Good evening and welcome to the let's see what is today's date.

November 4th council meeting.

If by chance you have a telephone on, I'm gonna add uh a telephone on.

If by chance you have your telephone, will you make sure it's not turned on?

Those of you that were here at the last council meeting understand the irony in that.

Mine is in the car.

Okay, with that in mind.

Excuse me.

With it with that in mind, the invocation will be given by my uh Vice Mayor Thanos today, and then followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Please stand.

So today is election day, even though we aren't having an election.

So I have quotes about that.

A politician thinks of the next election, a statesman of the next generation.

And that was James Freeman Clark, who is a theologian and writer in 1888.

He died in 1888.

And another one, democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely.

The real safeguard of democracy is education, and that was FDR.

And to republic stands.

Thank you.

Roll call if you will.

Vice Mayor Thanos?

Here.

Councilmember Shaw.

Present, sorry, no worries.

Councilmember Jackson?

Here.

Councilmember Early.

Present.

Mayor Love.

Here.

City Attorney Salzman.

Here.

City Manager O'Reilly.

Present.

And Deputy City Clerk Hartman present.

Thank you.

So tonight, um, if you've been looking at the agenda, it says that we're gonna have two presentations.

But in fact, we're going to have one.

So the um winners of the Halloween contest, they weren't able to be here tonight, but they have already been here and picked up their award.

And the teen counsel who was to present it couldn't be here tonight.

So I'm just gonna have the pleasure of telling you that the winners of our Halloween decoration contest were Alex Garcia and Robert Ware of 531728th Avenue South.

So no surprise, right?

Everyone can figure out which house that was.

All right, and then we'll move right along, and so we'll go to the second presentation, which is now the first presentation.

Trolley Marketing Plan presentation, Mr.

Shea, thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council members.

Thank you for having me today.

Welcome the board, welcome aboard the City of Gulfport Trolley Service.

This presentation is about the City of Gulfport's looper service trolley service, an initiative focused on improving mobility, enhancing visitor experience, and supporting local events in businesses.

One of the key features of our service is a 20-minute continuous loop ensuring regular predictable transportation.

Whether attending events, visiting businesses, or just exploring the trolley, welcome aboard.

On the home page at MyGolfport.us, just simply travel to the special events looper section under the things to do menu item.

This is our dedicated landing page where residents and visitors can find updated schedules, route maps, service alerts.

It's part of our effort to keep information accessible and keep the public informed in real time.

The site provides instructions on how to ride as well as a schedule of events when the service is in play.

Also on the website, um, we have an interactive map that we'll get to later.

Um with the support of the public works department, they gave us access to the GIS mapping system.

The opportunity is endless inside that program, uh, and we will get to that.

Um, as far as improvements, I first wanted to show what the previous trolley route map looked like.

Um continuously plan to make improvements.

We're in a constant state of flux, and we want to take this program to uh uh the where the community wants it to go.

This map had a dated visual style.

It made it hard to distinguish street stops and parking locations at a glance.

Overall, it provided a basic visual visual presentation.

Now I want to take you to what the excuse me, my keyboard's a little touchy.

What the current map looks like.

This base layer allows for improved clarity.

It's a streamlined visual format.

The parking locations, the offsite parking locations, the trolley stops, the locations of where you would wait to pick up the looper trolley is more visible.

One of the input from the community was we wanted, you know, it wasn't big enough, but this gives you a clear picture in hopes of making it simple, easy to read, easy to understand, where someone can pick up the map and say, I know where to go.

First, wanted to talk about the brand, the street pole banners.

Um, this is the Gulfport Merchants Chamber of Commerce.

Their motif, their artwork, they are the designers of the Welcome to Gulfport brand.

We also uh wrapped the vehicle fleet of the special event service with that same type of brand.

In addition, we've been working behind the scenes to put together a marketing plan to highlight the locations where people can pick up the looper and be dropped off at.

One of the main hubs we want to focus at is the casino bus stop.

As you see on the visual, this is what the uh benchback would look like at these locations.

In addition with the artwork from the Gulfport Merchants Chamber of Commerce, had a very productive meeting with the director of planning at Panel Sun Coast Transit Authority.

In fact, we are on the agenda tomorrow for a internal review to approve these locations with these benchbacks in our community.

Um, and they're reviewing which stops essentially our PSDAs, which are the cities, and uh they're bringing it up for an approval to put these benchbacks in our community at these stops.

In addition, we also have the poll plan where we could put the signage that the trolley stops here at the local bus stops in downtown Gulfport.

Um again, they seemed very supportive of the community initiative.

Um, this would be located at the historic Gulfport Casino, plus the stop at 30th and Beach Boulevard in downtown.

Um I will keep you updated as we move forward in the um the plan with uh Pennell Sun Coast Transit Authority.

In addition, we want to get community feedback.

Um, the QR code that's on the screen opens up a survey link for someone who rides to give us feedback on the service.

Um, how is the cleanliness of the trolley?

How often do you ride the trolley?

Um was the driver a professional?

Um we want to get that feedback so we know how to improve the program.

Um and without your help, we could not do this.

Um when you ride the trolley, we have some creative, unique ideas in the future.

As you can see in front of you, there's a uh City of Gulfport Looper Magnet that you can put on the refrigerator.

We want to provide swag, if you will, to people who ride as well as take the survey.

And uh, we want to make it fun for the community, and we want people to come out and enjoy downtown Gulfport, the looper service, as well as using the service.

Um, so please, when you ride, complete the survey, let us know how we do so we can improve if there's issues we need to improve on.

Um, the looper service runs during special events, um monthly events that we run 5 to 9 p.m.

the first Friday art walks on a monthly basis, the third Saturday night markets.

In addition, we're running this Saturday for the second Saturday Fusion 49 market at Trolley Market Square.

Um, in addition, we run seasonal and annual large-scale events.

We do have an alternate route when we have Beach Boulevard closed, but working with Mr.

Bruner on this GIS mapping system, we have the ability to simply click a button and the map on the web page will update in real time with what route we're on that night.

Justin, is um are we interchanging the words trolley and looper, or are we using two vehicles?

And I don't know if you're saying the the trolley provides a looper service, or if there's two different so there's two different vehicles in the fleet.

Okay.

Um the special event trolley is the bigger 32 passenger bus.

We had that on the road Saturday night for the Stetson University 125th Gala.

The looper service is a smaller, more mobile vehicle.

Um for example, when we go into town shores at 29th and 59th, our first pickup location is um we call it Town Shores North, um, is on 59th Street, but then when we get to Shore Boulevard with the smaller vehicle, we're able to turn right to go to the diplomat and the embassy and then turn around and come up to the clubhouse to uh pick up riders.

So to answer your question, Mayor, we have two different vehicles.

The trolley and looper are the same service essentially.

Um we have one vehicle on the road when we are active in service.

And I want to uh give you an example of what this interactive map looks like.

I'm gonna go to the city's website, my golfport.us, and travel to the trolley page.

So when you land here from the things to do menu, um you'll get here to this page.

The the map, which is new, has different locations pinned to it, which allows the user experience to click on, say, for example, the golf port casino location.

Say, for example, the and my mouse is um say, for example, the uh recreation beach complex off-site parking location.

This would give the users experience to click on those locations, find out more information about that.

In addition, we're able to, like I said, in the background, click a button and it changes the route, and that map would change in real time as we change it in the background.

Um we want the community to experience the the city's looper service.

On this page, we have the schedule of events when we are in service.

Um, and we want your feedback to improve the program.

And we want this to be a successful program.

We think with the updates, it provides more clarity, it's simpler, it's easier to read.

Um soon as we know where we're going with the bench backs and the polls, uh, when we have that permission, we'll be able to uh uh enhance our pickup locations with the uh the city uh the artwork.

Any questions?

Um I I was gonna ask about the signage, but clearly if we have the bench backs, that's perfect.

And it does say on there every 20 minutes, right?

Yes, ma'am.

That was one of the um the marketing decisions that we wanted to get out there is that wait at the stop.

We're here every 20 minutes.

Um we looked at the mobility studies of inner city connectors and um trolleys essentially in downtown markets.

Ideally, the 10 to 20 minute range was the ideal timing for a system like uh a looper service.

Um, and as long as we can stay consistent with that, we keep it simple.

People know to wait at the the stops to get on and ride.

Is there any way that the driver could have a button or something that or you know how you do um clickers where you count how many people come in so that it's really easy that they could have something like that so that we could keep track of the usage?

Right.

Obviously, when we stop and let people on, it slows us down.

Um I am exploring options in this new mapping system.

At the moment, we don't have the ability to track the trolley essentially in real time.

I know there's probably a feature we could turn our location on.

I mean, just so it appears on the map.

So the the driver could five people get on.

You click five times so you know how many people rode the trolley.

Oh, sure, yeah.

We do keep track of our ridership numbers.

Um the way that the analytics are looking, um, our ridership numbers increase during the springtime.

Um we obviously slow down in the summertime.

Um it ramps back up for GeckoFest.

That's our largest ridership event of the year.

Um, and you can see the curve.

Springtime ridership increases essentially with season, and then summertime it's slow.

The ridership slows down, but then GeckoFest uh brings those numbers back.

Can I also suggest that as one of the things that um you can search for?

If if we have a search thing for parking that could even take you to this map, would show you where the off-site parking is, or another place that just shows off-site parking so that people could just put it in the search engine.

Right, and that's what you is unique about the interactive map.

There's uh there's different layers that we're building that would give the opportunity to put the GPS in of say Ted Phillips Wood Ibis Park offsite parking.

Um work in progress, but that is a great idea.

I have a question, but let's go in speaking order.

Councilmember Shaw.

I just have a quick one right now, and that is are those signs reflective?

It looked like in the picture they might be.

So one of the things we talked with PSTA on, uh that they're talking in the internal review tomorrow, um, was a vendor that would provide the bus stop backage, the signbacks.

Um so obviously we want to go with a proven practice that works.

So that discussion happened today, and they're gonna send us some the vendors that do it on a regular basis at their stop.

So we can certainly um put the reflective um backs on the where the most impact is on the polls.

Visibility.

Um yes, ma'am.

Um but that was a uh a prime discussion we had with PSTA and recommendations on to make it visible.

We previously you've seen them on Beach Boulevard.

We pre previously used a seat back, bench back when we had the full blown trolley that went to St.

B Beach and we had signs that said trolley stops here.

This is more focused inside, and I it's a similar type seat back that you've seen.

And you like Mr.

O'Reilly's talking about, you'll see that bench, you'll see one of the bench backs, uh, the previous versions at 27th Avenue and Beach Boulevard South.

Um, and then the goal is that's included in the plan to update with the new signage.

Okay.

Councilmember Jackson.

I have nothing else to add.

I think that was great, and that I had the same question about how many people would be riding.

So it's good that we're tracking the ride share.

Thank you, Justin, for all of your work on this.

Um, last night I was um in a meeting with the PSTA group regarding the new bus routes, right?

And one of the things that they mentioned is that there's no markers for the new bus stops.

So they may have I may take 9F and then now I take 9A or what have you, but I don't even know if my bus stop move, right?

Because they didn't order the markers.

That was just a bad on theirs, and they're re rectifying that.

So is there is our marker just the bench?

Uh the bench and the poll marker that will be on their polls.

They're doing a big campaign in January that we're essentially in the mix on.

Yeah.

Um, so they were very receptive to us having that on the polls with yeah, yeah.

So you're way ahead of them.

Way ahead of them.

Congrats.

Love it.

Way ahead of them.

One thing that PSTA said when we originally talked to them, the the supervisor that works with us out in the community when we do parades and street closures.

Um, he gave us the person to talk to, and she was very receptive.

Um, and then gave us to the director of planning, um, and they were on board with we want to support this, we're gonna bring it up as a approval, um, and that essentially will take place tomorrow.

And and for you know, for our residents um information, the 15 and the 23 are now the 66 at the casino.

Um, so we have one service um at that location now.

Um, are we gonna be adding any oh I'm you're done right?

Okay.

Are we gonna be adding any additional benches, or we're just putting like the wrap on the benches that we currently have?

Because I thought I heard something about additional benches in town shores.

We can certainly look into that.

We had a very productive discussion with Irene, the president of uh Town Shores, very receptive once the the construction is complete to have the 59th Street bench to come back as the pickup location.

Um we'd also have that conversation to what can we do at the clubhouse to make it more visible, more known.

She's very supportive in sending the map out to the residents to um uh to get the information of when we are running.

And I can tell you most of our ridership does come from town shores.

Um when we ran on the October 12th Health and Wellness Expo, um, that event took place at the Maria Center um during the day, um, and we found that most people brought their cars to that event location themselves.

Our main ridership was Town Shores to downtown that day.

Um, but we did stay in communication with the senior center foundation.

Um, and uh we want the best impact for the most amount of people.

Right.

The second thing, when I look at that map, I believe that I could go drive that map in 20 minutes.

Sure.

But does that take into I mean it just doesn't look like you can get people on and off and do that route with the increased traffic in 20 minutes?

Is that how have you got to be able to do that?

There are variables, Mayor.

Um there are variables to that, and that's a continuous study that we need to be looking at as ridership increases.

What do we do for our 20-minute continuous loop?

Um as I touched upon previously, we may have the ability to turn on some type of location on this map to show in real time where the trolley looper is.

Um, but that is a huge variable that we have to take into consideration.

Um in the field.

No, we would work back from that.

Our goal is to be there every 20 minutes.

Now, if we have to adjust certain things later on, maybe there's a stop that we have listed that there's no riders from.

We can eliminate that.

So we just go past it, and it picks up time.

It's all about where you're gonna make up time and where you're gonna lose time.

Without speeding.

Without speeding.

Okay.

That's it.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

I'm glad to see that uh looks like we're gonna um uh maybe be able to answer people's questions better when they say when is it running?

Where is it running?

That's yes, ma'am.

And now everybody can go look at the map themselves as well.

So that's a good step in the right direction.

Thanks, Justin.

Thank you.

All righty.

Then if I'm looking at my agenda, it says that the next thing we're gonna do is have a discussion, but that is not the case.

There is no discussion item today.

We have a full plate without that.

Um so we're gonna move on to public comment, and I think I recognize most faces.

Just a reminder.

Public comment is for anything that is not on the agenda.

So if you wanted to talk about beach restoration, we'll do that when we get there.

That's not at this time.

But anything else, raise your hand and I'll call you up.

Francine.

Francine from Operation Santa.

We have done it.

This will be our 33rd year of doing Operation Santa, the city.

We last year we did 90 families, 300 kids.

The police and the fire group chief both go and the fire police officers.

It's a wonderful.

They they love it, they have fun shopping, and with all the donations we get from the city of Gulfport.

I haven't had to turn anybody down.

So that's what's wonderful.

Um, if people have donations, they can start bringing them in any time they want.

People who want to sign up have to wait till after Thanksgiving because we got some more paperwork to do.

But they can after Thanksgiving, they can come in and sign up.

And like I said, we haven't had to turn anybody away.

So if anybody knows anybody who needs a little bit of help, just come on down.

Could you refresh my memory on the ages that you try to take care of?

We stop at age 10.

But what we've done is if the 10-year-old has a 13 and 15-year-old sister and brother, we get something for them too.

Because, you know, they're probably feeling left out, so we don't leave anybody out anymore.

You know, but and like I said, I've had not had to turn anybody away ever.

So I'm excited.

Thank you.

Anytime.

All right, who else for public comment?

Yes.

Hi everybody.

Hi, my name is Brad Bruner.

I live on Beach Boulevard near 27th Avenue South.

And I'm here tonight to introduce the new Discovery Walk Discover Walkport walking trail system.

It's about to launch here in town.

And the senior advisory committee on aging, of which I'm a member, envisioned a series of interconnecting marked paths that will invite residents and visitors alike to experience Gulfport's many vibrant districts and lots of hidden gems along the way.

These walking paths use Gulfports many existing sidewalks and crosswalks so that the project can be created with minimal cost and disruption to the city.

Um we invite everyone in the community, including members of city council and everyone else here tonight to participate in the upcoming first annual mayor's community walk scheduled on Saturday morning, November 15th.

