Town Council - Regular Meeting

This conference will now be recorded.

It is now six o'clock and it is my distinct honor and privilege to call to order the regular town council meeting of August 24th, 2026 for the town of Surfside Beach. Please stand as we begin with an invocation from Mark Lincoln of Discover Church.

Father, what a privilege it is to come before you this evening on behalf of this gathering, the people gathered here. I thank you for the leadership of this town council. I pray that you would bless them. I pray that you would bless them in this time. Just give them a sense of understanding. that they would know the love of Christ in this place, that they would know that you've made a sacrifice for every single person in this room, Lord, and that they would come to know you in that way if they don't. Father, would you bless this time? Would it give you honor and glory? And would you help it to be fruitful? And to accomplish all of it, it needs to be done. Your word tells us that you've provided everything we need for life and for godliness. And I pray that it would be so during this meeting. And as you do that, we'll give you praise because we ask it in the powerful name of Jesus. And everyone said, 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. I will now entertain any motions related to the agenda. All right, hearing none, we'll move on to minutes approval.

Mr. Mayor, I move that we approve the minutes for August 10th, 2026. Second.

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. Motion carries and meeting minutes are approved. We'll now move on to public comments related to agenda items only. I see no public comments, so we'll go into communications. We begin with the SLED presentation from Mr. Ryan Cummings, Lead Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst.

Mr. Mayor, I'll be here in two minutes.

We will wait two minutes. No, I don't think we want to do that. You're not going to do the Administrator's Report in two minutes, right?

I can.

You want to? Go ahead, go ahead. Mr. Mayor and Council,

A couple updates for you. The bids for the courthouse council chamber project were publicly opened on August the 11th. There were five bids received from the opening day. The price ranged from $4 million to $4.5 million, including contingency. The apparent low bid is BEC Construction out of Murrells Inlet. Creation Associates will verify unit cost, check references, review with the owners of similar projects, and then report back to council on September the 8th. on the September 8th agenda. The budget for this project was $4 million. Secondly, the purchase of the land with the public works complex. We closed on this property on August the 17th. The next steps for Director Adair and Director Broder is to rezone the property to PAO public land, send in the planning commission for their review as it relates to the comprehensive plan, selectively remove the tree canopy, engineer and design the new building. The proposed building will match the existing buildings for a building size of 120 feet by 25 feet. And the budget for this project is 250,000. And lastly, with the approval of the contract with Bolton and Ming, staff will begin coordinating a kickoff meeting for the public to attend and give their input for the Martin Field master plan. And then you have the HR report attached.

All right, thank you. Any questions, comments for Mr. Vincent?

Yeah, I guess I have one. So the bids came in between $4 and $4.5 million. Did that include the soft costs of furniture and that sort of thing?

That does not include the soft costs. So we've been going through that the last week. So we're adding up the soft costs to about $280,000.

Okay. And how much do we currently have in the fund to do this?

So our total project was $4 million that we budgeted aside. but how much do we actually have? I don't have that number with me.

You're going to cover that?

We budgeted $4 million. We'll have to come back to council. Okay.

Because we're also, John's building, we're looking at doing that as well, correct?

We already budgeted that.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay. All right. I got a couple of questions. Would you explain the contingency portion?

Yeah. So the actual bid price was about approximately 3.8, and I believe I sent you guys their contingency on their project was like 198,000. Contingency is any error of unit cost per the bid. So there may be some unit costs by the time they do the implementation and building of this project, those costs may have gone up. So that contingency is ours. If they don't use it, it goes back to the town. Okay.

so with the uh zoning and planning commission uh their review to the comprehensive plan um we're looking for that in the next meeting or so as soon as we can get the advertisement we'll put it on the next agenda okay they meet september 1st after probably the october meeting it'll be october okay okay uh and then uh assuming we get that uh go ahead um what do we target the uh tree clearing and property clearing and the building to start. Is that going to be going on this in the winter season? Probably November, December, Tom.

When we can start, we underbrushed it on Saturday. There's nothing in the PL designation that's going to be used in the district. So nothing's going to stop us. It's more of a formality than anything else in PL because the use is allowed in the district. So we're just going to do a clearing, then we're going to do the fencing. and then we're going to bid out the building. So that'll put us into the winter probably.

Okay. Okay. So probably December, maybe January before it starts.

Okay. All right.

That's all I have. Thank you. Anybody else?

Yeah. I have a few questions, but they're about the HR report. Um, first one is on full-time employees. I'm wondering if it would be possible and not a lot of work to break that out by department instead of just for the whole town. Okay. Thank you on that. Um, And then on the back page, highlights, it says, launched a new employee assistance program effective July 1. Is that something that the town council needs to review and approve, or is that just something that's done in-house?

It's an employee assistance program. So it's a part of the medical health benefits we have, which is changing from one group to another.

So we don't, the council doesn't have any role to play in that change? Not with the AP, no, sir. Okay. And then I had a question of, it says here, implemented PACE study results and recommendations effective July 5th. I was just wondering how the costs of that new PACE study are tracking with the original estimates.

What we budgeted is exactly the PACE study.

Oh, okay. So it's tracking perfectly, then, is the answer.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

I've got a second. Anybody else? Okay, kind of related to the pay study. We've talked about this two or three times, but at one point we discussed a two to three year plan for the older employees or the longer term employees to try to help get them a little closer to where they should be. I know we didn't do a lot of it up front because of the cost and that kind of thing. I just want to make sure we don't lose the bubble on that. I'm just concerned that there are guys that have been here 20, 25 years, and they really didn't reap the benefit of this pay study thing.

We're not going to lose sight of that. I mean, basically, maybe a six-month review just to see what the cost would be to hit those higher employees that have been here the longest.

Okay. Well, and maybe for the budget next year, see what we can do. I understand it's probably going to be a two- to three-year process. I just want to make sure we don't forget it.

Right. think we need to set guidelines so is it 20 years or more or is it 15 years or more for those employees okay all right thanks all right with that we'll uh move on and uh is mr cummings here now yes come on up hey

Got it. I made a presentation. I mean, I don't necessarily need, oh, you guys have it printed out. That's perfect.

Do you need a copy?

No, I don't need one. Unfortunately, I've talked about this so many times.

I thought it was. Excuse me, Mr. Mayor? Yeah. Is the presentation going to be projected for the audience?

It doesn't sound like it has a projection of it.

I have a copy of it on USB drive, Bill.

We don't have a lot. We got one. All right, let's do it. All right. Okay, we'll take a minute. Is this on? It's probably not on. It's on top. Oh, really?

That's the one.

I just got a notice to make sure all council manage everybody speak into the microphone when we're speaking. Some of this not being picked up too well.

Okay. I hope everybody can see it, but if not I'll do a pretty good job of just kind of explaining and breaking it down as to how it happens. And some of the pictures are kind of just there to look at, and they're not necessarily for a major purpose. But I'm here today to talk about how payment fraud affects South Carolina organizations. So I work for SLED, and I work for a critical infrastructure cybersecurity division. We deal with payment fraud almost once a week at this point. And so what I'm going to do today is kind of break down how it happens, the different ways that actors are doing it, and kind of shed light on the situation and at the end kind of, not necessarily give my recommendations to the town because I'm not sure exactly how this is done, but how the recommendations that we give pretty much any organization that this happens to. And it's pretty simple, just, you know, extra verification. So what we do, at least my organization, is we provide security services and disseminate cyber threat intelligence to South Carolina's critical infrastructure. We facilitate the cyber liaison office program, which is essentially we have contacts at all of these organizations we support, and we work with them to better their cycle programs. We lead a task force that's comprised of federal and state partners. I'll go over that in the next slide. But generally, we're here to improve the overall cyber posture of South Carolina. So this is the task force. It's a bunch of state federal organizations Department of Administration, worked really closely with the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, especially on a lot of these cases when it comes down to prosecution, and actually the Secret Service, they are the ones we primarily pass these cases to, and they handle a lot of the prosecution aspects of it. So to start off with how payment fraud works, I've decided to go over the most common scenario that we see first, and that's when a vendor who works with an organization or a state entity like Surfside has one of their email accounts compromised. So what's on the screen right now is an email that was recorded to us from one of the CEOs, one of our partners at an organization around the state. They sent this to us and said, hey, we're not really sure what's going on here. We looked at it. We verified that this email came from a legitimate vendor that the organization did work with. One thing we found particularly interesting, the email was right, it went to the right person at the organization. The invoice had pretty much all the correct details on it, the right amount, what it was for. The only thing that was different was the phone number and the email signature. They changed one singular digit, so when they sent this to the procurement person at the victim organization, they tried to call the number and they didn't get anything. And so they did that intentionally, it was just a broken phone number that led to nowhere. And so the idea with these is they got into the vendor's email, they just revised the invoice, and then they sent it to the organization in hopes that they would pay it. And that's the most common scenario that we see. Outside of that, there's another pretty common one. They'll compromise the vendor, right? They'll get in there, have them perform reconnaissance, like analyze who they've written they compromised, emails who they work with, and they'll take that information and then they'll create an email address, pretty similar to the one that they compromised, and use that email to correct contacts, and with fake invoices, trying to get them to pay it. Another really common one is vendor spoofing. So that's pretty much, kind of like I just said, but without a compromise, so the actual vendor doesn't be compromised whatsoever. So I kind of did an example, and went over, like, how could this be done at SLED, and kind of just break it down for everybody. So SLED in particular in the state, they have the division of procurement services. So it basically shows pretty much every state contract and the vendors that work with the state. So I just went there first and looked at state term contracts. Digital fingerprinting was one that stood out to me. It's real small, but I put in a red square there because that sounds like something that SLED would do, digital fingerprinting. So I was like, okay, I mean, that's something I can kind of put myself in the mind of a threat actor or somebody who doesn't perform fraud. so i went and looked further into digital fingerprinting and the actual project name so the state actually says this is for sled use only so the state pretty much just gave out okay so it has a digital fingerprinting project um they also gave the name of the actual person that sled is working with and the vendor who said is working with so if you're a contractor you can already start to get the wheel spin a bit and you know sled works with Ademia Identity Solutions, and we know that they talked to a guy called Jay Truitt at Ademia. And nothing against this company or anything like that. It was just a random one. So now that we have all this information together, we also have the contract end date and the contract start date. In this case, it ends in 2029, so they're likely not going to use this one. But I imagine the end date is in a couple weeks from now. So next, they can create an email, and this was just me messing around to see if this would work. I created my email address. It looks pretty similar to the actual one. I emailed procurement with a fake invoice. And I used the email signature I just created. It looks pretty official. I used the actual phone number of this guy, but I just changed it by one digit. And I took a picture off of Google and put it down in the corner.

