everybody else, and I think I've done a pretty good job. We need negotiations in this bill coming up, and we need to put the brakes on this right now. This 60-40, I know they'll love to have that, and we've got to put a cap on the amount of money that the taxpayers can get relief. It's not fair for a guy at the Dunes Club with a $3 million home to get almost $2,000 in tax relief, and the guy down here at the south end at Market Commons with a $300,000 home gets $600 in relief. That's not fair, and it's not right. And he probably pays as much into the tax as the guy up there does. And We need better controls over this Chamber of Commerce. We don't really know what they're doing. We know that they primarily look out for golf courses because the people that run the Chamber are golf course people. And so that's where I think most of the money goes. I'll close with this. I've been in business for 22 years here in a restaurant, a world-renowned restaurant. We have never lost money. Always made money. I've always got a nice check every year to help me keep going. Last year, I didn't get a check. We were off 14%. This year, the first six months, we're off 11%. That's 25% where I come from in a year and a half. We've got to turn this around. It's not heads on beds. It's quality heads on quality beds. Thank you very much. Joe McVeigh and I will not be charging for my services consulting. I just signed at 83 a contract to travel the tourist markets of the United States on behalf of a company out of St. Louis, Missouri. And I negotiated that over the phone. and on the internet, and I can deal with the Chamber. They might not like my views, but they'll get the views that represent the taxpayers.

Thank you, Joe. Thank you very much. And I think we all agree that you're a very sharp business person, so no doubt about that. I won't tackle, we've got more, Jennifer?

Yes, one more, and then one that did not sign in that wants to speak.

Oh my goodness, okay. The... There are more players than just the city in that legislation. It needs to be changed in Columbia. It's not something that we can change here. The business community is one of the backbones of Myrtle Beach. They make Myrtle Beach what it is today. So we've worked with the Chamber of Commerce. I think if it were a different... set of rules and realities, we would wish for something different. I think the 60-40 is a vast improvement over the 80-20. And to your point specifically, having that extra money for tourism related infrastructure projects will give us a better quality product at the end of the day. That's where we're headed with this. So thank you, Jennifer.

CJ Walters.

Good morning. Morning.

basically implored to do this today. I'm here to talk to all of you guys today about bike theft and how it has run rampant in the city right now, specifically e-bike theft for the most part. So last night we had four e-bikes stolen from renters. This is big because e-bike theft is insane right now in Myrtle Beach. This has been the worst year for bike theft in general that I've ever seen. I own a home here in the city. I own a business here in the city. And I also sit on the bike and pedestrian committee as well. So in front of you guys is just basically a handout of some printouts that I made of some recent theft that's happened to me, myself personally, also renters and visitors to the city, locals alike. So, I mean, this is just not a good look for the city. It's not a good look for the brand. It's really affecting locals and businesses here, as well as the visitors to our city. I've had, like I said last night, four e-bikes were stolen from renters, a wonderful Amish family. This past Friday, we had two bikes, regular bikes, a trike and a normal bike stolen from another Amish family, all down on the south side. It's gotten out of control, honestly, and I'm begging you guys for help. This is affecting me as a business, this is affecting the locals, this is affecting the view of the city. I've had people for the past two, three years since all the e-bike theft started ramping up, coming to me, begging to me to help find their bikes and stuff like that. I've come to the city. I've had people who have been coming to Myrtle Beach for 15, 20 years, telling me that they don't know if they're gonna come back or not because these bikes, these aren't just hundred dollar Walmart bikes anymore. These are thousands of dollars of bikes. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand dollars worth of bikes that are being stolen. There's chop shops located within the city here. There's the motels like the Virginian, the Twilight Surf are just cesspools for drug addicts who just don't care. They're gonna steal whatever they want and whatever they please. As you can see on some of these handouts, this Quincy Jones, Tommy Overshine, who's still sitting in JRubin right now, these aren't good citizens. And I'm begging you guys to ask the judges, the state's prosecutors, to actually do something about this. Because every court case I see, people are just getting deposed. The cases are getting dismissed. These people aren't getting in trouble for this. And it's starting to affect the city, and it's affecting locals and business owners. I'm sorry, I'm just getting over a stomach virus this past weekend, so I really wasn't prepared to come today, but the police are out there doing their job. Carbone, Preciado, Kirby in specific, she's awesome. They're out there doing this job, but now this falls on the judges and the state's prosecutors to actually hold these people accountable. There's people that are getting held up at gunpoint to the head. You know what I mean? Stuff on Facebook. You can look it up and find it on all these Myrtle Beach pages. I just had a couple this past weekend as well who was staying at the Polynesian, go figure, who had all the parts on their e-bikes robbed. They were looking to me for spare parts, trying to find stuff just so they can make their vacation, their stay here in Myrtle Beach enjoyable. But it's... I'm sorry, I'm just a little emotional. My personal bikes were stolen. Two rental bikes and my personal bike here, as you can see on the second page where it says my home. First off, my personal bike was stolen back in May, and I had said something to you here a few months ago when I was here. And then it was stolen again June 14th, along with two other rental e-bikes that were on my truck and two regular bikes. They actually cut the lock through the bed of my truck, discarded the analog bikes, and took the e-bikes in specific. They had to come down almost 100 feet of my driveway to the back of my house, walk past my daughter's room. They're lucky I didn't hear them. I'm begging you guys to do something. The police are doing their job, but I need you guys to try to recommend a task force or something to really cut down on this. It's dangerous for the community. It's dangerous for visitors here. I just had to charge the people who had their four bikes stolen $6,500. Because these bikes aren't cheap. These bikes are close to $2,000 a piece. And for them to have to give out that type of money just because some would-be criminals Caleb Mark Withrow, who is the person who stole the trike and the regular bike from us on Friday from the renters down on 22nd South, he's got a laundry list of cases, manufacturing fentanyl, marijuana, theft, trespassing, all kinds of stuff. He was actually, one of his cases was actual chop shop and defacing serial numbers on stuff. The last four of that case number are 4594, and the judge was Mrs. Livingston. I'm just begging you guys to do something about this. I'm begging you guys. Small businesses like me and my wife run, mom and pop bike shop. It's hard for us to make up for this type of loss. And it's even harder when I have to charge renters that are just trying to vacation in this town that type of money.

Thank you, DJ. Can we have a report on how many e-bikes were stolen over a given period of time? I don't know that I was aware that this was the issue that it apparently is, and you've reported it to the police department.

Oh, yeah, I'm actually working with the police department as well.

I don't think we have the ability to tell judges how to do their job, unfortunately, in some cases, but I don't think that's within our purview. But thanks. Let us learn more about this, and we appreciate you bringing it to our attention. And one more.

And one more. Come forward.

Thank you for having me here. Can you state your name for the record, please? Sure. Here you go. Okay.

Perfect. Thank you.

