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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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Bubba Owens Helping Hand

For the past five years, Bubba Owens has donated his time and money to give a helping hand to those in dire need.

Owens organizes and directs charity events to raise money to help people through very hard times.

“About five years ago, several people approached me about someone with cancer and no insurance to sponsor an event to raise money to help with the medical bills,” said Owens.

A businessman in the south end of Myrtle Beach for many years, Owens called on his many contacts to help with the event.

“We were fairly successful with the first event and I liked the feeling I got from helping someone in real need,” Owens said.

Owens said he has run approximately 25 events in the past five years raising a total of approximately $250,000. The beneficiaries have included a family who lost their home to fire, cancer patients and others with serious medical problems and trust funds for small children who have lost parents.

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International Drive Stalemate

A recent meeting between residents in the SC 90 area and representatives of the Coastal Conservation League highlighted the International Drive stalemate.

According to sources familiar with the meeting, homeowners in the area want the road built and the environmentalists won’t give in unless they get their way.

Their way is to add millions of dollars to the cost of the project for bear tunnels, electronic warning signals, higher fencing and additional mitigation not needed for the project at the cost of a $1.6 million payment to The Nature Conservancy.

In other words, the environmentalist tactic is to delay the project for as long as possible and to add as much additional cost as possible in the hope the road project will be abandoned.

And I don’t believe these delaying tactics are about bears in the area at all.

Fifteen years ago, the Horry County Solid Waste Authority board discussed using authority funds to pave International Drive as a means of reducing garbage truck traffic on SC 90.

The environmentalists were never heard from during these discussions.

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Gingrich, Myrtle Beach, Oil and Interstates

Horry County – Myrtle Beach Land Deal

Horry County and the City of Myrtle Beach are investigating a joint purchase of the former Hard Rock Theme Park.

According to sources familiar with the talks, the reason for the purchase is to build additional sports fields for the sports tourism industry.

This is not a good idea on several levels.

Horry County and Myrtle Beach should not use public tax dollars for the purchase of land and construction of sports facilities for the tourism industry.

Horry County just raised property taxes by 7.2 mils (the maximum increase allowed by state law) for this current fiscal year ostensibly for pay increases and public safety improvements.

Now it not only proposes to use tax dollars to purchase land and build sports fields, but the purchase of the former theme park property by local governments would remove that land from the tax rolls, a double whammy for local taxpayers.

Horry County already wastes over $1 million per year funding the operations budget of the Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corporation. If this is such a good idea, shouldn’t MBREDC be able to recruit private business to purchase the land and build the facilities?

Myrtle Beach raises tens of millions of tax dollars, with its one cent tourism sales tax, that it turns over to the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce to use for tourism advertising. This is something that should be funded by marketing budgets of the private businesses in the tourism industry.

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Myrtle Beach City Election Runup

The Myrtle Beach city elections are just over three weeks away and the game of keep the incumbents in power is in full swing.

There were competing op-eds in local media recently between local writer Mande Wilkes and Myrtle Beach public information officer Mark Kruea that are of note in this election season.

The opinions expressed in the two columns demonstrate the current disconnect between Myrtle Beach city officials and the people who live and work in the city.

Wilkes criticized the “Asian fetish” of Myrtle Beach City Council while stifling local business investors with “the bizarre zoning laws, the oppressive signing ordinances, the climbing licensing fees, and the restrictive parking policies.”

“All of these rules add up to a suffocating environment for businesses, and that’s why Highway 17 is littered with empty storefronts and dilapidated buildings,” Wilkes wrote.

“I wonder if it’s common for a relatively small-town mayor to be paid to jetset across the globe,” Wilkes speculated.

We agree with Wilkes’ assessment. Myrtle Beach City Council ignores locals while looking for big hitters from abroad.

She stung council enough that an official response was deemed necessary.

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Horry County Schools Building Projects

The Horry County Schools Selection Committee will meet tomorrow to decide on what firm or firms it will recommend for each of five new school projects.

Three teams, Thompson Turner Construction, First Floor Energy Positive and M.B. Kahn Construction Company, were invited to make offers on at least two projects to all five of the projects, at their discretion.

After several months of review and consideration of the proposals submitted, the committee will recommend one offering team proposal for each of the five building projects being considered.

Interviews with the teams will be held tomorrow with the committee tentatively scheduled to present its recommendations to the full Horry County Schools Board of Education at its October 12, 2015 workshop for an up or down vote on the recommendations.

If the board votes to approve the list as submitted, final negotiations with the winning offering team for each project will begin.

The proposals submitted are for design-build delivery of each of five planned new school facilities. The overall projected total cost of the five new facilities is $150-200 million.

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Random Thoughts on the 1,000 Year Flood

Sitting through the last three days of Nikki Haley’s 1,000 Year Flood, I had the sense of Yogi Berra’s “déjà vu all over again.”

If you are in a flooded home or on a flooded street, you may not believe this, but I feel Horry County at least partially dodged a bullet with this storm.

To me, Hurricane Floyd and its aftermath in 1999 was worse in Horry County. Not by much, but worse.

What makes this storm Haley’s “1,000 Year Flood” is the rain and flooding was much wider spread throughout the state than it was in 1999. Floyd was a coastal storm that dumped a lot of rain. but didn’t hit the midlands and upstate like this one.

The Carolina Forest area, which saw significant flooding over the last few days, was in its very early stages of development in 1999. Other neighborhoods that are now flooded didn’t exist when Floyd came through.

You can only put so much asphalt and concrete in a coastal plain before problems develop. But, housing demand and an expanding tax base will trump other discussions every time.

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