And what we have here is a pretty legitimate email going to procurement that will probably get hard on procurement teams, if I'm being honest.

It was well put together and it took practically five to 10 minutes of research. And so, I mean, I go over this purely just to show how easy it is. I mean, it takes pretty much no skill. I mean, you just sit down and do some research and then send out emails. And so imagine if you're a grad actor and this is your full-time job, you can send out hundreds of these per day. And yeah, you're bound to get successful with one or two of them. So the next thing that we see is still kind of along the lines of payment fraud. It doesn't relate to any vendors actually. So this would, for example, be something that would affect like users in particular. So we see these things all the time. They're called credential harvesters. They're essentially a login screen that's designed to look legitimate. So it's designed to look like the actual Microsoft 365 login screen. And so attackers will send these in phishing emails users will enter their credentials into it, and then the attackers can basically control their account and skip over a few steps there. So we see that as a step one. Instead of pretending to be a vendor or perform reconnaissance, they'll just use that same account and go straight into the self-service portal or wherever they can change the direct deposit, whether that's email and HR or there's actually the portal that I have on the screen here. And now they'll simply just change the direct deposit. And one of the main things we see is, we kind of mentioned this to IP people and people we work with, share this with their HR or finance or accounting, is that pretty much all these contractors are using a thing called green.bank. And this is a picture of the direct deposit form. It's something that we see even in those vendor compromises that they're still using green.bank. We've tried to look into it, but for the most part, they're hard to subpoena and kind of track down. And if this stuff isn't reported within like one to two days, the money has already moved like three different hops. So that makes prosecution and tracking people down very difficult for the law enforcement side of things. So that's where my organization comes in. So my team, we don't prosecute, we don't subpoena, we don't do anything on the law side. We are purely cybersecurity. So we try to then help organizations reduce progress. And the biggest thing and the best thing that helps in all of these situations is just general process and policy controls. We would encourage any organization to require mandatory verification for all payments or vendor banking changes. Verify requests using a known phone number on file. We saw in my example and the other one that happened in real life that the phone number they had put in the email has been changed, so you can't just call the one from the email. You gotta enforce out-of-band confirmation, basically. Have that number on file and then call that number to verify if you're speaking to the right person. Similar to policy, it's just access and oversight. There shouldn't be five different people at an organization that can modify invoices or correct deposits. It should always go through a two-step verification process. And finally, and the reason I'm here and the reason I do these talks pretty much everywhere, is just training and awareness to let people know that this is a thing that's happening all the time. And we always recommend using a real-world example, like I did here, just showing how easy it is to do. type of thing and how common it generally is. I think over like the last six months we've seen close to two to three million dollars lost on this type of scam and that's affecting people and users from like weak salary to major projects that organizations have sent to the wrong person. That's the end of my slideshow, sorry, but I'm happy to answer any questions that the council or anybody else has.

All right, thank you sir. Any questions for Mr. Cummings? Sure.

On the second slide, you talk about disseminating cyber threat intelligence through this critical infrastructure sector. How does that stuff get disseminated down to the municipalities?

There's a couple ways. We have close relationships with the Municipality Association, which they're a partner and we send them stuff and we kind of hope that they hit the organizations that aren't currently members of our program. Otherwise, it's kind of like anybody can join our program, and if you join our program, we're sending you stuff constantly. We try to build awareness by just going to events and speaking and advertising as much as we can, but it's hard to get every single municipality or school district or government entity in South Carolina. There's no law enforcement that we have to say that you have to join. It's purely optional, and so I think a lot of organizations that don't fully understand what the program's about are like, no, we're good in cybersecurity. We don't need it at the end of the day. needs information sharing. So it's an ongoing process that we're trying to get it out and trying to increase our reach.

And Jerry, do we participate in it? I mean, are we getting this type of information?

We're members of the Union Association of Battle.

And if we're not, what do we need to do to do that?

Well, right now we've asked Heritage to kind of put some training above and beyond what you guys see on your computers.

Because my concern, and he said it, The threat changes all the time, right? You know, MOs change all the time. So what we might fix the problem, a problem from before and not be aware of the upcoming problems or things that are on the horizon. So that would be my concern is that somehow we tap into the intelligence side of things that's out there and that we develop a training program that actually matches that. So I don't know how we do it, but.

But also the finance department, the employees are a part of the government finance offices

associations so they have seminars on this all the time which is the most up-to-date what's going on now with soccer crowds all right and then this is probably a question for you all the but basically the recommendations on how to do this I know that we I know we've made a lot of changes and also know you've got an upcoming briefing here to talk about another way to help fortify what we're doing but the the bullets he has here about how to reduce fraud risk, how much of that has been incorporated into what we're doing currently?

Well, it's going to be a part of Melanie's cash and distribution policy. I mean, that's been updated too.

Right.

Yes.

But yeah, I know that. I guess my question is, he's got some reasonably specific recommendations in here for how to reduce risk. I just want to make sure that we're taking the best of what we can get to update our process.

Yes, we'll look at this and match it to our new policy.

And then lastly, the training and awareness. I know you guys are looking at that. To me, that's the most important part of this is to understand what to look for. And that gets back to the intelligence part and gets back to training. So I would just strongly encourage we take full advantage of whatever's out there. Yes, sir.

Yeah, I'm going to add to that and say that if SLED is working directly with MASC, that we make sure we're taking advantage of every bit of information that comes through that channel. And then for Mr. Cummings, as I'm looking at how you reduce fraud risk, mandatory verification, known phone numbers, out of band confirmation, et cetera, It really, if I can summarize this, slow everything down. Don't respond to the urgency.

100%, yeah, that's nail on the head, 100%. Almost all the time this happens when somebody is overworked, moving too quickly, and does something they probably wouldn't normally do if they had the time to sit there and wait a minute and think about it.

And I believe that was a factor in our case. We were responding to urgency, repeated requests for payment. um yeah so that may uh anger some of our regular uh contractors but just too bad we're just gonna it's gonna take an extra week or two or whatever and we're gonna deal with it i mean is that doable on our end oh yeah okay that's good that's all i have thank you and then one thing just on that topic um this presentation i made this six months ago before any of this even happened at suicide just this continued to be such a relevant thing that so

literally none of this really has anything to do with the particular incident that happened here, but it just applies in so many different ways and different things that we see that keep happening. So it's not a single out search letter. This presentation was entirely about that. It's just unbelievable how often this happens.

I appreciate it, but you know, and kind of if the shoe fits, not a deal. So, you know, we get it. Mr. Staney.

I have got a question. And my question is, how can you take, Keep tracing the money when it gets out there. What happens if it gets gone that you can't trace that money no more?

Yeah, so it's kind of a complicated process and. It's kind of interesting because the people who are actually doing this are not the same people that are handling the money. I'm not the best at this, but I don't do much with the money aspect, but there's people in the United States and they're called they're in our industry that referred to as a money rule. So they basically launder the money for these out of state. Most of these people are either in Eastern Europe, Russia, name your choice, but they have groups of people who specialize in moving money. That's all they do. And so they're able to, once they hit a bank account, hit another bank account, and who knows if those bank accounts were created by the threat actors or they were just compromised other bank accounts. So the money before it hits its final place is going through three or four different places and then being transformed into cryptocurrency, which is even harder to track. And it just moves so fast. This type of thing will get reported to us when the organization gets reported to by the vendor. So like three months later, the vendor's like, hey, where's the money? And the organization says, we already paid it. Then it's reported to us. And by that time, the money has hit five different bank accounts. It's been converted into two different cryptocurrencies. And it's God knows where. That said, we've had luck in prosecuting these people and actually taking these people to court. but it needs to be reported within like the first two to three days or the money is pretty much lost. And the banks are doing their best to, I mean, we work with them to kind of make them aware of what it looks like, but there's just so many ways that people are getting around it and being creative with it by using actual real people's bank accounts to funnel money through it and that person has no clue what's happening or there's just so many different ways to get around it and they move quick. And it's like, as soon as we adapt and we figure out the way they're doing it, they're already onto the next one. The money is the hardest part. We can track the cyber part pretty simply and understand how it's happening, but the money is still working on it.

Mr. Mayor. Mr. Hyatt. Yeah, I have a few questions. You said you were training this kind of information six months before the incident occurred in Surfside Beach. What did we miss that we didn't get that training? What we should have been a part of in order to have received that training six months earlier?

Yeah, the our South Carolina critical infrastructure cybersecurity program. And I mean, you know, understanding that coming here, I realize that we probably need to do a better job of getting word out there and recruiting, you know, towns and organizations to join our program. And it's not just on cert side. If this information never crossed cert side, it's not their fault. This information didn't get to them and help them.

So I'm not trying to say it's anybody's fault. I'm just wanting to know how we could have been a member and gotten the information six months previously.

I mean, yeah, to become a member, you just contact anyone. We have a public website where you request to join the program, and you fill out a form, and it's as easy as that. You're getting invites to our webinars. You're getting emails about free cybersecurity services. You're getting bulletins sent out to you when we see this type of stuff happening. It's pretty, yeah, you just signed up on our website. It's scic.sc.gov, and there's a request to join form. But I'm pretty sure at this point, the time starts, I have joined the program.

Okay. SLED was a lead agency in this investigation, not our own police department. They turned it over to SLED. We, at some point, should get a report, you'd think, since we're the victim of what SLED has determined. How do we get that report?

That's something I can take back to my team, so I wasn't the one who first-hand investigated this case or anything like that. So I can go back to the mask and See if I gave you guys something, or at least a write-up of what we found exactly.

Okay, and then I have a question on how this criminal works. So the criminal is outside the system. Does the criminal enter the system with the vendor, or does he enter the system with the payer? Or does he enter the system with the vendor and then go to the payer? How do they enter the system?

everything you said is an opportunity for them. So yeah, they can enter with the vendor and find out who the vendor is working with. And I mean, that's usually the most profitable route for them because the vendor has multiple different customers paying them and they can pretend to send new ones to each of those customers or they can get into the actual victims network, right? Understand who they're gonna be paying pretty soon and then create a new email, pretend to be that person exactly. I mean, there's just multiple routes for it and all it takes is one compromised email. So to answer your question, all of them. All of the above. Yeah, every single case. You've seen it with the victim organization, the vendor, or somebody who just Googled who the organization works with. I mean, it's all of them now.

