Myrtle Beach polishes 10-year plan

During the next 10 years, Myrtle Beach plans to protect residential neighborhoods from commercial development, increase connectivity between parks and open spaces, promote the use of native plants in landscaping, encourage energy-efficient building and work on supporting the arts.

All those goals and many more are in the city's comprehensive plan, which is still being updated.

At a special meeting Tuesday, City Council members went through the second half of a 150-plus-page draft of the plan, item by item, making changes to goals, removing repetitions and actions that are not in the city's purview, and talking about the city's future.

The draft will be revised to incorporate the changes, then will go back before the council for two rounds of discussion and voting before it becomes official.

Council members and senior staff members talked about connectivity such as greenways - walking and biking paths - linking neighborhoods with parks, open spaces and the beach.

"It would allow people to move more freely throughout the city," said planningdirector Jack Walker.

Increasing connectivity between businesses and business districts is another goal. One way to implement that is by widening sidewalks, removing many of the curb-cuts, requiring shared parking and putting it behind businesses instead of in front, which discourages pedestrians.

The plan's overall theme is sustainability, and one aspect of that could come through native landscaping, which requires much less maintenance - time and money - and has a better survival rate than non-native species.

Not all the ideas put forth in the plan, updated over a year of public hearings and committee meetings, will fly.

The council rejected the idea of expanding the powers of the Community Appearance Board, and said they prefer not to be locked down by a community master plan, which is more specific than the guiding comprehensive plan.

Council members also discussed the idea of requiring all stormwater retention ponds to have parks constructed around them, but quickly decided that wasn't a good plan.

"You want them to look nice, but you don't necessarily want people hanging out there," said assistant city manager John Pedersen.

Some topics, such as Chapin Memorial Library, stirred up tension.

The city owns and operates Chapin library on Kings Highway, saving Horry County about $1 million a year, said city spokesman Mark Kruea. The city wants to work on expanding the library, council members agreed, but has no money to do so right now.

Some council members grew angry as they talked about what they consider to be the county's small annual contribution to Chapin library.

"They spend $5 million here, $6 million there building new libraries, and they give us $10,000," said Councilwoman Susan Grissom Means. "It's wrong, wrong, wrong."

Mayor John Rhodes, who has long expressed the city's tensions with Horry County, agreed.

"Every time we turn around we're getting screwed on something," he said.

Councilman Phil Render said constituents have asked him why they pay county taxes but get few county services, including a county library.

"We're only here to support the county," Rhodes said.

Horry County used to give between $40,000 and $60,000 a year to the city's library, but had to cut back funding, as it did for other agencies, amid the down economy, Horry County budget director Westley Sawyer said. The county would have to find a building for a library if Chapin library didn't exist, he said.

"When times get better, we will likely look at funding them at a higher rate," Sawyer said.

Most of Tuesday's meeting was mellow, though, as council members talked about the idea of needing to expand city office and meeting space, encouraging building that meets U.S. Green Building Council LEED standards, and encouraging public art projects such as decorating "pelicans," the large blue garbage bins each city trash customer gets.

While Myrtle Beach takes its comprehensive plan seriously, completing about 90 percent of the goals set forth in the 1999 document, Means reminded her colleagues this plan might be a little different.

"We have no money to do any of these items right now," she said.

City manager Tom Leath took a more optimistic approach.

"Hopefully, that's going to change over the next 10 years," he said.

Staff writer Claudia Lauer contributed to this report.