The walk will celebrate the opening of the walking trail system, and we'll be led by our mayor, Karen Love, and we really appreciate her doing that for us.

Uh check-in begins at 8 a.m.

The walk will begin at 9 a.m.

And we're gonna meet in front of the Hickman Theater at the corner of Beach Boulevard and 26th Avenue South.

Uh Mayor Love will lead us on a 1.3 mile walk lasting between 45 minutes and an hour.

There's gonna be water and snack stations along the route, and participants can expect some special treats and gifts along the way.

We have copies of the flyer available up front.

And so please take these home and share them with others.

And we also have QR codes with the website on it, and there are some of those in the back as well.

So please utilize those.

Let's see that there's going to be several paths on the system along the end.

It's all going to be at my Gulfport.us slash discover.

That's forward slash discover.

The website's currently in a beta version and should be fully functional by November 14th over 4.

And soon you're going to be noticing some new signs going up around Gulfport.

We have these Discover Gulf Port Walking Trail signs that are going up.

We're very proud of.

Thanks again to Department of Public Works for the help with those.

And we're going to be using color-coded uh different colored arrow paths for the different walks.

And so the first set to go up will be the red path.

And that's what we will be following on November 15th.

So we're very excited about that.

And I see I've got a hurry.

So special thanks to the following people who have helped us do this.

Mayor Karen Love, Tom Nichols, Kristin Osola, Rachel Cataldo, Justin Shay, James O'Reilly, Dave Mather, John Stirner, and all my fellow members of the Senior Advisory Committee on Aging.

Again, please join us on November 15th to walk or send the walkers off in style at the Hickman at 9 a.m.

sharp.

I'd love to be invited back to tell you more about this down the road if you would like to invite me at your leisure to talk more about this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Woohoo!

I made it.

Who's next?

Who's next?

No, no applause.

Amy.

Hello everyone.

Amy Costa, Midtown Business Collective Wonderworks and the Senior Center Foundation tonight.

First, I just want to say that on Halloween night, we hosted an event called the Gulfport Citywide Creepy Crawl.

It was the first time we did it.

We had over 20 businesses who participated all the way up as far as Ferrell Hair Salon, which is up on 49th, all the way down to our downtown.

And it was uh we made a map and a scavenger hunt that you know invited all the families to visit the different businesses to trick-or-treat, have specials offered to them at the different locations where they would then get a sticker for their tombstone, and then they can turn that in for a raffle where the businesses are all giving us donations to then raffle off to the participants based on the um responses I've gotten so far from the businesses.

It was successful.

Um they got lots of families, people that maybe hadn't been in those businesses before then.

So looking forward to next year to do an even bigger one.

Hopefully, more businesses get involved.

It was from four to seven, and it ended up nicely where all the families could then head down to the rec center for the Halloween fest there.

We also had a switch witch location, which I learned about.

Um of our council members are switch witches, it's where um families could bring their kids' candy and switch it out for prizes so they didn't have to take home all that sugar.

So that was really successful.

I appreciate everyone who participated, all the businesses.

Um for the senior foundation, just some reminders of some events coming up.

We have our Veterans Day celebration on Tuesday, November 11th.

Um, starts at 10.

So we invite everyone to come down to the Veterans Park.

Mayor Love will be there.

There'll be a bunch of um invocations and messages from um the ROTC and groups like that.

So please remember check out the Senior Center Foundation website.

On November 29th, we have the Mad Beach Band returning.

It's a big hit um apparently around here.

So these are all our fundraisers for the Senior Foundation.

So there's still seats available for that.

Coming up in December, we'll have our Santa gift wrapping, and that'll be at the senior center.

You can bring your gifts and for a donation, we wrap them up for you, so nobody has to worry about that for the holidays.

On December 13th, we have our big band Christmas.

So that is um tickets are on sale now.

There's an early bird that tickets are on sale if you get them sooner.

Um so that's gonna be a fun time as well.

And coming up in January, I know it's a little far off, but plant the seed now is our casino night.

Last year was our first one, so we're expecting it to be even bigger this year, so stay tuned for that.

And we had um our night in Italy on October 25th.

It was also the night of the witches dance, so we were a little nervous, but we had over 250 people.

Um it was a packed house.

We had lots of donations from our own Pias, Mazaros.

Um, I know I'm gonna forget some things, but we did a wine ring toss and raffles and all that good stuff, and it was a blast.

So put it on your calendar for next year.

It will not be on the same night as the witches dance.

Thank you.

Okay, who is next?

Yes.

Good evening.

My name is Please use this card.

I live at 5817 21st Avenue South.

And from my backyard, there's an increasing number of air traffic.

And I think it would be good to deal with the case.

Excuse me.

Could you use the microphone?

Because we're being recorded.

Thank you.

Okay.

Deal with that situation at its lowest level.

So now is an opportune time to address it, perhaps.

When I look up, I see planes that are about three or four hundred feet in my estimation.

I say that because I can see the yen numbers and clear markings.

And windows.

No one's waving yet, but they're up there.

This air traffic consists of a Legion Air, police helicopters, Coast Guard helicopters, private helicopters, Coast Guard aircraft, it's a jet prop.

And uh fixed wing or small aircraft into Alfred Wood Airport.

Lately, there seems to be Air Force jets up there running doing a practice run.

So we have a lot of congestion going on up there.

I've named seven.

Now it's likely that four of these six entities that I've named are flying on what you call visual flight rules, C and B seen.

And if weather comes in suddenly, can't they can't see each other?

So this sets a stage for uh potential very dangerous situation, a helicopter going into an area, whatever.

We hope that doesn't happen.

But when you talk about contingency planning, you have to say what's likely to happen, what could happen, and what have you what have you done?

Um Legion Air jets in particular fly when they're coming in on approach, they're in a fix fixed wing uh fixed configuration.

Very little maneuverability at that height, and they they can't maneuver they can't maneuver.

So if a helicopter comes, there's not too much they can do.

Um avoid.

And I even suspect that they may be shortcutting their designated route rather than going out over the water.

So aside from the noise and pollution concerns, I believe that this traffic concentration, given the altitude and the visual flight rules combined, sets the stage for something not nice to happen, poses significant safety risk in flight and on the ground throughout nice little wooden cottages.

Okay, so I would encourage uh the city council, fire, chief of police uh to meet with air traffic managers, airport managers, and uh see who's doing what, where, and if they are deviating.

Whoa, welcome up.

One more minute, second, I'll conclude.

Uh no the routes.

Also, FAA provides noise monitoring devices that we can put in our community uh for the wine of the jets.

That's no cost to us.

That could be a requested.

Uh and to the fire chief and police chief, everyone else.

I would I would suggest reaching out to mutual aid responders, conducting a tabletop exercise, crash fire rescue exercise, and uh risk management, contingency planning, and also um if you do that, you may be opening the door to federal funding because now you're inviting this whole group.

Already think of the senior center.

Thank you.

We've got a three-minute leader.

Alrighty, who's next?

Who's next?

Just Lenny.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, Lenny Gukenheimer, Delette Avenue South.

And um very, very pleased to see uh Justin Shay's presentation on the on the looper.

Um that will help quite a bit for all the events that we have where people are looking for places to park.

And I would just like to make one suggestion that on uh the streets that we have closed uh for for no parking for when we have our events that uh the sign that states the time that parking is prohibited, if there could be some information about this wonderful looper service and um the remote parking, a QR code that would say this is where remote parking is with uh trolley or looper service, I think uh, and just put that on the cone with that information about when the parking is prohibited, and that would help people when they come in.

They could see, oh, we got remote parking, and I can get to this event from there.

That's that would just make it be the cherry on the on the on the Sunday.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um Wolfgang.

Thank you, Mayor.

Council.

Wolfgang Dining or Gulfport Grassroots.

Um so I'm gonna just talk about what we did last month.

We had two cleanups.

We had a total of um 75 people at those cleanups, and we got collected 270 pounds of trash.

So that that's a lot of trash.

That's not going in to our bay.

This month, our cleanup is this coming Saturday, uh 9 a.m.

Uh at shelter uh number four.

We will have a raffle.

We have gift certificates from two uh local uh businesses, stormrunners tavern, and also uh the series uh pizza.

So uh we're excited about that.

This uh week's this uh Saturday's event also we will have uh capacity path relief.

That's a charitable organization from St.

Pete, and they will be um setting up a tent, and they'll be offering uh resilience tools and uh the coping strategies, stress uh coping uh strategies for the residents who are still upset and uh just suffering from the effects of the hurricane.

So that's a new deal for us, and we're very excited about that.

Um that's it.

And oh, and lastly, I was wondering, I couldn't tell on the map, but is the looper also going as far as our other over of 55 a community in Gulfport of Beachway Park, uh, in other words, up uh the 54th to um seventh of north uh south.

So that's my question for uh Justin or uh Dust City Management.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kieran uh Karen Schwartz, Delette Avenue South.

I also want to thank all the people who were involved in revamping the trolley service, the mapping, and and I have a couple of comments too.

For those street closures or one side of the street parking, it would be uh it would be nice if the map could also mention that that um for certain events like um Gecko Gecko Fest, that there's one side um one side of the street parking on 53rd, um that that would be a nice to have too.

Don't drive around aimlessly looking for parking when there's parking available off-site.

And I want to know if um kind of similar to Wolfgang's question, will it go to Trolley Market Square?

Um, you know, for any events that are happening north of 22nd Avenue, or um anyway.

That's my question, and kudos to everybody who is involved in developing that.

I've been I've been praying for it.

So very good.

Who's next?

Ingrid.

Ingrid Bredenberg, 56th Street South.

I just have some good news.

Um today at the at the close swap, uh Channel 13 came and did a nice little piece that'll be on TV next week.

And of course, it was an opportunity to talk about the market and Gulfport.

And uh I love the creepy crawl.

I learned about switch riches there as well.

I think it's such a great idea.

As I was walking out the door to this meeting tonight, Berkeley mentioned that Gulfport is featured in USA Today.

Maybe other people knew that.

And of course, he just had to point out that the pod heads had their picture there.

Um, and then oh my goodness, uh, this book, Gulfport Rising, Lynn Taylor.

Uh, maybe you all have seen it.

Um I just saw it today, and what beautiful art and what a beautiful story about our town and how we are returning and restoring ourselves, and it has the art of so many wonderful artists here, good writers, and you and and Wolfgang and all the good work that you've done with our cleanup.

And it has the art of so many wonderful artists here, good writers, and you and Wolfgang and all the good work that you've done with our cleanup.

So it's beautiful.

And again, the looper, all this is such good news.

So many wonderful things.

So good work, everybody.

Thank you.

Julie.

Julie Armstrong, 17th Avenue South.

I just wanted to thank the city for sponsoring Art in the Yard.

This past weekend was a great event.

It was very successful.

We filled the streets with people coming to buy from our artists.

We had over 40 houses, and we had over 70 artists participate this year.

And we couldn't have done it without the city support.

We couldn't have done it without Justin.

Especially, we could not have done it without Kristen.

So thank you, City.

Super.

Who's next for public comment?

Courtney.

Hello, hello, Courtney Pro Copis, 15th Avenue South.

Just to piggyback on what Julie said, thank you so much for the support for Art and the Art.

I had a thought as we were going over this.

Is there a process to request the looper for certain events, such as Art in the Yard or the community yard sale, or the Tuesday market, which I think would be a brilliant use of the looper.

And if there's a way to kind of make that a little more formal, I think right now it feels inaccessible and it feels like you gotta know someone to get it to happen.

And I it makes me a little uncomfortable.

So there's just more formality in how you would go about that procedure.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Who's next?

Yes, Bob.

Bob Canning, sure, bullboard.

I'm gonna talk about the drainage again, of course.

This is how it happens.

You're riding out of car, you in the car, your wind is down, your Walmart bag blows out and it falls into the street.

Then it rains, goes into the sewer, goes down a drain and ends up in the bag.

Then the tide comes in and pushes all your trash up onto the beach.

Wolfgang was just saying 270 pounds of trash.

The majority of it is comes from that.

I was down, I had lunch at O'Maddie's.

I see we're putting a drain back in.

Great idea.

I didn't see a baffle box.

I didn't see a flange that hooks to the baffle box for a check valve, which you can just install.

You don't have to install a check valve, but you can be there.

My problem is are we having a baffle box put there?

During public comment, it's not conversational.

You just tell me.

Oh, okay, okay.

Well, I didn't see a baffle box.

I didn't see a phalange, which you can temporarily put there.

So when if you do inside when we get this new plan that's coming out on November, we can see weather calls to have a pump there.

If it does, and we don't install this stuff because we uh baffle box wouldn't hurt because we catch a ton of trash that is going into the bay, and then Wolfgang's got to pick it up with his crew.

But I didn't see that being installed.

And I'd hate to do what we did at the beach.

Pay twice.

We've got it dug up.

It can be installed.

Why would we put something in there and they go, oh, well, we're gonna do this and have to dig it all back up and redo it again.

So while the ground's open, now's the time to do it, so we don't have to pay twice.

All right.

Thank you.

Anyone else before I close public comment, Mary?

Mary Hanrahan, 27th Avenue South.

Um, I just want to say I think of Gulfport as a warm, friendly, welcoming community, and all these great things we've heard so far this evening, and we've all been through a lot this year, and I think both locally and nationally.

I just don't feel that city code enforcement officers sending certified letters to residents about plants that are 13 inches tall when the limit is 12, or corner visibility issues just doesn't fit with the friendly neighborhood feel of the community.

I think the city resources can be better used to address more pressing issues.

I've heard there are houses that have been repaired without permits, or in some cases rented out to unsuspected attendants without proper remediation.

We should address such issues with our resources.

A short while ago we had a presentation on rain barrels.

Later this fall, I understand we have another presentation, which I think is on Florida friendly planting.

City resources could be used for teaching Florida friendly planting, native and zeerscaping landscaping, maybe with demonstration gardens at the library or at the senior center.

Spending employee time and expense and city expenses incurred by sending dozens of certified letters to residents is not the best use of our limited resources.

In the comprehensive plan, which we'll talk about more later, on pages 31 and 32, some of our policies are policy 125.

The city shall review its landscape requirements within the land development regulations where appropriate to ensure that the greatest extent possible native vegetation is used in required buffers, setbacks, and open spaces.

Policy 152 says the city shall continue to review and appropriately amend existing regulations to include provisions which will encourage the concept of zeascaping.

And 153 says the city the city shall encourage the public by education, demonstration, and example, how to select plant, select, plant, and maintain native plants and trees.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Laura.

Laura Oldaney, Ninth Avenue South.

I'm gonna build on that.

This didn't directly impact me, so I was waiting to see if any other resident brought it up.

So I'm gonna read.

First, has the city made any effort to inform property owners what in particular they are now enforcing more than in the past.

I admit to not being on the city's email list yet and not having been at one of the recent council meetings, but I also haven't seen or heard anything about it in conversation or in the GABA.

Secondly, given some of the examples I've heard about, the five days seems like too little time to expect someone to address this, especially with our elder with our older demographic here, and $500 a day seems especially excessive, like a really heavy fine.

Third, one of the examples I know about was of a homeowner near me being cited for native sea grapes.

She's been maintaining for eight years and only was issued a citation when um these trees got quite well established recently.

Um sea grapes are protected native species here in Florida and play a vital role in creating the healthy ecosystem we need to restore here as we prepare to navigate a rapidly changing climate.

This also seems very incongruent to me given the council's enthusiastic response to Dean Hayes' recent presentation on increasing our tree canopy in Gulfport.

This actually leads me to wonder how much disconnect there may be between our existing codes and comprehensive plan, which likely conform to the more conventional thinking that has brought us to where we are today and the codes and ordinances we actually need to make Gulfport truly prepared and resilient in the face of increased flooding and potentially stronger hurricanes.

I know Gulfport doesn't have the resources to bring on a sustainability or resilience manager like Clearwater or St.

Pete, but it could be worth while to convene even temporarily a task force of interested residents, something along the lines of the Charter Review Committee to work with the city on this.

And since this is my suggestion, if council is interested in pursuing this, I'd happily be part of it.

Thank you.

I think I saw one more hand go up.

No.