Thank you. Oh, I have a question.

Mr. Mayor.

Yes, Sean. Mr. Hyatt brought up a good point as far as how do we get involved in the SLED training. And I don't want to assume that we're already doing this.

are we doing this are we part of this we have not joined this sled program okay we will okay thank you thank you mr comics yeah thank you i'm here i have to speak to you guys i love service at beach many times thanks for the plug

All right, we will move back to our director's reports. We did the administrator's reports. We'll begin director's reports. So Director Gruber will kick us off.

Good evening. We're reporting on the month of July, and of course July is the beginning of a new fiscal year. So at this point, you're going to see the trend will be that our expenses are higher than our revenues until tax bills go out and we start receiving that tax. In July, we have 32 new businesses, nine in town, 12 out of town, six contractors, and five rentals. um for accommodations tax we don't see the first quarter of that until about october november time period and then for hospitality and local pay tax the first two months of what the um county sends to us gets poured back to prior year because it's prior year money and then same with june what we collect in june for hospitality locally tax gets accrued back to june um sorry but we select in July, gets approved up to June. So right now you'll see that there's no revenue really yet for hospitality and agents. For capital projects, I just put a little reminder of what the projects are for this fiscal year. We're doing the road paving, Markham Park master plan, the Fuller Park pickleball courts, finishing the floral clubhouse renovation, sidewalks, We started a life cycle maintenance program for our buildings, and of course the court and council chamber building. Stormwater has collected $18,000 through July. There's been major projects at this time. So we are brewing that money for the next big project. On the enterprise funds, we had $74,000 in operating revenue, and of which 36 of that, 74 was for parking. And then expenses are $16,000 for July. Sanitation revenues are $277,000. Our expenses are $76,000. And then our parking for July is $111,000. And our expenses are $1.4. The investment pool, the interest rate remains consistent at $3.9, which is good. So this is a little overview. During the month of July, the finance department works in two fiscal years. We work throughout August to collect prior year revenues and pay prior year expenses to accrue back to tune to complete fiscal year 26. The finance department also has been very busy collecting the data and answering questions for the audit, which they were there last week. So we've been answering lots of questions. Everything's been going great with them. And that's all I got.

All right, thank you very much. I think the July report is always kind of skinny. It's kind of hard to draw any conclusions at this point, but are there any questions, comments for Director Gruden? Mr. Mayor. Go ahead. Ms. Shaw, go ahead.

Under the first page, you said five rentals. Are they new rentals or are they just rentals?

They're new business license rentals. They're new. Mm-hmm.

Is that when somebody sells their rental and then there's new change of plans?

Yeah, it's when they bought something and they decided to rent it out or maybe they already own it and they decided, hey, I'm gonna rent it out.

Thank you.

Sorry. Under capital projects fund, I think all the projects that you've listed are funded in the budget, is that correct?

Yes.

Okay. And under sanitation fund, operating revenue is $277,000 while expenses are $76,000. That makes John Adair look like he's skinning a fat hog. Is that really the... Especially since we have an increase.

That's the whole point of an increase is to start gaining that fund balance again for this fund so that it can sustain itself for the next 10 to 13 years.

Right. And then under parking, parking revenue is $111,000 and expenditures are $1.4 thousand. That's $1,400. Is that really correct?

Mm-hmm.

Wow. Okay. Thank you. That's just for July. Thank you.

Others? Mr. Mayor. Mr. Coleman. identifies funds for the year. We're getting 36,000 for parking, so that makes us only 38,000 for everything else?

Yes.

That's rent and stuff like that?

Yeah, that's your rents, your fishing revenue, any kind of events there, binocular revenue.

Wish we had a bigger parking lot. Yeah, that'd be good.

All right, then thank you, Director Gruber. We will now move on to the fire department report with Chief Nelson.

Good evening. I just want to let everybody know that we have 42 personnel currently in the fire department. Of those 42 personnel, 18 are crew and 24 are volunteers. Of the 24 volunteers, we have roughly 16 that are anterior firefighters. So we've changed that around quite a bit. We do have one opening currently at this time. It's for a firefighter paramedic position. If we fill that position, which will help us in the long run lastly uh pa fire incidents uh that we've been doing in collections and stuff we collected another 250 dollars that gives us a grand total so far this year 2870. uh fire inspections that we started going for we had six thousand nine hundred dollars thank you uh i'm gonna break my own rule and it's not part of your report but what happened uh my set tore off so that was repaired okay

the money that you've been collecting on this uh accidents and whatever yes sir you know how much you got in that fund now i would say anywhere from eight to ten thousand but i don't have a direction are you still planning on building A train facility out here? Yes, sir. Have we got enough money to get started on that?

No. Okay. I've gotten a couple estimates, and we're looking anywhere from $250,000 to $300,000. It's all for the whole system. You've got to figure all these. They're connex boxes is what we use. They all have to be fabricated. We have to have a welder come in and cut it. join the boxes together. They have to build stairwells in there, water piping systems, and quite a bit of work goes into building that. The gentleman that I got the one bid from is the one that does wells in the Myrtle Beaches. He did not do really counties, because we're a county that had a welder that worked for him at the time. So we couldn't do it in stages. There is two stages that we could do. One is 250,000, and then an additional is 100,000 added on. I won't talk.

Just to burn it down. I hear you.

So we're at $20,000 roughly, I would say. We've got $10,000, $20,000 somewhere in there that we collected over this last year.

Mr. Mayor, Mr. Walsh. I could ask a question. This would include Melanie. Oh, hello. Melanie, we are keeping a separate bucket for him so we're keeping this money set for it. You said that, I remember when we talked about it like a year ago, we wanted him to have, we didn't want him to have to collect it, but we did want him to have a place where we were holding it for him. So he could keep up with it separate from any other. Okay, just double check.

Thank you. Mr. Webb, Mr. Hyatt. Chief, I have a question on the number of calls volunteers were dispatched to charge. For example, on the left side, it says volunteer ID number 74, responded to one call but on the right it said volunteer id number gave zero hours to the department and then 52 uh right below it id number 52 says responded to 28 calls and yet they're not even listed over there on the right side so am i misinterpreting this yes sir yes so hours are different from response calls

um so we have some volunteers that aren't listed in this as a part of operations they collect out um so they would help out when we do public affairs and stuff like that and they get counted with hours as far as that when when the call volume that's an actual they get a call they don't get hours per se for that call line very good thank you i appreciate it no no mr coleman go ahead i see you have

Yes, sir. Any word from one county about the ambulance? No, sir. I go by Scipio Amulet. There's two ambulances in the base there.

One's a spare.

Okay. So they have a spare then?

It's not manned or anything like that. The only thing that that ambulance is used for is if another ambulance goes out of service, they go there, pick up that ambulance, and jump in to the ambulance. You know, it was a tire or engine or whatever it was.

I was just hoping that we're just keeping that sent over the press with, you know, when that comes.

Hold on. Anybody else? Go ahead, Mr. Walts. That's just an interesting observation on Harry's comment. When we hear that countywide we're 48 ambulances down. They don't have a staff. That's where it's not that they don't have the equipment. It's that they don't have the people.

You've got to figure if they're covering 1,211 square miles, they have to have so many spare ambulances and they have spare engines and everything else. Yeah. And that's where they house them at and stuff like that. Unfortunately, hiring paramedics is kind of difficult. You know, we're starting at 51,000. Rose Inlet's starting at 61,000. And I don't really know what county's starting next. You know, so it's getting a medic anymore is very difficult. One of our captains is planning on going to medical school, which is awesome. We're very excited for that. If we can send some more people through, we'd be glad to do that too.

If I could, that's like the top of the fireman ladder, isn't it? Before you go into administration.

That's the top as far as EMS side of it is. Okay. Yep. Next thing after that would be probably a physician's assistant, a nurse, and going into the hospital. Oh, right. Yep. Okay.

Thank you. Any others? All right, thank you, Chief Nelson. We will move into the communications report with Mrs. Mull.

Good evening, everyone. Okay, so I'm pretty proud that we've hit 50,000 followers on Facebook, so yay us. We have interviews for our new position that has half begun, and they will continue over the next week or so. So we're excited about that. Our summer events have wrapped up for the season, but just remember that we still have the same things that go on during our fall months as well, which is Music and Memorial Park, Farmer's Market, and then the Arts and Crafts Market. And then we're getting really psyched about the Edge of Summer Fireworks Festival, which will take place by the noon at the pier. And then just wanted to give you a brief update. You guys have all this information in your packet. But just to kind of give you a little update from our logistics meeting. So the pier indeed will be closed. And that's the pier from the gate to the end of the pier. That's going to be closed all day for the fireworks festival for our safety. And then our peer businesses will be allowed to remain open all day after the fireworks have been loaded onto the pier. And we plan on loading in around six-ish, that long. So everybody's safe, our businesses are safe, our town people are safe, and then our visitors will be safe. That is a wrap-up of those event details. I think our next meeting is on Wednesday. And that's all I have for you.

All right, any questions, comments? Mr. Coleman. Why is all the summer events wrapped up?

Kids are not in school.

Summer kids aren't in school yet.

I understand. yeah we roll on this the general school schedule you know I'm again remember when I was going through this I was going through some tests right so what I would say to you is I find a very strong opportunity for the community family game nights and if I, and I haven't baked it all yet, but if I had to say, I would back it up a little bit, like around 6.30, 7 o'clock. Mom and dad go to the Pure Village. They have dinner or downtown businesses, whichever they prefer. And then we start some support. So we had a start shop continue with a meeting for that. So we've got some pretty good ideas that are on my priorities board.

My question was, we were trying to get more towards to come to a vacation here. And I found out two weeks ago, he had an older show, he had a craft, his craft is called Drop In. He has a family name. How do we chat with him? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I understand. But we are working on some different things that I think will work pretty well for us.

The older fire dance show, they're the ones who said we can't do it anymore? Correct. They are back to school. I'm just saying, maybe they can't do it at 8 o'clock at night. Could they do it at 6.30 or 7 o'clock? Yeah. Absolutely. There's a lot of possibilities out there. There are still a lot of people up north. Yeah, live. So all those families are still coming down. Sure. It would be great if we have something for them absolutely and i would i totally agree with you we need to capture that audience thank you um i actually got a question for the ministry and not to be a bad guy but are we allowed to have the fireworks displayed on this end of season or does the council have to vote on this because it says um supposed to be 30 days prior town council will be authorized publicly

No, sir. A year ago, the town attorney had indicated that that section does not apply to the town. Does it need to be changed? It does, so that it's clear. So it's not very clear, but it does not pertain to town council or a town event.

