City Council - Regular Meeting

and evaluation of the city manager.

Motion.

Second. The motion is second. All in favor say aye. Aye. We will move into executive session. Okay, so council met in executive session and no votes were taken. We're adjourned out of there, but we will go back into executive session because we didn't finish our conversation after we go through the regular meeting.

I think we need a motion. I'll make a motion we go back into executive session after the meeting. Is there a second? Second.

All in favor say aye. Aye. All against? Ayes have it. So we will move into item 1C. continuation of called order and we have the invocation i believe our pastor mitchell livingston is here are you here it's actually my pastor are you here mitchell i don't see him okay so ryan could you lead us in the invocation please okay or i'm gonna pass it to allison okay good

Dear Heavenly Father, we just come before you this evening and thank you for being the Savior that you are. Thank you for our city. Thank you for our leaders, both here and across our country. And Lord, I just pray that tonight everything that we do and say will be pleasing to you. And we give this evening to you in your name. Amen.

Amen. So we'll move into the Pledge of Allegiance, but I would like to recognize that we have Scout Troop 899 from Carolina Forest here at our council meeting tonight. And the troop leader is Adam Redale. 20 scouts and five leaders, his troop. We'd like to ask you all to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, if you all don't mind. If everybody would please stand.

I pledge allegiance.

okay we'll move into item two is minutes we have uh item a on our minutes city council meeting monday june 15 2026 and item b city council special called meeting thursday june 25th 2026 is there a motion to approve so i move second motion a second all in favor say aye aye against I just have it, we'll move into communications, and we have a presentation by Alan Lee. Are you here, Alan Lee?

Thank you, Mayor Baldwin. Thank you, Council. July 4th was a big day for America. 250 years, that's a lot to have freedom. You Boy Scouts are coming up that way to understand that. Lee Funiham had a drive-through pick-up-your-flag day. We had 250 flags for 250 years. We flew 50 flags around our building for 50 states. We give all 250 flags out, it was from 10 to two, and at 10 after two, we gave the 250 one out. So we're very proud of that. The 50, we decided we're gonna give them to people whom we feel like make our community better to live in, our county, and it's gonna take us a little while to get rid of 50. But we gonna start here tonight. Mayor, I'd like to start with you. This is what the public got.

Other than the case, you're special.

American flag, inner case, 200 feet of your .

You have one for your car. You have a flag pin for your lapel and your flag. Thank you.

Let's keep going.

Thank you, Alan.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, sir, so much.

Thank you, Alan, very much.

Okay, we'll move into item B, Department Monthly Reports for June 2026 are available online. And now we'll move into announcements by Mayor and Council. Are there any announcements by Mayor and Council?

I just have a couple things. Just wanted to kind of open it up to discuss with you guys some of the things that I've heard around town, talked to some of the residents about that maybe we can just discuss amongst each other. The Main Street issues that are coming up right now, I think that's a big deal with the residents. What happened this weekend, college week that happened that we were unaware of. I think those are two main issues that a lot of residents have contacted me about that I don't know how we can handle that as council people.

i mean it's it's definitely an issue i don't know if dana's dana's not here right now our chief is not here i've not seen her she is yeah please so i did talk to her yesterday um we were on the phone for a long time because we had another incident there over the last i don't know night before last but uh yeah we did talk about some of the details and it's all different it's just a different like a different time we're living in with things that we didn't used to see happen that are happening in different ways and our police department's incredible and they're doing with them in every way that they know how um and and they're doing an incredible job they have a massive amount of force down there and uh dana you're thank you you weren't here but we were talking about councilman councilwoman were brought up about the events going on main street what we're doing about it and i was telling you telling her or telling everybody you and i had a conversation about it yesterday and i know you're working on it i know that um we've got different challenges that we've not seen before that are you know that are different than what has been in the past so it's kind of a different kind of challenge but i know you're on top of it but melissa well miss councilwoman whoever was saying you know what can we do to help and what can we do with to deal with the situations that's coming up and i don't know if you've got anything to add and we're kind of throwing you on the spot here but

you're referring to the fights that were the fight that was online well i think several things like we had college week that came up that i think kind of took us a little bit by surprise um and then the incidences that are happening on main street not just this past weekend but we've had several um you know instances that have happened that i don't know if we just got blown up on social media or we weren't aware of or a combination um that are concerning no that's

