Ever want to say something about Atlantic Beach’s latest predicament, but weren’t
sure what? Thursday’s editorial offers help:
If Myrtle Beach Mayor John Rhodes
were arrested, or Conway Mayor Alys Lawson, or Surfside Beach Mayor Doug
Samples, our newsroom would quickly shift into overdrive. Reporters and
photographers would be sent to dig up background. Front pages would be
redesigned. Sources would be mined for information. Competition would be fierce
for every nugget of information. Articles and editorials already in the works
would be moved to the back burner to fit in news and commentary on the arrest.
When Atlantic Beach Mayor Retha
Pierce was arrested – again – this past week, the reaction around here was a
bit more muted. Rather than “Oh my God!” it was more of an “Oh, her again?”
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.
A hundred new jobs and another
company headquarters in the county? Yes, please.
News this week that gunmaker PTR
Industries is considering Horry County as it gets ready to leave Connecticut is exciting news for our area,
which is recovering from the recession, but not as quickly as we would like.
Dozens of new well-paying jobs (averaging $20-21 an hour) would be a noticeable
and welcome boost to our area.
Is ethics reform hard? Yes. Is it
possible? Of course. Sunday’s editorial urges legislators to keep trying until
they get it right:
It’s time for South Carolina ethics reform to stand up and
walk.
Any parent knows the process children
go through as they learn to walk for the first time. It starts not with the
body, but with the head. Long before they’re actually able to actually
coordinate their limbs and balance their weight, babies begin to try. And they
fail. And they get frustrated and cry about it. And then they try again. And
fail again. It can be months between when a child knows what he wants to do and
when he’s actually able to do it. They’re not able to tell us, but it’s likely
that all those false starts make the success at the end even sweeter.
Thursday’s editorial, after having
some good discussion about it yesterday:
How long should a homeowner be able
to rent out his home and still count it as his main residence? Legislators are
confronting that question this year as they consider a bill pushed by Sen. Ray
Cleary of Murrells Inlet, who wants to let homeowners rent their homes out for
more than 14 weeks a year and still be taxed at a lower rate than other rental
properties.
Is this a good idea? Well, it seems
at least innocuous enough. Cleary’s point that the change would help homeowners
struggling with soaring insurance premiums, especially wind, is well taken. It’s
an issue that sorely needs to be addressed and which we are following with
interest in Columbia
this year.
Friday’s editorial weighs in on the
county’s recent buyback of Grand Strand Regional Airport in North Myrtle Beach,
which strangely has gone unreported in the news so far as far as I can tell:
When you weren’t looking, Horry County
bought an airport.
Or, to be more accurate, the county
took back management of one it already owned. In February, County Council
signed off on a plan to buy back the last seven years of the lease on Grand Strand
Regional Airport
in North Myrtle Beach. It wasn’t clear exactly
what the purchase price was (county staff were still looking that up for us at
press time), but the number floated in previous meetings was $800,000. Good
move? We won’t know for sure until a few years from now, but at least on paper
it seems so.
Thursday’s
editorial celebrates a couple of ways Horry County
has been being wise with our tax money recently:
Though we
often forget it in today’s instant gratification culture, change can take years
to develop and bear fruit. Such was the case with a pair of recent successes at
Horry County worth noting.
First, the
council voted Tuesday night on a resolution expressing their commitment to
providing a safe working environment for county employees and naming June
Safety Month in Horry County. The action sounds like benign fluff, about as
exciting as the annual resolution honoring the employee of the year. Yes, we
want Horry County workers to be safe. But how much
should taxpayers – and their wallets – really care? A lot, as it turns out.
Hopefully, the
S.C. House’s face is feeling properly spited. We’d hate to think that members
cut off their nose this week in vain.
House members
were offered two choices on Medicaid, the federal program that provides health
care to the poor. They could choose between a three-year expansion of the
program, insuring hundreds of thousands of previously uninsured South
Carolinians, with the federal government picking up the whole tab. Or they
could vote to let S.C. residents continue to pay the billions in federal taxes
earmarked for the expansion, but refuse to actually allow the expansion to go
through, saving no money and insuring no new patients.
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.
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