I just want to make sure. Yes, sir. And can we work on making it clear? Yes, sir.

Mr. Hyatt. In a minute, Mr. Hyatt, I just want to add, because I brought this up with the administrator, and this is all not too long ago, because we did go through this discussion last year, and we need to clarify it. And unfortunately, we had the event, and we just moved on, and nobody said go back. So we've all made notes that we're going to clarify this thing before next year. Mr. Hyatt has also weighed in on it. So yeah, we should be much better going forward. And with that, Mr. Hyatt, go ahead.

Not to complicate things, but I noticed there's some vacant spots over here. There's some vacant spots over here. Does that mean that we're not going to have full-fledged vendors this year or is it just- We don't have a full-fledged of vendors on the fireworks festival.

That is 12 to 14 total is what we do. Everything we do is in that parking lot area. One of the start-stop continues that we learned last year is we were really crowded in that little space. And I know most of you guys were there. So again, you're always testing things to see how they work. So it makes better sense for us to have fewer vendors, more space for the public safety. Very good, thank you.

You're welcome, sir. Mr. Staley, we sort of back to the 30-day prior notice for fire workshop. we actually did that because you know if you really think about it because we uh voted on this at budget time and proved it back then so it has been voted on and approved yes sir prior yes wait for this yes sir that's i just want to clear that up thank you mr mayor good shot um you know you have reported also that like the t-shirt sales

that we always make a profit out of that, even though we have some left over. Are we gonna do a sale today? Yes, we are.

We're having an end of summer sale, for sure.

Mr. Mayor, can I get a second? Hang on, anybody else? Go ahead, Mr. Hyde. Is there a chance our town could order some more hats that say Surfside Beach on them? They are on the way. Thank you.

You got it.

All right, with that, thank you, Mrs. Mull. We will now move on to the public works report from Director Adair.

Good evening, Mayor and Council and citizens. Public Works for July. In our sanitation division, the summer rollout program is going to be going off out of effect after September 12th and back to our winter schedule. Again, I mentioned last month the new sanitation rates approved by Town Council are in effect, as is the bill that everybody got August 1st. Hopefully you all got that. Yeah, thanks John. Yeah, we voted for that, right? Yeah, it took a lot of doing with Grand Strand Water and Sewer to do that. I'll comment that our next household waste e-waste drop-off event is going to be on September 11th. put it on their calendar. Mr. Hyatt mentioned earlier the sanitation expenses. You're gonna see new sanitation trucks coming in in a couple of weeks and you're gonna see a big expense on the expense side of the sanitation fund.

And a Mercedes outside of the office. That would be good.

No, it's just a garbage truck. It's a side loader. So they'll bring that expense side over there. In our streets and drainage division, I'll just highlight, which isn't on here either, plastic pipe, you're going to float that off into the ocean and then cap the ends of it, and that will be the end of it, and the whole beach will be open 100%. So I still get calls about it. I'm sure you guys get calls about it. But during the demobilization, all the sand has been pumped already. There's no more dredging going on. And so we're just waiting for them to completely get all that stuff off the beach. They'll be followed by sand fence installation by their subcontractor after that. So that won't close any beaches, the sand fence installation. In our grounds division, we installed a new water fountain in the Fuller Park playground. In our fleet maintenance division, in July, our mechanics completed 83 repairs on town vehicles and equipment and 16 vehicles had preventive maintenance. If anybody has any questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

Mr. Mayor. Ms. Shaw. You said now with all the dredging on the beaches completely done, when will the new signs get implemented?

Once the sand fence goes up, the signs will go up.

All right, thank you.

Yes. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Stamey. As everybody knows, we received a thing today about the skate park down here. And y'all, when they inspect that, make sure it's safe. Mr. Mayor.

Yeah, this is not part of the report. We should not be getting into these. But yeah, it's not part of the report. Sorry, John. I mean, that's what we're supposed to stick to. Thank you, Ms. Medina. I asked her to keep me on task.

Mr. Mayor, if I could. Mr. Wallace. Just a quick question. Absolutely. I don't recall seeing exactly what, but I'm just curious. What does one of those blue side loaders cost us?

Almost $500,000. I was going to say.

$460,000, I believe. Thank you.

Yes, sir. Any others? Thank you, Director Adair. Thank you. We will now move into the Police Department Report. Chief Mickle.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, citizens. So for July, It's 1,767 calls for service. The council has broken off the self-initiated from year to date. He wrote 93 citations, made a total of 30 arrests in July, and 19 of those were after arrest warrants, which are listed there. When you look at the index crimes, I don't see anything that are highly ordinary or of concern there. And then the golf cart activity, This is year-to-date, again, 10 citations, 37 warning citations, 14 accidents, five of which are injury. And for notable events. We responded to an unresponsive incident at a residence and upon arrival, officers administered life-saving measures and were able to revive the child. The incident was referred to the Child Protective Services. We were investigated and took appropriate action I believe at the next council meeting, myself and the fire department will be recognizing the officers and the fire department personnel that have been involved in saving that child. Officers also responded to a stolen vehicle that was stolen from a tow company and wasn't seen and caused a bunch of damage when it was leaving. We were able to work with some other agencies and find that vehicle and issue some charges for the subject of the broken stolen vehicle.

and of course we all participated in fourth july events which were really great and a great time to do it any questions any questions comments for chief michael mayor mr waltz if you could please i've been getting a lot of uh inquiries as to the the latest golf cart activity that we've had one of them wasn't in our town another was in our town if you could Just for the good, it seems like the residents are awfully interested in those certain activities.

I know this is a July report too, but there's been a lot of activity in August with golf carts too. So I'm just going to, probably more of what they're talking about. Yeah, we've had a lot more golf carts in town and we've had, I think we had a total of five accidents in August just itself. Three with golf carts, two rail SUVs. So we've seen an increase in August just as well. So um of course they'll be in the other district but i forgot about that because we're talking about it so oh yeah there's a lot there's a lot more uh golf card activity in town um i think maybe only one of those was at night um still there access during the day two of those i think were injured so yeah there's been um but i i think the county's seen it as well too um i just i think there's a lot of variables involved um i actually did grant some numbers um but an increase since last year of 21% of accidents involving golf carts. But prior to the year before that was an increase of 27%. So I don't know if that correlates with, but I think it was just a lot of variables. There is the new law that was passed, there is population growth, and then there's also a huge increase in golf sales and rentals. We've seen them spring up all over the county as well. So I just think there's a lot of interest in golf carts and LSVs. And a lot more people are getting them. And so we're just seeing a lot more on that activity as well.

Someone called me today and asked where. So I think I clearly told them. But if you could, just for the record and everything, there was a fatality.

Yeah, it was not within Surfside. No, right. Right. Not within town. It was just outside of town. But there was a golf cart accident with a fatality. I don't know a lot of the details. It was Highway Patrol, I think, was the primary investigating agency. And as far as we can tell, there's no ties to suicide on the victims as well. Yeah, it happens. I mean, we had an injury. Yeah, I mean, we did have an injury accident here as well around the same time. Not nearly as serious.

And alcohol was involved in that when we got here.

Thanks, Steve. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Shaw. I would kind of be curious to understand these accidents with the golf carts. Is there any way we can find out how many are from rentals compared to owners?

I'd have to go back to each one and run the... See, the problem is with the golf carts, I mean, it can be with LSVs very easily, the golf carts, they don't have flexible plates.

Any reason why?

I won't be able to get exactly accurate numbers, but I can probably get some approximations on that.

Any reason why I'm asking is since the accidents are going up, should, and if they are on the rental side, should the rental companies do a better job educating? You know, people come down here for vacation and they rent, and I see them all over town. And the rentals, I can guarantee you, No, well, I haven't seen that many where they put children in the seatbelt. They either choose not to or they're not aware of the new law. So it's just something to think about. I don't want you to go like, I can't tell you what to do, in other words. But it would be curious to see if it was from the rentals. And then we could walk back and get the rental company to educate the people.

Yeah, I know the rental companies are. I mean, the team posted on the rentals. The law is posted on the rentals. I think by the way, they have to do that. We haven't seen anybody not complying with that. People pay attention to a lot of those label warnings, I guess. You know what I mean? And again, that's why we keep these records when we go back and analyze. I mean, now we can see some of these numbers next year and we can

trying to reduce these numbers uh focusing our enforcement enforcement techniques so it's learning experience for us as well mr mayor mr coleman i'd like to go back to the uh hot hot accident so he's you know seriously was that an accident was in order to the person fall out of a cop car Meaning you was today hit something. Well, first of all, it was an LSV. It wasn't a call. So it would have been allowed to be out at that time, but it was at night. Yeah. So I'll call it a different name.

Right. Right. But I was correlating with the law. So let's say that the, the, we hadn't changed the law. You guys had not changed the law. LSV still would have been out there.

I get that.

There was a single vehicle alcohol valve and the passenger fell out. So I know the driver was arrested.

Correct.

DUI.

DUI. also arrested for a person getting hurt with an accident. Never hit anything. She fell out of the golf cart. That's correct. Was she drinking alcohol beverage? We don't have any toxicology evidence to the officer. Did the officer speak to her?

The investigation revealed that alcohol. So this was more an alcohol incident than a golf cart incident. But it's still classified as an accident. I'm just saying it was in order to be able to look at the analysis.

cause was so many drinking car driving correct and most probably the passenger was probably had a couple too many of them and fell out of a cop car that's it so that could have been a bicycle could have been a wagon could have anything else in the person probably would have got hurt just telling me the point that it didn't really have anything to do with a cop car thank you oh i got the sauce went up from from two from last year to five

that was real assault well that was a report yeah i don't understand the report so these are actually um the crime data that so the report yeah reported so we just had five more reported it doesn't mean that there were five actual cells we arrested five people for assault that just means those we got those are the reported monthly crime data so we've received five reports So if you want to go back and look, if you go back and look at those five reports, I think we had one assault and actually occurred in a probable cause.

So initially we only had one assault. We had five calls. Five reports and then we could only have. A report meaning somebody called that said there was somebody weighed down at 3 o'clock and said there's somebody getting assaulted.

Correct.

We responded to five calls of classified assaults. And only one.

And only one resulted in the charge.

We can get that instead of, I mean, I was a rookie man up to me, so I just got robbed. They're just going to rob. And I called all the troops to come and basically what it was is they were sitting in a bar and she went into the bathroom and someone took a couple of dollars out of her pocket. That wasn't a robbery. So the true number, I like the true number. I don't care how many people miss calls. or said it was a soil delusion. I'd rather have the real one. We have X amount of soils from this month to last year.

