When the project resumes, the same type of equipment that was successfully used in North Myrtle Beach will be employed. The new completion date is January 1996. Surfside Beach recently became the first Grand Strand municipality to install beachside parking meters, and they are about as popular as income taxes. Visitors are complaining that they can't just relax at the beach and forget about the time, and they have to obtain quarters. The quarters are also a nuisance to local businesses, who are getting requests for change all day.
Some owners say their business has dropped because of the meters.
You can feed the meters up to four hours, and they are only enforced from 8 to 6 each day. The rest of the Grand Strand is largely meter-free, a pleasant contrast to many other beach resorts around the country. Some residents of Little River, the fishing village just north of North Myrtle Beach and just south of the North Carolina line, are trying to incorporate the area into a town. State law requires them to ask to be annexed to any bordering cities, in this case North Myrtle Beach. Since they don't want to become a part of this city, they drafted an unusual request that would not allow North Myrtle Beach to legally annex them, hoping to then proceed with forming their own town.