Posted on June 28, 2016
By Chloe Johnson, MyrtleBeachOnline
After a years-long effort, North Myrtle Beach is preparing to review bids to dredge the Cherry Grove canals.
On Monday night, North Myrtle Beach City Council passed the first reading of an ordiance to finalize the project’s financing. Dredging will remove silt from the finger canals; currently, enough sediment has built up in the waterways that they are not passable at low tide.
BB&T Bank is the lender for the project. The bill comes up for a second and final reading in a special June 29 session.
“We want to be able to move because the next day, we open the dredging bid on the actual dredging project,” North Myrtle Beach spokesman Patrick Dowling said. “We want to be able to move forward with the bond if the bids are what we want them to be.”
The project has proven difficult to get off the ground. North Myrtle Beach spent about $3 million in litigation that ended at the South Carolina Supreme Court, which determined that the state owns the land in the center of the canals.
Then, the city approved a special property tax assessment zone for homeowners with land directly facing the canals. Those inside the zone are liable for a maximum of $24,000 over 10 years to pay for the silt removal. Several people contested their inclusion in the area to the city council, and Dowling said that the city then received about 30 notices of people who were planning to appeal the council’s decision.
Though those property owners had the right to appeal to a circuit court, none did. For the first time in years, the Cherry Grove project is free of legal obstacles.
For the first time in years, the Cherry Grove project is free of legal obstacles.
“Assuming that the bid comes in and it’s affordable, and we can continue to move forward, dredging will begin in October of this year, and people will receive their first assessments as part of their property tax bills this year,” Dowling said.
The canals will be dredged twice over the course of the project. The first stage will end in March 2017, and Dowling said both dredges should cost $6.5 million each. The city will contribute up to $3 million for both projects.
North Myrtle Beach will then spend another $1 million relocating oyster beds and grasses displaced by the dredging to a new area.
After the silt has been removed and the waterways are passable, Dowling said property values of parcels facing the canals may rise as much as 40 percent.
However, there is always the possibility that bids may come in over budget — $6.5 million for the first round of dredging — or that the project will prove more expensive than projections. Dowling said the city does not have a specific plan for those scenarios.
“They (the companies bidding) know what the estimate is. They should know what the wallet holds, you know, above which there isn’t a great supply of money. They’ll be smart if they want the work,” he said.
For property owners who bear both the biggest potential benefit and the biggest bill for the dredging, the project will not cost them more than $2,400 a year, regardless of the final bill.
“If the bids come in lower than we estimated, then the property owners will be the ones who benefit. We’ll know that at the end of June,” Dowling said.
Source: MyrtleBeachOnline