You have that, though, so you can see what the calls you're responding to that fall in those categories, and you can look at them and see. If you look at the method of violence, too, there's two there. So now that I'm looking at that, that might have meant three of the five, those domestic violence could have been assault. Of course, then some of those disorderly conduct also could have said, hey, you know, those other ones aren't actually an assault, they're disorderly conduct. So we responded to five calls that were classified as assaults, and then go back and look at arrests that correlated to that.

Possibly three assaults. This is two domestic violence. Yes. This is a necessary assault.

harassment well the domestic violence has to include an assault so there was three assaults all right mr mayor he does i guess okay mr hyatt i think chris wanted to go well yeah go ahead sticks out on here there was an arson could you tell us what happened that was uh yeah um that was third fourth of july there was an alcohol wild in a uh

on the incident inside a house and there was a fire and the fire marshal responded with our detectives and they conducted a fire, across the origin investigation and determined where the fire started in the house, had something to do with fireworks and were able to determine who was responsible for that in the house.

Okay, there's a couple other questions. If you received more than one call for the same incident, do you count that you count that like let's say you receive five calls for an incident is that do you count it as one because that's one just one okay um because we responded to that one incident and then i'm wondering we don't have a handle here on town council of anything that really happens on our beach because do you oversee the lifeguard services do you know what's going on on the beach so we don't oversee lifeguard services that's a private contract

I always see the Beach Ambassador Program, which patrols the beach, and all of their statistics are right here in the report as well. You can see. I saw those. Yeah. And then we have them. We break it down. Yeah, that's how we keep everything on the beach. Now, what the lifeguards do, that doesn't. So we don't have any information.

If they're rescuing anybody, we don't really know it. unless they call for help unless they call for assistance i have to ask is that correct unless they call for their ems or fire and another question i have sometimes i have to shut down the beach how do we know are people complying or are we not we have a problem there you know we we're kind of blind to this kind of information so when weather conditions cause for the beach to be shut down

they shut that down and then nobody complies then they'll call us so nobody complies so as you'll remember a couple of months ago maybe a gentleman wouldn't comply i was swimming by the pier fire department brought him to the shore and we arrested him took him in jail for not complying so i think you'll hear about a you know vast majority of people comply um with the replace yeah and then there's an ordinance that they don't comply um it's a violation of the ordinance

One last thing, I'd just like to make a comment to the officers that helped revive that child. Congratulations to them.

You'll have that opportunity.

Good. Looking forward to it.

Mr. Staley. On these 37 wards on the golf cart, I mean, burning five patients, on the Goff Parts via 37 warnings. What kind of warnings is that for? Kind of give me a, kindly an idea of what traditional warnings, or 37 warnings you'd stop a Goff Part and give them.

Could be any of the, about any of the ordinance or state law violations that the officer determined.

Well, Black, if you stopped a Goff Part and the child is in the state building, would you give them a warning? Probably not.

would you want it depends on the circumstances would your officers give a warning it depends on the circumstances i can't really get into the kind of scenarios what you're saying but it's just it's it's within their it's within their uh legal discretion to do so would they do that probably not they probably wouldn't have a warning for that but i can't say that just a lot of warning tickets being given out

for 10 citations and 37 warnings. I mean, that's a lot of difference. It's a lot of warnings. People get a lot of warnings. The warnings don't go too far. I've had some myself. I'm telling you. Well, there you go. There you go. You might want to stop talking.

When you get up, you just wind that forward.

Oh!

well i mean we do try to get compliance through education if you think that'll work if you don't think it'll work then we use your citations and if you get the warnings are all documented it's not like you just get a verbal warning if you if i give you a warning tomorrow today and you can stop by another option it's in the system he pulls it up around you he sees you got a warning for it you're not getting a second one okay

it's curious apparently he is and now i know you're not getting anywhere mr mayor if i could hang on let me see anybody that's just you and me that hasn't said anything i just wanted to clarify something with chief nelson and and you all back back in the day when i worked the beach um our procedure was if we pulled anybody out of the water We had to call you guys in to clear them. I mean, we're certified lifeguards, but we're not medical professionals. Correct. We should be calling for an ambulance if they pull somebody out. So I wanted to clarify that. That's still a procedure here. If they had to do any kind of life-saving rescue, they've got to include you once they get them to the second level, if they can get them to the second. Yes, sir. Okay. So we know about it from your report. Correct.

all right with that thank you uh chief mickle and chief nelson thank you uh well now we want planning building and zoning director broder good evening there council members a lot of trying the highlights here um

The second reading of the tree ordinance will be coming to you soon. As you know, we're refining the section on fines versus penalties, and we've got that ironed out, I believe, so that will be coming to you. On September 1st, the Planning Commission is going to be holding a public hearing on two items, one on locational controls, or I should say further locational controls from the storage future of vehicle fueling establishments. And in brief, what that really is is that we actually list auto service station and gas stations in two places in the use matrix. And in one place, it's permitted, and in the other place, it's conditionally permitted. So then we start splitting hairs on definitions of what a gas station is and what an auto service station is. Exactly, so I was put in that uncomfortable position of having to do that. We need a change in the ordinance, so we're making a change in the ordinance, and we're updating it. We're doing away with gas stations, we're doing away with auto service stations. By the way, auto service stations are the gas stations that I remember. Those are the ones with the pumps, with a roll-up door, and two lifts, and people were actually working on cars. A gas station is purely fuel. we're updating it to call it a vehicle fueling establishment to include things like electric hydrogen and all the other fuels that may be coming along around your future so we're updating that ahead of the game if you will the um last one i wanted to talk about briefly was all of the parcels back there, except for John's facilities, are zoned C1. And in order to be consistent with his zoning on his current site, we'll be taking that to the Planning Commission to rezone that to C1. With that, it's been a long set of questions for everybody up here. I'll just ask, is there any other questions that I can formula? Any questions?

There's more, the bullet on preparing to bring damages against the illegal killing and removal of an oak tree. Is that the one that came in? We got an email.

It is. Okay. As I always like to say, I have 75 excellent code enforcement officers out there in golf carts taking names and taking pictures. So we have a picture of it. We didn't have a picture of it coming down, but yeah, it was a tree that, from my understanding, was a past issue. Somebody tried to kill the tree chemically. The tree is, in the picture that we have, is the tree is dead. There's no question about it. There wasn't a leaf on it. But there was still an illegal removal of it. So we're just following up on that and doing the appropriate enforcement action on that.

Thanks. You're welcome. Any other? Thank you, Director Broder. Thank you very much.

we'll now move into our discussion item item 7a on placard mrs wall is going to uh introduce this topic all right i'm i'm pretty excited to uh put this presentation before you by trent and i'll just give you a brief overview uh when you are looking at your presentation um in your packets There's two pieces to this. One is called PeerCast and of course the other one is called Placard. We can marry the two names if we want to. So it's a system that allows basically a QR code. He's going to give you all the info. But it's a QR code. If I'm a person that I'm going to go fishing on the pier, I'm going to scan that QR code. It's going to tell me what's biting currently, what we are using as bait, et cetera. I won't steal all your thunder. And then the second part of that is a digital sign, 60 by 30, where I can scan a QR code and I can say, I don't have to Google restaurants near me, happy hours near me, what are the beach rules? I don't have to Google any of that. It's all gonna be in one great place for you. With that, Trent, thank you very much. Of course.

Council members, thank you. Mr. Mayor, thank you for having me. Essentially, this is Placard. I'm a co-founder of Placard. I started Placard with my friend Chris Coulter. We both moved here from Florida. We've been here for about six to seven months and absolutely love it here. We've kind of been here for a while. I have a wife and four kids, and I'm very excited to continue to live by the beach. My wife missed it dearly, so we're going to be by the beach for a while. We started Placard because we had some questions through those questions. So first and foremost, what is Platt Group? We connect physical places to dynamic digital experiences that can be updated instantly. This is a live example of our Surfside short-term rental location called Surfside State of Mind. Essentially, what you do when you walk into this short-term rental, if you are on Airbnb or Vrbo, is you can walk in, you see this plaque, you scan it, and it tells you immediately 90% of the questions that you have about being in that space. The whole purpose behind this is to deliver information the way it's never been delivered before. Right now, you're Googling things. Right now, you're asking to check GPT. And that's how you're getting information. People really want to engage with something that's native to their phone. So we create mobile web apps to do exactly that. So when you walk into this short-term rental, this is the experience you get. You can press Copy right on that button for the Wi-Fi access and then paste it right into your Wi-Fi password. So it's super easy, really straight to your phone. It also tells you everything that's local. It's all geolocated. So you never have to worry about if you're in a short-term rental in another city that you're not going to be able to indulge in the local farmers markets or events around the area. So where it started, PeerCast. This is our first baby. And you're more than welcome to scan this with your phone if you'd like to get a firsthand experience. You just hold your phone up, open up your camera, and point it right at that QR code, and it will open the PeerCast mobile web app right now so you can see exactly what it looks like. PeerCast started because Chris and I met, and we were at a One Million Pups event in Myrtle Beach. And we went out to the pier, Pier 14, and we wanted to know about fish that people were catching. We wanted to know what kind of bait, what kind of rigs they were using. And nobody could answer any of our questions. So we decided to ask around, gather this information. We thought to ourselves, it would be really nice if this was all in one place, right out here. What are the rules and regulations? Anything you want to know about, fishing right on this pier. And so we created PeerCats. We had questions and the answers were scattered and disorganized and not pretty to look at. So we took, no offense to the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, but we took the information that's scattered throughout their website and we put it into one beautiful mobile web app. So not only that, but we tell you if the tide is rising or falling, what your bite score is, the likelihood of you able to catch fish that day based on the weather. the tide and what kind of bait and lure you're using. There's games on there to get bored. Kids can play or give their parents fish. But what we did is we took three sets of information with all these ads that were popping up and we put it into one place where it's delivered and it's not cumbersome. And what we discovered is anywhere we go, this applies to absolutely anywhere. Visitors spend more time searching for information than enjoying where they are. I hate trying to look for parking. My wife, one of them super young, she's screaming like crazy in the backseat, driving all over the place, trying to find parking, trying to find public restrooms. I can't stand it. And then when I get out of the car, I want to go to happy hour with my wife. That's something that we like to enjoy together. And I want to know where the closest one is. It would be nice to have that all in one place. And so we're proposing a plaque, a 60 by 30 plaque where you can scan And you can have every bit of information you possibly want to know about the counter search site. It will look something similar to what you see here. We can design and create absolutely anything that we want. So if there's another design that you all would prefer, this is something that you can go in a different direction with. I personally like this one. The benefits of Blackbird for the visitors is, of course, less searching or exploring, better first impressions of the city. It feels like you're more engaged, easier navigation, and it's always current. Really important part of it. Benefits for businesses. They can list and update their happy hour whenever they want to. They have full access to an admin backend dashboard for this that will allow them to update this data so that we don't have to go back and forth with communication. Very simple for them. They can also listen to all live music. And the biggest one for me is seasonal promotions without replacing signs or printing new materials ever. It's just on this one scan. Benefits for the town for you guys. This is extremely important. You get all the analytics, all the metrics. You get to see how people navigate your town, what they're most interested in, what are people clicking on the most, the most viewed businesses. This is extremely valuable information, and you can use it however you want. You also get to see peak visitation days and times. So not only is this a service for the guests' experience, the visitors coming to your town, but it's a service for you as well. This slide is gonna look different than the one you see in your packet, and I do apologize about this. switch their name to 21 Arrows. Same company, same concept, change the name. 21 Arrows is a strategy and technology firm. They create custom software, digital experiences, and they track growth. And a lot of this is based on in-predicate automation. It's very important that we automate this to make it easy for everybody. The proposal is, I would like to see PeerCast on your peers. I would also like to see Placard in your town. And that's a goal of mine. As someone who just likes to create and solve problems, this is something that I enjoy doing. And I just would like to have your permission to pursue that.

