Town Council - Regular Meeting

This conference will now be recorded.

It is now 6 p.m. It is my distinct honor and privilege to call to order the regular town council meeting of September 8, 2026, in the town of Surfside Beach. Please stand as we begin with an invocation by Pastor Oki Landers of Pine Drive Gospel Church.

Let's pray. Father, as always, we humble ourselves before you at the beginning of this town council meeting. Father, not only do we humble ourselves this evening, but often we are humbled by the circumstances of life. We're especially mindful, Lord, in this time of year of 9-11, of the brevity of life, the sudden and unexpectedness of death, and afresh of our very real need of thee and dependence upon father we pray for that grace and that mercy grace for the salvation which is in not only begotten son mercy for life and we thank you for that grace which has attended many of us who were present here this evening and your mercies which are a part of all of our lives father we especially thank you for those who serve in our Those whose lives, Lord, are given that others may live. May we never take for granted the mercies of life. May we always be a thankful people. And again, I pray for your continued grace, your continued mercy. How good you have been to Surfside. We thank you for this community. We thank you for our leaders. The powers that be are ordained to I ask you blessing both upon the community and upon those who lead it, Holy Father. And I pray this evening that our deportment before thee might be that which is acceptable unto you and pleasing in your eyes. And may the issue of this time be that which is your will. Thou art the God who is there and we worship thee in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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. All right, I will now ask if there are any motions related to the agenda. Hearing none, we'll move on to minutes approval from last meeting.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion that we approve the town council meeting minutes from August 24th, 2026.

Is there any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. Motion carries. Meeting minutes are approved. will now move on to public comments on agenda items only do we have any public comment all right we'll now move into communications uh looks like we got a double header police and fire recognition however you guys want to do it you're meeting the mayor council public so this is i know i've probably said this before but one of my favorite things i like to do

in my job. I get to actually recognize some of the officers that do just such an outstanding job. And when they go above and beyond, you know, we'd like to really recognize them in a public forum. So today our officers worked with our fire department and responded to an incident where they excelled and saved a life. So we just wanted to share that with you. So how it came about is we were looking at some body cam footage on a call and When we watched it, we were like, wow, what a great job our officer did. We saw what the fire department did too, so I contacted the chief and said, hey, I think we need to do this together and recognize our staff. So I'm just going to read this out loud, this recognition of performance. On July 3rd, 2026, Corporal Corman responded to an address from the Surfside Beach, South Carolina, in reference to a one-year-old toddler that was unresponsive and not breathing. Corporal Corman arrived on scene before DMS and medical staff to find a resident of the department conducting CPR on a child, to which Corporal Cormier took over until a Surfside Beach Fire Department arrived. A few minutes later, Corporal Cormier remained with the patient and assisted the medical staff by retrieving medical supplies as they administered medical treatment. With the child being well cared for, Corporal Cormier and the other officers switched their focus to conducting an investigation into the circumstances behind the child's condition. While in the care of medical staff in the ambulance, the child was in unconsciousness before being transcribed. transported to Grant Street Hospital for further treatment and observation. It is due to the swift action of Corporal Corman and the medical team of the Surfside Beach Fire Department providing immediate first aid and life-saving CPR that attributed to the child's survival. The child did make a full recovery and DSS took over the investigation and took the appropriate actions. So the child's alive and well thanks to Corporal Corman and the firemen. So Corporal Corman, if you could come up here, please. and of course we're all recognizing him but this is what this is this guy does this kind of stuff every day all day he um he's just solid he's here he's here he's answered the call and uh he's a great he's a great asset to our community and uh i just want to thank you for what you do and uh saving that child's life when you do it anywhere else all right good job I'd like to echo with that.

I feel as a department, both of us doing public safety, that's our job is what it is to take care of our public. And it just shows what a great team that we have to work together and something like that. You know, police officers are already out on the streets so they can get there quick. They're trained to do what they need to do. Matter of fact, today our captain was teaching CPR to them. We put automatic external defibrillators inside the police cruisers so that we could help out the public. And this just shows what we can do as a team. On July 3, 2026, Surfside Beach Fire Department Rescue 56 responded to a cardiac arrest involving an infant. Captain Paramedic Chauncey Kelly, Firefighter Engineer Michael Henderson, and Firefighter Engineer Gabriel Lunders arrived to find Corporal Sato-Corman of Surfside Beach Police Department actively performing CPR. The Rescue 56 crews immediately assumed medical care and initiated advanced life support. During the resuscitation efforts, the infant regained a heartbeat. Care by Rescue 56 and Corporal Foreman continued until the infant was transported by ambulance to the hospital. Following extensive hospital stay, the infant was discharged. This incident exemplifies the very best of public safety services throughout our teamwork, professionalism, and unwavering dedication. These first responders worked together to give the child a second chance. In recognition of this exceptional action and lifesaving commitment, This Phoenix Award is presented to the firefighters engineer, Michael Henderson, Captain Kelly, and Captain, sorry, promotion today. You guys can come up, please.

Can we get one more recording up here?

Again, thank you.

all right thank you very much gentlemen we do appreciate that and it is uh emblematic of the family beach um we'll now move on to our business items uh business item 7a strategic payment services uh director gruber are you going to introduce that someone i'm melissa ellie come up and give a presentation about the services they provide And since we have an outside speaker, I'm going to suggest that we wait on a motion until after the presentation. Yeah, we could probably hit at least the front lights.