All right.

Yes.

MJ Kozlowski, 27th Avenue South.

Um, I was walking along a beach, and first I don't know if everybody knows, but AA and Al Non meet at Pavilion 6, and there are no lights.

Um I'm wondering what happened.

There used to be lights in that pavilion.

Okay, thank you.

Anyone else before I close public comment?

Seeing none, we're going to move along then.

Thank you, everybody, for all your thoughts.

And we will go to the city manager report.

No report, Mayor.

Okay.

No report, Mayor.

City Clerk Report.

Yes, Mayor.

I do have one uh report.

We will be conducting our e-comment training on November 17th.

And once training has been completed, we expect to move forward with the official once in December.

Okay.

All right.

So that will lead us to then council comments and reports, and we will do that in speaking order.

So we will start with Vice Mayor Thanos.

Okay.

So I have a number of things.

The tree committee.

I asked the city manager where we were with that, and he said he was conferring with Tom Nichols and Parks and probably Kendricks, figuring out how the committee would interact with the city.

So hopefully I'll know in a week or so what the plan is, and then we can start convening meetings, maybe have signups for the on the volunteer portal and start making something happen.

I'd like to know what's happening with Ian.

Okay, nobody wants to answer that.

I don't think that there's anything new to report, and I think as soon as there is, they'll tell you, but it's at the state attorney's office, is that correct?

Not yet.

Oh, well, then I think we need a report.

Thank you.

They are still investigating the case.

They've talked to Ian, they've in interviewed everyone.

I realize that folks think that everything happens overnight, but it doesn't actually.

We have to wait for other people's schedules sometimes.

Okay.

Um hopefully it'll happen soon.

I mean, it's just that I understand it's a process, but people I get comments all the time.

It's like, why in the world?

What's I mean, not that you don't have to investigate, the comments are what's to investigate.

Everybody knows what happened.

And so they're frustrated that it's taking so long.

And not to say that you shouldn't do your job properly.

And I understand that, but we do have our protocols.

Right.

And the the GABA actually did a really good investigation.

Um, however, we still have to do our investigation.

Okay.

And your best guess would be that that will take how much longer?

My understanding is the only thing left is to interview Ian.

So getting their schedules to align is has been a challenge.

And I think the can I think that we all became aware that there was confusion maybe two weeks ago when we thought, I know I did, that um at some point before this council ever came in, and we've been here for over six months now, that it had been turned over, and we thought that that was the city attorney who had turned it over to the uh state.

So it was kind of a aha moment for many of us when we found out that in fact the city attorney thought that the police had done it.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, anyway, so yeah, well, no, I'm just saying, because there, you know, people are are talking and wondering.

So best guess, just you you just have to get Ian.

What if Ian never wants to speak with you?

I I don't think that this is the time to actually have that discussion.

It's an open case.

Okay.

So I understand.

I believe that in the next couple of weeks we should be sending it to the state attorney's office for the their determination.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um another thing, um, besides the code enforcement letters that went out, which I've had a lot of comment, and I actually got a list of places and had them check with the police department to see if there was any accidents that were caused by these line-of-sight issues.

And in fact, there weren't any.

Um, so to me, I think we could have better use of our resources as well.

And also, I found out today that we've sent letters out to all the elevated houses that are in the flood zone, telling them that if they have any walls or um, you're not supposed to have any living spaces down there for sure, but even if they have walls that they've put up to make a room maybe for a studio or something, that if that wasn't in the original design of the house, and usually you know the houses have turned over multiple times since they were built, and people could have they probably wouldn't have been able to get a permit to put those walls in, but they might have put them in anyway, as we know people do.

Anyway, so the current owners are being told that they have to bring it back to how the house was built originally, or to make sure that the water will flow through and they've used all the correct um FEMA approved materials down there.

So just be aware that this is going to cause a lot of drama for a lot of people.

And um and it and it's causing a lot of confusion.

Um e-bikes.

I got a comment today about e-bikes in parks, that places where people are typically walking and a lot of us elderly people walking and with our dogs and stuff, and the e-bikes are just zipping past and and it's not good.

So I would like to propose that we not allow e-bikes in parks.

You know, they can park them outside and walk through and take a look and make it safer for everybody.

So I don't know if that's something that there's a consensus about or if you guys have heard anything about that.

You're asking no bikes and parks?

No bike, not no bikes, no e-bikes.

Oh because they drive fast.

Okay.

Okay.

Are we doing a consensus?

Yeah, I think she asked for consensus.

I've I've also had people talk about how they've fallen because of that.

So yes, I would be in agreement.

Um how do we stop people from writing an e-bike in a park?

The same way you would stop anybody doing anything that's not according to the rules.

You'd have to catch them or people would have to call the police if they see them.

But again, if you have a sign, it hopefully will remind people that they're not.

Huh?

Just asking to put a sign up?

Yeah.

Okay, so that you you're not supposed to do that.

Yep.

You can't put a sign up unless you have an ordinance to back it up.

Yeah, but I mean, again, it's sort of like litter.

You can put signs up that there's no littering.

If you don't catch the people littering, you can't do anything.

But by having a sign, the same as the no smoking, hopefully it'll prevent people from doing it.

Because it's not safe.

But we can't put up random signs.

I know.

Um I know.

I I would like to see e-bikes not be on our sidewalks and on our trails at all.

But it was my understanding that we being the city do not get to govern that, that that is overridden by the I'm not proposing it for sidewalks or trails, just parks that are city-owned parks.

So that would be things like the rec center, Wood Ibis Park, maybe Tomlinson if there's a problem there.

But I know Wood Ibis, it's a problem, and I know the recenter it's a problem.

And we can if I could, Mayor, let us look into that because of the comparison to bicycles, they're treated as bicycles and it's under state.

The state's talking about laws now.

Right.

Introducing bills to address e-bikes.

But before we the unintended consequence may be that you heard now banning bicycles, I have to make sure the definition is not inclusive that you're because if the state is identifying them as bicycles, then you ban an electric bike, you're banning all bicycles.

I don't know if that's the intent.

But let us look into that before you say let's go do this.

That's fine.

So I am I'm really with you on that.

And I've actually asked um Donovan Nickel to come speak to us at the next council meeting because he's uh representing uh with Ford Pinellas uh on bicycling.

And I think that years ago I asked, could we please define what is a scooter, what is an e-bike, what is uh, you know, and then I was and that never happened because I was told that the city didn't have any rights to monitor that.

So let's see what happens.

Our city manager can come back and inform us about and the other thing is that um I had a particular contractor mentioned some improvements that we could do to B SNA that's our um software that we use for permitting um that could make it much more streamlined that would take um less staff time, they wouldn't have to answer phone calls or emails and stuff, and faster for the contractors.

So I'm hoping that we've looked into those and maybe even have them come out and talk to us in in the department to see what else we can do, because maybe there's a lot of things that they could do more streamlined that either we didn't want because we're used to doing it a certain way, and maybe there's a better way, or it might be a little bit more money, or we just didn't think of it, and they were just doing the the bait most basic model of this the system.

But I think we should use it for whatever whatever we can get out of it, because the whole point was to streamline our system and make it more efficient, and we don't want to waste contractors' times or staff time on things that are simple and could be easily done in the portal.

And the other thing is that SALT, who came to my um town hall, they do after like at this stage of a hurricane recovery to help people who are still struggling to get back into their homes or to find services that they need.

And the permitting department was going to put out a letter so that they have a list of kind of what they do and who they are.

But just so you know that if somebody is struggling and needs help still, that they can either contact me or get one of these flyers from the permit department because they're looking to help wherever they can.

That's it.

All righty.

Councilmember Shaw.

Thank you.

First, I I want to mention that some folks have said that they have trouble hearing us.

And for those that aren't aware, we do have receivers and earbuds that you can contact the city clerk about in advance and utilize those while in the meeting here.

So if if that would be of assistance to you and you'd like to try that out, you know, please please contact the clerk's office.

We used to use them in the theater, and so I asked, do we have them here?

And they do.

So that's great.

Um I also wanted to mention uh about things going down the drain.

Um council member Early and myself are volunteering on with an adopted drain program.

And so please contact us if you're willing to adopt a drain in your neighborhood, because we'll we'll show you the map and get you set up and uh it's it's not hard, just you know, once in a while just make sure it's clear so we only have rain going down the drain, protect our waters, and help prevent flooding.

Um I have a whole list of all the wonderful things that have been happening.

You heard some of those, but I have some other things I want to get to first so I don't run out of time.

Uh I also want to mention that uh residents, Rebecca and Kelly in the Marina District, uh, shared a handwritten note from Heather and on our staff that she had sent to them after she visited their storm-damaged house.

Um we don't always get to hear about the very caring and human side of our staff, so I wanted to share that because it was beautiful.

They also wrote that they're rebuilding their dream home and said what makes it the dream home is the community.

And I thought that was beautiful as well.

So the topic that I really want to focus on right now is is relative to some of the things we heard about code enforcement tonight.

I wasn't sure there'd be any speakers about it, but I've been giving it a lot of thought because I too had a number of contacts and have been involved in that, especially in the past week.

Um I want to clearly state that I'm not criticizing staff or anybody that had anything to do with it.

I mean, if they're advised about something, they're required to act upon it.

My reason for addressing this topic is to consider the process and thus perhaps making it more effective.

Recently there's been, as you heard, uh a fair amount of upsets and confusion over receiving violation letters pertaining to the 25-foot visibility triangle and roadway visibility as described in our ordinances.

Folks received a first-class mail letter and a certified letter with legal language.

The letter gave varied days to comply or non-compliance could include a citation imposition of fines of up to 500 a day.

It also further stated the city that could uh result in in liens, etc.

Um were away and upon return had them in a panic.

So I propose that we review the process, especially regarding violations that have not been focused on in X number of years, and I state that because some of this this growth was was not recent growth.

Um if it was so recent, um it probably wouldn't have been a concern or a violation.

Uh so uh it I've been advised that we used to send courtesy letters, but that practice was discontinued.

So if we wouldn't consider the practice of an initial courtesy letter in this type of circumstance, again something that hasn't been acted upon in X period of time, then I propose we first review the letter.

In a letter, we understand that particular legal language is required.

However, I propose that we include additional language that is perhaps less formal, particularly a less firm way of encouraging people to call with questions or to discuss the time frame.

We're here to help, so why not convey that along with the required formal language?

I also propose that if a particular ordinance has not been focused on for X period of years, we draw a line in the yam draw a line in the sand, so to speak, by informing the community that it will be focused upon in X days and weeks in the future to allow those residents to respond to it prior to the commencement of violation letters.

I met with Heather and the director of the pro at the property at a property to help with the resident gain clarity regarding measurements and also due to their various types of plant material and palms.

Heather suggested that we could include the descriptive descriptive page titled fence regulations generally.

That's the name of it, as it explains the measurement requires with a diagram, most helpful.

I agree with her and propose that this must be uh should be included.

I also propose the information be included in the mailings that address addresses the different varieties of plantings in addition to the transplanting suggestion.

It would be helpful for residents to understand what to do with taller growth, growth such as Eureka palms, fish tail palms, clump palms, etc.

That may not obstruct visibility once low growth is cleared, for example.

It would help residents to know that pruning bushes rather than cutting them to two feet is an option.

So the bottom line is courtesy letter, utilize the draw line and the sand approach, make modifications to the process and letters along with providing information, and I don't know if I asked for a consensus at this time or under new business.

And can I just add something to that?

It's up to the mayor.

I I had asked if this is a state law or is this our law.

It's our ordinance.

It's our or it's our ordinance.

So we could amend it.

You could, but theoretically.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm not suggesting that we necessarily amend something that is a safety matter.

I'm talking more about informational and educating our residents so we don't have something that hasn't necessarily been focused on for a length of period of time.

And now we're going to, and then it causes a flurry of issues and frustrations and anger and all kinds of other types of emotions.

So just by changing the process and looking at some of these things, we can make a difference.

I think several of your suggestions for changing the process, which would get us the same result without the fear, uh, is really wise.

And I was really glad that you said that you had discussed it with Heather too, and that she was open to making some changes.

Yeah, so um, because I know we've all heard from a lot of people, and uh I would never I definitely want to keep the sight lines.

Um we have some really deadly ones in my opinion in town, but um I'm really think that it's really good because you kind of came up with a maybe uh a compromise on how we can both get uh everybody can get two different things accomplished.

But but also please re remember that there's been no accidents at these places.

Uh it only takes one, and if it's a death, it's one too many.

So I'm not sure if I still have a little bit more time.

Yeah, because we stole some.

Okay.

So we've had so many wonderful things happening in our commit uh in our community, and I'm not gonna have time to list them all, but um I I will write about them, but um I also want to say that I I think that the senior center foundation outdid themselves.

The night in Italy was amazing, and um and I have to say I didn't know what a switch was was, but when they asked me if I would do that, I said, sure, but what is it?

And it was wonderful.

It was so fun.

The kids were a delight.

And then I went over to the rec center, which was also fabulous.

I I I won't go to the last bell here, but um I'll write about it and you can catch up with it that way, perhaps.

Thank you.

I don't have much on my reports, but we did have a great Halloween party on our street on a block party, and I want to thank the city staff for getting us those barricades so we can shut the road down.

It was a lot of fun.

So, council member Shaw didn't mention the boomerangs.

That was the highlight of my week.

The boomerangs invited uh the mayor and our council to join their first day of practice in their first games, and I grew up on a baseball field.

It was amazing to go.

And they I think there's a couple people that asked about it.

It's Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday, and it's such fun.

So you can go watch or you can just join men and women.

It was co-ed.

And they do a lot for the community.

In fact, I got an email from uh Drexler, who here won, I think a spirit award, right?

And he just wanted to mention that he the boomerangs have partnered with JAX In and Out Cafe for donations for Thanksgiving Day for those less fortunate.

Monetary donations are accepted at Jackson and Out or the Boomerang's Venmo account, which I do have if someone wants that.

And I would consider um for all of us to read that.

I can send this out or put it on my on my page because I think it's a very good thing that they do.

JAX is amazing, and so is this group.

So is this group?

Last night in Fusion 49th, there was a presentation by Devin Deal, who is planning and data analyst manager for Pinela Sun Coast Transit Authority.

So on October 26th, the new plan came out, the new bus routes, right?

And it was very interesting.

So the federal government requires them to look at the routes every five years.

And what they came up with here when they started working on it is that Monday through Friday from 7 a.m.

to 9 a.m.

and 3 to 5 p.m.

We're the most busy, right?

And that makes sense before COVID.

After COVID, not so much.

So they've whittled down those bus routes and they've pushed them to Saturday and Sunday where they'll run all day, every day.

So if someone is a service uh worker, works down here, maybe in our downtown, they can get the bus to go home or they were not able to do that before.

But I will say that there was a couple people there who are unused to the new route, right?

F9436B, all of that, and they knew their route, and this gentleman was able to point them in the right direction to a place where they were very happy with the new route.

So I think it's great.

But if anyone here has faced something, maybe you take a regular bus.

Um you know the route, you know the place where you get on the bus, all of that, and it's no longer their website is uh chuckful.

You can say, This is what I did, and it will tell you what to do now, or you can let me know because I have this gentleman's phone number, which he will uh soon regret giving me, I'm sure.

Um that's all I had there.

Thank you.

So one of the things that I absolutely love about my community here is the number of volunteer groups.

You know what you want to get done, you take it on, you get it done, and you do it with volunteers.

So I heard four of them mentioned already today.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Here's the fifth.

At the last council meeting, I asked if I could get a couple people to help me to jump in on uh bice bicycle racks.

How many and where are they versus where do they need to be?

I immediately heard from Steve Bickford who's here tonight.

He uh took care of the downtown and waterfront area.

Karen Schwartz, she jumped in and took care of all the parks, and I took care of all the municipal buildings.

So what I found out, you know, in having a very short period of time here, we were able to, from those three different locations, we identified 131 uh bicycle racks.

Oh, excuse me.

I said it backwards.

We identified 44 bicycle racks, and assuming that you weren't with your kissing cousin and you wanted your bike separate from the next person's, I figured we had 131 spots for bicycles, okay.

