Author: Paul Gable

Horry County Schools Picks First Floor Energy Positive

The Horry County Schools Board of Education voted last night to award construction of five new schools to First Floor Energy Positive.

Included in the motion to award contracts for all five schools in this round of building projects to First Floor Energy Positive, was the raising of the budget for construction from approximately $167 million to approximately $225 million.

Proposals from all three finalist construction teams exceeded the initial budget by a considerable margin, according to sources familiar with the process.

The vote effectively ends a selection process that began in early 2014. The school district will now file a Notice of Intent to award contracts and there will be a 14 day protest period in which one of the other two finalist construction teams may challenge the award if they so desire.

A protest is expected and sources within the school district say there has already been Freedom of Information Act requests for large numbers of documents associated with the selection process.

Be that as it may, the Horry County Schools Board of Education made the correct choice.

First Floor Energy Positive has constructed three state of the art schools in North Carolina, all of which generate more energy than they consume. Excess energy is sold back to the local power grid.

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Horry County Schools Building Decision

The Horry County Schools Board of Education will vote on awarding building contracts for five new schools at a special meeting tonight.

This should have already occurred, but bureaucratic interference slowed the process down since the board voted October 12, 2015 to begin negotiations for all five projects with First Floor Energy Positive, the top rated construction team from an earlier selection process.

Thompson Turner Construction and M.B. Kahn are second and third rated teams, respectively and were again included in the process in the past two weeks when bureaucracy took over.

The Horry County Schools board expressed an interest in building energy positive schools when the Request for Proposals for these five projects was reissued earlier this year.

First Floor Energy Positive is the only one of the three finalist teams to have already constructed energy positive schools. In fact, it is the only team in the United States to have designed, constructed and operated energy positive schools.

Sandy Grove Middle School in North Carolina was the first energy positive school built by First Floor Energy Positive. It generated 42% more energy than it consumed in its first year of operation. The excess energy was sold to the local power grid.

The other two North Carolina schools in operation have produced similar savings.

Based on the experience of the three schools in North Carolina, it can be projected that Horry County Schools and taxpayers can save $100 million in utility costs over the 40-year lifespan of these five schools.

These are not hollow projections. First Floor Energy Positive is the only one of the three finalist teams who can guarantee, via performance bond, that their school buildings will generate more energy on-site than they will consume.

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Changes Needed From City Elections

City elections in three local municipalities could bring much needed changes to the way those communities work for their citizens.

Those three communities are Conway, Atlantic Beach and Myrtle Beach.

Below, we have highlighted the candidates we believe are most likely to bring new ideas that will lead to much needed positive change for those municipalities.

Conway

Mayor and three council seats up for election.
City council member Barbara Blain-Bellamy is continuing to build momentum in her attempt to unseat incumbent Mayor Alys Lawson.
Blain-Bellamy is well known to Conway voters. She has been elected to city council three times and has led the ticket each time. This is not an outsider attempting to unseat an incumbent mayor.

Blain-Bellamy’s message of finding new ways to ward off the influence of gangs and crime in Conway’s neighborhoods and listening to the concerns of citizens throughout the city highlight her message.

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Bob Kelly Goes Negative on Bubba Owens

The special election campaign for Horry County Council District 3 took a negative turn this week with an attempt to smear Republican candidate Bubba Owens.

This was not unexpected as the campaign of Bob Kelly has been trying for weeks to get out what it thought was damaging information about Owens.

The information came from a search of the public index of court records on Owens.

After that search, Kelly’s campaign consultant, Jim Wiles, sent an email to GSD and other media, which, among other things, decried the “22 year criminal record (of Owens) in Horry County” including “two convictions for criminal domestic violence.”

The email went on to claim “15 criminal convictions” and called Owens a “violent felon with a 22 year history of domestic violence.”

A search of the SLED CATCH system, which is the Criminal Justice Information System of South Carolina, reveals only three entries.

Owens plead guilty to unlawful use of a telephone (a misdemeanor) in January 1997 and public disorderly conduct (a misdemeanor) in June 2004.

Owens was arrested for criminal domestic violence (a felony) in 2013, but the charges were dismissed because no probable cause for the arrest was found.

(The SLED CATCH documents are attached at the end of this story.)

Another attached document is a summons for Owens to serve as a federal district court jurist in December 2015. For those of you not familiar with the law, a convicted felon cannot serve on a jury in South Carolina, neither federal nor state.

So, South Carolina Law Enforcement Division records do not show Owens to be a felon. Neither do SC court system records.

One has to wonder, however, why the Kelly campaign, one which claims his career as a police officer as some kind of shining endorsement and touts the words “Zero Tolerance” as if it were a Bible verse, felt the need to stoop so low.

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Energy Savings in Horry County Schools

The Horry County Schools Board of Education will hold a special meeting Monday night to vote on the awarding of contracts to build five new schools.

Board members voted October 12, 2015 to direct staff to enter into negotiations with First Floor Energy Positive, the top rated of three finalist teams considered for the projects, to finalize contracts for the five school buildings.

The vote approving the contracts was expected to come at the board’s regularly scheduled October 26, 2015 meeting.