Well, I'll turn it on. Good evening, mayor and council members. Thanks for having me this evening. I'm Melissa Elliott. I'm the vice president at Strategic Payment Services, and I have my partner, Jim Hutto, with me as well, who is the president and actually began the company years ago. So we're going to talk a little bit today about what we offer to help you guys with fraud protection as it relates to your accounts payable services. So we do what's called a comprehensive payment solution through a process called Smart AP. And what Smart AP is, and I'm going to try not to get too far down into the weeds. I am an accountant by education and I've worked with local government entities and K-12 school districts for almost 30 years and utilize the same financial system that you guys utilize here at the town. It is a passion of mine and sometimes I have to make sure I don't go too far down the same road. So what we do is we deploy a process through your existing financial system that helps you guys mitigate fraud, generate additional revenue, sharpen your oversight, and create efficiencies within the team. So really our value proposition is the fraud mitigation, as well as the rebates that you earn and the efficiencies gained through this process. Now, if we look at our key benefits, you'll see here, mitigate fraud. Anytime that we make a payment on the town's behalf, the fraud for that payment is shifted to SPS. So, it gives you some protection for some things that have happened in the past that we've seen across the state, across the Southeast, As well as that has picked up since, really since 2020, we've seen fraud really accelerate since COVID. We monetize payments. So we have a supplier activation team that works directly with your vendors. Many of our team members have worked for entities such as this with the same accounting system as well. So they understand the process. They understand your language. They understand Melanie's language and her team because they sat in their seats before. as well as the sensitivity between you and your vendors. We maximize efficiencies. And when I say that, there's multiple ways that efficiencies are gained here. So keep in mind that when I say this process is called Smart AP, it's just a deployment of a function that already exists in your financial platform. There's no changes to the process for your accounts payable team. There's no changes to how you get invoices, how they're approved, your procurement process, your POs. All of those things remain the same as well as all of your records are still maintained in your ledger. So the efficiencies that are gained are you'll no longer be standing in front of a large multifunctional machine to print checks. You'll no longer be reconciling hundreds and hundreds of checks that haven't cleared. All that will then move over to our team to process a payment file that's created at the end of your AP process. The costs are reduced, obviously, from not buying check stock, from not putting postage on checks, folding on, all those sorts of things, not paying stock payment fees on those checks. All that is then picked up from our team. So when I say comprehensive solution, what does that really mean? So for a comprehensive payment solution, that means that SPS, Strategic Payment Services, manages your payment processing to ensure secure, efficient transactions that reduce cost and risk and allow your team to focus on other high-value tasks. So what does that consist of? Today you're paying all of your vendors with a check or with an ACH. Now, we all know that checks and ACH hold the highest fraud risk associated with any payment channel. So we have various payment channels that we work with your vendors with to assess a virtual card being the most secure. Have any of you ever heard of a virtual card? You know what a virtual credit card is? So a virtual credit card is just like a credit card that you would have a physical card, except for the vendor receives it via email. It's a card number that is a direct replacement of a paper check. It's only for that one payment, and it's only for that specific amount. So let's say you're paying Tractor Supply. There's 10 invoices on that payment. They receive this virtual credit card number. The total of the payments is $3,000. If they try to accept that payment on their point of sale system for $3,001, it'll decline. Once they accept it for the $3,000, that number is no longer activated. So the next time the town pays Tractor Supply is a different credit card number. It's a 16-digit number just like you see. So it's our most secure form of payment. It's a visa, so we all know what a visa is. Obviously, not all businesses accept credit cards. So the businesses that we work with, not the businesses, the local government entities that we work with, have a lot of local vendors that they work with that don't accept those types of payments. So we have to offer other channels as well. And the next channel we'll talk about is the Secure AP Plus. So Secure AP Plus is delivered via ACH. Now the difference in when we do an AP Plus or an ACH versus what you can do today is we don't make any payments via an ACH until we've done a micro deposit and verified the account. So I'll just use Tractor Supply as another example. And let's say they prefer to have an ACH or AP Plus payment. We send a micro deposit to that account. They have to verify it with the amount back to us prior to us making any payment on your The next form is a multi-P card. So basically this is an actual, you can do a virtual or physical. This number doesn't change. So we also have vendors that will accept a credit card for payment if the number doesn't change. Or we also have clients that order these for each department. Let's say your fire chief is going out and you have a procurement card for him. You can control his expenses. You can control what he can use that card for. You can turn it on and off. There's all kinds of restrictions built into that, but it's just meant to help streamline the point of sale at the register purchases. So the other thing that helps with this, especially with smaller organizations, is separation of duties, made simple. So as we all know, your AP person, your finance director, your entire team here wears multiple hats. I was a finance director for a school district for 11 years, and I knew that anything that I could implement to increase efficiency so that I could utilize the team for higher value objectives was something that I was interested in. Also, from an audit perspective, everything here is cleared by your auditor. It's audit-approved AP workflows. It reduces your risk of errors and payment fraud, efficient use of limited resource, accountability at every step, one hundred percent. So how does this work? So today, you use a system called Smart Fusion. That's your financial accounting system. Your AP resource, she does the same thing she's doing every week when she processes AP. She's looking at those approvals, she's keying the invoices. The difference is, when she gets to the end of the process, instead of standing in front of the machine to print the checks, the system automatically creates a payment file that's sent to SPS to process on your behalf through these various channels we just discussed. It's one payment file. It's one collection from your bank to fund the payment file. So instead of doing a bank reconciliation, as I said before, for all of those checks, let's say this week's AP total is $400,000. you reconcile that one $400,000 to fund that $400,000 file. You're no longer going through all of those processes and contacting vendors to say you haven't cashed this check, did you lose it in the mail, did the mail take three weeks to get it there, which we all know is also an issue now. So that's the way the efficiency is created at the top of the slide here, at your bank account. So we collect the funds, we store them, and we distribute them to your vendors. through those various channels. So you may say, well, what does it look like for our vendor? Everything is branded with your name and with your logo. So this is an example of an email. They receive this email. It will say, town of Surfside Beach here. It'll have your logo at the top. They'll send their steps here at the bottom to process it. When they click that green activate payment button, then the next screen pops up with their 16 digit code. The remittance information that you currently have on your checks on the stub is the remittance information that's in this email so they know where to post the payments. In addition to that, the vendors that will not accept electronic payments will know a check on your behalf as well. So those checks have your logo on there, they have town of Surfside Beach, care of strategic payment services. Again, the remit at the bottom is the same remit information. Now, why choose SPS? Well, there's a lot of different reasons. Really, the ERP integration with this particular situation is very valuable because, as I said, the process is already written in Smart Fusion. There's nothing you change there. Everything is outline. I actually worked for the company that wrote this product and I helped develop this process into Smart Fusion. So the integration is seamless. The program managed piece of it, which we talked about with our team and being market experts, the fine print, really understanding how this works and then the customer satisfaction.

So one important thing too, this is no cost to town.

We are partners with Harris. We went into that partnership probably 10 years ago. So they agreed that it was a value proposition for their product as well, and that's why they agreed to write this functionality into the system. So there's no cost. Now, the payment channels that are electronic, such as the virtual card and the AP Plus ACH, that's delivered via ACH, the town actually receives a rebate on those. So we've looked at your spend history over the last 12 months, and we're estimating $12,000 to $15,000 in rebates based on this process that we'll be performing on your behalf as a breach. So we're gonna pay you to protect your payments. We've got client testimonials here. If you go to our website, that's really the end of the presentation. Our website is www.spsepay.com. You'll see all of our clients listed there. There's video testimonials, written testimonials. We only deal with, like I said, local government entities and K-12 public school districts across the southeast.

That's it. All right. Thank you very much. I am now going to request a motion to approve this proposal as presented. I'm going to make a motion to approve this presentation, to approve this process as presented. Second. All right. I'm going to start the discussion then. So Ms. Elliott, come back please. I'm not through with you yet. So I'm just going to be blunt and lay it out there.

Absolutely.

What's in it for you?

What's in it for us?

Yes.

So the way that we make money, and this is always our question, The processes that work with the virtual card and with the AP Plus generate processing fees. We share those processing fees on the back end with you guys. So Visa, for example, I'll use Tractor Supply again, we don't control those at all. The company that accepts a credit card has a merchant that they have negotiated with and said, yes, I'll take an Airbus Express, MasterCard, Visa, and based on their volume is what they pay percentage-wise to accept their credit card. We're the middleman processing those payments for Visa. So they're sharing a portion of that with us, which then we share with you guys. So the only way that we make money is when you make it.

And then the rebates, similar?

That is the rebate. Yeah, that's what generates the rebate.

So the rebates are actually much larger and you get a portion and we get a portion. Correct. And so the hypothetical tractor supply or anybody else is willing to pay these because they get security as well. Correct.

It has to be a win-win on both sides for the vendor as well as for us. So when our enrollment team is speaking to a vendor about the different payment channels, they discuss with them what the value points are with each of them. We also have vendors that have maximum and minimums on the payment channel that they accept. So you can imagine for construction projects, we have really large $3.2 million payments. Well, that company may say, I'll accept a credit card up to $30,000, and then I want the rest in check, or I'll accept it up to 30, and then I want 80 plus. So we handle all of those in the background as well.

