We always start on time.

So welcome to uh everybody who was able to make it here tonight for our workshop.

I think this is the fourth workshop we're having in eight months.

Um trying to talk out things.

So um we're gonna start with um roll call.

Vice Mayor Thanos here.

Councilmember Shaw present.

Council Member Early Present.

Mayor Love here.

City Manager O'Reilly.

Here.

City Clerk Carico is present.

Um Councilmember Jackson has asked me excuse me.

All righty.

So let's let me kind of start with a just a little bit of an overview, all right.

Um I don't know how many of you I think a few of you might have been present for the presentation.

We were um it was very overwhelming.

Uh a lot of terms and acronyms that were uh not uh in my wheelhouse because I'm not an engineer.

Um but I am extremely grateful to get the presentation.

We needed it, we needed to, you know, start the forward motion and to me just hearing the presentation was the way to kick it off.

Um as far as I'm concerned, and I don't know if everyone would agree with me, but I think that uh storm water is the number one issue in Gulfport.

Um and the biggest one that we have to get um figure out how to get our wrap our heads around and what to how to move forward it with fixing it.

Um I did ask enough questions that I was able to find out that um though there were a few improvements made in the nineties in Ward Four and the tangerine stormwater slash quality water improvement was made approximately fifteen years ago.

Besides that, we have a very old system that was designed for life a long time ago.

I think isn't our city about a hundred and twenty-five years old now?

Okay.

So um you know, we have an antiquated system and the fact that we've had so much weather change recently and that the storms came our way made us really aware that this has to be number one in our book.

So just to kind of put it all into perspective why I might suggest that it was overwhelming.

Approximately ten years ago, our previous city council decided to move forward on working on our um sewer system.

And they put into place a 10-year program, and I think we're at about year nine, nine and a half on that right now.

So to just kind of help you understand that the money, year today, so far in the last nine and a half years, we've spent $13.5 million on improvements in our sewer system.

Okay.

Based on the presentation the other night, if we were to move forward and complete the six projects in today's dollars, we're looking at 75 million.

So 13 and a half million, 75 million.

Needless to say, this is a big ticket item that needs some conversation.

And of course, you've heard me say many times that how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time?

Well, this is a gigantic elephant.

So somebody asked, I think Vice Mayor Thanos asked me at the last meeting, what are we going to talk about?

Okay, so let me just kind of say what my goals are here today.

And of course, they can everybody can talk about anything they want to, but this would be my goals.

I would like to think that as each of the council members would address uh the defined level of service that was presented to us and address whether they think that that is acceptable or not, and kind of compare that defined level of service to reality.

Um when I say reality, I'm just suggesting that we do live in a coastal town right on the water, and uh uh the water's not receding, and it's not possible for a small city to fix everything for everybody in every circumstance.

So decisions have to be made, all right.

So that's one thing.

I'm hoping we get we'll address a little bit the defined level of service.

The second thing is I would like it if the council would address uh if they're comfortable, the uh project development assumptions.

The that was a page that was made just before we went into the details of each of the projects.

For example, one of the project development assumptions that was made was that we don't want to buy up homes to store to uh store our stormwater.

So I would like for um council members to address that if that's one of the things that they've looked into.

I know I have some thoughts on that matter.

I would like to acknowledge that I don't think until this presentation was given the other night that I really realized that we have a much bigger um rainwater stormwater issue versus a tidal water issue.

I I thought that tidal uh fluctuations was a bigger deal than what it is, and now I realize that the overland water coming across is probably the number one reason that we're having so many problems.

I also really truly did not realize until the presentation that how much of our water issue starts in the northeast part of our city and flows to the southwest.

And um that if we can stop some of, you know, take care of some of the water up in the northeast section, the less of it'll come down to the southwest section.

So that was uh helpful for me to hear as well.

Um the last thing in terms of what I'm trying to accomplish tonight, I would like to suggest that we don't need to be going into the funding issue tonight.

There's gonna be plenty of discussion about the funding issue, but I think we have to have a little bit of a clearer path about how we want to proceed first, and also I would like to hear the vulnerability study, which is going to be presented in January before we start looking at the monetary uh consequences.

So it's been asked of me too, why are we having this meeting tonight?

Well, part of it is because I think that what we were told last week was some of the biggest information that we've received from the DIS in many years, and certainly with financial consequences, and I did not feel comfortable getting all that information and not talking about it until January.

And when when I got together with staff to see if we could pull it off before January, I found that there wasn't a lot of flexibility between everybody's schedules, meaning the staff, in terms of when they could make this happen.

So we've we realized that if we kicked it off at four o'clock, it we could make it work today.

It will not be the only discussion that we're ever going to have on this topic.

It's just the start to get us over the hurdle.

Hopefully, all the questions of the council members as well as the audience, the our residents, I shouldn't call you the audience.

You are our residents, I understand that, uh, will will be answered.

Okay, so when we do get to public comment, whereas typically public comment means you can come up and have three minutes to say whatever you want to say tonight, you're gonna be welcome because this is a workshop.

You're gonna be welcome to come up and ask your questions.

Our engineers are going to be writing down the questions, and after everybody's had a chance, they will address the the questions that were asked when they know the answers.

And if they don't, they're gonna say that they don't know the answers, but they can get back to you on it.

Um of the public, I only ask that if you uh have already heard the question asked by the council or somebody else in the audience that you not ask the same question over again.

And I'm hoping that if you ask detailed questions that hopefully you listen to the entire presentation so you know what did take place a week ago.

So with that in mind to the council, then I say um my thoughts are, and I'm saying it to you in case you think no, this is not good, but my thoughts are that we will go in speaking order, and um you will have an opportunity to ask any questions that you want, and um you will get answers right right away.

And also um if you could kind of address the issues that I I asked about to the level of service and the assumptions that were made on the on the projects, I would appreciate that.

And we'll all go in um speaking order and I'll have the last uh the probably the least questions because I think most of mine will get asked before I get my turn.

Before I get started, one thing I had asked was to have them address the water because Amy brought this up at the other meeting, the water coming into Gulfport from St.

Pete and what's happening with that, so that maybe you could address that so for all of us before we start our questions.

Oh, yes, you can come up any time.

Uh Justin Keller with Advanced Engineering.

Thank you, Justin.

Um good to see everybody again.

Um so regarding the question um from the water that's coming in from St.

Pete.

Uh let me go ahead and let me go to our uh sub-basin map real quick.

Um just so you know, we we did provide an updated uh slide with some uh with some high resolution images and also um some some legends that would uh um make it to where you can look at it without having to hear my voice on the video as well.

Um so we uh the main places where we abut St.

Pete is to the northwest, bear uh more or less the north and the east part of your city.

Um so one of the first, let's say, uh points where there could be overlap between the city of St.

Pete and Gulfport is gonna be on the eastern ridge of that 49th Street system.

Um the 49th Street system uh when you look at those flood maps, that it it actually is one of those areas that performs relatively well in comparison to other areas throughout the city.

Um we did not do a deep dive in the model yet, but we did do a high-level look based upon the timing in which we we got that request.

Um but there is little water that is transferring on the east end of the 49th Street Basin into the city of Gulfport.

And south more than I know too, because yeah, you know, because really that's kind of the the top of the hill, if you will.

Um so when the water is gonna, you know, switch basins, it's really gonna happen more in let's say that marina district.

Um but but again, in the main issue that we pointed out, which was regarding this cascading water going from a northeast to southwest direction.

Um the most water that comes in is from Bear Creek.

Now Bear Creek um is a regional conveyance facility.

Um I am not able to provide you with detailed information on what City of St.

Pete projects are proposed and nor what benefit they would have.

But we did not see anything within our preliminary review that suggests that there is a large amount of water that comes into your most problematic basin, which is the PYCC basin.

And that's really where we're we're kind of some of the challenges start.

And Bear Creek runs along the whole north side, or where exactly does Bear Creek run?

So Bear Bear Creek, um, this is the subwatersheds, and and Bear Creek is actually comprised of three subwatersheds that that that we tried to just parse out for for uh clarity.

It is the Bear Creek, Peters Lake, and Bogus is which from here.

From here.

So do you mean the gray one, the green one?

Yeah, the do you have a laser pointer or sure would be helpful?

Pretty much the top one.

The top three.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The top three that represents the Bear Creek subdivide.

Okay.

And so when the water flows from Bear Creek into those, I mean, is there much land between Bear Creek and us that's St.

Pete?

So there are parts of this model that actually extend into St.

Pete because we felt that we had to do that in order to properly represent how downstream uh conveyance facilities can impact your area.

So in Peters Lake, which is the green one in the top middle, um, I'd say probably about like 11 o'clock ish, um, that's where the actual lake is.

If you look on a map, you can see a lake there, and and that directly abuts Bear Creek.

So there are and and Bear Creek actually um it more or less runs along that top border because what we did is we use that as a dividing line for our basins.

Everything on that other side of Bear Creek um we wasn't an immediate concern for us because we just wanted to know okay, what is Bear Creek doing, and what is everything downgrading of the city of Gulfport doing.

So Bear Creek is more or less I'm I'm fairly confident that it's more or less that where the basins are trimmed along that edge.

Okay, so for instance, if the land above Bear Creek, which is St.

Pete, if that water all flows south into Bear Creek, then Bear Creek It actually flows north into Bear Creek.

So so there's actually a ridge here.

So what you're seeing is that there's actually a ridge to where the PYCC basin is really that northeast to southwest.

And and and then everything else, like like the Bear Creek and the Stetson area, um, part of that flows more, let's say, westerly.

Peters Lake actually flows and bogie flow north.

So yeah, so so the water from there doesn't flow into PYCC, it it goes the other way.

No, so now along your sub basins and um along these subwatersheds, we we want to take some time to try to see, okay, is there inefficiencies in the Peters Lake subwatershed that is contributing to some of the challenges in PYCC?

And I think we can say that there are.

Now, are they so impactful that it is the nexus or the cause of these issues?

And we don't think that's the case.

Okay.

Um you know, kind of from a super high-level stormwater standpoint, when you think about a new neighborhood that's built out in Pasco out in Hillsborough, um, you look at the stormwater ponds that they have on site.

And then when you look at some of the aerials of built-out urban Pinellas County, same amount of impervious, no ponds.

So essentially, all this water has nowhere to go.

And um in golf port, you have the benefit of having some gradient.

Um, and that's what essentially allows for some of this excess water to kind of cascade in that direction.

Okay, so the top three, the gray one flows west.

But wouldn't that flow into PYCC too?

So when when the when the top one that actually goes to the top left, um the very top left green one, I think is is Peter's Lake.

And then Peter's Lake was a green one.

Yeah, okay.

I'm talking about the gray one to the left of it.

That okay, Bear Creek, yeah.

So that goes into Bear Creek, either in a direct west in in more or less a westerly direction.

Okay, and then Bear Creek.

Um actually, if you are driving on Gulfport Boulevard and you're heading west to South Pasadena, right after you pass 64th Street, you cross over a little canal.

Right.

That is that is Bear Creek proper.

Okay.

Um, and then you also have some areas to where if you make a if you're heading west on uh Gulfport Boulevard and you make a left or head south on 64th Street, you will also come across on the uh west side of the road.

There is a really heavy um vegetated area.

That is actually a little mini creek that goes Caddy Corner across Gulfport Boulevard and goes into Bear Creek.

So that that area um it really really goes towards let's say the South Pasadena side, if you will.

Okay.

So okay, so that that helps me understand that part.

And the the 49th Street stuff that runs pretty much south.

Yeah, does it cross the marina or does it go more towards the east and miss the marina?

Both.

So 49th Street, the main leg goes um straight down, let's say to 49th Street to to the terminus of the roadway.