So thank you very much. All right, thank you, sir. Are there any questions for Mr., what, Trent, was it? Yeah, Robinson.

I don't know why Williams is on there, but Robinson.

Oh, Trent Robinson. Okay.

Thank you for correcting that problem.

Or Mrs. Mull, if you want to understand from the town perspective.

Mr. Hyatt, go ahead. Cost. Cost, absolutely. So we have multiple quotes for signs, but right now, if we buy three signs, we source from Seaboard Signs because we noticed that Seaboard Signs was used for some of the signs that are already on the pier, so we wanted to go with the company that you had already worked with. Seaboard Signs quoted us one sign plaque at $8,000. And then if we do three and we place those throughout multiple areas of the town, it would be $6,000 per sign.

For the digital, right? Per placard?

No, for, yes, yes, absolutely.

Sorry.

Not the, yes, exactly.

The sign you showed us with the- Right, the big signs, my apologies.

6,000 apiece. Yes. Wow, that's interesting. They are illuminated signs and they are auto powered. So there's no need to run electricity to them. That's a really important note.

How long has your company been operating?

So we've been operating peer cast for five months and the amount of data that we've collected in that amount of time is pretty astonishing. We're on two peers right now, currently with live plaques on the peers, 12 total plaques between of peer 14 and second half peer. Those are the two we're on right now. We have gathered over 5,000 QR scans in the past four months. And that number continues to rise. We've also had a really interesting metric, was people were visiting the site even after scanning, so they would go back to it again. So we've had a total of 14,000 website visits just from peer scans.

So you're new and you're growing, but you're highly utilized so far. Correct. Some of the things you heard tonight, could we somehow have another section for golf carts and explain seatbelts? Yes. Absolutely, anything you want. And on beach rules, we can have riptide safety? It's unlimited.

Anything you can think of, tell me, and I want to make it for you. That's how excited I am to do this. The guys behind 21 Arrows are, it's astonishing.

So if we buy these signs, these three signs, it's $18,000. Then what's the cost after?

Sorry. So a monthly retainer to maintain those and to go back and forth with the businesses is going to cost us $1,000 a month. And then to build out the mobile web app and put the design and all the information and gather the geolocation together is $12,000.

In addition to the 18 and the 1,000. Correct.

So the 18 is for the signs, the 12,000 is for the mobile web app, and then $1,000 per month for maintenance.

Is there any way we can recoup any of that for the businesses that use it?

Absolutely. I didn't know we were talking about this. Actually, Tabitha will probably take his part for a second.

Sure. Before you go on, I missed something here. This is a discussion item, and we are allowed to make motions. It is not a business item, so we're not scheduling a vote, but we can make motions here. Wanted to clarify that. Sorry. Go ahead and proceed.

Yeah, so with the business committees, permission, I want to catch this to the business committee first. And then my idea is to charge the businesses monthly fees. So we're basically the upfront money that gets it all in motion. And then they have their monthly fees that they are going to pay us to be a part of that. As far as the details right now, I'm just giving you very top line. Of course, I would have that conversation, but it's sort of like Google. Like if you want to be the first restaurant that pops up or the first happy ever, that's where I would charge the money. And then you would go down through tears. So that's the concept. Again, just right off the top of my head there. From, I haven't spoken into the businesses yet. Just sitting here.

So basically this is just an informational. Mr. Hyatt. Yeah, talk to your microphone. Yes, hi microphone. So this is just an informational presentation

presentation and your next step is to take this to the business committee is that correct correct if you guys really love this and think it's a good idea as i do um then i will definitely take it and go from there okay mr manning you you don't miss that i'm not okay just watch it just quick so the 12 000 to build the data is that a one-time fee or is that going to be an ongoing annual fee that's a one-time fee correct any anything else from on an annual basis that we would be paying, or is this all just up front pretty much cost?

$12,000 up front, $18,000 for the signs if you choose three, and then $1,000 a month for maintenance for the site and communication base.

So that would be the, so 12,000 a year. Oh, correct. Yes. So that would be an annual cost. Correct. Okay. And in terms of how the information gets updated, I guess that's kind of one of the business to make sure that you have the information that they want to get out one

I got a couple questions. There are three signs, and that's probably more for you. Where do they go?

So the first sign, of course, is at the pier. I think that's really vital. Second sign, Memorial Park. Third sign, Harrison Park. It's the center of gravity of our town. So those parks there would make the most sense to me to have them there.

Okay, and 30 by 60, where does that come from, that size?

I just figured, I kind of took measurements and put it up against my wall and measured my height and size and what I'd like to walk up to and what would present itself. At the end of the day, this is going to draw people to the sign. We want it to be attractive, we want it to be beautiful, and we want it to stand out. The more foot traffic, the more scans, the more data, and the more information we can consume from it.

So I get the point of standing out, and of course, larger stands out, shattered button. appears kind of tight in places and so forth. And yes, it's an informational sign, but you don't want too many signs around it. Would it be a little smaller?

Absolutely, but this is the time of day.

Okay. I mean, I will do whatever you guys want, but from a tourist or visitor standpoint or community standpoint, you've got to have scale to make it beautiful. You've got to attract them to that. So to me, that's the right sign. Okay.

Yeah, I'm not saying I have any insight to it. I just, you know, I just don't want too large, but of course I don't, it does no good if it just people walk by. So I get that. I don't know what the magic number is. Anybody? Mr. Coleman?

Yeah, I'm not getting, why is it a $6,000 sign? Do you put a digital sign?

It's not a digital sign. Are you just asking why it costs $6,000? Yeah. So this also includes the base of the sign. This is a weatherproof sign. It's a high quality, very nice sign that should last a very, very long time. This is not some cheap thrown together plastic. It's steel framing. It's beautiful. And we use premium products and it is heavily illuminated. So it's going to withstand all the weather that you can throw at it. So yes, it is a pricey sign, but it is beautiful. I think an investment into a quality sign is a good idea.

I think it's a great idea. It's just that I'm not sure why we're calling it Pier Village because it's for the whole town, right? It's not just for the Pier area. I hate that all the, you know, you see a sign that says Pier Village, you think it's only restaurants in the Pier Village.

Yeah, and that was for the mock-up.

I'm just throwing it out there. I'd rather have certified, you know, because we have great restaurants throughout the whole place. And in my opinion, Your village gets a lot of attention. We need to expand the whole town. We have great restaurants. We would just be retail stores.

And I love the idea that you're saying is throughout the town. I want to benefit the town as much as possible. So anywhere we can put it and however you want it to be, we can make that for you.

And honestly, I don't want to spend more $6,000. If you had a bigger parking lot, too, you come down to the beach, you don't even think about having dinner here. You put your phone in it, you go, hey, Mildred, let's go to dinner tonight. There's a restaurant over there.

If I may, one other thing that we're working on right now, And this is a tech that we're kind of working on in the back end because you see how much of a hectic headache it can be throughout in all the pictures.

And I believe one of the pictures has it that it's a little tiny sign that it's on a, possibly in a restaurant or something. I don't know what it is. That's a short-term rental.

Yeah. That's a small, yeah, that's a small, so when you, yeah, when you walk into a little Airbnb, it's a little one.

Maybe you can throw them into a restaurant or something. Just so you'll know what's going on in the town and where you go later on. Yes, sir. I love the idea, and I really like the idea that businesses are going to help pay for this. Because not just the town residents, the people who are actually going to benefit from getting more business. You might have a little restaurant that's not doing well. It's a great place, but no one knows about it. This way, they'll find out about it, and hopefully they'll go to it.

I'm glad you see the vision.

It's a great idea.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor. So, by the way, I like the concept, even though we got a preliminary look at it. And I like the placements because it was important to me also to, let's not just focus down there. But okay, so I did scan your QR, and by the way, really cool.

Thank you.

Okay. And Surfside Pier is, by the way, already on there. Yes. But there's an open button on here, out in the ocean, beside my pier. There's an open... What would it do if I hit it? It doesn't do anything currently. But what would that do if we came on board with you all? Would that take you to our town website? Correct.

So that's a placeholder for town websites. Okay. That's what I was wondering. And it tells you all the data that you would like to know about the town.

Anything we wanted to learn in there, right?

The business rules, the whatever could be also sorry to interrupt ad placement is huge on this yeah um not the nasty google ads with that little teeny x that you have to figure out how to hit and get off your screen we don't we don't do that um okay we run ads that are beautiful and they're integrated into the global web app so it looks like you're actually scrolling to something that you're excited yeah and and by the way this this information i'm not a fisherman but if i were i mean you've got it all then

right here. Everything they need to know to catch fish. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Yeah. Thank you. Well, anybody else want to do a... Okay. Mr. I, go take a... I want to make a motion. Okay. That's what I was going to do.

I'd like to make a motion to approve the placard concept for further development with an emphasis on recapturing investment income and ongoing costs and perhaps lower sign costs.

I'll second it. Is there any discussion on the motion?

