The Gulfport City Council met on Tuesday, October 3, 2023, at 6:00 PM at City Hall. The meeting included a presentation from Pinellas County Commissioner Rene Flowers, public comments addressing police conduct and community initiatives, a consent agenda of 11 routine resolutions, first readings of two pension ordinances, and several resolutions including a controversial fundraising contract for the senior center and vehicle purchases. The meeting adjourned after council comments.
Stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't. Under God, individuals with liberty and justice. All right, roll call, please, city clerk. Councilmember O'Hara. Here. Councilmember Thanos. Here. Councilmember Brown here. Vice Mayor Ray. Here. Mayor Henderson. Here. City Attorney Salzman. Here. City Manager O'Reilly. Here. Deputy City Clerk Hartman present. Thank you. All right. Pleasure to have you at the meeting. Thank you. So we have a presentation this evening. We have uh we're lucky enough to have Commissioner County Commissioner Renee Flowers here with us tonight. Thank you very much for taking the time to come down to Gulfport. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so very much. And it's a pleasure to be here. Um, we're neighbors. I live not too far from here. So to uh Mayor Sam, that's what I call him, and to Vice Mayor Paul Ray, and to all of the city council members as well as city attorney and city manager. For those of you lovely folks out here, thank you so much for having me. I just um want to make sure that I am uh touring Pinellas County, not just my district, Gulfport is a part of my wonderful district, but the entire county just kind of talking about what it is that we're doing uh in the county government system and to make sure that you know I am available to you for questions or for uh serving together on projects. Anything that you need that I can do, I'm certainly available. I just want to give a little highlight about our budget season. I'm sure that you all just completed yours, and it tends to be a very interesting process, especially as we look at the times where we are now. As you know, Pinellas County is huge. We have close to a million people residing in our county, and we have about a thousand people moving in on a weekly basis, just exactly where they are parking. You can just only look at the new apartment complexes and houses that are going up, and you will see that they are taking advantage of our lovely beach communities. And so, as such, we're having to look at stormwater sewer uh issues and look at things where we're providing um those services to them and expanding our resources so that it doesn't kind of creep up on us. As you know, Pinellas County has its own local administrative services, and then we have our constitutionals that we fund. We do not manage their day-to-day operations, but their budgets come from our overall budget. Our budget is close to 3.8 billion dollars. And while that sounds like a lot of money, when you look at the unfunded mandates that come out of Tallahassee, it really is not. For example, Tallahassee decided that the FRS increase was going to be put back down on local governments, and so that caused a huge increase in our budget to our sheriff's department, where his budget now takes up about 41% of our overall income. I believe it's worth it because they make sure that we have safety and security in our communities. However, just looking at that percentage, you can see that there's quite a bit going on.