The Gulfport City Council held its regular meeting on Tuesday, July 16, 2024, at 6:00 PM at City Hall. The council approved a consent agenda, heard two presentations, conducted first readings of two ordinances, and passed seven resolutions. Key decisions included maintaining the current millage rate, approving a conditional use for three schools, and authorizing insurance renewals with minimal increases. The meeting also featured updates on the Senior Center Foundation, the utility rate study, and a discussion on the marina study hiatus.
Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the July 16th, 2024 regular city council meeting for golf port. Our invocation tonight will be by our council member Christine Brown, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. So please rise. Welcome everyone. The fabric of our gentle nation is tattered, but our courage and common sense must bring us together. Let us not forget that differing opinions, policy, and politics are inferior to love. Love, compassion, kindness, and empathy are necessities. Ascend above the hate, the vitriol, and the simple-minded ideas that ignite violence. We all want a world where respect is paramount, family is first, and love transcends. Councilmember Brown, here. Councilmember Ray. Here. Vice Mayor O'Hara. Here. City Attorney Salzman. City Manager O'Reilly. City Clerk Carico is present. Mayor Henderson and Councilmember Thanos have asked to be excused. Okay, we have uh two presentations this evening. So please welcome Mr. Larry Kennedy. Good evening, everybody. Thank you for allowing me to present. Mr. Raleigh had asked us to do an update from our February update. And um, so I'm here to do a brief one for you and answer any questions you may have. Right. It's over here. It's gotta be on the screen. There you go. Oh, do you see the masher up there? The little arrow in the top right. Is it green? Ah, that helps. So again, our goals uh same as what we were before is to support the senior center. Our primary functions are the uh food pantry, the uh fitness center, and then anything unexpected that comes up that uh they need money for that's not in the budget. And then along with that, we have a five hundred thousand dollar commitment to the uh building fund that we made in um the end of May of uh 23, and it's uh 100,000 a year uh for five years. And then um uh to uh oh maintain sufficient funds. I can't read it from back here. Uh maintain sufficient funds to you know operate the uh foundation. So what we do have um this is how we've raised our money. Uh we've had many um events over 40 events this past year, the past 18 months. Um, and we've done it um early part of the year or early part of the 18 months with just a few active people on the uh board, but we have been fortunate to uh add some members since our last update, and we're now up to I believe 11 members on the board, so it's allowed us to make some changes. We actually have different committees, you know, PR committee membership committee, which is allowing us to do different things. Um of our events would be the uh sip and pain, it's a monthly event that we do here. We've had dances, plays, concerts. Uh most of them are in the uh Hickman or the casino with some of them here in the um in the uh senior center. Um one of the things we've been able to do with the added um board members is with the PR committee. We're now actually on um uh the morning blend and St.