version of the uh city council hope everybody wore their Kelly Green or version of green today and uh we'll go ahead and get started uh with our agenda I need a motion to uh approve the agenda so moved moved by Mr.

Creel seconded by Mr.

Tisdale any discussion none there being none call for the question all in favor those opposed motion carries mayor's report yeah thank you Mr.

President welcome everyone again have happy St.

Patrick's Day uh see a lot of smiling faces and a little green out there too so um uh do uh you have a few updates but I'd like to ask uh um Judith Brandon to come up and give us a little uh report on the pink ribbon or heart funds pink heart funds excuse me thank you Judith thank you thank you thank you I'm also gonna start two different things one on each side just to kind of look at show up about you for the opportunity my name is Judith Brann I'm the vice president of Pink Heart Funds before I start talking about the reason I'm here I'd like to just ask the council and mayor as well as the attendees in the office how many of you have been affected either personally family wise or good friends with cancer okay I think I can almost complete my talk now it is it's very unfortunate cancer does not go away it has no um loyalty to one person or another it hits almost all of us at some point in time and our organization Pink Heart Funds works directly with patients in the lower six counties of Mississippi we are a nonprofit a 501c3 we um constantly fundraising so I'm here today to ask for some consideration I'll tell you what we're doing I think it's especially especially special here in Valoxi our two biggest events that which is being run by Pink Heart Funds are here in Biloxi.

So what I've passed out is information about who we are first of all we work with men women and children and we work with all cancer patients.

We're not just breast cancer what we do is provide free wigs free breast prosthetics and bras free lymphedema sleeves and our most active um category is financial assistance for those folks who just need a little bit of help for a short period of time we work with the social workers and the nurse navigators at our cancer centers across the coast to make application we we don't have deep pockets we can't take on a lot but what we can do is put out a fire for a moment if you'll think about for example a waitress who works her shifts but doesn't have any long term care maybe she's underinsured or uninsured and she can't work because when you're going through your chemo process it's pretty brutal so what we can do is help with a payment for rent we can help with utilities we can help with a car payment we do not give patients money direct we help pay their bills and there's a very strict process that we go through with the hospitals to make sure that we have our ours covered and our eyes dotted and teeth crossed the two fundraisers that Pink Hearts is driving and the reason I'm calling these two out is we have a lot of people who do fundraising for us and we receive funds from them but we're not necessarily the people that are producing it.

You'll see I'm I passed it kind of backwards on the uh council you'll have one sponsor package for splashing out cancer that will be Saturday April 18th and it's down at Point Cadet Park yeah I'll know where that is it's a 5k run it's also a family walk and a family day we've joined forces with the YMCA out of um orange I'm sorry out of Ocean Springs and Pascagoula for their kids healthy program so we're expecting many hundreds of people in your city which is good it's good for your restaurants and for all of you.

The other organization that we're doing is Saturday September 12th and that is known as out of bounds.

Out of bounds will be held at the Slavonian Lodge and we'll focus on prevention and early detection and with a highlight to men's cancer our speakers and things we'll be talking about that.

It will be more like a ball but it's going to be very informal.

It has a sport theme so y'all come in your shirts and support the teams that you do we'll have games we'll have a band but all in all we are fundraising.

So that's in essence what I'm here to ask is your consideration to do some sponsorship for us.

The other cities along the coast I've already have done presentations I'm having quite successful the pressures on for you guys to uh support us as well and I'm open for questions or comments thank you so you said this is a coast wide organization correct it is.

Okay.

And so you got or uh events you said in Hatterburg Bilexi and in Govort?

No it's all both ocean springs.

Yeah both of our events are here in Biloxi at uh point cadet and at Slavonian lodge.

We're all volunteers that's the other thing I want to say so the money that we raise other than our overhead goes directly to patient care.

Perfect thank you.

Thank you we appreciate the good work that you're doing.

Thank you.

Thank you do you have any questions or anything I'm gonna leave a packet with your clerk so she'll have everything she needs as you discuss it and I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.

Send out some money thank you Judith appreciate it.

And let me give you a little follow up on I think our cruise ship uh is due to get come back on this Sunday at 1230 and uh leave depart uh Monday at 1230 and there'll be one more trip after that in March and then we'll begin again in uh October weekly through November and December and then I think on into uh 27 so it's pretty exciting I think they had some bad weather the other day and they stayed in port and go forth but uh again it's very interesting I think uh the excitement is there to especially to see a 330 foot boat on that back day uh but uh the uh and I think that concludes my report yeah it does thank you thank you mayor we'll move on to council reports uh we'll start with Mr.

Gray all right thank you um I got a me and Mr.

Marshall had our warr meeting last week Monday or this Monday well no last Monday it turned out good we probably had around 200 people we did a poll and uh on the poll we did it was for millage increase it was raising how how do you want to raise increase revenue for the city millage increase hotel room tax or 2% restaurant tax so we had just wrote yes or no so we had 29 people on millage increase voted yes 97 voted no hotel room tax when 99% 99 people voted yes 26 voted no 2% restaurant tax 58 voted yes 68 voted no so it's just a kind of a poll that we just kind of put out there just kind of see about raising revenue and we'll get on to that I guess there in budget time so it's just something we just wanted to try to put out there to kind of see I mean I would I would say I I would like to if we did a hotel room tax have it where you know a couple of dollars went to parts and rec's equipment money went to uh public safety and some went to uh paving and sidewalk repair because we all know that's our biggest expense that we struggle find the money for and that's my and um get miss Christy Labata a couple questions for you can you give us an update on the sidewalks between Hopkins and Manacke where they put the new polls on on Howard yes ma'am how it so we've been working with Mississippi Power to uh have them pull their wooden poles they were waiting all the other utility companies to get off of those poles before they could pull them we are down to just one or two polls that have utilities left on them we we put pressure on those utilities I I believe it's ATT but don't hold me to that but we push put pressure on them about every two weeks Jody Ewing and my office stays on top of them.