And then I have one question for Director Grover. Is there any downside to this?

Not that I can see.

That's all I have. Thank you.

Anybody else? Mr. Mayor. Mr. Stanley. I do have a question. Not mostly for Mr. Carver. Is this going to help you out staff-wise? Will it make it easier for your staff to be able to handle all this, or is it changing anything for y'all?

It doesn't change the process, the AP process. It's just the end when the checks would go to be printed. We save the cost and the time of printing those checks, having to fold them, having to put them through the mail system and send them out. And again, they take on all

I guess I got one. Just curious, how many municipalities or jurisdictions do you all currently serve?

Prescott, 50.

And that includes the schools as well? Yes.

And a large majority of them use the financial system. We're ERP agnostic, meaning we can do it with any financial system, but a majority use Smart Fusion because of our partnership and our efficiencies that are written into this audit.

Thanks. Mr. Wallace, I guess you're aware of the scenario that we just recently went through, unfortunately. So I think it's important for folks to know one of the main reasons that we're considering you and are so excited about this opportunity that Melanie brought to us was because You incur all the liability, but from what I've understood, you've never had to pay. You've never had.

We have never had a claim.

Something like we had happened to us. You've never had anything like that with all the municipalities and the schools that you all.

No, I have not.

Well, I know. I know. I'm really jinxed. But still, it's. This has been going on for a while, and it's spreading like wildfire.

It is. It is.

You all have avoided this through your processes since a lot.

It does. We have an amazing team.

So I just wanted to draw that out because when I was interviewing Melanie about this, she had mentioned this to me, and I'm like, no way. Never had to.

I know. We've been very, very lucky. And we continue to improve our processes because- Well, yeah. those that are trying to create the fog continue to find new ways.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Mr. Mayor? I'm going to let Mr. Hyatt go first.

Yeah, I just, you know, the devils are in the details. Do we have a viewable contract that we can read that... Melody does. Melody does, okay.

Yes.

So you can get us a copy of that, Melody?

Yes, please.

Okay.

How would your service have stopped the fraud that occurred to us.

Because we would do a micro deposit prior to sending the payment to ensure it was the right account.

Explain to me a micro deposit.

So a micro deposit, let's say a vendor, it could be one we're already paying via ACH, or it could be a new vendor. And they have sent us a form and said, we want payment to go to this account number and this routing number. Okay, we can do that. But we're going to send a micro deposit prior to sending the payment. And it's a different amount every time. So let's say it's 31 cents. They'll call us back the next day. They have to confirm the exact amount and the date that it was deposited.

Okay. I understand that this is part of an existing service that we're already receiving.

It's part of your AP module with Smartfusion.

Why didn't we have this in place before now?

That would be a good question.

We didn't know about it until the Harris Conference this spring. That's who it must have been.

They attended a presentation that I did at the user conference for Harris, and that's how they became aware of it.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Anything else? In that case, the motion on the table is to approve this service as presented. Ms. Medina, will you call the roll?

Mr. Allen? Yes. Mr. Hyatt? Can you come back to me?

No. I would really want to contract first before I vote. You've got to vote yes or no.

No.

Mr. Lawhorn?

Yes.

Mr. Walz?

Yes.

Mr. Coleman?

Yes.

Mr. Stamey?

Yes.

Mayor Krause?

Yes. Motion carries six to one and the process is approved. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Have a great evening.

All right, we will now move on to the award of courthouse bids, Creech and Associates.

Yes, sir.

This is going to be a pretty short presentation. So, yeah, go ahead and make the motion, or somebody can make the motion first.

Go ahead. I'd like to make a motion that we accept the bid, the lowest bid on our We only have $460,000, $350,000, $4 million. I would definitely approve that. With the contractor. I'll second it. Go ahead.

Good evening. Thank you for having me here tonight to update you on the bid opening for the courthouse and council chamber project.

We opened bids August 11th. We received five total bids. The first bid was Coastal Structures Corp at $4,108,141. BEC Construction at $4,060,350. SouthCon Building Group at $4,573,681. Lanteith Construction Company $4,122,300, and Samet Court at $4,486,673.10. All of those bids do include a 5% owner's contingency. So if you have your base bid plus owner's contingency, the number I gave you is the total of those. We have looked into the VC information. that was presented to us, everything seems to be in line. Reached out to a few of their clients that they've worked with and received good information. So I think next step would be to gain approval from you folks and enter into contract negotiations.

All right, thank you very much. Any questions or comments on this recommendation?

Another question?

Yes. I'd like to understand the contingency fee. Really what we asked them to do was provide a base bid for the work that was outlined in the project manual, which consists of the project specifications and the contract documents, and then a separate line item for owner's contingency of 5%. So they're carrying an owner's contingency for unforeseen items that may come up, unsuitable soils.

So there's a base, contract that's less than the amount you stated. And then there's 5% for cost overruns that can or cannot be used depending on what they are. And if they're not used, then that money does not go to the bid amount, right?

I think that would all be spelled out as we enter into contract negotiations with them. There's different ways of handling it. Sometimes there is some sharing of that. a certain percentage would go back to them. If it's remaining money, or you can structure it that it's all back to you. It really kind of depends on how you structure your contract with it.

You know, in the past, we got pretty burned by having a contract that was low, and then it turned out to not have been low because there was all kinds of stuff added to it over the years that made it quite high, actually. How do we make sure that this isn't going to happen here?

Well, we will be acting as your contract administrator through the construction process. Keep an eye on all of the items. We'll be down here every two weeks to meet with the contractor and own representative, keeping an eye on construction, making sure that our consultant team is down here, right? Want to make sure that we have structural input, civil input at all the various stages of construction. And we... That's kind of how we hope to mitigate any potential issues.

What in the contract says can be charged in addition to the contract amount?

I don't know. We don't have a contract yet. I think we're waiting to gain approval for this first, the acceptance of the bids, and then we'll enter into contract negotiations.

So we'll have another chance to bid on this, to vote on this later with the contract. Is that correct?

You approve the low bid for tonight, and then the contract comes in two weeks.

And we get to approve that? Yes, sir. Okay, very good. That's what I wanted to know. Thank you.

This is Laura. Probably one for you and maybe one for Jared. So first one that is for you guys. I'm very familiar with how the federal government does this stuff, but not as familiar on the local level. Are we required to take the lowest bid? No.

No.

Okay. So that would come back to you. So the due diligence, I can read through your stuff that you talked to, you know, you, you did a, you did a review of the low bid. Did you also look at any of the other bids at those companies?

Some of them I've worked with, so I'm familiar with most of the ones on the sheet. But in order to gain some familiarity with BEC specifically, we did reach out to a couple of their clients, a couple of their low bid

Okay, but we didn't. So you're familiar with the others, but you didn't reach out the customers of the others. I mean, I come from the Pennywise to Pound Foolish school. So sometimes saving $100,000 ends up costing you a half a million. So I'm a little concerned from that end about the due diligence at this point, that we didn't at least look at the other companies just to get a qualitative evaluation, are we picking the right people? I mean, we did get burned, you know, before, you know, in a different project. Right.

And typically, Mr. Long, we do not go to the other builders unless there's a red flag on the first one.

