Town Council - Regular Meeting

This conference will now be recorded.

All right, it is now 6 p.m. It is my distinct honor and privilege to call to order the regular council meeting of July 28, 2026 for the town of Surfside Beach. Please stand as we begin with an invocation offered by Pastor Tate Park of Surfside United Methodist Church.

Let us pray. Gracious God, we gather together as neighbors and leaders committed to serving the best interest of our community. In this time together, we ask for your presence to guide our thoughts, our words, our action. May this meeting be a space of mutual respect where diverse voices are heard and every concern is weighed with care. Inspire in us a spirit of cooperation and a deep sense of responsibility for the people we represent. Help us to make decisions that promote fairness, strengthen our town, and reflect the dignity of every person. May we move forward not only with intention, but with humility, compassion, and hope. We are grateful for the opportunity to serve. May all that we do here today bring benefit to our community and honor to our shared purposes. In your name we pray. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right, thank you very much. Number four week. To get into the agenda, I just want to make a couple little announcements at the top of the agenda. It says the next council meeting will be held Monday, August 10th, instead of Tuesday. And that's due to the Senate primary. And there's at least 10 candidates running. So the likelihood that anyone will garner more than 50% of the vote on the first try is unlikely. So that means the next meeting will also be held on a Monday because the runoff is two weeks later. I also want to say that I have it on good authority that we have a council member with a birthday today, Mr. John Hyatt. Thank you. Happy birthday, John. You got squealers in town. It's the double shell. I wasn't going to say it. I wasn't sure. But congratulations to you. Thank you. a little more seriously, this is going to be a long meeting. So I'm going to suggest to all the communications report people, hit the highlights. And to all of us, make your comments on point. Let's try to get through this. We've got a lot to cover today. So with that, we'll move into item number three, motions related to the agenda. Nobody here, none. So I'll look for minutes approval. Mr. Mayor?

Yes, hi. I will move that we approve the meeting minutes from Tuesday, July 14th.

Second.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. Motion carries and meeting minutes are approved. We'll now go to public comments on items related to the agenda.

Carolyn Cradley, 512 13th Avenue North. Good evening, everyone. I just want to talk about the job description issue that was addressed at the last meeting. I do not think the full intent of what you all intended carried through to the new version of the job descriptions for the events and communication manager and the tourism coordinator position. I had understood listening to the meeting, your last meeting, that the intent was to make it so that the manager position did not have a lesser education level than the coordinator position. And right now, with the change, it does. because it says in the manager position the education requirement is preferred, but it doesn't say that with regard to the coordinator position. So the coordinator position has a higher level of education. And I think if you look back at the recording from the last meeting at about minute 38, you will see that the discussion was with regard to both positions and not having the manager position, which was, I guess, the supervisory position to the other position, to not have a higher level of education. But when the motion got described, I think it got cut off somewhat, and so it didn't carry through to get the as preferred or preferred language about the education. added to the description for the coordinator then I would also add I hate looking at our agenda and seeing Tabitha not listed as a director make her a director thank you thank you any other public comments

All right, we're going to move on then. We are now in the communications items and we're going to start with the administrator report. Mr. Benson.

Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor and Council have my report. Are there any questions?

Who said you weren't in Jordan? I said hit the highlights.

He did say hit the highlights. A couple items. The Hampton Inn and Suites, as you know, has started clearing the property adjacent to Johnny D's. began on July 15th. It is a three-story hotel, 127 guest rooms, public spaces, indoor swimming pool, outdoor patio, and approximately $18 to $22 million in investment. The construction period is approximately 16 to 20 months, depending on weather events, and a groundbreaking is scheduled for tomorrow the 29th at 1 p.m. with the owner, public officials, and invited guests. Today, I sent you, counsel, an email regarding the courthouse council chamber project. The bids were due on Thursday, July the 30th. However, they've been postponed and rescheduled to August the 11th, same time, 1 p.m. at Town Hall. In my understanding, there's several inquiries from contractors regarding this project. There's been approximately four addendums that have been sent out to the contractors. and they didn't feel like they had enough time to get the pricing for this project in two days. So it's been rescheduled for in two weeks. The Martin Field Master Plan is on the agenda for your consideration. And with council's consent, staff will begin to organize and schedule public input meetings in the near future with multiple new engineers. And the purchase of the land that's adjacent to the public works complex. We received the title work and survey a week ago And the next step is to set the closing date with the closing attorney. And also in your packet is human resources report. That's it, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Questions, comments?

Mr. Mayor. Mr. Hyatt. I have a couple questions. One is on the personnel report, human resources report. Has risk management been handled by that department?

It's a function of. in the resources. Yes, sir.

Would it be possible to maybe start getting something current regarding risk management that's being conducted by the department?

Because we conduct quarterly meetings.

Yes, sir.

Okay. Thank you. Sorry.

I didn't know anything was going on. Mr. Walts, just a quick question, Jerry. I'm just curious. seeing Moulton and Mink throughout. I see that we go to them quite often to take care of business for us. And later on, they're in our agenda. Is there a reason why we always go with that?

Yes, sir. So a couple of years ago, what localities do is they do an on-call RFP. Which is whenever we need engineer services, they went through our process and they became our engineers. So whenever we need them, they're on call for us. And it went through the RFP process and yes, you'll see them in multiple places. Sidewalks, master plan, whatever John needs them for.

Okay. And next year I'll be putting that RFP out again. Because about every five years you do that.

That was my next question. Is it

there ever an opportunity that we look at that and make sure that every five years they're the best option for our town yeah yeah okay it's it's it's an rfq really it reflects the qualifications right prices are part of the deal we look at what they've done types of work we need an all-around civil engineer that offers a full suite of services okay and then we take advantage of them during that term period and then we put it out again next year for an rfq again then we'll take all of those into consideration. We got proposals last time, nothing for a longer meeting. We got proposals from a lot of out-of-town firms as well. We want somebody local. We can get down here in just a half an hour. We don't want somebody coming from Charlotte. So there's been lots of reasons why they're on call. They used to be DDC engineers, as some people might remember, but they merged with a nationwide company called Boatman May, and they offer more services now. such as the master planning of the park, which we wouldn't have been able to get from them in the past.

So we do a five-year contract with them?

Yeah. Okay. It's just about over though.

Okay.

Very soon. Okay. Ms. Shaw. As far as the HR report, it says June.

Yes, June's report.

Oh, is that because we have filled the business license?

Yes. So that's June's report. And when Chief Mikkel gets up, I think we've also filled the four police officers as well. Okay. For conditional offers.

Mr. Chairman. Mr. Coleman. Yeah, I want to go back to that, you know, broken... both of them engineers. Is that the best way to do it? You get a request for a qualification and they get all the jobs, they can name any price. I mean, it doesn't seem like it's good business sense to have. I get an emergency, boom, you have to call them up. But this is a long, long drawn out ordeal for council changes, for the Do they have the same thing? They have architects, but no, I'm saying do they have that same kind of contract?

No, just for that one job. So Bolton has it.

And it's in our contract with Bolton to make that we can bid out other projects as we see fit.

So they're not automatic. For most of the stuff that we did with them, like stormwater items and drainage projects and street paving and things like that, they're all around civil engineers.

I'm going to ask some specific questions when we get to these programs, so I think if you're okay, we can... Yeah, I understand why we're doing it.

Most every city does that. If we had something that was an emergency, yeah, we'd reach out to them. We need this done right away. Well, we have time to do stuff. Why aren't we requesting RFPs for this kind of work? $50,000, $59,000. And we just keep writing checks to people without finding out if that's the best way to do it. It's the easiest way to do it, probably. That's all. Yes, sir.

Okay. And then I have one question here about this. Are we satisfied with the quality of the RFP, the guidance we got from Creech for addendums? Sounds a little concerning.

Typically there's more addendums. It's based on questions from the contractors that are doing the bidding. Okay. So what they are, addendums are a clarification of what they're asking for. And the addendums are sent out to everybody on the list that plans to bid.

And I get that. I just, you know, I mean, For enough questions that require four addendums, I just wonder about the quality of the initial RFP, you know, the bid request that went out. Right. And did it not sufficiently cover? I mean, I don't want to get into detail of what the four addendums are, but I think we should know them.

And they all were separate. Yes, sir. I get it.

Okay. All right. I'll leave it at that at this point. Anybody else? All right, then we'll move on to the fire department report. Chief Nelson.

Good evening. I'd like to first say we appreciate you passing the budget. We started in the process of procurement. We've met with different sales teams for some of the gear we've been looking for. The current vendors we've had, we've had some issues where stuff hasn't been ordered correctly and going in that direction. We've found a new vendor who's a couple hundred dollars cheaper as well as gives us some breathability in the gear and it's p fast free which means we're not going to be developing cancer and stuff like that so that's a pretty good thing we're pretty excited about that and that's why i leave my report all right questions comments mr mayor michelle i was happy to see this discussion about an additional ambulance um did you get positive I'll be honest, we haven't heard any feedback yet. I saw Chief Tanner about a week and a half ago, and he said that Ms. Hardwick was out of town and that she should be back and shortly be getting back with us. So I haven't heard anything.

But the purpose of this is to have it permanent?

So the goal is that when Prestwick Station opens, they were supposed to be moving that ambulance down there. Myself and Mr. Vinson went there to meet with him to assess that this ambulance is very busy, and from my time being in the fire service, I've never seen the Myrtle Beach Fire or Myrtle Beach Ambulance, which is still Horry County's 36th coming down on this area, but it's down here consistently, and that I feel that there needs to be a second ambulance put back in this area. And with them moving or opening the Prestwick Station, I would like to still see an ambulance here, which would give us additional ambulance in this south end.

Good luck with that. Yeah, but thanks for going for it. Mr. Coleman. Do you have any word on when Presswick? I do not.

They haven't started building. There's a sign there. Yeah, that's all I've seen is the sign.

I believe they said it was delayed by a year. So it was supposed to start next year. It's delayed even further.

Yeah, probably 10 years.

Mr. McElroy.

Sorry.

Mr. Laud. Yeah, just a quick question on the false alarms. I noticed that there was a couple of properties that had multiple false alarms. So I was kind of wondering, how do we handle repeats? And then are you tracking repeats over time? Yes, sir.

So basically within a 24-hour period, you get a freebie. You get acknowledged at once. We give you 24 hours to get the system fixed. If you get three false alarms within a year's period, then we start charging you $200 for every false alarm after that. All right. Thanks.

Mr. Mayor. Yes, hi. Chief, I'm kind of curious about the stats for July. We had 227 calls in June, and we had 52 in July. Yet July was one of the most busiest months. So what made the positive difference? Do you have a clue?

I do. It's just the way summer months are busier than anything else. Like I said in my report, we had the lightning strikes. And during that time period, I think we ran six calls just here alone. The county was running, we were in calls for the county as well because they were out running after lightning strikes and one of those came back with a little bit of smoke in the attic and that was it. Luckily, nothing significant.

Another question I have is, or a comment, under number of incidents, you had 99, which if I have this right, is around 80% of our calls were in town. I'd like to point that out to people that are saying that we don't have that many calls in town. And last thing I'd like to say is I see the volunteer stats and I really appreciate the volunteers helping us out.

They do a great job.

I appreciate it. One point I'll make is that July's not over yet. And I don't know exactly when you wrote this, but probably only halfway. Yeah. So you were in July when you wrote it. I mean, I'm sure there's more sense. I'll just leave it at that point. Any others? All right, we'll now move into communications and events report. Mrs. Mull.

Good evening, everyone. Okay, so quick bullets. Facebook followers, we continue to climb on our followers, which is really exciting. A couple of bullets that I want to hit on is our Visit Surfside Beach website has launched. It launched on July 21st. Um, we are still going through, um, editing that site and I just wanted to thank the business committee. Thank you, Tom and your team, uh, for just perusing through that to help me figure out what still is viable on that site or what do we need to add to it? So that's pretty cool. Um, the event summary for the 4th of July. Wow. I had no idea we would have that kind of turnout for the golf cart parade. Um, I was worried for an entire year. And it was done very well, very well attended. I couldn't even believe that for a Saturday check-in, check-out date. So I was really excited. We did a little spin with the 250 fam jam this year from 12 to 3. It was super hot. We were doing a start, stop, continue with our team to kind of figure out where we're going to go from there. Next year's sequence of events, we're already starting that because it's on a Sunday in 2027. So just a little blurry starter for me. And then our T-shirt sales, the 250 shirts did $5,500 in sales. I can't even imagine that. It was bigger than I ever thought of. And just to give you a little comparison, our regular T-shirts only gained us $578. during that 12 to 30. And if any of you missed the Salute from the Shore flyover, wow, just look on social media. You'll see all the good things. But Salute from the Shore, their Facebook page, they have all the captions there. So it was really spectacular. Upcoming events, we continue the music in the Memorial Park. The hula and fire dancer shows continue through August the 10th. The family game night continues through the 29th. Keep it in mind that the family game night is the new add to the pier. Thursdays is Crafter's Cove, and then the big end of summer fireworks festival, 5 to 9 on September the 6th. I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Mr. Mayor. Ms. Shaw. The July golf cart parade, as always, was good, well organized. The only question I had was, I saw a lot of political signs. I counted at least four carts that had political signs. That doesn't bother me, whatever. But especially for little kids, because they don't know what they're looking at. Thank God, they're blessed. But I didn't like the water. They were shooting water and a couple of young kids got hit. So I thought that was another thing that was a no-no in our town.

Yeah, it clearly states no water. So thank you for that. I had no idea. Yeah. Thank you so much. Noted.

Mr. Mayor, you done? Yes.

No, that's fine.

I just wanted to ask, I'm just curious, because this was a unique print for the t-shirts.

Yes.

Okay. You did a special order just for, you know, do you recall off the top of your head what your cost was?

So I could give that information for you, like cost versus sales? Oh, yeah. I'd like to know what we actually got. I can definitely give it to you.

Thank you.

Yeah. It was good, though. I mean, I know we had a positive return.

I'm sure. I'm just looking to know how big.

Yeah. Thank you.

You're welcome. Mr. Staley.

I'd like to shout out. about this church, how great a job they did for the state and the Scott Park Prairie. We had people on hand to help line up and get everything straightened out. So shout out to them too for doing that.

Thank you. They have been great partners to us. And of course, KSBB, PD, Fire Department, Public Works, we just can't do it without each other. So thank you for that.

I got one question. The family game night, so that's a new event. What's the feedback on that?

So there's a test, right? I always do a test before I do anything. It has not went out to the news media or anything like that. It's been all social. But on our website, it's Ed Venture coupled with DJ Louie, who did the DJ at the 4th of July golf cart parade. So we're doing a start-stop-continue meeting And that's going to be coming after the Aloha end of season for that game night. Sometimes it's really strong. Sometimes it's not so strong. So we're going to all put our heads together and figure out what's truly working. I know karaoke, people love that. I was up there one Wednesday night and had a lot of kids singing karaoke. So it was interesting. I'm learning songs I've never even knew before. It's a hit or miss, so that's the way I see it right now, but I don't want to give you information until I have that start shopping thing.