Yeah, I have a reservation about making a vote on it right now. I'd rather see line by line how much is really going to cost.

I think that his motion is to pursue that.

Oh, okay. I'll repeat it for you. approved the placard concept for further development with an emphasis on recapturing investment income, ongoing costs, and perhaps lower sign costs. Okay.

Mr. Mayor.

Ms. Shaw.

This is going to the business committee. Correct.

We're making a motion for her to do her job, basically. How she wants to do it.

How she wants to do it.

We're saying please continue. Okay. Yeah, you can talk to whomever you want.

Mr. Rayer, if I could. So what we're asking you basically to do is put some meat together and present a decision paper for us to look at and vote on. Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Any others? I am not going to repeat that motion. If we need to repeat it, Mr. Hyatt has it written down. I saw that. Does anybody need to hear it again? All right. In that case, Ms. Medina, will you call the roll? Yes. Mr. Coleman? Yes.

Mr. Walz?

Yes.

Mr. Waldman?

Yes.

Mr. Hyatt?

Yes.

Ms. Fallin?

yes yes motion carries unanimously and uh ms small is directed to pursue this thank you thank you very much mr robinson thank you sir all right um we are now moving into our first business item the strategic payment services uh director gruber is going to uh introduce uh miss elliott uh mr mayor unfortunately at the last minute she is unable to attend but she will be here for september 8th okay So we have to remove that item. Yes. We don't have to officially vote since she's not here, I assume. Okay. All right. Well, thank you for letting us know. And too bad that didn't work out.

Yeah.

Okay. So we're going to move into item 8B, a memorandum of agreement. Well, I'm just going to ask for a motion on this.

Mr. Mayor. Mr. Lawhorn. Make a motion to approve a memorandum of agreement with the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice for fiscal year 2026 to 2027.

You got one of them? Seconds, okay. All right, Chief Mickle, you go through this?

Yeah. This is just a renewal of the agreement we have with them every year. It's just an agreement that if we do it on the custody, it needs to be transferred to Columbia Permanent Detention, what their responsibilities are, what ours are, and schedule fees. We didn't even use them once last year and the year before that. We brought one juvenile in and spent a total of $75. But their fees did go up this last year, so they're looking at about $175 a day if we rest the juvenile. The majority of juvenile charges are through a summons, where we issue them a summons to the family court and then release it to a parent. So it has to be a pretty So yeah, so that actually I'll get it started right before we have any choice. We have to do this. Non-negotiable costs are in there.

So we're going to vote and I mean, we can see the writing on the wall, I think. Anybody have any real questions? There's no real questions. I don't know how to do it.

Well, I mean, we have to vote on this, but go ahead. I just wanted to clarify, we use Greenville? Is that where we would have?

No, so DKJ has a facility in Columbia. If they don't, if they run out of space, the only other facility that meets the same criteria is Greenville. And they may take where we bring them

oh but so we we would never think we're going to have to go to btj first and they decide where that is i grew up in counties that have their own juvenile homes i've never seen a state that has one that we got to drive a day and a half to get there and back is that really what happens here yeah uh the only facility that's um licensed to do this kind of thing and then i read in here that they won't take 17 year olds what do we do with them oh that's not They would go to be charged as an adult and go to jail.

So is 17 the age of majority in South Carolina? I think it depends on the crime and how the solicitor's office decides to charge the person.

It says they will not be admitted. Oh, I'm sorry. It says if charged as an adult. Okay, I got it. All right, thank you.

Anything else? All right, then the motion is simply to approve this memorandum of agreement. Ms. Medina, will you call the roll?

Mr. Staley?

Yes.

Mr. Coleman?

Yes. Mr. Walden?

Yes.

Mr. Walden? Yes. Mr. Hyden?

Yes.

Ms. Scallion? Yes. Mayor Crouch?

Yes. Motion carries unanimously, and the memorandum of agreement is approved. We'll now move on to our first resolution, and I need a motion for that.

From there, Mr. Walhart, make a motion to approve resolution 26-0224, acceptance of donation from Eugene Reed.

I'll second it. You get one of us. Mr. Vincent, do you want to just tell us real quickly?

Yes. So last meeting we had, we did a proclamation from Mr. Reed, and so then now this is a resolution to accept at once.

Any questions, comments? Okay, so the motion on the table is to accept the donation. Ms. Medina, will you call the roll?

Mr. Samuels?

Yes.

Mr. Coleman? Yes. Mr. Wald?

Yes.

Mr. Hyde?

Yes.

Ms. Fallon?

Yes.

Mr. Krause?

Yes. Motion carries unanimously. The donation is accepted. Our next resolution is about KSBB. I need a motion. I'll keep it going. Good job.

Make a motion to approve resolution 26-0225 of acceptance of donation to keep Surfside Beach beautiful committee from Jane Atterbury Morgan.

Mr. Benson, do you want to tell us what's going on here?

I got this from the finance department. So this is a generous donation from Jane Morgan to the KSBB for $300.

All right, Miss Morgan is here. Do you just want to tell us what you're doing? Come on up.

Why are you being so nice? You know, I love this best big little town or whatever. You know, I do four parties a year, and I have been lucky in my life, and so I pick a charity at each party. I try to guilt all the guests who want a good tribute. You know, I have $10, whatever. I always start it with my $100. And I think the first one was veterans in honor of my dad, World War II veteran. And then the food bank here. I always pick things in Surfside. Choice for Todd at Christmas. I'm glad to say they had to come out to the house four times to bring the big boxes. I did invite 300 people to celebrate my birthday. Surfside Beach Cleanup, which I always do. I'm trying to get closer to summertime. And then I just did the Humane Society. And based on listening to needing a firehouse that they practice in, I'm thinking my next one needs to be here.

I was sure Chief Dills would.

I know, I tried to, I was hoping he'd still be here. Anyway, so it's just, I love this town.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you. And we have KSBB here. Ms. Longhorn, would you come up and tell us what you plan to do with this? What can y'all do? Ms. Lawhart loves public speaking.

We're going to invest in a tent with our brand on it, with KSBV, like the police have in the fire department.

As you say, we're at every event, I think.

Yes, we're at every event.

All right. I was told that we can't ask her any questions. Anything else?

No.

Thank you very much.

She has somebody here that

I ain't asking her any questions.

We realize the writing on the wall.

Let's close, and then we'll take some pictures, okay? So the motion on the table is to accept this donation from Ms. Morgan for the KSBB branded tacky.

Mr. Stamey?

Yes, with a thanks.

Mr. Coleman? Yes. Mr. Wallace?

Yes.

Mr. Walhorn? Yes. Mr. Hyatt?

Yes.

Ms. Fallon? Of course, yes.

And yes, motion carries unanimously. The donation is accepted.

I might remind them in the wholesale business and this equipment and cars, if I can help that way. A lot of equipment costs and stuff like that. It's what I do.

All right, thank you very much.

All right, we have another resolution for the public works director. Can I get a motion there? Sure, why not?

We'll make a motion to approve Resolution 26-0226, reappointment of Public Works Director to the Technical Advisory Committee for the 26-27 revision of the Horry County Solid Waste Plan.

Director O'Dear, you want to tell us what's going on here?

Absolutely. Thank you again. The Horry County Solid Waste Authority is subject to the rules of the South Carolina Solid Waste Policy Amendment Act of 1991. They're required every few years, used to be Three years, we've made it five now to update their solid waste management plan for the county. It's almost like a plan for solid waste for the county. We talk about population trends and recycling trends and things we can do to make them better in all of our communities. And I've been on the committee for my fourth round with them. And we need a council resolution to appoint me as the town's representative back onto the committee. Thank you for the advisory committee.

just looking for extra things to do in your spare time, right?

Yeah. Right. I think, yeah, they, they, they actually serve. And so I can't say no, they're doing good to me.

All right. Yeah. Please. I just, I just wondered, this is kind of a really critical time, isn't it? I mean, they're looking at expanding the, the fill. Yeah. Hugely expanded for, through the year or whatever, but I mean, we've been all about that. So you being part of that.

Yeah, like I said, this is my fourth round going with this. We've been doing it for a while and the landfill space is eventually going to run out in the county and the garbage is going to have to be shipped out of state more than likely unless they permit more class two and three landfills. So it's a real, you try to buy years, you try to buy some years and expand as much as you can, come up with ways to reduce the waste stream, increase recycling, limit the amount of material that goes in there. This is why we're so focused on recycling as a town. We have been for a long time. I started the beach recycling program when I started working here. I started the e-waste and household hazardous waste program. Keep all this material out of the landfill. Everything is separated out. And not everybody does as much as Surfside does. We're actually very recognized throughout the state for what we do with recycling. But it's going to come to pass someday that the price per ton is going to go through the roof when they run out of landfill space. So all these strategies have to be explored and written down, and that enables the authority to qualify for state grants and things like that that they get from the state. They have to have a management plan, just like our comp plan.

Well, I will say that I'll speak on behalf, and I know the mayor can speak to this, anybody that's ever attended some of these local grand strand league of cities things that we attend on behalf of the town they all speak very highly of you and you are you have set trends for this we're doing more than municipalities with sometimes everybody you're doing a great job thank you yeah everybody respects you and speaks very highly of you you're you're cohorts in crime up and down the strand.

Don't make him cry. No.

No, it's true. His involvement with this has been great. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you.

Mr. Coleman. I think they'll have a board of recycling in this county like we're doing.

Oh, county-wide? Well, it's all about the dollars. You know, the Owee County Solid Waste Authority does not pick up. Correct. They don't have they don't pick up. They rely on Everybody's contracted out, like in the county, or in Garden City, let's say. Everybody has these private haulers that they get, and if they have to pay extra, if they want recycling, they'll provide it, if they want extra. But they're charging $30-something for one tent. So a lot of people aren't going to want to do it. So the county has the convenience centers.

The private places charge how much for a tent at all?

In the 30s, mid-30s? In the 30s. Forget about yard, forget about lawn.

They don't get yard waste.

Oh, they don't get recycled.

They don't get concrete. They don't get just one can a week. Just one can a week. I think we just went to 26,000.

26,000. Yes.

That's one time a week.

Goodbye. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Any others?

All right, the motion on the table is to reappoint Director Adair to the Technical Advisory Committee for the Horry County Solid Waste Management Plan. Ms. Medina, will you call the roll?

Mr. Staney?

Yes.

Mr. Coleman? Yes. Mr. Walts?

Yes.

Mr. Lawhorn?

Yes.

Mr. Hyde?

