Tag: Charleston County recycling

Questions Surrounding the HCSWA Board Member Elections

Nothing is ever simple and straightforward when it involves the Horry County Solid Waste Authority (HCSWA) Board of Directors.

Last Tuesday, Horry County Council voted to appoint two members to the HCSWA board from among three nominated candidates. Two of the candidates, current board chairman Pam Creech and vice chairman Norfleet Jones, were incumbents. Candidate Sam Johnson was the outsider in the voting.

Creech was reelected by a majority of council members. However, Johnson and Jones tied in two successive votes with six each. After the first vote, Creech was named to remain on the board by council chairman Mark Lazarus who proceeded to hold a second ballot with just Jones and Johnson competing for one opening, against the advice of Horry County Attorney Arrigo Carotti.

Jones and Johnson tied with six votes each on both ballots.

Lazarus announced the second opening on the HCSWA board would be filled by council vote during council’s regular May 16, 2017 meeting. However, Lazarus stated nominations for the second position would remain open adding an additional question mark to the process.

The voting, however, only showed minor problems compared to what transpired before the vote.

On April 28, 2017, Esther Murphy, HCSWA’s Director of Recycling and Corporate Affairs sent an email to Horry County Council Clerk Pat Hartley with copies to all 12 members of county council as well as HCSWA Executive Director Danny Knight, Creech and Jones.

The email began, “Board member Norfleet Jones asked that we contact you regarding his term on the Solid Waste Authority Board, which ends on June 30, 2017. Mr. Jones indicated he would be completing his first term and would like to be reappointed to the Board for a second term…”

Continue Reading →

Revenues, Expenses and the HCSWA Budget

The HCSWA budget is in its final preparations before being included in the overall Horry County Government budget as it is every year.

While the Horry County Solid Waste Authority budget has been included as a section of the county budget since its inception in the early 1990’s, Horry County Council has paid little to no attention to it when approving its annual fiscal year budget.

This year is different. Some council members are actually paying attention to the HCSWA budget.

That is a good thing. It was prompted by the initial request of the HCSWA for an increase in tipping fees at the county Hwy 90 landfill.

Tipping fees are the cost, ultimately paid by the citizens of the county, of burying waste in the ground.

To its credit, the HCSWA has essentially charged the same tipping fee, with some minor variations, since 1992. To its detriment, for many of those years, the tipping fee charged to the citizens of the county was too high.

I remember one former executive director of the HCSWA commenting over a decade ago that so much money (from tipping fees) was coming into the authority coffers, it didn’t know what to do with it all.

A lot of the excess revenue got wasted on purchases of land that was not needed, public relations campaigns, lobbying fees, attorney fees, even bugs that theoretically would extend the life of the landfill, but, in fact, died.

While some of this sounds funny, millions upon millions of public dollars were wasted by a succession of HCSWA boards and the indifference of county council.

Now, the HCSWA is in somewhat of a cash crunch, somewhere between $500k-$1,000k projected shortfall in the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2016.

The first inclination of the HCSWA staff and board was to raise tipping fees. County council said “NO”.

Continue Reading →