And I'm just going to be frank. I mean, this is a spring break city, and it has been since 1951. We've had people coming to our bar area on Main Street for many, many years, a fight. on main street is not something that is out of the ordinary we responded to a hundred fight calls last year you know i think we've just seen a change in social media expectations and you know we don't we don't do a notification every time we respond to a fight this was a I think there were two or three fights that actually several of the males there broke up the females. That's a normal Saturday night for us. They just happen to be more frequently videoed and put on Facebook. And then it looks like there's this big new issue that's not the case. So now spring break in your area. That was a different story. So I was actually speaking to Miss Uchi outside. That's why I was late. We have definitely seen a difference. The city change as far as I've been policing for 24 years. I've been chasing kids around for spring break and graduation weeks for 24 years. But typically you see that like in the Main Street area or Cherry Grove area. not in a residential area. So I had actually called someone in our community that he does a lot of spring break rentals and asked him if he had any inside information of why that change had happened. And he said about three years ago, he noticed that kids started from that week from a particular area in Virginia, they started calling and asking to rent, particularly between 10th Avenue South and 17th Avenue South. and uh so he would ask why and they just said that's where we want to stay well there's not really that's different than what we would normally see in cherry grove or main street so we have over the last several years saw that they have began to migrate there um again we saw over and over online teen takeover teen takeover these kids weren't you know causing they weren't breaking into cars or or causing malicious damage to property or when you talk about these teen takeovers and you talk about you know people enacting uh juvenile curfews and whatnot you're talking about kids going in two three four hundred of them and taking over stores and destroying everything that's not what we were seeing we saw a lot of kids in one location at a time and you know maybe fighting a lot of times when we would get the phone call we would actually say wrestling they weren't even like fighting but there were not to say that there weren't kids doing what kids do um a juvenile curfew you know statistically 65 to 75 percent of these kids are 18 years old so they're not juveniles i don't think that that would be something that would be helpful i just think think that this is something that we're going to try to be on top of next year for sure to uh make sure that we're reaching out to that school district you had you had a really great idea to do that and let them know that you know if they come here that we're not going to to tolerate that behavior and we're just going to try to reach out to the people that own short-term rental rentals in that area and let them know hey August or June the 16th of next year, you may want to be very mindful about who you rent to and if that person is 25 years or older. Yes, ma'am.

Thank you so much, Chief. Are there any other comments by council? I would like to bring up that, you know, and I know Alan Lee was just here and presented us with these flags, and we had the celebration of 250 years of independence at the Horseshoe on Main Street on the 4th of July, and we had volunteers that carried flags from one end of our beach, starting in Windy Hill all the way to Main Street, and then all the way from Cherry Grove all the way to main street and and uh it's quite incredible i've not carried the flag yet but i heard stories of people just you know it was it was pretty impressive saluting and standing up and clapping and then we had to fly over and hey look a lot of people well not a lot of people i think one person complained about that that might have been a little low but it was incredible fly over and uh and you know recognizing not only our people that have served for our country that that didn't survive but our families that also uh endured uh all that and our people that are serving us now so it was incredible event are there any other comments by council okay we will move into consent agenda and if it's okay by council I will take everything together. I know there may be some explanations on some of these and we can do that if anybody wants. Is everybody okay to take them together? okay so i'll read them um item a is a resolution designating green finley calling llp to conduct an annual audit of financial statements for fy 2026 and fy 2027. item b is an ordinance second reading amendments to chapter 20 land development regulations of the code of ordinances of north myrtle beach south carolina clarifying site-specific development plans requirements and applicability item c is an ordinance second reading amendments to chapter 23 zoning code of ordinances of the city of north myrtle beach clarifying site-specific development plan regulations and applicability item d is a resolution for pre-annexation agreement for 1424 jack circle road so just to clarify what some of these are the the first item item a is is our um llp our cpa or financial firm completed an audit for 2026 and 2027 so we're engaging them to do those And then item B and item C is just changing so that people understand what the plan requirements for when they're applying for a permit of what they have to provide. And it just clarifies that so there's no questions. and then item d is a um pre-annexation for property on little river neck road or i mean i'm sorry jack circle which is at the end of little river little river neck road that is r1 single family and they have no water sewer and that's a big issue in that area a lot of times it's caused damage to our say damage but where our creeks are closed shell fishing and things like that so we we have got water and sewer there but they are not contiguous with the city so they cannot annex into the city so a pre annexation agreement gives them the ability to get water and sewer and get off a septic and then when they do become contiguous as our city grows that way then they can annex in or they will automatically be annexed in hope that answers all those questions Are there any comments by council regarding these issues? We need a motion to get these on the table. So moved. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay. Is there any comments by council? Are there any comments by the public regarding these issues? Hearing none, we will take our vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. All against? Ayes have it. We'll move into unfinished business. Item A is an ordinance second reading amendments to chapter 23 zoning of the code of ordinances of North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, removing the maximum area account for bedrooms, sleeping areas, and residential districts. Is there a motion to approve?