Fair enough, okay. That's all I have. Others? Thank you, Mrs. Mull. Thank you. We will move into Public Works, Director Adair.

Good evening, Mayor, the Council, and citizens. The month of June on our sanitation division I'll note that the new sanitation rates approved by council in this year's budget Will be in effect in effect for the month of July appearing on the consumers August 1st water bill Now streets and drainage division our crews continue to inspect and maintain drainageways throughout town for capacity and function and we're containing this space this is a catch basis on schedule as necessary and a cruise from the Great Lakes dredge and dock under the contract of the Army Corps of Engineers. They mobilized throughout the town in July, and they're in the north of us now, heading towards the state park, but the pipe is still on our beach. And they'll be pumping sand into mid-August up there, and then on the south end of Georgetown, below the Garden City Pier after that. This federal project is necessary to protect this important asset from storms. In our grounders division, we'll say that our crews have been spraying the town lakes for aquatic growth, accelerated by the warmer weather and lack of rain. In our fleet maintenance division, our mechanics completed 83 repairs in June, as well as 16 vehicles received preventive maintenance. If anybody has any particular questions, I'll be happy to answer them at this time.

Yes, ma'am. Mr. Stamey. John, did you ever find out why they skipped the five blocks that put the sand out?

Well, yes, as I reported, the contractor, the importance of that when it happened, that they were jumping right from third south to fifth north and tipping that section because it was already at target elevation. They have target profiles, which is a cross-section of beach, every 500 feet. I was telling one of the citizens earlier that, don't forget, this project was authorized back in the 90s, and they're still using the same target elevation. And I've been told with the last re-nourishment that, as I said, can't we go a little higher? And basically they have to use the same numbers, otherwise they have to go back to Congress for a whole new federal project authorization. So these have all been extensions of the existing. That's why they have certain targets that they're looking for. So every about 500 feet, they have a target profile from the dunes down into the water. I don't know exactly how far, but it's into the water. And as long as they're at that target elevation, that particular segment, they go on to the next one and they keep moving down the beach. Now, supposedly, that section from 3rd South to 5th North was already at its target elevation. So there was no need to add any additional sand to it. So they were moving right up to 5th North. They're going to continue up North. I do have an email in. today to the Army Corps of Engineers, the project manager over this, to inquire as to if that's appropriate and why, and explain that to me a little bit deeper than what I got from the contractor. And when I get a response back, I'll share that with everybody. But I can't imagine that knowing that they're checking behind them, the surveyors, that they're gonna skip anything. This is a worldwide company, they're not gonna come back and do double work. So I'm pretty confident that they're gonna say it's a target elevation. are they going to put up fences on there and they're going to go back are we going to have them put up or do you have to do that they come in after the feature nourishment is done they come back with a separate subcontractor working for them and they put the same fence on thanks john your mr mayor um just the one first question um to go off of the fence question yes is that when the new signs come up Keep off the doom sign? Right, yeah. Once the fence is up, we'll install the signs. I already have them in my office.

My other question is, when we do get rain around here, it seems like it's a downpour, and Ms. Dolores that lives on Pine showed me pictures, and she had water all the way up to her steps. Is there anything we can do for Pine? I mean, it's not even a hurricane. It's a downpour of rain that comes. And they have, it's just like a lake out there. And is there anything we can do for that?

If you don't mind, I think that is the exact same storm we talked about that caused the drainage around 3rd and 4th. Oh, yeah.

And on Pines, the house that she's speaking of, the problem is usually in their backyard. It's come up many times over the years. We don't really. water out it's a way for it to settle in but the one uh that you'll be getting at the next council meeting i'm going to ask for some money to dredge out a big section of lower myrtle basin floral basin because it's built some of those larger canals need to be cleaned out with a big machine which we don't have and so i'll be bringing you guys a proposal to approve on an emergency basis that's cleaning up this watershed uh putting out the some of the larger canals running through below fourth south over there where it never floods.

That specific storm, I remember, hit right at high tide in the middle of the afternoon. I was sitting at town hall. We had a three-hour meeting there, and I just listened to that going on. It was like six inches in about two hours, and it wasn't even forecast.

If you get that much rain in a short period of time, generally speaking, you know, No municipal system can handle that much rain in that short time. It takes time for it to go out, especially at high tide. Most municipal systems are designed to like a 25-year storm event. We couldn't afford to design it to like a 100-year storm event. There's just not enough infrastructure when you put it in the ramp and you still have flooding. So generally we tell people if it's flooding someplace where it never flooded before, that's something I really key in on. If it's flooding, if it hasn't dissipated in 24 hours, let's take a look at why. We're lucky that our soils are sandy soils here, and it takes it pretty quickly into the ground. And then the drainage system has time to catch up and do what it has to do. I saw a post on Facebook the other day from the city of Myrtle Beach. With rain we had last Thursday or Friday, they had like a foot of water in the intersection of Joe White Avenue and 17 Business. And they showed a before and after picture, like three hours later, it was almost gone. And they said, please allow 72 hours. They say that they tell their public, you know, before you call us, you know, because the system needs time to catch up. So it's very common here, close to the beach, to get those gully washers.

Okay. And I'm sorry to interrupt, but I just, I spoke with Mr. Loris too, and I knew it was that same store, but I get it. We are going, yeah, we're going a little bit.

Okay. But I just want to say, doesn't get to finish. Go ahead. It was not in her backyard. I have pictures here of the road. Okay. And every time it rains, this is what happens.

I'll answer that more directly. In that north side drainage project that we did the phase two of last year, pine was in the phase three. If we ever do a phase three, pine will be in that next phase.

John, what can I do so you're doing? What canals did you say you're going to dig out?

Basically, we have a large artery which runs, it takes most of the floral watershed from like, let's say, 8th South by the mini golf place, all that water from Sandy Laney. It comes under the highway and it winds up coming down 5th and 4th South and it goes under the road at Merle Drive. And Mr. Anusha and some of his neighbors brought it to our attention that they had, their road was over top of the border at the intersection. That rain we had a couple of weeks ago, I think on the 7th of July, if I'm not mistaken. And that doesn't usually happen that far upstream. So we have to clean out, we surveyed the whole watershed going down, it goes all the way to Holly Lake on 2nd North. And all those big canals need to be cleaned out because the sediment has built up to a point where it needs to be to hopefully get approval for it to have that work done. All right.

With that, we should probably wait until next meeting to discuss. That's fine. And I contributed to it. So we'll take that responsibility.

Okay.

Is anybody else? Mr. Coleman first.

I see that 16 North for the papers. Great job. We have any more accesses from the

Well, we have two more in this year's budget starting in July. We've put together from three different sources. If you remember the budget process, we have about 70, $72,000. I was, there should be like two done and it's going to be fourth North. And I believe if I'm not mistaken, ninth South on the next two.

Okay.

Thank you. Yes, sir.

All right. Anymore on the report. And we really shouldn't be talking about high drive anymore.

I mean, I mean, that's part of the drainage system.

But we really weren't doing a whole lot of drainage talk. We just kind of got into that. Go ahead and ask a quick question.

John, I've talked to you before about this timescreen. This ain't the first time it's happened. But on that, saying that, didn't you say that when we done the drainage on the other side, we just want to get that problem out? Well, we have another gentleman who is right here, right here, that goes almost up into his house. And this has been going on for years. And you said when we built this new ground that we just finished, it was going to have that problem.

But it doesn't seem to have that problem. Yeah, well, some of the water from the poplar side is going that way in a second now. So it helps somewhat. But with the five-inch rain in a short period of time, putting the line down fine is going to help much more than that.

Okay. All right. With that, we will move on. Thank you, Director Adair. We'll move into Police Department. Chief Nichols.

Good evening, all. Let's get right into it. Thank you. Here to date, our calls for service are 5,194. Self-initiated would be 1,904 of those. In June, we wrote 80 citations, eight ordered citations and 260 warnings. We made 25 total arrests. You can see the breakdown of those arrests. get down in the personnel actions we just have a little bit of activity on that in june uh we have a communications officer who is completing her training is working independently uh we have another one that's finishing up her training and she should be within a month she should be on her own and we also offered a conditional offer to the part-time communications officer position so all of our dispatch positions are filled we did have an officer resign but we also gave up four conditional officers to fill all four So we currently have no vacancies anywhere in the department, actually. Officer Oliveira was promoted to corporal, and Officer Wasserman was promoted to police officer first class. Some notable events. We renewed our contract with Axon for Taser. Part of that renewal was upgraded to the Taser 10, which has some technology advances as well. That means some training advantages.

and we also responded with the fire department to the structure fire and it was deemed that it was an intentional fire and someone in one of the offenders was charged the offender was charged with arson questions one quick one um so under the golf cart activity yes i i just may have been asked at a prior meeting did i apologize um it indicates that there was one nighttime accident do you recall the circumstances or why that happened i don't

we've had one nighttime accident out of all my accidents some year date one time i was just going to follow up with we don't think that it being at night was i think that's what i'm trying to do i'd have to read the accident report see if that was contributing factor i don't know i'm not going to get details on it all right um i think that's it

Mr. Mayor. Mr. Hyatt. I have a quick question. On the ordinance citations, are any of them for feeding wildlife?

I don't believe any of those in June were for feeding wildlife.

All right. With that, we will thank you, Chief Mickel. We'll move on to Director Broderick and the planning, building, and zoning people.

Thank you, mayor and members of council. I'll keep my remarks short this evening because following me, I invited a speaker here to discuss a web water leak with you. I don't know if you've had questions on that in the past couple of weeks, so I'll keep my remarks short. Tomorrow night, I hate to do this to you, but we're having a workshop on the tree ordinance. I know we're gonna go late tonight. Hopefully the tree protection ordinance workshop tomorrow night is a little shorter. The Planning Commission has been studying a couple of things that I wanted to make you aware of. One of them is looking for additional patrols for the location of cell storage and mini storage on the west side of Highway 17. And we've been receiving a number of, just an unusual number of inquiries in the department recently from gas stations. is to locate gas stations. Planning Commission is looking at that because right now, under the current ordinance, we allow gas stations by right. And the Planning Commission is looking at adding some conditions to the placement of gas stations in the future. So be aware of that coming down the pipe. And one of the things that I want to ask you all is that one of you emailed me and asked if would be possible for us to add an additional sheet to our report that gives you the addresses of where we're allowing where we're driving building permits and i know as council members you get calls all the time like something's going on and didn't like to know where the addresses are would that be something that would be helpful to all of you for us to add addresses to the permits that we're giving you we'll give you a sheet that just tells you how many permits i don't know how helpful that is to you i think Possibly more helpful would be that we would give you a list every month of where building permits are being drawn from Sure, you're worried.

Well, let's let's say why don't you finish?

Then we'll discuss. Yeah, and just so you know the Zoning Board of Appeals is meeting on August 20th to hear an appeal of my decision to Permit a certain use in the in the R3 zone With that, I'll stop. All right. And I'll stop. Yeah.

Now we'll go into any discussion.

Okay.

Mr.

Stave, you got that first.

My question is, can we make these people post these permits outside where you can ride by and see the permit, whether it's up there? I know that we're supposed to do it now. Can we get it to the point where we can use it? make people do this because right now you can ride by places and you don't have a clue whether they're doing what you're supposed to be doing or at least if they had a permit posted out there you'd know that they've done one thing right whether they have absolutely that that is that i've heard a big thing about the citizens can just ride by and say make it visible we it's not good in the truck or somewhere that you can't see. I mean, that's where I'm at on this deal.

I don't put a nail on the oak tree to post it there. I'll be fine. There you go. I'm fine with that.

Whatever it is, I'll put it on the pine tree. I don't care, but as long as I can see it, I'd be happy to absolutely. I'm going to go on Mr. Hyde.

That's right, Mr. Hyde. Are you suggesting that you might want to give us a list? We've had 671 permits so far, and we'd have a list of all 671. I don't think I want that list.

We can draw that database if you need that. And any time any of you ever have a question about any address, please don't hesitate to call us. I know that giving you the list was a bit of a shot overkill, but just know we have the database that would give us . Thank you.

You know, getting back to Mr. Stanley's comment about being able to see it, I know that we were told to place our permits, we did all this extensive work on our home in the front window, but now is that Is that now giving every resident the right to come onto my property, onto my front porch so they can read it? Absolutely.

That's what I want to get to. I do not want any of you trespassing on anybody else's property.

It's not my job to enforce anyways.

We will pin it to my tree or we'll have them put a post in the ground. But please do not walk out on private property.

Thank you. I want that for the record. And then it's law. So the question is, do we want every one of these? Probably not. But I would be interested in like new builds.

You know, in other words, you know, a little accessory. Right.

Is there a way to cut the data to where it's it's I mean, I know one of the things that hurt it is there was a discussion. I know an email discussion we've been having over buildings over there. So across the street.

New builds.

Yeah.

So, I mean, new builds are all commercial, all builds, all residential builds as well.

Because I can parse the information. Maybe to start and then, you know, I mean, I don't know what I don't know, I guess is the thing. So I wouldn't necessarily be able to tell you specifically what I do want until I kind of see what's there. So, but I think that would be helpful because we do seem to get a lot of questions about some of the, commercial ones for sure. But even some of the houses, there's questions about some of that. When they're knocking a house down in a lot and you put the three up and all the trees are gone and all that. Absolutely.

I know he offered information, but that's not on the report.

Okay. I know. I don't want to get it to Stafford. All right. I will come back to you with that as an item. Okay.

Thank you. Anything else for Director Broder? Thank you, Ms. Medina. All right. Thank you, Director Broder. We will now move into the finance report. Now, we've got finance report and cash handling policy, and I'm going to treat these as two separate items. So please just do the finance report. Everybody can comment on that. Then we'll get specifically into cash handling policy, and we'll get the two speaking terms again.

Okay, to keep it short, remember that these numbers in front of you for June are not the final numbers for June. are still going through the audit the audit continues until about october so i just want you to keep that in mind these numbers will be changing in fact they've already changed since i've done this report um so just to highlight some of the major things um we ended up the year with 7.59 million in property taxes um we had 34 new business account license accounts opened one of the things that changed on here I say accommodations tax revenue was expected in August well we got it we did make budget in fact it's a little bit up from last year so we need to keep up the good work of bringing in horses town then on the capital project side we did payment in this week last week last Friday or $415,000. Parking was $587,000 is where we are. And I believe I forgot to write that one down, but we did get our last parking lot. 587 is where we were at for revenue and expenditures were 195. On the peer was 226,000. For on the LGIP, the interest rate tends to go up. It's going up slightly. We're at 3.9 now. During the month of June, of course, we are preparing for a fiscal year end, getting the budget in the system, and working on all the audit information, which we'll be continuing to do for the next three, four months. So, also, we work on this cash handling policy, which we'll go into, but I just want to explain that this is an internal policy. This is our standard operating procedures. This is what we do every day. So we'll get into that more. Also at the beginning of the meeting, it was mentioned about our business license official. So we did hire a business license official, and that's Jay Falkenberry, and he's right here.