Some may already recognize me. My name is Kimberly Poirier. I'm a retired police sergeant from Charleston County Sheriff's Office. I retired three years ago. Prior to my tenure there, I was a Myrtle Beach police officer, PFC. I left Myrtle Beach in 2009 after nine years of service here. One of my main As a Myrtle Beach police officer, one of my main goals was working with the homeless population. Now I call this population today the residentially deprived because I do not like the name homeless. That work with that certain population as a Myrtle Beach officer I think was a big part of me getting named as Officer of the Year, Rotary Officer of the Year. That was 20 years ago and prior to that being on a bicycle officer and all that. I loved arresting people. I had many, many arrests. In fact, the last time I was in this chamber was probably at a court hearing. Having said that, I did my research at that time, and I thought when I left this city... That problem would be maybe taken care of or continue to be taken care of. It's not a police problem. The police here are doing a fantastic job. But let me just get into some statistics with you. 42%, I hit the ground, the pavement, because I didn't like what I was seeing in the city, which I love. I came back here to live here in Horry County. 42%. of Horry County residents make too much money, okay? So they apply the SNAP, but they do not have enough money to make ends meet. And I am reading my notes, I apologize. Well, that being said, anyone, anyone in this room could end up homeless. It's not a disease. It is a choice. It's a choice for very few, probably 10%, and that 10% are those who are probably causing all the theft problems or what have you out here, but 10%. The rest, it's a whole different story. So what I have found is that there's no simple remedy, but the city of Myrtle Beach could look at this issue as a reason to help and less of a problem. One building that housed a representative from each agency would be amazing. The city of this size truly needs a first phase shelter. This would provide clean beds, shower, and agencies needed to get the folks off the streets and not on these streets, okay? A place to go. Right now, they don't have a place to go. They have some places, but they are, for instance, I will give you in just a second, okay? The residentially deprived population now, I notice, has pets as well. So we also have to shelter the pets. Don't leave the animals out. That would be cruel. They're emotional support for many of the residentially challenged individuals. Now, I gave you a piece of paper, ma'am, if you pass it down. Anyone can do this. I had no problem going and interviewing 21 of our deprived homeless people. All by one gave me names. I didn't have a gun, I didn't have a badge, so they were more inclined to talk to me. Some of them, yes, they remembered me from arresting them 20 years ago. So 11 males, 10 females, age 21 to 74. Seven from South Carolina. Most had been here either one month up to 10 years. 17 of them wanted a job. One worked at the community kitchen. 17 others were disabled. So you have people out there disabled. What are they gonna do? 17 walk, four bicycle. their choice would be vehicle or bicycle. Health, medical issues, a lot of these people have health and medical issues. So that being said, with the healthcare system in the state right now, it's hard for them to get help. Income, eight of them had income, SSI. Two had odd jobs, and one, being very, very honest to me, was panhandling. Veteran, three were veterans. One was not, 18 were not. 10 had no proof of identity. Three told me they couldn't vote because they were felons. They were all honest to me. Three said they liked their lifestyle. Those would be the people probably causing some problems. The rest wanted a different lifestyle. They liked their lifestyle because they did not like having responsibility. All of the ones that I interviewed, 17 wanted the same thing. They all want a small, easy to maintain apartment, clean, one bedroom, small TV. And having said that, y'all, I just think of all these places for help, there's seven in the city that these individuals can go. Unfortunately, you have the family shelter. That is not for domestic violence cases. Yeah.

I believe time's up.

Okay.

And we appreciate you bringing this to us. We're conscious of the fact that what we don't have is that low barrier entry shelter. We're working with the county and the other jurisdictions right now.

That's fantastic.

That's something where we know that that is a missing piece of what we have here. We've got other steps along the continuum, but we do not have that. So we're working on that both through two different pathways right now.

That's fantastic. And the police are doing their job. The only one right now that has everything except the beds is that little frigging coffee shop. They're doing everything in there. Everything, it's amazing. That place needs to be in a bigger, bigger.

We appreciate that. Thank you, Kim. Appreciate you all.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

And I do remember you, yes. All right, moving on to the consent agenda. There are three items on the consent agenda, Mr. Manager.

Good morning. Yes, sir. There are three items on this morning's consent agenda. The first item is second reading of ordinance 202652 to amend section 12-181C of the City Myrtle Beach Code of Ordinances relating to parking mopeds, golf carts, LSVs, and scooters. As we talked about a little bit, this is necessary to allow golf cart parking. It does not describe the program. The second item is motion 202687, authorizing the city to accept a grant in the amount of $10,000 from Santee Cooper SC Invest, grants for marketing and technical assistance program. There is a match of $900 in the economic development budget that will buy some software, implant software. And the third item is motion 202688, to approve a memorandum of agreement between the city and the Department of Juvenile Justice to hold facilities, hold juvenile defenders in their facilities.

Just a quick question on that. The $125 per day per child, is that an increase over what we've been paying? That is an increase. Yes, it is. Significant. $75 previously?

It's been a hot topic issue within the state of South Carolina.

I'm aware. Okay. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? So moved.

Second.

Jackie and Debbie. Any discussion from council? All those in favor of the consent agenda as presented, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. Moving on to the regular agenda. First reading, Madam Clerk of 26-51.

First reading of Ordinance 2026-51 to amend the 21st Avenue North Ocean Front PUD, Plan Unit Development, Division 1A, Breakers Resort.

Ken's kind of walking up with the applicant. It's actually the next two items also pertain 2026-53 and 2026-54 all pertain to the same project. We've talked about this in the workshop a month ago, I think, regarding the parking. The second one has to do with an alleyway swap, which we can get to on that one. And the third one is a development incentive. So we can... I can walk through this one pretty quick, but there hasn't been any changes since the workshop.

As Fox said, we workshopped this over a month ago. I'd be glad to go back over the whole presentation or just answer any questions that you may have in regard to it.

Denial was recommended by Planning Commission. Since this is first reading, I think we need to walk through the presentation, please.

This just identifies the 21st Avenue PUD as a whole. This is actually the Phase 2 development area. This PUD consists of 5.4 acres. Phase 2 will replace one existing oceanfront building, totaling 107 units, with a second 230-unit building. Phase two amended to close and relocate two oceanfront alleys as well as one second row alley, and the applicant has requested 0.9 parking spaces per one bedroom unit in lieu of one parking space per one bedroom unit. That was the big, again, this is just showing the location. Again, going over the proposed changes that I just went over with you on there, the public improvements that they're looking at are the phase two public improvements would be improvements to the oceanfront park area created by the relocation of alleyways and improvement to 21st Avenue North streetscape. This is to be completed no later than November of 2032. Again, just identifying the property. This shows the alley swaps that they're looking to do. Again, showing the alley swaps. Again, this is what the property looks like after the alley swaps. You can see where the alleys have been relocated. The purple and pink and the Carolina or Carolina Blue. And then you see where they all three get relocated to. Again, that's the proposed footprint location of the 20-story hotel. And there's the proposed public improvements, which was the street end and the 21st Avenue street itself. Again, you're looking at your open space requirements with your street ends and your additional right-of-ways due to the alley relocations. This just goes over the developments of the properties so far, the building coverage. Again, we're looking over some more of the parking requirements right here. Again, that was the issue with Planning Commission. um there's the 0.9 parking standard um i guess the note would be it's not only applying to the new structure but is applying across the entirety of the pud itself so that that includes any existing buildings there's your 300 foot parking radius and there's a finding the fact that are required not lost on anybody as part of this conversation is the result will end up with a double wide view of the ocean at the foot of 21st avenue north correct yes sir but that's the that's we end up with that view whenever we do any alley swap so this this is that's pretty common that's part of the reason to swap alleyways is to get them to larger to make corridors to make more access and inviting uh uh beach access

Council, do we have a motion to approve? Did we do that already?

Second.

I think we did that already, but I may be wrong. Any discussion from council? Who's the second? Debbie.