What I also found was that because we have them in many different size shapes and colors, there's not a consistency that your eye can immediately look and see a bike rack.

I guess the theory earlier on was let them blend in.

We don't want them to jump out, but I think now we want them to jump out.

Of course, my goal all along has been to try and get them off the sidewalks so that people can walk through and wheelchairs can get through.

Um I in in looking and I took all the information that was given to me, and I would say this.

There's seven racks currently placed in places that make no sense and that we could you move them and into much more logical places.

Um I also think we probably need to purchase if we don't have in storage three larger or medium-sized racks.

I would like to think that we would paint them all blue so that everybody knows that consistent gallport blue color, that's a bike rack.

And so I'm asking right now my for a consensus if being that uh rather than a whole presentation when our meetings run so long, if I could just get a consensus that I could work with staff to relocate seven and add three additional.

Yes.

Yes.

Sounds good.

Second thing.

Been brought up by several people out there today.

So let's just to be clear.

So we started with you know, the big picture in stormwater we're gonna get at the next meeting.

The smaller picture, what can each one of us do?

That started with our rain barrel class, and that was a good success.

Our next class is November 20th.

It'll be at the neighborhood center.

They're gonna tell us how we don't have to have huge yards, I understand, in order to have rain bear um a rain garden in our yard.

So we're gonna learn that.

That's gonna be the University of Florida uh extension unit that's gonna come talk to us, and then I then the next class after that that is not scheduled yet, would be for uh Florida friendly plantings, um, which I think we'll get a little bit of that in the rain garden class as well.

Um third thing.

I went to um a meeting uh last week and I guess it was in Orlando, and um it's called emo, so it's for newly elected officers, and there's no way in 10 minutes that I can tell you.

Class starts at 7:30 in the morning and ends at 4:30 at night, okay, two days in a row.

There is so much stuff, but there are two key things that I wanted to share with my other council members, no surprise.

Um that I got from here.

First thing you want to I want to tell you is that Senate Bill 180.

Okay, nobody's happy about it.

All the discussion I heard from the attorneys and the other attendees and everybody else was there that they do expect that there will be some alterations uh at the next uh session.

Umbody knows exactly what's gonna happen.

Some people want it to be tougher, some people want it to be weaker.

You know, when that bill was originated, it was with the idea of let's not do like we did after I think it was Hurricane Andrew when it was so hard for Floridians to rebuild.

Let's make it easier for Floridians to rebuild by not allowing additional restrictions.

That's where it started, and it just kind of went off the rails and has made it very difficult for cities to do have much control over anything, including um changes in their comp plans.

So that's one thing I want to tell you.

The other thing had to do with property taxes, property taxes, property taxes.

There's already eight bills that are gonna be presented at the next session, and they are all over the board, all over the board.

Some people want taxes, some people don't want taxes.

The question is, is if there were to be changes, would it affect only homesteaded properties, or would it affect all properties?

It's really, really rough out there, and apparently our governor's not happy with the whole thing.

Um just to give an idea, okay.

Our budget this year, our balance budget, and I say that because I did attend a council meeting where they passed a budget with 11.9 million dollar deficit in our area, okay.

So our balance budget is approximately give or take, 22 million dollars, okay.

Our taxes, we will collect approximately seven million dollars in taxes this year, okay.

Our public safety, which would be our fire and our police, is our budget for that for next year, is 8.8 million dollars.

So I just want to help kind of put it in context for you.

That when everyone says, oh, yeah, let's get rid of property taxes, can't wait to get rid of property taxes.

Our property taxes that we're gonna collect are about seven million of a 22 million dollar budget.

Our property taxes barely cover or will not cover the cost of both police and fire.

There's people expecting that fire may not um get funded anymore.

It might be pay as you go.

Okay.

There's people that are expecting that EMS might not survive any of these cuts.

You need help.

You call the ambulance, by the way, an ambulance riding right now, is about $800.

I just looked at my property, my Gulfport property tax bill, $423 for the year.

I could not have, I'm not talking my county taxes, I'm talking about my city, and I'm encouraging every one of you to look and see what you pay in taxes to our city.

Okay.

Mine's 423 dollars.

It went up 3.4% from last year.

I couldn't have paid somebody 423 to take all the trash off of my yard after Milton.

So just keep it in perspective.

Um I made it, I guess.

Thank you.

All righty.

Yep.

Let me get to had to flip my screen back here.

All right, so that would lead us to um consent, please.

Item 7A, consider approval of meeting minutes from meeting held October 21st, 2025.

Item 7B, resolution number 2025-91, a resolution of the city of Gulfport, Florida, establishing the date of the 2026 municipal general election as Tuesday, March 10th, 2026, providing authorization to the city manager to enter into a contract with the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections to conduct the 2026 municipal general election and providing for an effective date.

And then item 7C, resolution number 2025-92.

A resolution of the City Council of the City of Gulfport authorizing the purchase and installation of a 20-foot by 20-foot steel shelter at Veterans Memorial Park, providing for funding from the Armed Forces Families Donation Foundation donation and providing for an effective date.

Motion to approve.

Second.

All in favor?

Say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Passes unanimously.

Okay.

Alrighty.

So ordinances, please.

Ma'am.

Item A, Ordinance 2025-02, second reading, an ordinance of the City of Gulfport, Florida, amending the City of Gulfport Comprehensive Plan pursuant to the evaluation and appraisal process of Section 163.3191, Florida statutes and the amendment process of Section 163.3184, Florida statutes and adopting new goals, objectives, and policies and maps as presented here here and below, providing for severality and for providing for an effective date.

Motion to approve.

Second.

City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor.

Mayor, I'd like to invite Linda Fisher of Forward Pranovis, who's been working with us to amend our comp plan with Mr.

Taylor.

And she has a short presentation.

Thank you, Linda.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Thank you.

It's good to be here as always.

And we're just gonna get the PowerPoint up.

Um we are almost to the end of the process.

Thank you.

All right.

Um I can't see from here.

Can you put it in slideshow?

Sorry.

Technical difficulties, please stand by.

Thank you.

There you go.

Now you can just use that.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Okay.

So uh just to give you a quick recap of where we've been.

Um I'm so sorry.

Push down.

I am, and it's not what am I doing wrong?

At the top, it might be locked.

Um maybe I'll just ask you to advance it.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right.

Appreciate it.

Team effort.

Uh so just a recap of where we've been so far.

Um, the uh planning and zoning board is the city's local planning agency recommended approval of the draft on June 4th.

And on June 17th, you held your first reading and transmitted the draft plan to the state for their review.

Next slide, please.

Uh the primary state agency that reviews comprehensive plans is the Florida Department of Commerce, also known as Florida Commerce.

Um, there are also a handful of state and regional agencies that uh have the option to review the plan.

The review period takes 60 days.

At the end of it, Florida Commerce sends what's called an objections recommendations and comments report or orc report.

Next, please.

Uh the city received their orc report on August 25th, and they uh Florida Commerce had one objection that we need to address.

Uh there's a requirement in statute that every comprehensive plan needs to include two planning periods.

One has to be at least 10 years and one has to be at least 20.

And the reason that's included is that the comprehensive planning process is really designed for growing cities.

Um, if you're a fast growing city, you might be significantly larger at the 20-year mark compared to the 10-year mark.

Now, for a stable community like Gulfport, um, that's probably not going to be the case.

You're planning for long-term continuity and continuation of your quality of life.

But that requirement still applies.

Next, please.

Uh, and we did actually address it in the plan that we submitted.

Um, we established two planning horizons, one ending in 2035 and one in 2050.

Um, but we only stated that in the data and analysis, which is an unadopted appendix.

Uh, and I've actually done it that way for years with many plans, and I've never gotten an objection before.

Um, but this time they stated that they want to see it adopted into the actual policies.

Uh, and fortunately, that's an easy fix.

Next, please.

Uh so now in your updated draft, we have an objective and policies in the future land use element, establishing the two planning horizons.

Next, please.

And in each of the other elements, we refer back to those future land use policies, and we state that all policies throughout the plan are in effect for both of those planning horizons unless stated otherwise.

This doesn't change anything about your comprehensive plan.

We're really just checking a box that honestly I thought we had checked already.

Just different reviewers sometimes have different interpretations.

Next, please.

So as part of their objection, they also want us to include a planning horizon on the future land use and future transportation maps.

So I added that as well.

And that was the extent of the state's comments.

Next, please.

And that's typical.

And neither of them had any comments.

They just thanked us for the submittal.

Next, please.

So now we are at the very last steps in the process.

Next, please.

If you vote to adopt the plan, it will go back to the state for a final review.

They have 45 days.

If any citizen wants to challenge the plan, they can do that in the next 30 days.

So assuming there's no challenge, once the state gives their final approval, then your new plan takes effect.

And if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

Okay, we can go in speaking order.

So uh um so I have a bunch of stuff that I found, and I'm just curious.

Like there was um under policy 1.18, it says the sh city shall restrict the development of taller buildings to the R4 district.

But on the map before it, it it it has residential high, residential medium, but it doesn't say R4.

So if that was a little confusing.

And I'm just curious, it it says the density and intensity standards are the maximum allowed for each category and shall not exceed the corresponding city countywide map.

So if it was 30 units per acre, I think if I looked at the residential high, which I assume is the right one.

Um what happens if you have like I'm just thinking of Seaside Villas, it's gonna build something big.

I don't know how many acres they are, but they had 121 units there already, and I know they're planning to build that many, but I don't know if that's more than 30 per acre, because I don't know how many acres that site is.

So I my question is what takes precedence?

So 30 per acre, being able to build what they built before.

Well, what they have, what they are allowed to build, what they had before.

Regardless of if it if it's more than 30 per acre.

If there was a clean slate, then they would apply these regulations.

So I was just curious which which which applied.

Okay, and then I love not being able to increase density in high hazard areas.

And I see that we have a lot of planning to do because it's of course on practically every page.

Um and then in the housing element, policy 1.2.2.

We're taking and this is in red.

So I'm assuming, and this could be wrong, the things in blue were things that either you put in or the state required, and the things in red that were taking out were things that the city was doing.

Is that correct?

Things that are outdated or um any changes that need to be made will be struck there in red.

Okay.

So what we took out, a city designee shall be the liaison between program administrators, rental unit owners, and program participants.

Coordination efforts shall include promotion of programs, monitoring the minimum extension of the requirements, and this was to provide affordable housing information.

So I'm so I don't know why we're taking that out.

So that was brought to our attention by the planning and zoning board that that is not a program that the city has currently.

No, we don't, but but it was in there and we should have it, and be nice to have.

I would prefer we didn't take it out.

If it's in your comprehensive plan and it's an adopted policy, you are committing to have it.

It doesn't mean that you can't have it if it's not in the comprehensive plan.

Um, but it's that's a policy decision on the part of the city.

Okay.

So what happens if you don't do something that's in your comprehensive plan?

Um a citizen could legally challenge you.

Okay, so we should have been doing that for many years, apparently.

Um we also took out something about um setting up an annual replacement program of five percent of the existing water meters.

Now I know we just got new water meters.

I'm wondering how long does a typical new water meter last, and should we keep something in here?

Because you know how it is.

As soon as you finish uh buying all new ones, you gotta start buying replacing the old ones.

So I'm just wondering how long do they last and should we have something in here about that?

Well, I think you're covered because you have the plan to replace five percent.

This is when it was So it's taking it out.

It's taking it out because you're you're now in a system where you have before it was to address when you did it piecemeal.

You now did it all in one swipe.

Uh yes, but we're gonna have to keep replacing I mean it's kind of like painting the Golden Gate Bridge.

You finish and then you start again.

Sure.

Uh so again, my the information that I was given was that that five percent per year program has largely completed, and while it's still water meter replacements are still happening, it's not on that strict schedule.

But again, how long is it water meter?

Are current water meters meant to last?

15 years.

Okay, so we can put it in the next way.

Okay.

Um then we took out on the next page 27.

The city shall adopt an updated water supply facilities work plan, a minimum of 10 years, 18 months after, and I know that we get our water from Southwest um Florida water management through St.

You get it from Tampa Bay water through St.

Okay, okay.

So did we take this out because it had the wrong per people?

Or because it seems like we should have a plan about our water supply.

So uh originally this chart um was uh the state wanted to see this detailed table in everybody's goals, objectives, and policies.

Uh they're no longer requiring that.

You can adopt it by reference.

Uh and so it it's it's actually in your data and analysis, which is more appropriate to where it belongs for that level of detail.

So there is a policy that uh somewhere else that addresses that.

Yes.

Okay, all right.

And and this table is still there, it's just in a different place.

I did see that, yeah, actually.

Oh, and then on our capital improvement program, you know, we crossed out all our old stuff, and then there's a new blue one.

But I have a question about there's hit a marina multi-purpose community building design and construction, and it's for 27, 28, and 28, 29, 350,000.

We had moved that up.

That just not been updated.

That's a five-year one.

It's a five year old.

We don't have a plan to build a marine of the city.

No, we don't.

You built so we should take that out.

Sure.

You've already taken it out probably.

You'll take you don't have to fund it.

It was in a five-year snapshot when we started this, the process.

We can replace it.

I mean, that's that's not a problem.

Okay.

Can I ask for some direction with that?

Sure.

Thank you.

That was it.

Thank you.

Council Member Shaw.

Thank you for all your work.

I know it was a lot.

Between going through each pace, asking questions and hearing that.

I have no further questions.

Thank you.

I have no further questions either.

Thank you.

I ask them for everybody.

I don't either.

Thank you.

Thank you for staying on top of this and being patient with the state.

I understand that that's not all that when the state told us what they want it and we did it, it's not normal that they send it back.

But uh in some of the meetings I've been attending, I've heard quite a few um mayors and council people from other cities say that uh the state sent it back to them as well.

Yeah, there are trends, and it used to be extremely strict.

You'd get a book back.

And then there was a streamlining in 2011, and things got very, very uh more relaxed, and now the pendulum is swinging a little bit back the other way.

But we'll we will do what they tell us to do.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Mayor, if I could once you adopt these changes and accept you can then in the future make changes to your comp plan.

I understand that right.

Yeah.

And what we'd like to do is now, and Ms.

Fisher, and we've discussed it, is to bring you forth in the first of December when you'll start the window, is the opportunity to start to re distart the discussion on accessory dwelling units.

Yes.

But do we have to wait for it to go through that next 60-day process?

No, we're gonna start on this.

I believe that's the first meeting in December.

Amanda.

Yeah.

Right.

So now that if we pass this tonight, then the state has 45 days to say yep, they put in exact verbiage the way we wanted it.

Then when it comes back to us, it's an RCOMP plan and we can start making changes, which we've not been able to do for the last nine months or so.

Correct.

Okay.

Good.

Thank you.

Super.

Any other questions?

No?

Alrighty.

Thank you.

Um any public comment on this issue?

Mary.

Sorry about that.

I got to read this report.

It was so much fun.

And I had some of the questions in April brought up some of those.

And I would have liked us to have a city disagree for affordable housing.

Um I had a question about the 5% of the meters, and that's good.

Um page 29.

Um policy 5.3 is identical to uh 4.4 on page 27.

I would hazard a guess that's a copy paste, but I don't want to make that, but that might be something you might want to look at.

And maybe you can have a copy of the problems.

Um, and then the capital improvements table.

I was thoroughly confused by that.

I brought up the 2425 and the 2526 budget and try to figure out which items from those budgets went into this table that was in this document, which is our adopted plan.

And I couldn't figure it out.

And it did have the marina stuff in there, which we've agreed we're not gonna do, and I feel shouldn't be in our adopted plan.

So I was interested to know how we decided what to put in that table, what whether there was a criteria that I failed to detect in there or or what exactly was going on.

But it was fun to read.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I look forward to being able to make changes to it depending on what it happens with SB 180, because I'm very nervous about what they're gonna do with that.

Thank you.

Anyone else for public comment?

Yes, Courtney.

Uh Courtney Prokoppus, 15th Avenue South.

Um, thank you, Linda Fisher, for all of your diligent work putting that together and for counsel for reviewing that.

Um I heard something interesting uh that didn't quite jive with what I've heard in the past, which is that the comprehensive plan doesn't need to be followed.