Okay.

Because they have built a similar building, a much similar building, town hall, and there were no red flags.

Okay. All right. So next question then, as you're in your project administration function, um, I'm assuming, obviously, there'll be a project plan, and you said you'll be here every couple of weeks to meet with folks. Are we going to be given, as a council, the whole project plan, the layout of the schedule, so that we have an understanding of, are we on time, are we on schedule? I'm just curious as to how that's going to look.

Yes, we will, kind of the kickoff meeting, we will request a number of different things. Schedule of values is the first thing that we ask for. along with an overall project schedule. Now we did, as part of the bid opening and the forms that are in that bid opening, we did ask them to provide days of completion. So we have an overall idea of how long they think this will take. BDC did give us 310 days for project completion. Now obviously that can change with weather events, rain delays, things like that. But those would all have to be accounted for and submitted to the actual team group. And that's from ground party, I'm assuming? Yes, you'll have to issue a notice to proceed, and once you guys get under contract, that includes their mobilization effort and the construction activities, usually taking you to a substantial completion, which ties in your warranty start periods and all of that.

Okay. I think that's it. Okay, I got a couple. So you said you're going to be the contract administrator. Yeah. On the previous project that they're talking about, no big secret, it's the pier. That service was not offered by the architectural firm that we contracted, is that correct?

They did not have a project manager, but they're part of it. So they did not offer it, that's correct.

So right there's a difference, and you should be keeping track. And speaking of due diligence, you're familiar with the other companies here, BEC or not. and that's where you did the research, I'm assuming that means you have a comfort level with the others that you didn't. You already know that they have positive feedback on projects.

Am I interpreting that correctly? I know of them. I know they've done similar type projects. So I think all of them are equipped to do this particular type of construction. Like Jerry said, we don't typically move on and really dig in unless there's a red flag raised by the lowest bidder. And then typically that goes back to your statutes for choosing a contractor.

You have to have a darn good reason not to choose a little bit.

But again, you have some comfort level with those other companies for what you have heard. Okay. So the one you didn't know, that's where you did the extra due diligence. Correct. Okay. I want to make sure it's clear how that is. So has staff reviewed the EC construction? I mean, I don't know if John Adair, Director Adair, has had any work with them, anybody? That would be EC Construction. Okay, so we are going strictly with what Creech & Associates is saying. That's correct. Okay. Well, one thing I see here, I will give you a hand. The bids come in with a total of 12.6% total variance from top to bottom, which I think is generally an indication of clear requirements, I was an automotive engineer. And you can get widely varying bits depending on how well people understand itself. That's right. I think that that speaks well of what you guys did. And in fact, the top three are only separated by 1.5%. So that makes me feel better that everybody understands this project and that you're communicating well. So again, that improves my comfort level. And also the fact that we started with a $3.5 million budget with the preliminary reviews with Preach. We said we better go to four. And even at that point, we knew there were still going to be some other costs. And we said, we're going to deal with that once the bids come in. The contingencies, the soft costs, we're going to deal with that. And that'll be in two weeks.

Yes, sir. You'll have the contract. And you also have a budget amendment.

So basically, these bids have come in right at what they told us they should be. So that, again, makes me feel a little bit better. That means you're doing your homework well. All right, that's all I have.

Before we get too far into this, you were saying, Chris, it's going to be our project manager on this job. Correct. I want you to tell who the project manager and what his affiliation is with Creech Associates. So we'll know how much you're invested in this to keep your name in good standing along with getting something done. So with that, I'd like for you to tell everybody else what your position is in Creech Associates.

Sure. So our CA team is, I'd like to take all the credit, but it's made up of several different folks. Charles Pierce in our office handles some of the paperwork, but I will be the one that you will see 98 percent of the time, unfortunately for you. I am a principal at Preach & Associates, so I want to be honest. Eddie? Yes, sir.

Ms. Shaw? As you said, you looked into BNC. Have they come on time with their projects? Have they come with other projects? Have they been on time with the timeline of completing the project?

To my knowledge, they have. Like I said, I don't have a ton of familiarity with them, which is why we reached out to an owner that is in Horry County, it is Horry County, and had a good discussion with them their work with them, and if there are any red flags from a delay standpoint, from a billing standpoint, sometimes, you know, with design-bid-bill situations, bid low and change order to death. And so I asked about their financials as well. They've got positive feedback from their county and their experience with EEC.

A little nervous about that. just because this town got so burnt with our beer. I'm walking very cautiously.

Well, we will do our best to make sure that everything goes smoothly on this. We did add that contingency in place, which is a fairly common practice to cover anything. You never know when you start digging in there what you're going to find. But we have a pretty tried and true method for reviewing any change orders, making sure, a lot of times, You know, they'll say something like, we found an issue here, we need to make a change, and they'll charge you for the change, but they won't necessarily credit you back for the information that was included in the SEP prior to it. So we take time and look through all of that and make sure if there is a change, that credit is given for what was going to be in place, and it's not just charges for new ones.

Schedule, making sure the schedule is followed, updated on a regular basis. is really important.

I'm sure you all are familiar, time is money, right? And so we make sure that the schedule, we want to schedule update preferably every two weeks, but at a minimum once a month. That way we can track any sort of weather delays, rain delays, all of those items and make sure that we are staying on budget and schedule.

Mr. Mayor, you done?

Yes.

Mr. Walts. First of all, Are you sure you want this gig? I mean, no one. And that leads right into what I'm going to add. How familiar are you with our previous circumstance?

I know. Yes. Yes, we're going to make sure that we take good care of this project. We are obviously devoted to this. We've been working with you folks for quite some time yet to develop this project.

um as far as knowledge of your of the fear and the issues with it i have bits and pieces not the whole whole story but i do know of it well and also code it happened with it so it was a it was just a nightmare from the beginning yeah just things outside of probably what i've dealt with guess where i'm going is it's it's going to be it's it's you're we're going to be going we're going to be scrutinizing you under Not you, but we're going to be asking you to take very good care of us because we're a little bit gun-shy. Maybe PTSD might apply to this situation, but we're afraid. You know what I'm saying. We're just careful. We don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past. That's all I've got. We're going to do things differently than before. First of all, the main thing is having you to represent us in overseeing if things are being done properly and on schedule.

Thank you.

You're aware and... Mr. Maynard. Mr. Coleman. What kind of work, what kind of buildings have they made previously?

They have a pretty good range of project types. As Jerry mentioned, they do have a town hall, a couple other municipal type buildings. They do some commercial work, some higher end residential work. So it's a pretty good mix of building types. There are a handful of those building construction types that closely align with what we're building over there.

Okay, so they didn't do a couple of bathrooms or a couple of kitchens. They've actually done big projects. I've got a second.

I've got a second. I think it's a really good question for Jerry. So as we go through this process, inevitably there will be change requests, whether they're reciprocated by you, your company or contractor or us. What's going to be our process for review and evaluation? of those types of things.

Well, typically that's what your contingency is for, unless you guys advise otherwise. When you talk about these projects, John Adair brings you the projects for the north drainage project and also the underground wiring for a couple million dollars. He does change orders within the budget. It doesn't come to council.