Debbie.

Okay.

Any discussion from the public? All those in favor of ordinance? Yes, sir. Jeff. Please. Yes.

We appreciate all the support that has been shown so far for this project. We do think, to steal a term from Mr. McVeigh, that a project of this nature will put quality heads in beds. The ordinance before you now, we do just want, we have one other... request to consider, and that is the, in this case, for 230 units, the alleyways, we are moving two alleyways. The increase in cost compared to the Marriott seven or eight years ago, which is also 230 units, increases that 1% fee for one alley to 650,000 from 386, so a 1.6% increase. We're requesting that there be some consideration for the second alley, which is primarily being moved to continue to widen the 21st Avenue a little bit more, that there be some consideration for a reduction in the cost, adding that with the increased you know, the increased costs already for one alley, 650, that goes to a million three, which is over 3.3%, or three and a half times, no, almost three and a half percent are times the amount that was for the same 230 units a few years ago. I know that's a, Economic argument, but we were trying to make the project work for the city as well And and again, we appreciate all the consideration you know a Proposal could have been perhaps to you know just move one alley and build a unit a building on just those two lots We think this is better for the city, and that's the reason for the request I think Matthew was going to walk through some of the benefits to the city as well as you consider that additional request that we're asking for

Just for clarification, Mayor, that item is the next item. This is the alleyway swap.

Okay. I mean, we can discuss it then. I'm sorry. We just wanted to make sure we brought it up. We may as well. We're here.

We may as well continue it.

Let's vote on this one and then move into what they have to say.

All right. Yeah. Hold your places. All those in favor of Ordinance 26-51 to amend the 21st Avenue North Ocean Front HUD Division 1A Breakers Resort, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. That's first reading on that. Let us get the next item before us. How's that? And we'll go from there. How's that? Don't go far. Okay. Ken, Madam Clerk, I'm sorry, 26-53.

First reading of ordinance 2026-53, to close and abandon certain alleys between lots 167A, pin number 42415020259, and 171, pin number 42425020258, and lot 173, pin number 42415020216, And lot 170, pin number 424-1502-0151. And lot 172, pin number 424-1502-0152 of the eastern section of the City of Myrtle Beach.

The alley swaps are part of the 21st Avenue North PUD Ordinance 2026-51. There are two 20-foot public alleyways along the east side of Ocean Boulevard associated with the breaker development. These two alleys will be combined into one 40-foot alley on the south side. There is also a second row alley recommended to be closed in exchange for creating a new third row alley. Per code, City Council has the authority to close and abandon right of way if it deems such closing necessary for the improvement or the convenience of the city.

The presentation was in the previous file, or you've got a presentation?

Let's see what we got. It was toward the back, toward the end there. there's the alleys all in showing i think it's a better picture it shows the three alleys in question the three different colors next slide shows where they've chosen to relocate them if you see on the ocean front they're taking the alleys from the north end and the alley in the middle of the properties and are moving both to the south end of the property to line up with the 21st avenue to give the view corridor that you spoke of earlier mr mayor and then on the second row you're seeing the lighter blue alley between those two properties on the second row Those alley just goes away, combining them with that property and is moved to the third row and basically added on to the edge of the right of way. Those areas are to be used for landscaping. And that's the alley swaps.

Motion to approve as presented.

Second. First and second the mics. Any discussion from council? Matthew.

Thank you. Our appeal to you is based on the need to get this project to pencil. When we came originally with the Marriott, we didn't ask for any. We paid all the fees as directed. That project penciled easily we're struggling even with what we're asking you on this project to get this to pencil the increase in construction costs of about 34% The interest rates. I know those are not your problems but to Chairman louder's point the the image that we're trying to improve here is a part of this we want to replace old inventory and with new inventory and of higher quality. And we're just appealing to you. The Marriott has produced over $10 million in taxes for the city and county. And this project would do pretty much the same over time. And we're just appealing to you to help us all you can and to give us whatever reduction on that second alleyway, keeping in mind It would be unfair to say we don't need to switch it, given all the complications. We do need to switch that alleyway, but not because we need the space to build the building. We could actually build this building without moving but one alleyway. But moving two is the cooperative effort between the business and city council or the city that allows these wider venues and for 21st Avenue to have this view corridor. And so we fall to our prayers.

If I'm hearing the request correctly, and fix this if this is wrong, you're proposing paying the 1% fee for one of the alleys and then half of the 1% fee for the other alley?

All or half, whatever you would do. Again, we don't think it's untoward to ask for just one alleyway because that's all we really fundamentally needed at the beginning. Now we do need it by the switches that we've done. So I don't want to mislead you into saying we don't need to move both alleyways now. But originally, had we started the project, we wouldn't need to move but one alleyway to build this building. So you could give us, I think, in good faith, the entire alleyway and charge for the other one that we do need, if that makes sense.

Mr. Manager or Mr. Attorney, do we have the ability to do that?

The code gives councils some flexibility to deviate from the requirements.

Mm-hmm.

Yes, you have some flexibility. Okay. Council?

I guess the other question is, are we setting a precedent by doing this?

Or have we done it before?

Or have we done it? Yeah.

We've done a lot of things before. I don't remember. I don't remember. I don't remember doing this one before, but it doesn't mean it hasn't. I haven't had time to look at that one. We've done an alleyway where we bought a gas station. Yeah.

We updated the alleyway swap ordinance. And we had to update the alleyway swap ordinance for that one.

So we have gotten creative. I'm sure something like this. Yes, it has happened. No? No, let me take it back. I thought it may have happened with the first part of the PUD, but I don't recall that.

You traded an alleyway for an unseedy business. Yeah, we've done that.

We've done that. So we've gotten creative. And that gives you, as Mr. Bryan pointed out, you do have the flexibility, but it's council's call, not staff's call.

Got you.

Well, just to frame the question for you, and then I want to hear from you, I think we have the ability to change the fee to $40,000 for one of those alleyways. I don't know that I would go to zero necessarily for one of those alleyways.

The two alleys on the east of Ocean Boulevard are supposed to be 1%. That's where the $650,000 is coming to the 1.3%. There's also a second alley on the second row that's going to the third row. That's the $40,000. That's the $40,000.

But what I'm saying is we have the flexibility on the oceanfront to do this is what you're telling me. Yes. Okay. So I would say that at a minimum $40,000 for the oceanfront as opposed to zero for one of the oceanfronts or half the regular fee for the oceanfront. I'm open to hearing what you think. We're not amending it at all.

Okay. Just for clarification here. Okay, so currently what would be collected? Currently.

As it's presented to you, $1.3 million for the two oceanfront alleys combined into one. And then there's a second row alley that's $40,000 that would go from second row to third row.

So another 1% on the PUD development fee. And the PUD development fees were 1%.

And you're asking for concession for?

For one alleyway. Okay. Again, to technically build this building, we could have come to you and not moved one of the alleyways and not even have that cost. By doing it the way we're doing it, we are opening up the corridor on 21st Avenue, another alleyway. Yeah. That's one way to look at it. At this point, we would need that alleyway. So, again, I don't want to mislead you. I'm just saying you could do this to make this project work. We're going to have trouble getting this to Pencil, and we're asking for your help.

I think he's asking for, instead of the 1.3, as they presented to the staff, the $650,000 for both oceanfront alleys is what he's asking for. Correct. In addition to the 40,000 on the second row to the third row.