However, according to sources familiar with the process, the negotiations hit a bureaucratic bump with staff and attorneys for Horry County Schools insisting the second and third place rated teams, Thompson Turner Construction and M.B. Kahn Construction respectively, had to be included in the final negotiation process.

The results of those negotiations, including recommendations for award of the contracts, are scheduled to be reported to the board at the specially called meeting.

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Candidate Forum Today

A candidate forum for both Horry County Council District 3 and the Myrtle Beach City Council candidates will be held today at the Canal Street Recreation Center.

This will provide a double opportunity for those living on the South end of Myrtle Beach to see and hear the candidates they will be voting for next week.

First round voting for the special election to fill the unexpired term of former council member Marion Foxworth in the county District 3 and the general election for Myrtle Beach city council will be held Tuesday November 3rd.

The forum for the county council candidates will begin at 5 p.m. It will run approximately one and one-half hours. A 15 minute break will occur between the two forums with the city council forum scheduled to start at 6:45 p.m.

Each forum will include opening and closing statements by the candidates and questioning of the candidates on important issues facing local government. The public will have the opportunity to participate in the forums by submitting questions, of particular concern to them, to the forum moderators.

Between the two forums, two appreciation of service awards will be presented.

Former Horry County Council member for District 3 Marion Foxworth will be one recipient. Foxworth resigned from office in August to accept the job as Horry County Registrar of Deeds.

Retiring city council member Susan Grissom Means will be the other recipient of an appreciation of service award.

This forum is being held as the campaigns accelerate into high gear for the final week of electioneering.

South Carolina is known for its hardball (many would call it dirty) politics. One only has to go back to the 2000 smear campaign waged against presidential candidate John McCain in South Carolina.

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Horry County Schools Construction Projects

An executive session for the Horry County Schools Board of Education dealing contract negotiations is scheduled for Monday night.

According to the agenda, the board will receive legal advice on contract negotiations for the five school building projects scheduled for completion in 2017.

Two weeks ago, the Horry County Schools Board of Education voted 11-1 to direct staff to begin final negotiations with First Floor Energy Positive for the five school building projects.

According to information provided at that time, the proposals submitted by First Floor Energy Positive were superior to those of competing firms, second place Thompson Turner Construction and third place M.B. Kahn Construction.

Additionally, First Floor Energy Positive’s experience in the construction of energy-positive school designs was an important factor in their choice.

First Floor Energy Positive’s team consists of local sub-contractors whose businesses and many employees are located in Horry County. Spending local public money in contracts with local firms is always a consideration for public agencies.

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Myrtle Beach Fantasyland

Fantasyland has arrived in Myrtle Beach.

No, it’s not a new attraction or theme park.

It’s the attitude and atmosphere that surrounds the biennial Myrtle Beach city elections.

Mayor John Rhodes (who is not up for reelection until 2017) stepped into the middle of this year’s election rhetoric a couple of nights ago at a Neighborhood Watch meeting at Market Common.

According to numerous sources at the meeting, Rhodes attacked non-incumbents running for the three city council seats in this year’s election cycle by claiming the challengers were lying to voters.

Rhodes said these challenger candidates were misleading citizens by claiming crime is an increasing problem in the city and using independent rating reports to substantiate their claims.

Rhodes referred to a city generated report which, reportedly, said crime is the lowest it’s been in the city since the city began keeping statistics 20 years ago.

According to Rhodes, crime in Myrtle Beach is at a 20-year low!

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SC General Assembly and School Funding

The SC General Assembly is trying to make a constitutional crisis out of last year’s SC Supreme Court ruling on education funding.

SC House Speaker Jay Lucas and SC Senate President pro Tempore Hugh Leatherman filed a motion earlier this week with the SC Supreme Court requesting reconsideration of the Court’s November 2014 finding.

The finding stated the SC General Assembly was not providing enough funding for the poorer school districts in the state for even the ‘minimally adequate education’ called for by the state Constitution.

The main thrust of the motion was revealed in a press release by Speaker Lucas issued Monday:

“Arbitrary deadlines that seek to hijack the legislative process and meaningless approval from an unrealistic super-panel will not reform South Carolina’s education delivery system. Achieving actual improvement requires extensive study and input from those most familiar with the issues.

“The Court’s attempt to overstep its judicial authority further complicates the lawmaking process. More importantly, it negates the significant progress made by the House Education Task Force over the last ten months. Every child in every part of our state deserves access to a 21st century education. Because we must preserve the diligent work already completed by our task force, we think it is imperative that the Supreme Court vacate their most recent order and remove itself from the legislative process,” said Speaker Lucas.

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Retirees Don’t Count Illegals Do

Retirees drawing social security (myself included) have already heard there will be no increase in benefits this year.

While the government says inflation is too low to justify an increase in benefits, it evidently is raging in the medical field because we also heard there will be a significant increase in medicare coverage costs.

That’s the government’s way of saying ‘we’re not giving you any more money, but you are going to give us more money.’ (We’ve heard that one most of our lives.)

None of us believe the federal government propaganda that inflation is too low for a cost of living increase with a dozen eggs costing nearly $3 these days and most other food costs way up.

No, it’s that we don’t count anymore. Those in Congress count on us to be relatively predictable in our voting patterns. They have to spend their time, and our money, on those new potential voting blocs – illegal immigrants and refugees!

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