On May 22, 2025, the Gulfport City Council held a workshop at City Hall to receive presentations on drainage, environmental programs, beach restoration, and a citizen-led land conservation effort. Presentations covered the Wood Ibis drainage evaluation, Tampa Bay Estuary Program, Sierra Club energy initiatives, native planting, and a proposal to preserve a 5.67-acre coastal parcel. Public comment emphasized urgency and support for conservation. The council reached consensus to bring a resolution endorsing the Gulfport Coastline Coalition's efforts at the June 3 regular meeting, without committing city funds. Additional discussion included potential adoption of a regional resiliency plan and updates from the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
Good evening. So I called the first workshop for many many years. I can't remember a workshop here since uh we were all arguing about the bicycle route through the marina area. That's the last one I remember. But in any case, I called the meeting to order. If you picked up an agenda, I just need to tell you there is one little change to it. Um we're only showing on on the written agenda that there's four presentations, but there's actually five tonight. We have uh uh Mr. Brian Beckman from the Sierra Club, the Florida chapter, he will also be speaking, and we're gonna slide him into the third slot. Okay, so if we will, let's see, we'll start with uh call to order. We had that, so let's all rise and we'll do the pledge of allegiance, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to be public stands. And with that roll call, please. Councilmember Jackson here. Councilmember Early President. Vice Mayor, excuse me, Vice Mayor Thanos here. Councilmember Shaw, present. Mayor Love here. City Manager O'Reilly. Here, City Clerk Carico is present. Very good. So I think it's gonna be another long night, so we're gonna jump right into it. So our first presentation is being given by Mr. Justin Keller, who is president of advanced engineering and design. He has been working locally on the water, much of the water issue. Particularly started, it was I think we might have referred to it as the Wood Ibis Water study, but it's much more than that. So good evening. Good evening, Council. You're gonna do introduction. Yes, I was gonna introduce Justin, sorry about that. Good evening, Council Kendrick Sanderson, public work superintendent. Those who don't know me. Um wanted to, we invited Justin Keller, who's the president of advanced engineering design to come up to present. He had several items that we tasked him with with his firm. It was a watershed management master plan, and he's gonna talk briefly about that. He's gonna briefly go over the vulnerability assessment that he's currently working on too. And he's recently has been tasked with a study for Wood Ibis, the surrounding area, the drainage. Uh so he has a another brief presentation on that. So if I can invite Justin up here. So regarding the watershed management plan, I love abbreviation. So if you hear me refer to it as the WMP watershed management plan, that is what I'm referring to. So that is your first acronym you need to remember today. Um more or less um you know, almost broken down on uh you know a block by block basis, if you will. Um so you'll see on the screen what we're showing is um the city of Gulfport watershed is surrounded by um St. Petersburg, and you can see that before we got going um we had uh the St. P watershed was broken down to this level of detail, and you know, the Gulfport watershed uh you know um needed some additional refinement. And so um part of what we're doing is kind of working within this construct to making sure that we're gonna be able to execute a hydraulic model that runs all the way from 275 all the way over to Bear Creek. So and understand kind of how how the water interacts, um, especially as we start talking about more significant, more impactful storm events, um, you know, water don't care about jurisdictional boundaries. So and then also too, we're gonna be um providing some project and programmatic recommendations um within the report.