And it seems to me like we're, oh, are you finished? That we're swapping, if you could, Ken or whoever, if you could go back to the picture of the alleys, like we're basically taking those two alleys and they're still oceanfront. Correct. And now it's a much bigger, wider public space.

It's a larger vista.

Which seems to be a good public improvement to me where I would be okay with reducing the amount there.

Can I say something?

Yes.

The code requires, and there is some flexibility here, but the general considerations for council to consider is for every alley to be abandoned, the person requesting the abandonment is to pay, is number one, to replace it with similar comparable property. If it's an oceanfront alley, the ideal is they replace it with equal oceanfront property. In addition, to offering the replacement property, the person requesting abandonment is also to pay either 1% of the development cost or $40,000, whichever is greater. Here, there are three alleys involved. The manager has been talking about $40,000 for the third row alley, or excuse me, the second row alley. That is already a concession. So I wanted to make sure council understood you're already providing a concession.

$460,000.

I think that's the type of.

This is for the oceanfront.

But anyway, that is the way the general considerations read. The section right above that does give council the flexibility to deviate from those general considerations. I just wanted to make sure you all understood what the general considerations were.

If I could just speak to that one, I don't disagree at all with what Will is saying on the considerations. Yes, the alloy criteria as they're written. I will say this, that has been in the past, and with all the ones that I've worked on over 20-some years, applied to what is going on that lot for the most part, because in this case, it's just a parking lot on that second row. I'm not saying it doesn't say that in the ordinance. It absolutely does. But that has just been a consistent consideration on that second alley. But it is. It is one.

To frame it again, I think we're all good with the second row alley and the $40,000. I don't think we have any issue there. The question then becomes... to get that double-wide, it's a weird term to use on Ocean Boulevard, but that double-wide corridor of view at the end of 21st Avenue North, what's your flexibility on charging for that second alley? And it's first reading. I would say, I'll go whichever direction you all wanna go with, I would still charge the $40,000.

At a minimum. What do we have it down for now?

$650.

Why would you change that to $40?

Well, they're requesting it is why.

I thought y'all were requesting the 650. No. 1.3 million.

We're requesting to pay 650 for the one alley and as little as your lettuce on the second is what we're requesting. So there's still going to be 650 for the, no matter what, one alley, and then the 40, and then another 650 for the PUD fee. So the total, if you were to charge nothing for the second alley, would be 1,340,000. Just for comparison, to build the Marriott, just not that long ago, the total was $700,000. So just because of the increase in cost, the cost and the difficulty in making it pencil, as Matthew says, is really creating a problem. Is there a motion?

I've got one quick question. How many units are you going to have in the new building? 230. 230.

You have a motion on the floor.

We got a motion to approve. All right. As presented. Need to amend then. Is there a motion to amend?

What are we amending it to?

All right. I will make a motion and we'll see where it goes.

You want me to withdraw my second? And you're going to make another motion?

You can still make an amendment to the motion.

Our parliamentarian.

Okay.

I will make a motion to amend the motion that's on the table to charge $40,000 for the second oceanfront alley instead of the original $650,000. Second. There is a second. Bill's the second. Any discussion from council? No. Any discussion from the public? So we have to vote on the amendment first, correct? Correct. All those in favor of the amendment to the original motion, please say aye. Aye. Raise your hand so that we can see who's doing that. No. Okay. All those opposed? No. So that's five out of six. All right. So we have a motion and an amendment to the motion. Okay.

Now we vote on the motion as amended. Okay.

We're ready to vote on the motion as amended. Any discussion from council?

Just to be clear, what is the total number again?

$650,000, $650,000, $130,000. Plus $40,000. Yeah, $1,340,000.

$1,340,000.

That was the original one.

I'm sorry, it would now be $1,380,000 because of the four.

That's the total. For the alleyway swaps alone, it's $690,000. Is that correct?

Was it $690,000 or $720,000?

Well, $720,000 because you got the other $40,000. Well, actually $730,000. $730,000. Thank you. Have we confused you yet, Mark?

No. No. I'm good.

Okay. All those in, any discussion with the public? All those in favor of the amended motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye.

Okay.

All right, we've got first reading on that.

Thank you, Council. Appreciate it very much.

Now, I would ask staff to come back with handwritten. I want it.

With an updated. Yeah, updated. Updated information. Spelled out. Okay. Thank you.

All right. That was challenging.

Madam Clerk, first reading on 26-54.

First, reading of Ordinance 2026-54 to approve a development agreement between the City of Myrtle Beach and PBB Development LLC and provide an incentive voucher as authorized by Section 15-53 of the City Code.

This is a redevelopment, same project, development voucher that we've done on projects before, 2%, up to $2 million. Voucher issues shall be reissued to reimburse building permit fees, business license fees, PUD fees, and alley swap fees paid by the developer.

This seems early in the process to be doing this. Is that my imagination? I think so.

I think we usually do it this early.

Oh, we do?

Okay.

And this is upon completion of the project, literally reimbursement for fees that they've paid?

Yeah, they don't get the reimbursement until the CO is issued, but they have, upon second reading, they've got five years to get it done from when the building permit is issued.

Mm-hmm.

Is there a motion to approve?

Motion to approve.

Second. Mike and Mike. Any discussion from council? Any discussion from the public? All those in favor of 26-54, please say aye.

Aye. Any opposed?

First reading for that. Moving on, first reading of... You're welcome. Thank you, gentlemen. First reading of ordinance 26-55.

First reading of ordinance 2026-55 to amend the Myrtle Beach zoning code article 17 design and performance standards to remove language regarding sidewalk installation and replace it with new regulations pertaining to a sidewalk development and maintenance fund.

Hello again. In review of the ordinance before you, we've been working on this since 2014. The concept in general was good, but we've run into some issues as further development has commenced. Planning Commission has approved this 6-0. Presentation. That's it. So to highlight before you, what we're looking to do is to have some flexibility in the ordinance itself. What we currently have on the books does not allow me to forego something. One of the criteria that was probably overlooked is what we have underground as far as being able to build that out. I think prior requests from a public improvement along Pine Island Road is a good example of you might run into a road under the ownership of the DOT or you might have a easement with Sandy Cooper that might limit sidewalk installation other issues that we've occurred with the existing ordinance is in some districts the sidewalk itself is 10 feet wide which can float into private property and then we have easements which hasn't been very helpful for us so the ordinance before you actually gives us a little bit of flexibility to utilize whether it be funds in other places to make connections Or bike pass or repairs and or the site itself is compatible with what we need and we can fill in those gaps where we have sidewalks. Following that, some recommendations will be from those funds will be passed on to the bike and ped for their thoughts and considerations. Then it will move forward to city managers to his discretion. So hopefully this fills in some gaps within the city. And the previous ordinance kind of gave us a, what I would say, like a end-to-end sidewalk where we would just, like, why did they put that in there? Hopefully going forward, this will be more of a completion path where we have those segments. I believe Councilman Lauder brought up a section on the south end of, hey, we're missing a piece of sidewalk here. This is that type of ordinance that can fill in that gap. You guys have any questions?

Yes, is there a motion to approve?

Motion approved.

Mike and Debbie, how's that? Discussion from council, and I'm going to start quickly. This would apply citywide in all zoning districts? Yes.

