The Horry County Public Safety Committee met on February 11, 2025, at 11:00 a.m. in the County Council Conference Room. The committee approved several resolutions and received annual year-in-review presentations from the Police, Fire/Rescue, Emergency Management, 911, and Public Information Office departments. All resolutions were passed unanimously.
As always, we'll start out with the invocation and please run council now. We could all bow our heads for a moment. Gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for the opportunity to come together and uh work to better our community. Father, uh, being the public safety committee, we are we're exceptionally uh proud and thankful for our first responders, whether they're in the 911 office, whether the officer that's uh going to be with somebody at the at a really bad time in their life. Your father, we ask for continued blessings. We ask for patience, guidance, and wisdom. In your name we pray. Amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag United States of America and the Republican for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all that the public input. So review and approval of agenda content. So moved. Second, all in favor, approval and minutes for October 2024. Second. All in favor? Aye. Randy Webster. Resolution. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. Um really an exciting moment right now. Uh, if you recall back about two years ago, uh the chairman put us in charge to work on opioid and mental health issues throughout our communities. And since that time, we had the task force come together under at that point Chairman Crawford and Chairman Patt, Task Force for Mental Health and Opioid, uh, to see what can we do next. Uh, we came up with about five or six different categories, and we've been working on that ever since. Since that time, and we've been briefing you on what we have done in terms of the harm reduction specialists that fire rescue has under the critical incident team for mental health work that police department has, what's transpired transformed in the detention center and the 15th circuit uh drug court uh etc. And so we've also been working with our partners with the City of Myrtle Beach, Portland Beach, Conway and us. It came together last year, put the funding from the opioid prices money uh and created a consultant group that created our plan, our framework moving forward for this program. Uh very comprehensive plan and identified five major areas, some of that we've already been working on, but where we are now in the process is to start bringing this together at the 50,000 foot level uh and coordinating all this into a very comprehensive and focused effort. And to do that, uh we're I'm asking through this resolution that we move money that's been already identified in the homeless and mental health budget category in the American Rescue Plan Act and transferring that into public safety uh so that we can take that money and continue to move forward with this project and initially create a pay for a person or overall coordinator to help bring this together and focus it in the right direction, working with our partners municipalities who are also uh looking to uh give us additional funding on an annual basis to go toward this as well. So proportional based upon the money that's been provided through the opioid act as well. So this is not only just for opioid opioid and mental health, address homelessness and the other issues that we have within our broad community, not just the unincorporated area, but all of Oregon County. And this will get us closer to the goal role line. Uh that's only a multi-year moving forward focused effort. Um, which chairman was here, he's been very much in favor of this, and I know the rest of the member of this committee and others are as well. So that's what I'm asking for in the resolution today. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a motion that we move forward with staff's recommendation for the transfer and funds. Second. All in favor? Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you. Two, three, and four, Ms. Beh, Primer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, and we greatly appreciate the opportunity today to bring to you uh some items that normally would have gone through uh the administration committee in order for us to expedite these actions. We appreciate your hearing them today. The three items that I have are all about housing programs, which are also operated out of my department. The first is to amend the Ory County Home Consortium Allocation Plan. Again, we run this housing program for three county consortium.