I believe that um city manager said that after the resiliency workshop or during the resiliency workshop back in May, that the comprehensive plan was just a mere suggestion, but from Linda Fisher, who seems to be um quite diligent about this, had a different thing to say.

So I just urge council to to synthesize that.

Uh big shout out for the ADA compliant closed caption searchable feature.

You can just go ahead and type in there, comprehensive plan.

It's gonna pull it all up very quick, very easy to find.

Go right to that video, rewatch it, and just you know, sit with that.

Thank you.

Anybody else for public comment?

All right, seeing none.

Vice Mayor Thanos?

Yes, Councilmember Shaw?

Yes.

Councilmember Jackson?

Yes.

Councilmember Early?

Yes, Mayor Love.

Yes.

Passes Ordinance number 2025-12, first reading, an ordinance of the city of Gulfport, Florida, submitting the following proposed amendments to the city charter to the electors of the city for approval.

An amendment to section 103, extraterritorial prowers.

Uh amendment to section 302 terms, an amendment to section 305 provisions, an amendment to section 306, vacancies, a filling of vacancies, establishing section 306.1, removal from office, and amendment to section 309 ordinances and resolutions in general, an amendment to section 314 charter amendment, and amendment to section 402, appointment, qualifications, removal, compensation, and amendment to section 501 election, special election definition of qualified elector and providing for an effective date.

Motion to approve?

A second.

Sorry.

All right, so um city attorney, um, we've got quite a few sections, and I'm looking to you for a little guidance on how you think.

Um I'm thinking that uh will you read one section at a time?

Is it possible that we read one section at a time?

And then in speaking order, we say if we'd like to.

I think what we're trying to do is accomplish two things.

Would we like to see this advanced to referendum?

And are we comfortable with what it says?

So there's kind of two issues.

Would we like to advance it to the referendum?

And do we like again we're not going to see the technical questions, but rather the intent of what we're trying to do?

Mayor, after the last meeting, I went back and made uh some of the changes, but I want obviously council has to be comfortable with what the changes are.

This is the charter.

There might be provisions that you decide you want to do by ordinance instead of charter, also, because remember it's difficult to change the charter, and the charter is the Constitution as opposed to the areas that I get concerned about is when you're putting procedures in your charter as opposed to policy.

Um I think we'll get to that when we talk about 305, 306, and 306.1.

Um, if you want, I can go forward with each section and discuss with you what we did uh and make sure I mean some of these should go relatively quickly in that you have already discussed it and you didn't have problems with them.

I think when we get to the 305, 306, that might be the ones that you really look at.

Um if that's okay, uh mayor, then we could go right to 103, uh, which just basically talks about real property um leases reduced from 30 years to five years, having a specific monetary amount for the lease to be at fair market value, uh, and how to determine that through an appraiser.

Uh the second part of 103 has upon approval of referendum, um, any kind of uh property that has been disposed of will be uh recorded by an updated deed.

These will actually be two separate questions if the council approves them because they deal with two separate issues.

And as you know, we have a 75-word maximum, and we try to make these as clear as possible.

So sometimes if you combine them, it's not clear.

So we would do these two separately, the first one and then the second one.

I don't know if council has any questions on this section.

Um I would think the second part of it about having, which I agree with about once we sell a property, um, that they're responsible for um the deed, but that we could put in the contracts when we sell.

You are correct, Vice Mayor.

That would be one that if you ask my opinion, uh I would do that by ordinance as opposed to by charter, because again, it's just a procedure and a procedural aspect.

Um I would agree with you that I would lead limit it to the first question and not the second one.

And I don't know how council feels about that.

Well, that certainly fits in with what you just said that we should be looking at policy, not procedure.

Uh, and and leave uh procedure to ordinance.

So with council's approval, we will do that.

Um, and what we will create is we'll draft an ordinance with these uh changes, should you pick any other ones.

Okay.

302 is the term provision uh that talks about both the mayor and council members shall be elected for a three-year term.

So that's an increase from a uh two-year term.

And we also have term limits and shall be limited to two consecutive terms.

Any member of council who has reached the maximum term for their ward seat must be out of office for a minimum of two years prior to the time of qualifying for a subsequent election.

I know um I spoke to uh vice mayor beforehand and council member Shaw, and I think we may want to add to this that the exception to that two-year term is if you're running for mayor.

For a different office.

Right, for a different office.

Because mayor could run for a council seat, too.

For a different office.

And that and that provision wasn't in there.

This is first reading, obviously, we can make changes before second reading.

If council agrees with that.

What we're trying to do is not preclude a sitting council member from running for mayor, um, especially if you have experienced people when you're talking about term limitations.

Or the mayor running for counsel.

Right.

If you're okay with that, I will make that change.

So I'm gonna say again, I I'm okay with this advancing, and I'm okay with the change that you just suggested.

But um, one more time I will say that I think when it comes to the mayor, that we should allow the mayor to have three terms.

And I'm going back to the fact that our last mayor was up here for 16 years.

Our mayor before that exceeded 20 years, I believe.

And also when you're, for example, I'll use the stormwater.

That stormwater project, it was a 10-year project.

Every time that you have a switch and a change up in council, if you don't have the continuity, a program that maybe and for example, let's say that our stormwater project or a senior center uh project might be spread out over 10 years.

You need to have content more to continuity.

So that's just my feeling.

And if you all don't agree, I'm I'm not I'm okay with it.

But I would like to see six years for council and up to nine years for mayor.

I also think the three-year terms are long.

And as somebody like in my age demographic, running for a three-year term would probably be difficult.

Oh, okay.

So you're you're not responding to what I said.

You're responding to the fact that whereas it's two years now, you might prefer to see it stay two years instead of three.

Okay.

All right.

Having run several times now.

Um running every two years, in my opinion, is a waste of resources and time, and that you're just getting to know what you're doing at three years.

So making it two years is for in my opinion, counterproductive.

So as I stated before, I did a whole research on every city in the county and beyond.

And two years is considered to be very archaic, and and the majority is three and four years.

And I so I I agree to the three years.

Um as to the number of terms, if one is going to be three terms, then I believe the other should be three terms.

Um as far as continuity, I think just the fact that we have four new council members on this council proves that m continuity it can be maintained, and particularly because you have continuity with the staff as well.

So I say if we're going to change it to three terms, then all should be three terms, and again, I agree with the the three-year terms.

Okay, because of the research.

If one's three year three terms, the other should be.

Okay, so there's two on that.

Is there a third on the three on the three terms?

That's what I'm trying to get there.

Well, do you have some I'm she wants a two year terms?

She wants two years, right?

Okay, that's a different issue.

Yeah.

Yes.

So you're saying three.

Yes.

For mayor, three years, three terms for council two years, three terms.

No, three years.

Okay.

I'm great with that.

I'm great with that.

And that goes with the research project I did as well.

And it's and and as I've gone to Florida League of Cities and the conferences and the educations, and I've gone to Suncoast League of Cities.

That that seems to be very common.

In our own experience, I think.

Right.

Sitting here, it's almost that speaks well.

Yes, right.

So three.

For our staff and for continuation and continuity.

So will you summarize what I think make sure we're all on the same page on what we just said here?

What we have done, at least from what I can hear, is that we have everybody has the three-year term for and up to three consecutive terms.

So it's a total of nine years.

Uh, and then we're going to allow that if you want to run for a different seat office, like the vice mayor's term office, then we will um you will not have that two-year prohibition.

I excuse me, I do have a question about that though.

I mean, how is that going to work?

Because if you have a council member that wants to run for mayor, that makes sense because it's it's it's a consequential move.

They've gotten the experience as a council member, and now they're a mayor.

But now, does that open it up for them to quit keep switching back and forth?

I mean, somehow that's not fitting.

You're right.

Somehow it needs to stop.

Like with the council going to mayor, not running or then back and forth, back and forth.

Maybe to instead of to hold to run for a different office, to hold a different office, and that would limit you to the terms of that office.

So you could theoretically be nine years on city council and nine years mayor.

So you could be council member for nine years, and then you could be mayor for nine years.

So you could be eighteen years.

But you couldn't then run for city council again and run another.

Be exhausted.

No, because you need to do two years of the year.

Yeah, two offices.

Yeah.

Is that what everybody wants?

I'll I'll try to craft that later.

Yeah, and because not, I mean, not everybody is going to wait their full nine years before they run for mayor or or vice versa.

I mean, usually it's not.

You're right.

Is that okay with everyone?

I'll try to craft that language.

Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Starting in Section 305, and just so everyone is aware, what I did is we have 305, which is prohibitions, we have 306, which is vacancies, and then we have 306.1, which is removal from office.

And I'll tell you why it's written this way.

So what was brought forward at the last meeting, I believe council was talking about the ability to reprimand, sanction, or suspend another council member as a as a separate act.

And what this under Prohibitions, number one, we get rid of the section that is of no value, guilty of a second degree misdemeanor.

And what we added is the City Council may by three-fourths vote of its members reprimand, sanction or suspend for a period not to exceed 60 days a council member from office for cause, and cause for this charter section is defined as including Badon limiting violations of law, ethical misconduct, or dereliction of duty.

This section just allows for that action of up to 60 days, period.

It's a standalone, which I believe it needs to be a standalone.

If you want me to remove it from this section, I can do that, maybe make a 305.1 if that's what you're comfortable with, but it needs to be a standalone from anything else, because as we talk about the other sections, they all have different um uh criteria and actions.

So for this, if they voted for you, you know, to be reprimanded, for instance, for 60 days, you wouldn't have recourse to a magistrate.

This would just be That is correct.

Okay.

Just to make sure that saying that.

Yeah.

And it doesn't say whether it's with or without pay.

Well that's up to you all to tell me.

I mean, would we put that in the ordinance or would we decide that depending on when we do it?

Um we could do, okay, so we could add to the ordinance uh that pursuant to this section, uh, for example, uh council will upon uh approving this determine whether it is with or without pay.

I would rather not again put that in here, and in fact, I'll throw it out there.

I I don't have a problem removing this completely from the charter and putting it as an ordinance.

And I'll tell you why.

Um this is something that I think is uh a council uh prerogative, and it's either should be something that you adopt either in your policies or procedures or by ordinance.

I would have nothing wrong with you doing it in your policies and procedures that we do at the beginning.

This makes sense in my opinion, to be put there.

I I I would agree with that.

Plus, it's less things to make a referendum over.

I and I think just the removal of that archaic language should be the referendum question.

That allows you to do what you want to do and us to um adopt those procedures that you're comfortable with, and frankly, we haven't done it before.

Something could come up while you're doing it, that you'll say, oh yeah, now we need to make sure that this is in there.

So I I agree.

I think it should be in our um rules for the for the council.

So what we're suggesting then is that we would still remove the statement, any council member violating the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a second degree misdemeanor.

Yes.

We're gonna take that out.

So that would have to go to referendum to be taken out.

And then what we would do, I guess when if and when there's a new council in April or May.

Okay.

We can amend your policies and procedures.

Okay, amend the policies and procedures.

So if we were going to amend the policies and procedures for this three-fourths vote to suspend somebody, if we uh thought that they had violate violations of law, ethical misconduct, or dereliction of duty, then it's my understanding is during that 60 days is when they could then elect to have a hearing in front of the magistrate.

This would be currently intended no, Mayor, and I'll tell you why.

Um I only put the magistrate in for actual removal, as opposed to the same thing.

This is just suspension.

Okay, so then what that leads to me, uh what makes me want to question is I mean, I think violations are of law are pretty black and white, and I think dereliction of duty is pretty black and white, um, as spelled out in some of the other um things.

But ethical misconduct, can that not get gray sometimes?

It absolutely can.

And that's why I put the limitation of time period in here, that you all may think that a majority of you may say, well, that's unethical, you shouldn't have done that, and we either need to sanction you or reprimand you.

Um, but uh it's just I mean, that's how you all are addressing it versus having somebody determine the ethical violation, some other agency, like we talked about.

If we sent this to the Commission on Ethics, their decision will be after you're out of office.

So this is almost as if you all are determining something that is unethical, how you feel it should be handled.

Um that's why I rather have it in the rules of procedure, because you may determine that you're uncomfortable with it.

We may have to amend it, we may have to do many different things.

Uh I think it's almost in there as a warning versus an actual, hopefully we'll never have to use it, but it's more of a warning, hey, you know, we've adopted this, you know, let's not get into this, right?

Um so I think it's adding teeth to your own policies, but I I don't think of it as something that we need to uh necessarily have in an ordinance form or in the charter form.

Okay.

I uh and again I let's confirm that we have a consensus.

I know I'm comfortable with what you said and what Vice Mayor said as well, that we take and we make this part of our procedural rules and not part of our charter.

And then as the pendulum swings the other way, it would be easy for somebody else to take and make changes, another council might want to see.

Right.

And remember, Mayor, the reason I'm recommending that is that this is solely dealing with the area of sanctions, basically, um versus vacancy or removal.

Okay.

So if council is okay with then that, then we load go to Section 306.

Section 306 basically talks a little bit more about the office of a member of City Council shall become vacant on death, resignation, removal from office in any manner authorized by law or forfeiture of his or her office, such forfeiture to be declared by a majority vote of the remaining city council members.

Then we talk about what forfeiture of office.

Now, remember, one of the issues you were talking about is what do we do in certain circumstances that are not necessarily the removal process, but you by your actions you forfeited your position.

So we talk about lax in any time during the office, any qualifications for the office.

Well, that's you know you moved right.

That should be pretty straightforward.

Is convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude.

Again, that's something that a criminal court is handling.

It would be so rare for you to be up here, but should it happen?

You know, we want to be able to make sure that that can be uh taken care of.

And then this one, which you talked about, and this will amend kind of what you're doing at your meetings, which we we also discussed, fails to attend three consecutive regular meetings or a total of six regular meetings during a 12-month period, other than work sessions, unless such absence is excused by city council.

So we are going to have to adopt a formal procedure for you at the beginning of the meeting to determine whether that's an excused absence.

Which we could also put in our policies in the process.

Exactly, Vice Mayor, exactly.

So this is more of a uh I think is appropriate in the charter section, because this is really a forfeiture of office.

These are almost things that you do pro forma versus you actually doing something, you know, voting on sanctions or things like that.

So that that's why I think this should be in the charter section.

I'm comfortable with that.

I still on uh three where we talk about if somebody were to meet um miss three consecutive uh regular meetings or a total of six within a 12-minute period of time.

I think missing six meetings is excessive uh in a 12-month period of time, and I personally would like to see that shortened to four.

And how is counsel feel about that?

Four.

Yeah, I would go for that because six is it it is a lot.

I it's a quarter of the meetings.

Right.

So four in a twelve-month period.

That's fine.

Okay.

So I'll make that change.

The next section.

Are you okay with that?

Yes, okay.

The next section, Mayor, is another one where I want council to consider whether you want this in the charter or you want this as a policy.

Because what I'm when we started talking about this at the last meeting, remember we started getting into criteria of when are we going to accept resumes, when are we going to know?

We're giving ourselves, we have 30-day time period, but we're doing 15 days of resumes, 15 days.

You know, each situation could be different.

And I believe I don't remember who brought it up.

One of the one of the council members or mayor, you brought it up that you know, depending on the time of year that this happens, what if it's one of those times where we only have one meeting?

What if it's in you know, the holidays of of December, and you're gonna need to call a special meeting or whatever happens.

Frankly, what if we missed the 30-day time period, right?

What if somebody resigns the day after a meeting and we don't have a meeting for two weeks and they're supposed to have their resumes in in 15 days?

I would rather move this to your policies and procedures.

I think that's a way of dealing with it.

It's always, as we said, let's just say hypothetically, we had a situation that didn't meet that policy and procedure.

What I would recommend at whatever meeting we have is that the first thing you do is uh either amend or suspend that policy or procedure and then take your action because you're forced to do that because we can't meet the policy and procedure.

Um that is just an easier way of doing it versus this.

So I would request that you allow us to move this to your policies and procedures.

Then we would only have a total of one, two, three, four questions related to this section on referendum, because they'll have to be separate questions for each section, as I said before, uh, as opposed to this next one, which would make it a little more difficult.