I want to say back in the what, like the early 2010s, um when you build those marina ponds, there was a uh a bypass system put in with the box culvert, and essentially what it is is um um a degree a certain amount of the flows are routed to the baffle box, and and then there's also a spur, I believe, that comes off and kind of matriculates into those ponds that provide a water quality benefit.

So that's why those ponds are there, is that there's a flood protection and a water quality benefit to to them.

So um, and and again, the marina area um, as we found, um you we've talked about really the the um 58th street area is really hit hard by some of this cascading water to where they're they're kind of the end of the line.

The marina is more or less spared from from that end to where they're not getting a lot of this upgrading water that we're seeing uh start in the PYCC.

So their main problem is just the um tidal.

Yeah, and and tidal and the fact that they're low, and so as as tides are high, your stormwater, you know, uh uh water will s will still drain.

If your pipe is underwater, the water will still drain.

It's called Bernoulli's law.

Um it's it's it's how it works to where as long as your elevation in the road is higher than the tide, you will still move water.

And as that elevation difference becomes closer and closer, you lose efficiency.

Obviously, if the tide's higher, sunny day flooding, that's that's a different matter, not a let's say a stormwater focus, if you will.

Okay.

And then another one that I had um questions on let me figure out which one it was here.

Uh so all these little basins and subwatersheds.

Yes, that one.

Um I I don't entirely get what that all means.

I mean because we have the bigger basins, and then we have this.

Oh, um maybe a good way to put it think of it like a like a house as part of a neighborhood to where you would say, okay, well, that parcel is its own parcel, but it's part of a greater neighborhood.

Uh so I guess you can say that the basins are more or less the parcels, you know, the individual areas that collect, and together, based upon the piping configuration that is there, they're part of these larger subwatersheds.

Because they seem very tiny.

Yeah, well, well, and and you know, one of the things that we um that that we we we pride ourselves on in this study is that it's easier for us to lump these things into big basins and be like, but you know, but we like to get down to more local level piping to kind of understand what some of those challenges that you're having.

So what do we really need to understand from this picture?

Well, that was supposed to impress you.

I guess that didn't work, huh?

So uh well it was because it was it wasn't mean anything.

You know, to be you know to me to be.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, um, you know, to us it's certainly a sign of um you know how we're able to subdivide the city, and it's really meant to demonstrate, let's say, in the public setting, uh, to allow the public to understand every point in which stormwater is collected and represented within the model.

So and this the link node diagram, um that that is more or less the the schematic routing, again, um something that um maybe the more nerdy of us would would like to dive into, but um, you know, again, something that from a stormwater uh or way uh WMP watershed management plan, the these are kind of conventional figures that you would present.

Okay, because again, because it's not labeled and there's no key to this, I don't I or so the black dots are what?

So the the dots that we're showing are nodes, which represents what nodes are the point of stormwater collection.

So like a drain.

A drain that that's a good analogy.

And then the blue lines are where this because they're they're broken lines.

So blue blue lines are gonna be links, and a link is a way in which a water moves from node to node.

So is it a pipe?

It could be a pipe, it could be a channel, it could be a weir, it could be a lot of different things.

It's it's a it's a means of conveyance.

I don't think in my mind we don't have any channels.

So what does a channel mean?

Well, and is it a gutter?

I mean, no, so um it's it is more or less it it is a way in which the model can move water.

So when you collect water at a node, let's say you are um let's say you're in an area with no drain.

You would pretty much have a node there, and there would be no way for the model to say, once I collect water, what do I do with it?

And essentially we put in the these what are called links, and those are the ways that we tell the model that when you see water at this node, you put it to this location with either this pipe or through this overland flow wheel, and it's more or less how it's a representation of how the water is transferred across your site or across your watershed.

Okay, so I'm looking at the street where I live because I live right on the north side of what I was pond.

Okay, and I see there's a node right in the middle of the pond.

I see nothing along my street at all, but yet there's a blue line that comes off of uh probably 59th Street, it comes over there.

So what what's that?

Because there's no it shows it like a blue line going into the pond, but there's no So this this is a um essentially what you're looking at is a GIS representation of all the work that we do at the micro scale that we're trying to show at a macro scale in a public setting.

So there may be certain things to where you know it doesn't mean anything though.

I mean I well, yeah, I mean, I I'm very aware of where um what Ibis is and what the basins are in that area.

No, but I'm just trying to understand your map so that I can try and make sense out of what we're doing.

And if there's a blue line that's supposed to be either a pipe or drain or or something, and yet there is no pipe, and there is no waterway there.

What why is that blue line there?

Okay, well, so they what I can do for that specific location rather than well, and I'm sure there's others.

I'm sure there's others around here too.

So part of what you will get is a GIS deliverable of this to where um you know this could be loaded up, and you could zoom in to whatever degree you wanted to and click on a link and see what node it goes to and from, and there's a lot of data that's baked into this this information.

Okay, I still don't get it.

And I can answer your question.

Oh, good, please.

Yeah, so the waterway that runs from the skimmer point exit towards IBIS.

See, we're that's the blue line you're seeing.

So what it doesn't work with you from the skimmer point exit, you have the men talking does not work with you.

That's the blue line you're seeing.

Okay, this is we're gonna be more lax, but not to that point.

We have our presenter, our engineer up here, he's gonna answer the questions.

And if you can't if and I understand, I'm not I'm not being derogatory, but if if he's not getting it here, maybe somebody else will ask a question when you're done, that might uh kind of bring you back.

Okay.

Because we didn't become engineers overnight.

Well, I know, but then but but I'm looking at a diagram and and it's supposed to mean something to me, and it doesn't.

Okay, and so that's what I'm trying to understand to understand all this information so that we can make sense out of it, and that's what I'm trying to do.

Um, one what what could be more effective if if you're open to it is we could provide you a large-scale high-res PDF image that you could zoom in on because again, because this is GIS, there are a lot of layers that overlap each other to where it's really hard to get an understanding of what's going on in the model if you don't have the ability to turn on and off certain aspects.

Okay, and let me ask you something else, and maybe I can show it up here.

So these lines that go into the water, what are those?

So those are that's the graphical representation that shows that there is water going to a boundary node or a tidal condition.

How how is it getting there?

It's it's it's a graphical representation to where essentially the obviously the pipe stops at the water, yeah.

The pipe doesn't go in there, but again, when you're preparing a citywide link node schematic, you have to provide connectivity so you understand, okay.

Well, where is that link going to?

It's going to the boundary.

Okay, and the boundary and there's a node here.

That's that's the boundary, which essentially represents your title outfall.

But if that's supposed to be like a drain, no, that that's that but the other ones are all drains.

So why what side why is that because that's um that's that's how you do it.

You represent well when you're doing a watershed model, you always have to stop at a certain point.

And for title and I could get if it was just the line around, but I don't understand the yellow dot.

Yeah, I certainly um so the yellow dot is represent it's it's a it's a node, and in this point, you know, because there's without nerding out too hard, and I'll certainly, you know, um try to make sure that I can explain this as clearly as possible, you have different kinds of nodes.

You have a time stage node, which essentially allows you to have a representation of how uh elevation changes over time.

You have a stage area node, which is more or less indicative of an area that has storage capabilities to it.

So there are different kinds of nodes, and again, it gets into kind of the modeling theory behind the stormwater.

And so that specific node is a time stage node that represents your boundary condition, so the model understands elevate, you know, your tide elevation starts at what?

And that node tells it.

So wouldn't it wouldn't it be good to have different color nodes with the legend so we know what kind of node they are?

Um typically when you're presenting in a public setting, that information um um conventionally has not been critical to conveying the message that the WMP is trying to.

But again, we have there are a lot of deliverables in GIS, and and if there are certain maps that um would give you greater comfort to review, we can certainly provide that.

And it sounds like one of them may be the link node diagram, so you can understand um, yeah, that I that needs more work for me for sure.

Um is okay, and then um I talked to um Negan, who's here from Tampa Bay Regional Planning at the last meeting to see what her thoughts were from your presentation, and one thing she said she really liked, I don't know where it is here, but if you you probably know where it is easier than me, the thing that you had about comparing our comp plan and like how many inches on a street were gonna be acceptable for okay, yeah, um about the level of service.

Yes, and she thought that was excellent, and she thought that was something that they should make sure all of their um plans like this have, so she really liked that, and she thought they were actually very realistic.

Maybe that not everybody would love to know that yes, there can be six inches of water on their street, and that's not considered a real issue.

Um but but that's realistic, you know, that if you have a really heavy thing, and and I don't know, you know, we've talked about how many inches, and and I agree that those are realistic.

Um and you know, if if a street has more, you know, as much for an emergency, I think was 13 inches or something, because I didn't turn to that yet.

I mean, theoretically, if you're on a street in the flood zone and your street has 13 inches and you're upset because you can't get out, you should have evacuated, is what you should have done.

And so you shouldn't be on the street anyway, and um or or you know, you shouldn't be going out in the water anyway.

One um one challenge with with stormwater modeling, and especially you know, stormwater in general as you present to the public, is that um obviously with what the community went through through Helene and through Milton, um, those are real-world flooding examples that that are present and kind of ingrained into your memory.

Um there is really no correlation between some of the rainfalls that we're running through this through um through our models, and the um, and let's say a hurricane.

No, and I'm not talking, I'm thinking more of what the rain we have this summer.

Yeah, well, so so I mean, like theoretically, you could have a hundred-year storm hit on Thanksgiving.

And and and so again, I I I guess I just want to um, you know, because when you talk about evacuating, I just did want to reinforce that there are some times to where these larger storms can hit.

And that like and and it's not it's not a um a coastal storm environment to where there is that.

So um, but certainly, you know, the comp plan, and you know, one thing that I hope um I did a good enough job in in demonstrating is that the comp plan is really the city's way to tell engineers what to do, you know, and says this is what we want to do, so do it.

Um, and the intent of that was to make sure that we took the comp plan and put the put together a set of assumptions that worked for the council and that were agreeable.

So um, you know, because again, the the six inches over the road, the nine inches over the road, those are taking some of these high-level principles that are outlined in the comp plan, and then trying to put a tangible how how does a nerd review whether it met it or not.

Um yeah, because I mean I think it it at least I understand that this isn't meant to fix a hurricane, a Helene.

It isn't meant for that.

Um, totally.

And I don't know if there's anything in here, and I don't remember anything from your presentation that talked about like say these storms we have this summer where we had a whole lot of rain, and really in not that big a time frame.

Like like the flash flood in August on the 10th.

You know, where you have several hours and all of a sudden those streets are totally flooded.

And anything that talks about um how quickly the streets will go down.

Like a recovery.

Yes.

If if if you will, yeah.

So um, and that's a that's a really good point because the one thing I do want to reinforce is that what these floodplains represent are instantaneous maxes.

And um the reason why we look at it is because um, you know, let's say just to put it in my own situation, I flooded during Helene.

Like it kind of doesn't matter whether it's in there for 10 minutes or 10 hours, like I flooded, I hit the elevation, it sucked either way, right?

Um so when when when we look at the floodplains, it may not, it may sit at that elevation for let's say only a few minutes, you know, maybe you know, and and that would vary based upon basin, but it still is presented as a max because structural flooding is is structural flooding, whether it's for a minute, 10 minutes, 10 hours.

Now, I will say part of the um, you know, there are certainly challenges in being a coastal municipality.

One of the benefits is that you have the biggest pond in the world to to drain to.

Sometimes that pond doesn't listen and it backs up and you can't get it down, but essentially from a stormwater modeling standpoint, you discharge to an infinite volume pond.

Like that's what any tidal water body is, is that there is no amount of water that golf ports gonna put in to Bogosega Bay that's gonna elevate Bogasega Bay.

Right.

That's all the moon and the tide.

