The Horry County Council held its fall planning retreat to prepare for the FY 2027 budget and next steps on growth, service levels, and strategic direction. County Administrator Barry Spivey, Finance Director Jamie Norman, consultant Bill Tomes, and department staff presented. Council directed staff to prepare a three-year one-mill property tax reduction, approved a resolution supporting the updated strategic plan, adjusted the Eagle Trace Special Tax District millage, and gave first reading to a state-required business license class schedule update. Meeting minutes were not provided. The agenda header lists Tuesday, November 4, 2025, but the meeting date used here is November 5, 2025, per the provided metadata.
Everybody please stand. Thank you, dear Lord, for another opportunity for us to come together to do the business of the county. We pray for patience and wisdom and guidance as we go through this budget and all the items contained therein. And we ask for knowledge of your will and the power to carry it out and all these things we pray in your name. Amen. Under God with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Please be seated. This is the fall planning retreats. We have the agenda, and everybody has the book with them. Um, like always, this is uh informal type uh venue. So if you have a question, just jump right in and ask it. But I would ask you to hold your questions until the presenter first is because most of the time the presenter will answer the question before the presentation is over. And with that, I will turn it over to a Mr. Administrator for an overview. Well, thank you. It's a privilege to be here with you, and we're grateful to be able to share these plans and um suggestions that we've got um as we begin the 2027 budget process. And you may remember that we've had a lot of discussion already about 2027 because as we were going through the 2026 budget process, we did reach out and and had some discussion about what we wanted to see for not only 26 but also for 27. I think everything that we've talked about up to this point still will hold true. So we have the capacity, I think, to to get into the 2027 year uh without a tax increase, but still have the ability to add uh I think the necessary personnel uh it won't be as much as we would like, um, but also have the opportunity to do something meaningful for our employees in terms of a raise. So as we work through, we'll at least start those discussions today. Um and just remind you as we're here during the meeting uh to facilitate the minutes and so forth. Uh, if you would press your speaking button here, the green button, or the button that turns green, uh, just to make sure everybody's comments are are on the uh record in that regard. Um, on our agenda today, we will be looking at um the unaudited financial update for 2025. We will do a strategic plan update uh as well as go over what we see as the issues from a growth and service level needs, uh, which is traditional for what we do at this time that sets the stage for that budget process. There are three actions that we would desire council to consider this afternoon. Uh, the first is just a resolution in support of the strategic plan that you will hear here shortly. Uh the second is a resolution to adjust the millage rate for Eagle Trace Special Tax District, and we will go into some details of that based on the community meeting that was held and a meeting of the commissioners who are recommending a specific uh action to council. Uh, in addition to that, there's a third item which is just mandated or necessitated by the timing required by the state. Uh, it is a change to the business license ordinance, and it solely addresses the codes that each business is assigned. The state now promulgates that list and which businesses are within which category. And you may remember we have categories one through seven and a few extra add-ons to that. And the lowest price is at category one and the highest price is at category seven based on uh each business and theoretically the profitability related to those businesses. Um, and now the state actually is the one that decides which businesses are in which category, and they update at every two years, and every odd year is the year that we need to adopt the state changes. So that's what this ordinance does solely, uh, just for convenience sake. We need three readings before December 31st. Today would be the first reading. Um at your November meeting would be second, and December meeting would be third. So that's why that action is on this agenda. It was reviewed and recommended by the administration committee previously, and that would lead us to our financial update. Good afternoon. So we're going to start things off with a review of our fiscal year 2025 financial results. I will mention that these are unaudited figures, so they could change because we're still going through our audit, and there's a lot of numbers, so just bear with me. So starting with our general fund for 2025, we had revenues of 299 million. This exceeded our budget projection by 25 million and exceeded prior year by 28 million dollars. Expenditures for the year were 242 million, which is 25 million less than the budget. Other financing sources and uses were 15.5 million, which is just under budget, resulting in an addition of 42 million in fund box and fund balance for the year, leaving the general fund fund balance total at the end of fiscal year 2025 at 202.9 million dollars. Looking at revenues by category for the general fund, we saw the largest increase in property taxes at $11.4 million and interest income at just over $7 million. We also had a large increase in EMS fees at almost $2 million. Looking at expenditures by category in the general fund.