So if council is okay with that, I will uh remove that section.

So the next one is three 306.1.

What I did is uh create a new establish a new section called removal from office.

This is um gives the opportunity for someone to be removed, as we said, council member may be removed from office by the city council for violations of the city charter or city council adopted rules if said violation by the affected council member is found after an independent hearing to be intentional, willful, flagrant, or continuous.

And then under two, we sub the independent hearing, which is the public hearing provisions that we talked about.

Um basically this allows a council member to request a public hearing by the uh special by a city appointed special magistrate, um, shall be an attorney licensed and good standing with State of Florida.

The hearing shall occur within 30 days of the request by the affected council member, the affected council member along with the remaining city council members or their appointed representative shall be allowed to present evidence and testimony.

The affected city council member may be represented by attorney at the hearing, and then the special magistrate will uh render a written opinion within seven days upon receipt of that opinion.

This council would then have to vote to accept the findings of the special magistrate.

Okay.

And uh in a perfect world, I would tell you to do this as part of your policies and procedures.

I know this is a very hot issue for you, but really it is a policy and procedure because remember this council is the one who's making that determination.

Nobody else can remove somebody other than the governor.

Um remove somebody from office other than this council.

So we've drafted because you have uh decided what the policy would be to do that.

I would prefer it in your policies and procedures.

If you want it in the charter, then that's the language we've incorporated.

Good luck making that into what 75 words or something really.

No, it's not what about just adding to the section one that the um the council member is entitled to a hearing and then have having the the hearing part in the policy.

And the other thing I would say, it says special magistrate shall be an attorney licensed and in good standing.

I I think it should be our regular city magistrate, not not an attorney who might do real estate law or something and knows nothing about this.

So my concern was again what if something happens to that person and we haven't appointed a new special magistrate.

I'm just thinking in my head.

We quickly appoint a new special magistrate so that we can have one.

Vice Mayor, I personally uh think your suggestion meets what I would normally suggest in this situation.

Yeah.

Uh then we would adopt probably the whole public hearing as one of your policies and procedures, because that's that's how we would do the hearing.

So if I'm understanding right, you're suggesting that we uh under Section 306.1 that we leave in number one.

And add what the Vice Mayor said.

Okay, which is entitled to a hearing.

You're entitled to a hearing.

Because it it already says after an independent hearing.

It's already in there.

I would just probably just clear clear up that.

But we could probably leave it that way, Mayor.

Yeah, okay.

And then we would just do that.

Um policies and procedures.

Yes, Mayor.

And and take out the sentence sent sentence about an attorney.

We will use our special magistrate.

I'll just clear that up.

If council is okay with that, we will make that change.

Yeah, yep, yep.

Yes.

Yep.

I'd say everybody is on board for that.

So then now the the uh changes that we're gonna talk about are relatively straightforward, simple.

Section 309 ordinance and resolutions in general.

Um we're removing this archaic book and putting according, we will um uh record them according to uh state law.

Um the same will be for the codification and publication.

Those are pretty straightforward.

Uh section 314, you were um doing the charter review instead of every 10 years, five years, um by in its entirety by a council appointed citizen committee.

Um I'm sorry, Mayor, if everybody's okay with those.

I I believe when we talked at the last meeting, everybody was okay with that.

Uh 402, which is the wait a minute.

What about section nine about this the city manager must live in the city?

That that's what the one I was gonna do.

That's the one I'm gonna talk about next.

Okay.

I thought you went to 402.

Okay.

That is 402.

That is 402.

It says 402 on the previous sheet.

Uh okay.

Mine says it under section 314.

Anyway.

Oh, I'm sorry.

It says, yeah, it's uh it's section nine should go to 402.

Okay.

Um and that's removing the that the city manager must live in the city.

Um I believe that one was everybody was comfortable with.

I mean, I would I personally would like them to live in the city, but I can understand that they might live somewhere if you're trying to find a new city manager, limiting making them move to Gulfport when Gulfport is getting progressively less expensive, and if they already have a house in Largo, for instance, you know, should they have to move for that?

But we should at least say Pinellas County, I think.

I think it's fine.

Well, some people said over the bridge is uh could be um a little less expensive.

I'm just telling you what you know people have talked about.

If I might interject, you also said that that's something that we can define in the contract.

Yes.

Absolutely.

And that gives me the conversation.

Yeah, right.

I I can see that.

I mean, you could honestly you could do the 10 mile, 15 mile, whatever with the contract, assuming the person is going to live, right?

Well, and especially if they live in Ohio right now, then you can be a little more specific about where they have to move to, as opposed to if they already have a house somewhere within a reasonable distance.

Exactly.

Okay.

Um and then the last one was just fixing the uh 501, which talks about um you having to determine when the election occurs in March.

That's already done by the supervisor of elections.

You can always call a special election if you so choose, uh, but certainly you're not determining their determining it.

So we remove that.

So that'll reduce so when you said we remove that, we're not going to advance 501.

Right.

Okay.

No.

It's gonna be written or advancing 501.

We have to do that.

You're just removing as determined by the council.

Oh, I thought we added that.

Oh no, Mayor, that was the first one.

Oh, that was there.

Okay.

Uh no, I read that but uh backwards.

Sorry about that.

So yeah, if that's what it said, then I do want it that added.

Um so those are the only uh sections that after we talked at the last meeting that we would uh bring forward and I will make the additional changes um so we have it clear for second reading.

Okay.

I will also at that time adopt uh I'll I'll work with Teresa and we'll get your policies and procedures updated.

But you can pass that at one.

That's your personal policies and procedures.

Okay, going back.

Um section 309?

Yes.

Was I I don't feel the need to correct that.

I think that's just kind of a clerical thing.

I mean, to advance that to referendum.

We could it is a clerical thing, and there is a provision that in your charter that allows you to clean up certain things without a uh uh referendum.

Um and this would probably uh apply to that section.

So if council is okay, then I will do that by ordinance.

Okay.

And then I would do honestly, I would do 309 and 501 that way.

Okay.

Excellent.

Excellent.

And that will reduce the number of questions.

I will prepare the questions.

You will have the ability to see them also.

Uh some of them are very artfully done.

So uh Okay.

And then I want to back up one more time to 402, because I think I'm on the outs on that.

And I can live with it, but I want to be sure I am.

I like the statement that was in here originally and has been removed.

At the time of appointment, the city manager need not be a resident of the city or state, but during the tenure of office, the city manager shall reside within the city unless, so we're putting an exception in, there could be an exception, unless otherwise super suspended um by an affirmative vote of four or more council members.

I liked that.

I do too.

Actually, we could, yeah, I'm good with that.

Okay, so leave that language.

So we're not saying that they have to live in in Gulfport, okay.

And of course the the point that um Ms.

Early brought up or um at the last one was that we certainly didn't want to limit our search just to Gulfport or to the immediate area.

So we want we want to be able to have a broader scope, but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that somebody live here, especially if they are coming from another state.

But if we just love this person, which is you know what's happened in the past, we wanted this person so bad that we said you know, we're willing to take a vote on this and we had a a four-count vote, then we could still move forward.

Right, because it says during the tenure of office, the city manager salaries.

Right.

So we're not even putting a time limit on it, right?

They may say it might take me six months or a year.

We don't think or they might say I've got um a child in high school at this in you know, in another county, and we're gonna finish that out, and then we'll move.

So there could be reasonable things that could do be, and those things could be renego could be negotiated in a contract.

Yeah, because it's you're you're interviewing people that you like, and so you the person you pick you.

We put it in.

Yeah, yeah.

I like that so we'll leave that in.

That will not be a referendum question.

Yeah, exactly.

It won't be a referendum because there won't be a change to it.

Okay.

So do we need to take any kind of vote on that tonight?

You need to take a vote on the whole ordinance after public comment.

Okay, yeah, I was remembering public comment, I was just checking.

All right.

So that was a whole lot of stuff.

I understand.

But we are open for public comment.

If you want to address anything that was set up here, just raise your hand and I'll call you up.

Jennifer Jennifer Dodge Premier Drive.

Um, so I just had two questions.

Um, number one is that um you were talking earlier about a 60-day suspension being a possibility for someone, um, but also that like if you miss three or more meetings, that that's like grounds for immediate removal.

So if you suspend someone for more than that many meetings, then is that suspension effectively setting them up to be immediately removed?

I would say no.

That's a good question.

I would say no, but we could probably clarify that in the rules of the point.

That's a good point.

Yeah, and there's three consecutive mill meetings you got in the right.

Right.

So if I'm six if you're suspended for 60 days, then you would miss it.

Yeah, I would say that would have to be exclusive.

Well, you're I mean, they're being forced to miss them, and it's for some cause that isn't necessarily like illness or whatever.

Um secondly, I was wondering if this is something that could be workshopped more than being at specifically at the council meeting.

So many people come and want to participate in like specific parts of the meeting, and then this taking so long to discuss, I feel like doesn't allow them to be so involved.

Like the last meeting was two hours worth of discussion of just this, and then I was the only one left at the end of the meeting to discuss the one thing that maybe somebody would want to talk about.

So um, if this could be something this big and important could be workshopped a couple more times before it's brought for presentation to everyone, I feel like that would be a more efficient use of everybody's time.

The only comment I would make so you know is we have a timing.

Sure.

Right.

That's the only reason why it's doing from 5 p.m.

to 6 p.m.

before the meeting starts, if everybody could just come and talk about it for an hour and then you have everything to be able to present to everybody and then you can have an extra meeting, so in between.

But we just so we I mean we're because when charter finished and doing everything, so we kind of yes, we we have to bring it in on the easy Mayor Mayor.

If I might yes, interject, please please.

Um just so you also know you may not be aware, but it was it was the public was welcome to every single one of the charter review committee meetings.

Exactly.

Now I'm a strong, don't take that to mean that I I I wasn't agreeing with workshops because I'm a very strong proponent of workshops.

But I just want to make sure everybody was aware that but if you're only interested in that, then you come just for that.

You know, so if I I really I'm I'm interested in you know what you guys all have to say, so I would come, maybe.

But if I'm not, then I don't want to sit here the whole time when really I really just want to talk about volleyball.

Like everything there might be something more for everyone else to be, you know, keeping up with their civic responsibility of being at the meeting, and we're just talking about a whole bunch of stuff that maybe somebody else is not interested in.

Exactly why I'm a proponent of workshops.

Yes, 100%.

Exactly.

Thank you.

Lenny, did you have a comment?

They were after a horse.

So if people work four o'clock true.

That could be changed.

Yeah.

Well, um I also want to follow along with that.

Uh you're still gonna have to sell this to the sit to the to the public, and the more exposure that you have, you're gonna have it really should have some kind of a citywide meeting that uh you have advertise very well, tell people what this is all about.

I bet you if you walk down the street and most people don't even know what a city charter is, or why they should care.

Um so I think there should be at least one more workshop just devoted to this and have it well publicized, and hopefully you could fill Hitman Theater.

Um I have it seems to me like some of the things that were talked about prohibitions are now gonna be maybe part of uh the rules and procedures rather than part of the uh the charter.

And one thing I think that council really needs to look at is uh a prohibition about contact with uh the employees, except for uh inquiry by the council people.

Um so what happens if a council person has a conversation with an employee and they're having a conversation, it's kind of going and there's a suggestion to do something.

Now, does that become um order to do something?

And you know, suppose that the employee says, Oh, that's a great idea, so they act on it, and then somebody else hears about this and they say, Oh, that city council person told so and so to do this.

So I think you really need to have some kind of a clarification that allows city council to members to be able to have some kind of communication with employees, and because this is happened um and actually in this meeting that's scenario just happened.

And because this is happened.

So please keep that in mind, because we don't want to have charges brought up against a council person for having an innocent conversation.

Anyone else on the charter referendum?

Seeing none Vice Mayor Thanos?

Yes.

Councilmember Shaw?

Yes.

Councilmember Jackson?

Yes.

Councilmember Early?

Yes.

Mayor Love.

Yes.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you for leading us through a difficult process there.

So we're going to move to um resolution on to resolution since eight twenty-one.

We are going to take a quick bathroom break.

And we will resume the meeting at eight thirty.

Oh, I can make slowly.

Like in February right now, we didn't have anything to do.

Well, I think we got that too.

All righty.

Thank you for being back in.

And so we're gonna move on to resolutions.

If you would please city clerk.

Resolution number 2025-93, a resolution of the city of Gulfport authorizing the city manager to enter into an agreement with Burgess Silver Civil LLC for the Gulfport Beach Restoration, providing for an associated budget budget amendment and providing for an effective date.

Motion to approve.

Second.

City manager.

Mr.

Nichols.

Mr.

Nichols.

Good evening, Mayor.

City Council.

After a long 10 months, we finally, as everybody is aware, we got our permit to rebuild the beach from the Army Corps of Engineers, and we're ready to move forward.

This project would be simply putting the beach back the way it was.

We will not be getting reimbursed from FEMA because it was not considered an engineered beach, so this will come out of uh reserves, the 811,000.

But the positive side of that is once we're done with this project, it will be an engineered beach.

And if something like this happened in the future, uh we would be eligible for FEMA reimbursement.

This is a simple three-phase project.

It's gonna be to put sheet piles in, as you can see where the purple line is to protect, and that's something new that'll protect if something like this happened again from erosion happening on the um the roadside as well as the sidewalk side on the casino.

It'll be to put the sand back and regrade everything back to the way it was.

And that's pretty much where we're at today.

We are, I did meet last week um with our landscape engineers and coastal engineers to put a proposal together to look at some hardening, some plantings that we can do.

Um I also met with uh a resident uh and she's here tonight, Priscilla Kidder, who's been awesome to work with and has got some great ideas as well.

And I've invited her to be involved in those meetings when we do um have a proposal from our coastal folks.

But this will be roughly uh three to four month project to get everything put back together, then we'll put the volleyball back, and um hopefully by let's say April, we should have it all back all back together.

Mayor, and we may have to bring the volley depending on the cost to rebuild the volleyball courts.

We may have to bring that back to you.

And that very well could too.

We all have a lot of the equipment we still have, but we've got to do all new electrical and some lighting and things of that nature.

So I heard you say that doing the sheet pilings was one phase, and that's the gonna be the first phase, I'm sure.

Okay.

And then I heard you say that um bringing in the sand.

But you're only showing one little section of our beach.

I thought we're restoring.

I can if you would.

Okay.

I just wanted to give a little picture of what we were doing at the main piece.

Keep going.

There's one that's that captures everything.

I think let's go back.

If you would please.

There's yeah.

There's there is one that showed the entire beach.

So then while she's doing that, so the second has to do bringing in the the sand and leveling, but what did you say the third phase was?

Was putting back uh the second phase is actually putting the concrete and the asphalt back in, rebuilding the road.

The concrete on the on the sidewalk on along the casino side.

Uh-huh.

And then the phase three will be adding some additional sand.

We don't think we're gonna need as much sand because we did bring in that uh when we did that temporary repair, that emergency repair.

Um and a lot of that sand is still uh there.

We just gotta regrade it out.

But for the volleyball court, don't we use a different level of sand?

There could be a final course that goes on top, but yeah.

Okay.

So then this plan that's gonna take three to four months, if I heard you right, that does not include any kind of s adding sand dunes, any kind of plantings, no resiliency at all.

Uh the resiliency on this phase would be the sheet piles, if you will, because that's gonna protect the roadway, it'll protect our infrastructure.

Um again, the biggest fate the biggest piece of this in my opinion is the um getting it engineered so we will be eligible if uh we had an unfortunate incident in the future.

But uh we are working on that.

I'll be bringing back a proposal uh once we do meet with our coastal engineers and our landscape architects to look at where we can do that.

I've also met with the resilience steps.

Add the resiliency steps.

Absolutely.

We also met with, I mean, I've met with Dr.

Haggood from Eckert College.

She's interested in in participating and helping uh Sarah Napier with the uh Sierra Club.

We've got a lot of moving pieces on this, and she we had done some and and even Dr.

Hagood's got a grant application in right now at Tamp Bay Estuary program for a project out there to get her students involved and help us with some resiliency ideas and getting the public involved in speaking order.

Did you have more to more to show us?