Um, so when you talk about recovery, um, I would I would venture to say that if we you know, one one thing if you feel would be important is that so these storms are time-based to where you start at hour zero and you end at hour 2436.

We could do a floodplain after the 24 hour storm period, you know, if if that's something that you think would be helpful to say, okay, where are the areas that are gonna sit for the longest, you know?

And I think you'll see it does paint a very different picture uh to where a lot of these areas probably do draw down once the storm hits.

I know, and I think that that everybody would know that that the experience is you know, my street floods a lot.

And um, and and you know, again, being right on 58th, it you know, we we see what happens there, but usually within a few hours it's not so bad.

You know, you could drive through it even if it had been up to 10 inches, for instance, you know, after four hours or something, it could be down to three inches, you know.

But something that would let us know, because that would give I would think an indication of how effective our stormwater system is how fast things can drain off once the rain stops.

What what we can do, um let's go ahead.

I I have your note down here for the link node diagram, a more detailed version of it to where you can kind of you know um, guess what's going on?

Yeah, well, you know, um, and then also uh we can provide, let's say, what we'll call just for today recovery floodplains that would demonstrate for some of these storms.

Okay, what we're showing is the worst spot during the storm, but let's see if we can get the node results um when the time equals the end of the storm, and we can plot what those are.

And um, I imagine there are a lot of places to where you will you I mean, I know there'll be a lot of places that look vastly improved over that.

Right, and that's not unique to Gulfport, that's really you know, those are a lot of places except you know, maybe some inland lake areas that you may drain to a lake, and the lake takes days and days to bleed down.

And and um I I would think, but again, I'm not an engineer, that if things drain down, at least in some areas, say say some areas drain down to maybe just a couple inches, which is acceptable um, you know, within say three hours, say another area may only drain down to six inches after that same amount of time, that that might give us an indication of which pipes are in worse shape that we might need to address first compared to another area, as and I could be wrong.

No, I mean I mean uh what I mean, all we can do is look.

Um I mean the numbers are there, yeah.

Um, so you know, we can certainly take a look at the floor.

When you just said which shape which pipes are in worse shape, are you talking about the size of the pipe?

Yeah, whether they si either the size or if the condition makes them for some reason not drain as well, which whichever thing it is, but probably size.

So and and um, yeah, I mean that that's certainly you know, because again, we the way the model works is that you get pretty much a stage elevation at each time interval, so we can certainly provide into storm floodplains, column recovery floodplains to get an idea of let's say what are the what are the lingering issues.

Yeah, because that way we might know the areas where it's gonna be stay the deepest the longest, and which of your projects would address that the best.

Okay.

That's my thought.

Okay.

And you brought up the idea about um houses.

It's my understanding that a lot of houses flooded for the first time this time, but there's a couple of houses or maybe four or five, something like that, I think, Jim, that have had repetitive flooding.

Because you know, with insurance, usually that comes up.

Isn't there only a few?

I believe there's minimum, maybe two repetitive loss homes.

Yeah, yeah, so not much.

And usually um, unless there's repetitive loss, or you could clearly see that a house is more vulnerable than many other houses.

Usually people, you know, at least from my experience of hearing about other places where they buy up houses, it's usually not an until there's repetitive losses and they can't even get insurance anymore.

But I know that there's a house on the end of my stream that's supposedly the lowest elevation in the city that's right on the corner of 59th and 27th.

As you go up to 59th on the right hand side, yeah, on the right hand side.

And that poor house, they have they they were fixing it all up to sell and then it flooded, and then they got to stop work order because they didn't get a permit, and it's just been sitting there.

And um, and it even has a couple of stairs up, but and it had never flooded in the house before, but the garage had flooded multiple times.

So actually it was uh some in talking, we were thinking, well, you know, it could make sense because 59th is such a problem, and 27th is such a problem that if you bought that house in particular, the one next to it sits up higher and made a pond that went over towards the ditch and connected into Wood Ibis and close off the connection between 59th and 27th so that the pond went right across the street, that might be a good solution because that might absorb a whole lot of water.

Um and I don't know, there might be other areas where we could create another pond, or like um, for instance, um along First Avenue North, there's a play field that's that's that's the Bear Creek, that's a floodplain management area for Bear Creek.

Okay, where the where the where the playing field is like a floodable park, and it's meant to flood when there's a storm, and then of course it clears up the community for a play field again.

But um, you know, I don't know if if that would be something that would be worth doing to any of our areas.

Like I don't know if Hoyt Field, like if you did it at Hoyfield, would that help or not help?

You know, or anywhere along climber.

I I mean I don't know.

Yeah, no, and and that's a really good example because I think that specific area shows um the space kind of the footprint that you need to make a dent.

Yeah.

And um, you know, certainly that that area that um I I grew up in St.

Pete, so I never quite understood why these dummies built it so low, and then I, you know, I'm an engineer.

Now I get it.

Um so uh you know, that that area to where, yeah, I mean the whole concept of carving out a big chunk of land, um allowing for a degree of usability by the public during the dry times, and then a recognition that it's not gonna it it serves a different function during the wet times um is certainly something to where we didn't specifically look at that here because again, um as we come and present projects to the public, uh I prefer not to have tomatoes thrown out the back of my head for hey, I'm gonna let's buy these homes, let's you know, convert this park to a pond.

Um, but those are all options that you know, as you see out and about, those are their examples out there.

Um I mean that's being especially I mean, using Hoyt Fields as an example, it might not be the right place to do it, I don't know.

But you know, again, it would still be usable 90% of the time.

You wouldn't make it into a permanent pond, but you know, it that could be a way that might be less expensive.

And again, I don't know that, rather than digging up streets, you know, to just take out dirt and resod, yeah, as opposed to and maybe put drains around or whatever you do to do that.

But anyway, um it's just another idea of something to do, especially if it was something that was in a good place to be effective.

Do you have any other questions?

I think that's it for now.

I might have more after.

Okay, that's all right.

Councilmember Shaw.

Um what you're talking about is as an example of that is climber park.

There are sections of that that do serve that purpose.

But they could even be like maybe more swales or something possibly, but but we do have some of that.

So certainly that's something we could look at if we had locations to do that.

The other thing I I was wondering since you were talking about the recovery uh floodplain, um, since storms all are all different, um how predictable does that come then to say where water is going to be held because I mean, even every tide we get is is different to some degree.

Oh, yeah, I mean, there's you know, there's um there are an abundance of factors that you assume when you develop a stormwater model that nature can kind of make a fool out of you.

Um so in this case, what do we assume?

We assume specific tidal conditions, we assume certain rainfall depths, we assume certain rainfall distributions to where you know our our curves show a peak of the storm right in the middle.

Well, we don't show a two-peak storm, you know.

I mean, so so there are all these different variations of of a storm that can differ from what we're modeling.

Now, from a high level standpoint, this approach to modeling these design storms is used because kind of conventionally speaking, if it functions well during this storm and you see these flood benefits, there should be a whole nother suite of storms that nature throws at you that you can handle.

Now, will there be some that you can't?

Of course, that's always gonna happen.

Um, but again, if you can handle that design storm, then that gives um you know more or less reasonable assurance that the improvements that you pay for are going to function as intended through the majority of the situations that'll be thrown your way.

Okay.

Um so where I'm coming from, where I'm at right now is like all of us, we've we've watched the presentation more than once.

We got the the presentation slides on Friday.

Um and then I had to work through the steps to be able to even download it.

And then, of course, by Monday, um our city clerk was able to provide copies of it.

And so then now the repeat of listening and trying to go through the pages and using up some of my time with the city manager and my weekly meeting with him.

I'm saying, okay, so am I understanding this is the purpose of this page and so on and so forth.

So since I'm I'm basically an inquiry mine and a data gatherer to prepare me to make decisions.

Um I don't feel like this has been enough information, like there are maps that were, you know, like I said, I had to make sure I was understanding where they were coming from, but even that you know, they only print so well, and the colors don't even necessarily match up.

Plus, we didn't have a legend.

So is there something that you can do to help us with that?

So there's an ex some kind of an explanation explanation going with each page of the res a presentation and the legends, etc.

So there is a report that follows this that kind of serves as the end deliverable.

Um this is this was a a presentation of findings, and certainly not intended to be like you know, we did a study, and these are all you get.

You're gonna get a geodatabase that identifies you know all these things in more detail to where you can turn things off, turn things on.

Um you're gonna get an executable model to where anybody can pick up the model and run it and see, okay, you know, did it function as I intended, and you're gonna get a written report that essentially takes takes what we're talking about at a really high level now and and breaks it down and you know, kind of how we would typically present this data to a client.

Well, I did ask about that, but I was advised that we don't have that at this current time.

So when would we be receiving that?

So we're we're slated to have that done by the end of the year.

Okay.

So all right.

And then in January, we're going to have the presentation on the vulnerability study.

Yes.

And so what we receive as far as the presentation and slides, could we take these things that I just mentioned and perhaps even some of the others have mentioned?

So it's more than a page with just a title on it that we have a greater understanding of what it is, and and maybe something that's more visible and legible.

You know, I I like the one with all the grids on it, it seemed to be so relative to the next page, and so some kind of reference to that for as an example.

Now that one may have been there, but there was another one where there wasn't.

So I'm just trying to see what we can do to make this more assimilable.

No, uh well, certainly I think once you know, with with the report, because again, this is um, you know, the the PowerPoint does not substitute the pages and pages and pages of written information that document our assumptions.

Um it's it's it's PowerPoint's just not the format for that, admittedly.

Um so really with the report in hand, um I'm hopeful that um some of those issues will be addressed, and um and certainly next time, you know, we'll make sure that um you know legends was certainly uh a comment that was made and we'll make sure for the VA that we have the the appropriate legends uh within that presentation.

Um that would help.

I mean, even when I flip through the pages and listen to the presentation, I made notes, etc.

But it if it was in the detail, that would have been very helpful, and so I'm hoping we can consider that for the future.

And even now to fill in some of the blanks.

Were there any specific questions you wanted to um not at the moment?

Okay.

Conceptually, I I think I'm I'm I'm grasping things.

Okay.

I'm just looking for further detail.

Okay, understand.

Okay.

Councilmember Early?

I have a question.

Um BMP six, right?

The marina title flooding mitigation.

Yes.

These items seem like no-brainers, right?

I mean, are we behind the eight balls?

So for example, public facing platform to inform residents of pending roadway inundation.

I think Lori actually brought Laura actually brought that up to us another time, right?

Like some of these things.

I was just wondering if we were behind the eight ball as far as yep, there you go.

Um, one more.

I think having the sensors, having a public fixing platform to inform residents, you know, hey, listen, these roads are because I actually drove my car on a road that I take every day, and my car's no longer my car for anyone.

So um uh I appreciate the request place for state appropriation.

But some of these things just seem like no-brainers.

Do other cities have them when we're behind the eight balls?

Should we start considering some of the things, even if it's part and parcel?

I uh well, so so really I I I would say that the um that what we're looking at is something that a lot of communities are kind of simultaneously adopting.

Okay.

Um and that's um, you know, essentially there is um, you know, the county just purchased a bunch of sensors from this specific company.

It starts with an H, and if I pronounce it, I'm gonna get made fun of, so I'm not gonna say it.

Um but essentially what it is is that there, you know, it's it's a new business model that's hitting the market.

Um before, if you wanted to provide something similar to this, you would essentially have to purchase the equipment, you know, your yourself, and then you would have to have the servers and all that to host the data, and and more or less you would have to develop your own public um your own public platform.

Okay.

So um with this with with this company that's kind of coming online.

I think it's started by some oceanographer from the University of Hawaii.

Um yeah, no, I mean, um, you know, certainly select idea, and what it is is that because again in society we don't own anything anymore, we rent everything.

Right.

So this is a subscription-based model.