Yeah, and I guess I'm concerned about that, given the size of this project and as everyone else has stated, our history. I just want to make sure we have a understandable process and that whether it's requiring council approval or at least council notification, I think we need to have more direct oversight of this, I guess, is my concern. To make sure that I'm not saying people are going to come up with frivolous change requests, but you never know. And again, in my experience, that's where the money ends up coming out. It's because somebody gets an idea six months from now, oh, you know, we need mahogany desks or, you know, you name it. So I would like to make sure that we have a way to mitigate that.

I'll just say this as a clarification. CREACH and BDC, assuming it gets the, it can't do anything without approval.

Yeah, typically it's, a town representative, Creech, and the contractor that talks about train changes.

So it's whether it's you or it comes to council. That's what it is.

That's my, yeah.

I can walk you. So typically if there's something that comes up, the contractor will submit a potential change order to us. We will review it and make sure that we are in agreement.

Once we have given it a thorough review, we will then either sign or reject it. and send that over to Jerry or whoever's gonna be handling it from the town side.

From there, they can sign off on it and then that goes into it. Now, as far as direct counsel, it's rare that that happens simply because I worry about the approval process and the time needed for that. So typically, we do our best to make sure that they are reasonable and appropriate And so it's not just kind of coming to Jerry without many eyes on it.

Yeah, I guess what I'm after, and maybe it's Jerry, keeping us apprised of the request to come in, because it, again, it doesn't take long to eat up that contingency. Right. You know, so next, you know, we could find out six months from now that we've approved this contingency, this contingency, and all of a sudden we need more money, you know, for something that's really. So I just want to make sure we have a diligent,

review process to ensure these things are absolutely necessary and that's something that will be covered in the month of reports okay from reaching associates okay yeah i said so we we will get those we will get those yes sir thank you i i'm going to go on a second one um you said maybe as as often as every two weeks you'd be doing reports but certainly monthly um i believe in our contract with creech going back year or so, we had a few review, large reviews, and that would be you coming here. When you're talking these two weeks to a month, that's just the two of you talking. Is that correct? And the contractor.

And the contractor.

Okay, okay. It's an owner-architect-contractor meeting. So we come down, meet with them, discuss any relevant items, review schedule, any potential change orders, any issues in the field. The contractor will be responsible to provide kind of a

an agenda that outlines all of the items that's going on. Typically, it's what's been done the past two weeks, what's going on the next two weeks, safety, all of those things.

We would ask that they do that. We prefer a two-week cadence. It seems to work well. Anything longer than that, things can happen and you don't have your eyes on it. Anything less than that, you really spend a lot of money to send someone down, but probably not a whole bunch of work has changed.

So two weeks is

us here in person having that meeting and then blocking the site and issuing .

So then getting back to Mr. Lawhorn's concern, I mean, I don't envision a whole lot of showstoppers that you meet and today we just discovered something that we have to stop work unless you approve this change order. I mean, that's not going to be a likely scenario, correct?

Yes, I don't think that is a likely scenario. Hard to peer into the crystal ball and you know that for sure, but I feel much better when I'm out on the ground with foundations and suffering.

But from past experience, a regular two-week cadence should allow you, you know, you're looking ahead, you know, you should be able to envision, you, the contractor, the administrator, should be able to envision what's coming over the, you know, again, you're not looking six months ahead, you're looking two weeks at that and and like, oh, this could be an issue, plenty of time for him to alert us if we get nervous or something like that. We can concern ourselves for better or worse. Okay, all right, and also in the contract, we do have a few reviews with them before council, do we not? Like a couple of reviews, project reviews or not? Or was that all in the planning phase? Remind me. With Creech. Do we have Creech coming to Council with updates at all once the construction starts or not? I don't believe so.

I think most of our meetings and Council presentations were relative to the design work. To this part.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah, I think once we get into the project administration, then all the presentations are done. You'll just be asking you all the questions. Yes. Okay.

All right, that's all I have.

This is David, go ahead. If it passes this $4 million threshold, if something comes up and you say that we've done use this $193,000, before you could go any farther than that, it will have to come back to council, would it not?

Yes, sir.

i mean if it's another hundred thousand dollars going to be added on to this four million dollars before you could ever do anything that would have to come back to council as a project so as far as is this council can see this is the number that we've got to stay within budget of right well i'm coming with a budget amendment that yes that's going to be well the budget amendment is not compared to our building The budget amendment will be for other things.

It's going to be construction, soft cost. Yes, sir.

But right now, what we're trying to approve is this $4 million that we're setting for this budget, for the bid, for the bid to send. If anything, if we start this project, if it goes another $100,000 more, it's got to come to council. It can't be approved by you or him or nobody else. This council has to come back and say, listen, guys, we need another $100,000 to do this job before you could ever make a decision on that. That's correct. Okay. I want that perfectly clear to everybody that we're not right now worried about nothing except this $4 million that we're trying to say that's under contract with this contract right now.

Is that it? A lot of times, you can tell a lot about a company from their safety record. Did you guys check BEC's safety record? I have not checked their safety record. And second, is there any, I mean, there's only a $40,000 or $48,000 difference between this bid and the next company's bid. But you don't know anything about this next company to tell us what kind of quality outfit they are versus BEC?

I know that they've done a lot of work in this area. I know the buildings have been completed in a reasonable amount of time.

I haven't seen anything in the news with any sort of negative impacts for any of the projects that I've seen.

That's about the extent of the next closest.

That's all. Okay.

I'm sorry.

Anybody else? Mr. Mayor, if I could, I'd just like to make a statement. It seems to be that we're positioning BEC because they're the lowest. There's something wrong with them. You know, it's not necessarily the case. You've done the due diligence because you haven't worked with them before. So just because they came in with, hmm, a little bit less of a bid doesn't mean that they're not qualified to do the same quality work as the other five or six are there. That's right. Right? That's correct.

I mean, someone mentioned before how close some of the first three were in the price point. I think if they were significantly less than some of the others, you would probably want to scrutinize that number a little bit more and just then we'd do basically a big qualification kind of exercise with them and make sure. But with all of these numbers coming in pretty close, even from the highest to lowest, not a huge spread relatively speaking. So there's a certain comfort level when your numbers come in that close, that the drawings are well put together and that assumptions are kind of the same across the board. I think if you had a big variance from your height a little bit, you'd probably

And then just one minor question that I would have for Jerry on this. Jerry, if you could please just make maybe a note that you would add this to your weekly updates that you send out to council members so that we can in turn keep our residents up to speed on everything that's going on as the information comes to you through Creech and all as well. We're on schedule kind of stuff we can share with our residents. Thank you, that's all I have.

Any others? All right, the motion over the table then is to accept the recommendation to accept the apparent low bid from BEC Construction at $4,060,350. Ms. Medina, will you call the roll?

Mr. Stamey?

Yes.

Mr. Coleman? Yes. Mr. Walz?

Yes.

Mr. Longhorn? Yes, mr. Hyatt.