Very simple.

Um so what's new is gonna be these steel things.

So we didn't have those before.

What did we have there before?

Just sand.

That's why it all washed washed out from underneath the road had nothing in front of it.

No.

Okay.

And what are these steel things going to look like?

What's going to be above ground?

You won't see anything.

It'll all be underground with a concrete cap on top of it and then buried in sand.

But it will protect if it washes.

And what about the concrete cap?

Are you going to see that even?

Nope.

And then what about it's steel?

What about rusting?

No, they're coated.

They're coated, they're 40 to 50 year lifespan on the coated it's it's what they use on all seawalls.

So I have no problem really with that.

I think we should table the rest of it.

Because first of all, this is all coming out of reserves.

We're not getting repaid for any of this.

And I think I'd rather wait to regrade the sand till we have a plan for the resiliency and the plantings and everything else, because you're also going to have trucks and repair people coming in to look at the casino over time.

And so they'll be using the pad.

I mean, they'll be on long concrete pad.

They won't be messing with the page.

Yeah, but I would wait to I would wait to replace the pad or do anything to the pad till they're finished, because they could if you get heavy equipment in there, they could break it again.

That could be two years.

We have heavy equipment on that pad all the time.

Anyway, I'm just saying because it and and you know, a big chunk of it came off, but depending on how we want to redesign the beach, we might want to change how that pad looks.

We also might want to make it out of a um uh uh permeable material rather than make it out of cement so that it that you you know don't have so much runoff.

So I I would say yes on the seawall things, and I would say no on the sand till till we can get something a full picture of what the whole thing will look like.

And for the volleyball courts, we could always put temporary courts closer to the rec center for now, and so that they could you know go get back to playing volleyball.

But I would wait on the rest of it because I think it's premature, and I I want to see the whole picture of it, uh, because otherwise we could have another rain and have it all wash away again.

And total waste of money that's out of our pocket, not out of FEMA pocket.

Okay.

Councilmember Shaw.

Um I I hear much of what Vice Mayoris is saying, um, but I'm very concerned about the the time factor because if one step's gonna take four months, and then how many more months is that going to add if we delay things?

That's a good point.

And my concern would be that if we have new plans, they're gonna have to go back to the Army Corps of Engineers, they're gonna have to go back to FDEP, and that could be another eight to ten months just to get the permit to do the resiliency steps of it, depending on what that looks like.

Um it may not may not be that big a deal to Army Corps once we get something put together.

But if you're just doing plantings, is that anything you do out there is gonna have to go through Army Corps.

But but I think it could be it could be a quicker process.

I'm just uh giving you a heads up.

It took me 10 months, which was a complete shock to me to wait that long for a permit to put something back.

And they said because it was not life and death, it went to the bottom of the pile.

Well, I've I've been involved in beach renourishments and I've been in and and along with that with sustainability as far as the beaches due to erosion and so plantings, et cetera.

And and it it takes a very long time for those processes.

So I'm I'm very concerned about that.

So I mean, in our meetings with uh Ms.

Kidder, our meetings with our our our coastal engineers, they've got some good ideas to come up with, and maybe you know, and there's gonna be a cost associated with all that too.

And now there could potentially be some grants out there to help us with the resiliency factors.

I'm sure there are.

Actually, Miss Kitter brought up quite a few when we had our meeting, so I think we could get some costs covered with that.

But again, that's gonna take time.

Well, I'm anxious to hear what everyone else has to say, including the public.

Sure.

Okay.

Um I'm in favor in of the plan you have proposed.

So um I'd like to move forward with it, and I think it would be very important um for volleyball and bringing back more people to Gulfport and the restaurants and the businesses really rely on that beach.

Really rely on that beach.

And it's beautiful when it's put together.

So I agree.

I'm afraid of waiting again, right?

They might even say, listen, we after 10 months we gave you your permit, now you don't want to utilize that.

So they may really put us down at the bottom of the pile.

I agree with Kelsey.

Okay.

So I think the part of it that I'm struggling with is if we waited for 10 months.

Because I don't always understand exactly, you know, what the roles of the different parties are.

So if we waited for 10 months to get a permit to restore I guess that the permit was to restore, not to increase resiliency.

Because see, I thought we were going to get the resiliency in this plan at the same time.

No, our our plan, and again, when we first put the plan together, we were under the FEMA guidance that we weren't going to get any additional.

We were anticipating getting back reimbursement, so we were putting it back the way it was.

We found out later down the road that it's not an engineered beach after five or six months.

We found out that we weren't getting anything because it's not considered an engineered beach.

It will be after this, and that just means we will have a full survey on the beach after it's part of this proposal to do an after-the-fact as-built permit, if you will, or an as-built drawings, and then uh we have to resurvey the beach every every two years and submit that to Army Corps, and that way it'll be considered long-term in Engineered Beach.

Well, I think I never knew.

Yeah.

Um I think getting it to be an engineered beach for future problems is really good.

I mean, I heard that and I didn't understand that either.

So that's really a big deal.

I also think that these sheet piles, which is the same way that they build, but instead of having a seawall above the ground, we're basically having a seawall below down, what 20 feet down into the ground.

They're 20 foot sheet piles, yes.

Yeah, so that we can't lose all that sand uh if all that water comes running down again.

So no, that would just prevent it from coming out from under the roadway.

We could lose some sand, but again, it will be reimbursable and it wouldn't it wouldn't tear up our infrastructure or sidewalks or our exactly.

So uh in terms of my thoughts on the matter are that um the morale, I mean, I hate that, but this is the first thing I've heard that neither FEMA or insurance are gonna help us with.

So I'm I'm disappointed in that.

But the morale of this city is what our reserves are for.

I mean, if if we have to use some reserves to increase the morale of our city, we have never I've only been here 15 years, but it's goes back way further than that since we've had the kind of destruction that we had, which doesn't mean that we couldn't have it again, and I know we're all afraid of talking about that, but it it does.

But if it happened again, at least we then have the engineered beaches, you say, which could help.

But between now and the next hurricane season, I will be as disappointed as the volleyball players are if we don't get some major, major resiliency in there and build up the dunes.

I mean, I know I went over to Passagrill right after the storms and some of the other beaches and those that had nice built-up dunes and those that had the the um uh what uh what's the tree?

Yeah, the plantings, but the true the one tree in particular.

They just did so much better.

Mangroves, that's the word I couldn't think of, the mangroves.

So um I'm I'm glad that we're moving forward.

I still didn't think it would take three or four months.

I thought, you know, we could I thought the first month is gonna be just ordering the sheep piles.

Once this gets approved and I get them the purchase order, it takes four four weeks, four or five weeks to get there.

I thought those were gonna be delivered any day like they had been ordered some time ago.

Okay.

Can I make one more comment?

I forgot to ask.

Sure.

Um, is putting riprap in front of the casino part of this project?

No, there's been a bad idea.

There's been some discussion about that.

Not the gray infrastructures I've learned here recently.

No.

Okay.

And and can I also ask how much do we have in reserves right now?

Uh we have we started the fiscal year with close to uh $5.4 million.

Okay.

And yet we did 25%.

Um that's where we always talk about being in that 15 to 25 range.

And this will have an impact on it.

And but we're also gonna have other expenses.

But we've got as we still have an outstanding count with FEMA for 2.9 million dollars to reimburse.

So it's constantly a moving number at this point.

Okay.

And and I just need to add that we did get like I think it was 350,000 from FEMA for some of the volleyball stuff, the uh electric and the bathrooms out here on the paid for volleyball.

We we got that.

We do get to get that money when you say they played paid for volleyball, you mean what?

The infrastructure that we lost.

Oh the electric, the lights, the yeah.

Okay.

All right.

And the bathrooms, yeah.

Okay.

Any other questions before we open to public comment?

No.

All right, seeing none.

Uh, anybody who wants to address public comment, you have to three minutes to say what you'd like.

Please state your name.

I'd love to know too if you're a resident of Gulfport.

Unfortunately, I'm not a resident of Gulfport.

Uh, I'm from South Tampa, but uh I spent a lot of time with Finellas County and an awful lot of time in Gulfport.

So thank you for hearing our voices.

Uh, we're all here in support of our volleyball courts.

Uh sir, you had us at uh the sheet pilings and the resiliency efforts.

We appreciate that.

We know how important that is.

Uh, we totally understand the need to protect uh our coastal lands, our volleyball courts, especially.

Uh but as we just spoke spoke about earlier, it's it's important to our team.

Uh, you know, people are here.

We travel from within a 30 mile radius, we come to these volleyball courts, uh, we spend money within the infrastructure.

We're happy to uh come to bars and restaurants and be a part of the solution there.

Uh we're just big fans of coming and participating.

Uh our group held a bounce back to Gulfport volleyball event that took place a few months ago.

Uh, we had an awful lot of people show up, about 160 players that uh showed support for Gulfport.

We sold out the event in a very short amount of time.

It meant a lot to us.

Uh mayor, we saw you there.

We appreciate your support.

Uh and it means a lot to our team in Tampa, our team of Pinellas County, our many friends that are here from Gulfport.

Uh, we're here to support that.

And uh, and once these courts come back, we will all come back as well.

Uh, two other efforts that were brought up, two things.

We already talked about the resiliency efforts, I understand how important that is.

Thank you for already beating me to it.

Um, and then I'd love to talk about uh the replacement courts that are currently in place there.

Unfortunately, they're not really uh in it in a location that is uh conducive to volleyball players to participate.

Uh I could go into intimate detail on that, but I don't want to waste all your time on that.

Long story short, it is inadequate for our needs and requirements in order to play.

Uh, when we did hold a uh volleyball tournament, we brought in six other courts that were placed throughout the uh the beach area.

But again, you know we certainly never want to do something like that again.

We want a designated area for beach volleyball players and a designated area for families to participate.

So thank you very much for our time.

I'm sure a lot of other people want to talk, so we'll keep it short and sweet.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Who's next?

Nope, we don't do any applause or booze.

Neither.

We treat everyone equally.

Uh good evening.

Uh I am also not a golf par resident, but I'm uh in St.

Pede, so right down the way.

Uh my name is Adam Abraham.

Uh I'm one of the admins of the GBT group who hosted the bounce back tournament in Gulfport.

Uh, I want to take a moment and share why Gulfport Vival courts mean so much to our community and uh why it's worth continuing to invest in them.

For many of us, these courts were where our golf port story began.

It's where we met our closest friends, built connections, and became part of something bigger than ourselves.

Week after week we gathered just not to play volleyball, but to also visit downtown.

Uh, after the games, you'd walk to the downtown strip, grab food, listen to live music, and support the local shops that make this town feel alive.

Now I understand the concern.

You know, the courts do require repair, and yes, that does come out of the cost, uh, but I believe those courts are an investment, not an expense.

Every time these courts are repaired and reopened, they bring back people the golf port, they fill the restaurants, create weekend traffic for local businesses, and remind everyone why this town is such a vibrant welcoming place.

When we hosted the Gulf Back, excuse me, Gulf Court Bounces Back tournament, we saw that impact.

You know, firsthand, the turnout was incredible.

Families, visitors, and locals all coming together to play, cheer, and spend time downtown.

The truth is these courts pay us dividends far beyond their upkeep.

They keep our parks active, our small businesses busy and our residents engaged.

They also give us a safe, healthy outdoor space that promotes fitness, connection, and pride, something that's priceless in today's world.

And while hurricanes and flooding are always a challenge, you know, they're a part of Girl Parts identity.

Uh we've all faced those storms before.

We've always come back stronger.

Instead of seeing these courts as a financial burden, we can see them as an opportunity to partner between the city and the community to share responsibility, organize volunteer maintenance, and host more events that fund their future.

Because at the end of the day, the golf port courts aren't just sand and nets, they're where memories are made.

Uh friendships are built, and the city's heart continues to be.

Let's keep them alive.

Let's keep investing in what made Skullfurt Gulfport, and that is why I asked the city council to vote in favor of preserving the courts.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Who's next?

Honorable councilwomen, Madam Mayor, my name is Luke Desondo.

I live right here in Gulfport next to Gulf Coast Seafood.

I moved here for the courts.

I remember my first time playing at the Gulfport volleyball courts.

I met a bunch of fun and interesting people, played until 10 p.m.

and then went to O'Maddy's for karaoke and beers.

Overnight I became hooked on the Gulfport volleyball lifestyle.

Because Gulfport courts had lights on a timer, we were able to play past sundown, unlike most other courts on the beaches in Pinellas County.

And since Tommy's Tiki and Neptunes were across the street, we were able to send someone across the street to pick up drinks or food, then come back and play more.

And when we were actually finished playing, usually very late, it was way too late to go home and cook, especially on a weeknight.

So we'd go to O'Maddies or Drunken Taco and eat dinner.

We would do this three or four times a week, every week.

I saw people commute from Tampa, from Brandon, Clearwater, Safety Harbor, Sarasota, and Bradenton to play on these courts and spend money at the restaurants after.

I've seen people stop at Plant Love Ice Cream and Sumitra Coffee Shop for a pick-me-up before playing.

People that lost their sunglasses would buy new ones from the beach bazaar.

I have stopped at the corner store more times than I can count to buy protein shakes before I played.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton brought an end to that lifestyle, but did not extinguish our hope for the return to normalcy.

In July, I was a primary organizer of the Gulfport Bounces Back volleyball tournament on the strip of beach between the destroyed courts and the playground.

We saw 120 people show up to play volleyball and plenty more show up to watch, including Mayor Love and Councilwoman Jackson.

O'Maddies ran a food stall at the tournament that sold out of food before the playoffs started.

We had so many people that stuck around in town after the tournament that Omadis couldn't take in everyone.

So some went to O'Maddi's and took every free seat.

Everyone else, about 70 people, took over the front room of the Drunken Taco.

The hurricanes have not stopped me or anyone else from playing volleyball or from spending money after, but our money follows the courts.

Our money is going to Pinellis Park, to Rec Deck, to Krabby Bills and Sky Beach when it could and should be spent at Gulfport businesses.

And the moment the Gulf Court courts open back up, you will see people out there and at Gulfport businesses because Gulfport Beach was the crown jewel of Pinellas volleyball, and it will be again if given the chance.

So please let's get our courts back so we can get back to doing what we love, playing volleyball, and supporting the businesses of Gulfport.

Thank you for your time.

And next, Laura.

So I'm not up here to say that we should not move forward with this, but I think I'm a much more fiscally prudent climate realist than a lot of other Gulfport residents.

And I do find it concerning to think about spending $811,000 from our reserve of five million when we've just been discussing what Governor DeSantis is trying to do to eliminate $7 million from Gulfport's budget.

And you know, I think we're still waiting on FEMA reimbursement, and yay, we'll have an engineered beach that FEMA would likely not give us any money for in the future anyways.

Um, given current tendencies.

So again, I'm not saying don't do it, but it does raise red flags for me.

It also reminds me of something that I've long been wanting to do and would love to see more of in Gulfport.

I think we need to come together and have realistic conversations about what it's going to cost to replace things, because we're going to lose more.

And how much money are we gonna put from the less and less money we're likely going to have in our budget to repair these things?

And I would love to see one of you on the dais take some leadership.

Let's have some town halls.

Let's have some realistic conversations about where we are fiscally as a city and what it's going to cost to continue to replace these things, these features of our city, and what we can realistically count on from outside of our city.

That's anybody else for public comment?

Yes.

I moved here to be closer to my mother.

She actually enjoys the farms at Gulfport.

I've lived almost everywhere in the world.

And I will say this is one of the most amazing communities I've seen in my entire life.

From the blueberry patch to all the little shops to what PIA does for the community.

I was luckily through Happen Sands through my realtor exposed to the Gulfport Volleyball Group, which has allowed me to experience every part of Gulfport, just the physical activity and getting better and being around good people, to also just walking down the streets and seeing the people of this community.

I obviously bought before I knew about Gulfport, so it's a little hard to move now.

But in the future, I know many people from our group have been purchasing in Gulfport because of who you are.

I just want to say I understand there's a cost for everything, 100%.

That being said, those cultural things like you were saying, they matter a great deal.

Having lived all over the world, I've seen things come and go.

What you have is worth preserving.