Hey, Jay. Welcome. Welcome to Surfside. Thank you.

And he should be filling the finance assistant in mid-August.

All right, any discussion on the finance report?

Yeah, I've got one. So the peer fund, and I apologize because these may be stupid questions, but I'm kind of good at those. In any event, so I guess my question is, in terms of what is categorized as peer revenue, is that just rental, rents paid? What constitutes that?

It's rentals. it is kiosks it's weddings it's events um coin binocular machines um fishing feet here parking fishing fees um miscellaneous other miscellaneous merchandise okay so things like h tax money from you know

for what the restaurants are paying, et cetera. That's just captured under.

We have a portion of hospitality and local aid tax that helps support the peer fund. So there's money being transferred in to the peer fund.

I think you're asking if that is set aside for regular age tax. Yeah, I mean, I guess the question is, so surf diner, whistling duck, whatever, I mean, obviously, I know there's age tax money that goes into everybody's bill. Is that money captured under the break?

Just the normal town under hospitality.

So we don't have a specific ideas of what those are generating. It just goes into the larger fund.

Correct.

I figured that I just not sure. Thanks.

Any others? All right, so why don't you just roll right into the cash handling policy, please.

So the cash handling policy, like I said, is an internal RSOP, which means operating procedures. This is a fluid policy that we look at at least yearly to update. The only major change that we have in what we're going to do is our ACH area. We are not going to allow any DCHs over 200,000 unless we have some kind of extensive verification and approval through the administrator, myself, partner head. We want all major vendors to sign a contract that has including the following, we want the scope of work, the dates of the work, we want them to create a security phase or some kind of PIN code So when we call them for verification, they will have to give us PIN code or they'll have to give us a password. Also, when they sign that contract, they'll have to acknowledge how they want to be paid. They don't really want to allow that to change. after that contract is started. So anything changes like that would have to be come to us in writing and come to us with original signatures. And of course we do that whole verification process with their PIN code or their password. Of course, no ACH withdrawals will be completed until we hear that we verified everything and we heard that password and PIN code to get the verbal authorization. And we may request the department head or submitting department to participate in such a call. Approvers must verify all documents, voided checks, ACH forms, and other paperwork to make sure they're legitimate and sign off that they have done so before any approval on ACH. All right.

Any questions, comments, discussion on this?

Mr. Stamey. With this being done, how many of these policies was in effect prior to this new document? Is it basically what we were going through before Or is this something new that's all come about?

This is something we pulled out of our other internal control policies. So we pulled it out separately. So we have an internal control memo that talks about everything. And then we have, this is just for cash handling.

Just for cash handling.

Correct.

Mr. Coleman. Is this a proposal?

No, this is just a, this is our SOP, basically, for my department.

Okay, because, like, theft or loss, it's being reported to the finance director. It should also be reported to the administrator. That's throughout the whole thing. There's a lot of different things that could have been done even better. I'm not saying it's bad, it's just that like you have down that or Employees access the cash bunch of limited to ensure limited to but doesn't say what limit so how many who? some page to internal control In the last one more employees with access to cash funds and limited to your internal control How many people's are limited to and to who is it limited to? I don't want to go on and on. I don't want to spend all night long here with this. Shortages and overages, somebody tracked and reported to the finance director, but also the administration. And that's throughout the whole thing. I don't know if the same cards were in there for the last one, but they weren't. The administration didn't know about these things.

And the administrator does. I would then report it to the administrator. This is what the people are supposed to do first, to me. I'm trying to find what you're talking about, the first one.

First one, second page, almost all the way back to the bottom, the number of employees with access to cash funds shall have a limit to ensure internal control.

Start from the bottom in section four. Start both from the bottom.

I mean, that's saying the number of employees that have access to cash is limited. We want to limit it so we ensure internal control. So that means only maybe one person in another department could have access. Really, we don't have any other departments really taking cash except for court and, of course, events. We do those special events. Every once in a while they may get some fines or checks in that come into the police department and they bring them over to us immediately, same with fire. Usually donations, anything like that will go through our front desk. So we have very limited other departments that handle that.

This is just a guide for people who want to understand the practice of what's going to happen. I mean, you say that they have to report it to you, but it doesn't say anywhere you have to report it to anybody else. It just stops at you.

Again, this is a fluid standard operating procedure. I can't have an administrator on every single one. In fact, I had already gone through and started making other changes on this.

And do we have to vote on this?

No.

No, this is just... We can't vote on it.

It's communications. No, no, no.

I'm not saying now.

Okay, okay.

This is just our SOP. The policy, the council have to vote on it to approve their SOP. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I don't know if we do or we don't, but... No. I'm sure.

Well, I mean, you don't approve SOPs for the police department of the fire department.

Right.

Well, there's an item on the agenda I think we're going to get more in depth in, and that might be a policy that you want to approve, which will relate to this cash advancement policy.

Well, I'm going to go on. I had asked for this to be at least a discussion item so we could make motions, because I envisioned this happening. I also won't go through everything, but I see a lot of shoulds that I think should be shalls.

Yes, I saw that too. I should say must. Must or shall, yeah.

I see reconciliations will be conducted to regular review. I think that's got to be defined what regular is, if it's monthly, six months, annually.

There was something about... Policy review is every year.

Okay. It's regular. Well, this isn't the policy. This is... Reconciliations.

Reconciliations are done daily and monthly.

Then I think it should say daily and monthly instead of regularly. Cash overages and shortages over $20 as well as known circumstances shall be documented. Well, what happens if it's 10 or 15? You still get it documented, right? Right.

This is just something that needs to be really investigated if it's $20. Okay.

Section 9, change funds when no longer needed for the purpose. Funds shall be given to the finance department as soon as possible. Next business day. Next, then that's what I should say. So, yeah, and then, I mean, this is really minor, but Section 14, check payments, check request purchase under $5,000 must be this, over $5,000 must be that.

I need to change that to $5,000 more.

Yeah, I mean, like I said, we, and there's a few more shoulds and extensive verification you mentioned it then you said what that meant that's got to be documented in here too i think um you know when you said for an ach payment so i just you know i'd like to see i mean we are hearing all kinds of stuff since this event and i mean we're taking a lot of heat for it and you know i i think council has oversight of uh responsibility with these kind of things. No, I don't want to mark up SOPs, but just like we're approving job descriptions, we're not going to sit there and say, this person needs to do this and that. But from the oversight perspective to identify educational levels, I think this is commensurate in my opinion. So I would like to see this brought back. And honestly, I'd like to see it brought back as a discussion or even a business item, because this is a sensitive issue in today's climate.

I've done. Mr. Mayor, Mr. Law. So I've got a question. I'm not sure it might be more for Mr. Vincent. So does each department have an SOP?

I wouldn't say each. I don't think PB&C has one.

Okay. Should they? They should. Okay. And do we have a format, a common format for SOPs? In other words, that that if you're looking at a Surfside Beach SOP, they all kind of look the same. They all kind of have the same general language. Because my experience is that makes it easier for reviews from external sources and even internal sources. So that's more of a comment than a question. And then lastly, do you approve these? Or is it just the director that approves?

I have seen most of the SOPs with it. I had not seen any revisions that I needed to approve. Okay.

All right. So process wise, if, okay, so this approver has developed this. I'm assuming you've seen this before now. She does not necessarily have to get your concurrence or approval before it can be effective. but we actually, we don't.

We've been through this several times already.

Yes, sir.

All right.

Okay.

Thanks.

Mr. Mayor. Mr. Hyatt. Yeah, I have a few questions. Under section 13, banking services and new account policies, bullet number two says opening new or closing existing accounts must be approved by the finance director and the town administrator. Yeah. Ordinance 2-186 says all monies of the town should be deposited in a bank or depository selected by the town council. So how do we have the town administrator and the finance director opening and closing accounts when it's supposed to be done by the town council?

You've already chosen the bank that you're using. This is for Scotland 10, I think.

Okay, I answered that question. uh question number two how and when did we establish an ach it would seem that that might have fallen under the same ordinance that requires the town council to approve deposit boards um achs have been going on for since i've been here um so it was approved We were using ACHs before you arrived? Okay.

Not a lot, but yes.

That seems to run counter to what the ordinance says. It seems to me an ACH should have to be approved through town council because it's obviously a depository for funds. And if that had happened, maybe we wouldn't have had this problem.

An ACH is a payment to a vendor. We have some that are reoccurring monthly. Some people will only take ACH payments now.

I'm not arguing any of that. I'm just saying that I think town council should be approving all ACHs. Not every ACH, but the depositories that we're using for ACHs.

We're using the general fund. The cash comes out of the general fund.

and the council approves the general plan.

No, that's not what I'm saying. That's not what it says here. It says all monies of the town should be deposited in the bank or depository selected by the town council. So why have we established an ACH that wasn't established by the town council? That's what I'm trying to get at.

You mean the bank that the contractor would want? I mean, we're paying a bill. I'm not following. You're talking about depositing our money.

The next statement is, manual check shall require a signature from any two of the following, the town administrator, the finance director, the mayor, or the mayor pro temp. So what I'm trying to say is the town council set up a bank or banks for a depository of our funds, but now we're using ACHs in addition, which circumvent what we say.

These are deposits.

They're talking about payments.

ACH.

It says deposits and withdrawals under this section. I'm just wondering why we started using ACHs and how we started using them when we had direct defense to be done by check. That's my question.

Apparently it started before. Okay.

I understand. All right. I got, I think some other questions here. Number three. Oh, I would say, You talked about verifying the ACH transactions. I would suggest a written payee-payor agreement. And once it's signed by both parties, it doesn't change until a new one is signed by both parties. And I also would maybe recommend that before we make big deposits over a certain amount, which you guys get determined, that you send $1 through the ACH and see if it was received by the intended recipient before you send the whole big amount.

Yeah, that's another thing I want to add to this. I talked to the bank about that and they said, well, they can't really verify within the bank that it goes to that it's the proper person. But then, since we're going to have this code word and all of this up front, then we can call and say, OK, did this dollar go through? So that's something.

I wasn't suggesting verifying it by the bank. I was verifying it by calling the person they know at the other entity.

Right, that's what I mean. I want to have that in there too. This is the kind of form that I want a contractor to fill out for. This is for finance use. It has all the information we just talked about. So we've created some more forms for them to fill out during the process of going into a contract with the department.

All right. I assume that because of how pressing this issue is that you're going to spend a lot more time overlooking this cash handling policy before it becomes a standard operating procedure? Yes, sir. Okay, and under training, as all staff will be familiar with this cash handling policy, all staff that handles town cash should be trained on the cash handling policy. by the finance department. I would suggest adding, and training shall be repeated at least annually. All such training shall be documented in personnel files or some type of file. And I guess I realize this is an internal document, so it's not something subject to a public hearing, I would really like to see a lot more work go into this. So maybe, you know, it could be modified and checked and then brought back to council for us to look at it again. I'd appreciate that. That's all I have, Mr. Mayor.

Any others? I've got one more. Anybody else want to go first?

Just real quick. So I'm just curious, and this actually kind of fits for other um departments as well but have we looked at what other jurisdictions do in regard to some of this stuff in other words have we we actually got a lot of the wording from other places okay like we were already doing all of this but we've made it specific you know we do okay so i don't want to use to coordinate but you have reached out to others to try to yes i'm because my concern is that we're getting you're sharing best practices and You know, and there's a standard that's kind of across the board, and I want to make sure we're consistent in that.

Yeah, that's what we did here.

Okay, good. Thank you. I have another question, Mr. Hyatt.

Anybody else still want to? Go ahead, Mr. Hyatt. You, earlier in this conversation, you told Mr. Stanley that this was a revision, and now you're saying that you went to other departments and pulled out what they had. No, no, no. I'm confused.

We have taken our standard operating procedures that were in our internal control memo, pulled them out into another policy on cash handling only. So this is a newer document. This will be, this is an addition because probably we're not overkill everyone. That's my plan. Thank you.

With that, thank you, Director Grover. We will now move into our discussion items, and we'll begin with wild water and wheels update. Director Broder, and we have a guest, I understand.

