The Gulfport City Council held its regular meeting on Tuesday, August 1, 2023, at 6:00 PM at City Hall. The meeting included an invocation by Councilmember Christine Brown, the Pledge of Allegiance, roll call (with Vice Mayor Ray excused), and a series of public comments, consent items, ordinances, resolutions, and council reports. Key actions included approval of a Yacht Club lease, a sanitation rate increase, police pension amendments, and a seawall construction contract.
Meeting adjourned.
All right, welcome everyone to the August 1st, 2023 regular city council meeting for Gulfport, Florida. Our invitation tonight's given by Councilmember Christine Brown, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Please join us in rising. Thank you all for coming. The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy, is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet alone with the heavens, nature, and God. Because only then does one feel that it is as it should be, and that God wishes to see people happy among the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists, and it certainly will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles. This quote is attributed to Ann Frank, who today in 1944 made her last entry in her diary before she went to the concentration camp. Roll call, please, city clerk. Councilmember Brown, here. Councilmember O'Hara. Here. Councilmember Thanos. Here. Mayor Henderson. Here. Attorney Salzman. Here. City Manager O'Reilly. Here. City Clerk Carico present. Vice Mayor Ray has asked to be excused. All right, fantastic. Brings us straight to open public comment. This is for any item that is not on the agenda tonight. So we'll go with a show of hand. All right, Mr. Gunther. And Mr. Shea, how you doing? Well we have a very special program to launch tonight in support of the Michael J. Yakes Foundation. Thank you for giving us the flyer. So Mr. Gunther's here tonight to represent the My Foundation. The city was approached yesterday to talk about how to put together a back to school supply drive. So City Manager O'Reilly supported the coordination efforts. We talked to the local library of Dave at the Gulfport Public Library. The casino will have one of these donation boxes. Yeah, so we're looking to um to provide backpacks and school supplies for the under underprivileged kids that can't afford to do so strictly at Gulfport uh Elementary. Um I'm here on behalf of Maddie. Maddie's out of town. She couldn't be here, so I'm here in lieu of her, and um, this is really herself and Michael Yake's uh spearheading this and wanting to um get these backpacks and get the necessary school supplies that these children need to attend school and do well in school. All right, fantastic. That's great. There's a QR code on the flyer that you you guys have, and that QR code that goes right to Amazon, and that has a list of the the items that the children need um to be successful in school along with a backpack. And so we're asking folks to fill those backpacks. We we have the boxes located in several areas like Justin said, and then we'll have uh Mayor uh Mike Yakes deliver that to Gulfport Elementary. Very cool, and that's uh collections Wednesday, August 2nd through Wednesday, August 9th.