At 8:30 Saturday morning, just under
1,000 new graduates of Coastal
Carolina University
will march across the stage in Brooks Stadium and turn their tassels from right
to left. On Monday evening, hundreds more from Horry-Georgetown
Technical College
will follow suit at the Myrtle
Beach Convention Center.
Many of those graduates will be
hoping to head into the workforce, looking to land their first professional job
in the post-college adult world. And many of them may be in for a rude
awakening.
Friday’s editorial is a wrap-up of
what’s working well when it comes to open government. It includes plenty of
links, so if you’ve ever wondered where to find some of this info, it could be
worth browsing just for those:
We’re nearing the end of another
Sunshine Week, when media outlets across the nation celebrate open government
and advocate for more transparency in the halls of power. In past years we’ve
used the occasion to call for a variety of reforms, including more robust
freedom of information laws in our state, fewer executive sessions at local
governmental bodies, better monitoring of those secret meetings and more basic
training for public employees on the state’s public access laws. Those concerns
haven’t changed.
But while there are still plenty of
issues to address across our state and region – and we will continue to point
them out – for today at least we choose to see the glass as half full, and we’ll
instead celebrate some successes of local institutions. There have been
achievements in public access and open government here in recent years and we
honor them to spread the worthy ideas and practices to other local governments
and agencies.
Friday’s first editorial wishes Coast
RTA the best as they try to get an airport shuttle service up and running:
Our hat’s off to Coast RTA General
Manager Myers Rollins. Rather than focus on the loss of the regional bus
service’s $629,000 contract with Coastal
Carolina University
as a problem, he looked upon it as an opportunity to try something new.
Thursday’s first editorial is a
helpful PSA as we near the beginning of tourist season:
Stay on the balconies, folks.
With winter nearly in our rearview
mirror, tourist season is approaching once more. Restaurants and mini golf
courses are reopening, businesses are putting the finishing touches on new
looks, and hotels are ready to welcome the first waves of guests to our shore.
With that influx comes the likelihood that visitors will be tumbling again off
the balconies of those hotels. It’s an unfortunate and dangerous annual trend
we see year after year.
Along with
everybody connected to Coastal
Carolina University,
we mourn the senseless death of sophomore Anthony Liddell, shot Tuesday night at
a college residence hall.
Police continue
to hunt for his killer and we expect more details will emerge in the coming
days. In the meantime, we shudder and recoil at the violence that continues to
touch our area and take our friends and neighbors from our grasp.
A whiz at
math and business and need something to do with your extra time? Consider
volunteering to help low-income folks with their tax returns:
With more
volunteers, a frustrating situation could be improved at Horry County sites of
the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program at three public libraries in
Conway, Myrtle Beach and Surfside Beach where the shortage of volunteers causes
about as many folks to be turned away as receive assistance.
A shortage
of volunteers is “our biggest drawback,” says Utocqua Grissett, who helps
organize the VITA sites as coordinator for the Horry County Financial Literacy
Coalition. It is a collaboration of entities including the United Way,
Horry-Georgetown Technical College, Coastal Carolina University, the Salvation
Army, Alpha Sorority Inc. and Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. The coalition has
been organized for about 10 years, Grissett says. VITA is a national program
sponsored by the Internal Revenue Service for four decades. Horry County has
had a VITA program since the 1990s, Grissett says.
If a neighborhood wants better
lighting and landscaping, the best place for it to find the money is its own
resources, as Friday’s first editorial points out:
Kudos to the residents of Quail
Creek, who asked for the opportunity to raise their own taxes this week.
Homeowners in the neighborhood near Coastal Carolina University
asked Horry County Council for the chance to hold a special election that could
increase their property taxes to pay for improved amenities such as street
lights, speed bumps, landscaping and better stormwater management.
Tuesday’s second editorial highlights
the good work of one of the lesser known nonprofits in the area:
Kristi Falk is on a mission: “to get
people in the area healthier.”
The former owner of a health food
store in Conway, Falk parlayed that experience first into five years of putting
on the Wellness Expo of Myrtle Beach at the city’s convention center. From
there, she founded the Wellness
Council for South Carolina in 2006. The nonprofit council seeks to teach
local residents how to be healthy people in all aspects of their lives, whether
nutrition or recycling, exercise or emotions.
Sunday’s
editorial takes on the tried and true topic of nullification. Remember that
from your high school history textbooks?
South
Carolina has a proud tradition of obstinacy. In the federal family, we’re the
child who automatically responds to every suggestion with an emphatic “nuh-uh”
or “make me.” Ingrained over centuries, stubborn refusal has become our gut
feeling, our knee-jerk reaction. The federal government says po-tay-to and we
say po-tah-to. Of course, if the feds at any point changed course and started
saying po-tah-to, we’d immediately insist that real Americans say po-tay-to.
This
disdain for and distrust of authority has led us into confrontations of all
sizes, from bloody wars to congressmen who publicly call the president a liar
during a State of the Union address. The recent calls by state legislators for
reviving nullification only adds to this long tradition of digging in our
heels.
Wednesday’s editorial highlights the
good work being done by the local branch of the Military Officers Association
of America:
With the commissioning of four new
Army officers at Coastal Carolina University the other day, the Grand Strand
Chapter of the Military Officers Association of America has four more members
to celebrate the chapter’s “5 Star Level of Excellence” award from the national
MOAA.
Roger Pilcher, president of the Grand
Strand Chapter, presented 2nd lieutenant gold bars to Derrick C. Barcliff,
Anson T. Cavanagh, Justin M. Jackson and Chase H. McCabe. With their first gold
bars, the new Army officers from the ROTC program at CCU receive the first year’s
membership in national MOAA and the chapter. The Reserve Officers Training
Corps program at Coastal is one of the many activities in which Grand Strand
Chapter members participate.
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