Thank you, Mayor. As you know, I'll say my understanding on the history of wild water and wheels is somewhat thin. Just a lot of things were done prior to my arrival. I've invited David Schwer from Diamond Shores, the developer of the property, to make himself available to you and to any of the questions that you might have.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hello, my name is David Schwer from Diamond Shores, and to be clear, I am not the developer in this case, although I am a developer in many cases. If you don't know me, I have a long history of planning and development in Horry County. I was the planning director for Horry County for quite some time, and I was there for a very long time. So if anybody knows about planning and land use law, I've also practiced up and down the East Coast, so it's not just South Carolina. I have a long standing. Now I run a firm that is a real estate firm. I run a separate firm that's also a development firm, and a firm that does survey, design, engineering, planning, and entitlement. And we also do construction management, and have a civil construction company We are not building this one. We were just the engineers and surveyors on this project. So I think most of you are familiar about the rezoning process that we went through. We first came in with a mixed use plan with residential and commercial. We ended up with a design where all the property that was planned development, which was the original wild water and wheels, got rezoned to commercial district. Now there is one parcel that's the parcel that's currently being built on out there that has the two separate trade shop structures that are currently being built. That parcel was already zoned commercial and was not part of the same property that was Wild Water on Wheels. So it was not, even though it was operated as a parking lot for it, it was a separate parcel that had separate zoning. Also a little history about the property that's out there so that you may be familiar with or not familiar with, as Sandy Lane is on the backside, it cuts right into the middle of that project. A long time ago, Surfside actually gave up 8th Avenue, a portion of it, as well as a portion of Sandy Lane to the property developers that were out there. They did not, however, give up all of 8th Avenue. They only gave up a little strip that was about 125, 130 feet long from Cara Pines to where 8th Avenue was. For some reason back then, which was long before I got involved in this and probably long before any of you were dealing with council issues, they didn't dedicate the rest of that section of Sandy Lane to anybody. So the town quick claimed the 130 foot long section, but not the rest of it. They also quick claimed the 8th Avenue extension south piece that was there, but is no longer as part of the parking lot for the adjacent property. What that basically means is that road that actually went back to Wild Water and the little section of Sandy Lane that is adjacent to that lot that's currently being built on, actually was never given to anybody. It remained public. it was never deeded dedicated or sent to anybody so it's been there and wild water of course was maintaining it as part of their private driveway system there was even a gate on a portion of that that was saying lane however the piece where the gate actually is not actually part of their property at that time so after we went through the rezoning process and we finally got all the rezoning space where it was all zoned commercial We started working on a design master plan, and that involved basically laying out the entirety of the property and trying to determine what types of uses would be interested. Because a commercial developer doesn't go in and say, well, I'm just going to go cut this property all into these lots. What they do is they say, well, this kind of is what I'd like to do. Now let's find some people who would like to actually buy the property so we can afford to do the design, build the roads, those types of things. So along the way, we started going through the process. We located what that deal size is and uses for the properties. For instance, one of the things that we noted right away was that the current entrance into there forces everybody to take an immediate right as they're coming off of 17. That's too sharp for even a standardized pickup truck to really make, and then take a sharp left. And while we saw that that's really an issue for a lot of potential consumers, It was also a safety issue. It created a stacking problem at the signal, and it was something that did not attract businesses to want to locate there. So what we did was we started discussions with SEDOT, and we started the plan review, and we had looked at the road. So what we had proposed was basically a realignment, and so we are now aligning directly with 10th with the new proposed entrance. So currently where you make the turn off of 17 into there, Instead of making an immediate right, it'll actually be a thing of my interest where you'll be able to go straight back for over 200 feet to the backside of it. So we'll have a front section of commercial parcels that front onto the frontage road. We will remove the section of frontage road that's to the right. So where you currently come in, you take the immediate right and you head down to the dominoes or wherever. Instead of taking that immediate right, you actually have to go back behind the first row of commercial around and back up to the frontage we will remove that section of frontage road so you won't have that big weaving problem that you have with people coming out of the area where the flea market is. So we've worked that out with DOT that basically that section where they make the right coming out of the flea market remains. We have provided them an alternative connection that if they ever redevelop the flea market at the rear, that they would be able to tie into that what's called a reverse frontage road, that they would have access to the back, That reverse frontage road is also tied into the existing road that currently goes back to Lightwild Water and connects back to Sandy Lane area. That road will be improved back to current town standards. And those residents that are coming off of Sandy Lane or Carapons will be able to come through to that signal at that location. So it provides them a safe and alternative access. And at the entrance to make sure we don't have people taking a left and there might be a commercial driveway right on the right and people are trying to shoot across to get the signal, we've actually medianized that entrance the entire length that it goes all the way back to the reverse frontage road. So you won't be able to take a left out of there. You have to come back on the reverse frontage road and come out of the light so that you don't have people crossing really close to the signal odds intersection. So we started all that design process and that thought process back then. We identified multiple tenants, and anybody who's ever been in commercial real estate knows, especially if you're dealing with a national or even a regional company, you have to go through like six levels of approval. We finally identified a couple tenants that met with the requirements that we wanted, were willing to participate. We came out with a layout at the end, which we cut off the old parking lot that was already an existing parcel. We left that by its side, but we did reserve some additional radius at the intersection, the only thing that we did with that plat is we recorded a plat that was approved by the town and it was recorded to reserve the radius of that curve so that when we make the improvements, it would be safe and visible and meet all of your current requirements as opposed to, it used to be basically a 90 degree property line, which you can't do that on a curve. When you're on a corner, you've got to have at least the 20 to 25 foot radius on the property line to make sure you don't have signs and bushes and stuff like that in your sight. So we recorded that flat. We recorded it as an existing property. Didn't change anything except to reserve that corner. That was sold to a different individual to go ahead and go with her vertical construction. They have access to the parcel that comes out. The existing entrance that's there was never dedicated to the Lazarus family or anything as part of the project, even though it appeared as if it was their driveway. There is another section of Sandy Lane that was quick cleaned by the town. through the Lazarus family, and they have a deed ready to dedicate that back, which they can do at any time. However, the town, of course, would have to go through a formal acceptance process that's required by state law, which requires that any new road, you can't just say, I'm going to put it on a flat, and now it's the town's responsibility. If it was only that easy, I'd save a lot of money, but it's not. You have to go through a dedication process, and that process involves acceptance by the town. The town can do it in one or two ways. accept roads by resolution or they can pass an ordinance for every road that they accept those are your those are your two options and I don't benefit from either way those are your options on how to do it now what we have proposed is all the new roads inside they're all interconnected we provided an adjacent connection for the flea market parcel when it redevelops we connect out the sandy lane and the connection that is the current entrance would be left in its place and It's shifted away from the dominoes so that they can continue to have access. And we're providing a driveway to the rear of that building that's there so they can continue to access the rear of their property just to make sure they're good neighbors. It took a long time. So we went through, we submitted plans. The staff at that time, which was the planning director, John, and we also submitted to the state. So we submitted those, but we've got, we went and received preliminary plan approval from the Planning Commission. That plan approval allows, it's good for two years, according to your regulations, which is standard across most jurisdictions. In Horry County, they change depending where you're at. Those two years that, that basically gives us, your plan is good, but you still have to address all the technical concerns. So we had the Planning Commission approval. We submitted full civil. At that time, that was just an idea, a plan. This is how we're going to do it. As part of that, we also added two large ponds on the property, which is something that wasn't necessarily required because it was all paved over already. In order to meet stormwater requirements, however, We didn't have to do that, but we wanted, as I said, when we were doing the rezoning, if you remember, I said I was going to try to improve the stormwater situation for the neighbors that were behind it. So we've installed two very large ponds on the property, and I'm more than happy to share the plans that you have with you that we've designed. They haven't been installed yet. Obviously, they'll be installed. Those two ponds that are there will serve as stormwater for the roads, So there's one smaller pond that's toward the front left when you come into the new entrance, and that'll handle two or three of the commercial parcels up front, as well as the roads. And then the larger parcels that are in the back and the parcels, the roads that are in the back, will all go through the current pond that's there, plus a much larger pond that's gonna be back behind the tower. Much larger, like twice as big. And those will meet new stormwater requirements. like the current pond was there for boats to drive around in circles and shoot water guns, don't say that, at each other. But the new pond that's in the back, which is a much larger pond, will have an outfall control structure, which will control the elevation of the ponds, let it out slower than the current water that just runs off the site. Anybody who's been here knows that the existing pond is there, doesn't really have a control as the pipes that are the control structure, and that drainage that's along Carrow Pines has some challenges. to say the least. So what we did was we actually changed our stormwater and the majority of our stormwater avoids that section and actually goes through the big new pond that we're building in the back. So instead of shooting down the ditch line and through those double pipes that are long tarp ponds, we're avoiding that and going into two larger ponds and coming in on the backside of it. So where that kind of log jam is being addressed. So we submitted those, and as part of that review, John and his group did a thorough stormwater review, planning reviewed it to make sure we met all the requirements. We've got sidewalks and lighting that were required by us that are in the plan set. All those plans were through. When we finally got to the point where we got technical review is what I call it, which is basically the staff or your reviewing body has reviewed the stormwater, given us an approval on the stormwater that it meets your requirements, We were able to submit that to the state agencies, the Department of Environmental Services, DES. So there's a couple different parts of DES, if you're not aware. There's one that's called BCM, which used to be called OCRM, which used to be called Ocean and Coastal Resource Management. It's no longer that. It's BCM, which is the Bureau of Coastal Management. Don't ask me. They wanted us to buy us a new letterhead or something. But they did. and the Bureau of Coastal Management. So what happens is they gave us a coastal zone consistency, which basically said the project is okay. It meets all the requirements. You're not impacting wetlands. You're not doing this. We took that along with the storm water approval letter that we got from the town, submitted that to Department of Environmental Services. Department of Environmental Services then issues you what's called an NPDES, which is a pollution discharge on the nation. Basically, it says that we're meeting all the requirements of the state requirements. Just so you know, we designed this to actually meet Warrick County stormwater requirements, which actually calls us to have a reduction in stormwater that leaves our site in a 100-year event versus just meeting the regular requirement. We actually went above and beyond that because I said I would when we did the rezoning. Once we got their approval and the NPDES, we had to address all of SEDOT's concerns. And their concerns involved things like signal timing, The crosswalk that comes across 17 in that location, we had to make sure that we had enough separation. So we're actually having to reroute that sidewalk kind of around the existing signal pole to make sure there's enough clearance from the edge of the travel way to protect the pole. So we're having to put a curb in the front to protect the existing pole that DOT put in 2 plus to the asphalt to begin with. So we're fixing their error and then we're rerouting our sidewalk behind that pole so that it's safer for pedestrians. During that process, as we were going through that, like I said, the commercial tenants had been identified, at least a couple of them have been identified. One of them, primarily a gas station, we went ahead and prepared civil site plans, which is very common that during the process of design of the major, these guys don't want to sit and wait six months after that's approved and constructed before they find out whether or not they can actually do it because If that design doesn't work, they want to be able to move to another site where they can make those requirements work. So we started the design, got it submitted, submitted it to town, had, I think, three conversations before we even submitted it about design elevations, requirements, color schemes, signage, setbacks, landscape buffers. So we did a lot of preliminary work and then we submitted that after we got that design done. And this was, I think, the third location we had done for this particular gas station provider. We submitted the plans after that review, got a small round of comments, got it addressed and submitted back and got approval. That doesn't mean that they can actually start anything. It just means that their civil plans are approvable. That doesn't mean they can go get a building permit tomorrow because the town requires that the roads be in place for me to be able to do that, that the infrastructure be in place to be able to do it. But what they do have is a plan that says, If you build according to this plan, when the roads are ready and the water's ready and the hydrants are ready and the sewer's ready, you can do it. And that allows that commercial tenant a level of comfort that they can continue to invest their money into getting ready to purchase that property. They've got to pay the title searchers to get to all the titles. They've got to pay the surveyors to update that. A lot of people get paid during that development process. but that means they're committed to that parcel because they they were able to meet so as long as the owner of the property and the developer of the property is able to install the roads the water the sewer then they can move forward with submitting their building permits after that's installed okay as of right now all we have is approvable plans that we're starting So we finally got DOT a little over a month ago. We've had pre-cons with them. Discussions is we cannot start the road construction within the DOT right away until after Labor Day, of course, because of all the traffic in this area and the roads. Not that it decreases much afterwards, but we all know DOT has certain restrictions. There's weekends that we can't do work. There's holidays that we can't do work. And of course, summertime limited on work as well. So after Labor Day is kind of the target market for construction. Also, last Friday, we got the last of all the permits that we were lacking, which is we had to get approval with the sewer. So not only do you go through that for stormwater, but for your water and sewer plans, those have to be submitted to Grand Strand Water and Sewer locally since they own and operate your local utilities for that aspect of it. They have to review it. They had to approve it. Then it gets submitted to the state. The state has to approve it. They give it back to Grand Strand. Grand Strand approves your debt. Then you work with a contractor. The contractor has to provide you with a list of the materials and quantities of those materials. Those go back to Grand Strand for approval, and then you can schedule your pre-comm meeting. We're at that process now where we're scheduling the pre-comm meeting with Grand Strand so that we can start construction. The plan right now is to start construction within the next 30 days. So full sets of plans are completely available. The planning director We can provide additional copies if you'd like to see, full-color renderings. I'll even share them on my Facebook if you want to be able to share that with your constituents who have questions and concerns. Things that we identified at the very beginning we said we would do. We said we would work to improve stormwater, which our plan does. We said that we would work on traffic safety, which I think straightening that section of road out, not making that hard right. providing additional stacking at that signal, as well as adjusting the light timing are all very big safety issues in my mind, because I know that's one of my frustrations on the front of the road is I don't have a large truck, but I have a full size truck and taking a right turn sometimes is a little hectic when you got oncoming traffic. So I think this overall would make that more safe than it was, as well as the tenants that we're looking at. Like I said, we only have that one. We have another one that's located, that will be located in the back in the existing maintenance building that's back there. We have a tenant for that. We have some ideas on the other properties, but once again, they can't, even though they can submit for zoning review or site plan review or even stormwater review, they can't go for a building permit on those parcels until the roads and water and sewer are placed, which is different than the other parcel that you may have heard about where the two buildings and the trade shops are being built. Once again, that piece of road was never deeded back to that Lazarus family, so there was no way for them. Now the section in the middle, they have the ability to deed it back. The plan is actually to resurface that section of road as part of the overall construction for this property. So that section behind where the gate was would actually get resurfaced as we're doing the construction so that the town roads, when the town gets the roads, you'll be at that point. Now, once the owner goes and constructs all these things, I know it's a lot of stuff, but there's a lot of questions that people ask. Big developments are not usual for Surfside. They happen all around, but it's different when you actually have to process the applications. Preliminary approval is only that. Until we record a final plat, none of those other parcels can actually be conveyed to the other commercial tenants that would come in the future. That final plat, before we submit it, we either have to complete all the infrastructure or we have to complete a significant amount of that infrastructure, and then we have to propose a financial guarantee that would have to come to the town that would guarantee that infrastructure. Now, many towns, and this town hasn't done it, but may look at doing a warranty bond as well on that for three years that says once it's turned over to the town, you have a three-year road warranty that would protect you in the future. The plan on this one is to build the majority of the infrastructure, the water, sewer, come in with a cost estimate, that is the amount that it costs to complete the project. Then there is a percentage that's put on top of that. It's usually 125% that's required on top. So you do 125% of what the engineer's estimate is to finish it. And that's usually supported by a contract for the construction, right? That is provided in order to even record the plat. Now the town doesn't accept it until the roads are actually and inspected by your staff to make sure that it meets all the requirements. Once that's done, you get a dedication document, which is usually provided to you at the same time the final plot is approved for recording. And that has to go to the Planning Commission. And before any of that, like I said, Planning Commission will have to approve it. So they're going to make sure that the infrastructure is either in or financially guaranteed. Then they'll approve it once it's recorded. That still doesn't mean those are town roads yet. You still have to go through the process of finalizing the installation, getting a final inspection, making sure it's stabilized, making sure the sidewalks are in, making sure the asphalt's the right depth, providing the core samples of the asphalt to make sure that it was installed correctly, the strength for all the concrete and the sidewalks and the curves. You have to provide those reports to the director, and they have to be verified that those meet those requirements. All the work that's within DOT right away will also have a separate inspection, and that's already been bonded with DOT. But they will do a series of inspections, and their closeout process is quite strenuous to be able to get that done. All that has to be done. Then it comes back to the town council to accept the roads. And only then will you accept the roads in public. And at that point, that's when they can get a building permit. So I know it's a lot, and I'm sorry She's had to write minutes or take anything on that. That's kind of how process works in development. It's not here locally. It's literally every jurisdiction. And I've worked in probably 10. And anybody who's been involved in development around Horry County knows that I'm not trying to say that this is how it is or how it is. I just tell you about the book, and if it costs me money, that's what the book says. So I follow the rules. I don't bend them, break them. I just tell you the way it is, and I try to design accordingly. Any questions? I'm more than happy for any kind of questions. I don't shy away from them.

All right. Thank you very much. With that, questions, comments? I have a question. Mr. Hyatt. Is Domino's going to be harmed by the road reroutes?

I would say no. It'll be easier for their drivers to get in and out. We don't plan on closing that road. That road is staying open. The only thing we'll be doing is resurfacing that road, the one that runs beside them that goes back towards Wild Water and Sandy Lane. So that road, not only that, it'll make it easier for them to get back there to Sandy Lane and Carapines and all those people that live back there because the gates will be open and that'll be an open public road. plus the other rail will have a signal to get across the way, so they're not going to have to come in in that sharp angle and then, you know, keep coming from the other direction. So it's actually going to reduce their conflict points. Will it, if you were taking a right, like a left off of 17 and a right into there, it might slow you down by 10 or 15 seconds, but what's that when it's safety? To me, I mean.