Yes Yes, yes motion carries unanimously the bid is accepted and we'll start to open the contract Why with that we are now going to the chief Mikkel show and Go through several memorandums of agreement

while i'm talking i'll make the motion to accept the first one to uh accept the memorandum of agreement with the children's advocacy center all right you got that miss medina all right thank you and the reason there's so many of them it's uh some some of these are a year or every two years and so after the fiscal year ends and these start coming up coming up so probably have a few more in the next month or two as well and then uh and then we also have some of them they use and just carry over for a long period of time, and you won't see those unless that's ever changed. So this one here is the Child Recovery Center. We use our Child Recovery Center. It's basically a multidisciplinary investigative team protocol. So whenever we're doing investigations involving children, we use this center. They have experts for interviewing and resources and stuff for our detective or investigators when they're investigating child crime and such. It's best practice, stand practice everywhere I've ever worked across the country, Child Advocacy Center, Child Recovery Center, whatever they call them. You really have to use these to do child investigations to be successful. Again, there's no cost. Other than pretty much all these we're gonna talk about today, there's no cost to the TAM on it.

All right, any questions for Chief?

I have one. Is this like a children's shelter? Is this where we take kids that are found?

No, it's not a shelter, so it's an investigative tool. So if a child is a victim of a crime, instead of interviewing the child at the scene with an investigator, the child is taken to the advocacy center where there's child experts. I know exactly what you're talking about. They do the forensic interview, provide the evidence and stuff.

If there's no cost, who does pay? for their services?

I think they're probably grants and governments and funding. They probably have so many different avenues of funding, but they don't cost anything. Okay, okay.

And kind of like our discussion with the juvenile center, I mean, we can't deal with these effectively

We couldn't do a legitimate child victim investigation without it.

All right. Thank you. Any others? All right. And the motion on the table is to accept the memorandum of agreement on the Children's Advocacy Center. Ms. Medina, will you call the roll?

Ms. Fallon? Yes. Mr. Hyatt?

Yes.

Mr. Lawhorn?

Yes.

Mr. Walz?

Yes.

Mr. Coleman?

Yes.

Just saying. Yes. Mayor Krantz.

Yes, motion carries unanimously. I'll request a motion for the next one.

Mr. Mayor.

Just call it.

I can make a motion to approve a memorandum of agreement, of agreement with the United States government . Okay, now this one,

Again, the only thing that would cost money on this one is just what we're paying an officer to be involved in the task force, so the regular salary. So there's no extra cost to this one. And really, this one, again, is a little different just because it's marked law enforcement sensitive. I think I provided a briefing paper for everybody, but that was not included in the public document. So it doesn't mean it's not FOIAable. It just means that if somebody wanted to look at it, it has to go through the FOIA process. We'd have to work with DEA to redact it. anything that's exactly unemployed. So basically this really just puts us, allows us to be on the DEA task force, utilize DEA programs, I'm sorry, DEA resources, and to work closely with them as well. I'll kind of go through it real quick, just where it really is on assignment. That'll be assigned on police officer part-time to DEA task force. It allows us to participate in federal drug investigations and task force operations. It allows us access to federal investigator resources and support. It's a coordination between the town and the DEA. It also spells out the responsibilities and obligations of the town and the DEA in this contract, in this MOU. And it allows us to participate in federal asset forfeiture and equitable sharing activities when assets are seized by the DEA and are during investigations. This is a standard MOU between every municipal agency that the DEA works with. All the other jurisdictions that are on the DEA Task Force in Orange County and in the state have the same exact MOU. And often they are approved through the same process where just explaining to the council what the MOU entails. So this is the reason that because DEA marks it law enforcement sensitive, it's their document. And that's why it's just a little different than the other.

All right. Any questions, comments? Yeah. Go ahead, Mr. Stanley.

We've always, I wouldn't say always, I think it's been on and off, on and off. And then this will last, we did it last year. And then this year, this is an annual one where DEA wants it every year. And so it came back across my desk. It's very important that we do participate. I think it's very proactive of us to be able to deal with large investigations, where the drugs are coming in and out for us to be shortsighted and just work our two square miles. Drug cases I think is really gonna help us out. And a lot of the sources flyer outside of our jurisdiction. So we would be, it just behooves us to have one officer, one of our officers involved in it to be able to take those investigations further.

Mr. Mayor? Mr. Coleman. So you mentioned in the past, we had a detective that's all we did. That's not going to be that.

No, no. And I actually follow that. And I guess you're going to talk, the two other MOUs that we're going to talk about too, and this is applicable to them, is we only participate in this stuff when Surfside Beach is secondary. Surfside Beach is our primary responsibility. If we are participating in any of this, it's because we have sufficient staffing for everything else. Everything else is a priority. There's patrol staff, everything's staffed, and these are supplemental. They just help us to do better. Surfside Beach is always a priority. We never go participate in any other task force or help other agencies unless we know that we are fully staffed and ready to go. Always a priority. So yeah, you potentially it's part-time as available. There's often times that a DA will call and say, hey, can you come? And the officer assigned will have to say, no, I can't do that. I have this going on. I don't have cover shift.

I have to do this.

So the benefit is that they'll share intelligence with us. They share a lot of intelligence with us. They share. So let's say we have a case. Instead of having to pull guys off the roads and investigate a case, our guy in the task force calls the team that he's assigned to and they send all their people and so it's a free resource we get the better end of this deal i can guarantee you that's what i'm trying to get out of here yeah this is a win for us yeah we put in a part-time guy that works a few hours here and there and we get hundreds of hours of resources and we come out on top of this one and we have 20 brands up right now we have 24 asset portraiture cases pending um so you know i don't know how that'll end up but um you know this officer worked a significant case with a lot of resources that were seized and So we foresee a significant portion of that funds coming to our department. Are they designated as a federal agent at all? Yeah, so part of that is they do get cross sworn with DEA and they get type 21 is the federal statute that covers controlled substances. The officer had to go to training, kind of cross-certified by DEA, sworn in, I think the attorney's office, and have federal authority of the DEA. Now, it's limited to that Title 21 case, so they have to work specific cases that followed in that US Code. And, again, even DEA, every case that this officer works has some sort of a nexus to our town. So we've decided that if drugs come in, we're able to connect it to this organization forever. So we're not just out there running around playing drug cop that has nothing to do with our town. Mr. Mayor.

Okay, I wanted to go along with Mr. Coleman. Yes, that was the question I was going to go for. He's not going to get, our part-time officer is not going to get a call because something's going on in Horry County, for instance, unless it has something to do with us.

Well, most of the cases that he's working are going to have a nexus to us. If someone on his team has another case and they say, hey, I need a nexus for surveillance, and he's available, maybe they'll go help. Just like they would for us. So really, it's just sharing resources. And like I said before, we're getting the better end of this team.

But that could also happen on one of our cases.

Right. But when he's the case agent, on any case where he's the main agent, he's the main investigator, those cases have a nexus to us.

he may have other jurisdictions or agencies with their cases as well but he won't be there with the best and and likewise we could get somebody from oregon county somebody absolutely whatever okay all right i just wanted to clarify that all right uh mr wallace i think you want to i just i did want to also bring up for the good of the order uh how our relationship here had to do with during my short term on council we've had two majors

bus in this town which you never would have thought the size of our town such uh was d was our relationship with dea involved in us helping helping us to find and make this bus yeah and some of the reasons some of this is a control document is you can't get in a lot of those things and how that occurs but dea has helped us with some of our cases in the past

And we try to identify these organizations that are bringing narcotics to our communities, and we try to investigate, dismantle, and disrupt those organizations long before they reach out to us. And that as a resource helps us, right? It could do with them.

Right, okay, thank you.