It applies citywide, but it's exempting single-family residential. I think one of the things that we've applied before was just an amusement in the MU zones, but we really need to have consideration in what we call the RM multi-family zones and the magnitude of population that we're bringing in there and the foot track that would occur.

If we had it in MU and amusement before, have we ever used it?

Yes, it's used. Unfortunately, if you go out there, you might just see it in segments because it only applies to that 50% rule, which is still in existence on the current ordinance, which would be a new build or a 50% improvement on said structure.

And this would be subject to the Zoning Administrator's approval? And the Public Works Department. And Public Works. Yes. Correct. And Public Works. And then my last question, why now instead of waiting until the zoning rewrite?

We're just running into a lot of projects where it's putting more or less, we'll say, me in a position of, hey, I can't break the law in the sense of, hey, this is on the books, and if you've got to do for one, you've got to do for all. So it's getting to the point where we just need to modify current conditions. We've been talking about it for a few years. You said since 2014. Yeah. Yes, but it's recently come into more of a chat in the past year or two, just with a lot of interior infill development. I lied, one more question.

I thought you only had one more.

I know, I told you a story, sorry about that. Will this, and hypothetical, will this result in the completion of more sidewalks at the end of the day, or will it result in just a fee that ultimately will be used to complete sidewalks? Can the fee in part B, can the fee be used for sidewalks someplace else?

Yes, and that's where that fee review is getting allocated the bike and ped where they can make recommendations to the city manager and then the city manager can designate out how he sees fit on the other hand there are projects that might fall within that that window where yes we need that sidewalk completed there or improved um the other avenue is it could create bike path and or repairs as needed because we do have a lot of repairs for the installation sidewalk we currently have on the books i lied i've got one more How's the fee calculated?

How much is it? Is it by foot?

We did an average. The current sidewalk that we have in place is between 10 feet and six. So we took the middle at eight from there. And this is going to probably be a fine tune later on where we probably base it off the actual fee of concrete rather than we have our yearly fee just because concrete right now is still fluctuating. So we'll probably put another modification into this before you guys see it again.

And this is strictly for sidewalks?

Sidewalk, bike paths, and repairs. Bike paths also.

Yeah, repairs. I know in the city there are a couple of areas looking at bike paths, right, where you're on this nice bike path, and then all of a sudden it ends, and you're thrown out into the street, but you've got another 100 yards before you get to the end of that street. So this could be used to... possibly solve those situations as well?

Correct. It's a good form of what I call a gap filler.

Okay. Mr. Attorney, can we create a fee?

Well, we currently have an account associated with this. This is why we're not recreating a fee. We have an account associated with it? Yes, we have a sidewalk fund account.

Michelle, there used to be $200,000 yearly put in the sidewalk account. Is that still?

We put more now. Okay. And really, that's not the justification or the reason why we're not looking at this as a new fee. In the past, and I asked Charles when we talked about this, is this something we've always required, that when the subdivision comes in or requests to whatever it was they're building, We require them to build a sidewalk at that time. We require that they spend those funds. And we found that sometimes that's impossible. So rather than requiring them to spend the money, they just put it now into a fund so that it can be spent for that very same improvement, whether it's at that property or some other, just like Charles had stated. It's not really a new fee. It is just a change in the way that the fee is accepted.

I go back to my question, can we create a new fee, because it's being described in those terms, even though I understand that there is a fund into which the money will flow. Would there be instances when a project would be approved that did not include a sidewalk?

Currently, single-family residential would not. Even commercial? Depending on the agreements between myself and the Public Works Department, there are those cases, yes.

So there could be a project that is commercial in nature where sidewalks already exist. They won't be charged for sidewalks?

Yeah, you could run into a road that's under control of the DOT that they wouldn't even allow an enlargement or modifications to that sidewalk in place. I've run into one myself. And then from there, we already currently have a sidewalk in place. So they would not be charged a fee? Correct. Okay. It allows us to have some flexibility with the current conditions in place in the city.

I don't mean to be thick, but what is the point, Mark?

If I may, if you have a currently commercial piece of property that has a four-foot sidewalk in front of it, we've got an ordinance now that is requiring an eight-foot sidewalk. So just because you've got a four-foot sidewalk in front of your property, yes, sir, you will be charged that fee because the four-foot sidewalk is not appropriate. Now, if it was already an eight-foot sidewalk in front of that property that met the code requirements that we already had in place and it's just an infield development, no, sir, you will not. But you will be charged to bring a four-foot sidewalk up to an eight-foot sidewalk because that is how we would currently handle it under our current code.

So the four-foot sidewalk's not grandfathered? No, sir. Okay. even if it's on public property?

I don't think grandfathered is the right term. If you come in and do an infield development on a piece of property, and we currently have a code in place that requires an eight-foot sidewalk in front of that property, just because you have a four-foot existing sidewalk in front of your property, we are not going to allow you to continue with that four-foot sidewalk. You have got to come in and put in the eight-foot sidewalk. In my past conversations with Public Works in similar situations where we had four foot sidewalks that were supposed to be eight, six or 10 foot wide sidewalks, adding a four foot band to a four foot sidewalk never works out. So Public Works normally requires them to go in there and rip out the whole four foot sidewalk and put in the eight foot sidewalk. So there are possibilities that if you've already got a sidewalk in front of your property that you will not have to pay this sidewalk fee. But I think there are greater possibilities that the sidewalk currently in front of your property does not meet today's standards. So yes, sir, you will be paying the fee.

I'll be quiet now. I had a whole lot more questions than I thought. Anybody else?

Mark, I'm curious, what was the point of that?

You lost me. The point of me asking all those questions? It's described as a fee. I understand that the money will go into an existing fund, but it's described as a fee, and I ask if we have the ability to create a new fee. And Michelle, explain the mechanics, how we do it now. Well, this is going to show up in the budget as a fee. Okay.

No, it is not going to show up in the budget because what is going to happen is when each property is assessed, when they look at each property and decide whether or not they can build that sidewalk, they're going to use the market rate at that time. That's written into these ordinances. We're not including that in the budget ordinance. I don't want to fix a fee in a budget ordinance when it should be considered at that time. It's one of the things we used to run into with the PUD ordinances, particularly the old ones, where the attorneys would write these things and they would set some price or some fee for an improvement that wouldn't be built for 20 years. We would end up having to fork out a lot of money. There are other situations where these assessments are made in the PUDs.

I didn't make it up. One of the bullet points under issues is the sidewalk assessment fee will be based on the fee schedule adopted in the city's municipal budget. That's one of the modifications.

Yeah, I asked him to change that.

Thanks. All right, anybody else? Any comments from the public now that I've had my 40 minutes? We have a motion. And a second. This is first reading. I would ask that in the interim between second reading, we get a response to the question about can we implement a new fee and is this a fee, if you don't mind. All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Sorry. Madam Clerk, Ordinance 26-56,

First reading of ordinance 2026-56 to annex four parcels, pin number 42511040022, 42511040018, 42511030023, and 42511040021. and to rezone from Horry County LI Limited Industrial to WM Wholesale Manufacturing Zoning District.