And and what we're looking at doing is that it it would it would give us the opportunity to tap into their platform, they their sensor provides all the data, they do all the data scrubbing in the background, but then there's also a publicly accessible link that the residents can see.

So yeah.

Okay.

So these are actually have to all be together, right?

They could be no that that those that was just specific for the project that was um that was developed for for the state appropriation requests.

Okay, that's what they needed.

They needed these and well, and and then obviously too, um, just because it's there doesn't mean I can't change to where if there was something specific that um you know wasn't desired or m desired more of, there's yeah.

So um, but more or less, you know, one of the one of the reasons we looked at this is because uh we had some of this discussion last uh meeting about the use of these backflow valves.

And those those do come with challenges, and so we're trying to see if there's a um I'm always told not to say better way to skin the cat, but better way to solve the problem.

Okay.

Um so um So this is kind of replacing the backflow valves, is that yeah, yes.

Well and and and you know, so well, and and what it does is this provides this this more or less is a system that would take the operational downfalls that a backflow valve provides and um removes them from the equation.

So now now there are other headaches that come with that, nothing for free, right?

You know, so and and and that's why we're calling it a pilot program because I think it's important any time you know you look at implementing a technology that you do kind of pilot it and see, okay, well, rather than dive headfirst into the water, let's see what works, let's see what doesn't work, and then that way if you do decide to implement it at a larger scale, you you kind of you know you can learn from the lessons of a smaller project versus you know a larger deployment.

Like a beta testing if you will just like for you always have other people then pilot projects oh yeah I mean I mean people do pilot projects.

But this particular a particular one like this.

I am not aware of one.

I mean I um you know um I I don't want to say that nobody's done it um I am not aware of one specifically and am I right in thinking that the reason that we would look at this in the marina area and maybe not right on shore boulevard is because this marina area does not get all the overland water that the downtown area yes now now so we're solving one problem not and one answer.

So the um you know there you know we're thinking in this area um you know because when we talk about the project assumptions um one of the kind of the non-technical things we have to do is recognize that everybody contributes to this pot of money to the city right so when we present projects we want to make sure that we're somewhat equitable in how we kind of spread out the wealth so to speak and so when looking at the challenges that face e each unique area we try to pick out a tailored solution and one of the challenges in the marina districts is you know you know because again you just did a pretty impactful project with with the ponds so you have a water quality um you know more or less addressed somewhat in that in that area you have relatively new conveyance piping so how can we help that area well their next challenge is really the tidal flooding so that's kind of the nexus of how that how that came to be why every every project we done different at the same time simultaneously or not.

Yeah yeah and you know what's oh it's funny is that we we we set up here and we talked about how we wanted to make these to where they're not sequential and you know sure enough we gave you two that really would need to be sequential but um you know generally speaking that's because the the magnitude of the problem is kind of warrants it and then you kind of say one two three four five so that yeah well well yeah yeah I guess yeah but yeah but they're certainly not in order but you know I guess it's cleaner than uh ABCD right exactly thank you for the answer okay so I'll start with my questions and thoughts um whoops that just didn't just interrupt in my brain for just a second okay so the first thing that I wanted to say was I liked um in your presentation I also struggle with the maps very much and I'm a map person so I found it them very hard to read not only because the print wasn't good but my eye it was too small I found problems with them all across the board.

The one thing I really liked in the presentation was how you tied the level of service and talked about how it really is kind of addressed in our comp plan and I felt like you were asking if we were comfortable with that level of service and again acknowledging that we cannot fix everything for everyone all the time.

Okay so I'm definitely liked the level of service that you talked about zero, six and nine inches of water.

I was very comfortable with that.

Then the second thing that I I spent a little time on was this whole project development assumptions and there were quite a few of the things that I agreed with 100% but there were some things that I didn't agree with and interesting I feel like two of my council members have already kind of addressed that as well.

I went uh where we made an assumption that we want parks to stay green converting green space not proposed I'm going to as I walk through the six different plans I'm going to suggest that I think that there might be ways and I'm not an engineer and don't pretend to be but I think that there might be some ways that we could use some of our parks to be holding ponds which would maybe prevent us from having to worry about crossing Gulport Boulevard um and even if they're not a hundred percent as good if they're close to being as good and it would cut the price and the inconvenience of having our um Gulfport Boulevard tore up for a long period of time I think they would be worth considering again I'm not an engineer not trying to be but um I I definitely would like to say that the that was the one assumption that I thought was made that I wouldn't necessarily agree with or buy into and I don't know what the others think about that.

No I mean that's that's why we share that so everybody can kind of see how the sausage is made.

I don't think parks have to be uh totally green.

I think we could make some water features in our parks um with free water.

Okay, so then um when I go to the um I'm gonna call BMP map one, okay?

So I'm gonna go in order, jumping right to the projects, not how the report was brought to us.

So um the first thing that I wanted to know was in the I've only lived here 15 years and I've never seen the flooding that we recently had.

So one of my first questions was have we had a problem getting our emergency vehicles out due to flooding?

And I think that the answer on that was not necessarily because we anticipated and maybe have moved our vehicles four times in the last 20 years.

Okay, so if that's the end, you know, that kind of puts it into perspective a little bit.

And then the second question that I asked was did we uh prior to the state telling us to shut down emergency services, because that comes uh with these storms, did we have anybody that needed to be rescued that we were not able to get to?

And I was told no, because we also have the availability of boats.

So that helped me look at this this one a little bit.

Um what I wasn't clear in listening to the presentation a couple of times and then looking at the map was I I I understand that this would go down 54th, and I understand, you know, I've seen the cascading effect down 54th.

I've I've stood at the uh uh at the bar at OMATI's and watched the water come rushing down.

I admit it.

For educational purposes.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah.

Um but what I wasn't clear on was when we were talking about a price like 18.1 million, you said what one of the things you said about this was that it has the ability to include expansion on 25th Avenue.

So I didn't know if this price included an extension on 25th Avenue, or you're just saying it could be done for future with additional funds.

Yeah, so so the areas that we noted where expansion is the opportunities are present, that was not included within the cost.

Okay.

Um and then I wasn't clear.

I did hear you say that this pro this particular one would reduce some of the water coming um uh down 59th and 27th, that would that area.

So we see that it would not solve the entire problem.

Right.

Uh right, and wind solve the whole thing.

And then um I I didn't quite get when you said the maintenance dredging would be required to maintain sump fallout.

So we've just put the new pipe.

Well, not that we've run a whole new pipe, but we're fixing the intersection, of course, right now at Shore and 54th.

So we just put in a much much larger pipe.

So are we talking that we would start up around 25th and run down and it would come into the new pipe that we just put in, or would we have another whole run separate from what was there?

It would be separate or a replacement.

Either or replace the pipe we just put in?

No, but the the we all we did was we only replaced the small part of it at the end.

It would be no um likely any time you have if if space permits, any time we have a pipe and we're adding something else, we like to keep it and have two, two is better than one type deal.

So we would certainly um if this project was pursued, we would look to try to keep existing outfalls that we can.

And add a second one, even if it's right in the same way.

Yeah, and and again, kind of convention, you know, conventionally speaking, you never want to take away an outfall.

Um, so unless there was a uh unique situation or or a space restriction that wouldn't allow for us to put two in there, which we're not foreseeing at this time, um, then then we would keep that in there.

And regarding the maintenance dredging, um the reason why that was mentioned is because as we have these long runs, um, you know, essentially uh with gravity, you keep on getting uh deeper and deeper and you're sloping downwards towards the water.

Okay.

So at you know, so as the grade is getting shallow or you know, kind of shallower and you're getting deeper, you end up to a point to where if you didn't do any kind of like a sediment sump, that pipe would be like below everything, and you'd be like, you know, so essentially what you have to do is that a lot of these larger outfalls, especially when they discharge into areas that aren't like big channels, and again, this is a kind of a flat beach area, um, you would have to have some type of maintenance dredging program in conjunction with this to make sure that you were maintaining that outfall because set it it will fill up with sediment either from the water that's coming on upland or tides bringing it back to it.

And you'd be like, you know, so essentially what you have to do is that a lot of these larger outfalls, especially when they discharge into areas that aren't like big channels, and again, this is a kind of a flat beach area, um, you would have to have some type of maintenance dredging program in conjunction with this to make sure that you were maintaining that outfall because set it will fill up with sediment either from the water that's coming on upland or tides bringing it back to it.

So the pipe that comes down 54th, where we had to replace the end of it because it blew out during the storms.

Okay, how long of a run is that pipe today?

Where does that run?

I would I I'd have to get back with you on that.

I don't have that immediately now.

So I asked that because that's going to, you know, that's not coming in below grade now.

That that is that, so it must be a shorter run.

I I without, you know, I'll probably go back and have to have to put my foot in my mouth, but yeah, I I think that is a shorter run really in this area.

I don't recall a lot of larger collection systems, or let's say long expansive collection systems.

Okay.

So then I'm gonna go out on the limb, you know, and I might get hung.

But um when I look at, you know, um, we're talking about running this down 54th, okay, which is doggone close to beach, and we're talking about starting it at 25th, which is dog on close to climber park.

I can't help but wonder if we couldn't take some of the water, um, and that is where I was saying that I'm questioning some of the assumptions.

Um I'm not sure that some of this water and that I wouldn't be in favor of taking some of this water over to Climber Park and making it a beautiful water fare uh water area and with the the native plants and with the uh walkways over it with the bridge and you know, a very manicured area that's going to hold water for us.

Um people I understand just like the open space, and I'm not opposed to the open space, but if I had to make a decision between having keeping that open space or trying to alleviate flooding into my residents' homes, that's an easy decision for me.

So I don't know if that's possible, but I look at climber park, I like the fact that it's open, but I I don't see it as um that necessarily holding water to me wouldn't necessarily be a negative.

I mean, we already have swells holding water between 23rd and 24th.

I know between 24th and 25th, some water will accumulate during the storms, and it all goes away by itself, you know.

So I'm not so sure that I wouldn't like to see something, you know, if I had a consensus among council where we looked into that possibility, um, whether that could save us some money because you know, shorter runs, I don't know.

I wanted to throw that out there.

Um then when I get to um uh BMP two, and and it would be helpful if you did put up this those slides.

I'm gonna go right in order.

Thank you.

Um this one for me was probably um one of the most troublesome to to try to really figure out what the map was was telling me.

You know, um when I got the blown up the visions, I could see where the yellow started, but I don't know how the water is getting to the yellow piping.

And then here's a disadvantage too.

I just want to say, just with the presentation, I've been behind the gate in the country club twice in 15 years.

So when you were referring to the land bridge and box culverts and the pond, I I don't even know where those things are.

So it was very confusing.

And then I thought the map would help me, but it didn't help me very much as well.

So um, if if maybe right now, if you could just tell me where does the water what what connects this new yellow line that I'm seeing on here, what connects to that where and what yeah, so in in a general sense, just to kind of orient everybody, what we're showing, uh you can see the road, you can see Gulfport Boulevard to where it takes the bend and it heads north.

Um you can also see that there's a treed area, which is there, there's a negative 2.39 right over top of it, which uh that is uh a node reduction, and essentially that means that implement project X, you get this much amount of water reduction.

So that's what all those minuses mean.

Um we're trying so the yellow pipe uh piping that we're seeing is to reduce the water collecting at the minus two point three nine.

Well, so the the um let me kind of orient real quick.

I I I apologize.

No, you're fine.

Um and so right now what happens is that the water that comes from you know that big PYCC basin that we talked about.

It goes into the marsh area that that that um let's say a non-defined pond right next to the guard shack, and um from there it goes into four CMP pipes that the city owns that goes across the golf course that was lined two or three years ago, I'd say.

Um from there, um there is a privacy wall that um separates the road from the neighborhood behind it.

