On December 12, 2024, the Horry County Council convened for a fall planning retreat at the MPR B/C/E in Conway, SC. The retreat focused on the FY 2026 budget process, strategic issues, and key action items. Council members received updates on finances, capital improvements, public safety, transportation, and other county operations, and provided direction for the upcoming budget.
The retreat concluded with the two actions and a reminder of upcoming commemorative events: America250 (July 4, 2026) and Horry225 (December 19, 2026).
Let's go ahead and call to order the fall planning retreat council meeting for Thursday, December 12th, 2024. And if I can get everybody please stand for the invitation and the pledge believe. Merry Christmas to everybody. This should be a very informative and very good meeting. Before I turn over to Mr. Barry Spabi, I'd like to remind everybody that we have these elaborate speaker systems. Is mine too loud? Sounds too loud, but anyway, maybe I'll turn it off. But if you do have a question, please push the talk button so everybody can hear you. I'd also remind if you have a question, please leave wait to the end of the speaker's presentation because nine times out of ten, they're going to answer your question during their presentation. And in the tradition of Ory County's family first policy and values, I'm going to turn it over now to Mr. Barry Spee for the overview. Okay. Good morning and welcome. We uh look forward to the opportunity of sharing uh various pieces of information with you to update you on where we are and the things we're seeing coming up. Uh that this is this first step in the process of our interaction so that we can get to a budget uh in the spring in that regard. Uh and I'm gonna share several thoughts with you here just to give you a quick quick outline of what we will address today. Uh we have very discussion various discussion topics. Uh just remind you as well, this is an informal setting, and and we appreciate your questions and your feedback in that regard because that's truly valuable for us. Um we will first touch on our 2024 financial update. We will look at our five-year forecast as it relates to all of our major operating funds. We will look at our capital improvement program as well as our debt service projections, and those will be updated based on our actual results for fiscal year 2024. We'll be looking at various strategic issues is the way we would phrase it. Yeah, we'll look at uh things that are going on at the airport and and things coming, a ride update, local road plan, the public safety update, as well as our future operational needs. We'll also review some of our major programs related to ARPA and also have an action item for your consideration for an ARPRA actual funding and a debris reserve increase in light of everything that has occurred with Hurricane Helene and the state of South Carolina as well as North Carolina and Georgia. We certainly uh recognize that that need could be very great for us, and and the opportunity presents itself that we can increase our reserve a little bit, and we would suggest that we consider that, but we'll go over that as a part of the presentation. Just in some preferencing comments, uh, I do want to share with you, you know, that Ori County does not make revenue. We do not sell goods or services that people choose to buy. We actually impose on our taxpayers, taxes and fees for the services that we provide to them. I also wanted to share with you we're a pass-through entity. We bring money in, we spend that money that we bring in, and that's how we're designed to operate in that respect. Ori County is a service organization. The services that we provide are only provided through our people, our team members. That's how we accomplish the goals that we set. 70% of our general fund is people, it's the cost of our employees in that regard. We've used the term many times that our greatest asset, but I'll use the term resource because just to be cultivated and um and stewarded to the best possible outcome. The better they are trained, the better services we can provide. The more experience they have, the more equipment, the skills to do the job, the better service that we can provide to our constituents. And really our services are focused on two fronts. Many times we sit here as a county and we think about the unincorporated areas of Ory County. And we have primary service responsibility in the unincorporated areas for many things. Our police, our fire, our code enforcement, planning and zoning, the maintenance and support services to support them as well as business licenses, grants, CDBG, communications, stormwater, watersheds, road maintenance, parks and wrecks, our unincorporated waste collection system. All those things we provide as the primary service provider in the unincorporated areas. But what we don't think about sometimes is the impact we have on all the county as a whole. And in fact, I believe there's only one council district that does not have a portion of a municipality within that, and that's district six. Everybody else has one or more municipalities within their jurisdiction in that respect. And we provide countywide services. Actually, in them. It benefits countywide. Registration elections, our support of the state health services, our support of the state social services, the state mental health services, and the state alcohol and drug services.