Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: City Government, Services & Community Resources

Myrtle Beach operates as a mid-sized South Carolina municipality with a full-service city government responsible for everything from beachfront code enforcement to stormwater infrastructure serving a resident population that swells by tens of millions of visitors each year. The city's governance structure, service delivery systems, and community resources reflect the unusual challenge of maintaining a functional small city underneath one of the most heavily trafficked tourism corridors on the Atlantic Seaboard. This page covers how city government is organized, how core services reach residents and businesses, and where different types of civic needs intersect with county, state, and regional authority.

Definition and Scope

Myrtle Beach is an incorporated city within Horry County, operating under a council-manager form of government as authorized by South Carolina law. The City Council consists of a mayor and six council members elected at-large to four-year staggered terms. A professional city manager appointed by the council handles daily administrative operations — a structure designed to separate electoral politics from the administrative machinery of municipal government.

The city's geographic footprint covers approximately 25 square miles along the northern portion of the Grand Strand, the roughly 60-mile arc of beach communities stretching from Little River to Georgetown County. That geography matters enormously for service scope: Myrtle Beach city government is responsible for a defined municipal territory, while unincorporated Horry County communities surrounding it operate under county services rather than city departments.

This distinction is not merely administrative. A property owner along the beachfront within city limits pays into and receives city services — fire protection, city police, solid waste collection, zoning enforcement. A property owner one mile inland in an unincorporated pocket receives Horry County services instead. The boundary lines are available through the City of Myrtle Beach GIS portal.

The South Carolina Government Authority provides broader context on how South Carolina municipalities relate to state-level governance structures, including the enabling statutes that authorize municipal incorporation, annexation procedures, and the financial reporting requirements that apply to all South Carolina cities — a useful reference for anyone trying to understand where city authority ends and state authority begins.

How It Works

City departments deliver services through a functional structure that mirrors larger municipalities, scaled to a permanent population of approximately 35,000 residents (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Decennial Census). The departments most residents and businesses encounter regularly include:

  1. Planning and Development — handles zoning applications, building permits, and development review under the city's Unified Development Ordinance. Given the density of commercial construction along US-17 Business (Kings Highway) and the beachfront, this department processes a high volume of variance and special exception requests.
  2. Police Department — a full municipal law enforcement agency operating independently of the Horry County Sheriff's Office, which retains jurisdiction in unincorporated areas of the county.
  3. Fire Department — provides fire suppression, emergency medical response, and ocean rescue services. The ocean rescue function is a specialized capability reflecting the 9-mile beachfront the city maintains.
  4. Public Works — manages city streets, stormwater drainage systems, and infrastructure maintenance. Coastal stormwater management is a significant engineering challenge in a city that sits at or near sea level.
  5. Parks, Recreation and Sports Tourism — operates parks, recreation facilities, and coordinates the sports tournament infrastructure that generates substantial off-season economic activity.
  6. Finance and Budget — administers the annual city budget and manages the accommodations tax fund, a dedicated revenue stream generated by the lodging tax that funds tourism-related public improvements.

The South Carolina accommodations tax, governed by S.C. Code Ann. § 6-1-520, allocates a portion of lodging revenues to municipalities for qualifying expenditures. For Myrtle Beach, this mechanism funds a meaningful share of public infrastructure that directly serves visitors — beach access improvements, boardwalk maintenance, and similar projects that general property tax revenues alone would not sustain.

Common Scenarios

Residents, property owners, and businesses in Myrtle Beach encounter city government in predictable patterns. The most common points of contact fall into a few recognizable categories.

A short-term rental owner navigating the city's licensing requirements will deal with the Planning and Development department for zoning compliance, the Finance department for business license registration, and potentially the Police department's code enforcement division if noise or occupancy complaints arise. The city's short-term rental regulations have evolved in response to the density of vacation rental properties in residential neighborhoods — a tension common across tourism-dependent communities.

A contractor pulling permits for a beachfront renovation will interact with the city's building inspections process, which operates under the South Carolina Building Codes Council's adopted codes (S.C. Code Ann. § 6-9-50). State-adopted building codes set the baseline; municipalities may adopt local amendments in limited circumstances.

A resident disputing a property tax assessment, by contrast, is dealing with Horry County's assessor — not the city. Municipal governments in South Carolina do not independently assess real property values. That function belongs to the county, which means the correct point of contact for assessment appeals is the Horry County Assessor's Office, not City Hall.

Decision Boundaries

Understanding what Myrtle Beach city government controls versus what falls to Horry County or the state of South Carolina prevents a significant amount of misdirected effort.

City controls: zoning and land use within city limits, city business licenses, city code enforcement, municipal court jurisdiction over city ordinance violations, city utility services where applicable, city parks and recreation facilities.

Horry County controls: property assessment and tax collection for all properties (including those within city limits), county roads not maintained by the city, the public school system through the Horry County Schools district (horrycountyschools.net), and services in unincorporated county areas.

State of South Carolina controls: driver licensing and vehicle registration through the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles, unemployment insurance through the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce, and environmental permitting for projects affecting coastal resources through the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.

The Myrtle Beach–Grand Strand Region page on this site addresses regional context that spans multiple jurisdictions — including the unincorporated communities of Surfside Beach, Garden City, and North Myrtle Beach, which are separate municipalities with their own governments and are not covered by Myrtle Beach city services. The home page provides a statewide orientation to South Carolina's governmental structure for readers approaching the topic fresh.

Scope and coverage note: This page covers the incorporated City of Myrtle Beach and its municipal government within Horry County, South Carolina. It does not address other Grand Strand municipalities, federal jurisdiction over the beach itself (managed in part through NOAA's coastal zone programs), or South Carolina state-level programs that operate independently of city government. Federal matters — including any regulatory questions involving the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' jurisdiction over coastal and wetland areas — fall entirely outside the scope of city or county authority.

References