Um right behind that wall is like a eight by twenty-two foot eight foot wide by twenty-two foot long structure that we built back in like I want to say the twenty around twenty twelve, twenty fifteen.

Um, and that was one to where that that takes the four CMP pipes that goes across and it converts it all to like a box culvert.

Think of big rectangular pipe.

Can you show us where it is on there?

Yeah, um I'm sorry, could you just use the mouse and just point to where you're talking about the armor thing.

Okay.

So we'll see.

Oh.

So my mouse right here.

So so we talked about the four CMPs that go across here.

Do that again because with a mouse, I alright.

So right there, so we got the four CMPs that go across the golf course.

CMPs.

Uh CMP is another acronym, uh, corrugated metal pipes.

So um, and those are things that you typically do not want in your system, or if you gotta keep them, you line them, and that's what the city did about three years ago.

So, and right now it goes from and then in between these homes, these CMP pipes or the the metal pipes were failing.

So the city replaced everything in between these homes and constructed a box culvert.

And that was done, let's say about a decade ago, give or take.

Um and so essentially and then from there it goes in between um in between this little channel and it goes in this little mangrove uh lowland area until it eventually flows out into this canal.

So that's the existing configuration, or that's how the water kind of migrates through the golf course now.

Um and in the proposed project, what we would do again, we talked earlier about never wanting to remove a pipe if we don't have to.

So that's why we we're using the term bypass, because essentially what we want to do is that we want to put redundant piping in.

We don't want to take out, we want to add would be using both systems.

Yeah, so so we'd use both systems, and this is more or less, you know, almost think of like siphoning off water during a heavy storm event.

And so what this would do is rather than taking the conventional path of going in between the homes, going through this mangrove area, and out here, that essentially bypasses that whole entire configuration and makes a B line right for the bay.

And then also we have this area here.

Um there's this system here.

Here's Wood Ibis Park.

Um, and here's uh actually right there is that low house that we were talking about earlier.

And um this water flows in this in this natural area, and it eventually goes under the road and then through a uh through that land bridge, and so we would do um another bypass culverts where we'd keep what's under the road, but then we'd siphon off high flows and route it down to that this this area here.

And this BMP, so we we know that we need to do work within the PYCC subwatershed, that big pink area.

And what this does is this allows us to where we can't put more water into the system before we get it out quicker, because we have to make sure that we don't have any adverse impacts.

So this one actually is the precursor because three to three, because if you do three without this one, now you're just moving that water downstream.

And you're flooding new people.

And so essentially this is one to where we try not to have them sequentially if we can't, but this was an opportunity we wanted to present.

I'm sorry.

So where there it says minus zero point zero one, which is that box culvert bypass system that leads towards the back gate where it's the landing.

And then flows into wood Ibis.

So I was told by our city staff that the water actually flows west.

This shows it flowing east or southeast.

No, we're flowing.

We're flowing west.

We're we not if you're west.

Not if you're flowing from here to here.

No, we're not flowing that way.

Okay, that's what okay.

That's what I'm confused.

Yeah, so there's there's the uh there's a weir right here.

There's a weir right here that's in the ditch.

Uh-huh.

Um, you know, because so Wood Ibis, how would Ibis functions?

There's three places it spills over.

It spills over in in that in the ditch that's on your property, it spills over underneath the bridge that that goes across there.

Wait, wait, wait a minute.

Can you point them out while you're okay?

Sorry.

Yeah, east point.

So you're pointing them over here.

Oh, I didn't know you could see it there too.

Sorry.

Okay.

So what bridge are you talking about?

So there's there's uh at Wood Ibis, there's a bridge right here.

Yeah.

And there's towards town shore.

Yeah, yeah.

And it goes down to down shores.

There's also a uh weir right here, which is more or less just a concrete structure in the ditch, and then outside of the view on 28th Avenue, there's a splitter, a smart box or a splitter structure that it bypasses and it goes to the town shores area as well.

So because Wood Ibis essentially how they designed it, is there's there's three points that it spills over when when it when it um gets high.

Okay, so to summer to summarize my question, then all this B2 is really designed so that BMP3, which relieves the water from the northeast area.

We can't just do three and have all that water come cascading down without a way to move it across PYCC.

So and and this kind of goes back to one of the um, you know, there are a lot of places in any watershed to where you could look at flooding and say the fix is so simple.

Bigger pipe, move it over that way.

Stormwater 101, you cannot have adverse impacts to where you cannot pass the buck downstream and say, well, I'm gonna do a project and I'm gonna make this area better, but I'm gonna impact you more.

That's that's just not how you do it.

Right.

And so that's why number uh number five, when we say do no harm, all of these projects, you know, we we we can propose some hell of a projects if if we allow people to flood downstream, but obviously we just we just can't do that.

That's not a feasible solution to present to the council.

I know for myself, it would be very helpful for me to get somebody who'll take me behind the gate and uh let me see this with my own eyeballs because um just seeing it on maps is not you know, I'm and that's not your job.

I gotta get a resident in PYCC who wants me to understand totally and will show it to me.

So now you got a volunteer right now.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

You are allowed.

That is in the post orders.

Okay, thank you.

That helps to know.

All right, so then I'm gonna move on to um BMP 3.

Okay.

So if I'm understanding that one, that is really designed, even though we call it Tomlinson Park, you you call it the PYCC watershed, right?

When I'm talking about Tomlinson Park, you when you say PYCC, I think you mean behind the gate, but really the all that water that's coming from the northeast into PYCC is called the watershed.

Yeah, then yeah, so um, I mean, really, it's it's up near um it's up near Tom's building, you know, on 49th Street, and it's Cumbles and Park, it's it's all the whole purple thing is the watershed.

Okay, good.

I mean that helps me understand that.

And the area that we were talking about where we were looking at, we that's the canal right down there.

Just give you an idea of kind of the the scale of where we're working.

So now I I have quite a few questions on this one, because this is this to me is like a major one.

Um so in on this diagram I see the the yell the stretch of the yellow piping.

So I think that's what you're suggesting is new would be new piping.

Okay.

Then is it safe to assume are we talking about adding additional drains there too?

Because there's a good number of drain drains that don't, I mean, there's a good bit of space there that does not have any kind of drain.

Yeah, so you know, any time I mean you can you can see we're trying to jam a lot of information on these maps, and so um there is a bit of a schematic to it to where um obviously if the city were investing that degree of money, we wouldn't leave these little isolated low spots.

I mean, typically you you can you can just assume if you're going through that intersection, either it's gonna be I mean it's gonna have to be rebuilt and regraded just by nature of the construction work, and if you couldn't grade out your problems, then you'd be adding inlets.

So that's kind of baked into the assumptions and while not necessarily shown on each map.

Because what I noticed when I, you know, I drive through there when it's raining and just observe um for a year the last year or two.

And what I notice is that in that area, first of all, there's blocks and blocks and blocks.

It's so level and there's no um no drains, okay.

But then when you get to the intersection at I'm gonna call it 21st and 60th, so it kind of goes into an exaggerated cul-de-sac there.

That cul-de-sac has three double drains.

But the water doesn't get there, right?

Just about a block away, whether you're on 20th or whether you're on 61st, I think I'm saying right, I might be 60th.

When you're about a block away, there's enough of an increase going in to there that the water is flooding everybody's yards and up into their carports and garages because it can't get there.

So to me, I'm thinking that that would be more of a grading issue than anything because I've watched it.

You can watch the water travel for six, eight blocks, but it can't make it to where all those drains are.

And that's along 20th?

No, 21st and 60th.

Is that the head that I think it was 19th and 60th that we had a lot of flooding where we had some complaints and stuff.

And that's where you said that there was a pipe going down into PYCC from there that we've had repeated problems with.

And there's in the corner where the road was closed many years ago when they built PYCC, the road was closed, and there's a niche and as it goes across into that area he was speaking to next to the guard house.

There's a small lower trench or wood ditch or whatever you want to call it to the left of the guard house, and the intent is for those pipes to drain into that.

No, but when I brought this up before when this the residents complained about the flooding, you said there was a pipe that went south from there that had had repeated problems.

And that's what we're talking about.

They're going across the I thought I okay.

I wasn't thinking south that way.

I was thinking I was thinking more directly south.

Okay.

Okay.

So this again is where I might get hung for saying this, but we actually own land right at 20th and 60th.

There's a tiny kind for a park, it's tiny.

I think it's called Yolanda Park.

Okay.

And actually that is where I'm talking about where there are three double drains that the water doesn't get to.

Okay.

And I think that would be more of a grading issue than anything.

But going out on the limb once again, I think that area is big enough that if we were give willing to give up a little, you know, like a half a block sidewalk that we're calling a park, I think that we could have another really great ponding area right there, and we could collect some of this as you use the term siphon some of this water off from Tomlinson without having to ever go underneath PYCC.

Hold the water on the the north side of Gulfport Boulevard, because we we already own that land, it's ours, and it's not being used.

I mean, somebody might walk their dog there, but if we had an option of walking our dog versus, you know, preventing flooding and prevent tearing up Gulfport Boulevard, I think that that would be reasonable, and I'd just like you to look at that and see if that's a possibility.

Yeah, um, you know, kind of thinking high levels, so I don't have a good visual of this park.

Um, but generally speaking, you know, when we talk about um, you know, the vice mayor brought up the 58th Street over near Bear Creek about that floodable park, and you think about the amount of space you need to kind of have an impact.

Um there is some initial concern about when we talk about individual parcels about how effective it can really be in providing that.

Um, you know, because not understanding the scale in my head, yeah.

Um, you know, normally when we're talking about areas, green fields, you know, climber tomlison, big green swaths to convert to storage.

Um so while certainly every little bit helps, um it it likely would not negate the need to go across Gulfport Boulevard.

Okay.

know because not understanding the scale in my head yeah um you know normally when we're talking about areas green fields you know climber tomlison big green swaths to convert to storage um so while certainly every little bit helps um it it likely would not negate the need to go across Gulfport Boulevard okay just love to have that looked at um because the the the piping that you're showing me on this visual for plan number three is right there where I'm talking about and it might not be big enough but it might solve some of the problem um okay um when I look at um number four I didn't have a lot of questions for that I listened to what you said and I heard you say that completing um projects one two and three would probably be more effective than creating uh then doing project number four because again what's happening there is not so much tidal it's overland water was my interpretation of what you were saying.

Yes and now you know our tide elevation that we're using is 1.78 which we provided the graph that um showed how that area you know like theoretically how many times a year that area would be underwater um that's not to say that if you have higher tides that area's not impacted but from a stormwater standpoint um this project while presented is more treating the um you know it's it's it's really um you know treating the symptoms and not the cause if you will um to where the the main issues we see here are due to we have offsite uncontrolled runoff that finds its way downhill okay I I understood that uh that one was a little bit easier because I know that property and I can walk it and ride it and the whole thing.

So then um I jump to um number five so on number five I'm looking at uh piping coming down I think it might be 60th and 61st okay and then going across 15th and then we get into the big bucks to cross over into across Gulfport Boulevard and go into PYCC.

Yes although this is not part of the PYC C subwatershed because the let's say the northwest regions of PYCC are more in the Bear Creek area.

Okay.

So just to provide right but I at least I'm understanding the flow right 60 is 61st go across 15th disrupt Gulfport Boulevard to get to the other side and use another pond over there.

So then this kind of goes back to again the assumptions the assumptions that we don't want to mess with green space so at the intersection of Gulfport Boulevard and 64th we have a smaller park but it's a nice size it's it's a lot bigger than Yolanda Park okay and um we have a playground right in the middle of it and then to the west side we have really quite a nice big open space and to the opposite side so both to the east and west side we have open space.

