Jul 09 2008
To Ride or Not to Ride
The council’s meeting room holds about 300 people and was almost full. Many arrived an hour before the mayor’s gavel dropped to ensure they had seats to show their support or disdain for the city’s moves toward discouraging bike rally visitors in Myrtle Beach, including passage of a 3-mill property tax increase to fund as-yet-undetermined anti-rally efforts.
Mayor John Rhodes gave each person three minutes to speak during the 30-minute public forum period at the beginning of the meeting. There’s another at the end of every meeting, but those who spoke didn’t even take up the first half hour, and all left when it was over.
The audience appeared to be about 60 percent against the rallies, 40 percent for. Some of those who were there in support of the rallies sported Harley-Davidson patches and insignias to support the 10-day Harley-Davidson rally in May and the shorter, smaller one in October.
I still believe that if Myrtle Beach goes through with this they are going to seriously regret it. That city’s entire economy is tourism based and they would be throwing out some of their best customers by putting the squash on these bike weeks. How are they going to replace the bikers with the vacationing families they are looking for? There is no guarantee they can and they are going to waste millions of tax dollars to run ads and other such methods of enticing these folks there when they can spend no money at all to keep the same revenue streaming in as it is today with the bikers. What sense does that make? Furthermore, they don’t even know how they are going to spend that money anyway? Who the hell would raise property taxes with no clue what they’re going to do with it and what moron would back up a politician who advocates such a think. Intelligence among the Myrtle Beach City Council seems to be lacking.
Good luck to them trying to bring in new tourists. I avoide Myrtle Beach because I think it is trashy and too touristy as it is and I know others who feel the same way. The bikers willing go there annually despite that and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars there.