Mr. Mann. Yes, hi. Chief, whenever I hear asset forfeiture, I get a little bit concerned. If we have an asset forfeiture in our town from a citizen, is there a viable appeals process that they can utilize if they feel they've been unfairly treated?

So there's two avenues for asset forfeiture, be it through the state or through the federal government. These are DEA, these are all federal, so they have to go through the federal process, and they have quite an extensive due process that goes through. And then also for the state level, if we did a state level asset forfeiture, it also goes through the courts. It's actually a county solicitor's office, contracts out a third party to represent us, and the defendant also has counsel.

So it's not an extra judicial?

No, it's not an administrative process, but we have no due process at all.

Thank you.

All right, with that, Motion on the table is to accept this memorandum of agreement with DEA as presented. Ms. Medina, will you call the roll?

Mr. Staley?

Yes.

Mr. Coleman?

Yeah.

Mr. Longhorn?

Yes.

Mr. Longhorn? Yes. Mr. Hyatt?

Yes.

Ms. Fallon? Yes. Mayor Crouch?

Yes. Motion carries unanimously. Carry on.

All right.

The next one, I believe, is Mr. Carolina, and it's really going to be- Oh, yeah. What? I'm sorry. I want a motion.

Move to approve the Memorandum of Agreement with Coastal Carolina.

Second. You got a second there, Ms. Medina?

Mr. Hyatt?

Hyatt then wants either one. Proceed.

So these next two are very similar in nature. This one, Coastal Carolina, again, I just want to reiterate that when we enter into these MOUs to give mutual aid or to help other agencies or other things, only when we're fully staffed and we're not skipping on our protection and our duties here in the town. So this one's for Coastal Carolina when they have football season and they need help at their events. So they reach out to all local law enforcement agencies and enter into an MOU. So it's really specific for the event. So, you know, it's not like our officers are going to be running up to Coastal Carolina and running traffic and write tickets to Coastal Carolina. Now, they're really only going there for the specific event to help supplement their law enforcement needs there. And so, and again, they pay our officers. So if they call and say, hey, we need help with a football game, we put up a roster and say, anyone who's off, if you want an overtime opportunity, great, but we're not going to pull people off the road. We're not going to, you know, take away resources from the town. It's just an overtime opportunity for an officer who's off to go up there, sign up, and go up and work the football game. and supplement them, and they pay that overtime rate to the town when you pay the officer.

Questions, comments? I've got a question. Travel time. That's not paid, I understand, by reading this. Do they take the town home car? They take their own car?

They'll take it from their house or wherever they're coming from. If they're coming from working to get off, whatever they're coming from, they're here at their house. They would drive there.

Okay, but there's no compensation for the time that they're in transit.

No, okay. By signing this or approving this, it goes both ways, right?

Yeah, so that's a great point. So let's say that we get to, I mean, we might have an event or two here in town and so on. And let's say we get to a point where we're like, hey, we're going to need some extra coverage here. The way we're going, we're getting extra coverage.

these events are being pretty big, we're getting a lot of attendance.

Or if we have a staffing crisis or whatever, we'd say, hey, we're gonna need some help. Then I would send an MOU to them and say, hey, remember when I helped you with the football game, I need two or three officers for important job creator or whatever. And they would be more than happy to jump in. So yeah, it does go both ways. If we decided we need extra help, we'll do the same thing with an MOU then. And the reason we have to do these MOUs is that's how it's structured in South Carolina. jurisdictions are in our jurisdictions and for us to do to work outside of our jurisdictions we say law requires that we have an emily okay but this one here is not we would have to issue our own back to coastal carolina or is this one automatically getting us both ways no this one is specific to the event of coastal carolina so and the next one you'll really be specific to that event as well so the scenario you said we would actually you'd bring one

forward to us where we are reaching out to them.

And state law doesn't allow us to have mutual aid for emergency response. So if they were going to have to share anything and they requested assistance, we can do a lot of that. That's separate from this. Okay. All right.

Thank you. Anybody else? All right. The motion on the table is to approve the memorandum of agreement with Coastal Carolina University. Ms. Medina, will you call the roll?

Ms. Phelan? Yes. Mr. Hyatt?

yes mr lawhorn yes mr waltz yes mr coleman yeah mr steven yes yes motion carries unanimously let's bring it home all right and then the next one is uh for the city of conway yeah yeah yeah so i should know i'll do it okay uh make a motion to approve the memorandum of agreement with the city of conway is written oh sorry all right so the same thing as before this is event specific uh their column their events are growing as well and they decided their Halloween event has requested some extra staffing. So they have asked if we would be willing to provide some additional resources for them during the Halloween event. And so this is again, a specific event. And again, I just want to, you know, if nobody signs up, we don't sign up and send anybody. We're not going to make anybody go.

This is just an open-time opportunity for officers and cost us nothing.

Questions, comments? Mr. Mayor, Chief, I would assume that other agencies, they make these own, like Myrtle Beach and other places, make memorandums of understanding of Conway as well.

So I kind of know the Chiefs and Sheriffs meeting, that's when these are brought up. And at that meeting, they say, hey, we're going to send this out to all of you guys. So every agency in Morley County will receive that. There you go.

if we have an event we need people?

Yeah, I'd have to send them an MOU. Yeah, I'd have to send them. Yeah, it's not, just to read this, this is them asking us for assistance and to give us jurisdiction for that event only. Okay. Bike Week and stuff like that, do we have any MOUs? So during Bike Week, we bring in state agencies that we already have existing MOUs with or don't need MOUs with, and they come and supplement us during Bike Week. You know, these agencies are, have their own bike week issue. So they're not in other jurisdictions, but. Do we pay other agencies? We do not pay the stadiums. They absorb the cost. We pay for their lodging. Thank you.

Any others? All right, the motion on the table is the approval of the memorandum of agreement with the city of Conway. Ms. Medina, would you call the roll?

Mr. Staley?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Chief.

Thank you very much. Appreciate you guys.

All right. We are now at public comments. Public comments on town services or business conducted. Are there any comments?

You want to make a comment? Wow. Because I forgot to put this on the agenda. and i was reminded today by another councilman so uh this is for the public so i think it's appropriate i just want to announce our citizens police academy has been scheduled starting november uh september 24th through november um i don't know i don't know where they dance but i had it on my list yeah okay great so i just want to announce that we are looking for we have 12 openings that we've received four or five applications so far but we really want to fill up our uh citizens police academy this year so if you're interested and in hanging out with us for two hours every week on a thursday evening to not only learn about what we do but also experience it um we'd love to have you and we'd just like to showcase what we do and show what your police department's all about so uh if you are interested you can go on our facebook page or you can go even look on the uh adams facebook and our facebook and add the flyer uh detailing how to apply for the citizens first hand i mean you didn't introduce yourself uh bill nichols

Yeah, after four times, I guess we should have got that down. Are there any other public comments? All right, we're gonna move into council comments. I'm gonna start with Mr. Lawhorn. Okay, for me all.