Thank you.

I know I had to drive past a driveway where the gas station is really close to a signal to get back to my neighborhood. And I really wish they didn't have that signal, that driveway that close because it makes it a real hazard. So.

Mr. Mayor, it's Lauren. So I got a couple of questions. So you throw a lot at it. So I want to try to make sure I got it.

They say it's like drinking through a fire hose.

That's right. timeline and and kind of the next steps my understanding is and i think you said it that you have to provide a final plan for the entire development back to the town to go through the planning commission and and all of that correct oh so yes and no we have to provide a final plan plan okay the the overall scheme of development the subdivision the lot layout that has already been approved as a preliminary plan by the planning commission and like i said

a copy of it and you can pass it around and i can email you pdfs i think that would be beneficial whatever whatever makes it easier to review so that you can have and share it it's public information so um the overall scheme of the lot layout in the road layout has been approved okay however the plat has not been recorded because that flat has to go back to the planning commission to make sure it meets all the requirements. Either that means the infrastructure is installed accordingly, that all the lots meet the lot sizes, which they're well over that, or that it's been financially guaranteed. One of those. And then the Planning Commission has the review authority to approve that final plan, but only once either the roads are installed or financially guaranteed.

So timeline for the submission of the final plan?

Probably going to be later this year, I would assume. Sometimes, because we don't want to submit it until we get closer, farther down development. And development will not start until about the next 30 days it's going to start. So you're talking that job site is six to nine months of construction. So you're probably talking mid-fall that we would submit the final plat for approval. That doesn't mean that when they give an approval that we would actually report it right then because we'd have to approach. do the inspections to get the roads improved or have the financial guarantee. It just means that that final plat is approvable and then they will sign it once we provide those requirements, which could be these dedication documents in hand, things like that.

And once the planning commission has approved the final plat, that's when they do that. No construction can happen until that step is taken.

That is not true. No construction on the buildings. The roads, water, and sewer have to be built first. All the mass grading has to be built first. We're extending the existing gravity sewer line that services the old arcade area and office. That's being extended all the way out to the frontage, so all those will be serviced off of that gravity line. The water line is actually being looped through the system. and expanding that so there'll be additional fire hydrants installed out there as part of that. There'll be, you know, I think there's two extensions on the lines out there as well as multiple fire hydrants that are being installed. And then the roads have to be installed, including the new call stack that's extending back the existing driveway and the reverse fronted road, as well as the resurfacing of Sandy as part of that section of Sandy as part of it. Not all of Sandy, just that section in front of that lot over and connecting into the project. That can happen now. All permits are in hand. We just can't submit for building permits. We can submit plan reviews, but that's only saying that it meets the zoning requirements. It can't meet that last threshold to get your building permit until the roads are actually applied at that point.

Okay. And you had mentioned, I think, I mean, I knew something about the gas station. Sure. You had mentioned there's another potential that you all

Well, there's currently one that's under contract for the existing maintenance building that's in the back that's been submitted and discussed with the town about what type of use would go in there and what they would need in order to make that happen. We've looked at three or four other potentials on the remainder of the property, including a redevelopment or reuse of the existing building that's out there. to turn it into another type of entertainment location or a mixed use kind of facility. But until those are under contract, I can't submit them. I don't even know what they are yet.

Right. So bottom line is there's a number of plans to where there's nothing committed, nothing necessarily specific that's...

The only thing that's committed at this time are the reuse of the maintenance facility for a trade and for the gas station. Those both are very committed. The plans are done. They're approvable, they're ready to roll as soon as the roads and water and sewer are installed. All right. I'm sure I have others, but that's all I got for now. That's fine. He has my email and my phone number. So like I said, if you have questions afterwards, feel free to reach out. Yeah, appreciate it.

I want to pick up on that. So roads and water sewer could start within, well, 30 days Labor Day for- Correct.

We got the last permit we needed, which was a sewer permit last Friday. long is that process you like for a project like that size usually six to nine months okay so that's not too bad so six to nine months is when the they can start you've got all the inspections and all that but there's a series of inspections and dots you know there's a signal timing that they'll have to put the questions on that's usually a two to three month process after that okay and then another month or so before processing and then like i said during that process We'll have also submitted flats to the town for the final flat approval review. Everything else the town has or can ask for and get at any time.

So when you were talking about building permits, I'm adding that all up. That sounds like a year to 15 months.

I'd probably say building permits somewhere close to 10 months or so. Okay. The gas station one's pretty easy because it's already been through that process. Okay.

We could start seeing buildings going up.

Yeah, I think the biggest improvement for the town will be the safety of the drive and the new entrance. Everything else is accommodations and revenue for the town, as well as being able to pick up gas on the way leaving or coming to that location will be extremely convenient. The entrance to that one, instead of having a full access facing that entrance road coming off 17, is actually just a right in. You can't actually come out that way. You have to go out to the reverse frontage to go either direction. that all sounds that all sounds much better i agree i uh even on the golf cart i don't like making that turn i yeah yeah i think it overall safety wise that would be the biggest benefit to the town like i said the plan is to start that new road system making the connection straight back into the right first and then connecting into the existing one that runs next to dominoes and then rebuilding that road after those two and then once those two are done we'll come back in and demolish that section of furniture that's in front of the existing wildlife on the right hand side.

So you're saying as little as 10 months, maybe a little more, they could start applying for building permits. Would we expect a lot of businesses will get a little more interested when they see some work?

I think as soon as the work starts, you're going to see a lot more interest. We've shown that parcel, many parcels out there, how they can accommodate different uses. Typically my services, I have myself as well as three other land planners, along with all our engineers, we typically turn around and if somebody comes in with an idea for a commercial use, usually 24 to 48 hours, we've got a site plan that meets all the requirements of the town in terms of the overall layout, maybe not grading and all that stuff, but the overall layout and provides that back to encourage the businesses to say, hey, this is gonna fit, this works. So, and we also provide that information to like, you know, traffic counts and things like that for them to help assist. Even though, once again, not the developer, just as a consulting and engineer.

Gotcha. But yeah, so, you know, as I'm looking at it, it's hard to get real excited about, you know.

Until you see the big heavy equipment pushing in the road, it does. Yes, trust me. I understand.

But I appreciate you taking the time. Obviously, a whole lot more has been going on. People just look at it and say, nothing's happening.

It can look like that. I mean, I have some job sites that I am the developer of, and just one phase of the project, depending on the size of the improvements within DOT right away, might take 13 to 15 months just to get to the point where you can even get a single-family house permit. Good, good.

Okay. Well, I appreciate it, and, yeah, I would love to see something go wrong by this time next year. That would be cool.

Well, I hope there is, and I hope I can come back and tell you all about the good news of more people that are coming in there. Well, thank you very much.

Mr. Walls, go ahead. I wanted to, first of all, thank you for walking us through the process. I know it's not easier, but my son is a developer out in Denver, and I know what he deals with every day and all their people, the pieces.

Before I went in the private sector, I also did consulting work for all the small towns in the location. I did Briarcliff. I did Aner and Loris. I've offered those services to those towns because I mean, while you may have very good skills that operate in the day-to-day, sometimes the development is a completely different path than when you see a project, especially at that scale. It's a lot of acreage.

This is different than our day-to-day considerations. But I did want to ask just a question to kind of be in a wisecrack here. But is that concrete grinding business that seems to have opened up out there on that lot. Is that going to slow you all down any?

No, I'm hoping that you guys have told them, you know, I was made aware that you were telling them they couldn't continue to do that. That's kind of why I threw that out there. I wondered if you were aware. I am aware that they've done it. A lot of that concrete, some of it will go into road base, some of it will go into parking lot base, and it will be used up on site fairly quickly when they actually start to build up for grading out the site. So you do need them hauling in stuff? I don't know what they need. That's the contractor. Right. So we don't deal with what materials they use on the engineering side. Okay. We tell them what they have to build. Right. And they use their construction best practices to decide what material they're using. So what's going on back there could actually be working toward your current. It is potential that they could be, but I don't know. I don't know how much material they have. I haven't done any measurements on it. Okay.

Thank you.

And just give an honest answer.

No, and I appreciate it.

And I've heard the complaints, and I've made the owner aware that that was an issue and told him that I believe the town was going to put a stop to it.

Unless you need them to make you road-based.

Even then, that is up to you whether you allow them to do it on that site. Right. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor? Let me see if anybody else wants a first comment. Mr. Culp.

If I stay much longer, they might make me buy them dinner.

Did you have anything to do with the two buildings that are there now?

The only thing that we've had to do with the two buildings now is surveying out the parcel. We weren't the engineers or the architects. We were the surveyors on that job. And that means we did the staking for the boundaries and the sidewalks and stuff on it. but nothing to do with the actual design of the layout.

I like what you're doing with the new thing, but I have questions about what was done already. He had nothing really to do with it.

I'm aware of it. I mean, so I know some of the things, just for instance, the questions I hear about is whether or not they should have met the supplemental design standards and exterior appearance That parcel is actually exempt because it fronts on Sandy Lane and Sandy Lane zone commercial is exempt from the supplemental design standards. And it was in existence well before into the 90s when that design standard was created. So I was, somebody had asked me about that. That's why I knew that. Okay.

So that's debatable. According to a lot in this town, that is not Sandy Lane. That is an alleyway. That is an entrance to a water park. not a street, not a public street. It's a road that has a gate on it that shut every day when the water park was open. So it was not a public street. So, and you brought up a great point. You can't, you're not supposed to get a permit until you have a public street. There's no public street there.

And I'll leave that up to the town hall. I can, I can, I've told you the history of that road, which was There was a small section that was given to the Lazarus family and the rest of it was never deeded over from the town to them. So the entrance road off of the frontage road, as well as the vast majority of the frontage of that parcel was never deeded to the Lazarus family, even though it was behind the gate, it was never deeded over or closed from being a public road.

and it was not a street.

That's an interpretation for you and your plan. I can't get into that part. Then it would be appealable to the zoning board and I can't do that.

I like what they're doing now. I just want to figure out how the other buildings will build. And that's not a question for you, it's a question for our building. Yeah, Mr. Broderick. sounds good i mean people can ask other questions but i'd like to ask how good you want to ask me right now did you um like i said the owner does have a deed ready and prepared for that small section that was

needed, quick plan needed back in the day, and they have a deed for that. It's drawn up. The survey is done. It's more about when the town wishes to accept it. But it is ready to go. I did that part of it.

Mr. Hyatt, go ahead.

One is if they used a public road like it was a private road for God knows how many years, does it cease being a public road or something?

that would take an attorney and a judge to make that decision, of which I am neither, to be honest. And the reason I say that is, you know, there's all kinds of prescriptive rights. But it was an open use of it by a private entity, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they've never been taxed on it. It was never included in their acreage. So you could decide either way. I mean, whether it was open and accessible to the public or not. You know, it was kind of an odd way the town operated back in that timeframe when they actually needed that property away. And so, you know, I can't speak to what their intent was back then.

Also, I noticed on this, there's some metal buildings. Are those existing?

Anything that is shown on there was existing. That was the survey.

So there's some existing metal buildings on there.

There were. The maintenance facility in the back was a metal building.

You said there were. Does that mean there's not?

No. There were some other small little buildings that were on there when we did the survey work originally, and most of those have been removed except for, like I said, the existing maintenance building and the storage that was back there associated with it. That still remains, and they're not changing anything on that except to come in and adapt the internal pulpit.

Thank you very much. I appreciate your presentation.

All right. Thank you. This is Danny. Go ahead. I'm almost out the door.

What I would know is the front entrance out front is going to close off for the gas station that's going to be set right behind that front entrance, I'm assuming.

That is correct.

Do you get to use that parcel of the front entrance or is it just an empty lot or a parking lot?

No, no, no. The asphalt will be cut. at the new entrance road and the asphalt from there over to the existing one. All that asphalt will be removed and it will be grassed and sodded and be part of DOT's right of way. We can't use any of it. We have to put our landscaping on the backside of that right of way and then the parking area for the supplemental design standards.

Good presentation. right there's nothing else i'm going to turn it over to mr coleman to ask director brother and thank you i'm going to ask you not to go anywhere just in case but i'll sit thank you as the gentleman was just saying that the point of our ordinances say

No building permit shall be issued for and no building shall be erected on any lot within the town unless the street giving access to the lot upon which the building is proposed to be placed shall have accepted or opened as a public street. Not a public street. It doesn't have a right of way. It doesn't have any kind of storm water. It's an alleyway or a sledge. Are we done? We're saying anyway. I'm talking about the road that's next to Domino's Pizza.

Looks like the area.

The history is a little twisted. As David said, back in like 2001, the town gave a piece of the end of Sandy Lane. If you know Sandy Lane, that's where public works is. When you get to the corner, to that road which goes back towards the carapines, after that intersection, they quit playing that. So anything beyond that was given to Lazarus. Yes, out of there, number one, no longer Sandy Lane. Also, in front of Wild West, which is now Wild West, there was like a loop, a horseshoe road they called it, where that parking lot is now in the front. And it went up the left side of that building, which is now their left side parking lot, which goes up the left side. But that was a road going back there at the time. All three of those items, the horseshoe road, the end of Sandy Lane, and that road going back, which at the time, I believe, was called Ninth Avenue, south extension. That was all quitclaimed, and I think the Lazarus folks paid us $70,000 or something like that in those days for that, and I have all the documents on that. Now, the road that's in question, which is the driveway to Wild Water and Wheels, was listed in the record as an unknown road. It may have been a public road. It may not have been, but it didn't have a name. and it connected with Sandy Lane at the time. It was not Sandy Lane proper. That road was never Sandy Lane, but it was called on the plats unknown road. So it was probably just a shortcut people took to get out onto the front of the road at the time. So currently, once they replat it, extend Sandy Lane to that point, that road's gonna have a new name once they bring it up to town standards. It's going to go back into this development, and it's going to be called like Wild Water Way or something like that, according to the preliminary plan. But it's never been Sandy Lane, that 90 degree. Sandy Lane ends in 2026 at Terrapins Road right there. So, you know, that's the history of it. You know, when it brought my attention today, I was like, what? You know, because it was being, you know, asserted that the whole thing was Sandy Lane. No, it's not.

would you classify that I'm not gonna say it's a rule would you classify that alleyway entrance way as a rule or is it because it doesn't have any right-of-ways doesn't have any stormwater or anything that it's it's a narrow Is it ours or is it ours? I mean, this gate's still there.

They just threw some asphalt on it. And like I said, I don't think it was ever in the town system, to be honest with you. And we've never maintained it. I don't know anything about what David said as far as the town never quit planning. I'm not aware that we ever really owned it as right-of-way. But it certainly wasn't Sandy Lane, I can tell you that.

but it was closed on the water park.

Right, yeah. They put up a gate on the Sandy Lane portion that they took over, and they used that for their parking in their pond.