Yes.

Ms. Fallon? Yes. Mayor Crouch?

Yes. You are appointed. Thank you very much. Thank you. work for you yeah all right the final item I'll take this because it has my name on it a resolution supporting completion of interstate 73 and the modernization of the interstate highway system I'm making a motion to approve that resolution 26-0 227 all right so what we have here is a Letter came from the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, came to Administrator Vincent just a week or so ago seeking approval to join a consortium of managers throughout the county. And he showed it to me and I said, I think we should run that by council and actually vote on it. So that's what we're doing. If you've been here any like the time at all, you know I-73 has been discussed and debated throughout Horry County for, I think it's close to 30 years. We are the largest tourist area that is not serviced by an interstate. If you've ever driven here, which I think probably everybody has, it's not easy to get here, and yet we, the whole Grand Strand area, are doing great. This could be a huge boon to our tourist economy. It could also help diversify our economy as we're so tourist driven. But businesses, manufacturing, IT, professional services, they tend to want to be near interstates for moving people and moving freight. And we lose out on that all the time. I think I-73 makes perfect sense. And all we're going to do is support the letter that the chamber is sending. We're just going to add our names to that letter if this vote is positive. Anybody else want to speak?

Mr. Hyatt? I'd just like to add that not only does it benefit us in economic ways, but this is a high hurricane area. And this establishes another high speed, hopefully, which I think is badly needed on the grand strand.

Any others? All right, the motion on the table is to support this resolution. Ms. Medina, will you call the roll?

Mr. Gramey?

Yes.

Mr. Coleman?

Yes.

Mr. Wald?

Yes.

Mr. Lofford?

Yes.

Mr. Hyde?

Yes.

Ms. Fallon? Yes. Mayor Trout?

Yes, the motion carries unanimously. Since the letter was originally addressed to Mr. Vinson, I will look for you to send those communication back to the chamber. With that, we're at item number nine, public comments, and it's 7.55. I told you to sit there.

Come on up. My name is Anousheh Shifted. I'm the 210th sub-motor driver. There was a teaching moment that I came up with that I wanted to pick up. We shouldn't talk about it. The gentleman came to do a presentation. He didn't have a laptop. Director of finance handed him her own personal laptop. The gentleman plugged a flash card into it, as you know, in any organization you go. He himself may not know, in addition to that presentation, what malware was there. That immediately was transferred to that laptop, and that laptop was connected to the network he's already on the network. Tomorrow morning, when you turn on your computer, it's going to be on yours. Go to Department of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA. None of the equipment has the ability to plug into it. This is how things get to your system. That's how somebody get into it. I'm not saying something happened, but I'm saying you have to watch. If I were you, I would disable all these abilities to plug in something, something to the laptops, because that's how things get to your system. Just want to let you know. Wow. Thank you very much. Thank you.

It's a good point. We can't interface with you, but I think everybody was listening.

Bill Kingen, 1312 North Elmwood. I'll talk about golf carts. My comment for this year is I've seen more underage drivers, and I'm not even talking about 14-year-olds. I've seen them so damn young they can't even reach the belts.

They have to sit on, and I tried to stop one, and the mother said, oh, he's fine.

I've learned to slap people before, but that was one of the big ones. It is worse this year than I've seen. And the reason I see it, I walk the dog every day. I walk him in the morning, I walk him at night. I'm on the boulevard. And I keep seeing him come by. And I'm old. And I know that 14-year-olds look older than they used to, but this is ridiculous when they can't even touch the pedals without sitting on the edge of Much less not having a seatbelt on.

I'm just talking about driving. And they're on the boulevard. It's crazy. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Any other? Well, I want to officially, because I'm going to give you. Name and address.

Jen Morgan. Just give us the street. North Myrtle Drive. I really am in the wholesale equipment and car business. And so listening to the cost of equipment. So I want to say for disposal or purchase anything, I can never help. I don't know how it works for the city in terms of rules, but it's business I've been doing for 38 years. So if ever I can help that way. I'm also treasurer for two nonprofits. And some of the things I listened to on the cyber, I know a lot about because of being treasurer of two nonprofit organizations. Once again, if I can help in any way, whether it's the policies that I'm rewriting right now for one of the very large organization, But I can do anything to help. So strictly, that's the best way to reach me if I can do anything to help.

Thank you very much.

And not looking for a consultant fee, just volunteering.

Yeah, we don't want to do job interviews. Thank you very much. Anybody else?

uh tori reed with uh fifth avenue north uh 519 fifth avenue north and i just wanted to come in to say that my understanding we are getting a sidewalk on fifth avenue north and i wanted to ask how long has this been on on the books and do we have any say in this because i'm uh i constantly am getting i'm picking up trash all week long with people walking up and down without the sidewalk and now we're going to bring them even closer to our property and also i i'm one of six or seven uh residents that have a circular driveway that once you put a sidewalk in it's going i'm just going to have a large concrete in front of the house rather than uh you know, just a regular driveway going in. So I wanted to know if this is a done deal. Also, I talked with about 10 of my neighbors who also knew nothing about it. So I wanted to find out what's that process of educating people when you're going to have something major as this. We get a letter to say there's smoke coming out of our sewers, but we don't get any kind of notification that we're going to have a permanent construction in your area. So I just wanted to comment to say not very happy with the way this project is going. And wanted to ask if there's anything we can do, not necessarily to stop it, but maybe to modify it somewhat. That's all I want to say.

All right, thank you very much. Any other public comment? All right, with that, we will move into the council comments. I'm going to start with Mr. Hyatt.

Yeah, I'd just like to say thanks for the people that provided donations to the town. Thanks to everybody that contributed to the meeting. Thanks to everybody that chimed in and came here to spectate. And regarding the sidewalk issue, I believe that that was part, sidewalks were part of the comprehensive plan, and that's where the idea is developed. comprehensive plan is visited about every five years. As far as modifying it, I think the best way to do that is to talk with your representatives and tell us what kind of modifications you'd want. That's all I have. Thank you, sir. Mr. Walz?

Yeah.

I just wanted to thank everybody for coming out tonight and sitting in. And I'm glad so many people loved it.

they're willing to help us it's wonderful um and i'll look forward to seeing you all next time thank you all right thank you sir um mr stanley i'd like to thank everybody for coming out the sidewalk deal send us some information what you think we can talk with john john's hitting up that project uh i don't think you'll be able to stop it but you might have some input in why the way it goes maybe uh i don't know that for sure But we'll see you in a couple weeks. We'll be back. And if you got any bum, let us know. Thanks. All right.

Miss Shaw.

Eight o'clock people. I'm excited. Yeah. I appreciate hearing that people love our town. It is our town. And when you get back in senior center. So if anybody would like to help volunteer, that will get volunteers there. But I just want to, an extra thank you. I was so, we talked about being proud of something. I was so proud of our town as a group of people when our K-9 CIF retired. We had residents, the police department, fire department, committee members there, council was there, our neighbors were there. And it tears up even though it wasn't the end of watch, thank goodness, it was the end of tour. And it was our four-legged family member that's going off to retirement. So I just want to say how much I appreciate everybody participating. Y'all have a good night. Let's get out of here.

that introduction mr longhorn um yeah thanks uh just real quick i first uh here i just want to say we appreciate it i appreciated you having those the sled person here um also took anusha's comments to heart because that's um it was a no-no where i work too you you disabled all courts they weren't allowed so um but it just goes to show that there's a lot from a cyber security standpoint that we don't know here in the town and getting tapped into the intelligence that comes out of that group I think is important to our future because it's not just about potential fraud and payments. It's about the system getting penetrated potentially and what that could lead to. So I just strongly encourage that as well as the training that is offered out there because it is a really big deal and threats change daily. Threats aren't stated. Like I said, I lived in that world. And it's not stable. So just want to encourage that. Secondly, thanks everybody for coming. And it is only 8.05. So let's get the heck out of here. Mr. Coleman.

I just want to thank everybody for coming out. I agree with Mr. King about the top parts. I've seen tons of kids when they're nine years old, or shorter with their mother or father, or even most likely their grandparents. I actually witnessed an accident with a child, went around the corner, couldn't maneuver the turn, smacked right into a big bush. Thank God no one was hurt. Father just backed the car, caught up, and let the kid continue to drive. And I'm yelling and screaming, he couldn't care less. I don't know if it's a rite of passage, right here or not, but it's not safe. It's not a toy that you shouldn't be dealing with. That's the side of works. when i first came here i didn't have a sidewalk in front of my house then i moved another house i had a sidewalk and guess what it was a nice addition uh fifth avenue north is a very very one of the most dangerous streets we have in this town right now there's a lot of traffic on it a lot of people going fast it's not going to be that big of a deal. I know people don't want it, but maybe they don't want it. I don't know. But once they get it, I think they're going to really enjoy having a sidewalk because it's going to be a lot safer for them and the people around them. Again, thanks for coming out. All right.

Thank you, sir. I'm just going to go on sidewalks for a minute too. I guess, I don't know if it's next meeting or the one after that, but the survey crews, I couldn't believe it. We authorized the payment and they had some people out like the next week. I can't believe SCVOT is that unbusy, but they were there. Oh, okay. No wonder. All right. But I guess an update on what's the projected plan and all that. We talked about it briefly. when we authorize the funds for it. But we can just do an update for the community, maybe talk about what the plans are in a little more detail, which side of the roads they're going to go on and so forth. And again, I'll leave it to you guys when it's appropriate to bring that. But ideally, If there is any opportunity for citizen input, it would be good to have that soon so that they could make some comment if there is, again, any opportunity to change anything. Secondly, golf carts. I'm not asking Chief Mikkel to answer this at this point. But I see a lot of them, and I don't know if this is what you guys are talking about, but where the kids can't reach, but they're sitting on the lap of mom or dad. Who's really driving at that point? Can that family, that driver, be cited for having the kid in front of me? She certainly isn't wearing a seatbelt, probably. So that would, in your next report, just put some commentary in that. I'm not asking for a special session on this, but. Just educate all of us how the police see that. Still speaking of police, the SIF retirement was pretty outstanding. I can only hope I'm that missed when I'm ready to move. I don't think so. But don't throw tennis balls at me. I'll just close out by saying the primary runoff is tomorrow. That's why we're meeting tonight. We're gonna scoop up all the chairs and all that. If you're so inclined, don't forget to vote. With that, I need a motion.

Mr. Mayor. Mr. Staley. I'd like to make a motion to adjourn this meeting.

Thank you. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. Motion carries. Meeting adjourned.