Sunday’s editorial takes a look at Horry County’s
proposed ordinances regulating adult businesses (including a quick box with
highlights of the proposed rules at the bottom of the editorial):
How serious is Horry County Council
about cracking down on adult businesses? They had not one, not two, but three
lawyers in attendance ready to speak on the issue at Thursday’s meeting of
their Infrastructure and Regulation committee. One – lawyer Scott Bergthold of adultbusinesslaw.com – was even
flown in from his home office in Chattanooga,
Tenn., to help draft the county’s
proposed ordinances and brief council members.
In other words, this isn’t simply a
fleeting interest for Horry
County leaders.
Friday’s editorial is a decent
reminder as we get closer to our peak beach/outdoor season:
The phrases should go without saying:
The beach is not your ashtray. Litter is everybody’s business. The river is not
a garbage disposal. Trash goes in the trash can.
And yet we must say them. And say
them again. And apparently say them again. As The Sun News reported on Tuesday,
volunteers with the Ocean Conservancy picked up nearly 10 tons of garbage from South Carolina’s beaches
back in September. (They picked up more than 200 tons in North Carolina.) Last month, more than 200
big-hearted folks collected more than 4 tons of trash from the waterways around
Murrells Inlet.
Wednesday’s editorial is a peek
inside the workings of the local mental health agency, which shamefully is
funded by two of the three counties it represents (Georgetown
and Williamsburg) but not by Horry County
(where most of its emergency cases come from). But I digress. That’s not really
what the editorial’s focused on:
Maintaining appropriate body weight
and handling personal finances are typically concerns of folks who have mental
illness and are going through recovery, so those topics will be covered at the
first recovery conference of the Waccamaw
Center for Mental Health.
“It’s a new deal for us,” – and an event envisoned as happening in future
years, says Linda Wright of the Waccamaw
Center.
Nobody likes to hear the words tax
increase. Like a fist flying at our face, the instinctual reaction is to duck
or throw up our hands in defense. But we also pay strict attention when our
fire safety officials say that they need more resources to keep us safe, as has
happened across the county recently.
Friday’s editorial gives some kudos
to Rep. Stephen Goldfinch, who’s been impressive in his strong work ethic thus
far in Columbia:
Take a look at what most of our
freshman legislators have done thus far in Columbia, and you might get the
understandable idea that they’re largely getting their feet under them and
finding out how it all works before attempting any substantive work.
Together, the four newcomers from
Horry County – Sen. Greg Hembree and Reps. Heather Ammons Crawford, Kevin
Hardee and Mike Ryhal – have proposed three insubstantial resolutions honoring
local folks, one road-naming resolution and two actual lawmaking bills, neither
of which got further than the committee level.
Thursday’s editorial calls for a bit
more opposition in local elections, for the benefit of everybody:
Surprise! Republican Mark Lazarus is
your new Horry County Council Chairman.
Well, not much of a surprise. In
fact, this was about as far from a surprise as is possible. If surprise were a
city, we’d still be right here and those actually in Surprise would be halfway
across the world, somewhere in Eastern Europe.
If surprise were measured on a scale of 1 to 100, we’re around a -6. That’s how
far from surprised we were with the outcome of Tuesday’s election.
How unexciting and predictable was
this race? Only a paltry 1.23 percent of Horry County
voters bothered to turn out on Tuesday. The unfortunate poll workers at the
Gurley precinct in Loris waited all day and nobody showed up to vote. Hopefully
they had a good book.
Tuesday’s editorial is a slightly
bizarre mashup of topics, on one hand talking about civility in leadership and
the other the overdue possibility of a new library in Myrtle Beach:
How much have relations between Myrtle Beach and Horry County
officials warmed in recent years?
County Councilman
Marion Foxworth’s
offhand remark at last week’s meeting about Chapin Memorial Library was a good
indication:
Sunday’s first editorial was cribbed
in part from one that ran 15 years ago:
Ready for a busy few weeks?
May is just around the corner, and it
brings with it a slew of events and visitors. How the events play out and our
reaction to them could determine not just their individual success, but our
reputation as a tourist destination and the repeat business of the hundreds of
thousands who will grace our shores this coming month.
Kudos to S.C. lawmakers – and
particularly Murrells Inlet Republican Sen. Ray Cleary – for pushing through
legislation to give voters the chance to allow churches and other nonprofits to
hold fundraising raffles.
Friday’s editorial previews the
get-together for peace and gun buy-back coming up Saturday:
If the example of similar local
events in the past few years holds true, we can expect a little over 100 guns
to be turned in Saturday during the Stop
the Violence Peace Festival and gun buy-back in Conway.
Will this make an enormous dent in
violence in our communities? We doubt it. Turn in 100 guns and there are
thousands upon thousands more left in Horry County.
National estimates put the number of guns in the United States around 300 million,
or about one for every man, woman and child in the country. Most of those are
owned by law-abiding citizens. Some aren’t. But one event in Conway won’t do much to change those numbers.
Recent Comments