We do know that the new poles are all have also created another um issue uh on the sidewalks with ADA we're trying to come up with a plan uh working with Mississippi power how we're gonna address that once the wooden poles are out of the way.

Okay.

And can you we got item O P and Q as the two um about about we we're closing out two accounts.

Yes yes two projects and we create another can you tell us a little bit about that what's going on with that yes so those are projects that we generally fund um we use our our MIMA our internet use tax money goes into those to fund what we call a repair place contract originally we had them separate because I think we did pay all paving in one and we did um all other type repairs in the other municipal repairs one uh just to keep it straight did that years ago well periodically on these projects that run a long time we close them out and kind of start them over because we have to um we have to keep accounting for that every year every year it has to be audited so we like to close them out and kind of start fresh.

So that was we talked about doing that and that was the initial uh reason why we decided to go ahead and close these and start new ones but then we also decided there's really at this point there's no sense in having two separate projects it's the same kind of money that goes in there.

So uh we just gonna combine them into one close those out and then and then open a new one.

Okay that's all I have for that's where we'll put the internet use tax money okay yeah uh before you go I'm gonna be asking you later about Reading Street so you may want to start looking it up.

Okay.

Okay that's all I have thank you.

Jamie Lee can you give us an update on the signs for the George Lawrence Pavilion and Point Cadet Park we spoke with the sign shop and they have the materials ready to go ready to make it all we need to do now is get a date together that we're looking at doing the dedication and then they can have the sign up ready to go for whenever the dedication day would be um whatever day is good with us as long as we get a little notice make sure it's not booked for a day a weekday of course would most likely be better than a weekend date so um the council wants to get what administration kind of come up with a date let us know we'll look and see if it's available and we can go with it advertise and go.

Okay have we had time to look at the padding at the splash pad we have and what we are going to try to do is we're going to try to block off that playground area um secure it the best we can notice put signs barricades whatever we can to keep people out of that area and we believe that we can get the splash pad back on for Good Friday.

All right thank you um I want to yield the rest of my time to um parents on a mission is she's gonna come up and give us a little presentation tell us about about her mission.

Thank you.

Councilman is and I am the founder of Parents on a mission this parent on admission is dear to me because I have a daughter who has a disability and the challenge that us parents have is that we have nothing in the community for our children and adult children and I find out one is the challenge is my daughter cannot get on the bus because she has to walk all the way to the bus stop but she has CP and she's legally blind.

So I'm asking the councilman and y'all what can y'all do to help us to bring stuff back in the community for us parents who have disabled adult children and children to give the parents some kind of relief because they don't have nowhere no resources at all they have to go to um golf port they have to go to Ocean Spring to take our children which we can have it here in East Biloxi.

This is not question and answer but uh certainly we can direct it to a proper uh channel to get some of your uh questions answered okay yeah but thank you Ms.

Connor that's that's all I have to thank you Mr.

Gray Mr.

Marshall I come back to Mr.

Neal um okay first of all I just want to let everybody know I work seven days a week and this council I work hard for it and the broadwater property uh I went riding around with the code enforcement the police last week and we rode we took pictures and we looked and we looked and as far as homeless people go we ran into maybe four.

And as far as homeless people go, we ran into maybe four.

So the big myth of the the broadwater golf course is full of homeless people is not a true statement.

They're out there but they're not like everybody thinks they are and we met with uh Willy Anderson Jr.

the other day and they're gonna start cleaning that property up in the next couple of three weeks.

So you will be seeing a big change out there shortly and cutting the grass and you know keeping it up like they supposed to and um I just wanted to I just want to get that straight and um Hill Park um I still got a hole out there by the by the pond that needs to be filled in and uh and as far as um to pavilion goes what's good what is the status on the uh on the pavilion where we at on that the looks of it Jamie the graffiti that was on the middle column has been painted over uh the handicap ramp was repaired and what we're looking at now is bringing in the Knights Peter Claver group to go through the go through the pavilion show it up get get the pinches some loose boards strapped down okay get it get it all put back together and then once of course you know using the treated wood we're gonna need to let it dry out a little bit then once it does we're gonna give the whole thing another coat of paint.

Okay let me ask you a question.

Yes sir when when we rent to pavilion or we have a reservation for it do we go out there and would do we put a sign up that says this is reserved because people will go out there like early in the morning and start partying in it.

And then at maybe 12 the people who reserved it they have to just leave or do we put a we don't put a sign up and saying it's reserved do we?

We do not um we haven't we haven't had that problem um in the past believe it or not that we haven't had a call saying oh this group's out here and we can't have our party I think most you know the word is hey we we have this facility rented for such and such event or such and such times and people people leave.

Now if there is an issue they can call dispatch dispatch will go out they'll confirm with our office that this pavilion is rented and they do have rights to that area and then whoever's refusing to leave would I assume chief may be able to you know reiterate on that but they would have to leave because whoever rents and pays for it has first right on it.

Yeah.

Because I went out there Saturday and they were having a birthday party right and I went out and talked to them and I told them who I was and they appreciated it and I said there's only one problem I have is if this is rented which I don't know if it is or not y'all have to leave we've had to leave and I said yeah.