So I just want to thank you all for all of your hard work.

Have a great day.

And who's next?

Hello.

My name is Kyle Jurens.

I live in South Pasadena, just a five-minute trip away.

Um I wasn't a volleyball player until I found the Gulfport volleyball courts and the community that is built on the volleyball courts.

And it changed my life.

To this day, I continue to play, and I've been in Florida for many years now, and it it the community and everything about it has made a big difference, and the friends I built along the way, and it's the reason I come to Gulfport.

And I know I speak for a lot of people when I say there isn't anything we'd rather do than come down here and be part of the community and play volleyball.

So thank you.

Okay.

Priscilla.

Thank you so much for having me.

And boy, what an uplifting group we have here.

I mean, anyway, um, that is so nice to hear.

And what I want to speak to is the resiliency of the beach.

And um Tom Nichols was so nice to talk to me about it and everything.

And I've been, I took a class uh at a conference the day after I met with him, and now I'm taking a class later this month.

I'm gonna write what I read what I read because I get nervous.

Um we lost the her, we lost the volleyball courts, and now we see it erode with every high tide faster and faster.

But instead of building any high walls and riprap, I think we can put put smarter shorelines in there using um native dune plants and shell features down maybe in the water that would hold the sand naturally and filter runoff and protect the volleyball courts.

Um, I'm gonna give you each a handout I forgot about uh that shows the cost and it saves you money when you put in when you put in, I've shared some of that with him.

Um when you put in um natural living shorelines, you wind up saving money.

And when you have this volleyball court, which he saw on his one slide, it's open to the water there.

That's why it got taken.

And the sheet pilings is his start to protect the sidewalk and the roads.

That's wonderful, but without any kind of buffer.

Yeah, I'm getting off course.

Um court to wash away again.

The handouts you have are page 31, 34 and 35 from Florida Sea Grant.

Um, an agent that did a conference.

Uh they show the science behind this approach.

Living shorelines can reduce erosion 50 to 80 percent compared with bare sand, while improving water quality and creating habitat for fish and birds.

Once they're established, they strengthen over time instead of wearing out like concrete does, and sea wells start to degrade the day they're installed.

So I know you're doing the pilings around the perimeter, which is great to protect that, and they're underground, that's fabulous.

Um, just some data.

After Hurricane Nadalia and earlier storms in North Carolina, researchers found that 70% of seawalls and gray infrastructure were damaged, 76% were damaged, but the natural and living shorelines suffered no measurable damage at all.

So, if we want to protect those volleyball courts, we need to put some plantings around there.

Um that's the difference between gray infrastructure and green.

A living shoreline bends and a seawall breaks.

So for golf port adding native vegetation and maybe near shore breakwaters with natural elements, oyster shells out in the water area that could buffer the wave and stabilize the beach.

Um, I also wanted to mention um an engineered beach can be a green shoreline.

I did deep dive on that, and you just have to have darn it, maintenance and records and stuff like that and keep a log of it.

But I would propose that we connect with the volleyball group there, even if they're non-Gulfport people, and bring them in because I would like to know as a person who's going to be interested in planning a green shoreline, what they want and where they might not want a bush this high, they might want low stuff.

There's all kinds of plants you can utilize hundreds of options that would be like I don't want to, you know, we want something we can trample on or a ball hit, but they need to get something around that to protect it, like arms to protect that volleyball court.

It's gonna wash away again.

And I don't want to see that.

It broke my heart when it did.

But these guys, I'm glad they're coming back.

Well, I'm I'm seeing them as our labor pool.

That's what I'm seeing.

I'm sorry.

Do you have any questions on that?

What I handed you.

I had just some data sheets on cost it's that.

I guess we can't do that.

No.

Yeah, I'm not gonna look at it now.

Courtney.

I also agree the enthusiasm in this room about protecting this resource is palpable.

And I just wanted to add another name to the pool.

Um, she's not here tonight, but Amanda Haygood has submitted a proposal to the Tampa Bay Estuary Program mini grants.

TBEP, I think is the initiative the initial there on behalf of the city of Gulfport.

And the mission there uh is to do a survey of how people utilize the beach, and so that will be coming down the pipeline, I believe, in January.

Again, uh, I just want to speak to that.

Reach out to Amanda Haygood if you know her.

If you don't know her, she's fabulous, get to know her.

Um, but she would be another great person to call into this conversation, and she has another legion of workers uh through Eckert College, the Sea Scholars program.

So they're going to be participating in the surveying data collection, data analysis of this.

Thank you.

Anyone else for public comment on this?

Yes.

Hi, so sorry, I'm not very good at public speaking.

But um, I am not a Gulfport resident.

Um, I live in um like downtown St.

Pete, but I have lived at the top of Gandhi and slowly but surely made my way down towards Gulfport to try and get closer to the um volleyball courts.

I am not a good player at all.

I am extremely bad.

All of those people speaking are very good, but I work from home and I found community through this group of people, and um I just look forward every week to hang out with all these people at this volleyball court, and we've had to move to areas like Pinellas Park, like they mentioned, um, Crabby Bills has a court, um, recdeck, all these places have courts, and we all spend our money there, and we would love to come back and put whatever investment we can back into this area because um we just love love love Gulfport.

Um, everyone talks about the wonderful lizard that we have, it fuels us in the volleyball.

Um, I just I can't stress enough.

Um, this community means so much to us, and these courts have meant so much to us.

So thank you.

I hope you vote in favor.

Thank you.

All righty, I'm gonna close public comment then.

Okay, call the vote.

Vice Mary Thanos.

I'll vote yes, but I hope we get the plantings proposed immediately so that they can get part of the plan so that the courts don't wash away again and waste all this money.

Councilmember Shaw.

I concur, yes.

Councilmember Jackson?

Yes, Councilmember Early, yes, Mayor Love.

Yes, this resolution number 2025-94, a resolution of the city of Gulfport, Florida authorizing the city manager to renew the agreement with shoemaker advisors, Florida FLLC for state legislative consultant and advisory services and government relations services.

Sorry, guys, we have a meeting going on before the Florida executive and legislative branches of the state government as budgeted for the for in the fiscal year 2025-2026, adopted budget and providing for an effective date.

Motion to approve.

Second city manager, mayor.

This is our state lobbying agency that's been successful for the past three years to secure us funds in the amount of the million dollars from FDEP for the sanitary sewers priority twos, one point two million for the 58th Street Roadway project, and just recently we received 1.2 million dollars for the Town Shores Waterline Project.

And they've been very successful.

And as I explained to the Vice Mayor, this gets you a seat at the table each year, the budget, the state budget.

Okay.

In speaking order, any questions?

Discussion?

No, we've already talked about that.

There's several different kinds of projects, especially after we see the stormwater study that we would want to try and go to the state for.

And if I may, um one of them is the catch valve type project.

Pardon?

The valves that were talked about.

The baffle.

Not the BAFL, the valves.

So that is one of the projects that we would probably ask for for funding to start because it's it's something they would fund.

Also improvements in the area of flood flooding improvements right here because the police and fire.

They like police and fire at Tallahassee.

Those are the type for initial till you get into the big projects that Justin Keller will speak of.

So one thing, Bob brought up a good point.

Why we have that one pipe already dug up and we're putting it in.

Couldn't we put a valve in that one at least for now?

No, the valves would come on, and they go on the end.

We can we will retrofit those.

What about the baffle boxes?

Baffle box, you would end up having to put it either tear up your park or your road there.

But it's already torn up, so the corner is a good idea.

We have a motion and a second.

But I'm talking to you about that because it's part of it.

No, not really.

And also the senior center, because council has established that we would submit three projects.

Okay.

All righty.

Ums Shaw?

Well, I I certainly understand the benefit of lobbyists, and then of course I've seen the the projects and the funding that they've brought.

And they've certainly more than paid for themselves multiple times over.

So I I don't have any further questions regarding that.

Yeah, no further questions from me either.

Thank you.

I agree with Councilmember Shaw.

No questions.

It is very helpful for you to spell out the amount of money that we had gotten from them versus the amount of money that we were looking at spending with them.

So I found that really helpful.

Vice Mayor Thanos?

Do we need to have public comment?

Excuse me.

Public comment.

Seeing none, call the vote.

Okay.

Vice Mayor Thanos?

Yes.

Councilmember Shaw?

Yes.

Councilmember Jackson?

Yes.

Councilmember Early?

Yes.

Mayor Love.

Yes.

Resolution number 2025-95, a resolution of the City of Gulfport authorizing the city manager to re-enter into a contract with Thorne Run Partners for Federal Legislative Consultant and Advisory Services and providing for an effective date.

Motion to approve.

Second.

Second.

Mayor, this is your federal lobbyist that's been works in a very good environment and bipartisanship.

You can see we've received 1.5 million dollar appropriation through a Democratic Congressman when we had him.

And now our present Congresswoman Republican Representative Luna.

And she's given us $2.5 million.

And this is these are appropriations that your respective Congressperson asks for.

Okay.

And it's have been the last two years also.

Okay.

Any questions specific to this resolution?

No.

No.

No.

Any public comment on this resolution?

All right.

Call the vote.

Vice Mayor Thanos?

Yes.

Councilmember Shaw?

Yes.

Councilmember Jackson?

Yes.

Councilmember Early?

Yes.

Mayor Love.

Yes.

Resolution number 2025-96, a resolution of the City of Gulfport, Florida, adopting an increase to the senior center non-resident annual membership fee in accordance with Chapter 25 of the Code of Ordinances of the City of Gulfport, Florida, and providing for an effective date.

Motion to approve?

Second.

Mayor, as council had discussed during the budget process and also during the discussion of the senior center, this is to increase the non-resident fee from $50 to $100.

Effective January 1st.

And if I understand that will it will be implemented then as each per because everybody doesn't renew in January.

So when it comes time for them to renew.

Exactly.

In your next year, as they come up, they will pay $100.

Okay.

As they expire, I guess the best way for me to put it.

Expire.

Maybe we shouldn't use that word.

And then our increase in hours will become effective January 1 as well.

Yes.

Or January 2.

Yes.

Okay.

Beginning in January.

Yes.

Okay.

All righty.

Any uh questions on this?

No.

Any public comment on this?

Rachel, would you like to?

You're good?

All righty.

Call the vote.

Vice Mayor Thanos?

Yes.

Councilmember Shaw?

Yes.

Councilmember Jackson?

Yes.

Councilmember Earling?

Yes.

Mayor Love.

Yes.

All right.

So that takes us to new business.

And we will do that in speaking order, of course.

And so we will start with Vice Mayor Thanos.

I didn't have anything till I I think Lenny brought up a really good point that once we make up whatever our referendums are going to look like, that we have a session so that people get that explained to, preferably like in February, so they don't forget for the March issue.

And maybe not a lot of people will show up, but if we advertise it a lot and say, you know, it's important and whatever that hopefully people will show up.

But I really recommend that we do that.

Good idea.

All right.

Anything else?

No.

No.

Okay.

I was going to bring that up as well.

And in addition to advertising it, that we make sure that it's recorded so people that can't attend that will be able to view it.

Until such time that we can hire at least a shared part-time resiliency sustainability staff member.

I'd like us to remember that other communities are successfully utilizing a student intern to assist with those and work on grants.

So I was going to pro I was hoping to propose that we could look into this and maybe consider this in high traffic locations, such as maybe 58th Street.

Do you have any any materials or anything?

Well, I I just have an image of it, but it's just a slightly raised area that delineates the pathway across the street.

Yes, between the curves.

If you could bring it Monday, then we can look at it.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

Um so I I think that would be really really great.

Um I was going to save all the rest, just write about it later.

Just was celebrating all the great things in Gulfport that I got to be a part of.

Um, including, by the way, Stetson's 125th anniversary council was invited to that.

Oop, I'm not using the microphone that Justin so wonderfully extended for me.

So I hope everybody's hearing me better.

Um and that was it was an extraordinary um uh event, and um uh I I was proud to be there as a representative of Gulfport, and so again, I'll write about the other things.

Because I I told all those young people this one it wasn't gonna be a four-hour meeting.

I have no new business.

I don't either.

Okay.

I have a couple things.

Um, I wish I could remember a name.

I believe it's Cheryl from the homeless alliance leadership of Pinellas County reached out, and uh they've been doing some studies about homelessness in Pinellas County in particular, and she has asked if they could have a presentation in front of council sometime in the near future, which could be the first of the year.

We didn't talk about time.

Um and I told her that uh I would present it to you and asking if we could give her a 20-minute presentation.

Um I will tell you that here's one thing that's their mission statement that I liked, or their vision.

Vision, their vision is to ensure that homelessness is rare, brief, and a one-time experience.

Um they've done counts.

I I glean the material and I can tell you that they're about to tell us where homelessness has gone up and where it's gone down and where the age ranges have changed, and then uh again some suggestions.

So can I have a consensus to try and get her on the schedule?

Absolutely.

Okay, good.

That's one.

Okay, then the second is I did mention um the um rain bear, not the rain bear, I always say that rain garden.

So that's coming up.

And then the next well, not necessarily the very next, but another uh group of a person here in golf ports approached me.

And um I think in the I'm not looking for anything now except to tell you there's a whole movement that's happening in other parts of the country called depa de pave golf port, for example.

Okay.

I know it's going on in in uh Boston, and um she would like to kind of see if she can't organize a volunteer group and committee to really do a deep dive on that and then come and give us a presentation of what some depaving would be.

And they're not necessarily just um attacking the city, okay, proper, but the residents.

So, for example, I have an extremely large patio.

It's been years since I've used this very large patio.

I'm planning to very possibly depave that and make a big rain garden back there.

So I just wanted you to know that um we do have interest in Dolph Port and somebody stepping up to the plate to lead that when it works with her time frame.

So I wanted to throw that out there.

Love that.

Okay.

Umploy parking study.

So Wolfgang who's left, Marlene, Miss Shaw, Miss Thanos, and myself divided up our downtown area, and we went to each of the businesses and we last us.

See, the bewitching hour.

We asked a lot of questions about how many employees they have, do they have regular shifts, the whole thing trying to get without spending big money, okay, trying to get a good handle on how many employees we have parking on our downtown streets on a daily basis.

So all that information is in.

I haven't even looked at it.

I haven't even opened up the files that have been sent to me.

So it's not going to happen overnight.

Okay, right now, let me get through the bike thing first, but I will be coming back eventually and being able to present some real numbers that we were given from the uh managers of the businesses in town.

So seeing what we can do with parking and maybe how we can get them off of our main drag uh for parking.

Um one more thing was I wanted to mention that um the boomerangs, of course, they've been responsible for quite a few fundraising activities, and what their hot button is today, they are collecting funds currently on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday during their early morning games uh to help uh Jack's uh with meals for uh the Thanksgiving meal.

She does a lot of them, and uh she does it based on uh donations, you know, that we the rest of us can bring in to help her uh with the funds.

So uh just wanted that to be out there.

And then the last thing, maybe some people have missed, but um I stopped in at Julio's the other day, and I don't know if you know it, but he just got an award for the best um empanadas in the world.

Wow.

Okay, it was a competition that was held happening um in North Tampa, and he had known about this for years, but he had never chosen to participate before, but he participated this time.

He won and the winnings are I think there's some cash involved, and there's definitely marketing involved.

And here's the part that I don't want to cry, but I have to tell you that was so exciting to me was here.

He was bouncing off the wall, so proud of what he had accomplished, and immediately related it to what it means for golfport that he was up there, and half the people in that area never even heard of Gulfport.

And now that he's the leader, the world champion of empanadas, they're gonna be coming to Golfport to spend more money in golfport.

So just another example of uh community spirit where he wasn't just looking for him the good for himself, but for everybody and how everybody could prosper off of that.

So I wanted to share that, and I would say at this moment, then I'm gonna say meeting adjourned, and thank you everybody who stayed and hung in to the very end, whether they're at home or here.

Thank you.

I imagine everybody will be a little bit shy to begin with, so I'm gonna kick it off by asking a question that might make it easier to get started.

I don't have any desired results.

I want to know.

I mean, I'm serious when I say I want to know what you're thinking and how you would like to see the city move forward.

There's not going to be any rebuttal.