But also, I want to say tonight, next to Domino's, there are two gates, swing gates, yellow swing gates. Right before, if you're going west on that, there's two swing gates right before those two buildings that just been erected. So that was not a public,

anything if you had gates on that road no no that's that's never been a public road okay so how did they get it from me yeah i was under the under misunderstanding probably the misunderstanding that that was shady uh sandy lane and the only road that gets a i call it a pass on the design overlay is sandy lane so when i looked at our city map our zoning map All of it says that road all the way back down to the frontage road is marked as Sandy Lane. So I didn't know any of the past of it.

I looked at the Horry County GIS today after this conversation, and the Horry County GIS shows that leg as Sandy Lane, which I've never seen before. So I do have an email into the county to find out why that's labeled Sandy Lane, but it's never been accepted by the county as Sandy Lane. And certainly it hasn't been accepted. the council would have to accept that into our system, and it has to meet certain criteria for it to be in our system. So it's never been accepted in Sandy Lane. So again, when I get an email back from the county, I'll let you know. Okay, good.

The only problem now, though, is we have a building up there. We have a building up there. Possibly noncompliance with our ordinance.

It would be noncompliance with the design order plan. Absolutely.

I got one more question. That's cementing in the past. What's going on? Okay. So here's what Britain, I was, I was there. Here's what I, two or three, um, bump trucks going in and out of the place. Tell me you took a picture. I'll go there tomorrow. I'll take a lot of pictures.

I've got, I've got my code enforcement outside there two times a day in the morning, because that's usually where they come and late evening. And we have not been able to capture a picture. They have been told consistently all the time, No, off-site spoils are supposed to be ground there. All grinding is supposed to be all on-site spoil. So if somebody gets a picture of a truck coming on there, they need to take a picture because I can't enforce what people said. I have to have a picture of a truck coming from off-site with concrete in it. But we will enforce that if we can. Which is even now. No, no, like I said, at first we all thought it was all on-site spoil. people in the back telling us trucks are coming in. Trucks are coming in. Okay, get a picture of it. Nobody's been able to get a picture of it. I'll get you a picture. All right, thank you very much.

Before you go. Go ahead, Mr. David. I did. Me and my wife happened to be driving over to the park, and I did go about this because we saw the truck come in and dump, and I didn't take a picture. I went straight over and talked to everybody, and they went to work on it. They actually told me at the time that they were going to put a stop and assist on the plane. But he couldn't catch nobody doing it. So he has informed me back after this that he's trying to catch up with them. So if you go over and get a picture of that truck, please take it to them. They are on the case.

We have 75, as you all know, we all have 75 code enforcement officers in the town. Anybody who takes a picture of an offsite truck dumping concrete on that side, take a picture of it, and I can enforce it. I'm not supposed to bring in anything.

It's a dump truck with a cover on it.

No offsite spoils are supposed to be brought to that side. That's the way the ordinance, that's the way the permit is. We made it, guys. Thank you.

All right. Covered that one. Yeah. All right. So we will now move into the business committee report. And Chairman Tom Vanish will present.

Got two minutes.

A year and a half.

Easy Hey

The business committee has been very busy this year. We've been able to bring over some new programs, and I'd like to just tell you about the things we're doing, and then at the end, we have a reply. So the purpose of the business committee is to improve communication with community recommendations to the county council, implement policies consistent with the business community community's interests, and cultivate a business-friendly environment, help new and existing businesses succeed, and prosper within the county's social so we've been working hard to try to do that one of the things that we found along the way is in the real estate business people are signing leases before they know they're allowed to do what they're allowed to do on the property but we're trying to get that word out to people that um you know before you sign the lease just make sure that you've done planning zoning which we've done recently and worked out very well um we have nine members on our committee me angie carnes who owns both all the boutique Ellen Delaplaine, who owns Pet Loss, Vince Grimaldi, who owns Surf Dogs, Brady Huffman, who owns Gone Coastal Golf Carts, Simon Phillips, who has, I think it's GDA Painting, Wendy Foster, who's the manager over at the Holiday Inn, Donna Gilchrist, who's retired, but he's a builder, and Melanie Peek, who works for Minority News. We meet the second series at Tuesday every month at 10 a.m. here. And our council, our county council is on the bridge. So these are some of the things that we've been working on. This is our oldest, actually, activity. We used to call it a business with a twist. Now we call it Surfside Beach Business Socials. And it's the first Thursday of every month. We've had very good attendance. Not just from council, but from other people. About 30 people usually. We've done some surveys for feedback and we're finding out that 71% of the people who attend, they get some meaningful connection. And 100% believe that the business um so far this year our business social host and what we do is we have somebody hosted every month so it's the first thursday of every month and we have a different business host it doesn't have to be a restaurant to be able to so far this year we've had neil and pam's all boutique surf dogs uh suicide beach books and gifts and then our next one is a christmas public house and the following months will be cow breath law like craft lighting dog words and holidays for christmas Another thing that's become commonplace in Surfside now is ribbon cuttings. They're one of the most visible ways we have to welcome and support local businesses. And we don't just do ribbon cuttings for new opens. We do open ribbon cuttings for anniversaries or whatever people want to do to celebrate their business. And it's a way that we can help them get word out about their business. So far this year, we've been on a whim, heavily various, surf dogs, Chico's chickens, Daddy-O's ice cream, Surfside Beach books and gifts, Champion Autism Network, J&P Treasures, and K-Bar Farms. We created a business welcome guide, and this is Basically, this is an idea of what they're getting into when they get to come to Surfside. We don't want them to find that there's a lot of surprises. We want them to know what they're going to face and what they can expect. It's a simple guide to distribute to new and existing businesses. By bringing information together about the business community, the programs, promotional opportunities, and the ways to get involved, the guides help businesses become active members of the community from day one and beyond. One thing I meant to mention about the business socials. We hold those for business owners and managers. It's not for anybody in the company because we want those people to then work with other business owners and managers. And we're finding that's really working out very well. We also started something called Surfside Beach Business Spotlight. And it highlights a local business history on the committee Facebook page. Each spotlight includes a description of the business along with the photos. And we post them on our Facebook page. And the town then just puts it on theirs, and then people share it to other pages, and we do that too. So people get some really good publicity from this. And it's not long, but it's just a way for people to let people know about their business. We've also been doing business in a month. This month is Omega Pancake House. We were lucky that HTC came in to sponsor this program for us. So what they do is they give us $200 in gift certificates to local businesses. And the idea is they're supporting local businesses who are then helping other local businesses. They've been a great partner and I hope they continue. This is their second year doing this for us. This is the month winners so far this year. Southern Chicken, J&P Treasures, South Strand Helping Hand, Surfside Smiles, Dental, Holiday Inn Ocean Farm Resort, RDR Four Carts, and the Omega Pancake House. And our feather flag, which is up there, is no longer in existence, so we're getting another one. But in the meantime, we put a sandwich sign in the picture there. We got that, so that's something in the meantime. The math booklet, which I just gave all of you, is something we started last year with a partnership with Southeast Publications. They came to us and said, we'll do this math for free, but we want you to, so we kind of edit it, keep an eye on it, make sure that they've got it all right. And this year we're getting it out a little bit earlier than last year, but next year our goal is to get it out before the summer starts, because it really is, The advertisers are not getting the banquet in a bucket. They don't get it out sooner. And I've got a bunch of them here that I'll give to anybody who wants one here. I'll give those out tonight. What we're proposing is to do a business expo. This committee would like to host a business-to-business expo for local businesses. The concept is a high-energy community-driven event designed to bring together local businesses for an engaging evening of networking, showcasing, and entertainment. There will be a must-attend annual gathering for the Surfside Beach business community. We spoke with the Holiday Inn. They're willing to host it for us. And the date that we come up with is November 12, 2026, Thursday night. So we're going to get to the request for county council approval. For the committee to continue execution of the following initiatives, Surfside Beach Business Socials, Business of the Month, Business Spotlight, Derivative Cuttings, and Distribution of the Town Map, as well as moving forward planning and execution of the Surfside Beach Business Expo.

All right, thank you. We need a motion. Well, we don't need one. This is a discussion item. We may make motions. I'm sorry, this is No, this is our discussion. Yes, we don't need a motion. We are allowed to make motions, but with a request from the committee, it would probably be appropriate.

Okay, well, I'll make a motion that the council approve business committee's request to continue execution of the Surfside Beach Business Social, Surfside Beach Business of the Month, Surfside Beach Weekly Business Spotlight, Surfside Beach Business Ribbon Cuttings, distribute the town map sponsors and local businesses, and the committees to move forward with the planning and execution of the business expo.

And Mr. Hyatt seconded? Okay. You made the motion. You're the liaison. You want to just kind of give some thoughts?

Yeah. I mean, all I would say is I think I've been to every one of their meetings and most of their activities, and And I echo what Tom said. The activities that the business committee has moved out on this year in particular have been very successful. The business socials, they're always well attended. I think the spotlight, some of the new things like the spotlight, the business month is a long-term thing, but the town map, and I know there was frustration with how quickly that, how long it took to get that. They're doing an outstanding job with all these things. They are doing a good job of marketing to towns, helping new businesses get established and creating liaison activities. So I think all of these things are wonderful things and I expect them to do even more stuff next year because they've got a lot of, they have a lot of ideas.

Sounds good to me. I guess I'll have, well, I think first of all, I think you're selling yourself short on the business socials and maybe there's 30 business people with some council and you guys, you guys are business people too. I'm guessing there's 40 plus at every one of them, the ones I go to anyway. I also attend a lot of ribbon cutting, so I know they work pretty well. The Business Expo in November, totally funded by local businesses, not asking for anything.

We don't need any money for it. It's like the business social. You know, we have a host for it, and everybody who comes in will do their own thing. I think we'll have about 20 tables set up. I think that's what we're shooting for first. And it'll just be a good opportunity for businesses to have something like this to, you know, we'll do it once, see how it works, and then next year we can make it better. All right. That's all I have.

Anybody else? Motion on the table is to approve All of the requests made by the business committee is on our last page. I'm not going to read all these. Anybody, you can look at it and see. All right, then, Ms. Medina, will you call the roll?

Mr. Simi?

Yes.

Mr. Coleman?

Yes.

Mr. Vandenberg? Yes. Mr. Lawton?

Yes.

Mr. Hyatt?

Yes.

Ms. Fallon? Yes.

Yes, motion carries unanimously, and all of these are approved. Good work and give it up.

Thanks very much. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

All right.

I'm going to leave the mask in the back so anybody can grab one of these. Okay. We're going to start distributing as soon as we get the next shipment.

It'll be going out in the next week. Very good, sir. All right. We will now move into the cybercrime update and we'll hear from Administrator Vincent on that.

Mr. Mayor and Town Council, Dated on the July 21st of 2026, the town put out a press release and also attached the public summary of the final report. So the town of Surfside Beach announces the findings of independent breach risk assessment and forensic investigation. The town of Surfside Beach announced the results of an independent digital forensic investigation conducted following a payment redirection fraud incident involving one of its contractors, Wildcat Contractors. The response team investigation focused on determining whether or not any Surfside Beach internal systems or Microsoft 365 accounts were compromised during the event or the incident. The review was prompted by an April 28, 2026 notification from Wildcat Contractors stating that they had not received the $545,598.30 ACH payment issued by the town on March 13th, 2026. The investigation found no evidence of unauthorized access to any Surfside Beach or Microsoft 365 accounts. The town of Surfside Beach is continuing to work with the FBI, SLED, and its insurance partners on recovery efforts. Any additional security measures have been implemented to strengthen verification procedures and reduce the likelihood of similar incidents. That's both the press release and also the summary of the report.

All right. Any questions, comments from Mr. Vincent?

Yeah. I have a couple.

Go ahead, Mr. Hyatt.

The report that we've received here from Constandy, it seems to say in a paragraph on the last page, from March 13th to March 16th, Surfside sent emails to and received emails from the legitimate Wildcat contractor domain. That seems to suggest that the actor had access to both the legitimate domain and perhaps the illegitimate domain. So I'm wondering if this report ever got sent to whoever's investigating this so that they could book into that possibility.

The report was sent to who?

Well, I guess it would be SLAIR, the FBI, whoever's investigating.

They have not requested this report.

I know they haven't requested, but maybe we should provide it to them since it suggests that the actor... have access to both the legitimate side of the email account and the illegitimate side?

Yes, sir, and we can. Okay. Yes, sir.

I think I had another question. Let me see if I can find it. No, that's it. Okay, thank you.

Any others?

all right well then i think we can uh let that one go because we're going to uh move into another topic here um mr long why don't you just take it off the town council inquiry okay so for several meetings uh i think i've discussed the need to i was calling it an after action type of review inquiry investigation whatever um i still think it's that but i also think it um it's it's maybe gone a little further than that. But bottom line, our ordinances give the mayor and the responsibility to ensure that any negligence, carelessness, possible violations of employees, council members, et cetera, is investigated and proper remedial actions are taken. I'm specifically focusing on the proper remedial actions being taken. So what I'm interested in is to have the council lead a review, inquiry, whatever is the right word, to look into what happened, the who, what, where, why, et cetera, and let those facts that we ascertain, I think a lot of them are already known, but there are some things out there that I think we still need to be looking at so that we can create a report that will be either divulged or provided in a special meeting or workshop or and then published, because I think we owe the citizens that much. It's our job. We have an oversight. We have policy responsibility. We have an oversight responsibility. And frankly, I feel up to this point, we've taken too long to do that. What really kind of got to me a little bit was when there was an interview done with the media a couple of weeks ago, and I learned more information from a Facebook post that I knew about the case. Um, so the communication has been lacking through this process. Um, and I wanted, my goal is for the town to understand the citizens of the town to understand what happened, why it happened, um, and ensure that we have remedial actions in place to preclude it from ever happening again. Um, my goal is to let the facts drive where it goes, um, etcetera. So some of the questions and, you know, and I'm, I'm open. The reason we're doing this as a discussion item is because I'm interested in input from the council as well. I've talked to a couple of folks offline, but the actual conduct of it, how many folks will be involved? I'm recommending three council members be involved, but I'm not even suggesting who those would be at this point. I mean, that's part of the discussion, I think. Also, how do we conduct it? Or do we want to have portions of this open to the public? of concerned about that from the standpoint of i want to make sure that the information that is provided to us is is good relevant information and that's generally done best when folks don't have 150 people standing there watching being talked to you know so that's my thought is we do it offline and then when we can provide periodic updates depending on how long this goes but at the end the goal is to present what we find and the actions we're recommending that coming from it. If there are any, there might not be, we may already have it all handed, I don't know. I do believe that outside expertise is going to be important to this. Specifically, and I mentioned it earlier, the question from Ms. Gruber about, as we're developing these policies and remedial actions, have we coordinated with other activities? Is there an expert we could call in maybe for mask or whoever, that understands the financial aspects of ACH transfers and whatever else is involved in this to ensure we have the industry standard in place, that our procedures are in absolute conformity with what accepted standards are across the board. I also believe we need a cyber fraud expert that can give us some better input maybe into what other municipalities have faced, what actions they have put in place to preclude stuff like this from happening. Do we need to harden our systems anymore? Is there training that we have not provided our staff that we should have provided our staff and therefore need to? And I'm not talking online training. I'm talking about potential seminars and things like that. So I'm after what happened and how do we ensure it doesn't happen again? So that in a nutshell is basically what this is about.

