CONWAY, SC (WBTW) – While Horry County continues to grow, the proposed county budget cuts 22 positions from the police department, but the county said no one will lose their job. County council will talk about the budget and give direction to staff at its retreat on Thursday and Friday.
The next budget calls for 107 patrol officer positions. In the current budget, the police department has 131 patrol officers positions.
The new budget adds a lieutenant position, an accounting clerk, a chemist assistant, and a false alarm clerk. All together, the police department would lose 22 positions.
The department’s spokesperson, Krystal Dotson, blamed the department’s loss of a school resource officer contract with Horry County Schools. The district had been utilizing 18 officers, 1 “rover”, and two sergeants. The officers served the police department when schools were closed during the summer.
The school board voted in June to hire private security officers after a disagreement about how much it should pay for the police officers. After the vote, police chief Joe Hill told News13 he would use the positions “to strengthen our community relations and crime fighting efforts.” The officers would work “in a patrol and community engagement capacity,” Hill said.
County spokesperson Kelly Moore said no officers would be laid off. The school resource officers took other positions within the police department, she said. The department has a history of vacancies due to struggles to recruit and keep officers.
“We took that personnel and moved them over to our regular department, which is patrol officers that we had 24 vacancies at the time,” county council chairman Mark Lazarus told News13. “They were allocated positions, we just didn’t have them to filled because we hadn’t been able to hire the people to fill those positions.”
Lazarus told News13 the new budget would include “significant raises” for public safety employees. Lazarus said the raise would be a percentage for fire and EMS employees and a dollar amount for the police, sheriff’s office, and detention employees.
Horry County’s police salaries have lagged behind other agencies and when the police chief publicly said last year he needed money — one of his officers took a higher paying job to hang drywall — county council chairman Mark Lazarus publicly criticized him and said the department had enough money.
Police agencies across Horry County face more pressure to raise salaries after the Myrtle Beach police department decided to give salary increases to all of its officers. A certified officer starting in Myrtle Beach now makes $44,000. The same officer at Horry County Police Department earns $36,882.00.
Lazarus said his latest proposal, partially revealed Tuesday night, would “put us more on par with Myrtle Beach and throughout the entire state.”