So um being that I'm not afraid to use one of those you know I I would like to have a playground and some open space but we've got two open spaces I'm wondering if we couldn't rather than routing it down 15th if we couldn't route it down 13th because if we went down 13th we literally could land right at this park that I'm talking about with the open space and could we not use that for our ponding as needed to siphon off the water let it hold there instead and not have to deal with crossing Gulfport Boulevard.

Okay.

And again I don't know you know if if others would even agree with me about using some of our green space certainly when when there's not uh flooding uh going on uh when there's flooding where our kids aren't out playing in the park anyway but when they're when it goes away and it drains down they they can play even if there's an incline that gives them something to run up and down.

So that's just uh the thoughts that I had was if we can move it from 15th to 13th and go into the park I think that it could be much more cost effective and much more much less disruptive to the traffic on Gulfport Boulevard.

Okay.

Now before I turn this over to public comment did I say anything that any of y'all need to respond to or address before we move on.

Yeah, and and I I yeah, Caldwell Park, you know, you might want to move the playground to one end or the other and make a bigger space.

Oh good idea.

Yeah.

Um and I and I think you could make a very attractive thing down um climber park to hold, you know, like a little canal that could be we could have gondolas.

No, I don't know.

Okay, so I I saw Nancy kind of shaking her head.

What do you think of uh council member Shaw?

Are you open?

No, I agree.

So mayor, we have direction then to look at possibly creating a pond at climber park.

Is that just to look into it?

Not a pond, more of a stream.

Okay.

Well, it would be more than a stream.

But but I mean not not not a round pond necessarily, but uh a longer well did you uh or a facility just to look at that.

To look at that, and then that's what we're kind of uh I guess what we're saying to you right now.

I think we have four out of four that are saying that um we're not necessarily when it comes to our homes flooding versus keeping every inch of our green space, we're willing to use our green space for more than one reason.

I think that's what we're saying.

We should look at it.

Yeah, yeah.

We we should look at it.

So we're open to that.

We have a food forest there, and that would probably help, not hurt, right?

It would be more water versus less water.

Yep.

So and and then too, just to make sure that um um the council's aware of kind of what we would come back with is that some of these more nuanced discussions on space planning of the park, obviously from a stormwater standpoint, we're looking at show me the land.

So you've shown us the land.

What what we're gonna do is that we're really not gonna focus on um specific amenities.

I mean, we're gonna look at dig a hole, oh yeah, make it big, what does it do?

Big big big picture stuff.

I just want to make sure that you're you're figuring out how to use the water.

It's our job to figure out how to beautify it or something.

But then and then really kind of the pro the process would be from there is that if that is something, you know, and and I think it's safe to say that you know that was a general comment that you want us to look at to where is there green space that can be strategically used to improve flooding?

And that's and and that's something that we can we will take a look at.

And then when we come back, um we will provide those general areas.

But there's going to be certain details about well, what about a walking path?

What about the water?

Yeah, we don't need to go that far.

Yeah, so I mean I I just wanted to make sure that you know when we come back, kind of the the the answer to the question is gonna be here's the area, here's how much better or not better it gets.

Right.

I think we've identified the three areas that you've talked about called and I think to it just to look just and look at the capacity, and uh that's why I recommend advice suggested climber.

There could be some really available capacity, and we'll have him look at climber or can Caldwell and also the 19th Avenue circle there.

And um, I I have Hoit as well.

Excuse me.

Pardon?

I I have Hoyt in my notes as well to look at.

So yeah, in case yeah, I'm not I'm not opposed to looking at the police and fire.

I mean, I I could look at using both.

Yeah, yeah.

And and and Hoyt is big.

Yep.

Okay.

Um look at them.

Okay, thank you.

Also would I'd even be open to hearing uh one of the things Vice Mayor Thanos said that I didn't seem think was out of line was that property that's right at the corner of 27th and 59th, which we do believe is the lowest point in our city.

You know, I uh is that big enough to would it be even big enough to be to make a difference in terms of holding water?

Again, you'd have to go across the street and into the park and create a whole other thing.

But you know, from from our standpoint, you know, we um you know the reason why a lot of times parks are brought up in the discussion is because those are big available areas, yeah.

Um versus the parcels that really represent a lot, you know, 50 by 100, something like that, which um certainly is powerful, but when we're talking about, you know, but this hundreds of thousands of gallons, you know, if not more than that, then um that that space becomes um pretty undersized pretty quick.

Well, and again it wouldn't just be the parcel, it would be the street in front of it and part of um Wood I was park.

You know, that you could make a whole separate pond because you could dead end 27th.

Yeah, uh the neighbor right next door.

We'd have to make sure they don't get public comment in a minute.

All righty.

You get to sit down and rest your voice.

We're gonna open it up.

Oh, were we gonna have any further discussion about um the marina title flooding?

I I it was my opportunity to ask questions, and I asked that on the front end.

Okay, so I didn't have any other questions on that one.

So I'm done with my questions.

Well, I don't have questions on it.

Just you know, just wanted to know where everybody was at.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

So I think you can sit down, rest your voice, and what we'll do then is we'll open up to public comment.

We're still gonna put it at three minutes.

Totally okay to ask questions, make comments, whatever you want.

Um, after we've been through public comment, then it um Justin is gonna come back and address w what was asked of him.

Okay, so show of hands.

Yes, I saw you first.

And if you'll give your name, please.

Uh hi, Shauna Stone, 3014 DuPont Street.

Looking at one of these maps with uh the colored areas, the purple and everything, it kind of looked like the town shores area and the beach area don't really get flooding.

Um we're on DuPont Street and on a high tide, the drains the drains back up.

Excuse me.

Um and I'm just wondering if we're losing sight here of creating pretty parks and water places instead of fixing the drainage system, because um neighbors' garages have been flooded in a rainstorm.

Okay, three inches of rain, the garage gets flooded.

It's not just hurricanes that are hurting our properties here.

My front yard, a good rainstorm is always flooded.

The street is flooded.

You have people driving through creating wakes, which the wakes go into the house, and unfortunately the police department doesn't do anything, they won't close roads down, and I get it, they're busy, but it's common sense and people don't care.

They think it's fun.

And I'm just hoping the council takes to task that we have a problem here, and we we probably should address for instance town shores when it rains, that ring goes right into 58th Street.

So on 58th and 30th, 29th and 31st, there's over a foot of water there, and that's just in a rainstorm.

And that in August, that that rain event that Sunday where it rained for 10 hours or what whatever.

There was a it was over my knee.

So you can and you could feel the current coming down.

So I'm just um um I get we want to have a pretty water retention center, but something has to be done with these drains, and um these new houses are coming in, and they're gonna have three or four bathrooms in them.

And where where is this water?

High tide, we get we get problems, okay, without rain.

So um that has to be addressed, I think.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, Anna.

Yeah.

Um, I'm gonna go back to that little house that April mentioned a while back.

Um lowest point, there is a drain there.

Now you probably know it as well as I do.

We walk by there all the time.

The water doesn't drain.

It sits in the room.

So if the water's high in Wood Ibis, it won't go anywhere.

If that ditch is in which direction, it just goes from there under the street.

It goes under the dirt over to that ditch that's along the back wall.

That's all it goes to.

It doesn't go to a drain.

It just goes over to that ditch.

Okay, and then so what do we do about being able to have Ibis pond low enough so that the water can drain there?

They were gonna dredge it and decided it didn't need dredging last time.

Last year, I think it was okay.

So then for the record, I beg to differ.

And and I'm also not clear, whatever comes down your 27s, 26 empties out in 59ths.

Where is that water supposed to go from there?

Where is it like you know, it it goes into the into the um ditches and on the street, and then where is it going from there?

I correct me if I'm wrong, Tom, but I think that's supposed to go back into PYCC.

So what we're gonna do is everyone can come up and say what they want.

Justin is making notes, and once everybody has a chance to ask all their questions, he's gonna come back up and okay answer.

So two questions then, right?

Yeah, did you understand my questions?

All right, let's go again.

Yeah.

So about the dredging.

About the dredging.

Yeah, yeah.

And then the water that comes from 2726 into 59th, comes down 59th.

Where is that going?

Okay.

Thank you.

Oh, thank you.

And I will ask everybody still to use the mic because this is being filmed.

Who's next?

Yes, Laura.

Laura Oldaney, Ninth Avenue South.

Just a collection of random thoughts.

I guess I walked in late and I heard the figure 13.5 million coming out of your mouth, Mayor, and I'm not sure it gets to me.

I don't know.

Do we have a sense of how much money we have to work with on this?

Is that still something the city's coming to grips with because it feels really hard?

Just you did come in late.

So I was comparing the humongous elephant, which to do the six projects suggested, is 75 million.

And I was trying to compare that with the 10 years we've been working on the storm water, we've spent 13.5 million.

And then we said the money is a huge issue.

But tonight, our goal is to talk, make sure everyone gets their questions answered, they get to make their comments, and we're going to save the discussion about money till after we've gotten the vulnerability study as well, which is the beginning of January, so then we know how big the elephant can really get.

Okay.

So thank you.

I hope that helps.

Yes.

All right.

Then also just uh um the money thing is one thing to help shape decision making, but also having a sense, you know, I don't live down where the most flooding is likely to take place.

So as a resident who wants to be part of decision making, you know, any maps we can make that are easier to read that kind of show for us who want to participate in these discussions.

What are the vulnerable areas?

Where is this water collecting when we get the rainstorms?

And the subscription tech solution sounds interesting, but I also think analog solutions are important too when there's no power around to supply these subscription services.

So even just signs in these areas that we're just discovering are likely to flood, could be helpful.

And I was really happy to hear, you know, these are elected officials with these creative ideas that you're out there that you're looking, you're questioning because we may not be able to come up with enough money to do these bigger projects.

And yes, you know, hopefully we can, but we also need smaller solutions, and I'd I was happy to hear that Megan from the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council was at the meeting.

I'd love to for us to have more meetings with you know, Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, someone from Forward Pinellas, maybe other communities.

I feel like we need more ideas, you know, more back and forth, because we're we don't know the answers.

I mean, this is great, but there are other people I think we could involve.

And also Diane Willis, who have directed the mayor towards she's walked climber park, she's looked at how water full you know could flow there.

I think bringing in she's a local rainwater harvesting expert who's a biologist.

There are other people we could bring into these conversations, and I think it would be really valuable to workshop it beyond that.

Maybe you're already thinking that way.

So again, um, and just thinking about what are our highest priorities, our highest impact areas.

I'm guessing it's residents' homes.

I don't know where does City Hall fall in our priorities, that kind of thing.

I think a lot of those questions were answered in the presentation last uh week would be my thoughts.

If you haven't watched it, it is on video.

Okay, okay, thank you.

Who's next?

Bob.

Hello, you know me.

Uh I watched the presentation, that was great.

The retention ponds is dynamite for more of the north northern part of the city.

Uh I was listening to everybody talk.

What's our problem?

Or I mean what's what's our problem?

What's our jet objective here?

We have our problem is our streets are full of water.

Your objective is to get it out of the streets and where?

Back into the bay.

Okay, because that's where it all goes.

Anyone spin it?

Now we've got two types.

We have storm water, that's rainfall where we flood.

And you got tidal flood, like a hurricane.

We can't stop that.

There's no way that's coming over our seawalls.

Rain water is not.

And I heard the gentleman say you can pump all the water you want into the bed, it's not gonna affect the the water level.

Correct?

Oh, is that a question?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

So I uh contacted uh Tyler at Xylem Pumps.

He's been contracted by Pinellas County, Treasure Island, and Indian Rocks.

He's a pri he's a project manager.

I sent him my drawings, which I gave you all you guys a copy of to put the pumps in.

And I sent him all this information.

He's going on, he could not be here tonight because of Thanksgiving.