Motion. Second.

The motion is second. Is there any comment by council?

I just want to clarify this is for new builds. This has anything to do with existing buildings, existing houses?

No. It would if to do an addition that would expand what would be considered a sleeping area and or a bedroom for the definition of the ordinance.

But we're removing because we had an ordinance in place that where we were trying, because we were having parking issues where we had people build rental houses and they basically had, they would have 10 cars and they could only park four or five. And then it created a problem with the neighbors. So we came up with something that would eliminate that, but it didn't really work because then people would say, It wasn't a bedroom, it was an office, and they found ways to circumvent the ordinance. So now we've changed that to regulate that by parking the number of cars that can park. So this is just cleaning up that ordinance. Are there any other comments by council? Are there any comments by the public? Hearing none, we'll take our vote. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All against? Ayes have it. We'll move into item B. This is the ordinance second reading, amend chapter 23, outdoor storage of personal property in residential districts. Is there a motion to approve? So moved.

Second.

There's a motion and a second. Is there any comment by council?

Go ahead.

Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead.

I've had quite a bit of phone calls on this ordinance that a lot of people didn't understand, and some of it was kind of putting things together. So it's and I've been there where you go to look up an ordinance and then it refers you to another section and then to another section. So it's kind of getting everything in the same place. And I had a lot of phone calls, whether it was trailers or boats, that people just didn't realize that there's always been an ordinance that you couldn't have a trailer or a boat in your front yard. It had to be in your side yard or your rear yard. And during the process of putting everything in one place, people thought that that was a new ordinance, but it was not. So I just wanted to say that.

Yes, that is correct. This organizes all of these things into one easy to find section. The only thing that's new in this is that we address the outdoor hoarding issue where people are hoarding materials and things in their yard. that don't necessarily qualify as being junk or debris or litter by our ordinance but they they do tend to sometimes get out of hand when people have too many items in their yard so we're saying if you're going to do that sort of situation um excluding the things that that are mentioned in the ordinance as exclusions then that has to be screened properly

Absolutely, but we are not changing the ordinance that regulates boats and trailers or RVs. They're already existing in the ordinance that already exists where they can park in their side yard or their backyard. A lot of that is being misinterpreted online.

Yes, sir. Just because it appeared in this new consolidated section, it could have led to the impression that something about that was changing, but it's not.

then there was one thing um that came up uh that i wanted to bring up was i think we had a 24-hour thing where you could park a trailer or a boat um in your yard and one thing uh was thinking about it's like we have a lot of people that come down here that rent a home for a week and they put their boat in the water and then they park their trailer at their home and they may be renting a house where you don't have a side or a backyard and there is nowhere else that they can park that trailer. So maybe amending that to be seven days or something like that was just an idea.

Yeah, we could certainly do that. What I would recommend is that's kind of a bigger issue about uh whether boats should be allowed in those yard in front yards or not or in front parked in front of the house uh it is something that's probably worth individual study for a future ordinance amendment okay all right i like it look but i agree with you I agree with you that it's difficult, especially in communities like Cherry Grove, where you don't have much of a side yard.

The only other thing, though, with that, Jim, is I did think about Cherry Grove, which is mostly where this happens. Most all of those houses are on stilts, so a lot of those people, when I see it happen, they push that trailer under the house, which is legal. You're biding by the ordinance if you put it under the house.

Some of the boats would be difficult to get under some of the houses because not all of them are elevated to the degree they would need to be. I get it. and that is the area of town where you're going to have most of the boat usage because of the boat ramps up there so i do believe that that that ordinance deserves a a more intense look um but we can certainly pass this as is and then go back and address that specific situation later okay all right and how ryan you might be able to answer this question how is is this going to be enforced so is there someone walking around looking for this stuff or

Well, I mean, it's going to be following our code enforcement department, but, I mean, we build it in to where it kind of phases it in where we're not, it's like not all of a sudden one day you can have it, next day you can't. You're kind of grandfathered in at least that situation, and then we give you ample time to bring it into compliance. So we're not looking to go out there and just hammer it away. We want to give people time to, you know, to come to compliance.

and it's complaint driven it's not like you've got somebody riding around looking to count how many days you got something parked in your yard but yeah and this wasn't really as much about what's parked in your yard as it is the debris and things that are piled up in the yards that's what this ordinance is really about

That's right. The substantive changes in this, other than reorganizing everything into one place, involve the hoarding of materials in the yard, and it also involves the ability to use those portable storage containers like pods storage when people are moving and they have one of those temporarily in their yard to help them move to a new address. So that's the substantive changes here.

