Posted on Tue, Jun. 20, 2006

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NMB considers coastal lobby group

By Lisa Fleisher

The Sun News

North Myrtle Beach City Council was expected to pass a resolution Monday night to join an alliance of coastal towns, which would place Mayor Marilyn Hatley one step away from her goal of coalescing the Grand Strand's political muscle.

Atlantic Beach, Briarcliffe Acres and Myrtle Beach have passed resolutions to join the Grand Strand Coastal Alliance, a group conceived with the goal of hiring a firm to lobby Congress for beach project funding.

Surfside Beach is the final town in the alliance's cross hairs, but specific actions the group will take - what money, if any, will be spent, and how - remain undecided.

There is no organizational structure in place, though Hatley said she envisioned a group with at least one council member and the mayor from each town, and possibly a county representative.

Hatley said that when North Myrtle Beach representatives attended the 2005 conference of the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association, an advocacy group for coastal communities, they realized that towns and cities that worked together scored more federal money than those that went after it alone.

"Up in Washington, they don't think of us in separate cities; they think of us as a coastal area." Hatley said. "By working together, it will benefit all of us."

North Myrtle Beach hired the association's chief lobbyist, Marlowe & Co., on short-term contracts and was happy with the results. Hatley said she thinks the company would be a good choice for the coalition.

"We become extra staff for you," Harold Marlowe, president of the lobbying firm, told Myrtle Beach City Council at its June 13 meeting. "We're there to make sure the letters are written, the forms are filled out. But, more importantly, the follow-up is there."

Marlowe said his firm would charge $64,000 annually to represent the alliance. The firm currently bills North Myrtle Beach $4,000 a month, which would be $48,000 a year.

Myrtle Beach already retains a lobbyist through the Downtown Redevelopment Corp. to work for those funds, leaving some council members concerned that two lobbyists would be fighting for funds from the same pot.

But Myrtle Beach Mayor John Rhodes said he saw the alliance as potentially having power closer to home, getting more attention and funds for beach projects from the state and even the county, regardless of what it decides to do in Washington, D.C.

Surfside Beach's council will have the item on the agenda for discussion for its June 27 meeting, but members could make a motion to act as well, Surfside Beach's temporary manager Peter Bine said.