Horry leaders, SC lawmakers cobbling together millions for SC-90 road upgrades
By this time next year, state and local leaders may have more than $150 million to dedicate to fixes and upgrades along SC-90, a once-rural highway that’s been pushed to capacity in recent years.
Both state Sen. Greg Hembree (R-Little River) and state Rep. Tim McGinnis (R-Carolina Forest) told The Sun News they plan to ask for $100 million in next year’s budget, a sum they and other local leaders say could go a long way toward raising and widening key portions of the road.
And Horry County Council member Johnny Vaught, who represents parts of Conway and Carolina Forest, said county leaders are looking to contribute another $25 million to Highway 90 projects in coming weeks.
Those sums would be in addition to $31 million Horry County leaders have identified for the roadway, totaling $156 million.
Vaught said a key part of the Highway 90 project — raising and widening the road from Highway 501 Business to its intersection with Highway 22 — could cost between $180 and $200 million, meaning the sum collected from state and local leaders would push that part of the project close to completion.
Hembree and McGinnis both said they’ve asked the engineers with GSATS, the Grand Strand Area Transportation Study, in recent weeks to study the infrastructure needs along Highway 90 and put dollar amounts on various projects that leaders could then fund. Both lawmakers said they wanted to involve GSATS, which is made up of government officials from across coastal North and South Carolina and which receives grants to study transportation projects in the region, because they want to identify smaller projects that Horry County and the state can complete sooner than later.
Additionally, Hembree said, he and other leaders made a similar ask of Horry County’s transportation committee, a state-organized group that has input on and helps fund road projects.
The lawmakers said they want to move forward with a piecemeal approach because aiming for the full cost of upgrading Highway 90 — about $500 million — has caused delays in the past. Upgrading Highway 90 was one of the potential projects Horry County could have included in its RIDE III penny-sales-tax-for-road-projects program, but it was ultimately not included because the steep price tag would have eaten up most of the money available in the program.
Hembree said he hopes that the GSATS study and a state allocation will come together to allow leaders to start making progress on the road by this time next year.
“You need to go ahead and get started and start moving dirt. The more process people see the more they’re wiling to commit to it,” he said. “I would hope that we could get some of these smaller projects started by this time next year, construction, moving dirt.”
A new subcommittee of Horry County Council, formed in recent weeks to study Highway 90, 905 and the Conway Perimeter, will also have input on the Highway 90 projects.
As budget talks begin in Columbia in the first half of 2022, McGinnis plans to ask for $100 million for Highway 90 in the state House of Representatives and Hembree plans to make an identical ask in the state Senate, and both lawmakers said they hope the concerted effort will lead to funding for the road. The money would come from South Carolina’s general fund.
“I think we have a lot of hope. We’re getting some good reports that we’re going to have a pretty good budget surplus next year,” Hembree said. “We are hearing rumors that the budget revenues are going to be strong …at least we have a good fighting chance.”
Vaught said county leaders are looking at using federal American Rescue Plan funds to boost the funding for Highway 90. Horry County is set to receive approximately $70 million from the COVID-19 relief package and county leaders have determined, based on federal rules, that all the money could go towards road projects like Highway 90. The only catch is that any projects the Rescue Plan money is spent on have to be completed by 2026, which can be a tight timeline for infrastructure. Vaught said an additional $25 million from that pot of money could help with smaller projects.
“We’re going to have to look at plans and priorities,” he said. “We’ll see what we can do.”
The county currently has $10 million set aside from the Rescue Plan for roads.
And all of that funding is in addition to $31 million that County Council member Dennis DiSabato identified in leftover monies from the county’s RIDE II program. County administrators cautioned that they have to finish paying the last bills associated with that program before the money comes available, but that the county should have roughly $31 million that it could dedicate to a road project like Highway 90.
The administration committee of County Council voted to move DiSabato’s funding plan for Highway 90 forward earlier this week.
The news of funding for Highway 90 is likely to be welcome to residents, who have been organizing and calling for more and improved infrastructure along the route for months now. Both lifelong and newer residents living near Highway 90 have told The Sun News that traffic and congestion issues make the road dangerous and difficult to drive on, and that bad flooding can push the road under water, leaving residents stuck at home.
Highway 90 was once a farm-to-market road that connected farmers to Conway, but today serves as a 20-mile connection between Conway and Little River. In recent years, developers and new residents have built new homes and businesses along the route, adding more and more users to the highway, which is two or three lanes in most places.
Hembree said that in addition to funding, its important that county leaders control growth along the roadway while leaders work to upgrade the road. Horry County leaders recently passed a resolution limiting new land rezonings along the road, but stopped short of stopping all new building.
“I think the key to SC 90 is tap the breaks on the growth,” he said. “You’ve got to do that. The reason we’re in the problem is because we didn’t plan.”
McGinnis said he’s pushing to start addressing the worst problems along the road.
“We have people talking about this, we have some of the holders of the purse strings aware that we have a critical need along Highway 90,” he said. “That’s going to be our best option at this point is to fix what we can now.”
This story was originally published October 1, 2021 at 11:00 AM.