Yeah, well, I try to keep everybody on their toes. So at the risk of beating dead horse, back to this issue of the change request. I fully understand that if it goes above budget, it has to come back to council for approval. No question, understood that. My concern is generally there are must have change requests and there are nice to have general change requests. I'm concerned about the scrutiny on the nice to have. I mean, if it's must have, we have to do it. And my concern is if we eat up that contingency or things that are nice to have, and then a must have thing happens, few months later and we spent the money and hopefully we did the requirements well enough to where this won't be a big issue. That's my hope. But my experience is that never tends to work out that way. So that's kind of what I'm after. I'm concerned about the things that might come up and say, oh yeah, maybe we should do this to ensure that we're actually scrutinizing those things for the cost and the impact, et cetera. So that's all with that. Second thing is there's a workshop next Tuesday, I believe, at 5 o'clock with the Planning Commission and the Business Commission Committee to discuss further follow-up to a workshop we had earlier this year in which we were talking about ideas for improving Surfside Beach for the future, development, et cetera, the overlay. So I would encourage folks to come. If you're interested to come to that, it should be an informative meeting. It'll give kind of a progress report and kind of where we're at and where we're going from here. That's it. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Coleman. Thanks for coming out. I agree it was a long one. Nice to have. Maybe it's the best thing to have. Must have. I think we should also look we should know about it i mean sometimes you can do a little bit cheaper if we're looking at it a little closer and uh i'm just afraid we're just going to go and spend all our money before before it's time so i think it has to be looked at very closely i don't want to see the same thing happen that happened That's it. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Walls. Uh, thanks everybody for coming out. Um, I'll plug it again. Um, I spoke of it a lot while I was going through the police Academy and I'll tell you guys for me as a council member, uh, very enlightening, great to know, uh, helped me with when it rolled around the budget time to understand better why they need what they need and, how they use what they use. But I would recommend it to anybody that just wants to know. You wouldn't believe how much goes into running the police department for our little town. So highly recommend it. And having said that, I'll see you guys in a couple of weeks. Thank you. All right. Thank you, sir. Ms. Shaw.

I want to say thank you to our fire department and police department for what they did. with that one-year-old child. It's close to my heart. Another thing that's very close to my heart is the 9-11 Surfside Beach stair climb for this week. We always need to remember, but we also need to share and educate with the younger generations. It's getting more and more that people weren't even born. And it's our job to make sure we never, ever forget. So every year, I get with my four grandchildren, and my youngest is five, and I talk to him at his level, and I deal with the two teenagers, and I make sure they understand how important the response. America came together that day. and we need to stay together. And I think we can only do that through education. So with that said, I'm loving this time, 7.25, so I'm going to thank you guys.

All right, thank you. Mr. Hyatt.

Yeah, I'd like to echo Sean's appreciation for the police requirement and saving a life. That's pretty unique and, you know, that's what most firemen and police officers hope to do in their career. Not all of them get the chance, and I'm glad these gentlemen did. I'd like to kind of say something, maybe more to the town, Jerry, but I would much prefer to approve a contract than approve a presentation. When I get a packet, the presentation doesn't tell me much, but I would rather have a contract to look at and approve. The details are in contract. It's not in a sales presentation. I'd appreciate it tonight having had a contract to review in my back end. On the bid for Preach & Associates, I realize that they're a pretty good outfit and we're going to have to trust them, but I'm a little chagrined that safety records are pretty common and they haven't done a safety record check. And I would have liked a contrast between the three lowest bidders. As the mayor pointed out, there's about a 1% difference between the three lowest. It would have been nice to see what the other two had to offer too, not just pick the lowest bidder. We've been burned picking the lowest bidder. I don't want to get burned again. But we will have a chance to review that contract, so that's a plus. So anyway, thank you all for coming and good night.

All right.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Stavey.

Well, I'm going to echo the same thing as the rest of the council members have said. thanks to the police department, thanks to the fire department, a child's life, and for a whole lot of money, y'all. And if they're just one that they can save, that's a great job. We will spend our money for what we've got if they save one life, one child's life. But with that said, I would like to get to a little bit of a pleasant note that our in-the-season festival went off be well. We had a little hiccup at one time, a little light in an area. We had to halt everything, but overall it went well. Beautiful fireworks. Some of the town is getting known for. People's talking about it, and I am glad to see it. I'm glad to see that it's a positive instead of a negative talk, and I hope we can do better next year. There's some things that need to be looked at and changed or maybe worked on, not just changed them, just neatly worked on. And I think we'll take that up in the future. But with saying that, thanks everybody for coming and see you in a couple of weeks again.

All right. Thank you, sir. It's early and I got a little left, so sorry, but I'm going to go through it. And the Summer Fireworks Festival, I wanted to start there. Great show. For being only the second annual, I'm really pleased with how well it's going. So I think it's delivering, it's full promise. There's always room for improvement, I get it, but I'm really pleased. 9-11 Memorial Stair Climb, I mean, this is 25 years. Even more so we should be there captain Kelly told me today that we surpassed the number of registrants from last year Registration is still open till Thursday afternoon. You can do it online. Please do it I'm going to be there in climate as long as I can For the whole time. We'll see how far I go also this weekend. I mean I We need to spread some of these people out I guess but the Carolina Cup Pro-Am surf tournament is September 11th, 12th, and 13th. That is right in front of the Surfside Beach Oceanfront Hotel by Scotty's Bar. So those surfers are good. I mean, you think, okay, we don't get a ton of surf, but they are good. Come out and see that. Adaptive Surf Wheel to Surf Project is at 13th Avenue South on Saturday, September 12th. So that's mobility-challenged surfers. And again, it's something to see. If you get a chance, go down there. If you don't have a chance, it might be because you're at Celebrate Surfside, which is also on Saturday, September 12th. And I even get to lead off the dunk tank. I don't know if anybody else is doing it, but if you want to throw me under the water, be there at 10 o'clock right when it opens. I went at the first spot. But all of those are worthwhile events and worthy of attendance. Tomorrow, I will be down in Garden City for the Army Corps of Engineers beach re-nourishment ribbon cutting at a press conference and all that kind of stuff or interviews. Hopefully they don't ask me anything, but if they do, I'll be there. But the project was a great success. Yeah, it came right in the middle of our season. We didn't dial that in, not that we could do, but very much needed and should make a big difference. And especially since it's gonna stay here, it doesn't look like the storm season is gonna be that busy this year. Well, we'll see if I'm wrong. The economic development workshop, definitely. We've been kicking around ideas for business 17 and even in the downtown, Several people from the business committee, planning commission, the liaisons and I and some staff went to Conway, looked at everything Conway has done over the last five, six years. We're gonna have the Conway city manager in here to speak to us and we're gonna kick around some ideas and we want resident involvement. So Tuesday five to seven, it will be worth your while to come down and help us set the vision. Huckabee Park, they have over 200 registrants for the fall league. That's what they have for the spring league. As they like to call it, the new era at Huckabee is really taking form. The fields have been improved. I think this is one of the best things we have done in the last year or so. We're restoring a viable rec league there. And again, we should check it out during the fall. Police Academy, that's already been covered. Courthouse changes. I think Mr. Vincent is sensitive to what council thinks. I think he's gonna be keeping us well informed. I don't think he's gonna be around and renegade on this and just approving things. So I'm pretty confident we're gonna have our say. That's it. So at least I went through it pretty quickly. With that, I need only one thing.

Mr. Mayor. Mr. Wells. I'd like to make a motion that we adjourn this regular meeting of the town council.

I'll second that.

Is there any discussion?

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. Motion carries. Meeting adjourned.