He was going to O'Cal or something, but I will make sure you guys have his number and we can work something to get him down here and show you what they're doing in Treasure Island, Indian Rocks and Pinocchio's had come all over the place.

Different places could get this water out of the streets and back into the bay.

What else was I gonna tell you?

I don't know, I've been busy.

Uh but oh that's where I am on this thing.

I'm I'm there and I handed you set of them drawings.

Okay.

So like I oh he said we were talking about the 54 street pipe.

We put in bigger pipe.

And you wanted to do, could we make that wider and direct that in?

And he would you were talking about sediment.

Well that'd have to be cleaned out.

One of them drawings I got, there's baffle boxes that handle that.

There's a check valve on the other side that handles the sediment coming in.

We have no sediment issue, like having to go in here like we are now with the big trucks and the pumps and sending the robots now.

We don't have to do none of that.

Take the cap off, you suck it out.

There's all the trash, sediment, this, that, and the other thing.

So I'm gonna give you Tyler's number, maybe, or have him call.

I gave him your number.

He will be calling you.

He's got all this information.

So uh like I said, if we can get in a rainwater situation, if we can get that water out back into the bay, that's what we want to do.

And I got 14 seconds during a flood, though, you know the water comes in and it lays there, and it doesn't move until the tide siphons it out.

Well, if we have pumps, and he oh, these pumps move four, six, and eight thousand gallons a minute a minute, and we can lease them.

We don't have to buy them, and and they take care of all the uh maintenance and everything else.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Who's next?

Hi, I'm Michael Thornton, uh 3014 DuPont Street.

I live in one of the areas that are affected by flooding.

Um just also first question, you know, three minutes is not a lot of time.

Um I'm just uh my background mechanical engineer, uh specializing fluid engineering and thermodynamics.

I've done many of these types of models for big campus systems and water distribution systems.

I understand the node.

I think the report was very well done, uh, very comprehensive.

Uh I have a couple questions because when I know when I do these types of modeling, it's all about what's asked to the model.

The model's great, but what do you want to look at, right?

So I have a couple questions about that, and also just to follow up my first thing.

Is there another venue that I can spend more than 30 three minutes?

Uh questions.

Did the report look at historical impacts of town shores development and the blockage of the watershed?

Did the report look at the impacts of the beach parking lot and the rec center, which were built over time at a higher elevation that blocks the watershed?

And what did the report look at any additional drainage infrastructure or account for these blockages?

Did the report look at a reduction in tailwater by installing check valves at the L Fall locations of town shores and/or the beach parking lot or the recenter?

Was pumping looked at at the locations during non-rain events to evaluate and look at the acceptance volume of the system in BMP 4 during the 48 tailwater events that were identified in the study.

And a different different tailwater events as related to the 25 year, because I do not believe there's a difference between in the area of 58th, there's a difference between 25 years and a hundred-year event.

It's inundated.

Um was over pumping during tailwater vents looked at as a mitigation measure with tailwater between 1.78, NAB D 1988, and 3.5 NAVD 1988.

3.5 is the level at which stormwater backs up into DuPont and 58th feet.

So I'll those are my questions.

Thank you.

Who else wants to speak?

Public comment?

Yes.

Um, just one thing.

It would be really great if those of us who don't know anything about what you're talking about in terms of the engineering technical talk could have some of these updated slides that are a little easier to understand once they become clearer.

If they would be available to the public so that we could really understand what we're saying, what what you're saying, what he's saying, and be able to talk about it a little more smartly.

Okay.

You can public records request the slides from the clerk's office.

I I understand that.

I think I guess what I would what I'm asking for is as this process goes on, would it be possible for simple and clear things to be put out for the the uninitiated so that we can have some sense?

I don't know what BMP stands for, for example.

I just listened to BMP one, two, three, and four, and I want to do it.

That's how each of the projects were labeled.

They presented us with six projects.

So what I'm saying is if there could be a some kind of um something like after this talk, if something kind of dumbed down a little bit simple so that all of the people in golf park could have a sense of what's happening would be great.

I don't know how to accomplish that, but I would be willing to help.

That's all.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, before I close public comment, anybody else?

Yes.

Scott Bernstein skimmer point.

Uh a few things that I'll talk about and say when it rains, from what I've noticed, is I water flows down to Ibis, not IBIS back to PYCC.

The rain water on 59th Street goes into the culvert that was just cleaned out, goes through the pipe under the guard house and out.

If you want a video, I can send you a video because I've seen it myself.

Um I agree when you have like a big storm, it'll back up into PYCs, but generally it runs one way.

I also would agree with you that the uh area of PYCC that you can't see on the entrance side way back, probably does flow out the kips because I've been told that I I haven't seen, I don't want to go through the muck back there, but I would say that's kind of how I'm interpreting which way the water goes.

Um I have no problem with the idea of looking at taking parks and making them water features.

I do not feel that they will hold the volume of water that everyone thinks they will.

Million gallons sounds like a lot.

Believe it or not, if you filled up this room and did the calculation, I would be willing to bet you this is probably about 85,000 gallons.

So you're only talking 10 of these rooms for a million gallons.

And I would have a very big concern for people that aren't aware of how the parks are being potentially laid out, and your 13-year-olds out at the park, and we get a nice rainstorm, and the next thing you know, golf port kid dies in park because they aren't aware of water coming in.

So I would either say it either becomes a water area or stays apart, because not everyone is gonna look at a sign, redesign, are they in every single language that we need to have?

That would just be my concern from a liability standpoint.

Um if you do the math and the math says it'll work, it's not a bad idea.

Also, if you're not aware, uh I'm in Skimmer Point, PYCC country club is doing a massive remodel expansion.

Since a lot of these lines go into the golf course, maybe linking up with them before they draw their plans and all that, you may get more bang for your buck on that side.

I don't know.

Good idea.

Yeah, not my paycheck.

Have a good one.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

All right, we're gonna close public comment then.

All right, and we're gonna give um Justin an opportunity to come back and maybe one by one address the questions and see if we all so again I apologize if I um if I don't get everybody, or if I don't um, you know, if I don't respond in a way that you feel addresses your question, but so I guess uh the first um the first resident spoke about DuPont and 31st.

Um that is uh that is a low-line area, uh one of the places to where we've identified um has um has a lot of these inefficiencies and PYCC subwatershed at the north end, they kind of manifest themselves down in this area.

Um we are aware that that is low.

Um there's a project proposed within that area.

Um from a big picture standpoint, you know, we we do feel that there is a project that is palatable and can provide some benefit during the um smaller storm events, but from the bigger storm events, if there's a finite amount of funds, you may want to pursue some of the other ones in there because if you you know, because really you're gonna have to tackle that problem.

You know, we don't want to catch water at the bottom of the hill.

Sometimes we have to do work at the bottom of the hill to allow for more water to come down so we don't have adverse impacts.

But um, you know, really when we talk about using other green areas to collect to hold the water, I think um those can be as or more effective versus let's say dealing with the issue that you see right there.

So my interpretation of your answer on that one is that um project number four does address specifically the issue that and the area that she's concerned with, but you're relating again that one, two, and three, even though they're dealing with the water upstream, would probably be more effective.

From you know, because there are certain issues that are manifesting themselves down in this area.

Let me go to that slide, um, that are not happening in that area, if it makes sense.

It's other issues that are coming into that area because it's low line.

And so um certainly understanding that um, you know, we we would like you know, a lot of this is because of that northwest, you know, kind of the northeast to southwest pattern that we talked about in the PYCC subwatershed.

So um I'm not sure if that specifically uh, you know, I I did want to point out that we we're aware of this area.

We identified it as a flooding hot spot.

We kind of combined it with the wood ibis area because are they um they have parallel systems, but they're they're next to each other.

And um this is a location that um has kind of the the double whamming of its it's lower, so it's more subject to tidal impacts, and then also we have the um cascading water during larger storm events that hits it also.

So um and some of the flooding depths that were reported, um, especially during that August flash flood, you know, I think our models kind of kind of telling a story that jives with with what with what the resident is seeing there.

Um moving on to the IBIS pond question as far as dredging.

Um when when we talk about um wet ponds, uh, and let's say uh when I talk about a wet pond, we mean a pond that stays constantly wet.

The reason why it's constantly wet is because it is dug out below the groundwater table.

So that means that essentially what you're seeing that static level is more or less the groundwater manifesting itself to where if you dug a hole on the other side of 58th Street, you know, you would dig about that depth conventionally speaking, and you know, that that's where that water table is.

So if you were in an upland area to where the water table was a hundred feet below grade, and you dredged, that water would drop.

You would realize volume benefits because essentially the the available because that area is available storage in wood ibis, that area for dredging is not available storage.

So the wood ibis water level would not drop because essentially what you're doing is you are you're excavating water below the ground, you're excavating water below the groundwater table.

You're not changing the groundwater table.

Now, what what dredging um you know, and and so these ponds, you know, um, you know, we certainly understand that the um you know, say common knowledge would think that let's remove more of the bottom and that water table is gonna drop and it won't because of the because of the groundwater.

And and so essentially you could dig a hole to the bottom of the earth and that water is still gonna stay the same.

So, and that's why when when you talk about wet ponds, um why they're wet is not because there's a constant source of well, we because there is a constant source of water, which is the groundwater table.

Um regarding the 59th outfall um or 59th Street and where that water goes, um, on the west side of the road, you have those homes that I I don't want to say they're part of PYCC, but they're built on the on the edge of the golf course there, and they have like the land bridges that go over the uh they go over the swale.

Those um the water that falls in 58 part of it does migrate down to the drain next to the low house and then goes into the the wood ibis area, and then the other part of the road, I believe there's an inlet on that side of the road, but eventually it goes either into wood ibis or it goes into that PYCC natural area.

And when I talk about the natural area, we're talking, let me pull this up here.

We're talking about this right here.

So can I ask you a question about the pond?

Because Tomlinson Park also is a wet pond.

But it's I would assume a much higher elevation.

Yeah, so I I know we dredged it, but um Yeah, so with with Tomlson, I would need to look at the groundwater elevation there.

Um, you know, to kind of see, you know, because um, you know, the groundwater is not, you know, um, the groundwater can kind of fool you sometimes to where in in low-lying tidal areas like 31st and 58th, it's it's way more predictable.

Right.

It's low, you you you know it's there.

Um as you get into the up up gradient areas of the city, um, you know, the water table can do a lot of different things.

It can follow, you know, can kind of follow terrain.

It could, it can, you know, sometimes it it can kind of almost like breach or you know, or or almost become higher in certain areas.

Um we've had projects in the bluffs over on the west side of Pinellas to where we're digging on the side of the hill and it's dry as you can be, and you get up to the top of the hill and you think it'd be even drier, and you're sopping wet in water.

So groundwater, you know, so that um when we I can speak confidently about um areas along the coast when it comes to groundwater.

When we go more inland, I would need to do some more research to kind of look at what maybe the groundwater would be in that area.

So it it is possible that even though it's higher, you're seeing the same thing that that is that is a water table manifesting itself.

Um okay, the uh the rain water in the bay.

Um I appreciate the gentleman sharing those plans.

We'll take a look at them.

Um a little bit about us as a firm.

Um we are a full service engineering firm, we work with other entities, we do stormwater.

We also do wastewater design, wastewater pumping stations.

So we're very very familiar with um with um, I I call them flight because it used to be flight back in the day, but now there's Islam.

Um and so when we talk about um, I think the number that was thrown out was 8,000 gallons per minute, um, which certainly is a is a powerful number.

But having a background in wastewater design and stormwater design, um one thing that's humbling is the volume of water that you're dealing with in a stormwater environment.

Wastewater, those flows are a lot more fixed.

Um so 8,000 GPM, you measure wastewater in gallons per minute.

When you talk about stormwater, you're talking about cubic feet per second.