Yes, sir. This property is currently under Horry County's jurisdiction and is zoned LI, limited industrial. The current site is undeveloped. The proposed land use is for the development and construction of the new Fire Station 1 and the Coast RTA Transit Center and Operation and Maintenance Facility. This is solely the approval of the annexation. There's the stars representing the four properties in question. Again, each individual parcel. And just a better view of not all the overheads showing the four parcels that are in question. Shows the zoning that would be placed on the property warehouse manufacturing. This shows you a better picture. The green in the bottom corner is the piece that would be for the fire station. And the other piece, the bigger kind of pinkish color piece, is where we're looking at doing the RTA transit. You see the little piece that ties back in to Joe White Avenue? That is just to access easement. Again, that's just a piece of the property. That would be the fire station. And again, that's just the property again showing the easements for the access easements up to the other piece on the rear. But that is the truest slide. And that shows the property coming into the city. It's warehouse manufacturing. That actually shows what the two parcels would look like.

I'm sorry, so one of the accesses runs over to Mr. Joe White Avenue? Is that the way I'm seeing that?

This kind of got a little bit... convoluted during Planning Commission. The clarity is gonna come in regard to that access once they submit plans to us. Right now there is no intention of having a connection to the RTA Transit from Mr. Joe White. Okay.

Thank you. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Second.

Second bill. Any discussion from council?

Mark, as an aside with regard to construction, this is kind of finance. Did we ever get anywhere, and we can get an update later with regard to state proviso appropriations. I know some towns did get a couple million dollars. I know that's a discussion for another day, but I don't ever want that to go away.

I think the short answer is no, although there was $2 million to an Horry County fire station that wasn't clear whether it's

It's not ours.

It's not ours. All right, maybe that is clear then at this point.

Are those numbers hard with Senate and House appropriations?

I believe they are. I assume the governor has signed it or has gone through the appropriate waiting period. Okay, and Ken, I apologize.

Oh, we're good, brother. I'm on your side.

I always like to know. We always like to know.

Any discussion from council? Any discussion from the public? Mr. Piasi is here this morning. Just out of curiosity, what's your time frame? Brian Pioncik from Coast RTA.

Hopefully opening day within three years. Something like that.

And Brian, how long have you been with the group? Is it 10 years? 11 years and seems longer. Because I remember I asked you one time the per fee rate, $4.76 for a fee from Conway to Myrtle Beach, and you admirably defended that. I won't ask again.

Thank you, sir. Let me know if you want to ask it again, and I'll be prepared.

All those in favor of first reading of this annexation, 26-56, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you all. Madam Clerk, 26-57, please, first reading.

First reading of ordinance 2026-57 to amend ordinance 2026-43, the 2026-27 budget ordinance and appropriate funding for the addition of a full-time position for the development and promotion of special events.

Mr. Energy? We talked about this last week during the budget workshop. Councilwoman Hadley brought this position to our attention, and this just amends the budget to allow us to get funding to advertise to readings.

Is there a motion to approve?

Second.

First and second. Is there additional funding available in the holdback that Not spent as part of this?

Yes, there is. We have an item that will be coming to you next meeting for the Gulf Centorium. Yeah. Of about 150. There's a total of, I think, 300? 310, something like that, that's in the total holdback. This is taking some of that... and 150 recommended for the Gulf Centurion that Ryan Cannon had mentioned.

And just out of curiosity, do we have a job description yet for this?

We've got some research on that. We haven't developed one. We've looked at, I know Greenville has one, and we looked at somewhere else. I can't remember. Where? Virginia Beach. Okay.

All right. Any discussion from council?

And this position is... New events or? Yes. Okay. So new events.

New events as well as current events. Help manage the current events as well in terms of sponsorships and things of that nature.

But are we looking for someone to work mostly on what Troy's been doing or sports tourism or what?

Developing new events, cultivating sponsorships. That's mainly it.

Who would this person work for directly?

We've debated that around. There's a couple possibilities. Communications has been one. PRST has been another. So we haven't really settled on that area yet.

And to whom do these responsibilities presently fall? We don't really have. Yeah, we don't have a promoter of events at this point.

Troy manages them and kind of helps them through from the beginning to the end, but they're promoted primarily from the outside. We don't create, we have a very few that we create our own.

We have, Troy would be an event coordinator. Is that, I don't know what your actual title is, but somewhere in that neighborhood. But this would be an event, Special event superintendent. Superintendent. Special event superintendent. Thank you. But this would be an event planner, not unlike what other communities are doing. And we've had this position in the distant, distant past, but we've not had one in about 20 years.

A couple of questions. the type of individual that we're looking for. What are the credentials that we're going to be looking for? In other words, not just maybe past history, but are they certified, that type of thing? Are we really looking for a coordinator or a planner or both? And then my last question is, what's going to be the compensation range?

We looked at the compensation. I can't remember exactly what we had. One... Order of magnitude. 140 is the benefits and there was some travel. Take 140 all in. That was salary and benefits. Then ask the first part again, Mr. McClure. Credentials. The credentials, I mean... Someone with experience who's done this before in other areas. I don't know if you have certified event planners. I think you might.

There are certification programs for coordinators and event planners, that type of thing. I personally would like to note that they... besides the on-the-job training, for lack of a better description, that they have the educational backgrounds to deal with what we're looking for.

I would agree with you on that.

A successful track record.

And we've got, as Councilwoman Attlee knows, I mean, we've got some tremendous opportunity out there. We want to make sure that we get this right out of the gate.

That's right. Most resort tourism majors have special event components in them as well. So not just special certifications, but also degree programs have that specifically as part of their program.

So this would be the first step to get the money approved, and then we'll develop a job description, develop requirements.

You're going to be thinking about it now. Now you're traveling down the right path. Go ahead.

All right, any other discussion from council?

I guess I'm just thinking, we talk about special events. Are we looking to do more? Now, I hear us one minute say, you know, we're doing too much, or we're asking too much of our employees, and now we're talking about creating...

I will attempt to answer that question. You all can fill in for me. Yes, we're looking to do more. I think the objection to doing too much has to do with the enormous events as opposed to some of the regular events. But that would be my answer to that question.

So this person is going to concentrate on more smaller events and not trying to bring more?

I don't know the answer to that question.

In a certain time of the year, I guess.

I think that's the answer to the question, is that we know that at certain times of the year, we are just wearing our people out. We've talked about this a lot. But if we have this type of person, I mean, part of their objective would be to look at what are the open opportunities that would not impact our personnel as much in different parts of the year. You know, we're still talking about and dealing with a new type of concert that might be coming to the city. You know, maybe if we had an event coordinator, that person could have already looked at where the conflicts might be and say, okay, we want to do this. Here's where we need to put it, and here's where we don't need to put it. So, I mean, that's the way I would see it.

Okay.

To some extent, it would be an event recruiter as opposed to an event manager, although there's some management attached to it, I'm sure.

Mayor, my concern is growing with regard to what lies ahead. In the mid, not way down the road, but next year, the year after, I share some real concerns with business folks statewide that tough times may be upon us. and whatever we can do to prepare, and if that involves a coordinator to help garner new business, we have to continually look what is new on the horizon. We live in scary times right now. We need to be prepared.

That's exactly why we need to be focusing on this position. You're right.

Any discussion from the public? All those in favor of first reading of 26-58, no, 26-57, to do a budget amendment, please say aye.

Aye. Any opposed?

Thank you. Jennifer, first reading of 26-58, please.

First reading of ordinance 2026-58 is authorizing an incentive agreement between project WGMB and the City of Myrtle Beach relating to the development of a surf park hospitality project and other matters related thereto.

