The Horry County Public Safety Committee met on October 14, 2025, to discuss growth-related public safety challenges, hear updates from the fire and police departments, and consider a resolution to limit residential rezoning for density in areas with limited fire coverage. The meeting included presentations, a committee vote, and updates on major projects.
To order October 14th, 2025. And as always, we'll do the appreciation. Apollo, thank you for this day. Help us and guide us in direction to do the best we can and make the best decisions for the people of Novek County. We thank you for this county, and we ask that you keep all of our first responders safe and out of harm's way. All this amen. Which it stands one nation under individual with liberty and justice for all we have no public input. And we're approval of agenda content. So moved. Second. All in favor? Approval minutes for September 9th, 2025. Seconded. All in favor? All right. We'll start with our resolutions to express the counties council desire to limit residential rezoning for density. Mr. Randy Girls. So thank you, Mr. Chairman members of councils, our committee. Um so I'd like to bring you something to consider as as we continue to work through rezonings and growth throughout the county. So my this resolution is also tied into number three on the discussion items for today. Uh as we start looking at public safety and the growth over the next number of years, including our tenure plan that we have uh provided to council now for a number of each year update. Um we we need to start taking I would like for us to start taking a look at how can we manage some of the rezonings in the areas that will begin to give us the most concern for fire coverage, being the areas that are only staffed with volunteer stations and also areas that are in our ISO 10 areas of the county still that we have uh and the ISO 10 section is what basically means you may not get insurance at all for your house. Um but the volunteers we we have a great group of volunteers that work very hard, but they have their limitations as well during daytime as well as as evenings, it's not like it used to be. So we do supplement those calls with the closest career station that gets on the way, but it is a time response time issue. Uh and so just something that we've been talking about. I would like the committee to consider. And we did put together a resolution uh to kind of look at that to not stop it, but maybe have second thoughts on it, maybe the way to look at it, or what can be done because the problem is we got to be able to fund, and it's not so much building the stations as it is the annual salary requirements for the career folks, which could be you know one and a half million or more depending on what needs to be in there over the course of forever. Um so I know we've had some offer to build stations for us, but that's even though that's hard, that's the easiest part. Uh so that's that's and then looking along at that line, just also with the law and for law enforcement side, we continue to grow our needs are continuing to be tremendous. Um you're seeing a lot of things changing in the communities, juvenile is a big piece. We've started to look at that with our uh efforts from the chief and behavioral services group uh and looking at a lot of different things, but still we still got to consider the growth of patrol officers and how we're going to continue to handle uh the growth as it moves more west, because that's where we have the fewest number of officers covering the largest area. So it's a little bit of a soapbox thing for you all from my perspective, but any questions I'm all for it, by the way. Let me say that, but don't we need to? Well, first of all, finding getting personnel for fire departments, police departments becoming harder and harder and harder. Absolutely. So I mean it's not that we can't build a station, you can get brick and mortar, but once you build a station, how do you man it? Well, that's that's a national problem, especially more so on the law enforcement side than the fire, but it's difficult on both of them. Um and that's something else I think we're going to have to have some other considerations on as we move forward too, because we're taking all the steps that we can not just salaries, but work environment, equipment, you know, the best things that we can provide our officers in the street, but we still struggle to find people to fill those spots. Exactly. Just the environment we're in. And it's not just Ory County, it's all over the county, it's all over the South Carolina, it's all over the country. Fire were a little luckier in some aspects, but it's still not easy. And even in the 911 side, we just did 21 new hires, and we've already lost three. It's just sometimes it's just not the best fit in that environment. So and that's the truth, all public safety. So I know we'll talk a little more about it at the fall retreat in more detail. But this one in particular issue though with the fire, I think, is something that officer. Right.