That's how you look at it.

So 8,000 GPM is 17 cubic feet per second.

And you know, and we talked about this project here, BMP four, that has the ability to reduce overland flows by 400 CFS.

So essentially what we're talking about is is just magnitude of scale.

And um we know that there are some entities looking at pumping stations.

We looked at a pumping station option at Wood Ibis Park for that study.

Um, you know, certain certainly in in certain areas, I do think pumping stations are a solution that should be looked at.

But the one thing that's unique about this area here specifically is that we have the tide, but then we also have all this other runoff that's gonna hit us.

So when we're talking about pumps that can move 17 CFS, and we have a slug of six 600 CFS coming on us, I mean it's it's just a magnitude of scale issue.

And when you talk about a pump station, you know, it's it's it's the pumps, it's the control panels, it's all that, and certainly in certain places it's warranted.

Um, this was not a place to where we felt that it it was um it was a good idea to deploy because of the fact that we have all these other upstream deficiencies that essentially if if we modeled this, you know, if we model the pump station, it's gonna show the same thing.

And so, you know, when you talk about pumps, the reason why we try to be very strategic when we deploy them is because you're talking about just different magnitudes of scale.

And um, you know, again, for first for wastewater, 8,000 gpm is a pretty powerful number for wastewater.

We we've done some lift stations that that the that size for stormwater, that's that's pretty um pretty pretty nominal, so to speak.

Um, and then also too, there was discussion about sediments um or sediment, the city um has baffled boxes throughout their system and they maintain those systems.

Um certainly we have we have spec's our fair share of baffle boxes.

Um we used to get cooperative funding by putting them in, and those days are those days are long gone, but we can still reflect on them and uh wish they'd come back.

Um, but so yeah, so we're we're aware of baffle boxes.

There are a couple projects here to where um you know there are other structural BMPs, BMPs, uh best management practices, more or less think of those as things that you do that are good for stormwater, whether it's putting up silt fence, whether it's improving um whether it's improving uh stormwater system.

BMPs is kind of a a stormwater generic term that is used for improving stormwater.

We could have easily called these project one, project two, project three.

So I'm kind of jumping out of order for the BMP question, but just wanted to hit on that real quick.

Um I'm glad to see there's a fellow nerd here in the room, um, another modeler, and um what?

I said that'd be you.

Well, I wasn't trying to call the guy out, you know.

So um, but you know, certain certainly um, you know, there there is there is a heck of a lot of truth to you know, the the modeling is that if you put crap in, you get crap out.

Okay.

So um, you know, there's a very, you know, very um, let's say commonly known and and you know thing that should be shared is that you're only you know, your model's only as good as the assumptions that you put into it, um, which is why for this presentation we talked about rainfall, we talked about tail water.

There's a reason why we talked about all that because the model is so dependent upon those factors, and it was important, it was important for us to kind of share with the council um, you know, what those assumptions are because if you disagree with them, then they would have a fundamental impact on the results that we see.

Um, as far as modeling historic blockages, um, I I did catch two, one about the beach parking lot, and the other um I believe about like PYCC around Wood Ibis.

Um regarding PYCC and the Wood Ibis, if you recall for the presentation we gave for Wood Ibis, we talked about how that you know that this natural area kind of used to be the shoreline back in the day, and how PYCC was built around that.

And PYCC is higher, you know.

So there is there is um there is a train change as you get closer to the water, it's kind of you know, almost like you're going down, then you go up to the waterfront property.

Um so that is that is certainly something that's reflected within our DEM, our digital elevation model, and we are aware of that.

Um when we're doing the model, we are not um we are not, let's say um our our job as we see it is to understand how the city's stormwater is functioning in today's environment with the land that's there.

Um we did not look at um let's say hypothetical, what if this area wasn't built or anything like that, because um our you know our immediate focus is to ensure that we're giving you the feedback on on what is what is here and what we're experiencing today.

Um there's also the question about about pumping and about tailwater events.

Um there was a um, you know, I I think the elevations were given um uh 1.78 to 3.5 was about the elevations that you would see um impact street flooding in this in in these areas.

I'd probably say, you know, even lower than 3.5.

I wouldn't doubt if two and a half, three, you'd starting to see some flooding in these areas.

Um again, when it when you talk about pumping, uh, you know, pumping can be effective in certain situations.

Um and there are certain storms to where you know putting in a pump um during a moderate rain event would have some benefits.

Um our job that we feel that we're tasked on is we are tasked with controlling flooding for the larger events that have a um you know that have a greater impact both to human life and to property.

And so um we've we've um you know, based upon our experience in working with pump stations in not only the stormwater but the wastewater arena um and our stormwater experience, we we we felt that um well, certainly we are not here to say never use them because there may be a time to use them.

Um there wasn't a place that we felt it could be um immediately deployed.

Now, let's say the PYCC area wasn't, you know, let's say the P uh P PY CC issues didn't manifest themselves and come down there.

I think that's a different ball game.

If we're not talking about all this cascading water coming from the northeast part of town and cascading down in this area, I I think that's something we probably would have looked a little bit closer at.

Um but considering that we have this uncontrolled runoff problem, the the pump station would have been uh certainly a considerable investment with with um expectations that I don't think would have been realized.

Um okay, we talked about the BMPs.

Um, and again, certainly I will try to do what I can to um let's say um uh but uh talking more uh conventional terms when talking about this uh skimmer point uh talked about the flow of the natural area.

Um I I apologize if I miswrote that down, but we um you know, based upon so the wood ibis pond, those weirs, um, those weirs flow from wood ibis to the west.

So when it when it discharges, wood ibis discharges on the west side of that weir structure that's in the park.

And then it it goes through the natural area and then it goes to the land bridge and all that area in PYCC.

So skimmer point, which I believe is a neighborhood to the south.

I think that has its own collection system and its own pond, I believe, um, that goes down near town shores.

So the skimmer point was a if if it's the area that I'm thinking of, it's a separate development.

Um because that's the berm along the backside, right?

So yeah, skimmer point, that that has its own separate pond, its own separate control structure.

I haven't ever seen the control structure, I don't think.

Um, but but I do believe that records show it going out the back and going out near town shores.

So and again, I recognize I probably didn't address everybody, but I hope that was um well, Millman's effort to address the questions.

Thank you.

Um does anyone up here feel the need in speaking order to make any kind of closing remarks on our town hall meeting?

I'm just curious Workshop meetings, excuse me.

Like when they built, and and I know it was a long time ago, but when they built town shores and PYCC, you know, now I know that there's a rule that if you're building something, you can't have a negative flow impact on the neighbors.

Like there's like a one you can only have like a one percent gradient or something like that.

So clearly that wasn't doesn't seem like that was followed for the building of those things at that time, and it was a long time ago.

So if I'm mayor maybe Yes, please.

If you look at the map in my office, it's pretty self-explanatory.

You'll see the original Pasadena Country Club, not passing the yacht and country club, that was Pelican Bay that was built in early started being developed in the 1970s.

If you look at the the map in my office, you'll see man-made areas, the fingers, they're all perfect.

What was a landfill for lack of a better term?

The golf course proper, passing the golf course that's across the street from Stetson.

That was all grass area.

The city drained that way.

They built passing the yacht and country club, Pelican Bay.

That is all higher, as it was spoken of.

Now town shores is also built on fill.

Those were all backfilled areas.

Hence, and to get I'll get to your other part of your question.

Those were all built higher than where the city was draining to.

59th Street is Justin spoke of, was all built everything south of 59th and 20 and 27th is man-made.

So they had what they had to do, and even in the 70s, this is all early 1970s, is they had to hand deal with the water on their property.

Not what was happening, what they were changing, impacting upland.

They were dealing with, as you spoke of in Skimmer Point, they have their own collection system, they have their own pond.

If you go around the club there around PYCC proper, there's ponds and they they have a master's association that manages some.

Each of the individual subdivisions within there manage their water.

That's what they had to do during this 1970s.

They had to hold their water on their property for X amount of time before it was treated and then discharged.

So yes, everything that's been spoken of, this gentleman spoke of was the city drained northeast to southwest without, and this is why when we talk about brick roads having fewer inlets and things like that, the city drained northeast to southwest.

It also drained, yeah, you have other elements that have created the high school changed.

The original high school built in the 1950s, was all grassed and drained to Bear Creek.

The Little League Boulevard, 7th Avenue, that all ties into Bear Creek.

It drained from 11th Avenue, the city crowned at 11th Avenue and drained the high school in there.

Now the high school is a completely different model.

So that's bringing that water again from the northeast section of the city down further down, and then hence, but the this gentleman spoke of is exactly what happened.

The original golf course was the shoreline to the as you can see in my office.

Town shores was built on man-made land.

That was all mangrove.

When I when I was a little, I mean, not to get into this, but when I was a little boy, none of that was it was all just being pumped up from the bay.

That's you so you're right.

The drainage was all affected by the development of town shores and the redevelopment of what became PYCC.

Councilmember Shaw.

I'm just taking it all in.

Thank you.

All righty.

Same.

Okay.

The more we talk about it, the easier it is, obviously.

So I look forward to the vulnerability.

I really do.

Yep.

Yeah.

Me too.

So if I was to just summarize, I think what I learned tonight was first of all, I appreciate Justin coming and being patient with us and trying to give the presentation in a more uh understanding way to non-engineers.

We're not nerds.

Okay.

So I appreciate that.

So I do appreciate that.

Um I also um like the fact that I could tell that everybody has been working on these.

Um even if it they didn't know what they wanted, they knew that what they didn't understand and need some additional assistance on, okay.

And we've been pretty consistent saying uh the the mapping itself is very difficult for us to comprehend.

Um I also f feel like we made good progress in the sense that um we're not taking green space off the table, okay.

Um the uh the use of some green space is not coming off the table.

We are not by any means trying to create more water parks.

We're not worried about what it's gonna look like.

That wasn't the point of it.

The point of it is is that all of us as we're talking to all the quote experts and everyone who wants to give us advice, we keep hearing bio swells, collection ponds, let the water um go natural when possible.

Uh everything doesn't have to be piped.

So what we're trying to do is look at spaces that we have in the city that we already own and see how we can incorporate them into the plan.

So it and then we only added that we could make them look nice so that we don't have then the backlash of that of oh, you're gonna take my neighborhood and make it look ugly.

Okay.

So that's the only reason that that was mentioned.

Um we didn't talk about money at all, which is the biggest elephant in here, uh, and that was intentional at this point because before we can even address money, we have to kind of know what do we and come to a consensus.

And I think um the uh ideas that were suggested from the engineering firm and and Justin, I think we've questioned a couple of those to the point that he might go back and reevaluate a couple things and see if he could incorporate any of the ideas that we threw out at him, and then that might lead to some additional um uh ideas of what money we maybe we don't have to spend, but money that we do have to spend so we have a better idea.

Also, we'll get the vulnerability study in, and we'll have some idea of money on that, so that money will be a very, very large topic.

So this is something as I started out the meeting tonight saying, you know, this really hasn't been addressed for many, many, many decades almost, okay.

So it's now falling on this council to try and start the process, not try, to start the process of moving forward and attacking what I see to be our number one issue in Gulfport, which is our storm water.

So we're gonna just take it one step uh at a time.

None of us up here profess to be experts on this, so we're learning as we go.

We hired an engineering firm that we do uh believe to be engine uh experts on this, and we need to take some of their guidance and the give and take between us will be a good thing.

And with that, um there'll be future conversations, and they will be posted uh when we're having them.

But uh, you know, I'd like to think that getting some starts going on this sooner rather than later is what we're all trying to accomplish.

Just a little note.

If somebody wants to borrow my copies of these to look at for a while, I'm happy to learn.

All righty, this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you so much for attending and giving your input.