Thank you, Mayor, Members of Council. Just a couple quick things. This is first reading, again, which would authorize an incentive agreement associated with the project identified as Project WGMB, Wave Garden Myrtle Beach. Very creative. It is a proposed major tourism and hospitality development centered around a wave garden surf lagoon. I really wanna talk through a couple, really four things as I'm going through this, but feel free to interrupt if you have any questions. I wanna talk really high level about what the project is, what the anticipated economic benefit is, how the $20 million incentive is structured and protected, and then really what issues need to be resolved prior to our second reading coming back to council. Really big thing, just want to hit more than anything else. This is first reading. Staff is recommending approval of the overall project and the incentive framework today while continuing to work through several important legal and financial issues before bringing this back for second reading. High level, the project is committing to a minimum capital, private capital investment of about $150 million. At a minimum, the project must include a wave garden surf lagoon of at least five and a half acres, a minimum of 150 room hotel, at least 20,000 square feet of food and beverage retail and tourism uses, as well as any associated hospitality space. The agreement also protects against the project being materially reduced after second reading. So if there is a material reduction, the project has to come back to this council for approval of that. Again, we talked about the project name, WGMB. The actual company will be listed in our second reading. So that's a normal economic development process That first reading, it's a project name. Second reading is the actual company itself. The city had an independent third-party economic and fiscal impact analysis completed. So just high level, a couple of those economic impacts. Estimated to be 364,000 annual visitors to this project. Estimated to have $58 million in annual on-site spending. Estimated to have an additional 12, a little over $12.5 million in additional annual off-site spending. Anticipated to have over 44,000 hotel nights. And then also approximately $3.2 million in annual revenue to the city. Let's see again. So $3.2 million directly to the city. And again, that's a combination of hospitality taxes, accommodations taxes, property taxes. Business license. Correct.

Yes, ma'am. That totally includes the business license.

Actually, I don't believe that. As I'm thinking through it, I can check that on the economic impact analysis, and I'll get back to you on that.

I think the first three you mentioned is the 3.2. I don't think the business one.

I think you're correct, Council Member. The economic impact also analyzed the impact to Horry County. Again, about $2.6 million to Horry County and about $9 million to the state of South Carolina. So again, just to wrap it up, from an economic development standpoint, Council, with this first reading, is considering a maximum $20 million incentive in connection with a project requiring at least $150 million in private investment and projected to generate at least $3.2 million in annual city revenues. If there's any questions about that, I'm gonna run in just a little bit about how the incentive agreement is structured and how the incentive works as well as the protections to the city, if that's okay. So, again, the agreement right now provides up to $20 million in incentive funding. I want to point out that's a maximum amount. It's not $20 million from the city plus other incentives. It's $20 million max is what this is contemplating at this time. The $20 million, and this is where we're going to spend a lot of time, really, if you approve first reading. The second reading is the source of this $20 million. We talked a little bit earlier about multi-county business parks and how multi-county business parks work. It's an economic development tool that the state gives to counties to identify certain properties as well as certain projects. and it changes the ad valorem tax calculation to what's called a fee-in-lieu, or you see the acronym F-I-L-O-T, FILO. That FILO can then be used for a special source revenue credit, which is a long-term credit to property taxes, or if a development needs the upfront funding, you use a special source revenue bond. And so that's all county-focused funding economic development tools. The city feels like the best opportunity for us is to fund this $20 million incentive through a SSRB through working with Horry County. There are, there is a risk, and we'll talk about this a little bit later on, if the county does not agree to the multi-county business park or to the SSRB, the city would still be on the hook for $20 million of this incentive funding. Again, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But there are other sources of funding that we're going to look at. SSRB, any existing proceeds that may be in a multi-county business park, any other legally available funds, grants, things like that, that we could potentially reduce our fiscal impact or our outlay of $20 million. Okay. So again, think of it as one $20 million incentive with several possible funding sources, not several $20 million incentives, if that makes sense. Another thing I want to say is the city is not writing a $20 million check when this agreement is signed. However, if SSRB, Multicounty Business Park, or other funding sources are not secured before the final approval, the city may need to reserve, designate, or otherwise identify all or a portion of the $20 million from legally available sources. Those funds would remain city funds and would not be paid to the developer unless and until all of the agreement's disbursement conditions are met. If that makes sense. And I want to hit on those a little bit. So the way this agreement is currently written, the company would not receive any incentive funding until the construction is at least 80% complete. So they've spent roughly $120 million, $125 million in private money, and then the public incentive is available. The company must demonstrate that all the financial requirements and all the equity necessary to finish and to complete the project are available. Again, there are several other things that we've written in this incentive agreement that talk about an updated program Sources and use statement, all the required governmental approvals, the permits, a construction contract, proof that the funding, that the expenses have been made. Insurance, all of those things that are very typical in an incentive agreement are listed here. At the end of the day, the intent is that the private investment goes first and the public investment goes last. There's some milestones in the incentive agreement as well. Again, working with the company, looking at a July 1st, 2027 construction start, substantial completion by December 31, 2029, and opening to the public by March 1, 2030. Again, there are clawback requirements in here that the project must be in operation for five years. Once the incentive fund is given, any month reduction in that five years creates a clawback or a payback of that incentive. I've talked a lot, but open to any questions or comments or concerns you may have. Again, this is a significant economic development opportunity, $150 million in capital investment, a major new tourism attraction, projected economic and fiscal benefits throughout the city and region. The proposed incentive is capped at $20 million, and the city's potential exposure, if alternate funding is not available, we certainly need to have further conversations with city staff, our finance, as well as our legal team to be able to iron out all those details prior to second reading. But happy to answer any questions you may have.

Let's see if we've got a motion. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Motion to approve. Discussion from council? I'll start that by saying, while it is a significant investment, the potential returns are great for the community. And if the project doesn't come into existence, we don't have any money on the hook. So it's kind of a win-win in that respect. Tourism is certainly Myrtle Beaches and Horry County's largest industry. If you look at Ocean Boulevard, I think of it as an industrial corridor to that extent. And Broadway at the Beach, this is a piece of the Broadway at the Beach territory. I would think of Broadway at the Beach as a large industrial park for Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand in as much as tourism really is our lifeblood at the end of the day.

Council? When we did the... Sports Center, for instance, in discussions about allowing us to do the funding model as we did, we pointed out to state leaders that they were the primary beneficiary of that building with regard to sales tax, et cetera. That leads me to my question here. Is there been or has there been, and I'm sure there must have been discussion with state leaders about being a potential funding source, particularly in the world of earmarks in which we live presently. That is one question. My first question, and you can answer it before now in second reading if this should pass, but secondly, Mayor, have you or any council folks entertained conversation with county leaders? Because again, they would be a beneficiary of this.

So I'll answer the first question because this is day six for me, Councilman Rinder. So the answer to the second question is we do have a meeting, Fox and Josh and I have a meeting with Horry County this week to begin conversations about the Multicounty Business Park specifically and how to include this project as well as the associated qualified expenses into an existing Multicounty Business Park. As far as the earmark, I don't know the answer to that, and I can certainly ask the company to see if they've had any conversations prior to me coming on board.

Well, that just seemed like two outstanding opportunities, and I think we all want the 21st Avenue corridor to be a signature thoroughfare, and this, without fully understanding all the ins and outs, this would appear to be one way to achieve that goal. Again, I think what we all guard against is a situation where we privatize profits and nationalize losses. We want this to be a win if it goes forward for everyone. I don't know a lot about this, but it's exciting. Tourism folks may know much more than I do.