Okay, I'd like to comment. I'm concerned if we do anything internally with three of us, I share Mr. Lawhorn's concerns about if it's public, it's difficult to talk freely. However, if it's not public, nobody knows what's going on. If it's done internally, there's already some idea that we haven't done enough. And quite frankly, none of us is finance or fraud experts, at least I don't think we are. I would like, and I know this will cost money, but I would like to see us look at engaging some firm with forensic accounting and cyber fraud knowledge and just turn it over and say, take a look at our systems. Have we done things right before? take a look at what we are now proposing. Are we heading in the right direction? Is there more we have to do? Not from necessarily a punitive standpoint, but just so that we learn, again, as Mr. Lawhorn said, exactly what happened so that we can be sure it never happens again. So I think just an outside agency would probably work better for us.

Mr. Mayor? Mr. Walts. I would be inclined to agree with you. I don't think with our various expertises, and careers that we bring to the table here. I don't think anybody on this council is qualified to do the proper investigation. And I believe, unfortunately, that if we dig ourselves deeper into the weeds here, we'll start micromanaging our team. So I would be more inclined to agree with the mayor and let's have some true professionals with the knowledge in this case from the outside to take maybe do a forensic and maybe oversee although i feel like this thing has been investigated to death but if we feel like if this council feels like that we yet need to do it yet again and provide some additional headlines for all the news medias out there then uh then maybe we should uh have a third party outside because i i don't think that perception I feel strongly that I don't feel perception that I just see this headline that says, town council investigates its town administration over the loss of $545. I mean, I don't like the way that looks or sounds, and I wanna be a part of that. So you wanna do a subcommittee or whatever, but I think we should do an outside third party with professionals that know what they're talking about to look at this, if you want to. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor.

I definitely would support an outside person, but at the same time, I think we should call our local FBI, which I think would be Columbia, that office to ask them, have you known any other town that has done this type of process? Are we going into the right direction with hiring a separate firm, and if so, they agree, then maybe they have firms that they could recommend and have those firms maybe come and talk to us as a beginning part of this, but just paying money to a firm, that's how we have to do a bid or whatever. But I think we could keep him out because the FBI investigates these cyber crimes all the time. So I don't know. It's just a suggestion. The type of person, I feel like we're almost putting them on the part before the horse, but I think they could give us a little bit more direction of how to move forward from this.

Others? Mr. Mayor. Mr. Stamey. While we were in Greenville this past time, Skip and I, myself, and Mr. Hyde, we talked to a SLED agent up there who is over our case here in town. And he seems to think that everything was pretty well handled through the town. according to their investigation. He did give me a card and told me to call him or get in touch with him if I needed any more help from him. I support, and as I've always said, I support going out of council because I don't think the town, even if we reduce everything and tell them what's happened, most of our citizens, well, not most of them, some of them will still have that problem of saying we're trying to hide stuff so with that being said i would support an outside source to do it i i'm not gonna i probably wouldn't support just the council or members of the town doing it because i don't i just i don't feel like that's the way to go but i do have a agent that that we talked to up there and as far as he was concerned they've done everything they could do to put in place the things at that time that seemed to be pretty good uh can they be improved sure i think melody and in that staff are working on trying to improve our our way of doing business on ways to send out money but I'll go along with whatever the rest of you decide to do in that case. Mr. Mayor.

Mr. Bouchard. Just hearing some of the comments from council, I would encourage the council and client to move forward on whichever route it goes to define one purpose and scope of whatever the inquiry is. What I mean by that is whether or not you are seeking to have a Back-based inquiry, that is to say, more focused on what happened and who and when and who said what. To a certain extent, I think it's largely been documented in the report that we've seen from the insurance investigators. Obviously, you can conduct extensive back-based internal investigations with big companies where you witnesses and gather evidence and everything else just like that. But if it's a more, I think Ms. Walhorn mentioned a how do we move forward, maybe it was Ms. Fallon, on how we go forward, then I think that may help in identifying who or what type of expert we wish to engage. And what I mean by that is if the issue is that we want to know what type of best practice protocols to put in place above and beyond what we already know factually occurred then whether it be accounting financial control type codes or even maybe more specifically a cyber crime expert that may more narrowly tailor what we're what we're trying to do i'll tell you i know with the law practice particularly real estate transactions, these issues of cyber crimes and ACH transfers is a constant battle that is a, they're evolving daily. A lot of these cyber, not just the insurance policies are relatively new in the world of insurance, but really to a certain extent, the whole kind of subject matter is relatively new. So I think as you proceed, determine one, is it a fact-based, backward-looking, inquiry, or is it more of a seeking a recommendation for policy procedure type recommendations going forward? Whichever route you decide to go, or a combination of the two for that matter, that may, one, make it easier to identify who you need to hire, and two, what their scope of work would be. But I suspect from what I'm hearing that it's maybe a combination of of cybercrime or possible accounting with financial control that could do more of a view of the facts in light of saying, going forward, here's some best practices, tips, policies one, two, and three that might help stay ahead of these things that are continuing to change yearly, daily, monthly. All right.

Well, thank you. Yeah, but I want to see if anybody else has any more. So anybody else want to speak who hasn't yet? I have some questions. Go ahead, Mr. Hyatt.

Regarding conducting the investigation or the inquiry or whatever we choose to call it, I really feel it should be done in coordination with the FOIA laws, which require open meetings, announced agendas, minutes. I don't believe that we're going to further transparency by conducting the matter behind closed doors. We did talk to a SLED expert at the MASC, which is the Municipal Association of South Carolina, had a conference in Greenville recently. And he was quite knowledgeable, and I suspect that we could probably get him to help with training. But I don't really want to retrace the investigation. The investigation has been done by fine people. We don't have to retrace that. My issues are, you know, the money handling procedures of the finance department. Why we even used ACH when council hadn't authorized it. I'd like to know more about our insurance purchasing and why our limit doesn't seem to be adequate for exposure. I'd also like to know about the cyber security training that's occurred in our town and who's overseen it and what training has occurred and why it didn't. When I talked to that expert in Greenville, he said that These kind of things have been going on for five years and that everybody in cybersecurity knows about them. Well, then why didn't we, our cybersecurity people should have told us about this issue and taught our staff. So these are the issues I want to look at. I don't want to look at the investigation. I want to look at all the surrounding issues. And I don't think we need an outside expert to do that because if we get an outside expert, then all the knowledge that, about our town that we would gain, you know, you don't just focus on what you're doing, you learn a lot more. We'd lose that as a town council. So I would prefer that it be a committee of this town council conducting questioning of town employees, whoever in public. I also would like to state that I would assume that everybody in our town would cooperate with an inquiry But I also know that state law does allow the town council to conduct an investigation. And that is a very formal procedure that gives the council the kind of like the powers the court has and can even back up the council with court orders if necessary. I don't anticipate us going there. I would hope that everybody would cooperate with an inquiry and we could switch to an investigation later if it became necessary. But I just want everybody to know that that's a choice we could make. It's out there. But we may choose to take a little more benevolent approach. But then we got to realize there's $500,000 of the public's money that's accounted for potential loss to the town. And I think we need to, you know, be a bit of a bulldog in trying to get to the bottom of everything that impacted this loss. And again, I'm not interested in retracing law enforcement steps. I want to look at all these other issues that are impacted and that we've learned about through this crime. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. Let me let Mr. O'Connor.

Okay, go ahead. Whoever wants to go. Go ahead, Mr. Steadman.

I don't think we need to retrace this. We've got reports here to tell us what it is. But I want to know if it's legally, can counsel appoint three people to investigate without being in a public open?

We can't do that, Cameron. You can appoint a subcommittee, but it's got to meet the four-year requirements, which is an open meeting.

I mean, that's the only way that that could be done is if it was, if it's done by council.

Yeah. So if the council actually appoints a subcommittee, then at that point, you know, it's just like any other subcommittee. It's meetings. It's, you know, compiling quality. Now, obviously, I presume each member of the subcommittee would do some amount of due diligence and review and things prior to Evan's meeting, but certainly any of the Once you have a subcommittee, then you have the core requirements and all those sort of things. So as a practical matter, yes, any of the meeting of that subcommittee would have to be subject to FOIA. And really, any of the findings, the reports by any expert or anybody else that's provided to the town, unless it was an attorney-client type of thing, that would ultimately be a public document anyway. The sole issue is whether or not during that due diligence or review it would be subject to the open meeting requirements. And again, if you're doing a fact-based inquiry, whether it's a fact-based inquiry as to who paid what and where or whether it goes to some of the more policy questions that Mr. Hyatt raised, then that's one step. If it's more of a how do we change procedures or something going into the future, then that's something that probably lends itself more to some specialized expertise and things along those lines.

With saying that, can we not reach out to the Municipal Association and have their experts to come in just to sort of help us with the finance, make sure everything's set. I think that's what most everybody wants to know, is making sure that what happened don't happen again in the future. And I think we can reach out to them, and I think they would provide, even in an open meeting, if we wanted to, to discuss and try to get us to where we need to be.

I'm not sure exactly what resources NASC has for that kind of purpose. Gary's probably more familiar, but I'm sure if there is some that's available that can be provided, whether it be in some kind of detailed report or in some kind of setting like a regular council meeting that can be presented in a more summary fashion, then that's certainly an option.

I was just going to say we have reached out to Charlie with the Municipal Association. He did indicate very quickly that if you do a subcommittee, it's an open meeting and it's open to the public. Second piece of that is we're going to look at best practices through the Municipal Association. He did mention GOFA, which is Government Finance Office Association, which Melanie is a member of, but he's still looking into that. And Mr. Mayor and Council, I'm just going to say if the SLED gentleman gave the presentation to 200 and some localities about cybercrime, perhaps before you form a committee, I can contact this gentleman to see what kind of process that we can provide or he can provide for us before we actually appoint a subcommittee of the council. And that can happen in two weeks.

Yeah, I do. So go ahead, Mr. Lawson. Yeah, so kind of to recap, I mean, I agree with Mr. Hyatt, and that's kind of why, that's what I was after. What I'm after here is what happened and how do we keep it from happening again and also being open and transparent with town because frankly I don't believe we've done a particularly good job of of communicating with the public to our citizens who we all represent um what transpired and why did it transpire um you know that That's why I'm not interested in re-looking at the forensics of it. We've got to report on that. I don't need that. But what I do need is, or what I'm interested in, are the steps that were taken as to how we got here from there, how we got here from where it was at the beginning. You know, I know some of that information has been divulged, but I don't believe all of it has. So I'm interested in, again, who, what, when, why, and then bringing in expertise, whether it be SLED, whether it be, I don't care who it is. I just want, I'm interested in getting folks to help us ensure our business processes are in accordance with national standards, what training we need to provide our employees. That's what I'm at. I don't care. I'm certainly not looking at a law enforcement investigation. We already had that going on. I don't care about that either. And that's why I feel like we are better served to have the council lead that as opposed to go into an outside entity, not to mention the fact that if you go to an outside entity, we're going to have to publish that. I'm assuming we would have to publish that, enter into a contract of some sort. It's going to cost us money, which is just going to take longer. I believe we owe the citizens of this town an answer on what happened. Because I don't believe we've done that yet.

Mr. Walts, go ahead. I would like to speak to that because one of the reasons, and it wasn't intentional, but one of the reasons is, and most everybody knows this, is that when you're in the middle of an investigation, people can't go around people that know what's going on can't go around talking about it. That's not, that's good. Our legal counsel recommended that we just, we keep it within the counsel until the final results, the investigation was finished, and then we could disclose. Now I think when that just happened, we're an open book, we're letting anybody see a copy of the results of that investigation. So I don't like the implication that that council's trying to make it sound like we were holding the wool over our residents' eyes. It wasn't that at all. We weren't allowed to talk about it.

Can I make a motion to do away with the two responses? That we can have more than two responses in this particular issue. Wait a minute, I didn't hear anything. I would like to make a motion that we suspend the two-response limit in this particular issue.

All right, sir. Alternatively, I could just ask if anybody objects if you address that.

Yeah, that's fine. However you want to do it.

Because, I mean, we could go on forever on this, is what my concern. Does anybody have an objection if Mr. Lawhorn addresses Mr. Walz's comment?

No.

I don't hear any, so go ahead.

I'm not trying to imply that, Skip. What I'm trying to say is I understood the forensics part of this, but the steps of how we got to where we got, that is not a forensics issue. That was a process issue. And I can tell you, I get stopped on the street every single day. And I don't mean this in a derogatory way. But I am asked, how did we hit the button to send the money without talking to a human being? That's part of what I'm talking about here. There was no reason in my mind at this point, and I blame myself because I've been after information from the get-go in this. And in retrospect, I think I would have pushed it a little farther. There were some process and procedural things that occurred during this that actually fell outside the scope. I think, of the insurance investigations. They were looking at forensics and whose system might have been compromised, whose system wasn't. That's what I'm saying, and that's what I'm after here. I want to make sure our processes are right, and I want to make sure that's communicated with them.

I would like to make just one small response to that.

Any objection to that, Mr. Wallace, speaking of which, go ahead.

Just in understanding that, I agree. I mean, my bank won't send a payment when I set up auto pay or any ACH. They will not send a payment without sending a buck through first to find out if it's a real account. I don't understand how that didn't happen, especially on this much money. I'm talking about making a $63 cable bill payment. And my bank, when I'm starting that, the first time they'll send a dollar through just to make sure it's a real So I agree with that part of it. I would like to know.

And that's the part I think that the town has been asking for from day one. Yeah.

We're going to keep going on this for a long time. Hang on. Well, go ahead, Mr. Ike. Go ahead. I'd like to make a motion. Oh, okay. I was going to get to that. All right.

I'd like to make a motion to approve a three-member council-led inquiry in accordance with ordinance section 2-21

um into the cyber fraud can't read my writing here matter into the cyber fraud matter that recently occurred in our our town okay so we gotta say i'm gonna caution with that motion we will then have to make another motion to say who the three people are or we'll just let it sit until another meeting um so do you want to stand with that motion as is

Yes, I'll stand with that motion. And the reason why is that we have a procedure for selecting committee members. People on the town council can put in their request, and we can all consider the request at the next meeting. That would be OK with me.

So long as we understand that. OK. So we'll start discussion on that. And you made the motion. So anything else you want to say about it? Not a lot I want to say. I think we've said it. I don't want to beat a dead horse, and it's getting late. People are sitting here. I'm going to make a comment on that. If we're going to do it internally, I honestly, I know this will be cumbersome. I'd rather do it whole council. I'd rather have all of us involved because I don't want to leave anybody out of this.

I can live with that.

