The Gulfport City Council met on August 5, 2025, at 6:00 PM at City Hall. The meeting focused on first readings of four ordinances to increase water, sewer, garbage, and stormwater rates, approval of a law enforcement support services agreement, and discussion of homelessness, parking, and community concerns. All items were approved unanimously.
And we were busy talking to uh call it to order. Well, thanks everybody for coming. You should have brought all your neighbors, but that's okay. Vice Mayor, if you want to Oh, sorry, yes, okay. Yeah, thank you. Um tonight the invocation is given by Councilmember Shaw, and then we'll have the Pledge of Allegiance. So it is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how strong the man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who's actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself on a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. That's an excerpt from the Citizen and a Republic given by Theodore Roosevelt in France on April 23, 1910. And to reflect on that, let us stand together in unity, not on the sidelines, but side by side, lifting each other up and daring greatly to keep us a strong, vibrant, connected community. Very nice. Councilmember Shaw. Vice Mayor Thanos. Present. City Attorney Salzman. Present. City Manager O'Reilly. City Clerk Carico is present. Um so we'll have public comment. Anybody wants to tell us something, please. They do go take a shower with their clothes, they use our restrooms, they throw their you know, food into the shop into the uh planters, etc. And it's really bothersome to us that they're not our friends. We don't want to become friends. We just want it taken care of by the city. And the way I feel that could be taken care of would be to have maybe I don't want pay parking in Gulfport. I just I really love it the way it is, and the way economy is, it would double the cost of going into town to have you know to pay. So I'm thinking like four hours of free parking if we had just you know some kind of a pay station for four hours of free parking and then they had to put their license in, and if it goes over that, then we start charging. Um that's the only solution I have. I'd just like to end with just a really funny thing that happened to me yesterday, which really made me understand why I really needed to come today, and that is that this one blue car, it's a storage unit. He does not drive this car. It lives right in between my house and Lisa's house next door. And he comes every morning about 9, 9 30, and he takes things from his beautiful black car. This guy is stunning. He's tall, he's in great shape. He's a beautiful looking man. I'm just staring at him yesterday morning. At nine o'clock, he pulls up in his beautiful black car, starts taking things out and rearranging them in the blue car, and then he goes back over, he's just very nonchalant about it. And then he's just about to leave when he pulls his pants down, bends over to get another pair of shorts with his bare butt. And I thought, I screamed, I go, what are you doing? I'm screaming at him. And I thought it's a good sight. However, it's inappropriate. So, you know, it's indecent. So he could have walked 500 feet or 500 uh steps to the bathroom and done that. He chose to do it right there because he thought nobody was looking. So he saw he goes, Oh, and he jumps back in the car and he drives away. So this morning, the car's not there. I go, Great, I scared him.