Volunteer helps shape policy on Myrtle Beach's aesthetics

It all started more than a decade ago when Don Shanks noticed land near his Northwoods house in Myrtle Beach had been clear-cut to make way for a new restaurant.

Outraged, the retired teacher and school administrator from New Jersey went to City Hall aiming to keep the clear-cutting from happening again.

"I'm proactive when I see something that may be affecting people," Shanks said, sitting in the Northwoods house he's called home for 22 years. "I get involved."

He ended up on a committee that worked for more than three years to come up with tree protection regulations in Myrtle Beach, which sparked a two-decade "second career" of serving on Myrtle Beach boards that reached a pinnacle recently when he won a statewide planning award.

Shanks, who always wears shorts even if it's 20 degrees, was the first Myrtle Beach resident to bring home the South Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association's Planning Advocate Award, given annually to one S.C. non-professional planner who has made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of quality planning.

"You just do what you have to do," said Shanks, who is chairman of Myrtle Beach's Planning Commission. "You don't give any second thought about any kind of honors or anything else."

Since getting involved with city committees in the mid-1990s, Shanks' volunteer work has helped shape policies for tree protection and landscaping, long-term planning, burying of overhead utility lines along 12 major roads, improving beach accesses and protecting neighborhoods - the interest that led him to City Hall all those years ago.

For seven years, he served on the city's Board of Zoning Appeals, which rules on appeals of administrative decisions about variances and special exceptions to city building rules. In the early 1990s, he served on an Horry County committee that developed a master plan to build parks and preserve open space.

Residents can credit Shanks with pushing for smaller signs along major roads such as Kings Highway to give them a neater appearance, preserving natural resources and improving quality of life, said Jack Walker, Myrtle Beach's planning director. Tourists can thank him for pushing for more greenery around hotels while accommodating the needs of an urban resort, he said.

"He's an advocate for a beautiful resort," Walker said.

Cities rely on volunteers to serve on planning commissions and give input on planning subjects, but it's hard to find residents such as Shanks who are dedicated to those tasks, Skip Grkovic, an official with the South Carolina planning association, said in prepared remarks when presenting Shanks the award.

"We all know how difficult it is to develop and maintain the active involvement and quality input of volunteers," Grkovic said then. "Myrtle Beach is fortunate."

Shanks stumbled into what he calls his "second career" of serving on Myrtle Beach boards after retiring here two decades ago, though this job comes with no paycheck but requires lots of reading and reviewing documents before the commission's monthly meetings. He's quick to credit city staff and fellow commission members with accomplishing the goals and admits it's a give and take to come up with the best solution.

"It's really not 'I', it's 'we,'" he said.

Shanks spends at least five or six hours a week on Planning Commission work, and that can swell to as many as 30 hours a week during busy times, Walker said. He has a diverse background that helps him rule on a variety of planning requests and issues, he said.

"He represents the epitome of what we'd like to see from our citizens," Walker said.

But Shanks also thinks about his Planning Commission role as he's driving around town, noticing that there's a lot of vacant commercial buildings along Kings Highway and making a mental note to brainstorm ways to lure action to those spots. That idea is being incorporated into updates to the city's comprehensive plan.

"I know he thinks about it all the time," Walker said.

Shanks turned to public service after working as a teacher, principal and superintendent, most of the years in New Jersey. He still hears from former students, whether because he has run into them in traffic in New Jersey or pulls a Christmas card from them out of the mailbox each year - small gestures that bring big smiles to Shanks' face.

Shanks' term as chairman of the city's Planning Commission expires in 2012. He hasn't decided whether he'll continue to serve, switch to another city committee or return to his real passion of teaching kids to read. He's worked nearly as hard on the city boards as he did as an educator.

"Retirement to me was a change in career," Shanks said.

He and his wife of 50 years, Susan, wanted to retire in different spots: He wanted to make Cape Cod home, she preferred Florida.

"So this was a compromise," he said, adding that the couple was happy with the choice. "It's not the golf. It's not the beach. It's not the shopping. It's the people."

But there's one statement the pair made when moving here that neither has lived up to.

"We said we are not going to get involved," Shanks said, "but we got involved."

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