Are there any other comments by council?

only that we do need to uh address like in cherry grove in particular because a lot of those residents up there leave their boats all year long and i understand that they have nowhere else to put them and they can't screen them um and we need to address that okay

Are they under their house though?

Most of them are under the house. That's fine. Every now and then they got a big boat that won't be under the house.

Some of the bigger ones can't be put under the house. I've seen that myself. I think it's an issue that deserves its own ordinance amendment and some thoughtful, maybe even a workshop.

Okay.

All right. Are there any other comments by council? Are there any comments by the public? Please come forward and give your name and address.

Good evening, Harry. All at Park Point. Pitchers, please. Please take in consideration the diversity we have in this city, comparing Cherry Grove to your POAs that are on the west side of the waterway. You have people parking stuff that are in their front yards that are overextending into the right of way, creating an obstruction. Again, it would be complaint driven. So when you do try to modify this, people coming in for vacation, long term rentals, whatever it is. taking into consideration all the different communities that we have. Even though POAs have rules and regulations, it's kind of hard to enforce the way it was set up with the developers, giving them 10 days, 14 days before you start finding and stuff like that. But when something is coming over into the right-of-way that the city owns and the sidewalks, something needs to be addressed. So just take that into consideration before saying seven days that they could keep it there because then it will be expected that it's citywide. Thank you.

Tony Warren, Jr. My family's been down here for almost 40 years.

What's your address, Tony?

1207 King Street.

I probably know it.

Yeah, Cherry Grove. But we've been here, like I said, my family's been here 40 years. I've been here full-time since 2013. And it is changing. It is changing. I just want to, can I show this to you? Sure. Y'all show it around. So this is not going to be permitted anymore, even though it is in my driveway, the trailer.

Rear yard, though, isn't it?

Well, it depends on how you look at it. My front door is facing the neighbor's house. The back door is facing my pool and everything else. My driveway is on the end of it.

tony can you talk in that microphone though we'll pass that around that might be let me look at that but that's the question what is it this part here the trailer behind the storage we're not changing that part of in this ordinance okay nothing to do with trailers boats any of that we're not making a change with that and you know i play the drums and

And that's my drum trailer parked beside my garage, and that's the only place I have to put it.

It's in my driveway. In this ordinance, we're making no changes to the existing ordinance that allows you to have a boat or trailer or RV in your side or rear yard. I get, but we're not making a change. So whatever's happening there is still falling under the same rules we're governed by right now.

All right. I just wanted to make sure. I'll be back up in a little bit. Okay. Thank you.

You're gonna put it on the screen, that would be good, so everybody can see what we're talking about.

Well, and it's hard to say, Tony, whether you're in compliance or not, not going and looking.

but like we were saying we're not driving around looking for things like this so we're not i don't know that we can't speak and say you are compliant because we don't know based on what you're telling us you know i've got a big driveway right everything else in my property is fenced in to keep crazy people out you know my dog's in but that's the only place i had to park my trailer and it is in a driveway so i just wanted to make sure that that was not what we were discussing because

And you might could get with Jim and talk to Jim about it.

Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other comments by the public? Hearing none, we'll take our vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. All against? I just have it. We'll move into item C, which is an ordinance second reading amendment chapter 22, vehicles for hire regarding towing from private property. And I am going to recuse myself, and I will give the same reason that I gave first reading when I recused myself, is I have someone interested that is in this business that would like potentially lease a piece of property that I own to do this type of business. So I'll recuse myself and come back after this is over.

Okay. Item 6C has to do with the

park vehicles for hire the code section ordinance north myrtle beach regarding towing and property private property is our motion i'd like to make a motion to postpone until the next council meeting for this agenda item we've had a lot of discussion we've had workshops we've gone a long ways but there's still some verbiage in here that um I as a council member will get from the rest of council, but that isn't quite correct. And since it's going on second reading, we can't make changes during the meeting. So I would like to postpone this to get everything right.

Is there a second on that?

