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COASTAL OBSERVER
Vol. XXXIII No. 16
Pawleys Island, South Carolina ~ October 9, 2014
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Pawleys median becomes battleground in House race
BY JASON LESLEY
COASTAL OBSERVER
S.C. House candidate Vida
Miller is hoping the passions
over the Highway 17 median
project that carried challenger
Steve Goggans to victory in a
Republican primary for Georgetown County Council are still
burning among voters. Construction is scheduled to begin
before election day, Nov. 4.
She told a group of supporters Monday at her shop, Gray
Man Gallery, that incumbent
District 108 Rep. Stephen Goldfinch failed to help a coalition
of business owners and private
citizens that opposed the plan
and offered a compromise.
“I’ll be the first to say this
issue is personal for me,” Miller said. “I know how much this
median project is going to hurt
the citizens and small busi-
nesses of this area. And, for the
life of me, I’ll never understand
why Rep. Goldfinch refused to
stand up for his constituents
when we asked for his help.”
Goldfinch said the die was
cast by the time he came on
the scene in 2012, adding that
Miller was chairman of the
Grand Strand Area Transportation Study policy committee
a decade ago when Highway
17 improvements were first ap-
proved. “If Vida really wanted
to stop the project,” Goldfinch
said, “she could have stopped it
10 years ago. I don’t know why
she wants to poke her hand in
this hornets’ nest.”
Miller said she voted for
funding improvements to Highway 17 from Myrtle Beach to
Georgetown as a member of
GSATS but was off the board by
the time the state Department
of Transportation presented
a design proposal to eliminate
the center turn lane on Highway 17 between Waverly Road
and Baskervill Drive by constructing a concrete median.
“Instead of standing up for
the rights of the more than
3,000 residents and 160 small
businesses that signed a petition asking for a simple redesign of the proposed median plan,” Miller said, “Rep.
SEE “MEDIAN,” PAGE 5
MURRELLS INLET
Petition
seeks ban
on fireworks
over water
BY JASON LESLEY
COASTAL OBSERVER
Photos by Tanya Ackerman/Coastal Observer
Changing
of the guard
Surfers gather off
Pawleys Island to remember Jimmy Williams, who died last
month. The paddleout took place during
the Happy Hendriks
Memorial Surf Off.
Palladin Pelliccia, 6,
right, was among the
winners.
EDUCATION | Waccamaw High
Members of the Winyah Sierra Club signed a petition that
began circulating Monday for
Georgetown County to ban fireworks over Murrells Inlet.
Gary Weinreich, a resident
of Murrells Inlet, presented the petition to club members at their monthly meeting
at Applewood House of Pancakes. He and his wife, Emily,
Leon Rice and Sandra Bundy
are complainants in noise violation cases against employees
of Zambelli Fireworks, hired
by the Marsh Walk Group to
shoot fireworks on 10 Monday nights last summer. If an
agreement cannot be reached
by the parties today, the cases
will be scheduled for jury trial
SEE “PETITIONS,” PAGE 5
Inside this issue
More students take AP tests with better results
BY CHARLES SWENSON
COASTAL OBSERVER
More Waccamaw High students are taking Advanced
Placement exams and more are
scoring high enough to qualify
for college credits, according to
results released this week.
School district
attendance
falls short
of estimate
BY CHARLES SWENSON
COASTAL OBSERVER
With 74 fewer students in
kindergarten through 12th
grade, the Georgetown County School District is facing a
shortfall of about $100,000 in
state revenue this year, according to Superintendent Randy
Dozier.
“That’s a manageable number for us,” he said Tuesday.
“We actually enrolled students
today. Probably five or six.”
The district gets funding
from the state based on the
number of students and that
funding changes according to
the type of student. Those with
special needs, for instance, get
more.
The district has a $79.3 million operating budget. It based
its teacher allocation on 9,078
students, but ended up with
9,004. It’s net loss was actually
smaller because Coastal Montessori Charter School added
21 students. It is sponsored by
the district.
“Some are new students
from private schools,” Dozier
said.
Despite the overall decline,
the district added a new first
grade teacher at McDonald Elementary, raising questions
from Board Member Richard
Kerr. Shifting a teacher from
another school would have been
“disruptive,” Dozier explained.
He said there are still some
vacant positions around the
district that can be frozen to
offset the drop in revenue.
At the same time, results
of state standardized tests
show that a quarter of Waccamaw students failed their endof-course exams in Algebra I
and U.S. History. Algebra was
the only subject where Waccamaw lagged in the district as a
whole, where 15 percent of stu-
dents failed the exam.
“We’re working on some
things there, some enrichment
programs,” said Waccamaw
High principal David Hammel.
“Overall, we stayed right about
where we were.”
The district changed high
school schedules in 2011 to ac-
commodate a growing emphasis by the state Department of
Education on the end-of-course
exams. Block schedules of 90
minutes with courses changing
at mid year were replaced with
seven-period schedules and
courses that run the full year.
SEE “WHS,” PAGE 3
ENVIRONMENT | Managing stormwater
Tougher rules arrive along with grant
BY JASON LESLEY
COASTAL OBSERVER
Stormwater entering estuaries of Waccamaw Neck will be
cleaner if Georgetown County
adopts new regulations dictated by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control. The water
quality of Murrells Inlet is getting a bonus.
Tracy Jones, Georgetown
County’s stormwater manager, held two meetings in the
past week to review proposed
changes in stormwater management standards. “DHEC
is really pushing for pollution
prevention,” Jones told a small
group of developers at the Murrells Inlet Community Center
Monday.
Under the proposed requirements developers will have to
monitor stormwater runoff for
fecal pollution during construction of a development of 25 or
more acres or if discharging
into impaired waters and exceeding the pollution threshold of established water quality
standards. County stormwater
plans must be updated every
five years.
Jones showed a map of Murrells Inlet depicting the expansion of the “MS4” area. The
“municipal separate storm
sewer system, includes an area
where ditches, curbs, gutters,
storm sewers and other means
of conveying runoff do not connect with a wastewater collection system or treatment
plant. Construction that increases stormwater runoff into
the MS4 area of the inlet must
meet more stringent regula-
tions under the proposal. Jones
said the new rules bring county design standards in line with
state regulations.
First reading of the proposed
county ordinance will go before
Georgetown County Council
Oct. 21. A public hearing will
be held prior to second reading
in November.
Pollution flowing into the inlet has been the subject of an
extensive study conducted by
Coastal Carolina University
and a number of government
partners using samples gathered weekly by volunteers. The
findings were used to write a
watershed plan for the inlet.
DHEC has awarded Murrells Inlet 2020 and the Waccamaw Regional Council of Governments a $270,000 grant to
implement three pilot projects
recommended to filter stormwater in the watershed plan:
floating treatment wetlands,
bacteria media filter strips in
roadside ditches and a constructed stormwater wetland.
On stage: Pawleys Island
music festival showcases
home-grown talent. And, a
plant, above, takes over the
Strand Theater.
SECOND FRONT
Sports: WHS lineman Tyler
Davis is first Warrior picked
to play in the Shrine Bowl.
PAGE 22
Crime ...................................9
Opinion............................. 10
Crossword........................ 14
What’s On ......................... 15
Property transfers......... 17
Classifieds.........................18
Sports................................ 21
On the Internet
www.coastalobserver.com
Tanya Ackerman/Coastal Observer
Fire safety month starts small
Aiden Boyette and Stella Gardner, both 3, try on gear with Midway firefighter/EMT
Brian Michnan at Pawleys Island Montessori School last week. It was the first of 23
visits Midway crews will make as part of Fire Safety Month.