Takeaways from Myrtle Beach’s budget. What’s new and what’s changed from last year?

Curious about how your tax dollars are being spent and what’s going to change this year compared to last?

The City of Myrtle Beach City Council finalized its $330.2 million budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, which started July 1.

According to budget documents, city residents’ taxes will not increase, and the millage rate will remain at 88.9.

Because of a South Carolina state law, local municipalities cannot spend in a deficit and must pass a balanced budget each year.

Here are some of the other biggest changes compared to previous years.

1. 14 new full time Myrtle Beach city employees.

One of the major expenses in this year’s budget is the salaries and benefit packages for 14 brand-new positions. They include two zoning code enforcement officers, one opioid peer support specialist, two paramedics, one A/P technician, an assistant for the chief information officer, two tree crew positions, two PRST positions, one sidewalk maintenance position, one concrete position and one attorney to work as a paralegal for Freedom of Information Act Management.

2. All full-time city employees will be getting raises.

Another universal budget change for this upcoming year is that all full-time Myrtle Beach city employees will receive a five percent raise. In early budget presentations, City Manager Jonathan “Fox” Simons, Jr. referred to the raise as a “market increase.”

3. There’s a massive decrease in new government construction projects this year.

Last year, according to the city’s 2023-24 fiscal year budget documents, they spent $82,406,498 on government capital projects.

This next year, Myrtle Beach plans on spending $44,475,613 on capital improvement projects, a 46 percent decrease from last year’s budget.

That money will be spent on a myriad of different construction and improvement projects, including new public bathrooms, Grand Park field replacements and parking garage maintenance at the Market Common.

An exact line item breakdown for construction costs for each project wasn’t included with the available budget documents.

4. There are increases in various fees to avoid increasing personal taxes.

Despite there not being increases in household taxes, the budget includes proposed fee increases. They include increases in construction permitting and plan review fees, recreation fees and charges and sports tourism fees.

One example is children’s athletics.

For other youth sports this year, parents and guardians who are city residents will need to pay $35 this year compared to $15 last year. For non-residents, the cost went up by $10 from $50 last year to $60 for this upcoming year.

For children participating in the cheerleading or football programs, Myrtle Beach city residents will pay $50 this year, while non-residents will pay $75.

5. Water and trash rates are set to increase, too.

Collection service for one residential garbage can and recycling bin will go up from $22.90 a month to $23.70 a month. Each additional container will now cost residents $4.04 a month compared to $3.90 last year.

Landfill prices are also set to increase from $5.90 to $6.11.

Water use based on base and volumetric charges increase across the board for this year.

For example, last year, for a six-inch meter within city limits, it cost $114.09. This year that new rate is now set at $124.36.

For people living outside city limits with the same size meter, the price went from $228.18 to $248.72.

Alongside the above increases, the city also approved an overall nine percent spike in water and sewage rates for this year, which is included in the above example values.