Second.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay, we'll postpone that until the next meeting.

thank you i forgot to say i was going to turn it over to our mayor pro tim hank but he got it councilman thomas okay so um there is no new business so we'll move into public comment if anybody would like to address council and make a comment please come to the microphone give your name and address good evening harriola park point pitches place

We are very happy with the successes of our sports park, with the expansion, and now the extension of the path, whether it's biking, walking, or running. We still haven't addressed the fact of safe passage for people that live on the west side of the park to get through the intersection, and now we have an even bigger path to go. Now you have the people that could go across even the entrance to the sports park gate A in order to transverse that. There's one stop sign for people coming out, nothing stopping for anybody making the left going in. Please, let's try to expedite this unless we know that there's a time frame already set when we'll either have some sort of traffic control device in order for people to get from the town homes or my community safely across the sidewalk, the street to avoid getting hit by traffic. we don't want to have an accident and that's how we figure it out okay all of a sudden we want to put it in we've gone down that way too much even though we've been lucky so far we don't want to see anything happen so please also one last thing champions park we're four months from christmas what's going to be the plan for to get the people in there there's still dirt roads down there that they would have to come over born trail go around the back Those people will never get home. They'll have to go to Watertower Road. Even Long Bay is seven or eight months in. Even with the four-month extension that they were looking for, what's the progress on that? Thank you. Thank you, Harry.

Are there any other comments by the public?

Please.

Yeah. Well, there's a microphone here too, right? Is that working? Or no? Come over here. Okay. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Janice Harrington. This is my husband, Kevin Harrington, and we reside at 5305 Heritage Drive, Cherry Grove. Tonight, we'd like to talk about the parking lot that is butted up to our home. It has been a terrible situation for us, a lot of sleepless nights, and we would like to have more of a physical presence there. i've spent hours and hours and lots of emails i'd like to thank uh mr thomas uh for actually coming down there physically and looking at the property and mr uh fabry and miss westmoreland those are the people i've been in communication with thus far but we are not sleeping well people are parking there at any time of night they're running their engines they're pulling out their fishing equipment their kayaks their paddle boards and it's a misuse of the parking lot The parking lot was put there many years ago without us even knowing it. And we've had many issues over the years. There was a kayak business there for a while, and we resolved that here with all of you. And you built two beautiful kayak ramps, one for recreation and one for businesses. And now you have this big, beautiful parking lot that's only a few feet away with 50 spots. This parking lot is only five spots, but it is a magnet for chaos. And it is really disturbing. And I know the people that I was in contact with, they heard my frustration. They caught me in the mornings when I did not go back to sleep at 2 or 3 in the morning. We were asked to call the police and we did. We have at least 10 on record in the last eight weeks. And it's become a job for us to maintain this parking lot piece, which we don't have. And what we're saying is you have all of this room now, and it's five spots, and you built four spots that are just a few away. Why can't we repurpose it, move it over a bit? We're open to ideas. and we would like to work with you, but we would like to have a presence down there because that part of Cherry Grove is really forgotten on Heritage Drive. We're about 50 houses, and the 12 houses on my side of the street on the water side, we all live there permanently. I only know of two houses that don't live there permanently. and you know we need more of a presence and we have a lot of people that could use some help down there and it's just we feel like we're being forgotten and we don't see the need for this parking lot we have a light that shines in our window like we're at you know Wrigley Field I don't open my kitchen window because there are fumes coming in and trucks are super loud. If you ever had one right outside in your driveway, you know when someone starts their engine, you're alert to it. Well, try hearing that at 2 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 6 o'clock in the morning. The hours are supposed to be 7 o'clock to 8 o'clock, and that's just not the case. We need help. We need help with this situation.

Okay, thank you. And we have staff looking into this, and we'll be back in touch with you. Have you sent an email? I know several people have been out there. Have you sent an email in about this? Okay, please send us an email.

And did you get the album?

Yeah, the album.

You guys have the album.

Okay, we're going to give that back to you. You can keep it for a while. Okay, that's great. Thank you.

Because I spent a lot of time annotating that album. Thank you. I'm trying to give you a picture of it.

I glanced through it, so I'd like to look through it more thoroughly. But thank you so much. We'll be back in touch with you. Thank you. Are there any other comments from the public?

i'm patricia jenkins 928 south ocean boulevard and our police chief has already brought this up but i just want to say that i have been in this area since 1983 we've had property and the week in june that we're talking about june 20th through the 26th I've never seen anything like that in my life. So I do hope that that will be addressed before next year because that was a scary week living right there when 60 people around your house was quite frightening i understand you know i'm proud of north myrtle beach i like to say i live in north myrtle beach but that week i was not very proud of it but the police did come when we called one night because we were afraid and they did come so thank you thank you are there any other comments about the public

Hearing none, I will need a motion to adjourn the meeting.

A motion to go into executive session.

Oh, yeah. That's right. I'm sorry. We're going to go. We'll need a motion to go back into executive session. Then we'll come back out after that.

Second.

There's a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you all for being here. So council met in executive session and no votes were taken. I'll need a motion to adjourn.

Motion.

Is there a second? Second. All in favor say aye. Aye.