4 Horry County Council members keep seats, 1 newbie to join them
Come January, Horry County Council, the local legislative body that controls large swaths of land and a $182 million budget, won’t look much different.
In fact, only one new face will join the 12-member council: Randall Mark Causey, who will fill the Northeastern District 9 seat after longtime council member W. Paul Prince declined to run for re-election.
On Election day, Causey and four other council members — Dennis DiSabato of Carolina Forest, Gary Loftus of Myrtle Beach, Cam Crawford of Socastee and Danny Hardee of Loris — cruised to easy victories after running unopposed, securing new terms.
County Council members are elected to four-year terms and earn an annual salary of nearly $16,000.
That means that many of the priorities council had set, including improving and expanding roads, bolstering public safety and better mitigating flood waters, will continue.
Here’s how the council members laid out their visions for their upcoming terms:
Dennis DiSabato - District 3 (Carolina Forest, Myrtle Beach)
If you live in, or have driven through, Carolina Forest, you know the traffic can be a headache.
That’s why DiSabato said he prioritized having Carolina Forest Blvd. widened as part of the county’s major RIDE 3 infrastructure program. According to the county’s project tracker, that road widening is under construction and on schedule for a May completion.
The RIDE program is a voter-approved one-cent sales tax on all retail sales, accommodations and prepared foods and beverages that will give the county $592 million for roads improvements over an eight year period.
DiSabato was first elected in 2016 when he beat incumbent Democrat Jimmy Washington in the general election. He’ll begin his second term in 2021. A native of New York, DiSabato is also the former president of the Carolina Forest Civic Association.
Heading into his next term, DiSabato said he’ll focus on what he’s focused on so far: Roads and public safety. He said he’d like to see the county fund and build a fifth police precinct, and locate it in the Carolina Forest area. Additional police officers and better emergency response times are also priorities, he said.
“Basically it’s roads and public safety, that’s what people care about in local elections and that’s what we’re going to focus on,” he said.
Gary Loftus - District 4 (Myrtle Beach)
Loftus, like his counterparts on council, won unopposed Tuesday night, sending him into his fourth term in 2021.
First elected to County Council in 2008, Loftus has previously served as the chairman of the Myrtle Beach Area Hospitality Association and the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce. Trained as an engineer at Princeton University, Loftus worked as an engineer for several years before working as the general manager of the Bar Harbor Motor Inn in Myrtle Beach.
He currently works as the director of Coastal Carolina University’s Center for Economic and Community Development and is the president of G & K Management, a management and consulting firm.
Messages seeking comment by The Sun News were left for Loftus.
Cam Crawford - District 6 (Socastee)
Crawford, a small business owner and Coastal Carolina University employee, said he’s going to focus on improving public safety and aiding his constituents who routinely deal with flooding in his second full-length term.
Crawford was first elected in 2015 when he ran to complete the term of former council member Bob Grabowski, who died while in office. He then won re-election in 2016 and served his first full-length term.
Working together with his wife, state Rep. Heather Ammons Crawford, Crawford said Tuesday he would continue to work to get federal food relief money into the hands of his constituents who routinely flood. A bill Ammons Crawford worked on in Columbia made it easier for municipalities like Horry County to access flood relief funds.
“This is one area where Heather and I believe we’ve really been able to help, she’s at the state level, I’m at the county level, so I feel like we’ve been able to streamline some things that may not have happened,” Crawford said of his ability to work with his wife to serve the Socastee area.
Crawford said he would also like to enact a pay scale for the county’s public safety officers, a longer-term solution to the low pay police officers, firefighters and other county employees often earn.
Randall Mark Causey - District 9 (Longs, Loris)
As Causey, a real estate agent in the Loris area, heads into his first term on County Council, he said he wants to focus on improving the county’s roads and storm water maintenance. While the 53-year old said he still has a lot to learn to get “up to speed” with how county government and council works, he said he’s focused on building relationships with current council members to ease his transition.
A graduate of Loris High School, Causey worked at the Pepsicola bottling plant in Conway before spending his career as a real estate appraiser and real estate agent. Causey previously served on the Horry County Planning Commission and the County Transportation Committee.
He named a number of road improvements he’d like to see in his district, including expanding Highway 9 and Highway 90. And he said he’d like to see the county add more police officers to its ranks.
But mitigating flooding from storm water remains a top priority, he said.
“We’ll never be able to stop flooding but I think we can continue to improve our storm water ordinances,” he said.
Causey will take over the seat from longtime County Council member W. Paul Prince, who served for nearly three decades. The son of sharecroppers, Price eventually opened a gas station and convenience store along Highway 9 before winning a seat on council in 1982. He served until the 1992, and then was off council until 2000, when he ran and won again.
As he transitions his seat, Prince said he hopes Causey avoids becoming a council member focused solely on “special interests.”
“I hope he becomes a servant of all the people, whether they’re rich or poor, whatever color they are,” Prince said. “I hope he can serve them to the best of his ability.”
Danny Hardee - District 10 (Loris, Green Sea)
After navigating a historic flood, a lawsuit between Horry County and local municipalities and a pandemic in his first term, Hardee said he’s hoping term number two goes “a little smoother.”
First elected in 2016, Hardee will begin his second term in 2021 and, like others on council, wants to prioritize infrastructure and flood mitigation.
Among the items on his wish list are widening Highway 90 into four lanes and connecting Highway 31 to Highway 17. In the RIDE 3 program, the county is planning to extend Highway 31 from its current stopping point in Little River to the South Carolina-North Carolina border. Hardee also said he’d “love to see” the county extend International Drive up to Highway 701.
As the county continues to grow, he said, he wants the county to take a “smart” approach — facilitating the new developments, but preserving the “heritage” of the rural areas.
More immediately, though, Hardee said he’d like to see the county bolster its efforts to clear beaver dams from retention ditches, and find a sensible solution for mining. The county maintains several flood water retention ditches in his district, Hardee explained, a mechanism that gives storm water a place to sit until it can flow out through channels into the rivers and ocean. But beavers, using felled trees from Hurricanes Matthew and Florence, often build dams blocking the outflows of those ditches, meaning they end up contributing to flooding, rather than mitigating it.
On the mining issue, Hardee said that mines are important for the continued growth and development of the area, but said he doesn’t want to see Horry County give up complete regulatory control. While the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control regulates and permits mines, municipalities like Horry County are allowed to control local zoning of mines, which can determine where a mine is dug. After a lawsuit from a mining company, the county is now re-writing its mining rules. Hardee said he hopes council takes a balanced approach.
“We need some input,” he said. “I know we need (mines), but at least to some degree lets not destroy our communities just to get a product.”