City workers may receive bonuses after surplus of funds from Myrtle Beach City Council

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WMBF) - Myrtle Beach city workers who have had to work harder due to staffing shortages could get a big thank you this year.

It all comes after job shortages during the pandemic pushed those employees of the city to fill gaps in other needed areas.

During a specially held meeting for the Myrtle Beach City Council, an ordinance was presented to amend the city’s budget to allow a one-time bonus for city employees.

The city says that staffing and filling vacant positions remains a challenge, but the staffing shortages have led to savings of nearly $3.5 million.

City leaders said this extra money will allow them to give bonuses to workers who were employed with the city before June 30 of this year.

“This is a chance to reward them for working that much harder during the COVID year when we didn’t have full staff of people,” said Mark Kruea, the spokesperson for the city of Myrtle Beach. “So the lowest paid staff member will get at least $3000 which is about a 9% bonus and then the most somebody would get would be $5000,” he added.

In addition to extra funds, city leaders also said that a good year of tourism brought on a surplus and now it could help fund a few new projects.

New fire trucks and renovations of Crabtree gymnasium are just a few items on the list that the extra money could help pay for.

A new ordinance was also presented to amend the past year’s budget to include the extra money dedicated to some of the city’s projects.

The ordinance also shows that stronger-than-expected tourism revenue will help pay for projects that either came over budget or issues that need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

“We had a great tourism year last year so that was one of the reasons why we had some surplus money in addition to not having enough staff to spend money on the staff that we normally would spend it on,” said Kruea. “So we are going to advance some C.I.P projects, there are a couple of things like purchasing some new fire trucks ahead which will save us some money that we’re going to go ahead and do with that surplus money from last year’s budget,”

As of now, the ordinances will be brought up again at the next city council meeting on Tuesday for the final vote.

If it is approved by the council, city workers will see that bonus in mid-January 2023.

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