Horry County Council approves spending $16 million of road tax money on radios

Horry County leaders on Tuesday voted to spend $16 million of extra road tax money on a new digital radio system for public safety personnel.

The measure had just enough votes (nine) to achieve the super-majority needed to pass. Councilman Paul Prince cast the lone dissenting vote, arguing that the additional cash should go to infrastructure projects.

“We should not take it and use it for anything else but roads,” Prince said. “We do have other projects that are still on the drawing board that haven’t been done yet.”

The money is coming from the funds projected to be leftover from the completion of the RIDE II program, which has repaired, repaved and created miles of roads throughout the county.

When the one-cent capital projects sales tax was approved in 2006, state law allowed any excess money to be returned to county coffers. Officials had projected the tax would bring in $425 million over seven years. The actual revenues are about $448 million.

Nearly all of the bids are in for the RIDE II road projects, and officials expect them to stay within budget projections. Even if there are some cost overruns, officials expect they will still have more than enough money to pay for the projects and spend up to $16 million on the radio system.

The county doesn’t have much choice in pursuing a new network.

The current analog one, which has been used since 1992, will become obsolete after Dec. 31, 2016, officials said. Once that date passes, there will be no more parts available or support from system manufacturer Motorola.

Apart from losing technical support and access to parts, officials maintain they need an upgraded system because the current one, which has 2,000 users, doesn’t cover the entire county, with many places having little or no radio service.

Using RIDE II money helps the county avoid borrowing to pay for the radio network or cutting into future budgets, officials said.

Those who support using the money for radios insist the county’s police, fire and EMS workers must have well-functioning equipment.

“One lesson that we can learn from the events that happened in California is that fast communication between first responders is critical,” said County Councilman Tyler Servant, referring to the recent mass shooting that left 14 people dead. “That’s just the way I feel about it.”

Although the council will spend some of the extra money on radios, officials have estimated the additional cash could leave millions more than the funding needed for the radio network.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Eddie Dyer, the chairman of the RIDE III Sales Tax Commission, asked the council to consider using any unallocated money as a supplement to the next road-building initiative.

“I would only ask that you consider escrowing any residual funds from RIDE II — once you determine what those funds are going to be — to apply to any projects in RIDE III that might be underfunded or underestimated if RIDE III is placed on the ballot,” he said, adding that the money could also go to “any other road projects that you deem necessary that we were not able to place on the ballot.”

County Council Chairman Mark Lazarus seemed amenable to Dyer’s suggestion.

“That is a great strategy moving forward,” he said.

Lazarus also floated the idea of creating a special committee to work with the council in determining how to use the additional RIDE II money not spent on radios.

This story was originally published December 8, 2015 at 9:38 PM with the headline "Horry County Council approves spending $16 million of road tax money on radios."