Yeah. And if you don't want to participate, just sit here as we talk about it, I guess. I don't want to drag anybody along. But I really think everybody should have a part to do. And I think we should then look at bringing in, and over a long, potentially long period of time, the SLED guy to educate all of us, a CPA person to bring us up to date on the latest procedures, look at, again, not from a forensic standpoint, but look at what we've done and say, you guys were you know, you were three quarters, you were 70, you were 20%, you were 90%, whatever. You know, just so that we all understand that. And of course, then we can also bring, like you said, as a hearing, we can bring witnesses in. So that just would be my thought that I think it should be the whole council.

I was just going to ask one question to understand, sort of help me both. Would we do this through a series of workshops or would we include them in our regular council meetings?

Right here, right here. Yeah. Yeah, as we're making, so we can make motions at any time. Right, okay, good. That's how I would see it. Good, thank you.

So I'll rephrase my motion then. A motion to approve a council-led inquiry, an entire council-led inquiry in accordance with the ordinance section 2-21 into the cyber fraud matter that occurred in our town. And I will add that the inquiry will be a time limited period at each and every council meeting until we feel it's no longer necessary.

I'm going to ask for clarification, time limited period?

Like we could set aside 45 minutes or 30 minutes, whatever we want to do. and we can work on an agenda beforehand, and people can come in and talk to us, and then we can move on to other business.

So that we don't do this. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So time limited to be determined maybe at the first time, or do you want to set it right now? We can always amend it later.

Yeah, we can amend it later. Let's set it for, I'd like to see, let's start at 45 minutes, and we can drop it to 30 if we get less busy down the road. But you know what? We don't have to go the whole 45 minutes. We don't have to.

Time limited. So the motion would be to set up a full council investigation as a regular meeting occurs, or as needed basis. On as needed basis. Time limited to 45 minutes. Did I summarize it fairly well? You did it better than me. Well, I didn't cite the ordinance. Sherry, can you get all that?

No, I was going to ask you.

I'll email it to the mayor and the mayor can email it to you.

As you wish. That is fine with me. We need a second. Yes, he's just amended the motion. I'll second. Okay, so now any more discussion on this?

I don't know what we're doing. We've got a motion. We're going to have an inquiry board meeting.

no all of us all of us yes limited to 45 minutes no more than 45 minutes per session it took us more than 45 minutes to do this it's time i've got a question it's going to be hard mr mayor i've got a question about the same thing are we going to have people that we include to have them come to that meeting before we can question them we can always do that we can bring anybody in so we can request we had to request seven days i mean five days on wednesday before the council meeting for sherry or how we're going to work getting melody here on the day or when we she don't need to be here how are we going to get her people that works our house explain to me we're going to have to communicate i mean if we think we need them maybe it's going to be part of the agenda

That would happen in a subcommittee too, I think. If we're going to do a committee, I said if we were doing a subcommittee, we'd have the same issue.

I think we will too, but I just want to clarify. How are we going to go about getting these people into question? How are we going to get John Adair in here on some night, or is it sort of like a subpoena? We're going to say, John, you've got to be here.

and they well he's here he's here anyway so not all the time we may not need uh everybody every time okay i just want to make sure everybody understands okay you understand jerry what we're trying to get.

I mean, I thought the direction was going to go. We know what happened, how we're going to fix it. We bring in experts to tell us how we're going to fix it. That's basically what we're saying. I think when he's saying, is an employee going to actually come up to the... I mean, we're not going to question an employee.

We may have to say, did we do this?

I think the director can answer the questions for the employees. She'll be here for the inquiry, but it's more of What policy did you have in place and what went wrong and how do we fix it? What can we do?

Yeah, and I think we can do that without a committee, without, we ought to be able to, I should be able to have Melody come up to this podium and I could ask her any question I'm going to ask her about this and she would be able to answer without even a committee. Or we can go and put it on the agenda and say, we want to have this as a discussion item. We need Melody here or John here that night to question him about something. I just don't see that we need a whole committee trying to question people in front of the whole town, trying to embarrass them.

That's what he gets to, Mr. Mayor.

We're going to try to make John look bad. Mr. Mayor. So I would envision more of that. Um, we named the meeting. We want to cover this, you know, these one or two or three things and have you and the staff prepare the response to that. You know, what were the steps that transpired that can be done in the paper and then have the person available that if we had questions about it, when we get to the point of needing outside expertise, we indicate to you, we need someone that can do that. That's how I'm kind of envisioning.

I'm just saying, I think if

I'm not expecting somebody to go over there and get cross-examined.

No, that's what I'm saying. I think Melanie, the director, will respond to what her statement did.

Right, that's what I would expect. I don't see this being that different from a regular agenda item. It's just going to say, thank you, focus on this stuff. That's really all it is. Except that we're acknowledging that we're going to do this. We're going to see it through. We're saying the council will see it through. That's really what it boils down to. Any more on this? And the motion is to, well, Mr. Hyatt, motion to have a council-led inquiry in accordance with ordinance section 221 into the cyber fraud matter. I'm having trouble reading your writing too. That what?

As needed.

Cyber fraud matter that occurred recently in our town. Okay. I flaunt penmanship.

So, yeah. And then we also said we put a 45 minute limit on it. That's the motion on the table right now. Any other discussion on this? So that's the amended motion. We're going to deal with this first. If this passes, we're done. If it doesn't, we go back to the original, which was a three person subcommittee. that motion was made and seconded so that's that is on the table behind this so this one passes we're done if it doesn't then we look at that three person and we we vote on that all right i just asked one question okay jerry please could we could you you would we could simply ask you to get someone see if charlie's available on this date to have one of his cyber

people come up here, or if we've got business cards from this sled guy, if you could get him for council meeting, something like that, right? Okay. Okay.

All right. Ms. Medina, call the roll, please. Yes.

Mr. Coleman.

No.

Mr. Walls. Mr. Walls.

no yes yes yes yes motion carries five to two and the three-person subcommittee is set aside all right we're now moving into business items okay director there is going to be up here for a while Yeah, do we want a five minute recess? All right, any objections? We're in recess for five minutes.

This conference will now be recorded.

It's up to us, that is correct, right? All right, Ms. Medina, are we ready to roll?

Yes.

All right, this meeting is now back in session. We're moving on to our business items and Director Adair is going to do the Market Field Master Plan Contract.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. This decision paper is for the authorized, the Martin Park Master Plan Contract with Baldwin & Menke, our consultant. The facts are, in 2025, Town Council desired some potential changes to the utilization of Martin Park. I personally applied for and was granted a Parks, Recreation, and Development Fund hard grant for the state share I was given $41,707.50 plus the town would have to match $10,426.88, a 25% match, which would require a total commitment of $52,134.38 minimum to create the master plan. Our engineers, Bolton and May, have a division that performs these projects and has offered a proposal to deliver the plan for $52,750. just around what the grant will be. After some negotiating, they had a little higher, but I got them down. The deliverables are in the task proposal, which is about four different phases of this coordination, this project coordination and project management, kickoff meeting with the town, data collection, site assessment, base mapping, public outreach and engagement, a couple of public engagement events to get the public's input on the plan, and then a conceptual park plan, plan alternatives, and then a final master plan for that fee. The town has budgeted the 52-135 in the current budget to cover these costs. And so the council, in order to have a feasible community vetted plan, which would enable future grants and provide a path forward, should authorize the engineering contract in order to proceed. The staff recommends the approval of the master plan proposal as requested, if so desired.

All right. Thank you. Who said that first? Mr. Colby.

I'd like to make a motion to accept the decision paper on the Martin Park master plan.

And thank you for stepping out of the motion. I should have even said that before. Second. Thank you, sir. And Ms. Shawna seconded. Okay. You want to kick us off, Fred?

What we plan on doing, and we have to do it. We got the grant already, and that's about it.

We'll get all but $10,000 back.

Okay. Then I want to go. $52,135. That's what we budgeted.

Correct. Which was basically the grant amount, which we knew before the budget process was over.

Who advised us in the $52,000? Or is that?

No, we asked for 75. Okay. But that's all they gave us. Okay. Because the hard money, there's only so much available for every county. And we have to get, the Horry County delegation has to weigh in on it. And they signed an awaiting rank.

We waited a long time for this. I remember that.

Yes. And then finally they came back and this is how much we're going to give you out of the Horry County funds that are available.

Okay. So then you negotiated, you say here. And I was kind of reading in between the lines anyway. So-

fulton and make probably would have thought it was closer to that 75 that we well their number was in the 60s and i explained that we only had so much available for this project and so we trimmed out a couple of scope services you know a few you know minor things to get it down to okay i mean close to the grand amount it still looks very comprehensive to me there's a lot of stuff in here yeah yeah well you know the people who do this they do it right okay so

Besides just your long-term relationship with them, I mean, how do we know that the $52,750, we're really getting our money's worth? I mean, it looks like it, I get it.

It's a matter of just experience and knowledge about the area and about the field. We've used several sit-down engineers since I worked here. I don't really want to name names, but I can tell you, to partially answer your questions from earlier, I went through this RFQ process 10 years ago, and we didn't select them when they were DDC. I wanted to. That was my recommendation. Council went against me and went with, because they didn't like the president of the firm at the time, but they went with my second choice, which was a different firm, and I had five years of hell. Every project was a nightmare because they're just not responsive. They're used to building subdivisions and stuff like that. And our little stuff was a priority for them. So I went through five years of tough times, you know, very difficult. And then five years ago when we renewed it and I was able to get them back on board, everything goes smoothly. You call them, they come, they answer the phone, they answer your emails. It makes their life so much easier. I spent half my time waiting for people to get back to me, but not them.

Okay. So we have a task one, two, three, four here. and they each have their own prices. If at any point we decide this is going south, can we just terminate with them and stop? You know, if at task one we didn't like where things were going or something, could we just cancel two, three, and four and?

I'll look, I'll read the fine print, but I assume we can. Okay. Say, well, bill us for what you've done already. Yeah. You know, everything's, that's like an attorney. Everything's ours based. Okay. Okay. They've done it for hours. I have a relative who's an attorney, and he says, what's on my shelves in my store are ours to sell.

Okay. And then the last question I have is the $615 difference. You're just going to make that up out of your budget?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I figured maybe take care of that. That's all I have.

Anybody else? That's the only question I have. Where are we going to come up with the $615?

Mr. Hyatt, I think you were- Yeah, Joe Wynn.

Other budgeted funds.

When the boat and make gets done, spending this 50 some odd thousand, we're gonna have a plan to build a park. Is that your goal?

In phases, yes. In phases. When we met with them originally, we want different, besides the one baseball field that's there, we might be able to implement the phase in, maybe a three phase plan for that property over time. And each phase, as we decide what it's going to be, we can apply for a grant from PAR to build out that phase and we'll get more money. But they want you to have a master plan in place. And there's other grants you can get besides PAR grants if you have a master plan. So that opens some doors for you.

And the phase-in plan is if we don't get all the money to build the entire master plan. So if we only get a quarter of it, then we just have to phase it in.

I understand.

Yeah, but doing it that way, it could be done in a comprehensive way. The community has looked at it, and we have a way forward.

One other question I had was that it says there's an additional cost for a whole bunch of things that are not included as a part of the proposal. That's on the last page, by the way. Yeah, they all have that. Is there any chance we're gonna need any of those?

additional or you kind of left the game so you don't need them yeah we rule those out you know i mean you know they always it's boilerplate language in every uh what they call this called psa professional services agreement they put that in there certain exclusions which we haven't included in your scope of work but if you do want them it'll be close to you actually gotcha okay thank you uh anybody else want to first turn mr coleman go ahead what's the timeline

to the year, two years, do you have any idea? I don't believe it says any time.

It doesn't have a timeline, but I'm sure we can get this done over the off season and have something final product for the spring. Okay, that's my opinion. It'll be several months.

I have another question too. Go ahead. Is there gonna be a chance for the public to kind of

There's going to be several events probably right here in this room where we have graphical depictions of what we could have and they're going to gauge the public's reaction to each of those and see where the support is. If you look at task number three, there's a public engagement plan and public engagement events listed in there. Two of them are included in the scope. Then there's a preliminary.

We already have a motion. Oh, okay.

Then there's a preliminary final plan, which we'll have a chance to review before we get to the final, final plan.

Kind of like the same process?

Yeah, yeah, that's, you know.

Anything else? Motion on the table is to approve this contract, this plan, or the contract plan as presented. Ms. Medina, will you call the roll?

Mr. Stamey.

Yes.

Mr. Coleman.

Yes.

Mr. Wald.

Yes.

Mr. Lawhorn.

Yes.

Mr. Hyatt.

Yes.

Mr. Allen. Yes.

Yes, motion carries unanimously and the plan is approved. We'll now move into the engineering contract for sidewalk project. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, why don't you just do it? That'd be great.

I make a motion to approve decision paper on the subject of engineering contract for budget sidewalk Project as written second All right, there we go.

Okay. Thank you Again, this decision paper is to authorize the engineering contract for the sidewalk project. Uh, it was initially thought by me that uh things were going to be business as usual with scdot And we would do a simplified encroachment application And not really have much engineering on this at all And just bid it out for construction SEDOT, which owns both of these roads that we're going to be, the sidewalks on, they've recently, at the beginning of July, implemented a whole new policy for their encroachment permits for this kind of work, and they will not issue it without a whole bunch of engineering, which I've listed in the document here, environmental site assessments, full set of engineering plans, geometry, drainage elements, ADA compliance, traffic control plan, rating profiles, potential nationwide permit coverage. It's like six or seven things that we have to do, maybe more, maybe 10, that we wouldn't have had to do a year ago on this, which I didn't see coming, to be honest with you. I went to do an encroachment permit with them about two weeks ago, and I said, I can't do this. So I got a proposal from them, and their proposal is 59-120. to do all this work. So being that we only budgeted 320 for the construction of the two sidewalk segments, basically we're left with the choice to either authorize additional money for this project or scale back on the scope of it. So that's why I come to council because they're not going to give me an approach and permit to deal with it without that.

Great. Okay. So I'll start again. The How long, I mean, we budgeted this money this year. So this study now looks like this is fairly extensive.

Yeah, it'll be a couple months before I get all this together.

So the work probably won't all get done this year anyway.

I'd say winter into the spring, yeah.

But it's not in the R3, so it's okay. Okay, so you think they could get all the sidewalks? This fiscal year, yeah. Yeah, okay. All right, so it's just something... we would just deal with later probably just allocating. First of all, you got to see if it actually gets to 59,000. It says some of this. Yeah, it could be less than that.

It could be a little less than that, but you know, I can't proceed with a lot of stuff until I know, you know, what portion are we doing?

Okay. So, but if we decided we want to do all of this and we're going gangbusters and we're coming up on a February, We still got four months of the fiscal year in front of us. We can look at a budget at that point probably. Something like that. Is that what you're suggesting?

I think you have to give me the approval to spend the maximum.

Or we just say build as much as you can for whatever there is at 320, right?

Yeah, or you could say scale back the scope so you can do the engineering.