Well, Council Member Rinder, what I do want to say is that regardless, again, any other earmark or any other funding that we get would actually be a reduction of our $20 million incentive. So that's the way it's contemplated now as written.

Well, you've made an outstanding presentation. Well, thank you. I can't wait for day seven.

I think, too, that just through... reiterated is that the monies that we're talking about the city would be putting into this project is the last dollar in. And as we've discussed, something goes awry along the way, we're saved harmless. We've got that protection behind us. I think it's very important for everybody to understand Anybody else? Just a statement. Yes, sir.

Thank you.

And I look forward to day seven also.

So do I. I kind of have to piggyback off of all the comments that Dr. Render had stated. Myself, and I'm going to go ahead and tell you, I'm going to vote no for it today. Today. Because I still have some heartburn with putting a project, us putting this much money into a project that is on privately owned land. That's just my issue with it, the main issue. The timing of it and everything is not adding up for me. I would like us to see it a little bit further down the road and also get along the input from county council. So that's all I have to say.

Understood, and Councilman Hatley, that's certainly within your purview. I will say that the reason why we are here today, again, a very compressed, to get to these documents, compressed timeline. The project's main funder, lender, has a deadline of tomorrow, and so we hope that this incentive agreement, if approved, we hope this ordinance and this incentive agreement will allow the project to continue to move forward. Certainly there are still a lot of dominoes that have to fall to get us to a finish line. But that's the reason why we're here for you today.

So Josh, I think, and I appreciate Councilwoman Hatley's thoughts on that. One of the things that we've talked about is general benefit, public benefit. And though it's on private property, And I think you've done a good job laying out in Section 1 the agreement that the estimated, and I'm thinking these are the estimated benefits or conservative estimate, a conservative estimate of $10.5 million in annual employee income 58.1 in total onsite spending, the 12.7 in additional offsite, over 44,000 room, nights, annual visitors, and in my estimation, just with the revenues to the city without the business that this would be recouped by the city within six years. and seeing the huge success in Virginia Beach of their current wave park that has just blown out all of their estimates. I can't imagine that this one would not do better. So I'm gonna support first reading today, yeah.

if the return to the city is $3.2 million a year, that's better than 15% on our money. It's hard to beat that these days. Tourism really is our lifeblood, and this is an opportunity to say yes to a major next level project for Myrtle Beach that would be, I guess, tied for the world's largest wave pool, wave garden. Is that a correct statement?

It would be up there. I don't know if it would be the largest. I can get the information on that before second reading as well.

Any other discussion from council? Any discussion from the public? All those in favor of first reading of Ordinance 26-58, authorizing the incentive agreement, make sure I'm reading the right one. Yes, authorizing the incentive agreement between Project WGMB and the City of Myrtle Beach relating to the development of a surf park hospitality project and other matters, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Thank you very much. We're going to come back to this subject in a minute. We have a resolution about appointing someone to the solid waste technical panel. Jennifer?

Resolution 2026-16, a resolution making an appointment to the Horry County Solid Waste Technical Advisory Council for the next update to the solid waste management plan. Thank you.

This request came to us from the county. There, as the caption says, updating the solid waste management plan, and they have a technical advisory committee, and they're asking the cities and the counties to make an appointment. This resolution would appoint Monica Vreen, who is our solid waste superintendent, to that technical advisory committee to update the solid waste management plan for Horry County. Ed Marr is here from the Solid Waste Authority to answer any questions, if you have any. Hey, Ed. Do you all have any questions?

Is there a motion to approve resolution 26-16?

So moved and approved. Second.

Somebody over here and then Mike. Bill and Mike.

Who do we have for the first and second?

Bill and Mike Chestnut. Any discussion from council? And Monica Perrine would be the appointment when we make this resolution, is that correct? That is correct. All right. Any discussion from the public? All those in favor of Resolution 2016 to appoint Monica Vereen to the Solid Waste Technical Advisory Council, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. All right, going back to Resolution 26-17, Jennifer.

Resolution 2026-17 to express support for surf park development and desire to include surf park within existing multi-county business park.

Thank you, Mayor, members of council. Again, same project. What this does is that this resolution shows your support to Horry County so that they can move forward with potentially including the surf park property as well as the project into the list of approved multi-county business park property so that this project would be eligible for that special source revenue bond. Nothing binding to this. It really is just a resolution stating your support for that. That allows when city staff talks to Horry County that they know that you guys are in support of it and we can try to move that forward on their agendas.

Is there a motion to approve?

Motion to approve.

Second. Mike and Debbie. Any discussion from council?

So this is going to be critical for us to have the potential ability for the funding, special bond revenue funding. Yes, ma'am.

Yes, ma'am. Vital.

And there will be other steps if we can get county council to agree to add the property. They've got to go through three ordinance readings. Well, I believe we've got to also do a resolution or an ordinance in support of that. I can't remember if it was an ordinance or a resolution from the city to okay the adding of that city property or property within the municipal limits to that ordinance. There will be other steps that we've got to do as well.

And there are larger discussions about the multi-county business park related to other future developments for the city.

Yeah, and we are trying to split those really more than anything. Focus on this project. We'll come back at a later date for the other bigger discussions.

We have a discussion from council. Any discussion from the public?

Mayor, I'd like to make one request. We have a couple of members on council who command a great deal of respect from members of county council. And I would like to ask if Mr. Lowder and Mr. Chestnut would reach out to our friends on county council personally. Sometimes that has great impact. This is so important that the personal touch cannot be discounted here. And they've solved problems before, and I think they can do it this time. Gentlemen? Just a personal plea.

I don't have no problem with talking with anyone. Thank you.

All those in favor of the resolution as presented, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you all. Making progress. We may be out of here by noon. Up next, a motion to appoint, reappoint one member to the Bicycle, Pedestrian, and Traffic Advisory Committee. Jennifer?

Motion 2026-89 to appoint, reappoint one member to the Bicycle, Pedestrian, and Traffic Advisory Committee.

I'd like to make a motion that Thomas Bitt be reappointed. Second.

First and second, any discussion from council?

Discussion from the public?

All those in favor of reappointing Tom Vitt to the Bicycle and Pedestrian and Traffic Advisory Board, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. Motion 26-90, Jennifer, while we show these on the screen.

Motion 2026-90 to declare certain vehicles abandoned or derelict pursuant to the authority of Article 41 of Title 56, South Carolina Code of Laws 2001.

The vehicles in question are on the screen. Is there anyone here representing any of these vehicles before we declare them abandoned or derelict? Is there any discussion from council? Any discussion from the board?

Got to have a motion. Oh, we've got to have a motion.

Sorry, is there a motion to approve? Thank you. 26-90. So moved.

Second.

Mike and Debbie, any discussion from council? Any discussion from the public? Nobody representing any of these vehicles today? All those in favor of motion 26-90, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Not agenda items from the public. Anybody dying to speak at this point? Hearing none, communications from city boards and commission members, communications from city council and the manager. Anybody?

Just remembered the 9-11 ceremonies this Friday at 11 o'clock at Warburg Park.

This actually is a really busy week. There's a lot going on in Myrtle Beach this week. Anybody else?

All right.

Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Phil and Mike, all those in favor, please say bye. Bye.